The dragon (wyvern?) Grimm buzzes the ship Ruby is standing atop on its (dragon's) way to cause trouble. It is shortly followed by a tide of Griffons, one of which breaks off from the flock to try to kill Ruby personally. Unfortunately for this Griffon, Ruby has Crescent Rose. Unfortunately for Ruby, her next opponent will be Neo. As Ruby goggles, Neo snaps a picture and sends it to Torchwick (with a text caption of "Guess who?"). Seeing Ruby
really gets Torchwick's goat.
Meanwhile on the ground, Adam pushes all of Blake's buttons. I was wrong earlier, he hadn't finished off that one soldier yet; it is him (Adam) going to do so that is the last straw to goad Blake into fighting him. Blake is not up to fighting Adam; she's some combination of less skilled and emotionally compromised. Adam nonetheless stops a Grimm from eating her while she's down, signalling very clearly that he wants her to suffer. This dude is clearly the worst.
In the courtyard, the students are doing okay against the Grimm, but the addition of a big mech puts them on the back foot. None of them have the firepower to accomplish much against it. Their heaviest hitter, Nora, just got knocked flat on the ground; the next heaviest hitter is arguably Coco, whose minigun is accomplishing absolutely nothing. Coco directs Velvet to break out the figurative big guns.
And here come the lyrics!
As the lyrics continue Volume 3's lyrical theme of 'real ominous', Weiss objects strenuously to Velvet walking up to the big mech basically unarmed, but Coco has absolute confidence in her teammate.
The figurative big guns are literal: Velvet breaks out a holographic Crescent Rose and does absolute Ruby things. So what you're telling me is that Velvet's camera pretty much actually is her weapon (well, holograms are technically funny colours...). Then she swaps to holographic Weiss'-sword and fences with the mech. Then to Yang's gauntlets and brawls, then to Blake's weapon and ties it right up.
Hey, I recognise this song from the V01C02 credits.
The tied-up mech has no option but to fall over. Cue a second one. Velvet throws the holographic Blake's-sword-sheathe - or I think it's still Blake's, I might be mistaken - at it and follows up with the holographic minigun. I'm not sure why she thought that would work when the real thing didn't. She cycles through Sun's and then Nora's weapons to put it down. The first mech gets up, so Velvet steels herself and swaps to Penny's weapons to slice it up and blast it apart. Then the second one kicks her aside just like Nora was.
Coco reforms the gun line, but the big mech ignores it, just like before. Cue Weiss to run in front of Velvet and try put up a shield glyph. What happens instead is she partially summons that big ol' armor suit from all the way back in her trailer. It cuts the mech apart, and Velvet snaps a photo of it (the armor's sword arm, up to the shoulder or so) while she has the chance.
Cue a
third big mech hurtling in under Black Queen control. "You have
got to be kidding me!" says Sun. I understand his frustration.
Back up in the sky, Neo is having a slightly more difficult time styling on Ruby than she ever did on Yang. But only slightly. Eventually she (Neo) disengages to give Torchwick a clear shot, which blows Ruby halfway back down the dorsal hull of the ship.
Ruby can't quite believe that Torchwick is sabotaging the main line of defence against the Grimm destroying everything. "That's the plan!" crows Torchwick, leaving Ruby in even more disbelief as he tags Neo back in. Roman Torchwick, my dude, remember when you were just a Dust thief? Treason doesn't suit you.
Ruby continues to attempt to fight, and Neo gets into her rhythm and starts really styling, disarming Ruby. As the fight evolves from there, Roman takes another shot; Ruby grabs her weapon which has anchored itself in the hull, which is the only reason she doesn't fall to her death. Yet.
Torchwick and Neo then make the critical mistake of taking time to gloat. Well, Neo doesn't verbally, but you know what I mean. As Torchwick winds down his speech about how none of them (not even he) can oppose the forces he now works for, Ruby sees an opening: she triggers Neo's parasol to open. It catches the wind, and off floats Neo. Excellent thinking from our protagonist.
Torchwick is now angry, but Angry Torchwick still outclasses Unarmed Ruby in a fight. He beats her down while ranting about how frustrated he is that she keeps getting in the way. Then he makes the absolutely critical mistake of gloating again.
"As for me, I'll do what I do best. Lie; steal; cheat; and survive!"
And as he goes for his next swing at Ruby, right after he yells "survive!", a Griffon eats him whole.
Well, that was a thing.
The Griffon roars and blows Ruby back; she countercharges, jumping off its head and over its back, and lands on the deck beyond just as it explodes, which I presume was Roman's ammo cooking off or something. This blows a hole in the dorsal hull a dozen metres wide. The ship shudders, shuts off its engines, and starts having secondary explosions as it loses altitude for the last time. Clearly it has heard of neither armour nor redundant systems.
Ruby has one more airborne cool scene left in her. As the ship falls, she runs - later along the port hull as it lists starboard - to recover Crescent Rose from where it's still anchored to the hull. She makes it, dives off the ship (past more Griffons), and executes her standard landing strategy onto what I think is one of Beacon's landing pads.
