RWBY 18 - Episode 6, "Fall"

[surgeworks]

17 – Volume 3, Episodes 4 and 5 | Table of Contents | 19 – Volume 3 World of Remnant

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We are at the exact halfway point of Volume 3. So far, progress in the Vytal Tournament has passed the teams and doubles checkpoints. The intrigue between the Big Good Conspiracy has been playing out in a frustrating manner, but was last seen touching on a note of actual plot. Get ready guys, because this is where Volume 3 turns over and exposes its ugly underside.

V3E6, “Fall”

 

We open on Ozpin’s office around sunset judging by the light. Ozpin and Pyrrha are sitting on either side of his desk. Ozpin is complimenting her on her performance, noting that, naturally, she’s been deemed as the one who will move on to the finals.

 

Oz: Your performance has been exemplary.

P: Thank you, Professor Ozpin, but, I would never have made it this far without my teammates.

Q: [from the back of the room] Personally, I think it’s the other way around.

*smiling patiently* Minor spoilers ahead guys, but, okay, Qrow. He says it loud, too, really interjecting so everyone can hear. So let’s go ahead and examine your team, Qrow. It consists of:

• You, an unstable alcoholic who will later be revealed as something verging on depressed and barely functional.
• A murdering bandit who’s been off the radar for how many years.
• A dead woman.
  
• A depressed teacher who spiraled into despondency after losing two wives.

So I think that, much like subtlety and discretion, the subject of a good and functioning team unit is one you should keep your mouth shut about.

Hypocrisy: 15

And, guys, you need to see Pyrrha’s reaction to this, it’s hysterical—



Look at her face. Look at it.

P: I’m sorry, but, I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.

That’s Pyrrha-nese for “come a little closer and try saying that, bitch.”

Qrow gives her his name, and Ozpin cuts in, calling Qrow a “trusted colleague” of his. Pyrrha turns her back on Qrow and cuts to the chase: why is she here?

Oz invites her to take a seat (because she was still standing after getting ready to throw down with Qrow), and she does so. He then asks her what her favorite fairy tale is, and she’s understandably thrown off. After he confirms that yes, he’s talking about kid’s stories, Pyrrha rattles off some in-universe ones, such as The Tale of Two Brothers, the Shallow Sea, the Girl in the Tower, at least two of which will be important later on but which I do not cite as actual foreshadowing for...well, you’ll understand later. Ozpin brings up the story of the four seasons, and Pyrrha launches into an actual recounting of that fairy tale. We launch back into art deco mode.

An old man is visited by four sisters. The first, representing winter, is calm and meditative and lets him have his peace. The second, representing spring, is cheerful and helps him tend to his garden. The third, representing summer, is passionate and bright, and convinces him to come outside and enjoy life. The last, representing autumn (or “fall”) is serene and embodies the contentment the man feels when he looks out on all he has.

In exchange for the kindnesses the girls showed him, he bestows on them magical powers, hoping they’ll continue to help others the world over. They graciously accept.

Pyrrha cites this as one of her mother’s favorite stories. Ozpin says it’s been around since he was a kid, and she laughingly brushes off the idea that he could be that old.

Ozpin’s the old man from the story, guys. It’s not even a spoiler—it’s heavily implied both in this episode and the World of Remnant later on, and outright confirmed out of story. Which leads us into the most facepalm-worthy curve ball RWBY has yet delivered us, if you ask me:
 

Oz: Well, would you believe me if I told you it was true?

P: [experiencing a range of visible emotions] I…beg your pardon?

Oz: What if I were to tell you that there were four maidens existing in this world, that could wield such tremendous power...without dust?

P: You mean like…a Semblance?

Oz: Like magic.

P: I…

Q: [piping up] Yeah, first time hearin’ it’s pretty crazy.

P: …You’re serious?

Oz: Do I look like I’m joking?

Eeeeeyup. There it is. “mAgIc iS rEaL?” That thing about RWBY that both fans and anti-fans alike have endlessly mocked, and if you aren’t mocking it, get over here and start, ‘cause this dodgeball team has everyone on it, bitches.

