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VOLUME IX (part 2)

Let’s continue, shall we? The next three episodes are probably the most hyped episodes in this entire volume. It takes center stage on the opening, and it has been building up since fucking Volume V. The battle of Qrow against Raven.

It starts with Raven in the Branwen mansion of Argus. She’s just relaxing there in the main living room, with Neil sitting near the fireplace as he slowly heals from his wounds. Shay, Niko and Odion are also there, and Raven wants them to explain what went down with their target last night. As she can see, they had to resort to Niko’s Semblance, since he’s asleep right now. She asks if they manage to finish her off while she was asleep, but unfortunately for them it wasn’t the case. Other Huntsmen arrived and so they had to dip. Shay is confident that they won’t find the secret to awakening them unless they are really fucking weird people, and even if they do, by then Watts will already have blown up their cities to smithereens, and the sleeping beauties along with it. With that said, they just gotta wait for the rest of the gang to return from killing the Ace-Ops, and then they can decide on who has to wake up Niko this time.

Raven scoffs at them, “you bunch of fools… All you had to do was kill one girl.”

“Yeah, well… As far as I know, you just have to kill one guy too, don’t you, boss?” Shay replies with a sly smile. “I haven’t seen you work much on that. What’s the matter?… Are you scared to fight him?”

Raven finally turns her gaze to him, showing a frown of fiery hatred. She slowly looked away again, and then sighed. “Yeah, I suppose I should get it over with… I can feel the moon will be at its brightest tonight… It will be the perfect night to say goodbye.”

With that, we cut away.

…

The Vale Huntsmen led by Harriet had reached the half-way point of their journey, but now it was night time. The moon was indeed bright, as noted by everyone. They all set up camp and were relaxed at the notion that all Grimm simply fled the wildlands. For the first time in this era, camping out won’t kill you.

Everyone starts eating their dinner and preparing their weapons for tomorrow, and for the first time Pyrrha realizes that they haven’t fed Jaune and Ren since late yesterday. She sees Nora feeding Ren some stew with a spoon, so Pyrrha felt like it was her job to do the same with Jaune. She made him lean against a tree and tried to shove the hot spoon in his mouth, but Jaune kept moving around like he’s having night terrors. Pyrrha keeps trying to reach his mouth until the spoon drops, and the stew falls on his chest plate. She facepalms and pulls out a napkin to clean him, finally realizing that someone’s presence has been watching her this whole time.

The entire team RWBY is peeking at them behind a tree. Pyrrha screams once she spots them, and shouts, “What?! What are you doing there?! Why are you spying on me?!”

“Come on Pyrrha, that spoon by spoon thing isn’t gonna cut it! Can’t you see he’s starving?! How about you try to feed him like the birdies do?” Weiss said, making Ruby and Yang nod in unison, while Blake just sits around in the far back — not interested at all .

“Eh--?! B-but! Wa-?! But he’s--! Wa-- EH?!” Pyrrha just stutters repeatedly as her face gets completely red. “NO WAY! THAT’S MESSED UP AND GROSS! I WOULD NEVER DO THAT IN A MILLION YEARS! YUCK! HAVE YOU EVEN CONSIDERED HIS OWN FEELINGS ON THE MATTER?!”

“Come on, Pyrrha, it’s the only way! Don’t make me go there!” Ruby said, making the others nod again. However, their tomfoolery is stopped once Qrow suddenly arrives. He manages to envelop Weiss with his arm, while grabbing Ruby and Yang by their ears. “By the gods, you three, have some class! I don’t remember training a squad of perverts, did I?!”

He starts dragging them away from the scene, as Yang says, “Who the hell are you to call anyone perverts, old m-- OWW!!”

Finally Pyrrha was left alone with Jaune again, but not for long. Soon later Nora heard their commotion and came to help, carrying Ren along. She still had the same empty and serious gaze from yesterday. She snatched the bowl of stew and spoon from Pyrrha’s hands and started feeding Jaune for her, saying, “Come Pyrrha, it won’t be good waking them up if they starve to death once that happens.”

She still had a very scary and serious voice as well. Finally Pyrrha asks again, “Nora… I’m kind of worried about you, y’know… You’re acting a little odd. I never saw you stay such a long time without laughing or smiling. It’s like you’re not yourself… If you’re really that anxious, please, just don’t be! Everything will be alright! I know for certain that we will be able to cure them once we find those guys and kick their butts! You don’t need to worry so much about him.”

“Not worry for Ren? How could I do that?… What else am I supposed to do?… I don’t want to be happy without him. I don’t want to smile. I don’t want to laugh… I’m sorry if I’m bothering you, but… Without him, I’m less than nothing… I’m just annoying, and stupid, and worthless when I’m on my own… Even I can't stand myself… Ren was the first one who did… All he ever did was take care of me… And so, I’ll never back down when he needs me… I’ll never stop caring for him…

I have to wake him up. Because if I don’t… I won’t have a reason to live anymore.” Nora replied. The most cryptic thing she ever said in more than ten years of show. Not even her own voice actress thought she could pull it off.

Pyrrha just keeps looking at her in terrified silence after that calm and yet powerful little rant. She literally couldn’t bring herself to say anything else. 

…

With that, the scene shifts focus.

We cut to later that night, focusing on team RWBY. The four are just resting their backs close to the campfire, while Qrow is still standing by a tree. Even if the Grimm are apparently gone, he won’t drop his guard not even for a second — that’s what Cinder wants them to do. He tells the girls to let the whole nightwatch to him, and so they sleep.

However, some hours later, Ruby wakes up again as she realizes Qrow left. She chased after his footprints and smell for a few minutes, until she arrived in a lonely little clearing of the woods, with a vision to the moon. There she found Qrow, holding a bottle of whiskey. She immediately jumps out of the bushes and screams at him, saying that he promised to quit drinking. Qrow explains that the drink isn’t for him, really. This specific night of the year, with the moon so bright in the sky, is a very important night for Qrow, for reasons he doesn’t want to disclose to Ruby. After all, such a bad past should really be forgotten. He’s just doing a little ceremony that he does once a year, and tells her to leave him be. Ruby hopes he’s telling the truth, because he made a promise to her. She loves him too much to just let him kill himself with booze. She wants to be with him for as long as possible, and they still have plenty of fun times to enjoy together. Her words make Qrow smile, and so Ruby takes his word and goes back to bed. 

After she’s gone, Qrow continues his little ritual. He looks at the palm of his hands, and sees a tiny little scar at the center. He opens the bottom and lets the booze fall on his palm until it is fully empty. He says, “It doesn’t matter how many years pass… I’ll always keep my word… This spare life that you gave me, I promise that I won’t waste it with some dumb shit anymore… I wish you could’ve seen your granddaughters… They are really something else… Strong, brave, honest and kind… I really feel like they will be able to save the world… I know they can put an end to this age of violence and monsters. So then people won’t have to die the same horrible way you did… I’ll make sure to help them get as far as my body and soul can take them. Until then, keep watching from up there… mother.”

Qrow stays in the clearing for a little while longer. 

Once he finally turns around, and goes to return to the camp… It all begins.

He can sense magic in the air, and suddenly, he sees red light begin to appear from his back. Just like any other time, that’s a sign of only one thing — his sister wants to see him. And just like that, Raven jumps out of the red light, fully dawned in red armor, already holding her sword. They remain with their backs turned to each other as Raven says, “Qrow… I knew you would be alone now, tonight of all days… the night where the moon is brighter than any other… It was on this very day, thirty years ago, that mother and father died, along with the rest of our entire tribe… Heh… You just can’t let go of your little promise, can’t you?”

“How bold of you… After what you did with your own daughter and your niece, I didn’t think you’d have the balls to ever show your face to me again, especially to have some chit-chat.” Qrow replies, turning to see her, already putting one hand on the handle of Harbinger.

“Chit-chat?… Oh no, of course not. Chat with who, anyway? A walking corpse? No thank you… To me, you died on that field along with Summer. And sometimes, I think you know that too… All you do now is run around like a ghost, searching for reasons to keep your sorry ass going…  And now, I’m here just to finish some business… You got on the nerves of someone who offered a really good reward for your head, Qrow. I knew that if I waited this long, this was bound to happen. Now I’ll do the bothersome work of dealing with you, and at least I’ll get something in return. It’s a win-win to me.” Raven says, also turning around.

The two now are face to face. Their shiny red eyes meet in this dark forest. Qrow then smiles and says, “You know what, Raven?… I think mom might be a little lonely up there… It’s time one of us goes to make her some company… Don’t you think so, sister?”

“I agree… but there’s one little problem, Qrow… You’re not going to the ever after with mom… Now, I will send you to hell with dad.” Raven said.

The two jump towards each other, and their two blades clash, causing the powerful shockwave that reverberates across the entire forest. The trees start to shake, and the loud noise echoes around them. Ruby was still walking back to camp when she heard it, and immediately started running back. Weiss, Blake and Yang also heard it, and moved out with a few other Huntsmen who woke up.

Raven and Qrow continue to fight a little while, before she senses the approaching Huntsmen. She explains that this place won’t be a good one to die, and so she creates a portal right behind Qrow, and tackles him into it. Ruby arrives at the scene just to scream his name, and see them disappear into the portal. Qrow’s presence completely vanished, taken by force to the other side of the map. Ruby is paralyzed with her hand reaching forward, and with an empty look of shock. Her friends soon find her, and ask her what happens. Ruby merely drops to her knees and screams into the sky, “UNCLE QROW!!!!”

…

Qrow got launched through the red portal, but was able to land on his feet. He looked around, and saw himself in a dark and dusty castle hall of black pillars and tiles. It was like the grand hall of Beacon castle, except it was left to rot and be forgotten. The more he looked, the quicker he realized where they were. This was the place. 

Raven says, “Doesn’t it seem familiar to you?… We ran for hours, until we found this castle hidden in the woods. Mother was so hurt from all the bites, and the claws… she only lasted long enough to see that we were both well hidden in here… And after she was gone, it was just the two of us, searching the world for a way to survive… Looking back now, the greatest mistake of my life was not leaving you here to die alongside her. All you ever did was hold me back. You were nothing but an annoyance to everyone around you… But now, I get to fix my mistake.”

“Is that so? Well, maybe I have something to amend for, too… Back when you abandoned all of us, I just let you go without much of a fight. I didn’t know what to do back then… Now, this time, I’ll make sure to cut off both your legs, so you won’t be able to run off like always.”

And so the battle begins, and what a battle it is. This one legit needs to be one of the best fights of the entire series, not only because it takes three episodes, but because it's a matchup that is incredibly hyped in and out of universe. Ever since their battle was cucked from volume V, and we developed their rivalry in volume VII, literally everyone expected this moment to arrive. I don’t even need to say what inspired this battle and scenery — there’s not many animes where two brothers with red eyes battle to the death inside a castle.

I don’t have inputs in choreography, but I want to update their skill pool with some ideas. Mostly focused on Raven playing with portals and Qrow using “Karma”. Qrow’s side ability hasn’t evolved, but it’s still pretty strong. It basically guarantees that both of them will remain as equals, always dishing out and receiving an equal amount of damage either by each other’s blades or by the environment with Qrow’s bad luck manipulation. And whoever gains a lead, it will soon start to suffer from random bullshit. Stuff like castle bats suddenly flying on their way, or pieces from the ceiling falling down on their heads or blocking their vision, or even the floor will break and get their feet stuck inside a hole. This ability mostly just serves to make the battle dynamic as all hell, because everything in the castle is moving to both help and kill Qrow at the same time, so random convenient bullshit happens constantly.

Now, Raven playing with portals is quite fun. So far Raven only used her portals to just teleport long distances with her crew. However, her Semblance also allows her to instantly teleport to a location if she can see it at close range — basically the Flying Raijin. That ability alone is able to overwhelm most people, but Qrow was extra wise to her abilities. Once you know her brain like he does, you know exactly where she will teleport and at what moment, and at which angle she will swing her sword. Once she gets angry enough, she starts abusing another facet of her power.

After being in the wild for twenty years, Raven saw plenty of new places that the rest of the world had absolutely no idea existed. Some of these places are deadly, and quite memorable because of that. And so, she swings her sword to open a portal, calling out Qrow to meet these places in person. 

Suddenly, Qrow is forced to jump away as a huge volley of heat and fire go straight out of the portal, towards his direction. The vision from the other side showed a picture of hell, but rather, Raven just opened a portal to the pit of a volcano. Qrow was able to take cover from the fire, but now the castle was set ablaze. Raven continued her assault by opening another portal — this time to some sort of cave hidden at the rocky shore towards the sea. It had an insanely strong wind blowing from it, and so all that force entered the portal too. The wind was able to lift heavy stuff from the floor, tossing Qrow and several other pieces of furniture against the wall. It was so strong that it made a whole chunk of the main hall’s rooftop fall on top of Qrow, along with some pillars. The fire was now spreading faster thanks to the wind, leaving Qrow buried on top of a pile of rubble on fire. Raven kept staring at it, waiting for him to get up, but…

Suddenly, Qrow’s hands rapidly emerge from the floor. He grabs her ankles and pulls her down through the ground, taking the battle to the dark dungeons of the castle. Thankfully the fire follows them wherever they go, always creating this dramatic visual of a fight in the middle of flames.

I don’t have much to say anymore for this portion, but Qrow is able to land a combo on her to pay back all the damage that the portals did to him. Not only that, but it seems that Qrow only gets stronger as the fight goes on, and he’s glad to explain why. Unlike her, Qrow doesn’t fight to survive or to conquer. He fights because he has a responsibility to fulfill with his powers. He is the one who fights to protect those he cares about, even if he has to die. However, the thing that makes Qrow get up no matter how many times he falls IS the promise that he made for Summer, and later Ruby. He will not allow his life to come to an end until he’s absolutely sure that Ruby will be fine on her own. He won’t dare break her heart by dying in such a pathetic way. He’ll keep coming back no matter how many times she puts him down, so he can return home and see her smile one more time.

Raven, who spent so many years just hanging out with a bunch of careless, selfish lowlifes, can’t even comprehend what it feels like to fight for love. She has absolutely no one that cares for her. She believes this loneliness is some kind of proof to her strength, and that’s why she clings to it. Qrow plans to completely shatter her pride and destroy her in battle, in order to show how wrong her beliefs are. And well, he’s winning. He suddenly became so strong and determined that he started to break Raven’s swords with their clashes. She still had several different ones in her cylinder-like sheath, so the fight continues.

For the next phase of the battle, a certain third party decided to appear. The two were clashing repeatedly at intense speed, before finally backing away to catch their breath. And ]when they least expect… they heard the sound of clapping, echoing in the castle halls, soon followed by some laughter. They both turn to see who it is… and it’s Tyrian.

His body is still covered in bandages, since Ruby used her ultimate suicide attack on him just last week. He says, “I never thought I would ever see this beautiful moment come to life! The two people I hate the most in this world, brought together in the same room as me! I haven’t received something so precious since I was a child…”

“God damn it, you again?!” Qrow and Raven say in unison. Then they look at each other and say in unison again, “Wait, you know this guy?! How do you know this guy?!”

Tyrian laughs and says, “Of course I’m acquainted with your sister, Qrowny! Where do you think I spend the other half of my time?! DID YOU REALLY THINK I SAT AROUND IN SOME SHACK, WAITING FOR AN OPPORTUNITY TO FIGHT YOU?!… well, sometimes, BUT I’M HURT THAT YOU’D EVEN CONSIDER SUCH A THING! MY TIME IS VALUABLE, MISTER!”

Qrow explains to Raven that this guy has been chasing him for over twenty years, and they fought hundreds times for absolutely no reason. And so, Raven explains that he also did the exact same thing to her. As a matter of fact, several renegades from the Branwen tribe were killed by Tyrian over the years, in his attempt to get her.

Now that they are finally all together, they demand an explanation. What the fuck does he want with them — what drives a single man to wage a long and fruitless war against two brothers? Tyrian is made more to be a concept than a character, so his own backstory shouldn’t be detailed or even important, but he explains to them nonetheless. 

Basically, Tyrian was a child from a noble Havanese family from a village that was raided by the old red bandits, led by Eirik of the red eyes. His family was able to hide him, but they were killed in the raid. Tyrian’s only memories afterwards were of little Qrow and Raven, playing together in the ruins of his village and making fun of all those who died. The desire for vengeance sent him on a quest for life, where he swore to destroy the red bandits and all their offsprings. He trained under the Shadow Alliance of Haven until he was a strong warrior, but by then he got the news that the red bandits were obliterated by Grimm, which cucked him real hard. He then continued being a normal Havanese Huntsmen until the fateful day where he met again with Qrow and Raven, at the Vytal Festival Tournament of Haven from 22 years ago. And he simply… couldn’t believe his eyes.

Those two murderous bastards from that tribe of killers and pillagers were still alive? He was happy to know that he could still have his revenge somewhat, but then… he lost to Qrow. Somehow he had grown into a warrior just as strong as Tyrian in those seven years. And then he tried again, and lost again. And then he tried again, and lost even more. And as he went, Tyrian’s mind started to deteriorate. He saw as the people he hated the most in the entire world became famous, became strong, and were hailed as heroes as if all their past actions were just shrugged off by everyone. They even got nice friends and hot partners on their team. They had kids and raised families with cute little daughters. All the while, Tyrian was left utterly alone, with everyone he once loved already being dead. The suffering of his family and village were forgotten by everyone, and their killers got to walk away. And then worst of all, people started calling HIM crazy and a renegade, because he wasn’t willing to forget the past. He was cast off like an animal, and finally understood why he was allowed to live unlike his parents. He had a life mission. He had to bring justice to this putrid world.

Tyrian hunts Raven simply because she’s evil, and he wants to get rid of all remnants of the red bandits. However, with Qrow his deal is much more personal. He knows that deep down Qrow is just as evil as his sister. HE HAS TO BE! And to prove it, Tyrian has spent several years slowly poking at his dark side, waiting for the chance where Qrow’s mind would pop, and reveal the demon inside of him. Once his mask falls off, Tyrian will prove to the rest of the world what he always knew — that Qrow was always a monster, and that Tyrian was the real hero all along…

And well, after a long-time coming revelation, these three jump straight to fighting. A three person free for all. This might seem familiar, as I know Qrow had a similar fight against Tyrian somewhere in volume 7 or 8 of the original show. This section right here should be the actual gold of these three episodes — the money fight officially begins, or “Sakuga moment” as the kids call it. It goes on for several minutes until both Tyrian and Raven realize that Qrow has become too strong for both of them, so they instinctively begin to target him more than each other. Soon enough they were literally 2v1 on his ass, and Qrow points that out in order to taunt them, showing how weak they became that they rely on their enemies to beat him.

Nevertheless, the Raven and Tyrian combo is enough to overwhelm Qrow, and they start beating his ass together. The battle seemingly ends once Raven decides enough is enough, and uses the finishing move she had planned out. Once Qrow was distracted in a clash with Tyrian, Raven takes the chance to kill them both with her ultimate move. She opens a portal, taking a lot of concentration and Aura to do so. But the result was quite deadly. The portal was connected to a place very, VERY deep within the ocean. The pressure was immense, and so the immense torrent of water shot out of the red portal like a huge hammer of water. Tyrian was able to jump away, but Qrow didn’t. He was taken by the water blast head on.

We take the view from far away, as this huge wave just spawned from within the grand hall, and blew a hole through the side of the castle. The castle’s rooftop started to crumble right away from the sheer force of the water, turning the whole place into ruins. Qrow was slammed against the wall, then shot out of the castle, and continued being pushed by the huge wave across the surrounding forest. His body was slammed against the trees, boulders and the ground for a whole mile, all the while drowning in salt water. The first impact of the torrent already broke his ribs and his face, and everything else after that seems to have broken his arms and legs too. Finally Raven closes the water portal, and Qrow is left lying on the ground, surrounded by the dark woods. He can only stare at the moon. With that horrifying shot of the aftermath, the first episode is over.

…

The second episode opens up with a flashback. It shows us the events of the night where the red bandits were completely annihilated by Grimm. We take the perspective of Qrow and Raven’s mother, as she flees from the slaughter with her two children in her arms. Raven just watched her father being mauled to death, and she’s not responding well to the situation. Soon one of the young Grimm wolves spots them, and starts to chase. Miss Branwen continues to run until the monster catches up and goes to attack Qrow, but she pulls Qrow out of danger and gets slashed by the wolf’s claws in his place. Despite the burning pain she keeps on running, until the wolf catches up again, and delivers a deep bite to her arm with its white teeth. She screams in pain, but knows she has to save her children somehow. With her last strength, she pulls out a small dagger that she picked up earlier, and stabs the Grimm in its eyes, making it let go of her, and stopping it from following them further. 

Despite her grievous wounds and continuous bleeding, she was able to drag Raven and Qrow for one more hour, until she randomly found the castle hidden in the woods. Once in there she finally collapses, and tells her dying words to her two children, which we already know of. She tells them to forget the past and forge a new, better family for themselves. And so she dies, with the bright shattered moon of Remnant watching all of it play out from the window.

…

We quickly take the perspective of team RWBY for a brief moment. We see Ruby running around as fast as she can, going from one high place to another in search of Qrow. Blake and Yang can barely keep up with her, and she’s in panic. Many other Huntsmen were looking around, but they couldn't find Qrow either. Soon Weiss descends from the skies on top of her ice nevermore, and explains that she can’t see anything or feel any battle going on. Raven could’ve teleported him to the other side of the world for all they know. Ruby refuses to give up — she can’t bear the thought that Qrow is fighting alone against the Branwen mercenaries. She has a bad feeling, and just when she thought it couldn’t get any worse… she felt it. 

Her bond to Qrow was so strong that she could feel and even see the exact moment that he was hit by the immense torrent of water. His presence from this world withered considerably. Ruby held her temples and dropped to her knees, crying profusely. Qrow was about to die, and there’s nothing she can do about it. Nothing. Her screams are nightmarish to her friends — Ruby never has been so distraught in her life. They hug and hold her, but she can’t calm down.  Just when Qrow turned his life around, this shit happened to him. Why does it have to be this way?!

…

Back at the battle… Qrow wakes up.

He was soaked in water and with pain across every inch of his body. He coughs out water and soon realizes that he can barely move. He remembers what Raven did to him, and realizes that he needs to get up quick. He can sense her presence approaching, but he can’t even crawl away. Finally Raven walks in, saying her usual shit talk about Qrow being wrong, and that her life of loneliness made her infinitely stronger than his life of coddled friends. His sorry state is proof of that. Right after her, Tyrian also jumps down from the trees, cursing Raven for trying to take out both of them with a sneak attack. He has to stop her now, because he won’t allow anyone to kill Qrow in his place. Raven drops the bone immediately and allows Tyrian to put him down, not wanting to waste any more time on her brother. Tyrian smiles and starts walking towards Qrow, salivating to finish the job…

All the while they were talking, Qrow was just trying to get his bearings. And it is now, at a time where death seems closer than ever before… that he starts hearing that voice again. That deeply distorted, irrational and evil voice, which he had not heard ever since he first awakened his Semblance. The voice that comes from his soul. It says, “Look at you… You allowed yourself to drown on the easy life, Qrow… and that shall now be your doom… But, it doesn’t have to be… I can give you more power… We both know you need it.”

“You again?… What the hell do you want with me now?!… You’re never here when I need you, you bastard… You’re not my friend… You just came back because… you’re afraid that you’ll die with me, aren’t you?” Qrow says, in his mind. “I don’t need you… I NEVER needed you… All I need is… is… Hey… where is it?”

He grasped his chest, only to realize that his cross pendant was gone. The water must’ve washed it away. He started looking frantically for it, until he saw that it was just out of reach on the ground beside him. He desperately starts crawling towards it, making Tyrian think that he was trying to run like a wounded animal. Despite the pain, Qrow grabbed the pendant, and opened as gently as he could. Unlike the cross pendant he wore in the beginning, this one had a round locket on the center, and the picture inside was ruined by mud. It was a selfie of him and Ruby, and they were both laughing and hugging. Such a small photo, and yet, so precious to him.

The pendant was a gift she gave him on his last birthday, just a couple of months ago. Qrow just continued looking down on it, with his face slowly being overcome by emotion. He remembers his promise, and what Ruby told him just before this battle started. Tyrian was slowly approaching from behind, ready to stab Qrow on the ground. Finally, the voice makes its final offer, “You have five seconds, Qrow… what will it be?… Will you die, or will you fight?”

Time pretty much stops around Qrow, and he says, “Chaos…”

“What is it?” replied the voice.

“Give me the power… to see my daughter again… and my life… is yours.” Qrow said.

“Heheh… good choice, old friend…” Chaos said.

…

The clouds in the sky start racing out of nowhere. The ground beneath their feet starts to vibrate ever so slightly. Tyrian stopped walking as he felt an intense presence explode right in front of him. He and Raven watched as Qrow’s red aura started to burn intensely, and they witnessed something that no one has ever seen before. These strange roots of Aura started coming out of Qrow, sinking into the air and the ground before disappearing again, as if infecting the world with his Semblance. Finally they began hearing sounds of thunder, and the tremors started getting faster. 

Qrow stands up, as if his injuries meant nothing. Tyrian tried to stab him with his pincer claws, but… Qrow blocked it. He allowed his hand to be stabbed through, just so he could grab Tyrian’s fist and lock him in place. With his free hand, he raised Harbinger and used it to clobber Tyrian. Not cut, I really mean clob. He got hit by the flat side of the blade and was launched far into the treeline, crashing and breaking through all the trees and branches in his path. Raven’s eyes open wide as she sees the face of her brother, grinning menacingly and with both his pupils gone from his eyes.

The demon of chaos is back.

And so, the battle begins anew, and the soundtrack pops the fuck off. Qrows goes for the full offensive, this time showing more energy and more strength than ever. His ferocity is unparalleled, and Raven simply couldn’t fight against Qrow when he behaves more like a beast than a warrior. His moves were not only stronger, but more unpredictable, as if he’s drunk on rage. We’ve seen him go crazy before, but never on a level like this. The battle then boils down to Raven just fighting for survival for five whole minutes. As they fought, the heavy rain started pouring down the forest with a crazy strong wind, knocking down trees and making the whole place really dark. But since that wasn’t chaotic enough, the ground underneath them started to crack and erupt into separate little islands, and hot lava started to emerge from the crevasses, spreading fast across the grassy floor and setting the trees on fire. It looked like pure hell on earth, all caused by Chaos.

After a whole fight scene of pure madness and feral chase, Tyrian comes back to save Raven at the nick of time, and he does so by narrowly stabbing Qrow in the calf with his tail stinger. 

He laughs maniacally, knowing it's over. Tyrian got exactly what he wanted. He made Qrow go crazy, abandon all the love in his heart, and now he gets to watch him slowly squeal in pain before finally cutting off his head. He says, “Take a deep breath, Qrow! Feel the air! This is freedom you see before you! Your fate is sealed! YOU CAN FIGHT ALL YOU WANT NOW, KNOWING THAT NOTHING ELSE MATTERS! AHAHAHAHAH! YOU ONLY HAVE ONE MINUTE NOW! ISN’T THAT WONDERFUL?! YOU CAN FINALLY DIE WITH A CLEAR CONSCIENCE!!!”

And as usual, Tyrian pushes the one nerve that he shouldn’t, trying to get as much of a kick as he could. He severely underestimated how much Qrow was willing to bet on this fight. And so, Qrow raised the leg of which Tyrian poisoned, and then…

He uses Harbinger to cut it, clean off from the knee.

The paralyzing venom will never reach his system this way, and Qrow can now continue to fight. The soundtrack completely cuts off for a brief moment, as Tyrian looks down at the missing foot of his enemy, with eyes of total shock and despair. Blood was trickling down like crazy. Qrow then says, “Looks like I got three minutes now… I guess it’s time for Qrow… TO LET IT RIP!!!”

Qrow puts Harbinger on his mouth, kicking the soundtrack back at full force. He drops to the floor and takes a stance similar to a dog, running and jumping with his three remaining limbs while using the sword on his teeth to attack Tyrian — and he ABSOLUTELY KICKS HIS ASS! He slashes him several times, cuts off his tail, destroys his pincer bracelet weapon, and uses the blood coming out of his leg to spray his eyes and blind Tyrian. He dished out the whole flawless combo, and finally uses his one remaining leg to kick him back to the far off distance. 

With him done, Qrow catches up with Raven again, and continues to brutalize his sister, breaking all her remaining swords with a single swing each. Finally he ditches Harbinger and gives her one well-deserved haymaker punch to the face, launching her all the way back to the castle where they started, crashing through the ruins. The whole place had already broken apart after Raven released the water portal, so nothing but rubble remains of the black castle.

Raven was knocked out briefly by that strike, and now Qrow approaches her with his crazy gaze. He uses Harbinger as a crutch to walk now that he lost his foot. He looks down at his sister, with his dark red Aura constantly flowing out of his body like a stream of fire. And as if this couldn’t get more crazy, Qrow’s Aura begins to take shape. Some sort of evil face made of his own energy appears on his shoulder, and starts speaking in his ear. It was Chaos, taking its own form now that he unleashed it completely. He keeps telling Qrow to finish off Raven, and make her pay for everything she did, listing all her terrible wrongdoings bit by bit. Her vile actions are public and notorious — the entity didn’t have to lie one bit. For a second, it seemed like he was able to convince Qrow…

But in response, Qrow said, “Maybe you’re right, old pal… But you know what else I just realized?… I DON’T LIKE YOU EITHER!” Qrow suddenly used his hand to grab the face on his shoulder and started pulling it out of him. “What?! WHAT ARE YOU DOING! LET GO!” Chaos replied. “Your rent of my body is overdue, YOU BASTARD! You are not Chaos, I AM! I DON’T NEED YOU TO BE MY MIDDLEMAN! IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO GO!!!”

