V08C10 Ultimatum
michaelb958
(Verified Michael)
- Location
- Wherever I am, there I am
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
V08C10 Ultimatum
We start with an epilepsy warning. That's a bit unusual.
One title sequence later, Ironwood looks out from his office. A fair bit of air force is flying past the place. He is informed that Cinder broke Watts out of jail. He snaps at the messenger. He doesn't snap at the messenger any less when it turns out that actually only Jacques remains in custody; Qrow and Robyn have (shown here) taken the opportunity to break themselves out as well.
Ironwood literally orders them not to return until they've recaptured Qrow. Supervillain hours in here.
After taking a moment to stare out the window and get a little less angry, Ironwood gets on comms to start asking about something. And here we see that the writers took the time to write a convincing dialogue interruption: he continues for just over half a second - four syllables - of the plainly visible The Whale blowing the h*ck up. Ah, this must be the subject of the epilepsy warning.
The blast is so big it even knocks out our sound-effects track, leaving only the background music as we montage through:
- The Ace Ops charge towards The Whale's mouth with The Bomb. They seem to be approaching from about the same angle as Ironwood's office is viewing from - is this intentional shot composition? And what are the Ace Ops doing personally lugging The Bomb instead of being available to escort it? A moot question, because The Kaboom hits them hard.
- Weiss brings what I think is Nora's dinner into Nora's recovery room nee Weiss' bedroom, and promptly drops it as The Kaboom drowns out all other light and sound. That makes Ruby and Weiss who have destroyed perfectly innocent crockery because they were surprised (Ruby back in V05C06). Correction, this stuff seems to survive hitting the floor. The contents might be another matter. Poor Nora.
- A bunch of airborne Grimm in the city get Kaboomed and die. Somehow the buildings are fine.
Fade back in to The Whale, which is decomposing rapidly as all Grimm do, although it will still take a minute due to the sheer size of the thing. Ohhhhh dear, the first SFX we get back is Neo making her escape with Knowledge.
The Ace Ops have survived - thanks Aura - with the worst injury being Elm getting a bit deafened. Marrow now realises that Team APRY were still on board, meaning that all his - and their - efforts to delay The Bomb were almost completely useless because The Whale blew up anyway. Marrow sprints over to the temporary carcass. Only Winter eventually follows.
Ironwood calls Winter to congratulate them on delivering The Bomb and order them to return at once to deal with yet-unspecified new problems. Winter, for whatever reason, rules that they'll tell him in person that The Bomb was not responsible (and bring it back, as a bonus).
Cinder and Watts lurk on a rooftop in Atlas, having just established that nobody else is answering their Scrolls so they're either dead or incapacitated. Watts asserts (correctly) that "She'll come back" and they need a plan for the meantime. Cinder says they already have one: Watts serves Penny up on a platter for Cinder to siphon the Winter Maidenship.
It emerges that Cinder and Watts had very different reads on Watts' message about having hacked Penny: Cinder thought Watts had Penny fully puppeted. Watts isn't impressed with the extent to which Penny isn't fully controlled by the hack, but it'll go to plan before long: the hack will open the Creation Vault and then destroy Penny. My words, not his.
Cinder and Watts now have a full and frank exchange of views™ about Cinder's desire to siphon the Winter Maidenship out of Penny in contrast to Watts' actual instructions to the hack to destroy Penny as soon as the Vault is open. Cinder and Watts have never really gotten on (witness their argument at Raven's Edgecastle in mid-V5) but they really aren't now.
Oh this exchange of views is getting very frank indeed. Short story shorter, Watts is still in a mindset of working for Salem, while Cinder has had enough of Watts working at cross-purposes to Cinder. Cinder's new plan is to kill Watts and then intercept Penny at the Vault.
Watts is obviously not going to win a fight with the Fall Maiden, and certainly not from a starting point of already being held over open space by the neck, so his only option is to talk really fast and hope to find the magic words that will change Cinder's mind without ever making a mistake. He opens with dismissive laughter, confusing Cinder enough that she starts listening. His chosen magic words are to remind Cinder about how well her previous plans have gone. Go kill Fria? Easy, right? Apparently not, that's how Penny got the Maidenship in the first place. Get Raven to assemble everyone Cinder wanted revenge on in one spot? Somehow this ended up in Cinder being an icicle.
'Somehow', continues Watts as Cinder forms a Maiden vortex, is actually Cinder thinking that the Fall Maidenship allows her to just bullrush through her problems. But not just that - he brings out the verbal pickaxe that Cinder thinks the world owes her something because she's suffered, because at this point he either goes big or goes extinct. (Cue abusive-childhood flashback for Cinder.) In the words of I think it was Mark Twain, the world owes you nothing - it was there first.
This turns out to be the right magic words. Cinder dispels the vortex, deposits Watts safely-ish back onto the roof, and stalks off to a different bit of roof to think about whatever it is Cinder thinks about when she's not thinking about murder. As a quote goes that my brother delivered to me without context recently, "You had a thought? It must be lonely."
