Yep, it's the pun we've all been waiting for since about Ruby's trailer. But first, another ad for gen:LOCK.
(shrugs)
There are about two things foreshadowed in the titles that haven't come to pass yet: Adam getting any significant screentime (maybe), and Jaune being mad at Oscar. So what's the other half of the Volume going to be about?
Cinder has brought Neo to outside the vault of the Relic of Knowledge. The Relic vault itself is inaccessible because the door is shut (how???). It is implied that Cinder has just finished storytime about said Relic. She catches herself mentioning Salem's goal instead of theirs - the difference is that Salem apparently explicitly ordered Cinder not to kill Ruby. So Cinder has had the big-brained idea of getting Neo to do it, as if that will save either of them from Salem's displeasure. They shake on it anyway.
Someone wearing a skull mask walks over a really stereotypical dangerous wooden bridge. At what sounds like a bird of prey screeching, they unstow and unfold a scythe, which is just as well because a very Giant Nevermore soon bears down on them.
The bridge is destroyed by the Nevermore and the figure falls. Good thing their weapon is bifurcated! They throw the upper part (including the scythe head) at the Nevermore where it securely anchors - and slightly wounds it, but that's less important right now. Then the matching ends glow purple and pull towards each other, dragging the figure up (and the Nevermore slightly down, but that's less important). They pilot the Nevermore around for a moment using the weapons stabbed into its back, repeat the throw-and-pull trick to bounce it off a rock pillar, and ride the stunned Nevermore down to a rough but non-harmful (with a Nevermore for cushioning, anyway) landing on a rocky plateau.
The Nevermore isn't dead yet. It shakes the figure loose, disarms them, and pounces for the kill. The Eye Beams of Doom disagree, petrifying it in mid-air. After an ACME-certified interval, it falls and shatters.
Correction, they don't have a bifurcated weapon, they just have two weapons. They rearm just in time to block someone shooting at them. Three randoms emerge from rock features near the plateau. A fourth, with an extremely broad English accent, emerges from the other direction and taunts our silver-eyed protagonist.
"Well, that's a fancy trick now, innit? 'Fraid it comes with a price, now, love."
(turns to face her, rather than the minions) "I don't think you realise who I am."
"'Course I do." (winds elaborate stopwatch) "You're the Grimm Reaper." (grins more toothily than any human should be able to) "And these are the last sixty seconds of your life." (starts stopwatch)
There ensues a fight scene exactly sixty seconds in length (presumably; there's a bit of slow-motion which makes it difficult to assess). The Grimm Reaper is very, very good, and might have been able to hold her own for that long if not for whatever boost the stopwatch is giving. She rearms when disarmed, she repels multiple opponents at once (including Toothy), she combines her weapons to fight in opposite directions at once until Toothy (the last left standing on her side) bites through the combination point. A headbutt that shatters the Reaper's mask is followed up by a sword slash with moments left on the clock that destroys both of her eyes. Ow.
Ow.
The Reaper spends the last of her magazine firing at where Toothy's voice is coming from, but Toothy dodges easily, then offers - seriousness uncertain - to spare her life seeing as the hit was on her eyes. The Reaper throws a blade which is also dodged. She escapes certain death at the hands of Toothy by calling it back for a backstab and then slashing with the other as Toothy falls forward into range.
Toothy called her "a fighter to the end". "But I wasn't," says Maria Calavera, the Grimm Reaper, to Team RWBY+Q+O. "I went into hiding soon after." This explains her extremely elaborate goggles - they're entire prosthetic eyes.
Oscar wonders how a legend like the Grimm Reaper could just disappear. Clearly he does not have any leftover advice from Ozpin, whose past lives intentionally did just that with the Four Maidens.
Qrow is having his own meet-your-heroes moment. As Ruby patterned Crescent Rose off Qrow's weapon, so Qrow based his on the disappeared Grimm Reaper's. He strived to be as good as her. Maria reckons that's a disappointing standard. Somebody call Jaune, we got some more impostor syndrome to take care of.
