RWBY RE:colored

by Royal-Harmonica

This is a re-imagination of the story of RWBY given as a pitch, a review, and a scene-by-scene style of writing. It's purpose is merely to adapt the series into a more cohesive and simple series for teenage and mature audiences. If you're not a nerd, your cringe discretion is advised. I post primarily on AO3, so this might be not be up to date.

6. Volume IV (The Clash of Three Nations)

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VOLUME IV

You might be wondering why this chapter has 100 pages… I can explain. This volume is just simply too much, and too long. I will now be covering completely new territory, since I decided to add much more to this volume with things I build up in the past. We have a huge tournament, and a huge finale. Several character arcs will conclude, and several will begin. All our heroes will return, but so will the villains. Hold onto your butts, get some ice cream, open Natural Readers in case you're legally blind, and let's go.

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The first episode actually starts in Medias Res, with a preparation montage. We're cutting between a destructive fight happening in the red forest, and team RWBY preparing their gear in a dark room — Batman & Robin style. We also see their new designs, which, for the sake of personal enjoyment, you can search for fanart alternative costumes online, and pick the ones you liked the most in order to get the picture of scenes. Once they are all finally ready, they start walking down a long corridor towards the light, as the cheering of thousands becomes clearer. After they are consumed by the light, we play the new opening of volume IV for the first time.

After that, let's go back to a week ago.

We cut to the girls and all other students of the academy looking up at the huge Atlas coliseum that landed in vale City park. Port was there explaining a bit about the Vytal Festival, and how it's been a tradition between Haven and Vale since way before the first Grimm invasion. Port now puts down a few basics about the tournament rules. First, the tournament will be a 1v1 between Huntsmen. Nations and teams don't matter here — the entire tournament only serves to show the people their best warriors regardless of where they came from (the Olympics, basically). However, this year they decided to change the usual scheme by agreement of the three headmasters. The tournament wouldn't be allowing any old professional Huntsmen this time, it would be exclusively composed of the training Huntsmen of the academies — sixteen from Vale, three from Haven and five from Atlas. They were lucky, because they only hold these once every several years. To take part in it being so young is a huge honor.

The festival grounds were also being set up around the coliseum, so there was a lot of workers going around in the background. Port allows them inside to get a quick view of the coliseum, which for now is empty. The thing was gigantic, and the warriors had a special area to hang out in between the fights, that I will be calling the waiting room.

On their way there, they meet again with some old friends. Here we are reintroduced to Sun, who also suffered a redesign. Last time he was here in the most casual outfit ever, but now he looks dressed properly for a fight, with a few more armor pieces just like all other characters. His name is literally Sun Wukong, so a vagabond style fits him perfectly. Aslan was also accompanying him, and they were eager to introduce their other and final classmate… but it seems like he had better things to do. He simply disappeared before Sun and Aslan could notice. Anyway, the two were excited to show their new moves in the tournament, and wondered if the others had gotten any stronger since their last competition. They expected a good show from everyone, but claim that victory is already theirs without a doubt.

Eventually Ruby goes ahead of everyone like she always does, running to the top of the coliseum to get a better look. As she arrives there, she also sees Ironwood's dreadnought arriving at Vale again from the sky. She thinks nothing of it, but then suddenly notices something strange. She can see one of the lower windows break, and suddenly a dot was flying towards her direction.

It was Penny. She was coming in like a rocket.

Ruby manages to catch her in a hug that looks more like a car crash, and the two friends have a cute reunion. Penny doesn't waste time, wanting to show Ruby to her new teammates. Penny sparks up her jet boots and flies with Ruby back to the ship. We cut to Ironwood's view as he stands in the control room at the front of the ship, seeing Ruby and Penny flying around as she waves at them. "Should I open the back entrance, sir?" Winter asked. "Just find the window repair staff" he says, as again they hear a window breaking in the distance.

The first person Penny decides to show Ruby is Fiona Thyme, who is changing clothes and screams loudly as Penny barges inside with an intruder. She was an adorably-puny sheep lady, with white hair and lazy ears. The poor girl suddenly becomes really anxious, thinking that they will all get martially punished for what Penny is doing. More and more people start barging into the room, making her scream again and again. Ruby comments, "wow, your Pyrrha is just as cute as our Pyrrha!" to which Penny agrees.

