Oh hey, a
slightly different gen:LOCK ad, cool.
The population of the military radar room is busy cheerleading Cordovin as she beats up on kids. None of them are the slightest bit checking the radar, so they miss the new contact.
Ruby climbs to safety and is incredulous that Oscar, stuck on the aircraft that's drawn the mech's aggro (which apparently did not get blown up in the cliffhanger), is more worried about
her. Oscar reckons he's found its weak spot, apart from those already known and exploited. Nora, supporting an exhausted Jaune on his way back to the main gathering, would like to hear it.
As Ren supports his team, Oscar explains that the mech's missile launcher is mounted on the main gun's ammo selector, and sniping missiles in the deployed launcher could destroy the gun, leaving it without its primary and secondary weapons. As I said, concerningly skewed weapons load.
Ruby's skilled, but only on the edge of the required level of skill. And if she misses, they've blown it, because Cordovin won't give them a second shot. They'll have to stack the deck for the first shot.
Maria reckons she can give Ruby a straight shot down the cannon. I wonder how she'll accomplish this. /s
Not quite how I was thinking: Ruby gets on the aircraft.
Maria taunts Cordovin. The latter fixates on Maria again, ignoring her phone ringing courtesy of the base. This gives Ruby a good angle on the missile launcher. Unfortunately the mech's computer is pretty smart and picks up on Ruby aiming, bringing it to Cordovin's attention. She retracts the launcher in the nick of time.
Cordovin, now angrier than ever, fires lightning at the plane with intent to kill: even the glancing hit sends it haywire (and incidentally nearly fries everybody on the clifftop because they're colinear). This also fries Maria's eyesight. Oscar's no pilot at the best of times, and this is sure as h*ck not the best of times.
Clifftop gang are horrified to see the plane crash in the treeline. Qrow birdforms and rockets off to check how many niblings and/or role models he's just lost.
The answer, we see, is none yet. The plane is in one piece and everybody can at least crawl away, if not walk. Unfortunately Cordovin is coming to change that: they're hardly into the treeline at all, with a straight shot from the ocean. Wow Cordo, turn down the ...I'm not sure that's even Atlas supremacy any more, that's just straight-up insulting to everyone that isn't her. Caroline Cordovin supremacy, if you will.
Maria is still blinded, so Ruby sets out to draw aggro. Cue Qrow to try and dissuade her. I predict another argument.
There isn't another argument. Ruby gives him her best determined look and says "I need you to trust me", and Qrow decides to trust her.
Ruby reaches the cliff edge and makes another Ruby speech at Cordovin. I'm not optimistic about her chance of success, but I really do admire her optimism.
It does not succeed. Cordovin points the main gun at her and starts charging it. I predict one of two things:
- Given Ruby can fit down the barrel without even bending, this is a perfect chance to shoot something important in the firing chamber.
- Having recovered some Aura in the last few minutes, she Semblances out of the way at the last moment. ...Maybe not this plan, given Oscar, Maria, and Qrow are behind her.
Nobody else is thinking of any of those things. Team JWNR sprint over to try to accomplish something somehow.
I was half-right each: Ruby Semblances into the massive gun barrel. Even Nora thinks this is "nuts".
While the missile launcher deploys out, the massive Dust cartridges that power the gun deploy
in to the firing chamber. It's literally impossible for Ruby to miss from here, and by the look on Cordovin's face she forgot which button unloads the gun or even cancels charging. Result: a really impressive containment failure on at least three cartridges that renders the gun a really expensive spiked club (and worse at that once the ice melts). Because Dust is halfway to magic it doesn't conserve mass, so it's also a really heavy spiked club that the mech can't swing, or even lift off the ocean bed. Shoulda just slapped her, Cordo.
The one minor problem is that Ruby didn't manage to Semblance very far
out of the gun barrel before everything exploded, and she's now unconscious on a ballistic trajectory for the clifftop. Weiss spends the last of her available Aura on slowdown Glyphs so Qrow can catch Ruby without anybody getting (further?) injured.