I just… Guys, this isn’t the first nor the last time RWBY has struggled with its tone, but it is definitely not so bad at style and tone that you can’t place it squarely in a genre. RWBY is an action fantasy. “Fairy tales are actually real” is the domain of urban fantasy. The distinction might seem small when said like that, but “Magic is real!” is no more appropriate in this setting than it would be in, say, cyberpunk or noir. And you can tell! You wanna know how I know this was an idea guaranteed to fail?

Look at the modifiers they use up there.
 

Oz: What if I were to tell you that there were four maidens existing in this world, that could wield such tremendous power...without dust?

P: You mean like…a Semblance?

If this twist were working properly, those wouldn’t be here. Ozpin specifically has to clarify that these supposed chicks can work great feats without the use of the energy propellant that enables the common man to do exactly that. He then has to clarify that it isn’t the work of a Semblance, either, because incredible feats are commonplace thanks to that, too.

Let me introduce (and properly explain, this time) a new count: The Lovegood Fallacy.

See, when Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was released, it introduced Luna Lovegood, a character noted by her belief in many fantastical and preposterous things, and because of this, she was the subject of scorn by other characters, most notably the very logical and grounded Hermione. When it came out, a lot of readers criticized Hermione for being so dismissive, since after all, she lives in a world where magic exists and amazing things happen every day.

*flatly* Those readers were dumb. While it happened that Luna’s oddity and artistic approach to things often ended up making her more prepared for the dangers of the magical world than others in some cases, in general, she was indeed wrong about many of the things she believed in, and Hermione was right to doubt her. This is because, whatever her other myriad faults, J.K. Rowling is an excellent writer and successfully employed the trope Magic A is Magic A.

Magic A is Magic A is a useful tool in any kind of fantasy or fantasy-adjacent setting, and in many cases it’s downright necessary. It is, in a word, internal consistency. Magic, by its very definition, is something which achieves feats not possible within the bounds of physics. Therefore, if you have magic in your story, it needs to follow a system of rules so that the story doesn’t absolutely shatter. And in that course, you need to define what your story’s magic is, what it can do, what it can’t do, and who can use it.

Rooster Teeth here are trying to employ Magic A is Magic A, but it’s not working because the nature of the differences don’t make dust and Semblances not magic. They are! Rooster Teeth can say they aren’t, but they are! The only real distinction between these things and “magic” is that the latter requires no power source or external fuel of any kind. That’s like saying that because white phosphorus (don’t Google that) doesn’t need gasoline or kerosene to ignite, it is therefore magical in nature. It’s like saying that if you freeze water, the ice you get is a completely different chemical. It’s not, it’s just solid water.

They're playing this like one of those readers would, unable to understand why skepticism was the right reaction. And that's why their curve ball is falling to the ground, because there's no in-story reason to disbelieve magic exists.

We’re going to see this “maiden’s magic” later on, and in fact, we’ve already seen some of it. It is literally no more impressive than anything else we’ve seen, less in fact because damn near everything it accomplishes is easily replicated by any person with a large amount of dust. It actually got mistaken for dust-based powers already!

So there’s the count, and it’s going to go up every time we have some plot point revolving around “fairy tales are real!” and more commonly, the reaction of “magic is real?! Gasp shock squint” starting now.

The Lovegood Fallacy: 1

And that’s our plot now. That is, quite disappointingly, the bulk of our over-arching plot we’ve waited two years for. Let’s get back into it.

Pyrrha asks why she’s being told this. Qrow and Ozpin share a look before the latter explains:
 

Oz: We are telling you, Pyrrha Nikos, because we believe that you are next in line to receive the Fall Maiden’s powers.

At Pyrrha’s repeating of ‘we’, the elevator doors pop open, revealing Glynda and Ironwood. Pyrrha, unsettled as she realizes the scope of this, asks who the hell they are, and Glynda says in a voice that probably wasn’t meant to be so utterly creepy but is, that they’re still the same teachers she met when she arrived at the school. Ironwood calls them the protectors of this world, and Ozpin says that they need her help.