Qrow and Goodwitch remain in the fight in Vale. Cardin is there too for some reason, beating up Grimm. Then he ends up under the guns of several robot troopers, for which he has no answer. You're telling me this guy
also doesn't even have a short-ranged option? Why exactly does he think he's better than Jaune?
Not to worry, somebody shoots the robots. Enter Ironwood, who, true to his name (and his apparently half-prosthetic body), has survived the crash of his shuttle and come to wreak vengeance on the army that is no longer his.
Ironwood has bigger problems, in the form of Qrow getting out the fabled Elder Gunscythe and coming for his own vengeance. No, correction, Qrow knew the score and was coming for the Grimm behind Ironwood, he (Qrow) just couldn't be bothered to say so.
Ironwood takes command of the situation whether authorised or not, telling Goodwitch to establish a safe zone in Vale and Qrow to take his remaining army (holy cow, the sudden trust) to evacuate Beacon in the face of the dragon while he (Ironwood) activates Plan B to get to his ship. Right on cue, said ship careens by on its death dive, leaving behind poorly-animated explosions. "Well, it won't be much of a walk," says Qrow as the (dismantled) robots all return to normal programming.
So too does Big Mech #3, which trips over its own feet and slides to a stop in front of the students. Yang belatedly arrives and asks Weiss if she's heard from Ruby or Blake; Weiss hasn't heard from Ruby (where did she end up?), but points in Blake's last known direction.
Ozpin, Pyrrha, and Jaune emerge into the vault and run like hell, the former shutting down the latter's questions with 'we
literally do not have time for this, stand there and guard'. (Jaune and Pyrrha's VAs are not doing a good job sounding like they're running.) Short story shorter, Pyrrha will need to make up her mind
now.
Pyrrha gets in the mad science machine.
Now back to the dining hall, where Adam continues to play Blake like a fiddle even while ranting from off the radicalised deep end. Most abusive vibes I've ever seen, and I saw my sister's marriage end pretty much in a restraining order. (I'm told the childcare centre has a photo of my ex-brother-in-law captioned 'IF YOU SEE THIS MAN HERE, CALL THE POLICE'.)
And then it gets worse: Yang, despite being forewarned of human (er, faunus?) opponents, announces her presence outside in a way that Adam cannot possibly not interpret as Yang being one of the things Blake loves that he just swore to destroy. Sure enough, "Starting with her."
Now back to the vault, where Ozpin insists on Pyrrha giving verbal confirmation before he starts the mad science. Pyrrha confirms. Ozpin starts the mad science.
Turns out, having someone else's soul shoved into your still-living body is excruciatingly painful. (But possibly not half as much as being that someone else.) Jaune leaves his guard position to do the best he can to support Pyrrha, which is to be visible to her. He was absolutely wrong about that being his best option, because Amber has just received an arrow to the heart courtesy of Cinder.
I knew it. Jaune, you had
one job.
Now back to the dining hall, where Adam stabs Blake. This draws Yang's attention. Yang, angry, uses her one trick of charging in and punching away. This fails catastrophically: Adam dodges and, having charged up some Final Smash, uses it to sever Yang's arm just above the elbow.
Now back to the vault, where Amber finally dies. Her soul retracts from Pyrrha's body and leaves this plane of existence - except the part anybody was concerned about, which retracts and then goes to Cinder. Now she's the whole Fall Maiden.
How many of these characters are we going to lose?
Jaune rushes to attack Cinder; Ozpin yells at him to stay back, and was right to considering how contemptuously Cinder brushes him (Jaune) aside. Pyrrha breaks out of the machine and Ozpin has to stop her from charging in as well.
"Take Jaune and get out of here! Find Glynda! Ironwood! Qrow! Bring them here right away. The tower cannot fall."
"But I can help."
"You'll only get in the way."
Ozpin is more ruffled than he's ever been, which is understandable given that everything he's ever worked for is coming apart. Cinder deigns to let Pyrrha and Jaune leave.
Now back to the dining hall, where Blake dives in front of the unresponsive Yang. "Why must you hurt me, Blake?" says Adam, certified abuser, before cutting her apart - but it's a shadow clone! The real Blake is carrying Yang away. Adam swats aside a Grimm as he slowly follows them. Presumably he feels like they can run but they can't hide.
Now back to the vault, where Cinder and Ozpin are in a staredown. Cinder calls Ozpin arrogant. The
nerve, the
absolute hypocrisy of that woman.
Geez, some of the Torchwick concept art in the credits looks absolutely silly. I also keep typoing his name as "Torhcwick", which I'm kinda tired of correcting. Maybe now that he's dead I won't have to any more.
Credits concept art also suggests that Velvet's holo-weapons are fueled by consuming her photos. If that's the case, she just burned a
lot of photos, including at least one that was literally irreplaceable.
Next time: Lifetime* guarantee.