Qrow continues pulling this entity out of himself, and it strangely seems to be working. He’s literally tussling with his own Aura, rolling around on the floor as he starts stretching and tearing it apart with his bare hands. The voice groans in pain and gets desperate, “You prick! I GAVE YOU THE POWER YOU ASKED! IS THIS HOW YOU REPAY ME?! YOU SAID YOU OWNED ME YOUR LIFE, QROW!”

“TOUGH BREAK, HUH?! SINCE YOU BEEN WATCHING ME FOR SO LONG, YOU SHOULD’VE KNOWN THAT I SUCK AT KEEPING MY WORD!!” Qrow said. After a long struggle, he seems to finally rip the chaos entity out of him completely, and then rip it apart like it was made of red jello. The entity tries to bargain with him till its final moments, finally screaming loudly as it gets torn in a million pieces. With that, Qrow blacks out for a second as well. 

Now it’s a good time to end the second episode of this fight. 

…

The third and final episode of this trilogy opens up with yet another flashback. This time seeing the perspective of Qrow and Raven right after their mom dies. We open with both of them just crying over her body for the whole night. In fact, it’s already morning outside. Raven takes hold of the situation, saying that they should probably go and try to find a village. They need food and water, and they need to keep living. However, Qrow didn’t want to just leave her body like this, and convinces her to carry her somewhere else.

After the main hall, they found this entrance to the small courtyard of the castle. The grass had taken over everything, since it was abandoned hundreds of years ago. Eventually they found a soft patch of dirt, and started digging with the old tools left lying around. Finally, they envelop Ms. Branwen’s body with white sheets, and lay her to rest on top of cushions at the bottom of the hole. They push the dirt back on top, and that’s it…

Still, Qrow wasn’t in the mood to leave yet. He kept looking down without saying anything. Finally, he confesses to his sister that he was weak. He was supposed to be the prince of a warrior tribe, but he was too scared to move and fight against the monster. If their mom didn’t have to defend him from that wolf, they would have all escaped safely. It was his burden that cost her life. And now, he’s afraid that if he continues being this same little baby, he will eventually kill Raven too. He doesn’t want her to die too — never! If he wants to protect her, he can’t be afraid to feel pain, or get hurt, or even to die. He has to make up for being a coward.

And so, Qrow puts his hand over the patch of dirt of her grave… and he stabs through it, using a rusty knife he found on the grass. The blood trickles down on the dirt, and soon he pulls it off, crying in pain. This is to show how serious he is about his promise. He will never back down again, if it means saving his family. Right after that, Raven comes to his side and slaps him. This stupid stab might just kill him now. Thankfully she still had the flask of booze that she stole from her dad last night. She pours it on the wound, and wraps it with her headscarf. “You dummy… That’s gonna leave a mark, you know.”

“(sniff)… good… this way, I’ll never forget…” Qrow replies. Raven hugs him, and that officially ends the flashback. Let’s end the fight.

…

Qrow wakes up, again. He looks down and realizes — holy fuck, he really cut off his own leg. He feels the pain from earlier all come back in one go, across his entire body. He rips out part of his own black cape and makes a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. His vision is already wobbly, but at least the battle seems to be over.

However, Raven just opened her eyes as well. She jumped up, and saw Qrow right in front of her, making him stand up as well. They both look really hurt, but they need to continue the fight regardless. Raven wields her sword that was broken and half, and Qrow is forced to balance himself on a single leg to wield Harbinger. The fight that plays now is absolutely pathetic — they are both too hurt to continue. Their moves are slow, sluggish and imprecise. This goes for one extra minute, until Tyrian arrives again. This time, he’s absolutely livid, completely dropping the charismatic killer persona that he has been using his whole life. He shouts in anger and demands them to die already — It was time for him to be the hero who destroyed the red bandits once and for all. He was a little better off than the other two, which forced them to unite and fight against Tyrian two versus one. Just to remind you of the battle setting, Qrow’s Semblance caused the land to erupt, and now there are dark ravines everywhere, and the forest fire has stopped due to the rain. With that said, let’s conclude the fight.

With their combined forces, the two are able to make one last combo together, and simultaneously stab Tyrian with both their swords right into his chest. The castle ruins are left in eerie silence, and Tyrian has finally shut his damn cackling mouth. They pull out the blades, and Tyrian starts walking back with two holes in his chest. He was gonna die anyway, but just to make it more dramatic, he accidentally falls in one of the chasms opened by Chaos, and we merely see his body falling to the darkness, saying, “This… is not… fair…”

And that was Tyrian. He played the Joker of Rwby well enough, and as simple and shallow his character was, his fight scenes and the stakes he put in his battles have probably made him quite the fan favorite. Hopefully he won’t come back in any shape or form to bite Qrow in the ass one final time, right?

Now it was just Qrow and Raven, catching their breath as the moon finally sits down in the distance, and the sun begins to rise far away. Now they continue their pathetically slow sword fight, and as they go, they continue moving across the rubble of the old castle, until they finally arrive at that same grassy courtyard from the flashback, having been left conveniently untouched by Chaos. Both end up too weak to raise their swords, and so they just start fist fighting each other. These two will simply not stop for anything, but it has to end eventually.

Despite the odds, Raven gets defeated by the crippled Qrow, and is knocked down. Qrow quickly grabs his sword from the ground again, and arches himself back to deliver the final strike. Raven’s face is overcome by fear. She raises her hand in front of her, almost begging for Qrow to stop, but her brain just can’t let the words out. Qrow has won. He will put an end to his sister, and all he has to do… is strike. They both held that pose for a little while, until Qrow heard something strange.

He heard a voice… calling out to him.

Qrow looked to the side, and he saw a vision. On that same patch of grass, where he buried his mother thirty years ago, he saw her. She was standing there, hands held together as if praying, and her sad gaze was looking straight into Qrow’s eyes. She didn’t speak anything other than his name, but Qrow understood what she wanted. She wanted him to keep his promise.

Raven saw Qrow look to the side while having a delusion, and saw her opportunity. Her shattered sword was just in reach, and so she grabbed it, and quickly slashed against Qrow. He was distracted, and couldn’t block the attack. Her blade made a slit across his stomach, and so he dropped on the floor. Raven kept looking down on him, not knowing what to do next. She should probably stab him again, but couldn’t bring herself to do it anymore. Now at the critical moment, she’s also experiencing flashbacks. All her time on team STRQ came rushing back, especially her friendship with Summer. All the memories that she swore would never get on her way… are getting on her way.

Her ultimate decision is to just turn around, and walk away with a limp. He’ll die of blood loss one way or another, so she has nothing to worry about. However, just as she was about to escape, Qrow said, “Raven… you know damn well that… a cut this shallow… is not enough to kill a man like me… Come back here… and finish the job…”

Raven replies, “I don’t take orders from no one… Not even you… Just sit there and wait for death like a man, you bum… All those friends that you made… won’t save you anymore… You’ve fought enough… You’ve suffered enough… I think it’s time for you to rest, Qrow… I’m glad that it is my blade that puts an end to you, and not this cruel world that we both hate… 

Farewell… Brother …”

Raven uses the absolute last of her energy to create one final portal back to Argus, and walks in. Qrow is left lying on the floor, completely alone, and with the sun rising far away. He flops himself upwards and tilts his head to the side in order to watch the morning shine, feeling like this might actually be the end. He takes his time to apologize to Ruby. Even though she wanted him to live a long and healthy life by her side, the world of warriors is way more cruel than both of them pretend to be. He can only hope that the anger and grief don’t send her on the same path of self destruction that he walked. With that, Qrow closes his eyes.

Just to make absolutely sure that he’s fucked, we see a pack of Grimm approaching the destroyed forest, and slowly making their way to the ruined castle. Qrow’s body would soon be devoured, and that would be the end of him. The scene slowly fades to black.

…

Ruby spent the entire rest of the night looking for him, until she lost all hope to catch up to Qrow, and just sat alone in a fetal position near the ashed campfire. Her team urges her to have faith, and trust that Qrow has the strength to survive. There’s nothing else they can do. However, Harriet came in and told Ruby that the Branwen are all in Atlas, and so the best way to find her uncle is to go after them. Ruby finally wakes up to reality, grabs her scythe and decides to follow. Her eyes of rage scare even her own team. It’s been a while since Ruby was THIS ready to kill someone. Yang could only tell herself, “Mom… I can’t allow you to continue living like this… Once we meet again, I’ll have to put a stop to you and your tribe… Once and for all.”

…

Raven returned to the Branwen mansion, and as soon as the portal behind her closed, she fell down on her knees through sheer exhaustion. She called out for someone’s help, as she couldn’t even walk. And so, after a short while… Shay shows up. “What’s the matter, captain? Sheesh, looks like he kicked your ass. You won, right?”

“Tch! Just shut up and get me something to drink! NOW !” Raven said, standing up despite her injuries to try and look tough. “Qrow is dead. His full power was greater than I thought, but that is all. I didn’t fail miserably like some other people here.”

She walked to their big dining room with all the pillaged garbage, and sat on her big chair by the wall. The only people there were still just Neil, Niko, Odion and Shay. They keep acting casual and congratulating her for the victory, until Shay brings her the drink. Before she takes a sip, she warns them that the warriors of Vale have assembled, and are coming towards Atlas right now, and they should warn Watts about it. And so, Raven drinks her first shot of whiskey.

And finally, Shay’s plan worked flawlessly.

After a few seconds, Raven immediately feels something wrong. Her drink had something in it, and before she could speak, she lost control of her muscles, and fell down on the floor. Shay already started mocking her, saying that this was the first time, in all those twenty years of working with her, that she actually drank something that came out of his hands. Looks like no one ever taught her that girls need to be extra careful about stuff like that.

“What… what did you do…?!” Raven mumbles.

Shay grabs her by the hair and pulls her head up from the floor. “What I always wanted. You have no idea of how long I waited for the day you slacked, Branwen. I knew that the battle against your brother would be the only thing that could weaken you enough, and so I prepared myself a little bit. If you didn’t die, this would probably do the trick… Don’t be mad, okay? It’s all part of the rules… We don’t need weak people, right? (giggles).

I got to give you props, though — you were a little useful back then. Your powers helped us escape from consequences, and you were strong enough to help us against bounty hunters and Grimm… But now, the world is changing fast, Raven. Soon enough Vale and Haven are gonna go under, and there will be no more bastards coming after us. I figured that now would be the best moment to get rid of you. I’d be crazy if I still chose to work for a crazy bitch like yourself, and continue living in the woods with a bunch of birds and rats. Now I get to be a bigshot here in Atlas! A member of the highest elite of the strongest nation! From a guy born in a stable, it’s a pretty good deal, don’t ya think? I can do whatever I want, WHENEVER I WANT, and most importantly, I won’t have to receive orders from ANYONE… including you…”

Raven called out the other people in the room, but they simply stared at her. Niko laughed a lot from hearing the big boss Raven crying for his help. Neil simply yawns and looks away. Odion, her biggest meat rider, says that she has simply nothing else to offer him, and so he will find someone better and smarter to serve. And just like that, everything that Qrow always told Raven has finally happened. Her tribe turned on her ass like it was nothing, despite all the years that she protected and helped them — as cruel as she was about it. The emotion on her face is hard to describe, but she was hit mainly by outrage and fear of dying. She was too weak to make a move, even before she drank the laced whiskey. Finally, Shay sat on top of her back and prepared his switchblade in order to stab her in the neck.

However, Neil tells him to stop. Killing Raven right now might be a bad call. You see, Vernal is still out there, and on the extremely unlikely chance that she kills both Ozpin and Leo single handedly, she will come back, and try to take revenge on him. Despite how much of a little bitch she grew up to be, she still cares a lot for Raven deep down. Using her as a hostage might be the only way to protect himself. 

Shay thought about it. Vernal surviving the fight isn't in his equation, but the logic is very sound. And so, he made a decision. He’ll trap Raven in the basement for the next three days, without medical care, food or water. If Vernal doesn’t show up, then he’ll just let her starve down there, and tell all the other members that she never returned from her fight with Qrow in the first place.

Being told exactly what her miserable destiny is gonna be, and without the power to make any moves… Raven passes out, crying tears of anger. At the back of her mind, she asks Vernal, Yang and even Qrow for help one final time. With that, the episode ends.

Commentary (spoilers): Now… a very big deviation can happen right now. One that Qrow dies here, and all of his side-content of the next volume simply gets scrapped. I think it fits Qrow to die in this battle, because that will allow Raven to pretty much substitute him in the story moving forward, even though there’s just one volume left. That would make her redemption better, and give her more room to work with, and a better chance of redemption. Of course, that’s not how I planned it out, and so I’ll take the route where Qrow survives, and so he keeps his final journey in the last volume. Both paths serve the same conclusion to Ruby’s story, so either Qrow dies here or survives to the next volume doesn’t really matter. Also, Qrow having this Venom-like entity inside of him that represents his own Semblance is a bonkers concept that I pulled out of my ass, just to explain how Qrow gets full control of his Semblance, turning it from a passive ability to an active one.

Now, about the battle itself, I think this in the top 5 battles in the entire show. Just from the creative uses of how their powers work and how they find new ways to damage each other. I mentioned earlier its similarities with the Sasuke vs Itachi fight. In a very shallow analysis, that might seem true, but thinking back the only thing they have in common is their eye color. Their powers, stories, designs and motivations are completely different. I have to admit though, the only reason I put the setting of the fight inside a castle is because I wanted to pay homage to their fight. RWBY RE:colored has a lot of cliches, but it isn’t so much of a copy, as it is a big celebration of all the stuff that inspired every bit of story that was created. There’s a sprinkle of Naruto, of Dragon Ball, of One Piece, of Bleach, of My Hero Academia, of Berserk, of Sailor Moon, and an unconsidered amount of Sword Art Online (even though I never watched it). The world of RWBY is so rich in magic, culture and technology that all of these aspects from wildly different series can all be integrated seamlessly into the story. Personally I think that is why it’s so fun to write about Rwby, because you can literally take the story anywhere. As of now, the show will probably be canceled forever, trapped in the shadowrealm of Warner Bros. IPs. What a sad fate for something with such potential.

And well, with the best fight of the volume over, it’s time to focus on the small Haven plotline — the last one to settle before the final act. I’ll be brief since its contents are mostly filler in nature. Basically, upon the end of the battle against the Dark Fang, Ozpin was told that Cinder was alive and she intends to wipe out all nations from the map with another legion of Grimm, just like 500 years ago. Ozpin decides to travel to Haven alongside Leo, for a reason he explains at the very beginning of the episode. 

The three were just casually talking while in the back of a closed wagon, soon approaching Haven City — Ozpin, Leo and Glynda, who decided to come with them for personal reasons, and to help protect the relic that Ozpin brought. He explains that right after Ruby told him of Cinder's plan, he started going crazy thinking of a plan to fight back or survive, when suddenly, for the first time, the Relic of Knowledge spoke to him. He pulled out of the same behind his desk, and heard its mythical voice. It simply said, “the relics… gather the relics”, over and over again. So yeah, the reason he’s coming to Haven is to find their lost relic, and then he’ll go after Atlas to ask for the same.

Once arriving in Haven city, the narrative splits between Leo with Ozpin, and Glynda. I’ll focus on Glynda first because it’s pretty simple. Once arriving in the city, the first thing she did was visit the city cemetery, with some kind of grand memorial of several warriors that died over the years. And there, in the middle of all the lonely tombstones, was a certain house. HER house — the one that used to grow legs, of which she used to travel with her old team before they were wiped out. Everything inside and out was exactly as in the past. They were honored as part of the battalion that took down the greatest threat that Haven ever faced, which was The Horde . She was surprised to find flowers at the doorstep, and soon she met with Corazan.

He heard that she was coming, and knew he would find her here. In fact, she comes here every year at least once, but judging by the flowers, Corazan must come way more often than her. It only makes sense that he pays his tributes to them, as it was because of him that they died. Had Glynda chosen to go with her team instead of rescuing him, they would all be alive. Glynda admits that their deaths still hurt a lot, but the future that they are living now is not bad at all. Glynda wouldn’t have become a teacher otherwise, and she wouldn’t have met all those brave kids that she grew to love as her own children.

Despite this little detour, Glynda actually came to see how Corazan was doing. She heard he got pretty wounded in his fight against the Dark Fang. She runs her fingers across his face, and is scared to see some gray hairs on his head that weren’t there before. It was the price to pay to get strength that his body couldn’t support, and he has no regrets about that. Now Corazan would explain what Minus told him, and Glynda would confirm it by what she heard from Ozpin. Their world seems to be about to end, only having three months before the end of the year. Since this might be the last time he gets to ask, he invites Glynda for a date. Seeing this as the last time he’ll ever ask… she agrees. 

And so, the entire rest of their scenario focuses on them, during the night, going to the light district Haven to enjoy the festival celebrating the end of the war. They eat new foods, they play games, they talk about their jobs, and Cory even manages to convince Glynda to put on a purple kimono and let her hair out, looking like a totally different woman as a result. Their scenes are mostly hilarious due to the fact we keep cutting between them having a good time, and Ozpin and Leo getting murdered. 

By the way, let’s focus on them now.

As soon as they arrive in the city, the two gotta figure out where to search. Leo never heard of any Relic during his time as a teacher, and none of the elders of the council seem to know anything either. Leo thought about finding and asking Daigo Kagutsuchi about it, since he is mythologically old and knowledgeable about Haven. Unfortunately, Ozpin awkwardly informed him that he was a Dark Fang elite member, and they killed him. Oops. Well, there might be someone else. All they need to do is search the archive of an old family, and Leo knows just the guy.

They went straight to Jobi’s house, as the Shinrai are the oldest family in Haven right now. His japanese-style mansion was huge, but since killing his brother, it’s been pretty empty and scary — not that he spent much time here anyway. The two are welcomed in by one of the young maid girls of the mansion, and find Jobi training in the sand yard outside. The only thing that changed about his design is that now he has an eye patch covering his slashed eye. They explained the situation to him, and so he took them to the secret archive.

Being a family of Huntsmen and assassins, the Shinrai had all kinds of ancient maps of the nation before and after the first invasion. They were able to find a depiction of their land right after Glenn was destroyed, and the Relic of Destruction was stolen by Haven’s ninjas and brought here. Comparing the current map to the old one, there’s a supposed temple that was forgotten in the north jungle. Together the three set out to find it. Little did they know, a certain teenage girl watches them from high up in the sky.

…

The three warriors go straight for the lost temple of the ancient map, exploring the jungle while they are at it. One important small moment needs to happen here, and it’s just Leo and Ozpin developing their friendship. Across the entire episode, Leo has been nothing but a douchebag to Ozpin, as he always was since the beginning of the series. Even in a serious situation like this, he feels the need to be above Ozpin in every conversation and shoot him down whenever he can. Once they were close to reaching the temple, Ozpin figured it was time to address the elephant, and ask why Leo still hates him. Why do they still need to be rivals after so many decades?

Leo’s response is pretty fair. Ever since he first met Ozpin back in Beacon, he always was on that talk about being “the strongest warrior who has ever lived”, and that he would, “destroy every Grimm that walks this earth”. The two had the same goals, and so their rivalry began immediately on their first day as teammates. The two were always in a contest with each other, and Leo always got the feeling that Ozpin hated him, either for being stronger than him or for being annoying. His suspicions became true on the day that Ozpin was selected to be the new headmaster Huntsman of Beacon. He knew damn well that Leo always wanted to become the headmaster, while Ozpin never showed the slightest interest in it, at all. The only reason he could’ve possibly accepted the job was just to get back at Leo for being better than him at everything. In turn, Leo saw himself forced to get back at him by becoming the grandmaster of the rival nation, through any means necessary. He challenged and defeated Daigo Kagutsuchi in battle, as well as dozens of other contestants, and thus was able to take over the academy for himself. He made sure to train his students much more harshly than Ozpin, so then his students would eclipse whatever student that Leo could have. And so, that takes us back to today, with their rivalry still going on until one of them dies or admits total defeat.

After his little rant, Ozpin simply laughs for a little while, making Leo angry as hell. He couldn’t believe Leo was still so childish and held such a petty grudge despite being over fifty years old. However, seeing his own mistakes, Ozpin is forced to tell the truth. 

In reality, on the day he accepted to become headmaster, he was desperate and afraid. After their brutal defeat against the Severus Hunger, he knew that he needed much more power, much more control and much more numbers if he hoped to one day go back and destroy Vacuo once and for all. All that he had on his mind was a longing for vengeance, getting ever greater with each passing day. He didn’t even consider Leo’s dream or anyone else’s for that matter. His desire for revenge against the Grimm surpassed all humanity that he had, and blinded him from the idea that he was perhaps not ready… and he wasn’t.

Due to his incompetence, they lost many powerful warriors and great friends over the years. The two most prominent being Hazel’s daughter, Olivia, and Summer Rose. These people trusted him, and he allowed them to die despite all the power he has. Not only that, but he continued on disregarding their hopes and wishes in pursuit of his vengeance. He failed to help Hazel, and he failed to protect Ruby several times. He pressured all those young teenagers to continue fighting for the sake of his dream, always keeping their own feelings as an afterthought. He believed the danger would make them stronger, and turn them into more valuable warriors. He was always this corrupted deep down.

As the leader of all warriors in the nation, Ozpin failed utterly and completely. Twenty four years on the job and all he has to show for are tragedies that took place under his nose. Cinder stealing the Relic, the attack on Vale, the war against the Fang, and now their impending doom. Perhaps if he abandoned his ego and his dream, Leo could’ve become the headmaster instead of him, and would’ve done a way better job by working through the love for his pupils, and not revenge against his enemies. He has to admit that Leo has surpassed him, and there’s nothing he could ever do to make them even again. Leo is the best warrior and master that the world could hope for…

That confession hit Leo like a truck. All those years of forcing their rivalry, only to end like this — Ozpin admitting that Leo is better than him, with no sarcasm, smirk or even a shred of doubt. All these years he was merely playing along to entertain Leo, while hiding his miserable side under a facade. But that’s just Ozpin — a man with many masks, one for each person he comes across. For him to drop his illusion, and admit his true thoughts, is something no one else but Ruby has gotten out of him. Leo didn’t know how to respond, and looking back at Ozpin, he saw the exact same person that he first met at Beacon academy, many decades ago. Ozpin remains the same person he always was. But… it wasn’t exactly the same. Something had changed. The fact he would outright admit all these things already proves that. He became humble and regretful.

Feeling flustered, Leo talks back by saying some other times that Ozpin actually did a very good job. From his point of view, it isn’t just vengeance that guides Ozpin, but also a lot of hope. He was able to raise powerful students, find a new silver-eyed warrior, and despite the many tragedies that took place, Vale is still standing strong. Leo looks back and admits not being an ideal master either, showing how much corruption and evil he allowed to spread across his nation, like the Malachite Yakuza and the Shadow Alliance, simply because he was too stupid to figure out a way to fight them, and allowed himself to be manipulated by empty threats and codes of honor. In truth they were both old fools… the only thing they figured out together, is that the new generation has greatly surpassed them in every way. Their unachievable dreams won’t be dreams for too long, and will soon become merely stepping stones in the long journey of the brave youngsters that they trained. It was time to trust the future with them, and fight like hell to help them get there. Surely, those kids will be able to save the world, even without their master there. Leo is sure of it.

Despite how much we see the backstories of these two, this is the first time we develop their current characters in the present. A scene of them finally reconciling is the last piece of fanfare I can give them before the end, so this scene is a must, even if it causes the episode to end as a two-part. Now, continuing the plot.

The two arrive at the temple’s door, which was located inside a small plateau in the jungle, and right underneath a big waterfall. The entrance was overtaken by vines and heavy grass, making it almost invisible. Ozpin pulls out the Relic, and sees it glow brighter, which means this is it. They force open the front gate, and use the relic to illuminate the path forward. They continue moving down several stairs in a row, seeing scriptures on the wall with drawings that show a battle between the old king of Glenn and the lady emperor of Haven, and how she was defeated by the king’s many powerful relics, which prompted them to steal one of them, back when Glenn faced the “horde of black demons”. Soon enough, they are met by a gigantic room, fit for battle. As soon as they take their first step inside, suddenly a red streak of light appears on the floor, and spreads across the room. Suddenly, a huge square of stone falls behind them, closing their exit. “Oh brother, this again?” Ozpin says.

They activated the security measure of the temple, and so the enemy started to form. A miniscule red orb appears from the ground, glowing red. Dust, clay and dirt started to pile up magically in the middle of the room, slowly forming a humanoid silhouette. The final result was a big samurai-looking golem, made from earth and stone, with bright red eyes, and a red glow emanating from within his chest. Apparently these were high on the market back in the day — every damn ancient temple seems to have one. However, this guy must be up to four times the size of the one from the Anima temple, and they assume it’s stronger too. It says with a distorted magical voice, “travelers, answer the code to the vault, and I shall grant you passage.”

Naturally they didn’t know the code, and the golem didn’t accept the relic as a token like the one back at the temple of light. This means they will have to fight their way through him, but then Jobi walks forward. The golem stops and recognizes him, since Shinrai are ancient, and all of them have wolf heads. He explains that centuries have passed and the code has been forgotten. These two are the rulers of current times, and they need the relic to fight against a powerful enemy. All the while, Jobi was looking into his eyes, and realized he could control the Golem. It had a basic soul, so he could control it just like he does with trees and animals. The Golem recognizes his power and bows to him, letting them pass and soon dismantling itself back to rocks and dirt. 

With that done, Jobi tells them to move while he guards the entrance. He felt a strange presence following them all across the jungle, and he’ll make sure they aren’t interrupted by anyone. Ozpin and Leo move deeper into the stairs until they finally arrive at the vault. It was another large, long, tall and wide room, full of several pillars, and with a red glow illuminating the ground. After a long and overbearing opening sequence, the pedestal with the relic appears to them. 

The almighty Relic of Destruction is supposed to be a sword that can cut through any armor, resistance, magic or entity in its path. However, what they see is… a small dagger. A dagger so pathetically small that it resembles more a pen than a blade. It doesn’t even have a blue glowing jewel like all the other relics — it’s simply a small cylinder made of gold. They try to rip it open, but can’t. That’s just great — now they have to find out how this one works too. Either way, they got what they wanted, so it’s time to leave.

At the same time, Jobi met with a certain someone outside the temple. A teenage girl appeared out of nowhere. He questioned her about why she’s following them, and before he can even get an answer, Vernal instantly one shots him with a wind technique. She made him choke on air until he passed out. She entered the temple, and soon she was on the same floor as Leo and Ozpin. The two heard footsteps coming from the staircase tunnel, and could also feel that this powerful Aura didn’t belong to Jobi. The girl that appeared before them is one that they never saw before, and yet she felt terrifyingly ominous. Ozpin could feel pure hatred coming from her.

Vernal doesn’t explain anything, she just announces that she has come to kill them for revenge, and moves in. Casual reminder in case you forgot, but she has the “Ancestral Semblance: Wind” . She immediately tries to choke them both with the same skill she used on Jobi, but Leo thinks fast and blocks his nostril with his finger, and does the same thing for Ozpin. Apparently Vernal can’t control the air inside their bodies if they block their connection to outside. Without any other methods to survive, they run away. The vault was gigantic, foggy and full of pillars in the dark, so they had plenty of room to move and hide. However, Vernal could sense their presence moving in the air she controls, and was able to find them every time. Now she began throwing slashes of pure pressurized wind that slash through everything in their path, and was able to cut them several times all over their bodies. Basically, the entire fight is just all about Ozpin and Leo getting absolutely bodied by Vernal without any chance to fight back. Even if they could, both don’t feel like killing a teenage girl, so they had to talk things out.

Ozpin knew that if he pressured her enough, the girl wouldn’t be able to resist telling them what this revenge is about. And so, Vernal just shouts at them everything that she knows, or rather, what has been told to her by Raven. She wants to take revenge on Ozpin for ordering Yang to be killed two years ago. She believed that Ozpin was the one who sent two assassins to take down Yang without mercy, thinking she had gone rogue with the Branwen tribe, when in reality she wanted to go back to Vale the entire time. Vernal has never, and probably will never meet someone that she loved more than Yang. Even if their time together was short, Yang became her big sister without thinking twice or caring about their differences, and showed her what it’s like to be loved. Vernal will make him suffer as much as physically possible because of what he did to her. Her confession seemed to have sparked a motivation boost, so now she starts fighting with even more ferocity. Ozpin obviously knows what she says doesn’t add up, but as much as he tries to explain that Yang is actually alive, Vernal won’t believe him.

