Having had three weeks for the titles to percolate, some more thoughts:
- Yang is on a hoverbike.
- Amity is clearly positioned as a thing being fought over. Penny then joins it. Given Penny and Pietro being juxtaposed with Watts just earlier, I have Concerns. To go with, y'know, all my other Concerns.
- On the other hand, it seems that Teams APRY and RSPBV may reconcile, if Ruby and Yang's shared nod is anything to go by.
- Ruby drops Crescent Rose as she falls into the crevasse.
- No fifth weapon appears in the last chalk shot - it's just dust clouds kicked up by the impacts.
Okay, so. Is this a thunderstorm or a gunfight we're hearing? Pained noise from Ruby suggests probably gunfight. No, wait, it must be the sound of travelling in a pneumatic tube. There's a reason they put safety warnings on those things!
May and Penny do indeed help Ruby out of a pneumatic tube. Nora tries to convince Weiss that "it's a once-in-a-lifetime experience" even through her own lingering pain; I was expecting Weiss to make the standard retort of 'certainly not doing it twice', but it is left to Blake instead.
Penny-vision! Penny determines exactly which route to take to get to Ironwood's terminal, and is understandably unimpressed by May not using her name.
May invisibles them all up and they start walking.
Team RSPBV+M takes a lift. There is a close call when two soldiers get in the lift. This implies that May's invisibility bubble is very selective: instead of just making everything inside transparent to everything outside, it can be tuned to treat some of the things inside as being outside. I have thoughts about why they're not taking stairs or something: On the one hand, it might be weird for security cameras to see (nobody) entering/exiting a stairwell if the stairwell has doors (which it probably does in a high-security area like this one). On the other hand, same applies to a lift. On the extra hand, entering/exiting a lift at the same time others do would mitigate that; on the matching extra hand, aside from needing to hope that others would exit on the right floor, the gang wouldn't react nearly as sharply to someone else walking into the lift if they'd entered with some other someone else... In total, they seemingly just have to hope that nobody's paying attention to (nobody) calling and using a lift. Case in point, these two guards, who appear to be on edge from the whole being-besieged-by-Salem thing.
Nora, last out of the lift, does not help matters much by pressing every button on her way by. I know it felt good in the moment, but do you really want to risk these two reporting the 'lift malfunction' and some computer tech unravelling your tapestry? The invisibility isn't actually perfect, especially in motion, and anyone who looks at a camera feed of the lift panel at the moment of 'malfunction' may well see the haze.
Subtitles: "(spy music)". (I know there's subtitle data here, because I can see it in a transcript pane if I ask for it. I just can't see it as
subtitles, which is slightly irritating - I have to go back and read the transcript pane later to fill in anything good I missed.)
Penny hacks a security scanner. ...Or just presents Pietro's credentials in a way I wasn't expecting. Ruby, being Ruby, sees any sign of Penny's synthetic nature as being very cool.
Next step on the route: right through the fully-staffed central command room. Trying to run that gauntlet would overtax May's ability to tune her Semblance. Fortunately, Penny has planned for this:
Harriet reckons Ruby's Semblance isn't a pure speed Semblance, based on her (Harriet's) experience with those.
As Penny now infodumps, it's technically not! Ruby's Semblance is to turn into a petal cloud and have that cloud behave in ways that defy little things like our understanding of physics, i.e. go real fast because it doesn't have mass. Penny knows from long ago (just before Ruby found out about Penny's synthetic nature) that Ruby can take passengers, also massless. So, reckons Penny, Ruby can whisk all of them through the danger zone. I worry that Penny isn't accounting for other factors, like volume, or air resistance.
Blake is a bit weirded out that Penny figured this out before Ruby did. Ruby retorts that Penny was the first of them to figure out that Blake is a faunus. Early-continuity references coming thick and fast recently.
Ironwood walks in to somewhere - is this the same central command room? (no) - and apologises for being delayed.
WATTS. WHAT.
Ironwood, what the hell are you playing at?