Next it was Harriet Bree, who immediately tackled Ruby to the floor with an elbow to her neck, thinking she's a intruder. She's not wrong though. Penny tries to hold her back, but Harriet easily puts her under submission as well. "YOU BETTER STAY DOWN IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SNAP LIKE A TWIG!" she shouted, bending Ruby's arm against her back. This girl has a frown that will likely never go away.

Ciel Soleil arrives pointing a gun to everyone, making everyone raise their hands. Her speech pattern and movements make her look like another android, but in reality she was just that pompous. She scolds the girls with words they don't understand for making a fuss. "Penny, you requested to depart for a second, but in reality you took 5 minutes and 48 seconds. You also didn't state that you would kidnap a civilian. You're being very unprofessional. I fear that I must report you to Major Lieutenant Winter." Ciel said.

"What?! NOOOO~!" Penny shouted.

Finally Robin Hill enters the room, and her commanding shout is enough to get her entire unit to stop their shenanigans and stand up with hands behind their backs. She was the captain of their unit, and looked way more serious despite not being any older than the rest. All of them are dressed more or less in the same outfit with the same colors, except for Penny, who wears it all wrong with green instead of blue. This section, which lasts more or less a minute, gives us a perfect idea of all the characters' personalities. Robin goes ahead and shakes Ruby's hand, thanking her for helping with the whole theft problem from four months ago. She then orders Penny to take her back, and so they fly out the window again.

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After that, we cut to a dark bar in the middle of Vale.

There's only one guy there, and it's Qrow. He's completely shit faced, but the barman, named Simon, just shrugs off all the shit he says as well as the misfortune he brings. This place seemingly was a common stop for team STRQ back in the day, showcased by an old photo in the wall. Seemingly this is the only place that Qrow wasn't banned from due to his Semblance and reputation.

Qrow is too drunk to talk straight, but he complains that the person he was chasing after was practically a ghost — she never leaves any clues behind, and though he tried hard, he wasn't able to catch her. Soon he's joined by detective Braun, and we instantly get a sense of old comradery from these two, as we learned last volume that they were once classmates at the academy. Qrow will be glad to know that Ruby managed to stay out of trouble for four whole months, and it seems she got stronger too. She along with all students will be taking on the tournament together. The two reminisce about the last festival, back when they were still a bit young. Apparently Qrow managed to get all the way to the semi finals by beating several older Huntsmen, only to lose to Glynda as always at the semifinals. He really wanted to see Ruby fight, but his simple presence anywhere near the coliseum will fuck stuff up. His semblance seems to work way more passionately against Atlas technology than anything else — no wonder he's straight up banned from setting foot in that nation.

Eventually he looks through the window and sees Ironwood's ship going to land somewhere in the city, so he decides to leave. As he gets up, the camera slides around to nail the drunk feeling. He goes outside and starts seeing more of those android soldiers that he fought in volume III. They annoyed Qrow, so he quickly started attacking them in drunken fun. Braun came running out the bar to scold him. Apparently Atlas was allowed to deploy the android soldiers to work as safeguards of the festival grounds, saving the police force all the trouble. Apparently all the programming errors of the androids have been cleansed. It seems alright — even though he attacked them, the robots didn't fight back this time. That's a good start at least. Qrow had to talk with Ironwood, maybe he had better luck finding their common assailant.

At that same moment, Ozpin and Leo were in the middle of their classic banter, being followed by the tired Corazan and Glynda. Eventually they are joined by Ironwood and Winter. Now the three organizers of the tournament have to decide what the opening act will be. Ozpin has an idea, thanks to a recent find that was brought to the red forest. A new type of abnormal Grimm. It will a be a good showcase of how powerful this new generation is showing itself to be. The three teachers now hat go talk with their pupils and explain how everything will play out. By that point all students and cadets had reunited at the waiting room of the coliseum. They don't immediately like each other and tensions seem to be growing as they throw subtle insults to one another. It's a tournament arc, so even if they will be friends eventually, we gotta have some level of animosity and antagonism between everyone. Sun complains that the final student from Haven hasn't appeared yet, and they shouldn't speak about the tournament rules until he arrives. Corazan call his attentionm and then points at the corner of the room.