While Ozpin tries to stop the fight, Leo tries to make sure they both are alive. He clutches a rather smart strategy, as he remembers what he saw at the entrance of the temple — there was a waterfall above it. He hits the ceiling of the temple vault with his strongest shockwave in a very small point. A big crack forms on the ceiling, and so water starts shooting down and soon flooding the whole room. The water made it impossible for Vernal to precisely detect where they are without her eyes, as now they could just hide in the water where she couldn’t sense them. By this point they are both bleeding from her wind slashes, not to mention their constant need to hold their breath. They figure that this girl won’t listen to reason, so they need to take her down, otherwise the relic of destruction will be lost. However, Ozpin still refuses to be responsible for the death of another young girl, and he wants to prove to himself that things can be different now.

Ozpin finally puts two and two together, and figures that Vernal is the girl that Yang has been trying to rescue from the Branwen all along. He could prove Yang was alive, he just needed to search his scroll phone for a recorded call he once had with Yang, one year ago. Vernal gets close and finds them underwater to continue her attack, forcing them to run while Ozpin scrolls down and up, until he finally finds it. He throws himself at her one final time, expecting to be caught by her wall of wind. Ozpin gets stuck in the air with air pressure holding his limbs, and Vernal prepares her short sword to gut him. Just then, he’s able to slide his thumb, and play the recording.

The call was quite short. Yang called him because Qrow had retired, and now all the S-rank missions that he was responsible for have been released for the other Huntsmen to pick — one of which was bounty hunting the Branwen tribe. Ozpin tries to explain to her that it was a lost cause, as Raven could always use her magic to run away and never come back, making the chase hard and with a low chance of success. Yang wanted to take the job anyway, because no matter how little of a chance may be, she needs to get back to them. They have a little girl in the tribe, and she’s not safe there. She’s unhappy, she’s being abused, and is being taught nothing but how to kill. It was Yang’s adoptive sister, and even if the chances are next to zero, she won’t stop trying, because she really cares that much for Vernal. She deserves a better life than that of the wild. And so, Ozpin gave her the job, and the call ended.

Vernal went through a huge emotional journey, during the one minute of conversation she just heard. Yang was alive, Ozpin was innocent, and Raven lied to her. All the last two years of edgy angst and hatred that she went through, it was all because of a lie. It all washed away in an instant. She didn’t know if she should be happy, or fuming with anger. 

Vernal fell to her knees and started crying like a baby. Thanks to the water constantly rising, the vault was soon to crumble away. Leo gathered all his remaining strength to grab the two and run for the staircase tunnel before it fell apart, and now they were all safe again on the empty floor. Ozpin and Leo were messed up and struggling to even crawl, while Vernal took her time crying. Her evil side gave one final stand, refusing to believe that Raven lied to her all this time. Ozpin must be playing tricks, there’s no other way. She prepared to kill them regardless of what she heard, but then she heard someone speak from right behind her, “That’s enough.”

To the surprise of fucking everyone, both watching the show and in the scene with them, Hazel Reiner makes his comeback to the series, sporting a redesign that makes him look like a fucking warrior, instead of the bum with a simple green shirt that we saw in volume VI. 

Vernal gets freaked out by his sudden arrival, but Hazel kneels down to her level and tells her to search her feelings. What they are saying is the truth, and her sister has been alive all this time. Team RWBY has been making a name for itself for the past year, and if she asks anyone in all four corners of Vale, they will tell her a story or two about Yang. Now that she knows the truth, it’s her chance to do something with it. “Trust me, dishing your anger and grief on others won’t get you nowhere. I can speak from experience.” 

Hazel keeps staring into her eyes, and Vernal just stands there. She shrugs her face and runs away as fast as she can, leaving the temple in a flash. We follow her outside, as she blasts to the sky once more with her wind powers. Hazel is right — someone else deserves her anger much more than these two. She will go pay her a visit right now. Vernal promises that Raven will pay. 

She will kill her mother for lying all this time, and so she disappears amidst the clouds.

Returning to Hazel, he sees Leo and Ozpin on the ground and decides to take both of them on his giant shoulders. Ozpin wants to know why he’s here, and frankly, Hazel didn’t know. It was only after he came in, and watched the whole fight play out from the shadows, that everything started making sense. A part of him expected Ozpin to kill the girl in order to survive, as he surely would’ve done in the past whenever he got desperate. However, it’s clear that Ozpin has changed, and he believes this change is all due to those kids he trained. They must have fixed Ozpin and Leo, just like they fixed Hazel.

After his defeat by team JNPR and RWBY, he spent one year soul searching, and came to the conclusion that there’s still something he must do with his life. He will unite with them as a team again, so they can all fight one last time against the end of the world. With that, both Ozpin and Leo pass out, ending the scene with a fade to black.

…

To cap off the episode in an unusually funny way, we see the conclusion to Corazan’s scenario. After a whole day and night on a date with Glynda, it all ended with both of them drunk and him asking her hand in marriage one final time. We don’t see her response this time, but we can figure out with the final shot of the episode.

Corazan opens his eyes in the morning, only to realize he can’t get up. He shifts his head to the side, and sees Glynda sleeping naked under the blanket of his apartment bed, hugging him and snoring adorably. His eyes go wide and he looks back to the ceiling. After a few seconds, he starts to squeal a slow, high pitched and long, “ yesssssssssssss~ ” and so the episode ends.

Commentary (spoilers): This episode mostly just sets up stuff for the next volume, and also Vernal’s character shift for the final act. If there’s one scene I would like to add in, it would be her, using her strength to hurt civilians in order to get the information she wants about Ozpin. It’s just to show how jaded and angry she became, to the point she looks way too much like Raven despite trying not to — she’s willing to hurt others to get something so small. By now I would even encourage a few minisodes of Vernal right after losing Yang, where she cut her hair and started training to become stronger immediately. She started taking part in way more pillaging or stealing missions with Shay and the others in the countryside, just to feed her newfound hatred for outsiders, blaming the entire world for what happened to her sister. It’s important to give Vernal as many villainous moments as possible, because that makes the ultimate resolution of her character much better. I figured it would be nice to put her character arc on the same episode as Ozpin’s, given his tendency to fuck over his relationships with little girls. I didn’t realize it was such a trend until now. He’s a character who’s backstory is way more important than his current self, and I wanted to change that for the final volume, because I want to give his eventual death scene a much more profound meaning. How his toxic dream of being THE ONE who kills all Grimm is the only thing preventing him from becoming a true legendary hero.

By the way, I also threw a lot of Glynda fanservice. Firstly because I’m her simp, second because she would be a really worthless character in the second half of the show if I didn’t give her at least a romance subplot to finish. It all started in volume II, when I thought it would be conceptually funny to make this character (Corazan) have Sanji-levels of infatuation with Glynda, a character that everyone else in the cast deeply feared due to her ruthless personality. It is still kind of funny looking back. As I wrote, I decided to make it more than a gag and make it a backstory surrounding it, mixing with Glynda’s team backstory. I would feel bad if I didn’t conclude their relationship in any way, so this is good enough in my eyes. It starts as a minor gag for both characters and it ends as a minor gag several volumes later.

Damn boy, we’re FINALLY back to Atlas, huh? Just one hundred pages for the final act. It’s been a while since it was this easy. I bet the next volume will have three parts with 70k words each just to mess me over. Anyway, let’s go to the two final prep episodes.

We go back to Mantle as we follow Ironwood, Winter, Fiona and Robin as they track through the liberated city of Mantle, at night. Ironwood says he might know a place where they can get some clue on how to fix whatever is affecting Penny. They are going to Pietro’s first secret lab, which lies underneath his old house. Back when Ironwood lost half of his body in a battle, he searched for anyone who could help him return to the battlefield with cybernetic implants. However, his especially fucked up state made impossible for any other expert on the field… except for Pietro. He saw Ironwood as a personal challenge for his ability, and aimed to make him stronger than ever before with his technology. He took him to this secret lab for days, until Ironwood came out as a cyborg. Since then they became close friends.

The house in question had been abandoned for years, so it was destroyed to build something bigger in its place. Ironwood entered the construction site, and punched the cement ground until he found a trapdoor and a staircase down. The secret lab was never discovered until now.

The lights didn’t work, but after messing around with some buttons and trying to turn on the computer, suddenly everything lit up. Some kind of automatic programming began. The computer screen immediately started to play a recording as soon as it turned on, and it was Pietro, sitting in a chair. 

He says, “Hey there, Jimmy! How are you doing? Don’t tell me, you’re using my secret lab to get private with some ladies? That’s low, dude… Okay okay, I’m just kidding! You must be thinking this is a video call. It’s not, don’t worry. I’m not secretly still alive somewhere else. But like… if everything ends up as I expected to be, it’s pretty much a video call now that I think about it. If I was still there with you, I probably won’t change a single word I say here, so maybe time and space isn’t really a barrier in the hands of foresight. Who needs time travel, am I right? Well, anyway, screw it, let me get to the point…

If you’re here again, only one scenario may have occurred. Penny might be wondering about her past, so you decided to bring her here to maybe find something that I left behind. Clever move, Jimmy. I knew I could trust you with taking care of her for me. I don’t know how old she must be by now. She can’t “grow up”, you know, but I know she must’ve learned a lot from the world already. Penny, if you’re with him right now, go and take a look around the lab! I prepared the three floors below just for you, with a big gift waiting for you at the end. I know you’ll love it! As for you, Jimmy, I left a bottle of that cheap shit you like under the table. It’s all yours. Okay then, move along.”

The recording ended, leaving everyone speechless for a moment. Ironwood laughs just by remembering what a clever bastard he was, and he tells Fiona and Robin to search the lab down below. Whatever this gift is, it might give them some help. Soon the girls find a hatch down and descend into the second floor, while Ironwood stays there with Winter. He convinces her to have a taste of the aged wine bottle, since they stopped making this brand years ago. Winter is still trying to put up the responsible advisor facade, but Ironwood tells her to drop it and enjoy her time a little, because they might all be dead tomorrow. Finally she takes a glass and drinks with him.

The rest of the episode we see Fiona and Robin as they check papers after papers that were layered in a straight line across the desks of the lab, telling Penny’s story with photographs as well. Though they see the story in this boring way, we actually transition into a flashback episode, seeing each and every scene that Pietro tells in these papers. And so, we go back more than twenty years in the past, seeing the story through his eyes.

…

It all started with twenty five year-old Pietro, using his free time at home to work on a modification to the current assault rifle that Atlas had, trying to perfect the design and its potency. It’s the same home and secret lab that our characters are in right now in the future. Suddenly, the doorbell up above rings, and the security camera shows that it’s… his ex-wife. 

He sighs in frustration, as he doesn't want to deal with her anymore. Despite his genius intelligence, Pietro was just an immature playboy that went to parties and hooked up with random girls — this one in particular being a girl so pretty that his drunk self thought it was a good idea to marry her on the same day they met. It didn’t last more than a month, so they swept up the whole affair and went their separate ways. What could she possibly want now?

He opened the door and met with that ginger bombshell again, but she was carrying something. 

A baby… HIS baby. Or so she claims. 

She goes straight to the point and says she already did all the tests, and has proof it’s his kid. She just wants to use the baby to extort a lot of money from Pietro, or else she would make a big deal from this on the news, and ruin the reputation of his family of geniuses. Pietro seems himself forced to comply, so he gives her a fat briefcase of cash and tells her to piss off. However, before their transaction ends, he asks what she plans to do with the kid. The lady will just throw it into the orphanage and go live it up on Vale now with all this money, since she doesn’t plan on raising the kid of an asshole she hates. Just then, something awoke in Pietro, and he decided to take the baby from her. It’s fine either way for the lady, even though Pietro has no clue how to raise a child.

And so, being the completely clueless bastard he is, he decides to take the baby to work tomorrow. He arrives in the lab, puts her in a chair at the corner, and starts working at the other side of the room without paying any attention to it. She cries and sleeps without him seeing a thing, until he even forgets it's there. A few minutes later, Arthur Watts showed up — a way younger version of course, with his same suit, hairstyle, but no mustache yet, so he looks quite the same age as Pietro despite being several years older. He was about to start his programming routine, when suddenly he saw the baby on the chair.

“Pietro… Who’s baby is this?” Arthur asked.

“Oh, it’s mine. I, uh… adopted it yesterday. Haven’t thought of a name, though.” Pietro said, not even looking back to Arthur. Suddenly he gets clobbered in the head by his fist.

“AND YOU JUST BROUGHT A BABY TO THE LAB, YOU MORON?! WHAT’S WRONG WITH YOU! YOU CAN’T JUST PICK A CHILD AND THROW IT IN THE CORNER OF SUCH A DANGEROUS PLACE!…  How old is it?” Watts shouted and then asked.

“I don’t know, damn it! I think it is about two to three months old. I didn’t pay attention to the iddy biddies, I just felt like having a kid — no need to make a big deal out of it! At least he's a cute little guy now, isn’t he?”

Arthur picks up the baby and checks. “It’s a girl, you idiot.”

“Huh, really? Well, if you’re so invested in taking care of her instead of working, why don’t you come up with a name for her as well? Any ideas, genius?” Pietro asked.

“Maybe… Penelope?… It’s the name of a very kind and noble woman. Or at least she would be, if she was adopted by anyone other than you.” Arthur said.

“Penny, huh? Yeah I like the ring of it. Might as well. Penny Polendina, the fourth.” Pietro said.

“I didn’t say Penny, I said Penelope! You’re always dumbing everything down to your poor vocabulary!” Arthur replies.

“That’s what I do, grandpa. I pick up stuff, spin it around and make it better than ever. Besides, what kind of guy would go on a date with a girl called Penelope? She’s been around for just a few months and you’re already ruining her life.” Pietro replies.

“WHY YOU, WATCH YOUR--” Arthur was saying, when suddenly the two get hit simultaneously by comical punches to the face, shutting them up. It seems their teacher arrived to work. The woman was doctor Tess, back to when she was young and hot, but still smoking one pack a day. She was already the leader of the research and development team.

“I just got in, and you two are already giving me a headache! We only got one year to finish the first android prototype, you better start hauling ass, you idiots!” Tess said. Then she looked at the chair and saw baby Penny. “What is this thing over here? Someone’s lunch?”

“Pietro brought a baby girl.” Watts said.

She stares the baby down with her angry eyes, but Baby Penny only smiles back. Tess immediately changed her whole demeanor, putting the cigar away. “Aw~ My~ Gosh~ What a precious little pumpkin she is~ Yes she is!~ SHE’S SO CUTE!~ Are these two idiots scaring you?~ Huh~? HUH~?”

Baby Penny laughs as Tess plays with her. Soon they heard growling coming from her, and Tess asked, “Wait… when was the last time she had her milk?”

“… Oh yeah, you have to feed them, right?” Pietro said, and Tess proceeded to beat the absolute shit out of him offscreen. We merely hear the punches, and cut back to see him all bruised up with bumps all over his face, flat on the ground. Tess then told Watts to go fetch some baby formula from the market, or else he would have the same as Pietro did. Watts ran as fast as he could.

…

And that’s how they became a family. Tess allowed Pietro to bring Penny every day while he got the hang of being a parent. They barely got any work on the android prototype during the first months, all thanks to Penny. Thankfully the three crazy idiots were the highest authority and the smartest scientists of the nation, so the higher ups from the government had to suck it up to their shenanigans. And as tough as it was, Penny just grew up in that lab. Their efforts of parenting the girl together paid off, as she seems to be a genius from the get go. Five months old and she was already walking. By eight, she was speaking.  By age one she was able to figure out logic games involving colors, letters and symbols. And once she finally got to age five, it was like speaking to a little adult who had her whole life figured out.

Penny loved to come to the lab with them, because that’s the only life she ever knew, and the only life Pietro wanted to give her. As his daughter, she had the duty to become a scientist just like him, and continue the genius legacy of the Polendina family. Penny grew with an insatiable thirst for learning about the world, so it only made sense that she followed his advice. Watts, feeling the most proud for how Penny turned out to be, decided to become her personal teacher. He would read her books, give her homework, and make sure she was college level by age nine. He put more effort in raising her intelligence than anything else in his entire life. Soon she was a teenager, with both brains and spirited youth on her side. She passed her exams, proved her worth, and despite her early age, she was awarded with the prestigious title of R&D Scientist of Atlas. 

All the while, Pietro simply looked at her growth from the back, and didn’t mind much. In his papers, he cursed himself for having remained a fool for ten whole years while she grew up. He liked having a daughter, but never bothered to be a parent. Somehow Penny grew to like and trust her father regardless, even if he didn’t deserve it. They developed the same personality but with wildly different focuses in life. Penny wanted to create stuff in the lab to make people’s lives better, while Pietro only cared to surpass the antics of his ancestors.

The Polendinas were geniuses at the art of destruction. Over the course of history, all their inventions were geared towards the single purpose of creating better weapons. Pietro’s grandfather created firearms, while his father created bombs of all types and functions. Inspired by them, he always wanted to create the best and strongest weapon that has ever been made. He didn’t care for what it was used for, he just wanted that clout of being the best Polendina of all time. However, being a big part of the R&D lab, he was forced to only work on what the higher ups wanted him to work, and that was the development of better androids, better mechas, better ships, and better software for it all. If Pietro wanted to achieve his dream, he had to go undercover.

He spent years in his dinky little laboratory in Mantle, but after several years at the lab, he saved enough money to finally buy a mansion in Atlas City. Not because he wanted the luxury, but actually just because he wanted a bigger basement to make an even bigger secret lab. In his private research, Pietro figured that the only thing left for him to use to make a weapon was Dust, which was the least experimented element that the world had. However, he didn’t want to use refined Dust. He wanted to make something using raw Dust, as it was known to be an incredibly deadly substance. However, as sneaky as he was, he eventually was caught by Penny, who by then was already fifteen years old. Even though Penny had her own goal, Pietro pressured her into helping him create the weapon, as it was her job as a Polendina to do so. Everything she would do in her life would pale in comparison to what Pietro is about to achieve, and he will not accept his daughter to be left out of the picture. Penny trusted Pietro more than she should, and so she decided to obey.

Working together through the night, while going back to the R&D lab by day, they eventually figured out a theory. The bomb would work by a method they called “Dust Fission”, where they changed the compound of Dust in order to make all its contents explode in a single go instead of slowly burning — the same as Dust bullets. However, the mechanism they prepared also made use of the other contents present in raw Dust, which were extremely poisonous. When present during the moment of explosion, those gases would be released in great quantities in a huge area. What made the weapon deadly isn’t the blast radius, although it was quite huge — what made it deadly is its second effect. The gases from the explosion would go into the sky and poison the land with a rain of fumes, infecting everyone on that side of the map with Dust poisoning, which has no cure. It was an insane finding, now they only had to try and replicate it on a smaller scale. Penny and Pietro tried, but…

Something went wrong, as we know.

Pietro in his papers believes it was his miscalculation, due to how focused he was on just getting done with the weapon as soon as possible. However, the flashback shows that it was Penny who messed up the formula of the chemicals. After all, even if she was a genius, the weight of what they were doing really put a lot of pressure on her. She was as prone to mistakes as any teenage girl, especially when chemistry wasn’t her best field. The result of their failure was an explosion that completely destroyed the lab, even going through the protective shield of the testing room. The explosion only knocked out Pietro, but Penny was wide awake. The real problem was the poisonous fumes coming out of the room where the chemical test exploded. It started filling the air of the lab quickly. The door to the outside broke, so there was no way out. The two had gas masks in the wall in case of an emergency, but one of them cracked with shrapnel from the explosion, leaving one remaining. Penny took the broken one, and put the good one on her father.

What follows is a really agonizing scene, as Penny simply squeals in pain, discomfort and misery as she is trapped inside a gas chamber, slowly dying by suffocation and pain on her lungs. For someone who lived so happy and was so cheery with everyone, her fate is truly miserable.

…

The explosion was reported by everyone who could hear it, and soon the military showed up, kicked down the door, and took the two out of the lab. The young Ironwood, still Major Lieutenant at the time, checked Penny’s pulse, only to realize she was dead.

Pietro woke up hours later, met by Tess and Watts in the hospital room with him. He was pretty okay… but then Watts grabbed him. With tears of pure anger on his eyes, Watts starts to beat the fucking shit out of Pietro, but the scene isn’t for laughs anymore. He couldn’t forgive him. Because of Pietro, they both lost a girl who they considered to be their own daughter. He ranted and cursed him endlessly as he punched, but Pietro didn’t know what happened. In the end Tess managed to pull Watts out of Pietro, just so she could slap him once as well. Their anger prevented them from having any conversation, and so the two just left Pietro, beaten up on his hospital bed.

Only hours later, he came to know that Penny was dead, due to his failed weapon test. He was also going to jail for a long time for stealing stuff from the lab and using it for shady experiments, but since he was literally the smartest person in Atlas, they gave him the pass to continue working under strict supervision. His name was stained in mud, and in the brief time he was in jail, he went through a massive shift in personality. It was as if he suddenly gained all the wisdom he has been ignoring for all his life. He stopped thinking as a scientist for a second, and he became a person. It was only after losing Penny that he realized how much she meant to him, and so he wept for the girl who had the misfortune of being his daughter. However, deep down, he already started putting his brain to work, and started crafting the most insane plan he could ever hope to think.

Time passed, and so Pietro was put to work again. He was banned from working at the R&D lab anymore, and so he was used in the more shady practices of the nation. While they continued perfecting the android technology and programming, Pietro became the official tinkerer of Atlas. Locked in a room for most of the day, and being given enough tools to make their common weapons better for performance and mass production. Not only that, but he was responsible for making special gear for all the other Ace-Ops of the nation, after being recommended by Ironwood. Soon Jimmy had become general, and since the army was in charge of Pietro’s work, Ironwood gave him way more freedom to do his stuff. Five years have passed and he saw how Pietro went from a thirty five-year old teenager, to a genuine hermit who understands all the mistakes of his past. And so, one random day, he requested Ironwood to give him permission for a little side project.

At first, it began as a project to create the ultimate android. Pietro spent days and nights configuring every minute detail of the robot’s artificial intelligence and its physical structure. The work on this one project absolutely consumed him, but no matter how tired he looked, he always had energy to spare to continue developing the robot. The result was the most complete system that will ever exist. Beside its vast array of functions, the robot seemed capable of feeling pain, fear, shame and sadness, but also joy, love and inspiration, while also being able to sense these emotions on others. He was able to translate such complex things into code all by himself, even though it’s supposedly useless.

One day, Ironwood came to Pietro’s personal lab to see how development was going, and he was astounded by just how many tiny little details it had. Though it was a marvelous work, so many things didn’t make sense. Pietro gave the robot eyes, a nose, ears and a mouth, and a stomach, while also programming all the necessary things to make these useless additions work. Hell, he even used some space to store water from natural humidity, and use that water as tears for the eyes. Pietro not only wanted the robot to look human, but also have the ability to experience everything that other humans could, even the bad stuff, like physical pain. Ironwood had so many questions — why suddenly he started to like working on androids? Why is it so important to him? Why did he build an android that feels fear? How did he make it so small? Putting it all together, it had all the capabilities of a sleeping giant mecha, but it’s only 5% of their size. The sheer amount of detail on this one android would make it impossible for factory production like the others, but Pietro didn’t worry, as they would only ever need a single one.

Above all its abilities, the masterpiece of the whole thing was its heart. A single core to power everything, without any place to charge the android with Dust or exit for an electrical cable. The blueprints didn’t make sense for Ironwood, and so he asked, “How is this thing even gonna work? What is its powersource?”

“Back then, when I was making… that thing , y’know… I came across something new, but chose to ignore it since it didn’t matter for the project. I called it “Dust Fusion”. Through an opposite reaction of what I was going for, it caused the energy inside the Dust to multiply instead of release. Basically, it makes Dust form more energy on its own, without the need to burn it. I already made the blueprints for a Dust Reactor, which will be able to power it without the need for other means of energy intake.”

“But… but that’s--!! How is that possible?! You’re telling me you figured out how to make infinite energy with Dust?!” Ironwood asked, genuinely surprised.

“Yep. As a matter of fact, it generates a little too much energy, so it might end up blowing up the body. I might know a way to use that excess energy, though. What do you think I should give it, jet boots or laser hands?” Pietro says, completely apathetic to Ironwood's surprise.

“Pietro, this is revolutionary! I don’t know how you did it, but this is the perfect android! Every part of it, down to the soles of its feet! Not just as a weapon, but everything else! All you have to do is program it with the knowledge to fulfill tasks, and it can do anything!” Ironwood says.

Then Pietro remains silent, and looks down at the blueprints with him. “The perfect android, you say?… Well, perhaps you’re right. If it stays like this, it will be a perfect machine… But still, just a machine… and that’s precisely why it will never be perfect.”

“I… I don’t think I follow. Isn’t this what you’ve been building for one whole year now?!” Ironwood asked. “If this is not perfect, what would perfect be? You’re saying you can make it any better?”

After a long pause, Pietro asked. “Jimmy… why don’t you tell me, what is perfection to you? What does it mean to be perfect?… I often ask myself that. And what I concluded was… Nothing. Not one thing… As a matter of fact, I came to realize that something can only be perfect… if it isn’t, yet…

I could make a medic android… but that’s all it will ever be. I could make a battle android, but that’s all it will ever be. I could make a scientist android, just as good as I am… but still… that’s all it will ever be. If they are born with a purpose… that’s it. There’s no more room or need for improvement. It will do its job until it’s cast aside and replaced by an equally perfect android… And if it can be so easily replaced, perhaps it's perfection was an overstatement… Things are not perfect because they are convenient or good, but because we judge them so… Everyone is perfect at something, I guess…

But this one?… She’s not made to be anything. She’s not particularly good at any of the things she’s capable of doing. Not fighting enemies, or fixing stuff, or healing the wounded, or whatever else… She’s a total blank slate… And it’s because of this that she is so special. She’ll be able to see, to feel, to think, and so she’ll be able to learn about the world all on her own, and pursue whatever she wants with her life. A being with the same endless potential as all humans, while also having all things necessary to excel at anything she tries… She will be perfect, if she chooses to be so… It’s all up to her…”

“… She? Her? What are you talking about? It’s almost like you’re describing something that has a life of its own.” Ironwood asks.

Pietro holds his tongue and says, “sorry, I must be getting tired. It’s not ready anyway. I can’t even begin to think of a release date. Even the reactor might not be possible to achieve. This is all just speculation… If you have any other work, feel free to tell me.”

That concludes the scene. What follows is a very long montage, as we see the slow process of Pietro creating Penny’s body over the course of two years. Bit by bit, from her head, all the way down to her fingertips. Every tiny piece surgically placed. As a final piece, he gave her long orange hair, white skin made of a rubbery material, and her iconic freckles. Now we finally understand that he was building a robot version of Penny all along. All this time, ever since she died, Pietro wanted to bring Penny back to life through any means necessary. No one ever knew his true intentions, but he had all planned out since his first day in the new lab. Once it was done, he hid her in a big capsule inside his lab in the Argus military base. However, there was one final piece that he knew very well. If he wanted to finish Penny for good, he would have a long week of work ahead of him.

…

Finally, Robin and Fiona get to the final note pad, and learn the end of the story. At first, it just explains how many years ago, during the time Penny was still growing up in the lab, the trio of geniuses from the R&D lab got the opportunity to decipher a mystery. In the hidden depths of Atlas City, they finally found the Relic of Creation. It has been sitting there for centuries, and the only ones who knew how it worked were the old Schnee emperors, but they were all dead. They needed them to figure out how it worked, and soon enough, they did. The staff is basically an entity that enters the thoughts of its user, and turns their wishes and commands into reality, either by a simple effect or by creating real things. It was deemed really powerful and dangerous, so they put it back on a new vault, and made sure only the council of Atlas and the top members of the research lab knew about it, including Pietro and Watts.

Many years later, Pietro saw the relic as his one chance to make up for the past, and finish his Penny project. He infiltrates the base of Atlas City unnoticed by using his many contacts with both Ace-Ops and normal soldiers, and then used some top-of-command stuff he stole from Ironwood in order to get access to the vault. Thankfully even the soldiers were always told lies about what was in the vault, so they didn’t see a problem with Pietro going in just to fetch a single long briefcase for Ironwood. Just like that he was able to escape the Relic.

He ran away and disappeared with it for several days, hiding in this very same secret lab in Mantle that they are on right now — the first lab he ever had. A nationwide hunt began, pinning crimes on Pietro that he didn’t commit, just to get him without revealing the truth about the Relic. Pietro used his last few days in this bunker in order to prepare all these letters and recordings for Penny, telling her the whole truth. He will make his wish, and whatever happens, happens. That’s the last phrase of his final note.

That was as far as Fiona and Robin learned, but since we get to see the flashbacks, we get the whole picture. On his last day, he secluded himself into this same room the girls are in right now, and called out the Relic to make his final wishes. First, he wished for the staff to be teleported back to the vault in Atlas City by tomorrow morning, which was quite clever. And second… he wished for his daughter, Penny, to be brought back to life.

Since her body was destroyed long ago, he told the relic to put her soul inside of the perfect android body he crafted for her. However, the relic warned that her soul already spent too long in ever after. If she comes back, she may not retain any memories at all of her time back in the mortal world. Besides, bringing her soul back would upset some sort of balance. As a last resort, Pietro asks if the relic could trade his soul for hers. One soul for one soul — that won’t upset the balance or whatever, right?