Maria beats herself up over cravenly never resuming even after regaining most of her sight through the magic of technology. The camera meaningfully looks at her over Yang's right shoulder (the mech-arm side) as she (Maria) says some of them are clearly stronger than her already. All she's got left are regrets over not leaving a better world for them.
Ruby proceeds to Ruby, requesting training on the Eye Beams of Doom which Maria had clearly mastered as a means of lifting her (Maria) out of her funk. Anything else Ruby had to say will have to wait, for at that moment her Scroll rings: it's Jaune (contact name Vomit Boy - some jokes just never die), who's been checking for their signal forever. And that's what prompts everyone to look up and realise they're almost at Argus. Cue piano remix of the last part of the title song as they crest the last hill and escape the snow.
(Ruby did not have a custom contact name for Jaune back in V2. In-universe nostalgia hits hard.)
completely unrelated storytime
It was about here, while watching the episode with the flashback where Maria loses her eyes, that I had to pause to go to an appointment to take ownership of reading glasses. The irony, it burns a bit.
Yang puts Bumblebee in a bike locker just inside the city walls.
The first meeting is Nora seeing Oscar. Nora. Nora no. (Nora yes...) Other meetings are less energetic.
Ruby & Jaune friendship moment! Those have been in somewhat short supply.
The gang ride a tram with either no visible rails or a comically narrow gauge (whose numberplate is
(checks) the Chapter release date) as Team JNR give the newcomers a quick lesson in Argus history. It's about the biggest city that isn't a Kingdom capital, having gotten that way by the joint efforts of Mistral and Mantle. It's under Mistralian governance, but Atlas keeps a military garrison (how wrong could this go?) - until recently?
They step off the tram, and Oscar thinks to ask where Team JNR were accommodated while waiting for them. Cue one of the fabled Arc sisters, and child. The look on Ruby's face warms but scares me (and Jaune).
Comedy™ ensues at the Arc-sister residence. Everyone but Jaune is entranced by the child. Jaune, in response to a remark of "baby brother", just dispenses what feels like an instant meme (
very carefully checks what? it's not there! how!):
"I am not a baby! That is a baby."
Said young individual folds their arms unimpressed-ly. Weiss and Yang are recursively entranced.
Blake asks for more details about Saphron "Saph" Arc, giving Saphron an excuse to tell us that most of the Arc sisters still live at home (wherever that is), and the camera an excuse to show us an old family photo in which Jaune is holding up a "HELP" sign (and reasonably so).
Terra Cotta, Saphron's wife, wanders in the door with groceries. Not sure if that'll be enough to feed the party, given how much we know slightly fewer of them could eat in Mistral, but points for trying.
Shot of a sandwich assembly line in the Cotta-Arc kitchen as Blake from next shot of the living room asks whether they can actually all stay there. Of course, says Terra (misidentified as Saphron in subtitles), it's basically their civic duty for a party of Hunters. (It's also a pretty big living room for a house of 2.5 people.)
Qrow has to talk fast - after Ruby elbows him - to provide what sounds to Terra enough like a legal justification for most of them only being Hunter-trainees. He eventually digs his way to saying that most of them are better than him at their age, which Ruby is pretty happy to hear. This remark is saved from verbal backpedalling by Team JNR bringing out the products of the sandwich assembly line. {{Blake noms.}}
Terra has to go take a Scroll call. (She works at the comms relay tower, which doubles as a military radar tower, so when the radar has a Heisenbug the blame rolls downhill.) Ruby, through two different sandwiches, explains they're trying to get to Atlas and will start by asking at the military base, to which Team JNR explains they already tried that. "Come on," says Yang, "it couldn't be that bad." This is called tempting fate, Yang, you shouldn't do it.
Cut to the military base (I hear the Atlas military theme music, what a throwback), where Watch Officer Fate (not literally) wordlessly slams (literally) the gates shut in front of Team RWBY. The sequence might have worked better without the music, but who am I to argue with nostalgia?
Next time: Bad news breeds.