There he was.

Everyone turned in shock, as the guy suddenly appeared out of fucking nowhere. He dressed in pure black and dark blue, with baggy clothes and cloth shoes. He wore a dark hood so we can't see his head yet — only sharp brown eyes glowing in the dark. The first thing he does is insult everyone inside for having such shit awareness, since he has been there ever since they entered. He looks tall and his Aura is naturally intimidating. Even for Blake, the stealth expert, he somehow was completely undetectable. He was Jobi Shinrai, the last student of Haven academy.

With everyone finally reunited, Glynda explains the crucial parts to them. Though the tournament is entertainment for the people, it won't be a simple-minded game for them. They will suffer the risk of engaging in real combat with one another, and get pretty hurt. She would give them that afternoon to think it over if they wanted to enter the tournament or not. Sadly, the cadets from Atlas would not have such privilege, and the Haven trio wouldn't give up even in their dreams.

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The rest of the episode would set the perspective of all our main warriors, which most are already dead set on entering for their various personal reasons. Most just want to prove they are the strongest, some are just pressured to tag along, and a few saw this as an opportunity to test their own growth. There are three important interactions during this segment.

First it was about Weiss. She was found by Winter, and the two went to talk in private over a cup of tea. She tried to convince Weiss to not join the tournament, as it was their father's only wish that she remain in secret while inside Vale. Weiss naturally denies, claiming her independence, and that's what Winter expected to hear. There was a plan B. She would have to forgo the Schnee name, and enter the tournament as Weiss Quartz — hiding her true identity. It seemed to be the only way to proceed, and so Weiss accepts despite being the most humiliating thing she will ever have to do.

The second scene would be about Penny. She was told by Ironwood that she cannot, under any circumstance, demonstrate her true nature during this tournament. Ironwood doesn't know what kind of reaction it would bring if the world found out she was a living robot, so this decision is for her own good. Basically, Penny will not be allowed to go full power like she did in her first fight. She understood and accepted his request.

The last one was Pyrrha, who was afraid to enter the tournament due to the trauma of the last one she was in. Being filmed to the entire world makes her even more nervous. Jaune tries to ease her pain and give a lesson in self confidence. Pyrrha is always so worried about what other people might think of her, either by joining the tournament or abstaining from it. But she's an adult now. She'll have to go after what she wants, even if others might not understand, or she will be criticized for it. She had to believe in herself, because Jaune also believed that she could kick ass in this tournament. But if she doesn't want to join, she has to set her foot down as well, and take either decision without fear or shame. In the end Pyrrha decides to enter. Something has been bubbling in her mind recently, and if she does win this tournament… then that will end all her doubts. What that means will be explained in the future.

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Eventually comes the day of the tournament, and we get a montage of people from all over the world coming to Vale. Through the roads, through the sea, through the sky and through the railroads. The festival sparks up with lights, food and demonstrations of games, arts and technology. The festival design naturally draws from a medieval festival with a modern spin, with music from that era to boot. The tournament is finally announced to begin, and so people begin to swarm into the coliseum. Just now we are back to the beginning of the episode, with team RWBY entering the corridor of light after a long suit up sequence. Now we can finally see the coliseum packed with thousands of people. It looked a bit intimidating even, but Weiss assures that they will get accustomed to it.

Soon all the other warriors from all academies enter the coliseum from the different entrances, and they are all left standing around the huge arena. We hear in-universe commentary from Port and Oobleck, who will be the announcers of this tournament for no apparent reason, other than they talk funny and we like them. They declare that the opening of the Vytal tournament will begin.

A ship then enters from the sky and lands in the arena, taking all the competitors aboard and blasting off. Just then a holographic screen appears at the arena, allowing the audience to see what happens next from the various cameras put on the ship and the red forest. The opening wouldn't actually take place in the coliseum, for the safety of the people watching. The 24 warriors are taken to the sky of the red forest, and are set to jump off. Their objective is to track down and destroy the abnormal Grimm who was released inside the forest. With that, all the teams jump down and we get this sick free fall animation between everyone. Penny just grabs her team and flies off with her jet boots while everyone else lands safely thanks to their sick new skills and strategy.