Team APRY have also not been killed by The Kaboom (chorus of party noisemakers), and are picking themselves up off the ground as Yang's Scroll rings. It's Blake, who looks like she really wasn't expecting to get an answer. Hopefully she 'only' thought that they weren't on speaking terms.
As Yang (and Jaune) and Blake establish the basics, Oscar and Ren consider another problem: Emerald, who has also survived (one extra party noisemaker). They don't manage any concrete answers. Emerald is clutching at Whaledust wondering if any of it is Hazel. Somehow,
.Weiss sends them directions to link up. This involves going through a subway tunnel. But that's where all the civilians are! What could possibly go wrong?
Okay, we have avoided that for now, because there don't seem to be any civilians in this tunnel. Instead there is a lively debate about Emerald's new status. Emerald would rather vanish off the face of the planet, at least from them; Oscar and Ren think it's worth some amount of cooperation against Salem; Jaune and Yang will need more convincing about that. Yang, in particular, has the world's most understandable grudge over the Fall of Beacon.
Oscar tries to convince them to accept any assistance Emerald might offer by appealing to having received assistance from the currently-also-untrusted Ozpin. This is news to Jaune and Yang, because Oscar hadn't previously mentioned Ozpin resurfacing, but Ren "had a feeling".
Turns out The Kaboom was all Oscar, with Ozpin sitting back and trusting his judgement. It was also powered by "most" of the kinetic energy stored up in their weapon over countless lifetimes, so not a repeatable trick.
Oscar's appeals to reciprocate Ozpin's trust in them earn Oscar Ozpin's gratitude, but it's unclear if anyone else is yet prepared to accept it by the time a crying child becomes audible.
Ah. Here are the civilians.
Nobody reacts to Team APRY+E, so they must be advancing under some sort of cloaking, but the only mechanism I can think of is Emerald's Semblance and it must have evolved a very long way to work on at least triple-digit numbers of targets.
As they pass beyond the subway station, Oscar keeps trying to get Emerald on side for the longer haul. It might even be working.
The Ace Ops enter Ironwood's office. The man himself is so deep in making plans at the holotable that someone has to clear their throat to get his attention, which startles him. He's also surprised to hear that The Bomb wasn't expended, but immediately pivots to working it into his next plan, whatever that is.
With Salem inevitably returning, Penny still in the wind, Watts taken again, and Qrow (and Robyn) escaping in the confusion of Watts' escape, Ironwood is losing his tiny mind even more than he already had, which is genuinely darkly impressive given how much he already had.
...even more than that, because I think he's suggesting taking hostages to coerce Penny into returning to custody. Ironwood thinks to leverage Team ARY, but Harriet undermines Winter by asserting that Winter "let them go". Harriet provides context, but Ironwood slides even even even further into psychosis.
Ironwood snaps and smashes the holotable. I hope that isn't a metaphor.
It is at this moment that military command reports to him the SDC freight fleet approaching Mantle. Bad timing. Ironwood concludes (somewhat correctly), while going so insane that he's looped back around to looking sane, that "this has always been about saving Mantle", then says he needs to make a call. :concern:
I thought there was a bunch of magical-explosion-remnant haze about but at this rate it's looking like sunrise. Where did the night even go? Anyway, Watts approaches Cinder on the roof. What he might be doing will stay unanswered, because Cinder receives a text from Neo:
Congratulations Cinder, your inability to recognise other people has finally bitten you.
Team RSB open the doors of the Schnee live-in trophy cabinet to find Team ARY outside. (Lyrics!) After a shorter but more traumatic interval than last time, finally Team RWBY are together again. Blake looks least expectant to be greeted by Yang, and most relieved when she is. Weiss takes Ren to see Nora; I hope they'll be okay.
Oscar was hanging back. Ruby goes to greet him, stopping in her tracks upon seeing Emerald behind him. Oscar has to talk very fast to avoid both of them drawing their weapons. Oscar can't talk fast enough; what actually stops them is May calling to report that the evac fleet is "not alone". She orders everyone into cover, then the explosion noises start and the call cuts out.
Moments later, everyone's Scrolls ring with a predefined emergency tone; Ruby puts hers on holoprojector for the benefit of those without. The lower-third of the emergency broadcast reads "AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM GENERAL IRONWOOD" as the Atlesian air force shoots down the evac fleet(!). Soon, cut to the actual announcement (that wasn't the announcement?): General Ironwood stands in silhouette to throw Penny under the bus. He implores her to return to Atlas Academy and "do your duty", and he'll magnanimously leave Mantle alone. Otherwise, he'll use The Bomb to destroy it. Apropos of Ironwood's descent into cartoon supervillainy, some music:
"If there is no Mantle, then there is no reason for you not to work with me." says this idiot, who obviously never got taught about grudges or anything like that.
Ironwood sets a deadline of one hour. This has the minor complication that Penny is still hacked and still out cold on the floor next to Nora (Weiss and Ren didn't actually manage to leave the foyer), but I have a feeling that won't stop Ironwood. He concludes by trying to abuse the fact that he granted the title of Protector of Mantle in the first place. This guy.
Next time: If only it were just a board game.