We next get a shot of Pyrrha looking extremely uncomfortable as she, along with the adults, rides the elevator down to a vault, under the school.



The door opens, and Pyrrha beholds a long hallway somewhat bigger than your average 400-year-old chapel.
 

G: I’m sure you must have questions.

P: ...Maybe one or two.

The adults get to explaining: yes, the maidens are real. And while they may die, their powers don’t. They transfer to a new host, and no one individual can hold onto it forever. Pyrrha asks how the people the powers end up in is determined. Qrow says “through a series of stupid and convoluted rules” and yes, he’s right. The maidens’ powers exclusively pass on to young women, but that ended up only being one factor.

Fauxminism: 7

Haven’t seen that count in a while, and that point is because that’s lazy. Rooster Teeth got endless questions about how old or young you have to be to inherit a maiden’s power, what the cutoff point was, and whether or not a trans woman could conceivably inherit it, etc. And for the sheer fact that people had to ask, it handily reveals that this is not a feminist story. It’s about women, sure, but not any kind of woman. A young woman, and not through actions or ideals that make her a character, but by a selection process that evidently determined her to be supple and spry enough for it.

Anyway, the other factor is who the maiden is thinking of at the time of her death. Unless it’s, in Qrow’s words, a dude, or “some old hag”, in which case it chooses a random, otherwise-eligible candidate.

This presents a bit of a problem, since someone down the line appears to have realized that if you can kill a maiden, you can get a reasonable guarantee her dying thoughts are of her killer, thus transferring the power to her if she qualifies.

Pyrrha would like to know why they chose now, and not after her graduation. Qrow explains that they’ve run out of time, and he states that it won’t be long before this era of peace they’re enjoying ends.

*files a nail, glancing in Ozpin’s direction*

Pyrrha worries about a war, and Ironwood qualifies that it wouldn’t be a war between nations. The details can wait, but one of the maidens, according to Qrow, was attacked. In the wake of this, something utterly unprecedented happened: part of her power was stolen. At the very end of this needlessly gargantuan hallway, we’re shown two pods.

The one on the right is empty, and the one on the left has a woman in it on life support.



This is Amber, the Fall Maiden. And she’s literally in a fridge.

Ice Cream Queens: 2

You, reading this, are probably familiar with the term ‘fridged female character’. The term loosely describes a woman who is hurt or killed off more to benefit other characters’ arcs or otherwise simply because someone had to be to get the story going. I take offense to that. We’re going to be upping that count whenever a female character in RWBY is killed off, made to suffer, or otherwise exits the story with a lone purpose served but little of her own accomplished because her experience was more important to another character.

The first point is for Amber. While we’re going to be able to infer maybe a detail or two about her come next episode, for all intents and purposes, she’s a body, not a character. She exists simply to be attacked and kickstart Pyrrha’s little mini-arc here about inheriting the Fall Maiden’s powers. That she even has a name is honestly a shock.

The second point is for Summer. Notice how, when we got Yang’s story about having not one, but two deceased moms, Summer was utterly unimportant? The fact that she was, quote-unquote, “super-Mom” was not at all relevant to Yang. Her only purpose in disappearing from her daughter’s life was to kickstart Yang’s dramatic journey to find her real mother, her biological mother, and find out why she left. And the sheer nerve of that is also getting a point that I should have awarded ages ago.

Fauxminism: 8

Pyrrha is unnerved, as she should be, and notes that Amber is still alive. Ironwood, whose Atlesian technology is keeping Amber stable (there’s a very bad joke in there somewhere about vegetables in the fridge, but that would be utterly disgusting of me), but there’s a lot about what’s going on that is a curveball to these guys.