As someone who had Opinions on these characters already and works with high-value computers for a living, this scene makes me
absolutely livid. I probably don't have to explain how the Opinions interact with this (but I will ask if Ironwood has lost his tiny little mind even more than previously apparent). The thing about any skilled professional field is that it looks pretty inscrutable to amateurs without professions in that field. Doubly so with engineering, where, as one documentary I watched put it, "we live in an age where engineers can destroy cities
by accident". Triply so with computers; put your hand up if computing is basically magic to you
(raises hand) ...what? I'm a software guy, I don't claim to have any understanding of hardware beyond how not to accidentally fry it. Point is, you wouldn't believe how easy it is for someone trusted to sabotage a computer system in ways that are difficult for even their co-workers to detect and even more difficult to prove weren't mistakes. The oversight on Watts here is four armed guards and occasionally Ironwood, none of whom are computing professionals (unless any of those guards are more qualified than they appear, and even then they can't see anything much on Watts' screens). If Watts wanted to slip some more malware in (or just nuke and pave the whole system) to help Salem sow chaos and/or division, the gates are wide open. Ironwood is betting Atlas on thinking that anything Watts does against the plan (whatever it is) will be obvious enough to blow his head off
before he can do it, which I am thoroughly qualified to tell you
you should not bet (even a skilled professional watcher might not be quick enough to raise the alarm if someone trusted goes for the ol'
rm -rf /*); and that the threat of having his head blown off will dissuade him from trying, which
we know enough about him to know is probably a safe assumption, but how sure is Ironwood of that, exactly? Remember when Ironwood had not enough conniptions that Cinder (not that he knew it was Cinder) got her blackened hands on the CCTS main terminal? He's
super not having enough conniptions about actively
letting Watts (who he knows damn well is Watts, minion of Salem) get his blackened hands on the
cyber-keystone of Atlas' defences against the unprecedented apocalyptic horde of Grimm at the gates.
It is at this moment that Watts gets to flag to Ironwood that Pietro's credentials have been used in the military headquarters. Oh dear, this will be trouble.
It is trouble. Ironwood locks down the headquarters. Team RSPBV+M can't even retreat - the pneumatic tubes are included in the lockdown. May proposes withdrawing to a hangar and stealing an aircraft; Penny counter-proposes yielding to the sunk cost fallacy, which I'm pretty sure is going to carry the day.
Nora has a plan.
(braces self)
The invisible bundle of people sneaks into the command room through a door by which someone is leaving. (This is a real thing - called "tailgating". Real-world perpetrators have to rely on social invisibility rather than physical invisibility.) One of them then trips a passing tech (their boot has to be visible to do it - why?), causing him to spill coffee all over at least one console (that looks expensive) and its operator (that looks painful). This causes a Disturbance™ - food and drink are not allowed in the room anyway. Everybody berates this guy for a long history of workplace transgressions, this being merely the latest, creating a sufficient distraction for a petal cloud to fly along the opposite edge of the room and whisk Team RSPBV to their next destination. (It worked!) Did they leave May behind? ...Ah, it must have been just May that snuck in under invisibility.
(One of the things shouted at the tech is that they're "in late all the time", which was confusing until I realised they meant
arriving late rather than
leaving late.)
Blake is not thrilled about this mode of transport either. Weiss' facial expression indicates she might agree. They appear to be outvoted.
Next step on the route: basically, whoever designed this hallway watched Pixar's The Incredibles just beforehand. At the end is a door so secure it's electrified. Penny switches it off and opens the door.
Yep, this is absolute supervillain base design in here.
The door closes behind them and re-electrifies. Nora glances aside at it. Hey, isn't her Semblance absorbing electricity? What could possibly go wrong?
Penny sits at the central
supervillain terminal and lets Pietro remote-control her, which freaks Ruby out a bit. This shot of Penny's right eye changing (to yellow) to indicate remote control bears disturbing similarities to that chalk drawing in the titles of Penny's right eye changing (to red, the standard colour of evil robotics).
If this process is so complicated, how does Ironwood ever do it? Or has Ironwood just not tried it from here since before it was made complicated, thus making his terminal in the Academy the single point of failure that this alternate terminal was meant to prevent?
While this is happening, Team SBV have a conference. Blake eventually reaches a point where spinning in an expensive (and likely superfluous - why does this room have so many other terminals in it? is it an entire backup command room?) office chair can't distract her from her unease at Ruby and Yang having the kind of fight that Blake can't remember them ever having. The reason for that, Blake, is that you went off to Menagerie where you couldn't see them fight like this on Patch. Weiss and Nora also didn't see any fighting on Patch, but Weiss, a middle child, has insight into the situation that Blake (only child) and Nora (family unknown, but probably long dead) do not.
Weiss, is this a projection of being on the opposite side to Winter? I think it is.
Anyway, Nora lists why Team APRY are going to be fine, except she conspicuously leaves out Ren. Faced with wordless judgement, she tries to find redeeming qualities in him, but can't think of any and starts spiralling. Blake tries to help, but I'm not sure if it's working.
Nora isn't sure who she is without Ren. Weiss suggests taking the opportunity to find out: "Do something only Nora can do." This does not really help Nora in the moment.
They all reconvene at the main terminal. (The operator's back is to the door. This is poor design, not just because the operator can't watch the door and the terminal simultaneously, but also the heightened risk of shoulder-surfing, which I assure you is the real technical term for why password fields only show you little circles.) Pietro was remoting in to do complicated things because this is not the usual use case for the terminal: the plan, carried out, is to clone the entire thing onto Penny. When Amity requests authorisation to launch, Penny will be closest, and can now masquerade as Ironwood's terminal and send that authorisation before anybody at either of the two physical terminals can countermand it.