The relic asks again if he would be willing to forfeit his life to bring her soul back, and Pietro confirms. To him, this is simply what should've happened, several years ago. He should’ve died for his stupidity and pursuit of a shortsighted goal, and she should’ve lived her life to its fullest like any normal girl. And now, this is what he must do to make things right. Even if she won’t remember him, or their time together… he’s more than glad she’ll get the chance to experience this wonderful world again, and make new friends. That’s all Penny ever wanted to do. He only hopes that she’ll be happy, and will have awesome fun.

With that, he accepts, and so the blue light of the staff starts getting really bright, enveloping Pietro, and so we cut away.

…

Several hours later, the staff was found back inside the vault, but Pietro was not. His body was gone, taken to the ever after along with his soul. The government of Atlas swept it all under the rug, while only a few people like Ironwood and Watts knew the true depths of what he did.

In exchange for his life, Penny the robot automatically gets released from her capsule and turns on, finding herself inside of the lab located in the Argus military base. She had no memories of her past, but an acute interest in the entire room around her. She smells everything, touches everything, and feels everything. It’s a beautiful scene, like a child gaining sentience for the first time. She stares at herself in the mirror of the small lab, playing with her ginger hair. Her clothes were basic and her form wasn’t that impressive underneath, but she looked exactly like Penny on the day she died.

The scene ends as soldiers finally come in, once she raises the alarm by accident. All they see is a young girl in an unauthorized place, so they tell her to freeze and ask her name.

She says, pointing to herself, “Me?… I’m Penny! Nice to meet you!”

…

The flashback ends, and so we return to Robin and Fiona. Suddenly they figured out the entire lore that Penny wanted to know about her father, except she wasn’t here to see it. Robin felt a lot of guilt again, seeing that she failed Penny by letting her be captured and turned into a monster. Pietro did everything he could so she could have a second shot at life, and this is the result. Now all the nations are at risk to be blown up by a nuke, because of her mistake. She had to save Penny, even if it’s the last thing she’ll do. She had to stop this war.

Finally they arrived at the computer set up at the end of the final floor, where another video recording started playing. This one was a personal message of Pietro to Penny. He says, “Hey there, Penny… I guess now you finally learned the truth… I can’t tell if you liked it or not. I never meant to trouble you with the past ever again, but I believe I owed you an explanation as your father. By now it must’ve been years, and I figure that the council will have me killed for stealing the relic, or something like that. I don’t want you to seek revenge, or try to follow my footsteps. All I want is that you live this new life to the fullest… Back in your first life, I didn’t give you the freedom to be whatever you wanted… so let me try again this time around. This time, it can’t be different.

I hope that you made good friends… I hope that the people treat you well, and even if they don’t, you must keep going… I’m sure sooner or later they are going to realize that you’re much more than what you appear to be. Never give up! Even when everything seems bleak, I know you’re smart enough to figure out what to do! Trust yourself, as I trust you… I know you’ll be alright! I mean, look at you right now! You made it this far already! I’m really proud… And… I guess that’s all the things that your old man has to tell you. It’s not like you ever needed me so far. I’m not that good with words anyway…

And… well… There’s one last thing I left for you… let’s call it a birthday gift . That should make up for all the birthdays I missed while dead, okay? It’s in the box underneath this table. Make sure to only use it when you’re ready. It will take to… let’s say, the next level . It will be a good use to all that extra energy that your reactor keeps saving up.

Goodbye Penny… Thanks for bringing a new meaning to my life.” Pietro finished.

It was a really heartfelt goodbye. They figured that he must’ve used his wish right after recording it, but since they didn’t watch the flashback, they still don’t know why he is gone. Robin went under the table and grabbed the cardboard box, opening it to reveal… another box, but made of metal. It had some strange patterns, being really heavy, but no seeming way to open it. Maybe Penny is the only one who can. However, Robin also saw something else in the box. Some kind of pendrive, but quite big and with a sharp edge made for plunging instead of inserting. At the same time, Fiona spotted something above the table. It was a CD disk, titled “in case you’re not Penny!!!”

They booted it up, and it was another recording. Pietro shows up again on the same chair and says, “Okay okay, Jimmy, I just thought of something. Even if Penny is strong, she’s not immortal. Maybe her system malfunctioned due to damage on the head and she’s having some trouble operating, so you came here looking for a way to fix her. Pretty clever, dude! Okay then, forget everything else you learned down here and hear what I’m about to say. I prepared a little storage device that should fully reboot her system as many times as it needs. I’ll leave it in the box as well, in case she ever gets “sick” or whatever else. All you need to do is give her a good stab around the neck with it, and it should do the trick. Keep it safe, okay! Thanks, buddy… Good luck.”

With the recording over, Robin and Fiona look at each other, and she tightens her grip on the device. This was it. All she has to do now is get to Penny, and hope this works. She puts it on her waist and lifts the box of metal to her shoulder. She turns to Fiona and says, “Next stop, Argus… It’s time to put an end to all of this.”

With that, the episode ends.

Commentary (spoilers): okay this was unnecessarily complicated. Summing it up: Pietro was a Tony Stark-like asshole who only cared about himself and his fame. However, his stupid work causes his daughter to die, which makes him realize that he was an asshole. And so, he spends the next several years crafting a bonkers plot to resurrect his daughter as a robot using both technology and magic, and not only that, but he pulled out a move from Dr. Light, and made a full set of upgrades for Penny, hiding it on random ass places and not knowing if she would ever need it. That’s basically it, cutting the flow of narrative and character development moments. I think it is strictly necessary to have this one episode where everything gets cleared out, because the entire plot is hinged on what Pietro did while alive. Turns out that the weapon he crafted was the Remnant version of the atomic bomb all along. The stakes are getting a little big, huh?

This episode is mainly the reason why I wanted to exchange Neptune for Pietro in this rewrite. I already had some of this backstory figured out all the way back in volume I. Pietro’s crippled old man design just doesn’t fit with the vibe of an arrogant and young scientist — someone who developed his brains to the max without ever developing as a person first. Him being younger is also very important to Watts’ character development, which I will explain shortly.

Okay, the next episode is equally important as the last one, because it explains Watts' backstory, and practically the same events of the past, except from his perspective. The problem is, I don’t care for Watts’ backstory. To me he’s already perfect. He’s already a deliciously evil, unapologetically racist and disgruntled bastard of a villain. In my eyes he’s already leagues above villains like Cinder or Adam, who share some psychopathic traits but don’t have this blindingly arrogant charisma and ego that Watts has. His backstory is here because not giving a backstory to the main villain of the volume would be a foolish mistake for someone so far into writing this show. I’ll be brief as hell though.

The whole episode starts with Paladin Watts visiting the old lady doctor Tess in her room again. No matter how many times she shoots him down or says that what he’s planning is stupid and cruel, Watts always comes back to talk with her, because she’s the only person in this world who still has any kind of connection with Watts. She was his boss, mentor, and now his one single friend. Deep inside, he wants to convince her that his actions are right, just to get her approval for once. As they were talking, Watts starts comparing himself now to all other points in his life, just to see how far he came. With that, the flashbacks begin.

Watts was quite old. Being in his late fifties in the present, he was just a child during the period where Atlas was ruled by the last Schnee emperor, Kalius. Back then Atlas had several policies that made people struggle, such as the complete lack of trading with Vale and Haven, which led to a long period of famine during the winter. The snow emperor would also hog a lot of food and riches all to his personal militia and allies, making so that licking his boots is the only way to live with comfort. Watts and his family weren’t some of those lucky ones. Though he had a mother and a father, they were poor and Watts couldn’t do much except be angry about it. It was in this period where he was supposed to have a little sister called “Penelope”, but his mother ended up losing the baby to the poor health conditions.

Those years of seeing powerful people laughing at his misfortune brought about Watts' deep hatred for anyone who was above him. He saw warriors as nothing but a problem, since the weak would always be at the mercy of individuals with such strength and magic powers. All of his hatred for the current state of Atlas culminated into his dream to reach the top of the ladder, using his brain and skills instead of strength, just to show how inferior those brutes really were. He dreamed of creating an Atlas where they wouldn’t need warriors, and wouldn’t be oppressed by those who are stronger. He would find a way for even weak people like himself to be capable of standing up against them. And so he began his academic life, running away from home in order to study under the great professor of his time, who was Pietro’s father.

The years passed and eventually Atlas was liberated, all the while Watts continued to study. In that time he grew very cocky of his skills in all fields of science and physics, being one of the most important people during Atlas’ rapid growth, as he oversaw the creation of machinery that were used in the most important factories they had. As a matter of fact, he was directly responsible for the creation of programming and coding, which brought Remnant to the digital age we see today. His studies paid off, and he was praised wherever he went. He frequented high-society parties and here he would develop his most vile traits, such as his unmotivated xenophobia against the other nations, and his blinding ego.

Following the unification of Atlas’s three cities, the creation of the higher government, and the end of free Huntsmen, Watts was able to land a cushy job at the research and development team of Atlas City. Everything he wanted was slowly happening, due partly to his own exploits. Huntsmen that he hated were reduced to fancy slaves of the government, and he reached peak popularity and wealth. Hell, he might as well have been the smartest man in the nations, and thus the world…

But then, to his utmost surprise, his old teacher Polendina had left a bastard son behind after his death, who inherited all of his fortune. That would all mean nothing to Watts, however, the boy also inherited his aptitudes. He was tested continuously, and was able to learn things at an unreasonable speed. By the time he was eighteen, he was approved to become part of the R&D lab, along with Watts. And so their rivalry began, for obvious reasons. Watts was outraged by the idea of a younger, more arrogant and more intelligent man than him. He hated Pietro for his raw talent, which put Watts behind without ever needing to work as hard as he did to reach his place.

Not long after Pietro, came James Ironwood. It was another super-powered warrior, however, somehow the council members thought it was a good idea to make him the great general of the nation. Normally the council would never let an awakened warrior become general, but they allowed Ironwood since he was a member of the elite of Atlas City way before he joined the army, so they believed him to be trustworthy. It was exactly as Watts feared that would happen again — this could only be an attempt for the warriors to take back their power and impose a new dictatorship in the nation. Not only that, but this despicable cyborg was now in full control of the army, and he refused to accept Watt’s masterpieces to take over the jobs of useless soldiers of flesh. He saw Ironwood as a rat who merely held back Atlas from achieving its true potential.

And not only him, but also the entire council of Atlas. All of them were mindless pigs, who were years behind Watts in any capacity. To think these fools get to run a nation just because they bought their position was ludicrous. It was like Atlas was predisposed to fall apart at any moment, and Watts was the only person capable of seeing it. Even when he eventually became a council member, he was merely a voice to be ignored, because his genius simply wasn’t noticed by the other idiots who only cared about money, or the general who only cared about maintaining an useless peace in detriment of their nation’s resources. Worst of all was the council leader, who was too stupid to listen to his advice, and allowed Atlas to continue going down it’s doom.

However, there was one bright spot to it all, and that was Penny. Suddenly, becoming a parent to this girl brought more joy to Watts than anything else he wanted to accomplish in life. For all those good sixteen years raising and teaching her, it was as if Watts completely let go of all the hatred he ever felt for the world and those who stood above him. He started believing that Penny would be the genius that would replace him, and craft an Atlas better than he could ever hope to imagine. He felt satisfied in playing his part in history by simply being the teacher of the girl who would change everything. He felt like he was finally good enough.

But alas, Penny died young, and that sent Watts in a downward spiral. The grief of losing her not only sent him back to square one, but even negative. He no longer was able to see any future besides the one where HE is the one to win. With her gone, he would never trust anyone else with the future of Atlas and the world. He would make his and Penny’s dream come true, by any means necessary. In truth, Watts really wants a better world — but his prejudice, his ego and his distorted view of the world prevent him from even considering that his way of achieving his dream might be wrong. After all, he is the smartest person in the world, of the greatest nation, and now with the body that can destroy the strongest warriors. Who can possibly know better than him?

To cap the episode, Tess throws back at his face how much of a hypocrite he became. He is now the emperor who squashed the poor in order to get what he wants, the likes he hated as a child. He turned himself into a warrior with magic, because he failed to prove that someone weak could surpass the strong. And now, he became a ruler who will not listen to the reason of others, because of his own greed. He has simply not surpassed the ones that came before him, he is simply repeating their mistakes, thinking that HE will succeed for some reason. Even if he is right about being better than the other council members, which is not difficult, he completely destroyed any reason for anyone to believe such a thing. Even with all his superiority, he cannot convince a single citizen of Atlas that he isn’t just another crazy bastard.

It’s for that reason that she decided to betray him, just now. She sneaked out a letter on an automatic drone towards Mantle, in which she explains to Ironwood exactly what his weapon is and how it works. She hopes it will help them put a stop to Watt’s madness. 

Watts looked unbelievably pissed for a second, but then closed his eyes, and looked again with an empty gaze of sadness. Seeing that absolutely no one is going to understand him, Watts starts to realize that he has been weakened too much. He’s trying to get closure from the past, when he should instead only look towards the perfect future that HE KNOWS he can create. He needs to tear himself from the past completely, and begin a new age for himself and for Atlas. That’s the only way to win.

And to symbolize that change… He kills Tess right where she stood. 

He used his fingers to impale the old lady in the stomach, letting her fall to her back. Still, this outcome didn’t surprise her. She fell on her back without expression, still smoking her cigarette. She tells him her last words, “Bye for now, Arthur… I know I’ll see you again soon… you moron…”

Watts looks down at his blood-soaked fingers, and realizes he just entered the point of no return. He leaves the room without saying a single extra word, ending the episode.

Commentary (spoilers): Watts’s whole backstory can be summed up to him being frustrated by feeling inferior to others despite how much he worked and studied. There’s always someone who ended up more talented, more powerful and stronger than him, keeping him down. In these flashback episodes we are shown first hand how he and Pietro started off similar, but matured in completely different ways following the death of Penny, and that relates to how they both perceive perfection. In Watts’ eyes, HE is perfection. His plans, his creations and his ultimate goals are all perfect, simply because they come from him. Meanwhile Pietro believed that perfection comes from the potential to try again even in failure — something that wants to know more, instead of thinking they know everything from the get go. That is the rival philosophy of these two, and it’s pretty much the main theme of the entire volume, at least from the Atlas storyline. It also translates to the themes of Robin versus Watts, where he believes ONLY HIM can bring about a perfect age to Atlas, while Robin believes that the people, even if weak and flawed, will work together to achieve something that is good for everyone. Maybe both are right, but there can only be one way, and so they need to fight in order to figure out who will.

Doctor Tess was a character that I made up, just so Watts could have someone to talk to in his scenes. She’s not that important, she doesn’t do anything crazy, and she dies to make the villain seem even more evil. Her name is obviously a nod to Nikolas Tesla, and that’s about it for fun facts about her. Unfortunately DanDanDan just came out while writing this, so I cannot unsee her as granny Ayase. 

Anyway, It’s time to resolve everything for the final act.

There’s one last thing we have to get through before moving on. And that thing is Ironwood’s backstory. I think it’s important for it to be told, but the problem is that his backstory has absolutely no place in the story. Like, not at all. It simply doesn’t matter for the overall narrative, but it’s imperative to explain what makes him different from all soldiers in Atlas. Why he refuses to follow the imperialist plans that the council has in store, and why he doesn’t hate the other nations. For that reason, this small series detailing his backstory should be strict minisode material to release over the course of the volume. I’ll be brief.

First, let’s go back some twenty years. As we know, the government was up to their antics, and destroyed the Schnee school for Huntsmen because they thought the warriors were becoming too numerous and organized, and that was a threat to people who were rich and evil. And thus all the rich people gathered, formed the council of Atlas, and united all three cities under one system. Then the army was first formed — gathering the already-existing police force, the warriors, AND whoever was interested in joining. One of these people was the twenty year-old Jimmy Ironwood, who was nothing but a trigger happy asshole who wanted to kill shit with guns and was extremely xenophobic against Vale and Haven, because his family was part of that secluded elite. He excelled at all the tests, and was in line to become a model soldier, both in attitude and skill.

Then came the day he was noted to have been slowly awakening superhuman qualities, so he was assigned to an Ace-Ops squad in order to train and ultimately awaken his Aura. To his surprise, the leader of his squad was the former headmaster of the Schnee academy, Mia Lulrid. 

Mia took over the role as headmaster after Nikolas got old and sick, and was also the one who signed the pack that ended the academy in peaceful terms. To set a good example to her students, she chose to become a soldier of Atlas, and currently occupied the role of Lieutenant while also being an Ace-Op. Once she started training the new cadets, she held Ironwood as the “sheriff” of the squad, seeing that he’s the one who needed to change more than all the others. Being the sheriff meant that she gave him twice the work of his peers, and picked on him for his slightest mistakes. And from their first interaction, young Ironwood immediately got a massive crush on her. Mia at the time was a way older woman with long braided blond hair and an eyepatch on her left eye, with a few other scars here and there on her face. She’s no best girl by any means, but I guess Ironwood has a thing for women that will literally just kill him.

Over the course of a few years, Mia trained her squad and taught them to be high-class warriors as they slowly climbed the ranks. With Nikolas dead and Maria blind, she was probably the strongest in the nation, only disputing the title with Troy. She rose to be Major Lieutenant, while Ironwood stuck around as her right-hand man and became a Lieutenant like she was. However, though he grew more powerful, Mia failed to convince his dumbass to stop being xenophobic. Warriors like them have much bigger problems than fighting in wars against other people. They are already at war with monsters, and people from Atlas are prone to forget that, due to their big ass walls and the protection of the Atlesian mountain range. They only have to deal with 5% of what Haven and Vale are accustomed to on a regular basis. It’s in one of these minisodes that Mia would confide to Ironwood her desire to become general of the army, and make sure that Atlas never attacks the other nations or tries to steal territories. Even if it would benefit their people to have big farmlands under Atlas control, that can be negotiated in a different way. To try and take stuff using their might is the same mistake that led to the dictatorship of the snow emperor. She can’t allow that to happen again. It will be a disgrace to everything her mentor and friends fought for.

Ironwood never saw the big deal of Grimm, since he only fought the weak and pathetic ones that approached near the wall. The oldest ones didn’t give him a bigger challenge either. He just thought Mia was exaggerating how strong they were from her experiences back in the day. Now Atlas is leagues more powerful than it was a few years ago. They have better weapons, more resources and more soldiers. He believed that would be more than enough to defeat the Grimm AND show that Atlas is not to be messed with, much less exploited by the other nations.

However, it all came down to one terrible blizzard.

Basically, one single Grimm was able to survive going through the high mountain range, arriving in Atlas City and causing NO TROUBLE WHATSOEVER before it was taken down in five seconds. The rich people of the city got unreasonably scared it would happen again, so they demanded that the Ace-Ops carry out a monthly mission to clean up the entire mountain range, making their lives a hundred times worse for the next dozen years.  It’s the same mission we saw team PCFHR doing in the beginning of the volume. The conditions made it impossible to traverse the place without freezing alive, even in good weather. Mia and Ironwood’s team of warriors was sent for the very first mission across the mountain. As expected they got stuck in a snowstorm, but that’s not the worst part.

Being the first ones setting foot in the tall mountains for over hundreds of years, they met head first with hundreds of Grimm who have slept in the snow since the first invasion. They grew to massive sizes and were almost completely covered in white layers across their huge bodies. Killing them was a drag, and the more the team moved, the more of them awakened. The squad of ten people started to fall apart. Ironwood watched all his friends, who have been with him since their first years as cadets, all of them dying one by one at the hands of the Grimm. Visibility was practically zero in that blizzard, and they were snatched away from formation one by one. Some were his best buddies, and some were cute girls who looked up to him. They all thought they were safe with him and Mia around, but Ironwood wasn’t able to protect them when it really mattered. Ironwood went mad by seeing their blood stained on his clothes. In the end he and Mia were the only two survivors, and had to escape back to the entrance of the mountain no matter what. However, they were followed by an Abnormal Grimm that lived in the mountain snow like a guardian. It was the Wendigo.

Just when they were closest to the exit of the mountain range, the Wendigo got the drop on them. A monster with a skull of a deer on its face, and a terrifyingly-lanky human body below the neck. The monster was insanely fast, and used the snow to hide itself. It absolutely kicked their ass in short order — even Mia, who was the strongest soldier in all of Atlas at that point. No, I don’t know what Semblance to give her, but it needs to be equally strong as Troy’s so their dispute for the title of strongest makes sense. I think a healing Semblance would be perfect to explain some stuff. Point is: they are going to die.

Seeing that they can’t win in these conditions, Mia tells James to get out while she fights this monster to the death. He does so, feeling total desperation at the face of a real and unimaginable monster such as this. However, he then looks at himself, running in fear like a little girl. Actually, not even a little girl would look this pathetic while running away. And so, James locks the fuck in. He won’t be able to live with himself if he allows his teacher, the lady he loves, to just die like that. 

Unfortunately, Ironwood returns in time to see Mia get brutally impaled by the Wendigo’s sharp antlers, and it was time to switch. He was still leagues below Mia, so the only way he could win was through brutal sacrifice. He grabbed Mia’s magnum revolver and shot repeatedly at the Wendigo, drawing its attention. The monster jumped at him at insane speed. Ironwood tried to dodge, but the creature was able to bite his leg, crushing it, and nearly ripping it out of him. However, now he was as close as he wanted. He uncovered a secret grenade out of his belt, pulled the pin, and shoved it with his fist into the eye socket of the Wendigo’s skull head. The result is… I guess you know.

The monster’s head blew up, along with half of Ironwood. He was launched away with his arm and leg missing, left unconscious. Mia was still awake for the aftermath, and despite the several holes on her body from being stabbed by the Wendigo’s antlers, she found strength to stand up. She walked over to Ironwood, cradled his half body, and walked slowly through the snow. Her eyes went dead, but she continued. Eventually the screen just fades to white.

Ironwood woke up several days later, missing half of his body. He was told that he was the sole survivor of his mission, as Mia Lulrid used all the remaining strength of her life just to carry him back to Mantle. She died as soon as she was spotted by the gate guards, but Ironwood was somehow still alive despite the blood loss. He was left in bed for several weeks after that, just dealing with the fact that Mia died, and that he was a cripple now. However, he finally learned his damn lesson. The ultimate enemy are the Grimm, and they are the ones who need to be destroyed at all costs. 

Now that Mia is dead, someone has to carry her dream to ensure peace for Atlas, and fight the real monsters. Ironwood believed that his life was spared only to fulfill this one goal, and so he will fulfill it no matter what. As we know, he went around in a wheelchair until he met Pietro, who made him the cyborg half of his body, and the rest is history.

The final episode of this little series should conclude in time with the release of the last episode, as we get a short about Ironwood and Winter drinking the wine while Robin and Fiona learned the Pietro lore dump. Ironwood hands her the bottle, and Winter says that she never drank beer or wine in her life before. Ironwood encourages to try it out, but she hates the taste immediately. 

Then we cut to five minutes later, and it seems that Winter SOMEHOW got completely wasted by 5% alcohol. Her face became slightly red, she’s overly giggly and wobbles back and forth on her chair. Ironwood seems incredibly uncomfortable by her behavior, as he never expected to see this side of her. She was just telling him a lot of personal things, but she’s dragging every syllable, so her speech is hard to understand and quite nonsensical. 

Winter just goes ahead and reveals her most personal insecurities. First she opens up about her family, and how she was a total bitch for the longest time. Following the death of Nikolas, which already was stressful enough, she saw her mother become a drunk, and her father became a controlling and greedy asshole. She felt alone, enraged and neglected. Instead of sulking all that teenage angst, she started to dish it out on everyone who ever tried to be close to her, and on her two younger siblings especially. The way she treated Weiss was inexcusable, and she only did so because she was afraid that Weiss would leave Atlas forever, and Winter would be even more alone than she already was. Even if Weiss forgave her, every time that Winter looks at the scar on her eye, she is reminded that SHE was the one that scarred her own sister, even if by accident. Even if their family comes back together, Winter doesn’t feel the right to be with them anymore — she changed too much.

And let’s not forget about her daily life in the army. For the longest time she suspected that she only rose the ranks as fast as she did because of her father’s and grandfather’s influence, and not because of her own merit. For that reason she continued to train so hard every day, despite having no missions to attend or reason to fight anymore. She wants to prove at all costs that she’s not a fraud, but every time she fails, her insecurities eat at her more and more. She got captured so easily, and thus allowed many terrible things to happen to the people of Atlas, to team PCFHR, and to Ironwood as well. Those girls were supposed to be her pupils, and yet, there they were, risking their lives to rescue HER from the prison. Robin and Fiona fought through hell, Ciel was almost killed, Penny was kidnapped, and she doesn’t even know if Harriet is still alive. With all that considered, Winter doesn’t believe herself worthy to be second in command. She doesn’t even believe that her grandfather would be proud if he saw what became of her. With her family life destroyed, she dedicated her life to be a perfect soldier… and she still failed.

Then, it was time for silence. Ironwood watched her rest her head on the table, and thought he needed to say something. Even if she won’t remember this conversation tomorrow, James decides to tell her a little something for her to feel better. In truth, her father wasn’t that influential in the army. She didn’t rise the ranks because he pulled some strings — it was actually all Ironwood’s doing. He specifically wanted to keep Winter close to him, because he saw a lot of potential in her. He knew that her progeny would result in her being a powerful warrior, like all the Schnees always are — at the same time, he could feel how broken she was at first, during her early months of training as a cadet. She was so angry and ambitious — a girl willing to do whatever her superiors say, wanting to use her life in the full benefit of Atlas, just like Nikolas had done. She didn’t understand how the people in power were corrupt, and would merely use her power for their own selfish reasons. Because of that, Ironwood started seeing Winter as his younger self, and felt the need to take her as his personal assistant so he could mentor her, and stray her away from that evil path. That’s why he took her on that trip to Vale three years ago. He wanted to take her away from Atlas so she could see first hand the rest of the world and become less prejudiced about them, and he succeeded — mostly thanks to Weiss, but still succeeded.

Ironwood finishes up by saying that she proved herself to be beautifully capable, both as a warrior and as a leader, and that she shouldn’t look down on herself for having failed once or twice. She shouldn’t be cursing herself for being young and stupid, because everyone was young and stupid once. Instead, she should focus on making up for her mistakes as best she can, and only then will she be able to forgive herself. Her family WILL accept her back. Her pupils WILL pull through. They WILL defeat Watts, and he is certain that she would make her grandfather proud, just like she makes Ironwood proud.

And well, he pressed the “grandpa would be proud” button, so Winter immediately starts to tear up, and hugs him really tightly. Winter wouldn’t be caught dead getting physical with anyone, so his words must have meant a lot to her. It’s a bit inappropriate, but Ironwood decides to lightly hug her back. These two have been nothing but stone-cold and serious soldiers so far into the show, so it’s good that we finally see them acting as real, emotional people before the final battle.  

Just then Robin climbs up the ladder. “Miss Schnee, Miss Ironwood, I think we...?!” she was saying, but then saw Winter and Ironwood hugging. She slowly turned back, telling Fiona that they should investigate for a little extra minute. With that, the little Ironwood story concludes.

Okay, so let’s set the stage for the finale. 

It will all take place in Argus and its outskirts. Watts has an army of more than three thousand robots with guns, including several mechas and ships. He also has the eleven remaining warriors of the Branwen tribe, led now by Shay without Raven. He still has the giant of Argus, the flying dreadnought, and the ultimate weapon. Fighting against him we have the dozen Ace-Ops who are in condition to battle, some volunteers from Mantle that want to help, and the battalion of twenty-or-so Huntsmen from Vale being led by Harriet. That should put them on a fifty man siege against a whole army of androids. The warriors are super-human, but Dust bullets and missiles still hurt a lot, so they can’t just rush in without a plan. Since the battle has two sides, I’m gonna keep switching between them whenever it’s convenient.

Let’s start with Ironwood’s side, because there’s a very cute scene at the start. 

They are going to attack very soon. Thanks to Doctor Tess, they know everything they need to know about Watts’ plan, and also that Harriet and the people from Vale will arrive today in Argus, so they should probably all attack at the same time. The Ace-Ops weren’t allowed to get much sleep or time to fully heal their wounds, which makes everything more desperate. 

We begin the episode with a scene of Robin looking out into the sunrise, standing atop the huge wall of Mantle. The box with Penny’s upgrade is firmly strapped to her back by two sashes, while the reboot device is on her belt.

Soon she is joined by Fiona, who saw that she disappeared from her room this morning. Thankfully she knows that this is the place where Robin likes to hang out. It has a perfect view of the city and the wildlands ahead. She came to warn that Ironwood is already preparing their guys for the assault and making the plan. She asks if Robin is feeling okay, and Robin replies with, “I just wanted to get one final look at my city. I feel like after today, things will never be the same again… all it needed was a little push for the winds of change to flip everything upside down. And now, for the first time I have this feeling that… I will finally get to fight for something worthy… It’s a shame the others aren’t here to see it… What about you, Fio?”

“Well, it was all thanks to you, Robin! You were so strong, and smart, and brave! If it wasn’t for you, we would never have gotten this far! We rescued everyone, and survived all those fights with your leadership… I’m glad that I get to have someone like you on my side!… I would’ve never managed it on my own… I try to help, but I just end up causing more trouble… If you didn’t have to worry about me, Penny would still…” Fiona was saying.

This time, Fiona’s meat riding has pissed off Robin more than making her flustered. She suddenly turns to her and says, “You always say that… But it’s not true, you know… I got here because I had plenty of people helping me, and that includes you… I would’ve died plenty of times without your help… You’re strong, Fiona. You’re even stronger than me… I don’t know why you think the opposite… I don’t even know why you like me that much… Just, why?”