The rest of the episode would focus on small fight scenes of our characters easily defeating elder Grimm that they struggled against in the past. Even the other teams, who don't get as much fight screen time, are capable of defeating them effectively. The Haven trio can take many elders on their own, having received the harshest training of all. Eventually we see the abnormal motherfucker that they were warned about. Ozpin titled him "the Mimic."

Team CFVY is the first to spot it, but don't find a way to kill it fast enough. Its natural form is simply a plaque of white layer and a single red eye, but its real power is to glue itself to structures and make them into its body. The monster starts weak, but it eventually turns into a giant titan made of trees, boulders and earth. With the combined teamwork of all teams and academies together, they manage to bring down the colossus by destroying its body. In the end it looks like it will build itself back up as if their attempt was nothing.

But just then, Jobi comes out of nowhere and plunges his cool wavy katana into the Mimic's eye, killing it. At that absolutely badass moment, he mocks them for not doing this earlier, as it was the obvious way to kill it. The mountain body of the Mimic falls down over the red forest, causing a quake and a gust of wind to rush all around. The wind pushes off Jobi's dark hood as everyone looks at him in awe. The episode ends as we get one epic reveal of his head, which is the head of a black wolf with vicious brown eyes.

Jobi was a wolf Faunus.

With that, the first episode ends. And the real tournament begins.

Commentary (spoilers): Very simple opening to the volume, this time we only had six new characters to introduce. As expected, the first ¾ of the volume is focused exclusively on the tournament, and this is a LONG volume compared to the others. We're gonna actively try not to do fight match ups that we've seen in previous volumes, except for highly anticipated ones. At this point the universe is getting a little bigger in both worldbuilding and plot, so a tournament arc with nothing but fighting and character development should be a nice change of pace… for now. This is an expensive ass volume too, just from the tournament we'll be having around 24 different fights, plus the whole shit that happens at the end. I'm gonna try to shotgun through it, since I don't want to give so much input on choreography. I want to give the animators the entire story boarding of the fights. Every fight just needs one key moment that makes it memorable in the long run. I also have no idea how to structure each episode, so I'll get even less in depth about that. From now on I'll just describe what happens in the tournament without interruption.

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The next episode takes place right after that. The whole fight against the Grimm in the forest took hours, so the tournament will only resume tomorrow.

Team RWBY is allowed to take a walk around the festival and see the many modern practical jokes and easter eggs that the animators put in there. Eventually they get hungry and go to the food stands, where they bump into Oscar. He was running a food stand of pastries that he made from his farm products. He suffered a small character design change just like everyone else. He grew a little taller than Ruby by this point, despite both being the same age. All our characters will be visiting his food stand in between battles, so we will see a lot of Oscar during this section.

That night they return for a good night of sleep at their HQ, excited for the battles of tomorrow. Ruby makes them promise to give their all in the tournament, in order to set a good impression of their squad to the world. They share a drink and a big fistbump together. It's important to convey their genuine smiles during this small scene. They have been together for a full year now, and the amount of crap they've been through has molded them together as something much greater than just friends. Ruby's not much of dolt anymore. Weiss ain't that much of a bitch either. Yang is not that immature, and Blake actually shows emotions. At this point, everything in their lives just felt perfect. As long as they stick together, they can stand against everything.

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That night, after the girls are all asleep, we follow Blake as she receives a notification on her phone.

She was messaged by a burner number with no photo, and the name is code, IV-|)-IV-|\/|. He expresses relief that she managed to survive the entire year away. He says something big will come soon, and that she has to hide as soon as trouble begins. She nervously questions him about who he is and what will happen, but this guy is not specific. He doesn't know exactly when, but a big event will happen soon enough. Thousands might die, and all the Huntsmen force will go down when it's over. It will be their golden opportunity, and he wants Blake to survive it. At this point Blake's hands are shaking and she doesn't know what to answer back. The mysterious messenger tells her to take heart in what she's fighting for. That was the last text. Blake is left clearly disturbed, and can't sleep again.

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The next day, she continues looking disturbed and small, appearing uncomfortably out of frame when put next to her team. They keep questioning if she's feeling okay, and she answers with an "I'm fine" that gets progressively less assured as the episodes go on. Our characters are taken back to the coliseum, this time for the actual tournament.