Pietro now suggests amending the plan: instead of then returning to Mantle to assist with evacuation, Penny should stay on Amity as it launches. Ruby and Weiss agree, on the grounds that Penny can't be abused into opening the Creation Vault if she's nowhere near it. Penny looks torn. Blake defuses the situation by suggesting that they have that conversation later, once they've escaped the headquarters.
Penny seems to have accepted the new plan as she opens the door back out. Waiting on the other side are the (surviving) Ace Ops.
Wow, Weiss grew some (metaphorical) claws.
Vine is not nearly as good a hostage negotiator as he thinks he is. Or maybe it's an act he's putting on.
Suffice to say that the Ace Ops are out here pushing all of Penny's buttons: blaming her for Winter's injuries (which they're playing up), again pushing accountability onto her for anything that happens to Atlas and/or Mantle (nice of them to remember that Mantle exists, except not, because that's just to push the "Protector of Mantle" button), and shutting down Ruby by throwing Qrow's jailing at her. This all goads Penny to be the first out the door, at which point it shuts, locks, and re-electrifies. Now Penny is on one side with a severe numerical disadvantage - the one way the Ace Ops can win fights - and the rest of Team RSBV on the other with no door-opener.
Penny gives an excellent showing, but she's busy being angry, she's new to the Maidenship, and there are four of them. Despite having ten swords, she repeatedly fixates on one target, then gets blindsided by another one, allowing the first to recover. I'm getting flashbacks to flailing around trying to play Grimm Eclipse. I got better; Penny doesn't have time or respawns to.
At one point Marrow would have fallen off the pointless supervillain-architecture bridge if it weren't for Vine grabbing him.
Back in the terminal room, Trailer Knight despawns without having accomplished anything at all against the electrified door. Weiss reckons the Ace Ops are "cowards" for needing a 4:1 numerical advantage, which I agree with. Ruby is optimistic that Penny can hold out for long enough for them to get the door open. Cut back to Penny, who cannot: after a bit more beating, Elm grapples her. The Maiden winter storm stops. But actually Penny was just lulling them into a false sense of security: she blasts herself loose of Elm. Harriet cues Marrow to do something; he knocks Penny off the bridge. Too bad she has rocket boots. Marrow does what they probably wanted him to do the first time and Stays her, which works just fine. The fight would have been shorter if he'd done that at the start, and the fact I thought of that faster than they did speaks ill of their training in taking down single targets. Clearly these are not actually Atlas' actual finest, just their finest bootlickers.
Nora runs out of patience for being stuck in the terminal room and eats the lightning: she siphons the electrified door for multiple seconds, at implied extreme pain due to Semblance overclocking. This charges her up enough to smash right through the door, making a mess of Elm's attempt to tie Penny up with more of those bolas. As the Ace Ops pick themselves up from under the former door, Nora's empowerment fades, but the wounds behind it do not; then her Aura breaks and she falls over without even a heavy noise.
(Ironwood curses the loss of their big chance, but Watts has a plan. Oh dear.)
The Ace Ops no longer have their numerical advantage (even with Nora spark out), and Penny is mad enough to summon a thunderstorm. Harriet objects to Ironwood's message (unheard), but Marrow acknowledges it. Vine evades Penny's charge back into combat and sweeps Team RSB off the bridge, using the gap Marrow had Penny make in the railing earlier; Ruby just manages to hook Crescent Rose on the edge of the bridge. Weiss grabs on to Ruby (and Blake on to Weiss), but then loses her grip, and Ruby has to Semblance to get them. Meanwhile, the Ace Ops have their 4:1 advantage back, and Penny must be at least partially worried about protecting Nora.
By the time Team RSB return by petal cloud (poor Blake), Harriet has stolen one of Penny's swords. (Ow.) The Ace Ops all leave with their ill-gotten gain by jumping off the bridge (???). Blake and Weiss agree with me that "that was very suspicious".
Penny must have some magic rockets to be able to hover that close to Nora without any noticeable jetwash (either heat or wind).
While all of this was going on, May did manage to rustle up an escape craft for them. She's taken aback at Nora's condition as Team RSPBV arrive at the hangar, and understandably so.
What, does Nora not even warrant being laid on a bench? The temporary invalid just gets left on the floor? C'mon, you lot. Anyway, Ruby and Penny are adorasad, and then Penny leaves for presumably Amity, which doesn't help with the sadness in-universe. Meanwhile, the Ace Ops present the stolen sword to Ironwood and Watts. I have a very bad feeling about that.
Next time: Ow, ow, ow, ow!