Ruby awakens. "Told ya," she says.
They say a good landing is one you can walk away from, and a great landing is one where they can reuse the plane afterwards. Oscar's landing is upgraded from good to great as Maria regains remote control along with her sight. For comedy purposes, she complains about having missed the action.
Elsewhere on the north coast of Anima, Adam continues to Adam. Blake asserts that she can't die now, people are counting on her. Adam claims she promised him that too. Yang asks whether Blake promised Adam or "the person you were pretending to be". Adam continues to Adam.
All three resign themselves to resuming the fight. It was going pretty well for people not named Adam until they tried something slightly silly with Blake's weapon-ribbon to throw Blake at Adam for extra momentum behind her attack. Adam blocks. Blake bounces off him, bounces off a cliffside at the waterfall (Aura flickers), and ends up hanging off a ledge below.
Adam takes another moment to verbally attack Yang before recommencing the physical attacks, which seems to work judging by how it sets Yang trembling again. Or maybe it didn't judging by Yang holding her own.
This shot of Adam also shows Blake conspicuously climbing the cliff over there. Now Blake gets to be in focus and not quite as natural a cliff-climber as it seemed. But she has motivation, so that's something.
"Just hit me already!" demands Adam, having perhaps forgotten how much Yang's hit him already.
Yeah, Adam's losing it. Not the fight for now, just his mind. Yang opts to tank his Semblance. She must be charging hers. Yep, Adam makes an overly-elaborate jumping overhead sword slash into the cloud of dust he's just created around Yang, and Yang, hair on fire, has caught it in her mech-hand. Try chopping that one off. Wait, you already tried, and failed.
"Gotcha," says Yang, and punches Adam along so hard he leaves a trench as he lands. His Aura flickers as he regains his bearings. "I may not be faster," she says in refutation of earlier, "but I'm smarter," and throws his sword (which she was still holding on to) into the river. Adam is pretty torn up about that. As he looks down at where it went, Blake arrives, knocking him away in an explosion of violence to clear her own landing site.
All three combatants simultaneously notice the halves of Blake's weapon, equidistant between them, and run to collect them. Adam is slowest and gets stabbed from both directions for his trouble. "Oh," is all he says, before torturously stumbling to the edge of the bridge and falling into the river (bouncing off a lower outcropping on the way).
Characters have survived stab wounds - one at a time, in less-immediately-fatal areas, with medical attention close by. Characters have survived long falls into water - still water, with nonzero Aura and an ice coating to blunt the impact, and Maiden powers to help them get out. Adam has just fallen into a moving river with two major stab wounds. I think he's dead. Looks like he got what he deserved.
With the fight over, Blake's emotional suppression fails. Fortunately, Yang. Go Yang!
Meanwhile, Cordovin continues to have her own villainous breakdown. Her mech now has no functioning weapons: the gun is a write-off (expensive spiked club stuck on the ocean bed), the missiles are permanently pointed at the ocean bed even if they can be deployed without turning the ammo selector (also a write-off), and the mech can't leave its position and is too far from shore to make melee attacks against anybody onshore.
Cordovin orders all forces under her command to "eliminate these pests at once!". Oscar said a swear word! Maria just tells everyone to get on the plane, they're fleeing. Is that going to work when Cordovin has just implicitly scrambled the fighters? Even if this plane was in good condition, which it's not. I wouldn't want to risk a cross-continental flight on it.
There is a more pressing problem for everybody, as is revealed by the base comms officer who finally has a chance at Cordovin's ear. Remember that radar contact from the start of the episode? The base is already scrambling to respond to a major aquatic Grimm, exactly as I was expecting. Would have been nice to have a big mech to fight it with, eh?
Oh dear, it brought airborne friends. Smaller friends, but lots of them.
Next time: Suddenly, Pacific Rim!