Qrow (“Look who’s been listening! She is smart.”) is needlessly a dickhead when Pyrrha pipes up about her power transferring, and I am literally going to fucking smash a frying pan over his head. He’s a dick! He’s not cool, he’s just a jerk! It’s like we’re in fucking Twilight, where the story keeps trying to sell me this absolute asshole as cool! He’s just a giant fucking jerk!

I have a question, and in fact, it’s the very same question he asked a few episodes ago: Why are you here? We know that Pyrrha’s here because they want her as a replacement maiden. Ironwood is here because it’s his tech that’s keeping the situation from falling apart. Ozpin is here because he’s the one who knows everything about maidens. Even Glynda, at a stretch, could be present because she is conceivably still young enough to receive the maiden’s power if Pyrrha decides to tell the Dumbledore Gang to fuck off. Qrow has no purpose here. He doesn’t need to be here.

Ironwood says the situation is delicate, referencing that possibility I mentioned up there where a killer could inherit a maiden’s power. What’s really interesting though, is that the power hasn’t been seen in a split state before. That’s right: the attacker who put Amber in this condition only got half of the power. It’s quite possible that when Amber finally croaks, her remaining half of the power is gonna fly off to rejoin the stolen half. And that would be bad.

Pyrrha solemnly approaches the pod, placing a hand over the glass, and demands to know why all of this would be kept secret. If everything is on the verge of destruction, why not let people know?

Glynda says it used to be common knowledge. But, that common knowledge led to those who wanted power to seek out the maidens with ill intent. Thus, the Big Good Conspiracy decided to erase the maidens from the public eye.

This, at least, could be justified. It’s the one part of Ozpin’s crippling need for secrecy that actually makes sense. The only problem is that, like guarding Imhotep’s tomb, it’s a ceaseless duty that relies on everything going perfectly and invites collapse at the behest of chaos. Even in the best scenario, it’s entirely possible for a maiden’s power to transfer to some rando chick on the other side of the planet who the BGC can’t reasonably find or conduct surveillance on, let alone keep a lid on. If knowledge of maidens were public, they could at least rely on news spreading if a woman exhibited maiden powers out of nowhere one day, enabling them to send her some bodyguards faster.

Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 3

Which, you know, really highlights the weird thing about this “magic”. Ozpin is the Wizard guys, that’s canon. He’s the one that originally bequeathed these powers onto the original girls from the story. You would think he’d know the exact ins and outs of how his own magic spreads from person to person, would foresee that happening, and could conceivably stop it on his own terms. Miles and Kerry have created this weird situation where the originator of a power is helpless against it.

Ill Logic: 32

Oh, and another point, because:

Oz: It would invite panic. And we all know what that would bring clawing at our kingdom’s walls.

Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 4

So again, it comes back to keeping everything hush-hush so that nobody cries and the Negative Nancies don’t come knocking. This whole “Grimm are attracted to negativity” thing is really starting to become burdensome. What else does Ozpin have to keep secret? Bad weather? The daily obituaries? Particularly emotional episodes of television? Are we ever going to address how this approach would be the subject of a dystopian novel in any other hands…?

When Ozpin gets ready to ask the big question, Pyrrha cuts him off and says she’ll do it. Her voice shakes, but her face is set as she says that, if it will really help humanity, she will become their Fall Maiden. The adults glance at one another, uneasily, causing Pyrrha to ask if this isn’t what they wanted.

Ozpin clarifies that, due to Amber’s position, she wouldn’t be able to inherit the power naturally. It turns out Ironwood was the one to craft a way around that.
 

I: For the past few years, Atlas has been studying Aura from a more scientific standpoint. How it works, what it’s made of, how it can be used. We’ve made…significant strides. And we believe we’ve found a way to capture it.

Q: Capture it, and cram it into something else.

So, for one, maidens’ powers are connected to one’s Aura, just like Semblance is, lessening the already-scant differences between them even further. Second, wowee golly gee, guys, remember that plot point about how Penny is the world’s “first synthetic human capable of generating an Aura”? There is a massive, juicy plot in there about how Ironwood had a dying daughter he desperately wanted to keep alive, and so he made a robot and devised a way for her to continue living by transferring her soul. It would explain not only Penny, but also why he had tech on hand that could achieve this. ‘This’ being a situation that is kind of…super fucked. We’re talking, take Amber’s soul and jam it into Pyrrha, a still-living person with her own soul. Who knows what kind of effects that would have? Blake’s “man with two souls” book from Volume One becomes more loaded every day.