Fiona blushes and looks down. “No, that’s not true… I’m not stronger than you… I mean, I once thought I was, back when I was a cadet… I thought I had it worse than all of you humans. I thought that my struggles while growing up made me better and stronger than everyone else. I believed I was gonna be the one who would climb the ranks, and then use my power to make everyone regret messing with me, or any other Faunus… But then, the moment of truth came… You remember, don’t you?… I was always the worst in training. I failed every test. I couldn’t understand the most basic books, and I got angry just from others staring at me… I cried at night, because I couldn’t do the one thing I set out to do in my life. I could never be a soldier, much less help others… I was a failure…

But then I met you… A poor orphan girl from Mantle, just like me… You were assigned as our captain on day one, and you refused to leave me behind. Even if I was mean and rude to you on purpose, you refused to give up on me, and believed I could be a great hero one day… You were the first human who ever said such nice things to me… The first one who treated me like a person, and cared for how I felt… You helped me train, and study, and see the world in a better light… It made me realize that, if someone could make Atlas better for everyone, that person would be you, and not me… The best I can do is help you, as much as my life is worth… And besides, I… I mean, I a-also w-wanted to… What I’m t-trying t-to s-say is… I…

I love you…” Fiona admitted, still too embarrassed to look her in the eyes.

Robin then grabbed her by both shoulders, towering over Fiona and looking into her eyes. “I love you too… But, you don’t love me, Fio… You just think that, without me, you’re gonna get sent back to square one. You still think you’re not good enough on your own, after all these years… but you’re wrong! You don’t need me anymore in order to make a difference… You just need to burn that spirit that you always had inside of you! I know that now you’re strong enough to achieve ANYTHING you set out to do! You’re not that same weak little sheep girl from back then — you’re smarter, stronger and braver than ever before! All you need to do is believe in yourself! YOU NEED to believe that you can do it!…  

That’s the last thing I have left to teach you as your captain… We won’t be together forever, Fio, even if we want to. That’s why you have to learn how to continue moving forward, without me. You’ll always have other friends at your side. They will look up to you, they will trust you, and they will NEED you. No matter what happens, you can’t let them down. You can never give up!…  No one's gonna fulfill your dream if not you, Fiona… Please remember that.”

She finishes up with a kiss to Fiona’s forehead. It was a brutal rejection, but her words completely elated Fiona at that moment — she didn’t even register it. She focused all of her mind on the final lesson Robin just said, and stood there staring ahead while Robin walked past her, and jumped down the wall. With that, the scene concludes.

…

Alright, let’s go straight for the plan. There’s no planning montage like the last volume, we just see it happen so we get equally as bamboozled as Watts is. He positioned a big fleet in between Mantle and Argus, but put most of his army and the Branwen towards east, as Shay warned that the huntsmen of Vale were coming. I’ll focus on Ironwood’s attack, and then later I’ll talk about Harriet’s.

The first phase of his plan was simple misdirection. He had to plunge through the fleet in between the cities in order to reach Argus, so first he sent the train that was stationed in Mantle. The robots attacked it, thinking the Ace-Ops were inside, but after knocking it out from the rails it turned out not to be so. It was totally empty, and so began the second misdirection. Suddenly they saw six or seven ships flying in the sky, which they also stole from the Mantle military base. Now the robots focused on shooting down those, but they were empty as well, simply flying straight with autopilot. 

By the time Watts figured out what was happening, Ironwood and his entire small battalion were right in front of Argus’s gates. He fooled the entire fleet with his distractions and took the opportunity to sneak through in the middle of the chaos using the OP abilities of his team. With that, he just needed Fiona to release two sealed crates of explosives out of her pocket dimension, and use them to blow the city’s north gate wide open. At the same time, their army of guerrilla volunteers started to charge after the fleet who stood behind, shooting them down as they tried to retreat and preventing them from going after the Ace-Ops.

Suddenly, Argus erupted into civil war, with robots and mechas fighting the warriors on the streets and the rooftops. Ironwood carefully positioned his more wounded fighters with the objective to help everyone escape the danger zone. Their single goal was to reach the main military base of Argus, where Ironwood supposes that Watts will be. 

He was right, but Watts refused to be a sitting duck. The weapon was ready, so all he had to do was take off. The flying dreadnought rose to the skies, and Ironwood immediately figured out that Watts intended to fire the bombs from the dreadnought. However, the most important point now is… they have to fight the dreadnought.

The dreadnought is basically an AC-130 in the Rwby world, except fifty times stronger, bigger and with more weapons. It could shoot either pure devastation, or really precise shots even from the absurd high altitude it currently is. Not only did they have to deal with the enemies all over the city, but also the constant rain of heat-seeking missiles and heavy machine gun fire. That entire neighborhood of Argus started to look like a warzone, and several houses were destroyed because of the battle. People had nowhere to hide and merely watched from a far and ran away once the conflict got close. Argus had around two thousand people living in it, so it was quite the desperate scene. They had absolutely no hope of even reaching the dreadnought in order to fight…

Until SHE showed up.

As we build up in the past minisode. Ciel makes her epic come back at the final battle, piloting nothing less than the sleeping giant of Atlas City — the Golden Eagle. 

She spent the last two days tirelessly repairing the core that Ironwood destroyed, and brought it to battle at the nick of time. Despite the damage it took in its last fight, it was flying just right and its weapons were all functional too. And now we have a giant mecha battle, because I simply wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t snuck a single mecha giant battle inside this volume, where the main conflict is all about robots. A huge golden eagle versus a massive flying fortress.

In this fight we see mostly Ciel’s amazing piloting skills as she dodges the most crazy shit that the giant dreadnought fires at her, including a massive laser gun at the helm. In order to fight back she uses the golden eagle’s claws to slash against the tough surfaces of the dreadnought, slashing through the cannons popping out of the sides and reducing its absurd fire rate. 

Meanwhile, down below the others start discussing what to do next. Robin, Ironwood and Winter can sense that another big battle is happening somewhere else inside the city, and they can sense one of the forces belongs to Penny. Robin decides to part ways with the rest, and go guns blazing across the city until she reaches Penny and helps free her. Fiona wanted to go with, but Robin says that it is her mission alone to make up for her fuckup of letting Penny be captured in the first place. Robin has a feeling that Fiona needs to stay here with the others, and help as much as she can. She reiterates the same things she said that morning, about how Fiona is strong, and she just needs to believe in herself in order to summon that strength. With that, Fiona accepts the order, and Robin prepares to run off.

However, before she does so, Ironwood pulls her to the side and presents her his white magnum revolver, of which he inherited from Mia Lulrid. He believed that her, who carries the most valiant heart of all soldiers in this nation, should be the one to wield it. And so they were off — while Robin went after Penny, Ironwood stood with the rest, and was able to contact Ciel via her scroll phone. They ask her to give them a ride up, so they can infiltrate the dreadnought and take down Watts. Ironwood leaves his other Ace-Ops to deal with the army of robots in the city while they are at it, and also to continue guiding people away from this zone.

The golden eagle swoops down, allowing Ironwood, Fiona and Winter to hop inside, and takes them to the skies. Ciel then flies above the dreadnought so Ironwood and Winter can jump off and dive towards it. Watts figured out what they were doing, and focused all his guns into the sky, forcing Winter and Ironwood to dodge a lot of incoming fire and explosions going on around them, like they were playing Just Cause 2. One of these missiles would eventually hit them, but Winter was faster, and was able to kick Ironwood out of the way so she would get blasted alone. It exploded right on her face and knocked her out for a brief moment, sending her crashing towards the city down below, while Ironwood successfully landed on the air strip above the dreadnought. It was time for him to have his fateful battle against Watts, and Watts saw this as the signal to go and launch the nukes right now.

What better time to change perspectives?

…

Harriet stood atop a small hill in silence, as she saw hundreds upon hundreds of robots promptly waiting for their arrival in order to start the battle. A whole army stood between them and the gates of Argus. They had ships, mechas and heavy mounted guns, not to mention all the traps hidden in the snow. She and the warriors behind her were ready for hell, even if they were outnumbered. It was gonna be a tough fight that required a lot of planning, but then… Pyrrha stepped up.

“Hey, Nora… could you hold him for me?” she said, handing Jaune’s body to Nora. Even if the chance was absolutely slim, she didn’t want him to get hurt with what she’s about to do now. And so, Pyrrha starts walking calmly towards the metal army, while everyone watches her back. The androids soon take notice of her approaching. The alarm is sound, and all the guns are raised in her direction at the same time. And so, as it has been foreshadowed AND awaited since as early as volume IV…

Pyrrha starts to decimate all of Atlas’ forces, in a matter of minutes.

They fire thousands of bullets in her direction, but they are all completely stopped at the same spot, just three meters away from her. Everything thrown at her got stuck in the air, and just as easily, she threw it all back at them at the same speed they came, causing explosions all around. Pyrrha wasn’t doing much but wagging her fingers around. She started levitating the hundreds of robots in the air, pulling their pieces apart and swirling them around in the sky like a hurricane, before simply crushing them all into tiny little balls until they exploded. It is a beautiful sequence that everyone wanted to see for the longest time. I’ve been CRAVING the moment where she goes full on Magneto bullshit.

All the while, Shay and his boys were at the other side of the battlefield, looking with binoculars. They started out smug as all hell, before realizing that the girl they were sent to put down… was still wide awake. They simply watched as she turned their thousand android soldiers into scrap metal with nothing but her thoughts. And well, they would’ve all died in short order, if it wasn’t for what happened next.

While everyone was cheering the hell out of her from the back, suddenly one of the Huntsmen realized something. Far in the horizon, a black vibrating line was quickly approaching their location. A keen eye was capable of identifying that… those things the Grimm. 

There were SEVERAL HUNDREDS of them, and maybe more. They were coming fast, and would arrive here in just a minute. They couldn’t believe this was going on — They have been played with. This legion was merely waiting in the shadows for Atlas to be weakened during the war, just so the monsters could attack them and Vale at the same time. Without no one to protect the wall, it will be easily destroyed, and everyone in Argus will be killed.

With that notion, they will be forced to split up. The overwhelming majority of their forces are gonna encounter the horde and hold them back, while team RWBY and JNPR go towards the wall with Harriet, fight the Branwen, and help with the battle going inside the city. They can see the dreadnought shooting down on the city by the way, which prompts them to hurry up. Our characters split off even more, as Weiss wants to go help the city immediately, while Ruby wants to directly confront the Branwen tribe and find out what happened to Qrow — still feeling bloodthirsty to find out what happened. And so they part ways, with Harriet and Blake deciding to go with Weiss by flying in the back of an Ice Nevermore, while Yang and Ruby go after the Branwen with Pyrrha and Nora — and Jaune and Ren’s bodies I guess. The other Huntsmen can probably hold off the horde, considering that they got Sun Wukong, and we know damn well how powerful his Hachiman summon is.

Weiss is able to fly just over the wall of Argus before she is spotted by a certain someone. Watts posted Penny on top of the wall as a last line of defense, and his caution paid off. She spotted the ice nevermore and used her laser hands to shoot it down, meeting again with Weiss, Blake and Harriet after they crashed into the streets. They have no clue who it is at first, so they start to fight, and Penny easily kicks their ass. She’s simply too fast, too skilled and reacts to everything instantly. Finally she unveils her flying sword, and so the three instantly realize that this warrior is Penny, but with red eyes, white hair and a black suit of armor. Things then start to get ugly, because none of them wanted to harm Penny, and even when Blake tried, Harriet straight up tackled her and prohibited her from harming her friend. Harriet had no idea that Penny lost all control of her body, and believed she could wake if they tried enough. Because of their hesitation, Penny is able to deliver several good slashes and stabs at the three girls, which ultimately ended the fight with just her and Weiss while the others were too hurt to continue.

However, Weiss wasn’t willing to lose in a moment like this, without knowing what her family is going through. And so she will pass through Penny, even if she has to slash her robot arms and legs off. With that, Weiss uses her Semblance’s ultimate skill to give herself a suit of white armor and a pair of wings, becoming the Ice Valkyrie again. This was supposed to be the first time she used it, but I decided to use it back in the last volume, so this fight becomes less special because of it. Weiss does get a lot more powerful because of the suit, and is able to contend with Penny now. Not to mention, but now she can also fly due to the wings, and so they can fight both on the ground and in the sky.

They remain in this stalemate for a long while, so let’s go back to Yang and Ruby.

Shay saw that the Grimm started attacking the warriors of Vale, and saw this as their golden opportunity to survive the battle. He told Odion and Niko to dispose of her weapons and use every dirty tactic under the book to kill Pyrrha for real this time, or at least buy them time, while he will deal with Qrow’s pipsqueak and the blondie. This will be fun. Note that all these fights take place in the massive snowy pine forest that is just outside Argus.

Nora and Pyrrha continue running forward until they spot Niko, sitting right there up above one of the trees. He taunts them into following him, and even if it’s a trap, Pyrrha has to go and find out how to wake up Jaune and Ren, so they rush after him and leave Ruby and Yang to their own luck. They were pretty lucky too, because soon they also spotted Shay, completely alone with his hands in his pockets. I don’t know if I should give Shay an Atlas suit to make him look more intimidating or if he should continue looking like a bum across the whole volume in order to hide his true strength. Either is fine.

The girls only have three questions to him: Where is Qrow, where is Raven, and where is Vernal? Shay merely picks on his nose and welcomes them to try and get their answers from him, starting a fight. He pulls his switchblade which turns into a big sword spear, and this initial bout is just to get a feeling for how strong they were. The answer was “quite a lot”, compared to the last time he saw them. Yang has reached his level of strength naturally, without the need of abusing her angry side anymore. They would’ve won like that, but fighting isn’t Shay’s specialty. He keeps on taunting Ruby about Qrow’s overly horrible death, driving her nuts and making her rush carelessly in order to shut him up for good. It was all that he wanted.

Finally Shay unveils the evolved form of his Semblance, as a dozen tentacles made of Aura pop out of his back, and they seem solid enough to grab Ruby. They wrap around her arms, legs and torso, and seemingly start causing an intense pain to Ruby, and she seemingly can’t use her Semblance to escape. “Ruin” was directly hurting her soul and preventing her from focusing on using her magic. She couldn’t free herself from the tentacles using brute strength either. Shay says, drawing her closer with his tentacles, “look at you, Rosey two. You didn’t get that much smarter since I last saw you, huh? Uncle is not here to save you this time… I thought about sparing you, but looking close, now you look a little too old for my liking. What a shame.”

“LET GO OF HER, YOU BASTARD!” Yang shouted.

“Nah, why would I do that? I still have to kill you, don’t I?” Shay said, then he put his fingers in his mouth to make a loud whistle. Suddenly, all other six remaining members of the Branwen all drop from the trees, surrounding Yang. It seems that all her former comrades hadn’t aged a day. She knows them well enough to understand that they won’t hold back, much less care for a conversation. She will have to fight all of them solo — however, Shay makes it clear that if she fights back too much, he’ll just stab Ruby in the heart with his switchblade, so Yang is just out there to be jumped by several strong warriors at once. It gets a little ugly.

…

Meanwhile, Pyrrha and Nora were not having a good time. They hide Jaune and Ren under a tree and prepare for their battle against Niko. At the end of the snowy trail they meet again with the tiny bastard, being accompanied by Odion. They both didn’t have weapons or any metal parts on them, so Pyrrha would have to fight normally this time. Odion will have his fist fight with Nora, while Niko faces off with Pyrrha, and he’s pretty cocky about it. It’s clear that she wants an answer on how to wake up her boyfriend, so Niko explains that the only way for him to ever wake up again is for Niko himself to reverse his Semblance spell. However, if she kills him, she will never get Jaune back. 

Their following fight is mostly about Pyrrha defending herself, and being too afraid to fight back against him while he doesn’t tell the truth. His insane speed makes it really hard to even consider capturing him. Without his weapons, Niko could only use his superspeed and his claws to fight. It didn’t last long, because this little battle was just a distraction. While he fought her, he sent the wounded Neil to go grab Jaune and Ren’s bodies, and bring them here. Now Jaune is in their grasp, ready to have his neck snapped by Neil at any moment. They force Pyrrha to throw off her weapons and accept Niko’s beatdown. The Branwen simply won’t fight without a hostage, won’t they?

Nora wasn’t doing great either. She just has to deal with this giant bastard, but he matches her level of strength too perfectly in order for her to get any advantage. And so, naturally Nora saw herself with the need to boost herself up with her taser. She unloads all the stored electricity directly into her abdomen, spiking up her hair and bulging her muscles. Finally she started whooping Odion’s ass for a full minute, but he wouldn’t allow himself to be defeated by such a weak-looking girl. The fact that he was getting overpowered made him angry, and being angry activates his Semblance for the first time. Odion starts foaming at the mouth as his body begins to distort, until he eventually mutates into… I don’t know. I don’t have the design finished — the point is, he becomes a twenty foot tall monster of pure muscle that starts beating the shit out of Nora, up until she loses her boost and starts getting destroyed even harder. Soon Odion loses the ability of cognitive thought and goes full berserk.

Since these fights happen in vacuum and don’t add to the Atlas storyline, I might as well conclude them here. Firstly, Pyrrha versus Niko.

Pyrrha was just getting destroyed, now with Jaune’s neck on the line and without even knowing how to cure him. If only she gets a single damn clue that will be enough, and then she will finally be able to fight back. Fortunately for her, she would eventually get her clue, from the most random source she could’ve possibly hoped for. Suddenly, their standoff is interrupted when someone appears out of nowhere, leaning against one of the trees with her arms crossed. It was Vernal, who just arrived back in Atlas.

She’s dressed in red and black, so Pyrrha assumes it’s another Branwen. However, Vernal isn’t here to fight and doesn’t want to explain anything at all, and simply tells her, “So he put that friend of yours into his spell, huh?… It’s actually pretty easy to wake them up. All you need to do is kiss him. That’s the secret… Now do me a favor and save me the problem of killing him. Bye bye.”

Vernal simply flies away. What a weird way for two ancestral warriors to meet. Now that Pyrrha finally got her answer, she stops allowing herself to be tortured and springs into action. They really thought that having Jaune as hostage was ever a good idea. Not only did it make Pyrrha more angry, but they failed to notice that Jaune was wearing metal armor. Pyrrha merely controlled his steel bracelet to deliver a punch to Neil’s face, making him recoil. Finally she dashes straight at Neil and kicks him in the stomach, making him fly far away, crash through several pine trees, and pass out. Niko looks at the scene, sweating bullets. He was completely fucked. Pyrrha starts to kick his ass with so much gusto that it’s satisfying as hell for the audience. After the beatdown, Niko lands all fucked up on the ground, barely holding on to consciousness. As a last resort he would try to prick himself with his claw again to activate his Semblance, putting them both to sleep together. However, Pyrrha was wise to his shit. She controls her fallen spear, which he had forgotten about, and shoots it straight at Niko. Now, either the spear goes through both of his hands and makes his arm stuck apart, or Pyrrha just slices off one of his two hands. Either is good. Niko goes down after that severe wound, and Pyrrha wins her fight.

As for Nora, she just kept getting wrecked as Odion continued to get stronger in his juggernaut mode. However, the fight gets decided in a very simple and cool way, with a call back to volume VI even. In the end he punches Nora far away, knocking her into the huge wall of Argus. And then, as she lays there almost totally broken, bleeding from her forehead, she looks up and sees that familiar yellow sign — a thunderbolt symbol and a skull. Oh boy, what a time to be lucky. Monster Odion found her, and immediately started running after Nora to give her one last haymaker punch, while she just pressed both her hands against the wall. The electrified layer immediately starts shocking her, and she keeps holding on for several seconds. Finally Odion’s punch connects…

However, Nora blocks it with a single hand, creating a really fucking cool visual. Odion’s giant fist was stopped like a fly. We get a reveal shot of Nora, showing that she has reached a new level of boostage. Her hair became even more spiky, and the orange marking on her skin got much thicker and with a new pattern. She smiles with a frown, “Sorry for you, big boy… I’m about to kick your sorry ass into the moon.”

And so she jumps, and throws a hook in his face.

Giant Odion gets launched a whole football field away, and Nora was granted enough speed to follow him and continue delivering a full ass whooping session that was too fast for him to follow, making him bounce on the ground with her punches and kicks. Note that this whole sequence is mirrored with Pyrrha also beating the shit out of Niko, just so then the music insertion doesn’t get wasted just with Nora. In the end she’s able to deliver the whole “Reverse Lotus” combo, sending the giant Odion plummeting to the ground with her final hammer strike, and forming a huge crater on impact. He passes out, and so his Semblance is turned off. He slowly returned to his human form, with his eyes whited out and his jaw hanging open. Nora wins.

…

Now the two get back together, and Pyrrha reveals that all they had to do was give them one stupid kiss all along. Nora urges her to go ahead and do it, but Pyrrha takes her time now. In a roundabout way, this conclusion ties back to her reluctance to accept her feelings for Jaune. This time she moves slowly, closes her eyes, and kisses his lips as he rests on her thighs. Some strange yellow markings start to appear on Jaune’s eyelids, before they break and disappear.

Jaune slowly opens his eyes with a yawn. It was like he woke up from the best sleep of his life. Then, he immediately got freaked out by waking up in a completely different place. Then he got even more freaked out when he remembered what happened to him. This scene now looks really familiar to volume VI too, when Jaune was the one who woke up Pyrrha from mind control — down to the same place on the map. Jaune kept asking more and more questions about what happened, but they didn’t answer him. Pyrrha simply held his face with both her hands…

And kissed him again, this time with him wide awake.

Jaune’s eyes open wide as Pyrrha's eyes start to tear up in joy. She lets go of his lips and says, “I almost lost you again, you dummy… What did I tell you about making something stupid just to protect me?!… Do you think I like seeing you getting hurt, or almost dying?!… You can’t keep doing this to me, Jaune!… When are you going to understand that I really, really like you?!”

“Pyrrha, I… I’m sorry… I’m sorry for making you worry about me, but… Why do you think I keep doing it in the first place?… I’m sorry, but I have to do it… If I can’t defend you, how could I dare to say that… I really, really like you, too.” Jaune says. Finally they fucking admitted it. Holy CHRIST! Their faces and smiles are slowly inching closer, preparing for the third and longest kiss. “Seeing that you ended up fine, it makes me glad…” Jaune says. “ (sniff) … You really are a lost cause…” Pyrrha replies.

“OKAY, ENOUGH WASTING TIME!” Nora said, angrily. 

She then grabbed Jaune by the back of his head, and pulled him down.

Ren was right there. Nora forced Jaune’s head against him, making them kiss. This time Jaune’s eyes went wide with shock. Ren’s spell was lifted in a second, and he woke up fast, immediately seeing that Jaune was kissing him. Both of their eyes had the same expression of sheer horror and shock. I don’t think I even have to explain what classic moment of anime history I’m referencing right now. What, you think I would have Nora kiss Ren? Hell no, bro. I’m sticking to my guns.

They immediately get up and start spitting and forcibly coughing all the germs they traded just now. Pyrrha is just paralyzed watching what just happened, while Nora’s face begins the process of lighting up. The serious mug that she wore all volume was gone in a matter of seconds, replaced by a genuine smile, a waterfall of snot and joyful tears once she saw Ren getting up. She hugged him and cried profusely, saying again and again how much she missed him. With that, the team JNPR storyline is over, and I guess Jaune and Pyrrha are dating.

Back to Ruby and Yang, they were in quite the predicament. Yang used her “Flow” Semblance to enter the “sadness boost” and become more resistant to any attacks, doing her best to tank the Branwen assault while trying to come up with a plan to free Ruby. However, it seems shit just solves itself when you have loads of side characters. Besides, this is the timeline where Qrow survived, so this makes the section even easier.

Just when Shay thought he had everything under control, all it took to bring him down was a single sword slash. Someone appeared in a flash and sliced off his energy tentacles, freeing Ruby from Shay’s grasp. Her body had become thinner and dry, as if the tentacles accelerated her aging process, but was now slowly returning to her peachy skin self. She was cradled in the arms of her savior, and slowly opened her eyes to reveal Qrow. “Hey there kid… Did you miss me?”

Ruby’s face slowly cracks up, trying to hold it in the tears. She answers, “Nooope… Not at all…”

Shay’s eyes display the most primal fear that this world can offer. Qrow continues, “Hey, Shay, how’s it going? It’s been a while. Tell me, do you remember what I said I would do, if you ever tried to touch my niece again?… Well, how about we leave that in the past, okay? Besides, I don’t want to steal her chance of ripping out your head.”

Shay turns to Yang, and sees her get up from the snowy ground with a smile, despite looking beaten. One of the Branwen tries to attack her, but his blade gets stopped by a huge spear pole, blocking the attack like a pillar that fell from heaven. Yang looks back in order to witness the badass entrance of Yatsuhachi, followed by the rest of team CFVY, who all enter a formation around Yang and scare away the other mercenaries. Coco, Velvet, Yatsu and Fox were all smiling and ready for battle.

“YOU– BASTARD–! RAVEN SAID YOU WERE DEAD!! HOW DID YOU SURVIVE?!” Shay screamed.

“Same way as you, old pal. I have loads of friends everywhere…” Qrow says, sending us in a flashback. 

Apparently, right after Raven left him to die in the castle ruins, he was about to be eaten by a pack of Grimm that came to check the place. However, team CFVY arrived at the nick of time. Just like I said at the end of the last volume, they immediately left Vale following the end of the war, and went to the forbidden north in order to observe Grimm movement from afar. And from there, they watched as an entire horde left Vacuo and went marching straight for Atlas in the west. The team gave chase, and on their way, Fox was able to sense the absolutely devastating battle between the Branwen siblings, and so they  arrived after it ended, and were able to heal Qrow’s most severe wounds. Qrow continues, “Can’t believe my luck, honestly. I even got to keep one of my legs!”

“Wait, what are you…” Ruby was saying, but then she looked down and saw that Qrow’s left foot was replaced by a small log and some bandages. She screams, “WHAT HAPPENED TO YOUR FOOT?!!!”

“It got in my way, so I cut it off, okay? Geez, kid, no need to scream in my ear over this. Don’t you know how easy it is to get a new one in Atlas?!” Qrow replied. “Speaking of which, I gotta skedaddle. Something bad is about to happen, and I can’t allow it. We’ll talk later, after you’re done dealing with this bunch of losers. Later.”

“Hey wait, we didn’t-- UGH! YOU BETTER HAVE LOST THAT LEG IN A COOL WAY, YOU HEAR?!” Ruby shouted, as Qrow simply jumped off at the speed of sound, easily hopping from tree to tree and leaping over the wall of Argus like it was nothing.

Now Shay looked at Yang and Ruby, and let’s say he did not like his chances, so he ran away like his life depended on it, leaving all the other Branwen behind to die. Coco tells the sisters to run along and catch the bastard, and they will gladly take out these other fools for them. That’s the last we see of these Branwen fodder members, so I’ll just assume Fox used his new martial art skills to blow up their hearts one by one.

Shay kept running, but obviously he wouldn’t be able to outrun fucking Ruby, so he threw a flashbang and went to hide inside something that was left stationed in front of the giant city gate. It was the sleeping giant of Argus, also known as the Gray Titan. Shay hopped in, and so he began yet another metal gear fight in this volume. Yang asks him one more time, “WHERE. IS. VERNAL. SHAY?!”

“I’LL SEND YOU BOTH TO HELL WITH HER, HOW ABOUT IT?!” Shay says, starting the fight. This Titan is too slow to catch Ruby, but Ruby is simply not strong enough to slash through its hard exterior. In turn, Yang was strong enough to dent it with her punches, but she wasn’t fast enough to hit it. Shay immediately activated the giant’s turbo mode, making a lot of steam come out of the titan’s body, but in turn making the thing move with a completely unnatural level of speed for its huge body. They didn’t expect a robot this big would be able to move at phasing speed, but it did. He’s able to deliver some very good punches and kicks on the two sisters, but Shay is very mistaken if he thinks just this will be able to kill these two.

They defeat him together with the power of a reference to the original show, and a call back to this rewrite. Shay had prepared to fire the energy blast on the titan’s forearm, aiming at Yang on the ground in order to kill her. However, Ruby swooped in, and with a precise shot in slow motion, she fired a Dust bullet inside the barrel of the blaster, hitting precisely the energy core that powered the gun, causing the arm off the Gray Titan to explode. Next, it was time for the sister’s trademark combo — the fast ball special, all the way back from volume I. Except now the one being tossed is Yang, as Ruby uses her Semblance to spin really fast and finally toss her older sister towards the titan’s body. Yang’s hair flares in anger and she haymakers the damn thing with everything she had. The robot gets knocked out on its back, and Yang was able to plunge into its chest. 

She was left wobbling in a daze after the crash and the fall, but so did Shay, who stood in the same control room where she landed. After they got their bearing, the two immediately started to throw hands. Shay tries to use his switchblade, but Yang disarms him and continues to beat his ass, in way better fashion than in volume V. However, Shay wasn’t stupid, and he did the unthinkable. He switched to his secondary — a hidden revolver that he had all along, with six Dust bullets. He fires all six in quick succession, but only hits three of them, one in her shoulder, one in her stomach and the third in her leg. Still, the bullets went right through her, and so Yang fell on the ground while holding her guts.