Without any further ado, everyone sorts numbers out of a box. With the number of competitors lowered from 32 to 24, only the finals will be changed, resulting in a 3 person free for all. Until then, every student will have to win four fights in a row to win the tournament, against their peers nonetheless. Like Port explained, they will even fight among members of their own squads if it comes down to it. The numbers went as followed, even though they weren't drawn in this order:

Sun got 1. Jobi got 2. Yang got 3. Jaune got 4. Blake got 5. Cardin got 6. Russel got 7. Penny got 8. Ciel got 9. Dove got 10. Nora got 11. Aslan got 12. Sky got 13. Harriet got 14. Pyrrha got 15. Fiona got 16. Velvet got 17. Yatsuhashi got 18. Ruby got 19. Coco got 20. Weiss got 21. Robin got 22. Fox got 23 and Ren got 24.

In total we are looking at twelve incoming fights for the first phase of the tournament. Some will drag a bit, others are lightning quick. We don't have to make full episodes for each one, we just need one iconic moment to set them apart from one another. This isn't just a characterless slugfest with two sides hitting each other until they fall. Before the fights take place, we could have a few conversations in the waiting room. These small chats usually happen in order to generate hype for the character that will fight, explaining their abilities or a bit of their backstory.

The arena is huge, and carries a special ability just like in the original. In between matches it will lower down into the floor, so then workers can modify the arena into different places — like a forest or a field. The other competitors are given this special place close by to watch the fight, and it's from there that we receive the most essential commentary of each fight. Also, though I describe them in this order, they don't need to happen in this order. Each fight is part of a block that gets randomized. It's better that way to keep the tone and dramatic energy of the tournament building up instead of randomly. As far as I care, Ruby's fight can come first or last. Now I'll just describe each of the fights until this phase is over.

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First fight is the classic. Sun versus Jobi, his fated rival.

The arena turns into a simple plain field of yellow dirt. Despite what I just said, this fight needs to happen early if not before all others so we can establish Jobi as a threat immediately. The battle begins rather basically, with both characters fighting hand to hand for a while before drawing their weapons. Despite Sun's style of fighting with trickery and surprise, Jobi was able to react and counter all of his moves with perfection. Their strength was on par and Jobi's speed is incredible. He spent the entire time mocking Sun and being an edgy piece of shit, so we can get the feeling that Jobi has absolute no respect for anything. Jobi doesn't restrain himself to just his family sword, he uses all kinds of ninja tools like strings, ropes and even throwing knives.

Right here Sun reveals to everyone what makes Jobi so formidable of an opponent. His Semblance is "Voodoo" — it gives Jobi the power to control the body of an opponent as long as they keep eye contact with one another. Sun's answer to his broken ability is to fight while with his back turned, and also keep his head down so he can stare only at Jobi's lower body. It didn't help him that much, so he had to switch to next strategy. His next trick was using a dog whistle to disrupt Jobi's sensitive hearing, but he easily counters it by plugging his ears and destroying the whistle with a flying shuriken. None of that child play worked, so it was time for Sun to demonstrate his ultimate ability.

Sun's Semblance allowed him to displace his Aura away from his body, creating clones of light. They usually last a few seconds before breaking away, but now he developed this Semblance to the max. Sun is able to sit in a meditation pose, closing his eyes, and thus summon a clone of Aura that carries 100% of his power. He uses that to fight Jobi head on, and it seems to work perfectly since the clone of Aura does not feel pain from his attacks or is affected by Voodoo. It doesn't fade away like the others, too. However, his own technique ended up being his downfall, as Jobi specialized his skills to fight opponents in any way possible. A surprise attack from the sky using his long range weapons was all that took. Jobi threw his kunais towards the sky in such a way that it looked like he missed, but after a while they came down, falling perfectly onto Sun's real body in the back. The Kunais plunged themselves in his shoulders and back, heavily damaging Sun for some reason.

Jobi explains that displacing 100% of his Aura away from his body will make him a sitting duck just as much as any normal human. Sun failed to realize that, and so he lost. The match was called off, and Jobi was victorious. He got Sun pretty banged up but didn't even give a shit to help him stand, and mocked him even as was defeated.