And to my knowledge, this never gets capitalized on. If it does, inbox me with as few details as possible. Otherwise, that’s a travesty.

Pyrrha is noticeably less enthused about this, calling it “wrong”. They’re agreed on that, Glynda says, but these are desperate times, as Ironwood continues. The other two confirm that, were Amber’s aura bound to Pyrrha’s, they can’t know what will happen to her as a result. There’s every possibility that, if they go through with this, she wouldn’t be Pyrrha anymore.

Ozpin acknowledges the weight of this decision and gives her time to think on it. But, she needs to have made her decision before the end of the Vytal Tournament. We see Pyrrha’s reflection in Amber’s pod set over Amber’s own face, as Ozpin continues that they can’t know when Amber’s assailant will make their next move. We then cut, naturally, to a shot zooming out from Cinder’s face.

She sits in the arena’s stands, overlooking the beginning of the final rounds of the tournament. This, astonishingly, consists of only eight individuals out of hundreds of competitors from four separate nations. The finalists consists of three random cut-out NPCs and five actually important characters, those being Yang Xiao Long, Sun Wukong, Mercury Black, Penny Polendina, and of course, Pyrrha Nikos.

Gonna detour here to complain about something Sun-related, since I won’t get another chance to. Skip to about four paragraphs down if you’re not into that.

We’ve seen all these named characters fight, so we know what they’re capable of, and it isn’t surprising they’d make the finals. However, we also know that Cinder is manipulating the match-ups, and we now know she wants the maidens’ powers, so we know she wants certain people in the running and certain people out. We’ve seen that of the named individuals, three girls and two guys made the cut. The girls are obviously possible candidates Cinder has selected as people to potentially take out if it looks like Ozpin will try to set them between her and the Fall Maiden’s power. The guys consist of three NPCs who are probably meant to be easy opponents to fill matches, Mercury, who is Cinder’s ally, and…Sun. Who is completely out of the loop on any of this.

Judging by the matches we’ve seen so far, we know Cinder was probably trying to get him eliminated. The dust-laden area in RWBY’s match was highly favorable to Weiss and her all-female team; the conditions supplied by the storm in JNPR’s fight sealed the match for Nora and, by extension, Pyrrha. SSSN’s match, by comparison, was split between their opposition’s advantageous home turf and a watery arena that had Neptune flailing, and theirs was the only match where the ‘heroic’ characters didn’t grab a solid win. Sun’s team, consisting entirely of dudes, are useless to Ozpin and therefore Cinder, so she had no reason not to get them out from the start, while they were noticeably pitted against an all-female team. This means that Sun not only proved himself against the entire world’s competitors, many of whom were likely more seasoned than him, but did so against internal efforts actively attempting to sabotage him.

And I was so ready to be proud of that fact, ready to grasp onto it for some crumb of respect earned by a guy Rooster Teeth apparently now hold disdain for, until it was revealed after the volume was over that this originally wasn’t the case. See, Sun and Neptune were slated to go up against Pyrrha and Nora and get soundly beaten, which I would’ve been okay with if not for the tragic cuts described to us wherein Neptune was A) supposed to stupidly buff Nora’s electricity semblance with his tazer-trident like an idiot, when everyone saw on international television that this would only strengthen her, and B) was supposed to deploy—I shit you not—fucking floaties in order to brave the water in the arena.

Floaties. Motherfucking floaties. My God.

Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 22

Am I insane? Delusional? Did I just completely imagine Sun performing like a one-man squad of ninjas with guns in the Volume One finale? Was I stupid to expect really cool things from his team when Volume Two was teased? Did I just miss some big “audience laughter” signal when these guys were apparently kicked down to comic relief status?