“I’M A SURVIVOR, DUMB BITCH! A SURVIVOR! I’M NOT GONNA WASTE MY TIME BOXING YOU! GO MAKE SOME COMPANY TO YOUR MAMA!” Shay said, and so he stood up and pressed a big button inside the control room. It was the self-destruct button. The whole fucking titan was about to blow up in fifteen seconds. Shay grabbed his stuff and jumped out the same hole Yang made. “TIME TO SAY SAYONARA, GIRLS! I HOPE YOU ALL SLEEP WITH ONE EYE PEELED FROM NOW ON, BECAUSE IF YOU SURVIVE, YOU BET I’M COMING BACK TO MAKE YOU PAY!”

Shay only had to do one more jump, and he would be free. He would be able to enter Argus through the gate and make himself disappear. Fuck the tribe, fuck Watts, fuck the Huntsmen. He’ll just bounce back and get more money, more power and more everything. Then he would get back at everyone who messed with him, and he will enjoy every second of their suffering.

However, something was wrong. You see… he was stuck in the air.

He tried to wobble and swim, but he wouldn’t move an inch. Then he realized that all his weight was being held by the steel pieces of armor all over him. Finally he dodges his eyes downwards, and sees all of team JNPR together, having won their battle against Niko and Odion. Pyrrha was holding him in place with one hand extended.

At that moment, Shay could only make a fake confident smile, but sweating bullets. “Hey, sweetheart… Have we met before? I don’t think we have! How about you put me down, huh?”

Pyrrha’s eyes were half-closed, showing the utmost discontent imaginable. She could only remember the horrible torture that this asshole put her through, and nothing else. Killing him now wouldn’t be a bother. It won’t even weigh her down mentally or tire her physically. After hearing the alarm of the self-destruct sequence, Ruby swooped in, grabbed Yang, and jumped out of the titan. Only then, Pyrrha replied, “Sure. I’ll put you down.”

And so, she lowered him back into the titan, and used her metal powers to completely seal the hole, trapping him inside. She kept crumbling its limbs until it was just a box of metal. Meanwhile, Shay was saying, “NO! NO NO NO NO! NOT LIKE THIS! PLEASE, JUST GIVE ME ONE MORE CHANCE! I’LL MAKE UP TO YOU! I SWEAR! I JUST NEED A LITTLE MORE TIME! YOU JUST NEED TO GIVE ME MORE TIME!”

Finally she raises her hand above her head, levitating the ruined mecha far up into the sky, at a distance where its explosion wouldn’t damage the city whatsoever. Shay then began screaming his guts out, until finally it went KABOOM! Some dirty fireworks he became. Man, what a SATISFYING way to kill a gross, pedophilic, conniving and cruel son of a bitch. Now I know why everyone likes to write one dimensional villains — it’s too fun to kill them.

With that, the battle outside of Argus is over. Or at least, the battle against the Branwen tribe and the androids. Now the heroes look ahead, and realize that dozens of Grimm were coming towards the gate, which was now blasted open thanks to the fight against the titan. They had to stay there and protect the wall, and so they killed the Grimm around them and rushed to join their friends against the horde.

Commentary (spoilers): If I made the plots of every volume just a little bit less bonkers, Jaune and Pyrrha would’ve solved their romance plot by volume IV. Romance is not my strong suite, but it’s the only thing left for both characters, so I have to milk it. To have them finally admit their love, at the final act of the second-to-last volume, is the most Shounen thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It doesn’t get more Shounen than that. Or maybe all anime have shitty romance pacing like that — I don’t bother to watch them all to know.

This whole battle gets way more fucked up in the timeline where Qrow dies. Ruby would get way more of a spotlight as she struggles to accept that her beloved father is dead, but still finds the strength to move on and defeat Shay. Since I didn’t pick that, this fight is way more emotionally dry. Of course, Yang hates Shay for what he did to Raven and Vernal, but without Vernal or Raven present, Yang can’t really see the stakes of which she’s fighting for. Literally no one is in danger, except Shay himself. I guess I’m not used to having team RWBY in the B plot. It feels so weird that their fights lack stakes, but I guess that’s just how it is.

On another point, holy shit Ruby didn’t do anything in this Volume. It’s even more pathetic when you consider that she’s the first best friend of THE MAIN CHARACTER of this part, and yet the simple geographical distance makes it completely impossible for them to interact EVEN ONCE. Hell, now that I think about it, Ruby hasn't talked with Penny (on screen) since VOLUME IV. That makes me facepalm so freaking hard, considering how much I love these two interacting. They are a near-perfect comedic duo, and quite wholesome. I guess it’s the exact same as the original Rwby, but I set out to be slightly better than them, damn it! What a shame it brings me. I can only hope her friendship with the other members of team PCFHR makes as big of an impression as she did with Ruby.

Well, the outside battle is over. There’s an army of Grimm trying to enter the nation, but the warriors of Vale can manage — especially when Pyrrha has so much metal scrap lying around to use. They simply cannot join the others inside for now, and so let’s see how they are faring on their own.

First, the fight on the dreadnought. Ironwood just plunges through walls and doors on his way to reach Watts as fast as possible, all the while fighting android soldiers on his way. At the same time, Watts was going crazy fast on the keyboard in order to fire the nuclear missiles, but at the nick of time Ironwood arrives and uses his gun to shoot down all the computers of the control room, canceling the launch. Watts will now have to launch them remotely by going to each of them and setting the coordinates manually. Ironwood tries to fight him, but unfortunately, Watts in the android paladin body is kind of overpowered. He beats the shit out of Ironwood and almost throws him out of the ship through the control room window, but he manages to hold on and continues pursuing Watts.

This fight now may seem quite familiar. Ironwood is chasing Watts through a maze-like complex on his way to mess with computers, and Ironwood must stop him. It’s basically their same fight from the original volume 7, except now Watts is a bulked up android that is taller than Ironwood. Of course I don’t have the exact choreography planned out, but most of their fight is still about them playing with gravity and walls. Since Ironwood shot down the control room, the ship is tilting to the sides randomly, forcing the two to run in the walls and ceiling until it stabilizes. Watts doesn’t want to waste time, so he merely shoots ironwood from a distance using the laser blasters in his hands.

Ironwood continues chasing Watts and shooting up all the corridors they run through, and eventually they arrive at the weapon station of the east side — the place where they recharge bullets and bombs from the outer weapons. The nuke missile is already prepared for launch, inside the biggest canon of this side of the ship. Watts starts pressing the buttons on the control pad as fast as he possibly could with robotic precision, but just as he was about to press enter, Ironwood pulls up and suplexes him away from the control panel. Then he started pressing the buttons himself, canceling the launch before finally ripping out the control pad to make sure it couldn’t be fired again. He won… or at least for now. 

Ironwood knew that there were two bombs — one that was meant for Haven, and the other meant for Vale. Now Watts just has to run all the way to the other side of the ship, and fire the other one. He decides to take care of Ironwood here and now, and prevent further interference. And so Watts uses his superior basic stats to completely wipe the floor with Ironwood, going full melee. Watts never trained to fight, but he has access to a database of fighting moves, of which his android body can perfectly replicate against Ironwood. The general ran out of ammo during the chase, both on his robot arm and the black revolver, so he was forced to throw hands. And when Watts feels like he might take too long to kill James, he decides to abuse his main ability. He could literally touch any part of the ship, any computer or stationed mecha armor, and he would start absorbing its energy to power himself up, boosting all of his stats. Now he has overwhelmed Ironwood completely, and to finish him off, he uses his new weapon, the hologram box, to end the fight.

He trapped Ironwood’s human arm into the holographic shield, locking him in place. That should keep him quiet for now, and so Watts abandons the fight and runs to the west weapon station. And boy, if you think Ironwood was a gigachad before, he’s about to drop the biggest banger of his whole career.

Seeing himself as the only thing capable of saving Vale, Ironwood starts pulling his arm out with all his strength. He screams in pain but doesn’t stop, and the result… his sole human arm is ripped off his body. Yeah this isn’t the PG version of Rwby, what did you expect? It’s a good way to show what lengths he is willing to go, in order to ensure peace. Despite the pain and the bleeding, he immediately continues to run.

This time Watts arrived at the bomb's control pad and took his time programming the missile. He didn’t expect Ironwood would show up again, tackling him away from the bomb’s controls again, but that’s exactly what happened. James tries his hardest to wrestle Watts away from the controls, but the lack of a limb and the weakness that come from the pain simply don’t help Ironwood at all. Despite his efforts, Watts is able to toss him away, and press the final button.

A special hatch opens on the side of the dreadnought, and so the HUGE missile gets fired. It cuts through the air at great speed, and Watts laughs maniacally seeing his magnum opus flying away. Now all he needs to do is kill Ironwood and the other Ace-Ops, but lucky for the general, the dreadnought completely lost its power at a convenient timing, and so it started to fall from the sky. Soon they will crash on top of several houses, but the Ace Ops cleared that neighborhood a while ago, so no one will be killed. 

The dreadnought hits the ground after a long drop, getting completely destroyed both from the impact and the following explosions. Ironwood’s and Watts’ fates is left ambiguous for now.

…

Let’s focus back on Robin.

All she had to do was cross Argus, and arrive at the battle between Penny and Weiss. However, there was a whole army posted in every corner, every rooftop, all packing heavy guns and even Dust Bullets. Robin is struggling to get past them alone, and fears she may not be fast enough. It was then that she started to hear some voices in her head. It was Penny’s voice. Either a hallucination fueled by her own guilt, or a genuine call that she was able to sense with her Aura, Robin suddenly could hear Penny desperately crying for help — stuck inside the robot body without being able to control herself.

It led to a moment of awakening for Robin. She walked out into the main street, holding her crossbow and Ironwood’s revolver in both hands. The robots all pointed at her in silence, and so she said, “My friend is crying for my help… Get out of my way!… I’LL NOT BE STOPPED BY SOME WORTHLESS SCRAPS OF METAL!”

And so, Robin evolves her semblance AGAIN. From “Hawkeye”, to “Deadeye”, and now finally to “All-seer”. Robin’s pupil splits again, now becoming three individual pupils shaped slightly like triangles. Now, not only could she see perfectly from many miles away, not only could she see in slow motion, but now she can see everything. She can see places that her eyes aren’t aimed towards, even behind her, or hidden in the corner that she has no perspective of. One last power up for our deuteragonist.

And so begins my favorite sequences in the volume.

Robin merely walks down the main road like it was nothing, never tilting her head or shifting her eyes. And yet, she’s able to nail every shot directly in the forehead of every android in the entire block. She was easily dropping them, and only doing very slight movements in order to dodge the gun fire aimed at her. She’s even ricocheting bullets to hit androids behind cover. Hell, if you want her to do that Ultrakill shit of bouncing a bullet off a coin in the air, go ahead, animation team. I just want this to be the most badass scene in the entire volume, and nothing less.

After dropping around fifty robots with just a few scratches on her, Robin finally arrives at the battle between Penny and Valkyrie Weiss. And well, it seems that Weiss lost. She wasn’t able to defeat Penny in time, and now her transformation ended. She’s really low on Aura, and Penny wasn’t damaged enough to be stopped. However, just then Robin arrived doing a cool pose and stopping the fight, still carrying the metal box on her back. She lets it fall to the ground, and comes face to face with evil Penny. 

“Harriet… You really managed to bring help… Thanks… If it wasn’t for you, we would all be doomed right now. You did a good job… I couldn’t have picked someone better to replace me as team captain.” Robin says.

Harriet smiles excitedly, and tells her that the rest of the force are protecting the gate from a Grimm invasion. They don’t have much time. And so, Robin relays her orders. She wants Harriet, Weiss and Blake to go straight after the dreadnought, and help in the battle. Meanwhile, Robin will fix Penny. She has a tool that can bring her back to her senses. The others decide to trust her, despite Penny’s overwhelming power. Soon the three run along, and so it’s just Penny and Robin.

Their final battle begins.

…

Let’s go back to the battle in the city. Ciel just dropped off Ironwood and Winter, and continued to attack the dreadnought at several points using the Golden Eagle’s claws. Fiona is in the cockpit with her, and does nothing but scream at all the missiles flying everywhere around them. Soon they witness Winter get hit in the air by an explosion, and was sent plummeting to the city below. At the same time, one of the wings of the golden eagle was finally struck by the heavy fire, damaging its ability to fly, so they decided to land this bird and go check on Winter. 

She was fine — well, as fine as one can be after falling 30 thousand feet down into concrete. She broke her sword-wielding arm, and while dazed by the impact, she found herself surrounded by androids that were about to gun her down. They were about to pull the triggers, but then Harriet, Weiss and Blake arrived at the nick of time, destroying all of them.

“So that’s how the future general of Atlas falls, huh?” Weiss said, giggling.

“Haha… real funny. For a second I was about to start missing you.” Winter replied

Soon after that, Ciel and Fiona landed right beside them on the Golden Eagle, and now the whole gang is together. Winter updates Harriet, Blake and Weiss on the whole situation with the city-wiping bomb, Evil Penny and Watts, and once they are finally done explaining… The missile was fired high above. 

They watched as it blasted out of the dreadnought, and shot straight towards the east, leaving a trail of white smoke behind. Soon after that, the dreadnought started to fall.

Now, the three had to do something quick. Fiona, Harriet and Ciel looked at each other in silence, knowing exactly what they had to do. They needed to fly after the nuke and stop it from reaching Vale City. They hop aboard the Golden Eagle again, and Winter tries to come with them. However, Harriet kicks her in the stomach, sending her flying out. “Sorry, boss… This might be a one-way flight. No need to have that many passengers. Weiss, Blake… Thank you, for everything. Please take care of her.” she said, closing the door as the golden eagle takes off. Now the others can only pray that Vale will be safe. They witness the dreadnought crashing far away, and decide to go see if Ironwood is still alive in there.

Let’s follow the three girls and the bomb, first.

They were speeding fast through the sky, but the damaged wing of the eagle made it impossible for them to catch up to Watt’s missile. They were going so fast over the plains that Ciel estimated that it would take just thirty minutes for it to reach Vale City at this speed. They have to figure out a way to catch up, and so Harriet has an idea — She will use her Semblance on a scale never before seen. 

However, with the very tight cockpit of the eagle, all she can do to generate speed energy is do some push ups and jumping jacks. It wasn’t producing energy fast enough, so she had to do something she never tried before, but it will work in theory. She started spinning around in place, getting progressively faster as she did so. She got sick really easily and was left dazed, but it built up as much speed energy as a full sprint. Finally Harriet presses both of her hands on the control stick of the eagle.

The speed energy starts to flow across every screw, bolt and engine of the golden eagle, and it finally starts getting a lot of speed. Enough speed to finally catch up and stand side by side with the flying nuke. The girls now all look at each other, thinking this might be the end. All they have to do now is crash the eagle against it, and they will save thousands of innocent lives. They can only lament having such short lives without being able to be free, even to their last moments. However, it was then that Fiona got the memo of what Robin previously told her.

She didn’t want her friends to die like this, and she didn’t want to let the people of Vale get nuked out of nowhere either. If she wants to solve this in the best way, she has to believe in herself. Believe that she has the power to make a difference. And so, Fiona takes leadership and proposes another plan. She will try to absorb the entire nuke into her pocket dimension, but first she needs to grab it. The others think it’s ludicrous, given how big the missile is. However, Fiona seems more confident now than she ever has been in her life, and so that confidence urges them to believe their friend.

Ciel flies ahead of the nuke as Harriet continues to generate speed. Once they are flying at a nice distance ahead, Fiona opens the side hatch of the eagle, and jumps for it. She was able to land on top of the missile and hold on, being pushed back by the strong wind. Now she looks ahead, and can already see Vale City in the far distance. It was now or never. She started to use her Semblance on the giant missile, coating it with her green Aura as she tried to absorb it. The timer display on the bomb said she only had one fucking minute now, so she starts to scream and use all of her remaining will power. The people of the city look up and see the bomb and the golden eagle flying in the distance, eventually passing over the city gates.

Just when the timer was five seconds from hitting zero, Fiona does the impossible, and absorbs the huge thing into herself. The green light makes the bomb pop out of existence, and now Fiona passes out. She was still flying insanely fast, so her body fell to the city and crashed against several rooftops in a row, before finally stopping in the main street. Ciel was able to stop the golden eagle and park it right beside where Fiona landed, so they could see if she was still alive. 

She was bleeding from her forehead and had several broken bones from the crash. After calling her name repeatedly for a whole minute, Fiona opens her eyes again. She sees Harriet and Ciel crying over her, finally bursting into joy as she wakes up. The three hug each other and cry, feeling the adrenaline of a lifetime.

The people of Vale simply watched without understanding anything — without knowing they just saved all their lives. With that, their scenario is over, and so it is their part on this war.

…

Going back to the city, the Schnee sisters and Blake went to check on the fallen dreadnought, and they only found pure destruction, fire and metal scraps everywhere. The massive fortress crashed on top of the whole neighborhood, creating the most epic fighting stage that we’ve seen in a while. They went around screaming for Ironwood or any other survivors, however, they were unfortunate to bump straight into Watts, emerging out of a pile of rubble. The massive android in black armor appears in front of them, with his black and yellow cape flapping behind him. Despite what just happened, he’s feeling pretty good. Vale will be destroyed shortly, and so the survival of Atlas will be guaranteed. All he has to do now is get rid of all Ace-Ops, so he can take back control over his nation. He’ll start with Winter.

Weiss and Blake rush at him, but let’s just say — they get wrecked. Weiss is out of energy from her transformation, and they are both pretty wounded from fighting Penny. They simply weren’t expecting to fight a STRONGER version of Penny right after fighting normal Penny. After both are knocked the hell away by powerful punches and kicks, Winter rushes in to attack, but can’t match him either. His solid hologram box is just too OP for any given situation — perfect defense and offensive capabilities. To the surprise of no one, Ironwood also survived the crash, and came out of nowhere to help Winter fight him even with one arm missing. However he’s not strong enough to help at all, and now Winter will not fight anymore because she decided to focus on treating Ironwood’s severe blood loss. 

No matter, though. All the other Ace-Ops now gather at the dreadnought ruins so they can jump Watts together. Their full team should have people like Katt, Flynt, Elm, Kobalt, Clover, May, and Cordovin’s bodyguard twins. Despite their united strength, Watts just steamrolls through all of them with ease. It’s honestly badass as hell for him, and a bit hilarious — it's like Broly bodying the Z-warriors in his first movie regardless of how much numbers the Ace-Ops have. This is just one final fighting sequence to remind us of the sheer threat of Watts before his true final fight.

And now, let’s go find his final opponent.

Robin versus Evil Penny was going pretty raw. Despite her sick new power, Robin wasn’t fast enough to compete with Penny. At least she could dodge her flying sword like a god without the need to look at it, thanks to her new Semblance. For her to win though, first she needs to tear off the black armor from Penny’s neck, and then find an opportunity to stab her with the reboot device. All the while they were trading blows and shots, Robin could continuously hear Penny’s soul crying out. She was begging Robin to just kill her, because she didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore. We even see the interior of her soul, as Penny remains trapped in that void of code from many episodes ago.

It was a long and arduous battle. Robin got severely damaged over time, but she was finally able to tear off Penny’s armor. Now she had to get in close, however, Penny decided to play ranged now. She isn’t getting anywhere fighting like this. Robin realizes that, if she wants Evil Penny to come close, she has to put herself in a position to be killed. The fight continues on for the entire rest of the episode, but let’s cut straight for the end. After using all her tricks and weapons, Robin did one final clash against Penny. The robot girl immediately pulled back her flying sword to her hand, and with a swift spin, she was able to stab Robin directly in her chest.

It was over. 

Blood started to pour out of Robin’s mouth, but then she used her last strengths to keep holding on. The blade pierced her heart, but she couldn’t allow herself to die before finishing the mission. She clutched Penny in place by holding onto the sword, and with her free hand, she delivered the decisive stab in her neck with the reboot device. Penny’s eyes lost their red color, going fully white for a moment.

And so, we’re taken to a scene inside Penny’s mind again.

She saw herself stabbing Robin in the heart with her own hands, and she screamed out the most powerful and painful scream that her VA could muster. However, soon she started seeing the effects of that sacrifice. The dark void around her turned to the color white. Red lines of code started appearing in the distance, but they were being destroyed, and replaced by blue ones. Penny kept looking around as it happened, and soon she looked forward. Someone suddenly appeared in front of her.

“Looks like they got you in some trouble, pumpkin.” said Pietro. Her father was right in front of her.

“Dad, what… What are you doing here? How?” Penny asked.

“It’s a little hard to explain. Well, let’s say I worried about the future a little too much. Even if I wanted you to live freely, I couldn’t help but think about what would happen to you after I was gone. That’s what fathers are supposed to do, isn’t it? I left this little version of me in here, because there’s something I needed to tell you.” Pietro said.

“Father, I… I got my memories back! I remember everything! I remember you, and uncle Arthur, and aunt Tess!… And I’m glad I remembered… I wouldn’t trade the memories I had with you three for anything in the world!… You must’ve been so lonely for all those years, father… I’m sorry I couldn’t be there to help you…” Penny said.

“Penny, please, just… just don’t, okay?… It was my mistake… I was a fool. I allowed my ambition cloud my reason, and I ended up dragging you down with me. I should’ve never ignored your warnings, or your fears… Everything that happened that day, it was all my fault… That’s all that I wanted to tell you, but never got the chance… I’m sorry you had to be my daughter.” Pietro said.

“Dad, please don’t say these things… I don’t hate you for what happened… I forgive you, and no matter what happens… I still love you.” Penny says.

The Pietro AI scratches the back of his head. “I’m just some fancy lines of code, you know… Please don’t get so emotional, okay? I don’t deserve those kind words, but, well… Thank you… I hope you made many new friends, Penny. I hope you continue to help them all, as you would’ve helped me… We don’t have much time left. The reboot is complete… Is there anything else you want to say?”

“Thank you… Thank you for letting me live again… All the wonderful friends I made, I was only able to meet them because of you… I’ll never forget you, dad.” Penny said, crying with her soul.

The white hue around them started to glow, eventually swallowing them both with light.

…

Finally, Penny opens her eyes back into the real world. Her eye color returned to green, and her hair became ginger once more — don’t ask me why. She’s already making a face of pure dread, once she sees that Robin is still at the end of her sword. She quickly pulls it out, and catches Robin before she falls. Both immediately start to cry, one with sadness, and the other with joy. Penny says, “Robin… What have I done?… Oh my gosh… Robin, I’m… I’m so sorry!… I just-- I just couldn’t stop it. I’m sorry!!--”

“That’s okay… Penny… I’m so glad that… I was able to bring you back… I wouldn’t be able to live with myself… If I allowed you to be that guy’s slave forever… You don’t deserve that… There’s so many more things you have to learn… So many more people that only you can help… Please, don’t mind me… Just go… The others… they need you…”

“Robin… But… But what about your dream?!” Penny cried louder.

“I know that… all of you… will be able to make my dream come true… much better than I could on my own… I’m sure that Atlas… Mantle… Argus… and even the whole world… is going to become a much better place… in your hands… 

Thank you… Thank you, Penny… for making my dream… come true.” Robin said, closing her eyes and making a genuinely sweet smile, despite the pain she’s in. She only has a few seconds left now. “Before I forget… In that box, over there… there’s a present for you, from your father… Please… Use it to save everyone… I believe in you… Penny…”

…

And so, Robin Hill, age twenty, finally gives her last breath.

For a character who I never had any intentions towards, or even liked to see in the original show… holy shit, she grew on me a lot over the course of writing this. She fought and died for her dream, and the dreams of others. What a good fucking hero story.

Penny continues hugging her body for a whole minute longer, before laying her down carefully on the floor, and walking straight after the box on the ground. She stares it down in awe, and so she slowly places her hand upon its surface…

And finally, the magic starts happening.

Cybernetic lines start to glow all around the box, activating the transformation sequence. Suddenly the box breaks apart into several pieces that fly around in the air, gearing into completely new shapes as they float. The dark armor Penny was using now breaks out of her, allowing the flying pieces to connect all over her limbs. Her whole body starts glowing with green light, and so begins the second and coolest magical girl transformation sequence of this show.

The pieces connect to Penny, detaching her body apart temporarily as they grip onto her joints and extend her limbs. She grew taller, her orange hair grew long and smooth, and she became way more curvaceous. By the end, she was no longer a teenage girl — she now looks like a fully adult woman, roughly the same age as Winter. This is what Penny was supposed to look like, if she never died. And to boot the final design, she was given a bright green and gray spandex suit, and she now had SIX flying swords instead of one. Needless to say, she looks absolutely badass!

She was ready, and so she cradled Robin’s body in her arms, and flew away with her jet boots. Her destination: the destroyed dreadnought. It was time for the final battle.

Watts spent an hour just beating the shit out of all Ace Ops into a pulp. It was finally time to finish off Winter and Ironwood, and they wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing against him. Winter’s sword arm is broken and Ironwood is unconscious. She can’t activate her Semblance with so many friends close, or else they would all die frozen. Watts prepares for the kill, when suddenly…

Penny arrives, shaking the ground with a superhero landing. Watts is frozen in place at what he sees. Penny’s menacing glare makes him back away. And so, she places Robin’s body right beside Winter, and tells her to take care of Robin. It takes a little while for them to process that this is Penny, since both her figure, age and voice changed considerably. Without delay, she decides to test her upgrades.

Achieving an insanely fast speed, Penny is able to disappear and reappear in front of Watts without him even reacting, and then using a high kick to send the bastard flying away. She follows after, and so the two land at a completely empty part of the dreadnought ruins. No one is around to interrupt them, or get hurt. Now they can talk.

“Is that you, android?! How?! How did you gain back control?! I erased everything that you were, and replaced you for something better! Who modified your body like that?! ANSWER ME!” Watts said.

“Uncle Arthur… It’s me, Penelope.” Penny said, making Watts' eyes open wide with shock. “I never expected that I would see you again… not like this.”

“Oh, please! YOU’RE NOT PENELOPE! PENELOPE IS DEAD! You’re just a random carcass of metal with a fake soul inside! Don’t think you can fool me with something so pathetic and cheap! You don’t have her memories! You don’t have her brilliance! YOU DON’T EVEN KNOW WHO I AM!!!” Watts replied.

“Of course I do… You were a father to me, just as much dad and aunt Tess were… You taught me so many things back then. How to write, how to count, and how to play, and how to behave… and you always told me that we should treat our family and friends with kindness, even when they are rude, because they only want what’s best for us… I also remember that you once told me that my name belongs to a very kind and noble woman…” Penny went on saying, and as she did, Watt’s face started to sink, because what she was saying was the truth. He couldn’t believe it, but he was too smart to just ignore hard facts like that. Penny finished, “Uncle, please… It’s me, Penny… I don’t want to fight you, I just want all of this pain and suffering to be over… You need to stop… What you’re doing isn’t right, you can’t just--”

“OF COURSE YOU WOULD DOUBT ME! EVERYONE ALWAYS SAYS THE SAME THING! THEY DOUBT MY ABILITIES AND MY INTELLECT! I thought you were different, you fool! I thought you would understand! YOU ABOVE ALL OTHERS SHOULD UNDERSTAND! All I’m trying to do is achieve the same dream that we both had! All I want is the perfect Atlas that we wanted to create, together! And if you can’t realize that, THEN YOU’RE NOT PENELOPE, AND I WILL DESTROY YOU!” Watts said.

Penny looks down, with a face of genuine sadness. “Do you even hear yourself talking?… You’re not listening to reason… I don’t think you want to. Not anymore… I don’t know what you’ve been through since I died. You must’ve felt sad, angry and lonely… and that loneliness made you believe in things that aren’t true… But please, uncle, you have to stop. You can’t keep going like this. You’re not gonna win… PLEASE, I BEG YOU!”

“Much the contrary… I have already won, my dear… Some miserable Ace Ops? I handled them just fine. A girl that can control metal? I’ll strike where it hurts her the most. People revolting against me? I’ll just have to remind them why I rose to power in the first place. They will thank me later… And now, a worthless imitation, trying to tell me what I should do, or who I should be?… You know what, android? I’ll prove to you how superior I am! I’ll defeat you, I’ll DESTROY you, and I’ll leave your head working after I’m done, so you get to watch as I turn this nation INTO AN UTOPIA, AND MY ENEMIES … INTO DUST!!!” Watts said, assuming a lower stance.

And so, Watts begins HIS transformation sequence.

Two pillars of metal and light rise from his shoulders. They start to glow, and so Penny watches as sparks begin flying in the air. Pure electricity was coming from the rubble and flying straight to the two pillars on Watts’ shoulders. He was absorbing all energy left in the pieces of the entire dreadnought. His android body underneath the black armor started to glow yellow, and Penny could sense that he grew twice as strong as before. He was fully energized again, and so the two pillars retracted into his torso. Watts built his body with the purpose of combat. He saw no way that Penny could defeat him.

And so the two started to fight. Watts’ body was way more bulky and physically stronger than hers, but she was faster and more experienced now. She knew that she couldn’t allow herself to be touched by Watts, or else he would absorb her energy through his palms again. Thankfully now she had SIX flying swords to play ranged with. In turn, Watts solid-hologram projector was an amazing defensive tool that could create shields anywhere at will.

