Oh look, the fabled pre-episode ad, for gen:LOCK.
(shrugs)
Titles: In the first scene after the title card, Jaune accidentally activates his shield while it's busy being his sword sheath. Cardin flashbacks intensify.
Ruby, why are you sitting on that staircase by yourself when everyone else is in the main room with the fire? The answer is that Qrow isn't in the main room either so she's keeping watch on him. He's found some of the alcohol, despite her best efforts. Qrow reports that the storm has cleared up so they should be able to leave the next day (it is now night). He also has a bad feeling about Brunswick Farms. "Especially with me around." My dude, you are the only one blaming you for your Semblance. Regardless, he claims the entire night watch before resuming drinking. I have concerns.
Maria has found the diaries of the head of the farm, and has been reading through them. Ruby interrupts to tell everyone that Qrow said they should all sleep. I have more concerns, given the dead bodies. Maria refuses - she's too old to let "some kid" tell her what to do.
The next morning, Ruby is abruptly awoken by the sound of a (visually distinct) bottle of alcohol dropping from Qrow's sleeping hand. After opening the curtains (Weiss objects), she goes to rouse Qrow, and is largely unsuccessful - she has to escalate to throwing the bottle away to shatter. Qrow eventually realises he said he'd wake them up at sunrise and it is well past sunrise. Fortunately none of the gang have died in their sleep.
As Weiss and Yang prepare Bumblebee to tow the trailer, Blake and Oscar commiserate in still being tired. Absolute mood, that's been my entire adult life. Qrow and Ruby push the trailer into proximity; it then develops a sudden and catastrophic flat tire, implied to be due to Qrow's Semblance. Maria really does not help anything by throwing peanuts about bad luck.
Yang isn't in a good place, convinced the universe doesn't want them getting to Atlas. She's also still tired. Weiss wonders out loud why they're going to Atlas at all. Yang wonders out loud whether they couldn't just hide the Relic where they are. (The answer is that it attracts Grimm: Salem would just have to look for a random hotspot.) Ruby, admitting to also being tired, goes to throw the Relic down the well. She reconsiders. Then she startles at Grimm eyes down the well and drops it anyway. Great. /s
Even Qrow now just wants to leave. Ruby is the only one at all interested in retrieving the Relic of Knowledge first. Yang's argument that it might take Salem years to find the thing doesn't hold as much water when you consider that there's probably a Grimm down there right now, but most of them just don't care and gaslight her instead. Team WBY eventually acquiesce and head down the well with Ruby. Qrow has Oscar fix the trailer while he takes up drinking again (to Maria's displeasure).
Title sequence foreshadowing means I don't like where this is going.
Team RWBY advance through the tunnels under the well (do wells work like that? I feel like they shouldn't) in search of the Relic. Meanwhile, Maria continues to page through diaries.
Team RWBY have the bright idea to switch their lights off and look for the characteristic glow of the Relic. Soon they seem to find it.
Maria turns the page and discovers documentation of "The Apathy". Oh no. With a name like that, it explains a fair bit...
Ruby has found the Relic. In accordance with its Grimm-attracting properties, she's also found the Apathy. I haven't been this freaked out by a Grimm since the Nuckelavee. Fortunately Team WBY can't gaslight her about seeing nothing when it rounds the corner behind her.
Crescent Rose accomplishes very little. Then the Apathy screams, and everyone loses half their wakefulness. It is up to Maria to get them to flee. How did she get down there? Good question, that might even be answered someday. The Apathy can't move fast enough to catch them, so it just screams again, stopping them all again at the well shaft. They don't have the energy to get back up. At least, that's the best explanation I've got for why Ruby takes them along another passage instead.
There are actually a h*ck of a lot of Apathy down here (it is unclear to me how many human-looking bodies make one Apathy), almost managing to cut off Team RWBY+M at every intersection. Eventually they reach what looks like a cellar and run out of options. More Apathy screaming saps almost all their remaining energy. Maria manages to identify an exit: it
is the cellar!
Ruby crawls to urge Weiss on (Yang is at the front), but Blake can't even crawl any more, and there are way too many Apathy slow-boiling into the room. Ruby turns back to get Blake, but runs out of energy herself halfway there, and can only watch as Blake's death comes for her...
Please welcome back to the narrative Ruby's Eye Beams of Doom! Suddenly there are fewer Grimm in the cellar. Kinda like bailing one bucketful out of the Titanic.
Everybody is energised again - even Maria, who's wondering what just happened. Weiss discovers the cellar door is locked. (Remember that?) Yang goes to apply her strength to the problem. Then more Apathy screaming puts them all on the floor. Maria, whose vision is definitely tinted blue, recovers just enough to go and ask Ruby some very important questions as the Grimm encroach upon them:
"What colour are your eyes?"
"They're... silver."
(audibly gasps) "You have a family? Friends?"
"What?" (hears Grimm)
(covers Ruby's ears) "Don't think about them. Think about the people who love you."
And so, as Weiss frantically tries to overcome the locked doors and Yang frantically tries to get up to help Weiss, Maria coaches Ruby into the protective mindset required for deliberate activation of her silver eyes. This time a lot more Grimm are burned away.
Yang blows the door open and they emerge into the kitchen(?) where Qrow is pretty drunk. Blake and Yang dash out the front of the house to help Oscar prepare for immediate departure. Weiss first sets fire to the cellar entrance where yet more Apathy are trying to emerge. (This is a callback to last Chapter where either she or Ruby gazed upon the alcohol and commented that they weren't going to have trouble starting a fire.)
The comedy is Qrow's reaction to Weiss smashing alcohol bottles to create the conditions for that fire. It turns out not to be funny, because Qrow is in the throes of apathy - until, as Ruby and Weiss drag him away, he recognises Grimm burning. Then he sobers up really fast at the realisation he almost just drank while his nieces died.
Yang drives them away as fast as she dares, as the main farmhouse burns.
So really Qrow's Semblance - and Weiss - saved anybody who might have passed by here in future.
Maria, sitting at the back of the trailer, tells them about the Apathy - "They're not strong, or ferocious. They drain your will to go on." - and how they got there. The head of the farm was looking to cut any costs possible to financially survive, and Hunter protection was a big one if everybody could be kept calm and not negatively emoting at all. So he had the absolutely universe-brained idea to lock a couple of Apathy in the cellar. Fortunately for the plan, they didn't die of spite. Unfortunately, they chose to live because they were smart enough to know they had him right where they wanted him.
The water tunnels, connecting to the cellar, were sealed from the outside world the next morning - but overnight the rest of the pack of Apathy had followed the missing pair in. "No one was angry, or sad, or scared. No one was anything. And then, no one was left." The last diary, that explained all this, is mostly nonsense Latin - contrast Ghira's speech notes - but the last words are very clearly
Maria yeets the diary into the snow. Why. That was valuable evidence.
Everyone has a recrimination session. Blake blames everybody's out-of-character conduct on the Apathy rather than anybody needing to apologise. Maria blames herself for not recognising the signs because she wasn't expecting them that big. This leads Ruby to ask her how she knows about Grimm, and for that matter knew how "to make me - make my eyes do that."
"Well, isn't it obvious, girl?" says Maria, "I had silver eyes."
This episode's voice cast is tiny - only seven characters spoke (all of the seven who appeared).
Next time: Maria Calavera's Tangentially Related Storytime. And then Arcsister's.