If you’re curious, the scene was cut because it was deemed too irrelevant to the overall story, which I can handily agree with at the cost of knowing Sun’s inclusion in a team of badasses was purely coincidental, like re-using something you were going to throw away earlier because your mom got mad at you.

Anyway. The first finals match.

The arena now is not a random assortment of environments, but simply the central platform raised up above the field and cast in spotlights. We see shots of different people around the world watching the “randomization” process, and it’s Yang versus Mercury, meaning at least one of those things from the Volumes 2 and 3 openings has finally come to fruition. Everyone cheers, and Ruby yells for Yang to “break a leg, sis!” Cinder simply smiles, gets up, and walks away.



The stage sets up, guitar riffs start playing, and Yang says Mercury had better not go easy on her. Mercury says she wishes.

This does seem like a bit of a tilted fight. We know Yang’s a good martial artist, but we know she pales in comparison to the likes of Coco and Yatsuhashi, who Mercury handled just fine on his own. But on the other hand, maybe a close-quarters specialist like Yang will have more luck where CFVY’s big broadswords and giant gatling guns failed.

Port counts down, and Yang and Mercury slowly approach each other in battle stances. When the fight starts, fist meets foot.



Mercury rushes her, and Yang leaps high, flipping over to his other side and launching a barrage of shotgun-propelled punches, which Mercury redirects with his arms. They knock each other back at the same time.



When Mercury has recovered, Yang is shooting shotgun shells. He leaps back and forth, dodging, before launching a bullet to propel himself high into an overhead kick, trying his now-trademark leg-down-over-head trick. Yang blocks with both hands, and tries to shoot him when he flips back, but aimed too high, and he smacks her with an upward kick that sends her back.

She recovers quickly, shotgun-boosting herself back across the gap and launching into another set of attempts to punch Mercury unconscious. Mercury struggles to swipe her arms to the side, but manages to get his leg around her defenses, taking her leg out from under her when she tries to kick him back. He presses his advantage, spinning just above the ground when Yang tries the whole “punch the ground to make a shockwave” trick, and continuing with another couple kicks which Yang blocks. He sweeps his leg high, and appears to anticipate her dodging under it, because he then twists his leg and brings his foot downward with extreme force, but she’s out from under it before it can curb stomp her.



They trade another few blows, but when Mercury spends a bit too long recovering from one of his own kicks after it succeeded in breaking past her guard, Yang punishes this by being ready for his oncoming knee, sliding it off her arm, and uppercutting him in the chin—followed by a double shotgun-propelled elbow to the gut. Ouch.

Mercury is sent skidding onto his stomach, struggling to get back up in time. Yang’s raining shotgun shells down on him, and he’s backflipping like crazy to avoid them—having to blast himself back up onto the stage when he risks a ring-out because he accidentally flipped right off of it.



When he lands anew, he apparently decides to cut the bullshit. The guy starts kicking like crazy, moving a lot faster than before, and putting his leg in more places than Yang can reasonably defend at once. He gets her in the back and almost gets her around the head like he did Coco, and before she can recover, he’s swung around her, leapt into the air, and delivered such a powerful kick that she’s sent hurtling backwards—following it up with another spiraling silver bullet.

Yang rolls out of the way, and Mercury takes this as the cue to initiate Operation Hurricane: he starts spinning in place, rapidly kicking the air and firing out bullets that start encircling the arena. Yang barely slides past two stray bullets as she tries to get in close, but he’s ready for her:



He casually kicks away her attempts to punch him, launches her into the air, and brings his foot down on her, right in time for all of the bullets to converge on her at once in a hailstorm of lead.



Side note, this actually looked way different in the drafted version, wherein there was an actual cage in this cage match. The bullet storm was intended to bounce off of the walls of the cage, all ricocheting at dozens of angles before finally striking Yang. I’m very sorry we didn’t get to see it, as that would’ve looked really cool, and the bullets as they are do admittedly look a little silly stopping mid-air and then starting to revolve unaided. Apparently the given explanation for this is wind dust, although don’t quote me on that. It does lack a bit of consistency given that Mercury’s otherwise a very strictly melee-oriented fighter.