The first phase of the battle is pretty simple. Penny evades and tries to deliver shallow damage to Watts, not having the guts to hurt her uncle despite all the evil shit he has done. She’s THAT pure of a girl. The first phase concludes as the two are able to destroy each others’ weapons. Watts is able to destroy five of Penny’s flying swords, but in turn Penny was able to destroy his hologram box.

Penny continues trying to convince Watts to stop his madness, but it only makes him more mad. Like, really, he’s going completely nuts with power, and he has become too arrogant to question his ability to win. While they were fighting, the two happened upon a pile of rubble that contained the motherfucking second Dust nuke that wasn’t fired. 

Apparently it didn’t blow up, because it’s not blown up by impact, but by a timer. Upon quick inspection, Penny realized that the timer on its broken display… is counting down. Watts shouts at her, “LISTEN TO ME, WHELP! That fool Ironwood has thwarted the launch, but I had already started the bomb countdown! It was supposed to fly all the way to Haven, and explode there in two hours! That bastard risked destroying his own city to defend our enemies, and you continue listening to his orders like a stupid puppy! Thankfully to all of us, I know the code to stop the explosion.”

“THEN DO IT! DO IT NOW!” Penny shouted.

“… No. I’ll destroy you first! IF YOU CARE FOR ATLAS AND YOUR FRIENDS THAT MUCH, THEN YOU BETTER DIE QUICKLY! HAVE SOME CLASS!” Watts said.

And so begins the second phase.

Though Penny still has hope for Watts, she won’t allow those hopes to bring the doom of all people in Argus. It was time to lock in, and defeat him once and for all. If he’s taken down, maybe he’ll forfeit the code. Now Penny goes with her full power and the desire to cause damage, and starts to kick his ass really hard, as she could’ve done from the beginning. One hot ginger lady beating the shit of a massively taller guy who’s five times her weight — just as god intended. They trade a flurry of punches and kicks, and fly around in the air as the fight rages on. They shoot laser beams of pure energy from a distance, but those were too weak to pierce through their bodies. Watts got so angry that he started to pick up massive pieces of rubble from the dreadnought, tossing them at Penny, only for her to cut through them with the flying sword. And well, if the music choice didn’t make it clear what this is an homage off, you’re a lost cause.

Finally, Penny flies the sword into her hand, and activates the same ability she used at the beginning of the volume to destroy the Black Widow. She put all her reserved energy into her palm, which started flowing into the sword and turning it into a blade of raw energy that cuts anything like butter. Now she was able to pierce through Watts’ armor and cut his android body. With her mind made, she delivers a long barrage of slashes at him, and finally impaling him with the sword.

Watts looks down, feeling no pain, but instead a lot of shame and outrage. He can see that she struck precisely in the internal Dust deposit, making white liquid leak out of the wound. He would start losing power, and so decided to bet it all on one last tackle. Penny confronted him head on, and so their palms collided. They held each other’s hands and wrestled to find out who’s strongest. Watts had the advantage, but then Penny used headbutt to knock him back, and pulled her sword out of his chest. Watts was stunned, and so it was time to finish the fight. She started slashing across his chest repeatedly, looking like a saw blade from how fast she was moving. She cut through his chest plate and exoskeleton, and with her final swing, she was able to split. Watts. IN HALF!!!

The fight was over.

…

Watts falls in two separate pieces on the ground, only having one arm that wasn’t cut off, and his head. He started to mumble stuff like, “This… is… Impossible… I created… the perfect body… I should be… the ultimate warrior… HOW?!”

Penny walks in front of him. “Uncle… you’re finished… You’ve already caused far too much damage to Atlas. Please, you still have the chance to stop it! TELL ME THE CODE TO STOP THE BOMB!” She says. However, Watts looked paralyzed. He was afraid, and his system was messing up due to damage he took, and the lack of energy.

“Please… I… don’t want… to end it here…” Watts said.

“Oh no… Don't’ tell me… You thought you’d never be defeated, and would never need to rest, and so you didn’t bother to program a restart function, didn’t you?… If you shut down now, you won’t sleep… you will die… correct?” Penny said.

“Pe… Penelope… Please…” Watts said. And so, he was able to pull on Penny’s good heart. She extended her hand to him, and he held it. With that, he started to absorb a bit of her energy through her palm, and had just enough to keep himself afloat.

“There, that should be enough. Don’t worry, you’ll live long enough to get an energy transfer. Now tell me, uncle! What is the password?! Please, we don’t have time!” Penny said. Watts felt the energy power up his system.

“You… You actually… saved me?… Good job. At least you’re useful for something.” Watts said. Penny asked for the code again, and so he looked at her with really menacing eyes. “Eleven thirty. Twenty fifteen. Sixty… five.”

Penny turned her back to go fix the bomb, and so…

We enter Watts’ mind.

“This… This is impossible… That miserable… that worthless imitation… was able to overpower me?… ME?!… You wretched, insolent little girl!… No, you’re not even that!… You’re a fake!… You’re less than nothing!… I’m ARTHUR WATTS!… I am the greatest mind that this nation has ever created!!… People like you are nothing but ants, who work for something that they don’t understand… something they can’t control, and can’t even see!… ONLY I have what it takes to rule this world to its full… ONLY I can see the full picture… while little pests like you aimlessly run to their demise!…” Watts was saying, as pictures of the past flash in his eyes. Moments of which he felt inferior to someone. To the emperor. To Pietro. To the council, and now to Penny. “I’m much better than you… I’M BETTER THAN ANY INSIGNIFICANT PERSON IN THIS CITY!!! NO, THE ENTIRE WORLD!!!… I cannot… I WILL NOT… Allow myself to be defeated by someone like you!… No one will be above me ever again… NO ONE!!!… and that’s why… that’s why…”

Watts raises his last remaining arm, and points it at Penny with her back turned. It starts to glow yellow as he prepares one final and powerful laser blast to fire at her, using all the energy that Penny just gave him. He can’t even comprehend that doing so will kill him — he just wants revenge. And so he finishes:

“THAT’S WHY… YOU MUST DIE BY MY HAND!!!”

Penny inserted the code he said, but it was wrong. She turned around quickly as she felt a terrible feeling, and saw him about to fire the blast at her. The light was blinding. The energy is released all at once, creating one massive wave of destruction. She won’t be able to deflect it. If she tanks it, she dies. If it hits the bomb, they all die anyway. And so, she simply gathered all her energy as well, and fired back just when the energy was about to engulf her.

“YOU FOOOOOOOLLL!!!!!!!” Penny shouted.

Her blast pierced through his. Despite being smaller it was much more powerful, and so Watts’ blast was being pushed back. He could do nothing except watch the energy come towards him slowly, and finally engulf his whole android body. He screams, but soon his voice is also muffled. Every inch of his body starts to be atomized, and reduced to dust. Once it’s all over, he finally explodes. Everyone in the city could see the light show from afar, and it gave a pretty good feeling that it was all finally over. It’s a not-so-sneaky copy of dragon ball… but fuck it. I loved it this way.

…

After the dust settled, Penny watched in silent shock as Watts’ tiny pieces fell from the sky. The look on her face is of sad disappointment, and regret. But she did what had to be done to save others, which is, ironically, something that Watts also taught her. 

…

The main villain was gone, so let’s go set the pieces for the final conclusion.

To our surprise, we meet with a very old and minor characters from Volume VI again. It was the redhead woman from the coliseum, who some might remember to be Pyrrha’s mom, Helen. She was watching the fight of the dreadnought play out from her doorstep, as she lives really far away from where it was taking place. However, soon an army jeep stopped in front of her house, and out came three androids. They came to kidnap her, and take her to a secret bunker far away. Watts obviously can’t beat Pyrrha, so he hopes that threatening her mother will be enough for her to back down until he figures something else. Helen refuses to be taken, and the android will have to use force. However… They are destroyed in a split second, by a spear.

“Hey, hun… I loved what you did to the front porch.” said Troy Nikos, suddenly appearing in the scene, killing the three androids. He looked beaten and with some cuts and slashes over his body, but looked fine and dandy. Helen immediately hugged him out of shock, and wanted to know what happened to him, and what he was doing here. Basically, he and the other normal human soldiers remained in the prison for the last three or four days. Watts kept a long range siege of the prison to make sure they didn’t escape. Troy was merely waiting for an opportunity to lead everyone out, and once he sensed all the battles taking place, he knew it was time. He single handedly destroyed all the robots besieging the prison, opening the path for the REAL army of Atlas to arrive at the battle.

And so, we see this montage of all of them raiding the many military bases across the city, gearing up, and setting out again to contain the situation. They finish off all the other robots who were posted across Argus, and finally arrive to help the wounded Ace-Ops after they got their asses whooped by Watts. Due to their assistance, most of them are going to survive, including Ironwood. A great majority of the soldiers moved out to the main gate, in order to help the Vale Huntsmen fight the Grimm. 

Team RWBY and JNPR watched as the ships and mechas, who tried to kill them not long ago, were now helping them in battle — piloted by actual people this time. One big detail I want for this part is for ALL of the Atlas soldiers to NOT use their helmets anymore. Now we can see clearly that they are people — individuals that came together to fight for a good cause, and not a mass of disposable idiots, even Cordovin.

…

Now, there’s two more important things that need to happen before the finale actually happens. First they gotta deal with the bomb. Penny brings it over to Ironwood and the others, trying to get answers on what to do. Everyone was freaked out, and they didn’t have anyone who wanted to risk opening up the display to cut the wires — it may kill them all anyway. It was at this dastard moment that Penny made the most courageous decision.

With her last remaining energy, she shoots for the sky with the bomb on her back. She wanted to fly so high up and so far away that the detonation wouldn’t hurt a single person. She only had five minutes, and so she blasted up like a rocket. Ironwood tried to stop her, but she was already gone.

She kept flying as high as she could, going towards the sea, and once her whole system had completely run out of energy, she used her sheer strength to toss the bomb even further away. Three, two, one… and kaboom. 

We cut to the perspective of every citizen in Argus, watching as the massive white explosion happened far away into the horizon, right above the sea. The soldiers and citizens cheered and celebrated in relief, while the Ace Ops merely watched in pure dread, thinking that Penny was dead…

After one grueling minute of suspense, they see something enveloped in smoke, flying back towards Argus. Once the smoke cleared, they all saw Penny. She was launched away by the shockwave of the explosion, and seemed to be fine. However, she was gonna crash to her fucking death this time. If she’s unconscious, her android body is just as tough as a regular android. It would break in a thousand pieces if it hit the floor at that speed. However, the lost child of Argus made her return.

Pyrrha and the rest of her team arrive, and she’s able to use her powers to slow Penny’s fall. Soon everyone reunites around her, and they can hear the reactor in her chest continue to make a sound. She was alive, and everyone cheered. Yang, Ruby and all other warriors from Vale and Haven also arrive, as apparently all the Grimm from that horde decided to run away again. The Branwen were detained, all androids were destroyed, and Watts was dead. Argus was safe, but now, looking at everyone around here…

Where is Winter, Blake and Weiss? With that question, the episode ends.

Commentary (spoilers): Yeah, that was something. You know, I didn’t expect how fond of this volume I would become over the course of writing it. I thought I would get this done in 70 pages or something, and now I see myself having to post it into two separate chapters again. The finale just sold me, I don’t know what to say. Fiona’s character arc, the mecha battle in the sky, Pyrrha being ungodly overpowered, Penny getting upgraded into adult form, Watts versus Ironwood, the bomb chase, the MGR ripoff, and the Iron giant ripoff. Above all, the death of Robin is something that I had planned out for the longest time. You see, “Robyn” in the original was supposed to knock at Robin Hood. However, In this rewrite, Emerald is already our Robin Hood — so much so her hair looks like a green hood on purpose. Am I the only one who ever noticed that? Anyway, I needed something else for Robin, and so I landed on “the red breasted robin”, which not only fit like a puzzle piece in her name, but also in her character design. It’s an old fairy tale story that has many iterations, but it’s always about a little bird who sacrifices itself for something that, although meaningless to the grand scale, is very important to someone in particular. I decided that I would center her whole character development around this one idea, while also keeping some traits of her being a freedom fighter, just to fit with the overall narrative of the volume. She’s not a god in the charisma or personality department like Penny is, but I think she can be appreciated as a really good mentor character that died for her friends. It’s thanks to her sacrifice that Watts was defeated, and Argus was saved from the explosion. The events that transpire in the next volume will make her death even more tragic, but it is vital to both her character arc and Fiona’s, so I can’t let her stay, even if I grew to like her. I guess all that is left now is to give closure, and hook everyone for the next and final volume.

While Penny was battling with Watts, and the other Ace-Ops stood behind to heal themselves a little, we cut to Ironwood, Weiss, Winter and Blake as they reunite once more. There was nothing that they could do in order to help Penny fight Watts, so they focused on keeping Irowood alive by making a tourniquet on his arm, which works. But then they try to see what was wrong with Robin, only to realize that she was dead. Suddenly Blake and Weiss are hit with a wave of guilt, believing it was a mistake for them to leave Robin alone to fight Evil Penny. However, it focuses mostly on Winter, as she hugs the body of her dead pupil, and admits that Robin was a much better soldier and person than Winter could ever hope to be, and she should’ve died instead. She simply can’t stand how worthless she became, and promises that she will make up to Robin by any means necessary. 

Just when things couldn’t look any worse… They found another problem. Weiss and Blake started to look around in dread, as if their astral senses caught notice of a familiar soul nearby. The feeling that this soul emits has been etched into their minds forever — it was haunting, angry and murderous. They decide to search for it, until they see it…

Someone in a black hood was searching the rubble of the dreadnought, and they watched from the shadows in silence. Eventually the person seemed to have found what it was looking for. It was lost there, in one of the destroyed rooms of the fortress.

The Relic of Creation.

The bright blue and gold colors made it very clear for Weiss and Blake what that thing was. The hooded figure then started to run away with it, and feeling a cold in their guts, the girls decided to follow. They shout at the person to stop, but she keeps running no matter what. Winter calls out for Weiss to come back, but she doesn’t, and so Winter is forced to feebly follow them while wounded.

Blake and Weiss chase that person until she simply stops, feeling like running was no longer the best option. The hooded figure says, with a woman’s voice, “You know what?… I figured I would pay you back for what you did to me, eventually. But now I’m wondering… why not do it now?”

The person pulls out their hood, revealing itself to be none other than Cinder Fall.

Half of her face, including her eye, was made of dark Grimm flesh, and her smile was crooked and horrifying. Weiss couldn’t help but cover her mouth in shock, as Blake’s hair and ears got all ruffled. Now it all makes sense — the Grimm horde that showed up at the gate, it was just a way for her to distract everyone. She’s the only one who could’ve done it. Apparently, Cinder came here just to fetch this thing, and take it back to Vacuo. Nothing else. But for the four little miserable bitches that ruined her dreams, she can always make an exception. She tosses the staff away, and takes off her hood fully this time, showing her new design, all dressed in black instead of red, and with her new Grimm arm as well.

Without a delay, Cinder begins to attack them. In case you forgot, Cinder is in a level relative to Ozpin, and has the Semblance to fully control and create fire. Weiss is tired after using the Valkyrie form, but she activates it again just so she can have a chance against Cinder. She was surprised to see Weiss’ new form and power boost, and was surprised to see the ice suit protect her from the fire. Still, it didn’t last long enough for Weiss to actually fight and damage Cinder, and so Weiss is completely out of Aura. Now it was Blake’s turn, and Blake mysteriously wants to talk this time.

“You… You damn, evil monsters disguised as a woman!… WHY?! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS?! WHY DID YOU CAUSED ALL THESE WARS?! WHY DID YOU PLAN ON DESTROYING ALL NATIONS, AND SPARE THE ONE WHO WON?! WHAT IS YOUR GOAL?!” Blake asked.

“Spare?… Oh… Oh, hohohou~ Oh yeah, that! I almost forgot about it. How careless of me… Well anyway, it was a lie.” Cinder said, smiling with glee. “I was never going to spare a single nation. I mean, I wasn’t going to kill literally everyone to begin with. I just liked saying that, because it made them so desperate to hear it — so easy to manipulate… In truth, I just wanted all of you to kill each other. Reduce your numbers before you eventually unite… I think it worked wonders, didn’t it? Just look at what happened to this city, or Vale, or Haven… or Planice.”

Blake’s eyes started to focus and sharpen. Her hair became more ruffled, and she gripped her sword tighter. Her mind was racing and she couldn’t formulate her thoughts. She says, “This… was all a lie? Just so then we would fight each other?… But… but all those people… The White Fang… the humans… Adam… They did all that, because he thought you--”

“Awww… don’t tell me… was he a friend of yours?” Cinder said, with an even wider psychotic smile.

Blake snarls and her hands start to shake. “Noir… Let’s kill her!…”

Blake’s own shadow crawled up her leg, and engulfed her sword. She activated her ultimate technique, creating the void blade, “Noir”. She dashes forward to strike Cinder, and the fight begins all over again. Cinder was wise enough to not let that thing touch her, under no circumstance. It was like a sword-shaped black hole, capable of eating her flames. In turn Cinder summoned her own lightsaber-like sword, which was able to clash with Noir. The thing is, all that Cinder had to do was spam her fire and heat as much as possible, and that would defeat Blake without question. She didn’t have to worry about anything. She wasn’t tired, or in a hurry, or wounded from a previous battle this time. It was actually quite easy to defeat Blake now.

She’s able to kick Noir out of Blake’s hand, and then proceed to slash her several times with her fire weapons. Finally Blake was left on her knees, with her legs too damaged to stand up. At that moment, Weiss springs back up, and tries to defend her friend even without any energy. Cinder sees the girl who tore out her eye, trying to fight her despite being totally defenseless. It was time for payback.

She proceeded to torture Weiss with several cuts all over her limbs. It was a long and bloody combo that even managed to break Myrtnaster in half, which finished shattering Weiss’ spirit. Finally, Cinder summoned a spear of fire. 

She tosses it at Weiss… and she gets impaled, right in the middle of her chest. 

Blake watches in pure horror as Weiss lets go of Myrtnaster’s handle, and falls on her back… She was dead. The spear stabbed through her heart, and she died instantly. Cinder laughed maniacally, while Blake just froze to her core. However, she wasn’t the one most pissed about this.

Cinder stops laughing, and turns her head to see… Winter, standing at the end of the road. 

Her gaze was absolutely terrifying. She was about to crash out harder than Gon and Vegeta combined. She started to walk slowly towards Weiss, with a completely emotionless face of shock. Cinder feels so much pressure from a sudden burst of Aura that she feels afraid to attack. Winter kneels before Weiss, with her hands trembling over her, as the spear of fire dissipates. Her heart was pierced, and her eyes were empty.

Winter wasn’t fast enough to save her sister. She wasn’t fast enough to tell her that their father and mother wanted to apologize to her. They were so close to all becoming a family again, and now it’s all slipping in between Winter’s hands. She let Robin die, and now Weiss. Harriet, Ciel and Fiona were out on a suicide mission, and she couldn’t save them as well. Winter was absolutely worthless… The only thing she can do now… is turn her gaze to the killer.

“Oh, you two look a little cute together. Was she your sis--” Cinder was saying, but before she finished, Winter activated her Semblance. A HUGE glyph appeared on the ground around her, surrounding all of them, even Blake. A layer of ice started to spread on the street, and the snow started to melt. Negative Zone has been activated. “What?! What is this?!”

Winter got up, and started walking towards Cinder, slowly and menacingly. “GET--- GET AWAY FROM ME! I--?!” Cinder shouted, and tried to summon her flames. However… instead of fire, her body started to get covered in ice. The effect of the semblance reversed how temperature worked. Hot equals cold. Something that goes fast will now move slower. Body temperatures will decrease to negative. And well, a woman who literally summons flames out of her skin, will naturally see herself trapped inside a huge ice cube, once she fails to understand what the power is doing. That’s what happened to Cinder. She was stuck in place and soon frozen solid, staring at Winter slowly walking towards her.

Winter simply raises her hand, and pokes her.

Cinder’s body is shattered into one million pieces inside the ice. She’s dead as well.

Now Winter looks back, and focuses on Weiss. She can’t allow this to happen — not so close to their good ending. Not on her watch. Winter didn’t know what to do, but her heart told her to just burn all her soul with as much intensity as she could, and her Semblance would do the thing for her. Winter powered up, and so the zone of the glyph started to form a dome of ice in the air. Now Blake and Winter were stuck inside, and they were frozen solid as well. People could walk in, and watch this horrifying scene that was encapsulated. Nothing inside could move.

The temperature inside the dome reached absolute zero. And now… I’ve been wondering about something. 

Speed generates heat, right? And the fastest something goes, the faster it perceives time. One might say that this is how time travel works, in case you were to move forward in time… But if you were to go back, wouldn’t you need the opposite? Cold instead of hot? Slow instead of fast? If something pierces the speed of light, and is hot like the core of the sun, that’s as good as traveling across time. But if something reaches a temperature below the absolute zero, through magic… What do you think will happen?

Yeah, that would happen. 

We merely watch from the outside, as the dome of ice became so cold that it broke through the limits of reality, and by doing so, time started to move back. All the events that took place inside that zone were reversed, while only Winter remained in place. She went back five minutes in time, to before Weiss was tortured and killed. With that, the dome breaks, and reality continues moving.

Weiss opens her eyes, and looks down. She was alive. Blake was also alive, and less hurt. Finally Winter collapses on the floor, being completely depleted of Aura. Weiss rushes to her side and hugs her, begging her not to die. “Winter… I don’t know how, but you did it! I’m still alive, see?! Please, PLEASE DON’T DIE ON ME NOW! WINTER!”

However, they failed to realize that, by reversing time, Winter also resurrected Cinder. She looks at them, and immediately shoots a massive fireball at the two sisters. Blake reacts this time — she makes Noir jump back to her hand, and she uses the void blade to cut the fire blast in half, barely saving them all. Meanwhile, Cinder was so freaked out by being one-shotted, that she decided to forget her vendetta and leave. She grabs the Relic of Creation and starts flying in the air with her fire. “MARK MY WORDS, YOU DAMN BRATS! I’M GONNA BURY EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU! WE MEET AGAIN IN THREE MONTHS!”

And so, just like that, she’s gone. Soon after that, everyone else saw the explosions caused by Cinder, and so Ruby, Yang and JNPR arrive at the scene. Jaune immediately starts healing the three, even waking up Winter. Though they are alive, they failed. Their prized Relic was stolen, and they still have no idea how terrible that actually is, since they are not on the same page as Ozpin and Leo. They kept gazing at the sky in shocked silence.

…

Team PCFHR had saved the day, and so they returned to Argus aboard the golden eagle. Fiona, Harriet and Ciel landed the ship and were eager to tell everyone how they saved Vale City, despite the odds going against them. The only problem is that now Fiona will never use her powers again, because if she does so, she’s gonna unleash a massive bomb and kill everyone — but let’s not worry about that. All that matters is that we’re all alive, and…

Oh…

Ironwood lost an arm. Penny is now a grown adult that barely resembles her old self, and towers over her three friends. And most notably, and worst… Robin is dead. 

Her body is left there in Ironwood's care, peacefully resting with a very gentle smile. The silence is absolutely horrifying, and of course, all members of team PCFHR start to cry. They couldn’t move or say anything. Penny simply covered her face and looked away. Fiona was the first to crumble, falling to her knees and crying on Robin’s chest. She was wailing, “Robin… How?… How could you?!… You said… You promised that we would all be free!… You said that all our dreams would come true, together!… If you’re not going to be there with me, WHAT’S MY DREAM EVEN WORTH?!… AHHH--- ROBIINNN!!! WHYYYYY?!!!”

It was so sad that it even managed to make RWBY and JNPR tear up, and they barely met or interacted with Robin so far. The older Ace-Ops just keep on staring down, closing their eyes in silent salute. With that, the screen slowly fades to black, which undoubtedly ends this whole crisis at long last.

But we’re still not over.

Somewhere, in a dark hole in an empty neighborhood of Argus, someone was left to rot. She was forgotten there, and merely awaited her death. It was Raven. She was strapped by chains, blindfolded, and with her red armor all removed. She was left pretty much naked, considering how little clothes she wears underneath said armor. Her wounds from the fight with Qrow weren’t healed, but weren’t enough to kill her. She’s just been left there, without the power to summon a portal, or eyes to teleport herself to the exit.

Eventually… the door to her cell opens.

It was Vernal.

“Hey there… mother…” Vernal said. “I can see that the others gave you a hard time. It would be a shame, but… I think that’s exactly what you deserve… Actually no… you… you deserve much worse.”

Vernal SOUNDLY draws her short sword, and slowly gives two steps ahead. “They told me everything… I SAW everything… You lied to me… You said that Yang was dead… All this time, you told me that my sister was dead… and for what?!… Did you just want to see me sad and miserable?!… Did you just want to hurt me, too?! Like all the others?!… I thought I could trust you… I looked up to you… I don’t… I don’t get it… Why did you lie?!” She says, already tearing up from distress.

Raven sees herself alone, lost in the dark, and surely about to die. It was now or never to let her true feelings fly out. She replies with her cracked voice, “I don’t know… or at least, not back then… It just felt right… Deep inside me, I knew that if I told you the truth, you would’ve gone after her… I was afraid you would leave me forever, just like… just like everyone else I loved…

Vernal… You were the only person in decades… who reminded me of how it feels to be loved… to be respected and liked, not because of how strong I am, or how scary I look… Even if I was a terrible mother, you never stopped believing me… And I was so afraid that I would lose your love, that I would do anything to keep you on my side…

But now I know that… I don’t deserve your love… I was a terrible leader… I let you be abused, and picked on by others, because I thought that would make you stronger… I turned my eye to your sadness… In the end, it’s just like you said, Summer… In the end, I was too stupid to change things… too weak… I was doomed to die like a moron, just like my father… I gave everything away, and now I have nothing to show for it... I’m worthless.

Please… just get over with it… just kill me… that’s the last thing I’ll ever ask you as your mother.” Raven finished. Vernal was looking at her, and started to lose all her fire as she spoke. Raven was looking more sad than evil, and now she didn’t know what to do. She didn’t want to hurt her anymore. Raven realized that, and continued:

“What… you’re gonna give up? Now?… Come on, Vernal. I know you want it… I know that anger inside of you… it will never stop bothering you, until you do it… But if you are really having second guesses now, let me tell you a secret… 

The one who tried to kill Yang that day… It was me… 

I chased her down… I tried to kill her sister, and her uncle… and when she chose them over me, I got so angry… I really wanted her to die… I spent such long years hoping that she would love me… only to be met with disgust, and fear… I hated her for it… Heheh~… Now that I think about it, Vernal, I never really lied to you… I didn’t think she would’ve survived… when I stabbed her in the back--”

“SHUT UP!!! YOU!!! YOU!!!” Vernal suddenly jumped at her, crying even more as she pointed the blade at Raven’s neck. “I don’t understand… What did I ever see in you?! You were always just a heartless monster, and you still are!… You!… You deserve to die!”

Raven smiled. “Hey, Vernal… Want to know another secret?… Tell me, do you remember how your real parents died?… Do you wanna know why they died?… It’s actually very simple… All they did wrong was squeeze out a pretty little pipsqueak, who was born with a really strong power… And I wanted that power… and so… I took it away from them… From their cold… dead… hands.”

Vernal snarled. She raised her sword above her head, crying profusely and shaking every inch of her body. Both sides of her were in total conflict. One side wanted to cry and run, while the other wanted to stab Raven in the forehead. Raven was trying her hardest to make Vernal kill her. She just sat on her knees, and awaited the end.

However, that end didn’t come.

Vernal couldn’t plunge her blade, because she couldn’t even move it. She looked back, and saw a man holding her sword in place, sinking his fingers into the edge. It was Qrow.

“It’s… it’s you…” Vernal mumbled.

“What are you trying to do, kid?” Qrow asks.

“She… (sniff) she’s a monster!… all she does is hurt people!… if I don’t kill her now, she’ll never stop! Let me go! GET OFF ME!” Vernal said, pulling harder.

Qrow continues holding the blade, even as his fingers bleed. “You know… Once upon a time, I knew a girl who let her anger make all the decisions for her. She thought it was the right thing to do, because it gave her strength. It made her feel good… and her story didn’t end pretty… The shame and regret that she carries now is unbearable. She still hasn’t forgiven herself for allowing hatred to consume her, even after all these years… Personally, it would hurt me a lot if I allowed someone else to make the same mistake as her.”

“But… But she… SHE CAN’T GET AWAY WITH IT!… all the horrible things she did… SHE HAS TO PAY FOR EVERYTHING!” Vernal said, crying too hard to see things straight.

“It’s not too late, Vernal… You don’t need to be the one who punishes her… You don’t deserve to be stuck in this cycle of hatred any longer… The Branwen are gone now, and you don’t have to suffer for their mistakes anymore… It’s time to change.” Qrow said, slowly letting go of the blade. He pats her on the shoulder, and so she slowly lowers the sword herself. Qrow says, “You should go now… Yang has been searching for you like crazy. She can’t wait to see that you’re okay.”

“I can’t… I don’t deserve to see her… I’ve been such a brat… All I’ve ever done since then was hurt others… I hurt people that didn’t deserve it, because I was angry… I almost killed them… She’s not going to forgive me… I don’t deserve Yang to like me anymore.” Vernal said, looking down and shrugging her face.

“Sheesh, you really didn’t learn a thing, did you?… It’s Yang we’re talking about… She’ll never stop caring for anyone she loves, especially someone who she chose to call sister … It’s good that you feel this regret, Vernal. It’s because of it that you’re truly strong… If you want to make up for the mistakes you made, then go!… Yang will be there to help you set things straight. She always will be…

Go now.” Qrow finishes.

Vernal takes one last look at Raven, before turning around and running off while shrugging her tears. She was gone in a matter of seconds, and so the two brothers were left alone in the dark room. Qrow then unsheathes his huge sword. Raven says, “Somehow I knew it had to be you… I wouldn’t trust no one else with it… Come on, Qrow… just do it.”

Qrow swings down his sword super fast, slashing through steel. Surprisingly, the strike didn’t damage Raven whatsoever, but it perfectly slashed the chains that locked her. She can now finally fall on top of her hands, and take out the blindfold. “Why?… Damn it, Qrow!… You really can’t do a single damn thing right, can’t you?!”

Qrow puts his sword back in place. “Summer never gave up on you… Tai never gave up on you… And so, neither will I… Now, if you really are as regretful as you seem to be… Then there’s plenty of people that you need to apologize to… Bow to them asking for forgiveness… not offering your head… If we ever meet again, I hope that you will have learned your lesson… Farewell, sister.”

Qrow walks away, following after Vernal with his audible wooden leg walking up the stairs. Raven just keeps on staring at the floor, until it fades to black, ending the episode.

Let’s skip time, to five days later.

Here would be a nice place to insert Robin’s funeral, if we even need that. It’s all just slow scenes of them looking down at her grave in utter sadness, all of them with varying forms of grief. No final words are said — their feelings are stamped on their faces. In the end, Ironwood is the last to stand in front of her tombstone, and he does the Atlesian army salute, followed by literally everyone behind him, except the people from Vale and Haven.

After that, we see plenty of montages of the people of all Atlas celebrating their victory over a new dictatorship. They started to clean up all the damages from all the battles, and right after this montage, we get three special scenes.

…

Number one is about Pyrrha meeting with her parents again, now that her father is out of jail. She thanks him from the bottom of her heart for the sacrifice he did. She didn’t appreciate their time together back in the day, but now she understands that he was only preparing her for a tough life. Without him, she wouldn’t have met her best friends, or the love of her life. 

By the way she brought her boyfriend over, proclaiming Jaune as such without talking about it beforehand. He gets all embarrassed about it, and then Troy gives him a good look. Then suddenly, “I can’t believe it… MY DAUGHTER REALLY HOOKED UP AN ARC! AHAHAHAHA!! WE’RE GONNA HAVE FIFTEEN GRAND KIDS, HELEN! YAHOO!!” Troy shouted all excited, making Pyrrha jump at his throat to shut him up.

“DAAAD!! DON’T SAY STUFF LIKE THAT OUT LOUD! GOSH!!” Pyrrha said, becoming more red than she already is. Jaune just stood in the back doing the Osaka face as he imagined fifteen kids with half blond, half red hair.

As for Ren and Nora, she simply hasn’t let go of his arm in the last few days. She promises to never let anything happen to him again, and he promises to stay out of trouble. She doesn’t know what she’ll do without him, and she will probably never know. But that 's okay. More often than not, we don’t like the person we are, when alone.

…

Next scene would be all about Weiss. Winter is driving her o a ship, with the final destination being the Schnee mansion, at hills of Atlas City. Weiss refuses to step forward, saying that her father has banished her from home, and so she can’t come back like this. Winter gives her the side eye. She grabbed Weiss by the hair and pushed her towards the door, forcing her to open. The main hall of the mansion wasn’t empty for once. It was full of light, and all her family was there — Klein, Whitley, her mom and even her dad. They were all waiting by the steps for her arrival.

Suddenly, Weiss saw as her parents got up and started walking towards her with really strange faces. She says, forcing out a snarky tone, “Uh-- Mother, father. I hope that the androids didn’t give you any trouble. It has been a while, hasn’t it?… Woah, father, you shaved your mustache? I can’t remember the last time since--”

To her utmost surprise, Jacques and Willow simply get close, and hug her at the same time without saying anything. She felt weird. No discussion? No rant? Mom doesn’t smell like alcohol this time? And besides, what is this strange magic?! Why can’t she move? Why does she feel so fuzzy?… How long has it been since they hugged her like that? She can’t even guess.

And to fuel her dumbfoundedness, suddenly her father holds both of her hands together, and begs for forgiveness. He repeats “I’m sorry”, over and over again. He wanted to apologize for being such a greedy and heartless bastard towards her, when instead he should’ve been an actual father and supported her dreams. He was so afraid of her getting hurt by the world that he did everything he could to make her give up. Now not a day goes by without him ripping out his hairs, just thinking of all the bad things he said to her, and for having kicked her away from home.

And to finish up completely breaking Weiss, her mother also starts apologizing for being a distant, drunk bitch that only looked her own way and abandoned Weiss to the world. She should’ve been the shoulder that Weiss could lean against, but Willow just pushed her away without thinking twice. The two couldn’t be more sorry for what transpired in the last nine years, and hoped that Weiss would give them a chance to be a family again.

Weiss felt so weird right now. Her family always taught her that she should always look strong no matter what, and never be taken by silly feelings. And yet here they are, looking like a bunch of crybabies, and allowing her to be weak as well. She says, “Mom?… Dad?… Is that really you?… Please, don’t cry like that!… Just, don’t cry… Don’t act like you were the only ones who wronged me… I hated you, too… I wanted to make you suffer for always getting in my way… Goodness, I was such a stupid dolt!… What happened to all of us? Where did it all go wrong?… I can’t even remember anymore. And you know what? I don’t care… It was all stupid anyway… I’m just glad that… we’re finally through this nightmare that we all had.”

The three were now crying silently as they hugged. Soon, Whitley got close and hugged Weiss from behind. The family hug looked good enough, but they knew someone was missing. They all turn their heads to Winter, who was just looking at them from far away. She didn’t feel the right to join them. Every fiber of honor in her being told her that she caused too much damage to them, and can never be accepted again.

But then… they all waved at her, and told her to come. All of them. There was not a single shred of hatred for her in their voice. She still couldn’t muster the courage to do it, and so Weiss jumped at her, and forcefully pulled her in. Winter was completely paralyzed as she was hugged by her whole family at the same time. She closed her eyes forcefully, with her lips trembling, trying her best to not cry. Despite all the things she did, they still are willing to forgive her.

Maybe this was that thing that her grandpa always told her about. 

Something much stronger and much more precious than honor. It was… love. 

For the first time in almost a decade, the family is back together. That sight drove Klein to tears as well.

…

And so the third and final small scene. Blake, Yang and Ruby were watching the plains atop the huge wall of Argus. Blake just finished telling them everything that Cinder revealed, as well as the bitch’s treachery, and the real reason for all these battles in the past month. Turns out it was all a plan to reduce their numbers before she begins her invasion. She said that the attack will begin in three months, and with that in mind, they should probably start preparing for that. They need to train hard, and they need the help of Atlas and Haven to succeed. A union among the three nations never happened in five hundred years, and that is probably the only thing that can save them from doom. 

Just when they thought they were alone… Penny suddenly appears out of nowhere.

She lifted Ruby off the ground with a surprise hug, and squeezed her really hard. They’ve only talked through text messages for the last year, and Penny was so excited to see Ruby again. They are all still really weirded out by the fact Penny is a grown woman now, despite still having the same personality and attitude of a teenager. Except Yang — she thinks Penny looks hot AF like this. They ask if she’s still sad about Robin, but she knows Robin wouldn’t want to see them sad, and so Penny will follow the orders of her captain. Penny can only hope that Fiona will be okay. She’s still planted in front of Robin’s tomb since the funeral this morning.

Suddenly, Penny gets a call and decides to move out. Ironwood wants her at Atlas City for their talk with the council. It should all go smoothly. Penny flies away, waving them goodbye for now. However, that wasn’t the end of the scene. Just when the three thought they were alone again, this time Qrow teleports behind Ruby. “How's it going kids?”

“AAAH!! STOP DOING THAT!” Ruby shouted.

“For fuck sake, keep your guard up, Ruby! Anyway, I’m sorry to interrupt you all, but, Yang… Someone wanted to say hi.” Qrow said, walking to the side and revealing that someone was behind him. It was Vernal, crossing her arms and looking down with a look of shame.

“Hey… Yang… It’s been a while, huh?… I’m sorry for what happened that day… I thought… I thought you were dead--” Vernal was saying, when suddenly Yang swooped in and lifted her off the ground. She immediately applied her signature bear hug, almost breaking Vernal’s spine in half as she struggled to free herself. She kept snuggling against her chest and face over and over again.

“Icantbelievit—Icantbelievit—Ican’tbelievit—OHMYGOSH-OHMYGOSH-OHMYGOSH!!! IT’S YOU! AHAHAHA! IT’S REALLY REALLY YOU! WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL THIS TIME?! I’VE BEEN LOOKING EVERYWHERE FOR YOU! GOODNESS, LOOK AT YOU! AHAHAHA~ I MISSED YOU SO MUCH! LOOK HOW MUCH YOU GROW! I LOVED YOUR NEW HAIR, VINNIE! IT SMELLS SO GOOD!” Yang shouted really fast.

Ruby and Blake were taken aback. So this was the Vernal that Yang spoke so much about for the past year? She looks adorable, despite her attempt to look really cool with the goth fit. The one most confused was Vernal, as she completely forgot how it was like to be around Yang. She completely forgot this feeling of being unconditionally loved and accepted, because she believed that she would never feel this sentiment again. It only took a few moments for the memories to come rushing back. Vernal started crying.

“Oh! Sorry, did I hurt you?!” Yang asked.

“I… I thought you were dead!… I thought I would never see you again!… and all this time, I thought that… I thought that you would hate me for leaving you behind… Yang!… I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!...” Vernal said, finally hugging Yang back. “I MISSED YOU SO MUCH!”

It was a really happy scene, with everyone smiling. However, someone from really far away is watching it happen from the shadows… and she isn’t happy. There’s only a purely miserable look on her face — nothing but regret, shame, and sadness. Raven looks away, and disappears into the dark — flashing red for just a moment. No tribe, no friends, and with a family that doesn’t need her. She has nothing left except her own thoughts.

Back at the top of the wall, Yang continues carrying Vernal on her arms like a bag. First they are gonna get her a bath, then they are gonna bring her home, build a new room in the house for her, get her new clothes, put her in school, and then MAYBE Yang will let her have her first taste of ice cream. Vernal didn’t know half of the things she said, but she was excited for it. 

While that was happening, Qrow and Ruby were having their little funny moment in the back, as Qrow showcases his new metal foot that he got with Ironwood. It looked really cool.

…

And now, the final scene to end the episode with, and I guess the whole volume.

We see Fiona, looking down at Robin’s grave for the last several hours. She was buried in front of the wall of Mantle, from the inside. Her lonely tombstone said, “Here lies Robin Hill. Born 514 – Died 535. A brave warrior, who fought for the dreams of others, shall now rest in peace.” The amount of flowers surrounding it was crazy — Atlas didn’t have a hero like her since Nikolas Schnee. Soon after we see the grave, Fiona is joined by Ciel and Harriet, approaching her from behind. They warn her that Ironwood called out the whole team to go see the council in Atlas City, so they need to catch the train soon. Simply staying here won’t bring her back, and it won’t make it hurt less either.

Just then, the three look up and see Penny flying overhead, and landing right next to them. She came to join them at the “trial” they are going to have. Before they left though, Penny wanted to use this opportunity to apologize to them. She allowed herself to be captured and mind controlled, and that resulted in Robin's death. It was her sword that killed one of her best friends, and she doesn’t know if she will ever forgive herself for that. 

Fiona disagreed, though. What caused so much pain to so many people was the evil of a single man. All they did was try to stop him, knowing damn well that it was gonna be a dangerous mission. Deep down Fiona knows that if any of them was meant to die, Robin would insist to be her. It’s almost like she knew it was coming. Fiona may feel regret now for letting her go after Penny alone, but she made the choice to obey her orders, and thus she was able to save all the people in Vale from a massive bomb. Even if they don’t like it, this is the perfect ending that Robin gave to them, and they should be happy.

The nuke is still inside her, by the way. Remember that for Volume X.

…

The girls grabbed the train, they dressed all nicely, and met Ironwood and Winter just outside the grand city hall of Atlas City. The girls are gonna be awarded and recognized as heroes, and Ironwood asks them to support him on what he’ll propose to court afterwards. And so they go in.

Just like the beginning of the volume, we end back in that same courtroom with the tall chairs and ominous lights. The fossilized old leader managed to survive two extra weeks just to reclaim his post as near-supreme ruler of the nation. Tess was killed, so she was replaced by another scientist of the R&D lab (Ciel’s dad maybe, just to reuse the model). Jacques — or rather, Jack Schnee was there, having shaved his mustache and changed his attitude 180 degrees since the war started. The leader proceeds to give Harriet, Ciel, Penny and Fiona golden medals. This session in particular was being watched by the public, so they cheered the girls one by one.

At last, Ironwood speaks out. “Thank you, your honor. It’s good that things have returned to normal, but… There’s something that we from the council have to discuss immediately. It’s true that while we were dealing with the android crisis, Vale and Haven were waging war against enemy assassins that controlled the Grimm. The end of all these conflicts only revealed something far worse. I’m sure you have some recollection of Cinder Fall. She was responsible for the attack on Vale City, two years ago… She was defeated, but somehow she survived, and came back for vengeance. Her next plan will not be as simple as her last one. This time she wants to take down not only Vale, but all nations of this world, and their people… We can’t just stand by and let that happen! If we unite our army with their warriors, we will be able to fight back and stop--”

“James… What are you trying to propose here?… That we just go to another war, AFTER WHAT JUST HAPPENED?! Are you mad?!” The leader said, raising his voice for once. The camera still plays around with him, making Ironwood seem small in all the shots, and making the leader look big and threatening. He continues, “Look at the state of our cities! Our army has been reduced to nothing because of the fight! We have to fortify ourselves, NOT throw our soldiers into battle!”

“Your honor, haven’t you listened to what I said?!” Ironwood shouts back.

One of the other rich monopoly men of the council says, “What, you actually believe that nonsense, Ironwood?! How come they expect us to believe that these ‘Grimm’ things are actually going to unite to bring us down? Aren’t they savage and dumb creatures?”

Then, another guy who never saw a Grimm in his life also says, “Not to mention, but they tried to take down Vale City and failed. I think you’re overestimating your enemies, general. The walls of Atlas have not been breached by monsters in over four hundred years! We can take them just fine. Let the other nations deal with it.”

“What the-- ARE YOU GUYS OUT OF YOUR FREAKING MINDS?!” Harriet shouted, forcing Winter to hold her back. “THE PEOPLE IN VALE CAME TO HELP US WHEN WE NEEDED THEM! EVERY SINGLE TIME! IS THIS HOW YOU’RE GOING TO REPAY THEM?! JUST GOING TO LEAVE THEM DIE?! HARRRGGH-!! IF YOU HAD A SPINE, I WOULD BREAK IT RIGHT NOW!”

“RESTRAIN YOURSELF, SOLDIER! The council is speaking. It’s time for you to listen.” said the leader. “They are right. We must focus on maintaining the stability of our cities, our economy and our ability to defend ourselves. Even if we were to unite with the other nations now, we would be vulnerable after the war is over. Haven or Vale would attack us without question. We know how much they crave our rich mines and advanced technology.”

“You can’t be serious?! Is this really what you’re concerned about? Don’t you realize that if we aid them, our rough relations might be reforged?! We will be able to finally forget about this fruitless rivalry that we had for hundreds of years! They won’t have a reason to attack!” Ciel said.

“The girl is right, everyone. We might even start gaining new trade opportunities if we do fix our relationship with Haven. We could set up a business route through the sea with the help of Vale, and one day even build another train line there.” Jacques said.

“Of course you’d say that, Jacques! What’s the matter now? Not enough money under your bed?! You’re already the richest man in the nation, and now you want to make even more by selling Dust to those uncultured monkeys?!” that guy from before replied.

“This is not about the money!” Jacques said.

“Yeah yeah, of course it’s not!” he answered back, winking. “That’s the only thing that has been going inside your head for the last several years, my friend — who the hell you wanna fool, eh?!”

“Uh, everyone? I don’t think we should be… fighting among ourselves right now, right? I don’t know how politics work, but… aren’t we supposed to do what’s best for the people? If we let Grimm gain power, it’s only a matter of time before they come after us. Even if they take years, the walls won’t hold on forever… Now it’s our chance to fight them for the last time and stop that from happening!” Penny said.

“Hey wait a minute! Isn’t this the super android that Polendina made?! Hold on, why are we giving a medal to a machine? Have we really stooped so low that now we allow something with a chip for a brain to tell us what to do?!” another council member said, making Penny recoil.

“DON’T YOU DARE CALL HER THAT, YOU BASTARD---!” Harriet shouted, making Winter cover her mouth as well.

“Enough! I understand that recent events may have shaped your view, but we are all logical men here. It’s a shame that strong soldiers like you have such soft hearts. You shouldn’t concern yourselves with NO ONE other than the citizens of your own nation, do you understand?!” the leader says.

“I cant… I JUST CAN’T BELIEVE YOU!!!” Fiona shouts. 

The timid sheep girl raises her voice, and it’s quite terrifying. Everyone is left speechless, and so she continues, “My friend… She JUST gave her life, trying to save this nation!… HER FUNERAL WASN’T EVEN A DAY AGO, DAMN IT!!!… All she wanted for all of us was a better Atlas, and she knew that the only thing holding us back… WAS PEOPLE LIKE YOU!… ALL OF YOU ARE NO DIFFERENT THAN ARTHUR WATTS! As a matter of fact, I know you all are just jealous that IT WASN’T YOU, SENDING THE PEOPLE YOU DON’T LIKE TO THE GALLOWS, JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN!… the worst thing that can happen to Atlas, is to be ruled by people LIKE YOU!”

“Ironwood! Ms. Schnee! Can’t you contain your own soldiers for just a second?!” the leader said.

“How dare you, stupid Faunus! Don’t you know what you did is a serious crime?!” another member said.

“Casualties are normal in battle, soldier! Don’t act like your friends were the only ones who lost something here! Do you have any idea how much money our companies are gonna waste on rebuilding everything?!” the fattest bastard of the bunch said, making Jacques facepalm at the other side of the table.

And well, as they shot down Fiona’s words, one after the other, we focus on Ironwood's face. He started breathing faster, closing his eyes and snarled angrily — finally, a very thick vein sprung from his forehead. He can’t endure this shit, because he knows Fiona is absolutely right. They are just as evil, careless and disgusting as Watts. He’s about to go postal.

And so, Ironwood draws his pistol, and shoots the ceiling.

Everyone shuts up instantly, and looks at him in shock. Once silence settled in nicely, he continued, “I’m not one who craves war… Much less needless violence… I would hate to see the people of my nation thrown into yet another war, after what they just went through… But if we end up doing it, it’s not because we are cruel… it’s because we believe in hope… At long last, we are going to fight for something other than ourselves. Something greater than one single empire, and all the riches it could possibly have… We are going to fight, so we can free the world from monsters.

And if you oppose something like that… then I will treat you as my enemy.” Ironwood said, lowering the gun, until he was pointing it towards the leader in his tall chair. The old man recoils. “It’s time for the ‘great council’ of our nation to show what they are made of… Tell me, your honor, will we fight, or will we hide like dogs?!”

Suddenly the guards from the courtroom point their rifles at Ironwood. Penny, Ciel, Fiona and Harriet all give a step back, shocked to see him react like this. Just then, Winter stepped forward, drew her sword, and put it at Ironwood’s neck before he could react. “What do you think you’re doing, James?!” she asks.

“I figure I should stop thinking and start doing… We’re running out of time. I’m sick of waiting for this bunch of idiots to grow some sense on their brains. Ms. Thyme is right, I should’ve never trusted the ruling of Atlas to people like them.” Ironwood said.

“WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS, IRONWOOD?! YOU’RE GOING TO BETRAY YOUR NATION?!” the leader said.

“There’s no point knocking an evil man out of power, if you’re going to replace him with another bunch of evil men. Given that no one else here is willing to do the right thing, unfortunately it has to be me. I’ll gladly betray my nation, if it means I’ll finally start serving my people.” Ironwood said. “I swear on my life, and on the life of Robin Hill, I won’t allow things to remain the same. It’s time for Atlas to change!”

…

And right after that little silence, whispers started to run across the gallery. People soon started to stand up and scream, siding with Ironwood. Citizens from Argus, Mantle and even some from Atlas City all stood up and started cheering him on. The guards who pointed guns at Ironwood now lower their weapons. Just then, Winter remembers what Ironwood told her in the bunker that night. She can’t continue serving people that are so obviously selfish and heartless — it’s not what her grandfather would’ve wanted. And so, she lowers her blade as well.

All the evil council members were really scared right now, except for the leader. He was pissed. “Is this… ARRGH! INSOLENT LITTLE PESTS! WHO DO YOU THINK BROUGHT RULE TO THIS LAND AFTER THE DEATH OF THE EMPEROR? WHO GAVE PEOPLE JOBS AND BETTER LIVES, IF NOT US?! WE TURNED THESE THREE CITIES, BURIED IN SNOW, INTO THE GREATEST CITIES ON THE ENTIRE WORLD! I WATCHED OVER ALL OF YOU FOR DECADES, AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY US??!”

“Don’t get us wrong, we are grateful for all your work so far… But the people are crying out for more. If you really are as benevolent as you think yourself to be, then it’s time you pass down the torch… old man.” Winter said.

“WHY--… YOU--! ARGH… HAH… IHH...” the leader started clutching his chest, as if having a heart attack. Everyone watches in silence as he has this silent crisis, before slumping over the chair. He didn’t make any more movements, or spoke.

Ironwood sighs, putting down his revolver. “Guards, call the ambulance this instant. This may not be his time… As for the rest of you, any objections?” he said, and waited in silence. All the dozen monopoly men of the council, including Jacques and the scientist, all bow their heads with varying levels of anger, but bow nonetheless. “Good enough… After we’re done destroying the Grimm, you can have your power back and put me in jail for all I care.”

Ironwood starts to leave the room, as everyone in the gallery erupts into cheering. Winter and the other four girls follow right behind him. They walk through the corridors, and so they finally realize: holy shit, Ironwood just declared martial law became the king of Atlas. He says, “The system should function just fine without them interfering. We’ll need to access the most damaged areas of each city and relocate people who lost their homes. We’re gonna have to put in a lot of work for the people to start trusting the army again. Hopefully if we show that we care for their well being, they will be most inclined to join and support us once the real preparations for war begin. Winter, I need you to contact the councils of Haven and Vale. We need to talk as soon as possible.”

Winter smiles. “Yes sir.”

“Hey! Since you’re the BIG boss now, can you make me Commander or sometin’?” Harriet asks.

“Sure. Why not.” Ironwood said.

“HELL YEAH!” Harriet shouted, as Ciel pinched her nose.

…

After that, we get one final scene to close the episode, returning to the wall of Argus. 

It was time for the warriors of the other nations to say goodbye to their Atlesian friends, despite the fact they will see each other again in just three months. In case you forgot, some of the people in this small battalion were Sun and Aslan, just to sink the fact that even Haven was willing to help Atlas this time, with their strongest warriors no less. Harriet bows one final time to thank them for their help, and promises that Atlas will do everything in its power to help them defeat that Cinder bitch, once and for all.

Team RWBY, JNPR, CFVY, Vernal, Qrow, and several others now walk along the snowy path, before taking off at great speed, and disappearing into the wind. It would take them a day to return, and it finally starts to snow again. Penny cups the snowflakes on her hand, before letting them fall off. Atlas didn’t have such a pretty snowfall in a very… very long time.

…

From the very top of the wall of Argus, someone was watching the heroes depart. It was Maria Calavera, looking on with the blue lights of her special glasses. She was carrying a strange backpack, which was hooked up to her goggles, and was packing her weapons by her waist. She only says, “All the pieces of the chessboard are finally moving… I never thought I would see the day… It’s time that I fulfill my duty, one last time.”

And so she disappears, moving at phasing speed.

And with that, ROLL CREDITS.

Commentary (spoilers): You know what? Screw volume V — this is my new second favorite volume. I only had very haphazard ideas, but it all culminated on such a strong emotional narrative. The world building of Atlas still sucks ass and is really unrealistic, but IMO the story bits all hit quite hard due to the emotions of all the characters. I am really proud of what became of the final act for a volume in which I had so few things to work with.

There’s a few things that may rub me off in the finale, since this is the first draft. Maybe it would be nice for Ironwood to also die, so Winter could become general and conclude her character arc on a way stronger note by revolting against the council herself, and not following Ironwood’s lead. That would enhance her story quite a lot, and would fit Ironwood’s development of taking the role of Mia to its fullest, as he also sacrifices himself for his protege. I kept him just because I like him, but it doesn’t mean he’ll live for that much longer. The final battle is gonna be gruesome. I may just re-use this idea for Volume X then.

The second thing that rubbed me off was Winter discovering her power to reverse time. It was something I wanted to implement for such a long time, because it complements her Semblance so well. However, I don’t think I used it in a good way. It was nice to have a reference of Weiss still getting pierced by Cinder’s spear like in the original, but having her die just so Winter could use her ultimate ability ONCE and revive her isn’t that cool. Like really, the ability never comes up again (for now at least. I might use it on an extra scene of the final volume). It would be much more memorable if she used it somewhere in the second act, in order to win one of her fights. If I think it sucks on a second read, I might exclude it entirely and just have Cinder escape with the relic without a fight.

Third thing that rubbed me off was completely forgetting about Pyrrha’s mom for most of this, even though I made such a big case about her dad. I think Watts should’ve thought about kidnapping her way earlier. I think the best moment would be to stop Troy from leaving the prison after being set free, as he likely would’ve stayed there if Helen’s life was at risk. That could probably be used in a minisode, and so she’s already kidnapped by the finale, which is why Troy came to save her. Yeah, I think that’s better… not gonna go back and rewrite it, though.

Another big problem: Yang’s reunion with Vernal needs to be better. Vernal’s character arc went smooth as butter and ended perfectly as I wanted. However, I think it’s a bad idea to hold their reunion for the aftermath — it should happen right after she defeats Shay, so there’s an immediate sense of reward for her having won. The problem is that the scene with Raven needs to happen first, and it’s quite long and tonally different from the rest of the final act. Maybe I could have the reunion, AND THEN show the scene of Vernal and Raven in the aftermath as some sort of flashback to show what happened to Raven. Yeah, I think that might be better. Needless to say, after this volume is over, I want like fifteen minisodes focused on Vernal arriving in Vale city and experimenting with all the technology shit that she was told about by Yang.

Now that I realized, there’s one secondary theme going on for the last two volumes. The story started with the girls coming together, because they needed the help of each other to grow up in different ways. Now the growth has already happened, and so the girls are slowly going their separate ways, because they simply don’t need each other as much anymore. Is kinda sad, but ties perfectly with the theme of the final volume. Yang has her future with Vernal as her surrogate mother, Weiss feels like she can finally return to Atlas now that she loves her family again, Blake wants to continue fighting for peace and will likely lead the new fang along with Ilia, and Ruby has Oscar and Qrow to care for. Their lives are both MORE and LESS messed up than when it all started, and the good things they gained on this long journey will power them with the desire to see a better world without Grimm.

You know, I had a lot of doubts about Penny going missing as a character for 50% of the volume. It stopped her from having so many moments of development, but it increased the stakes of the final act by a lot. Another thing that I changed was how vital Penny was. Originally what Watts wanted out of her was the location of the missing Relic of Creation, which Pietro took and then disappeared. The reveal would be that it was inside Penny this whole time, but it wouldn’t make a lot of sense, so I dropped it in favor of a nuclear bomb plot line. The relic ends up being very worthless to the overall story, but personally I don’t mind that. Nobody should really care about the Relics in this show — they never do cool stuff. You know what is cool, though? Adult Penny. I think it’s WAY better for her to get upgraded into an adult woman, than to have her just become a human girl with the power of the relic. 

Yeah, remember when I made a big deal about revealing Penny’s semblance? Well scratch that. Back then I was still in the “Penny is the relic” idea, so her Semblance would allow her to create shit like the relic does. I don’t think I need to explain why I scratched that. I just really needed the relics for the final volume, and so Penny couldn’t become THE relic of Creation. Besides, adult Penny is 1000x better by default. The adult form also allows her to gain a power boost, even if it doesn’t make that much sense… Man, a lot of things in this volume don’t make sense, but I kept going anyway. It's so damn liberating to be a bad writer! HA!

Anyway, I’ll probably have to revise this whole thing grammarly and then split it in half so it will run on AO3. Next chapter will be the (likely) 3-part conclusion of the whole series, Volume X. I’m really excited to start writing it, in 2077, when I fucking have time! After the end, I’ll likely make an entire chapter dedicated to “Conclusion”, with a bunch of fun facts, revisions, the fates of all characters post series end, and some final words of thanks. I’ll see you then, bye bye.