But anyway, the bullets all strike, and Mercury walks away, dusting himself off, apparently satisfied in his victory. But the bell didn’t ring, and predictably—especially so, given his silent but mouthed ‘of course’ as it happens—Yang gets back up, hair aflame and eyes burning red.

She blasts forward, sliding under Mercury’s kicks and letting the one that lands bounce off of her arm before throwing a set of fiery, powered-up punches that Mercury can’t fight back against, finally slamming him in the gut so hard his aura is eliminated in one go. Which we see as a silvery shimmering effect moving over his body. We could’ve seen that sooner, guys. This will become shorthand for “this character lost the fight”/“this character is in a really bad position”.

Mercury’s down, the bell rings, and Yang cools down and raises a fist in victory!



The match ended close—with Yang one point above a knockout—but she won. RWBY and the rest of the audience cheer for her, and Yang wipes a brow while smiling and offering the recovering Mercury a “better luck next time”.

M: There’s not going to be a next time, Blondie.



There’s a sinister sound, and as Yang turns around, she sees Mercury standing, and rushing her for another kick. What a sore loser, am I right? Except, when Yang brings her fist down on his knee (and yes, this is standard practice in martial arts if an opponent won’t concede) the reaction from the audience doesn’t quite fit. Mercury’s on the ground, clutching his leg in apparent pain, and the booing from the audience doesn’t seem to be for the fact he tried to attack after losing.

Oobleck is shocked and Port orders the cameramen to cut. Something very strange is happening.

We cut to outside Vale, back in Mountain Glenn, observing the Grimm there, including the solemn Goliaths, who raise their ears as if listening to something. The Grimm collectively begin to look towards Amity Colosseum, floating so high up in the sky, and get agitated.

Back in the stadium, Mercury is crying out while holding his leg. Yang is just ready to tell him that’s what he gets for pulling that shit, but before she can finish, she’s surrounding by guards and guard robots, all of whom are pointing weapons at her, and is being told to stand down. The music has taken a very ominous turn, and Yang’s confusion is underscored by Emerald rushing the stage in seeming concern for the injured Mercury, who in a very Malfoy-esque voice, begs to know why Yang just attacked him while Emerald glares.

Yang finally looks back up at the instant replay, and realizes that nobody else saw what she just saw. All they saw was Yang turning around and shooting the defenseless, defeated Mercury for no reason. The music is overtaken in piano as Yang realizes that she just committed an extremely dishonorable foul on international television, and just about everyone in the world now hates her—and her teammates are looking on in horror at what she just did.

There’s a spinning shot of Yang’s distraught face, and then we cut to black.

Since we’re halfway through the volume, we’re actually going to have to wait a while before we get back to this, since before we can, there’s a flashback episode, and before we can do that, we have to do the World of Remnant episode dump. So that’s what’s up next.

Counts:

• Jaune: 16
• It Was Right There: 4
• Fauxminism: 8
• Hypocrisy: 15
• Ice Cream Queens: 2
• Reliable Leaders: 10 + 4
  • Prowling Wolf Fallacy: 4
• Threatening Enemies: 4
• Love to Be a Part of It Someday: 22
• Your Fight Scene Sucks: 34 + 13
  • Evisceration Evasion: 13
• Ill Logic: 32
• Pay No Attention to the Man Behind the Veil: 11 + 2
  • Wink Wink, Nudge Nudge: 1
  • Band-Aid Brigade: 1
• RSVP: 25
• Road to Nowhere: 7
• Y.A.S. Queen: 4
• Rooster Tease: 5
• LuLaRwe: 2
  
• The Lovegood Fallacy: 1

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17 – Volume 3, Episodes 4 and 5 | Table of Contents | 19 – Volume 3 World of Remnant

Comments

[rc88]

Grimm being attracted to fear specifically would work so much better...