Naturally all our cast and viewers immediately dislike him. This fight, where he destroys a fan favorite character, is the piece that solidifies Jobi as the pseudo antagonist of this volume. Here at the end he proudly states his philosophy to everyone else — that the losers don't matter, only the strong survive, and that their ignorance to this fact will kill them eventually. Basically he believes that the world sucks, and so he will live an accordingly shitty existence as a warrior with no remorse.

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Next fight is Jaune versus Yang.

It's a very contentious fight. I think any fan (and even creator) of RWBY is aware of the awesome fan animation of this same matchup. Shit's genius. We're adapting most of it, except the ending. The arena is modified to look like a rocky shore near the sea, and the fight itself will be pretty raw. Yang doesn't really wanna hurt any of her friends, but after all the training he did, Jaune demands to be taken seriously. Here we see the first instance of Jaune's boss personality, which will come out every now and then in the future.

The fight begins, and as everyone expects, Yang is much more skilled than Jaune. He's not bad by any means, surely his training with Pyrrha has elevated him way past his starting point, but Yang just has too much experience. What does shine through is Jaune's absurd levels of tenacity, which we have noticed ever since his introduction. Jaune just has a strange ability to bounce back as if his injuries don't matter. That, plus Yang not wanting to hurt him at first, creates a steady fight in which Jaune is getting better every time he gets back up. At one point Yang has to up her game and use the explosive charges of her gauntlets to fight with more agility to keep on the offensive.

Eventually Jaune figures out a plan. He starts to annoy and mock Yang in an attempt to make her change personalities as she usually does. It doesn't work until he goes for the foolproof method, and cuts off a few strands of her hair with a quick slash. Yang immediately bursts into anger, and activates her second Semblance, Burn. She begins to completely obliterate Jaune in a fit of rage thanks to her rage boost, and he is no longer fighting back. Despite that he still finds strength to keep getting up and keep taunting Yang to come attack him more. This plan culminates into his victory.

In the end Yang burned all her Aura with her Semblance without realizing, and since Jaune didn't hit her back, she didn't recover her powers using Impact Absorption. This puts her in a dazed state of weakness in which the beaten and bloody Jaune can pin her down with his sword, winning the fight.

This comes as an absolute shock that no one could believe. This is the ultimate underdog moment, and it doesn't even come off as bad for Yang, since he didn't beat her through physical supremacy or skill. If anything he's clearly way more hurt and broken than she is. He abused her flaw to win a fight, and that is the sweetest type of victory. The decision to cap off both Yang and Sun at the first phase of the tournament might be controversial, but Yang has no reason to move up the tournament character wise or plot wise, so this is a very rare Jaune W and a very rare Yang L. From the bracket, it makes evidently clear that he will fight Jobi in the next phase, and that already has a bunch of hype to it. Jaune is basically Naruto in the Chunnin Exam right now. Nobody expected anything of him, and that was their great mistake.

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Next it will be Blake versus Cardin… which is not even a fight.

The entire time up until now, Blake is visibly scared and distant. Her hands shake as she holds the sword and thinks about the message she received. We still don't know jack shit about that, as far we know she just received a strange message telling that her friends will die. Her behavior and inaction sells this idea of powerlessness, which is not something Blake ever displayed before. She always went and did whatever she wanted (even if it was illegal), but here she's like a deer in the headlights, and for some reason doesn't want to talk about it.

When it came time to fight Cardin, the arena turned into a hill of tall grass — a place where she would have absolute advantage. Cardin was pumped out of his mind after seeing Jaune fight, and he wasn't gonna let that asshole slide to the finals. First he needs to get through Blake, and he doesn't underestimate her at all. The two stared each other down across the field, but as the countdown began…

Blake suddenly raises her hand, forfeiting the match.

It was shocking to everyone, and even dreadful for her own team. She was weird before, but this is just ominous and worrying. She turned her back to leave, but then it happened. Cardin suddenly appeared at great speed behind her, looking like a tower. Everyone expected Cardin to attack, not allowing Blake to quit the fight against him. But instead, we decide to be a little subversive with his character. Instead of attacking, Cardin hunches down, looks her right in the eye… and asks if she was okay. That shocked everyone even more, even his own team. Blake didn't respond, and simply walked away nervously. Cardin puts his mace on his shoulder as he is declared the winner. To not hurt his own pride, Cardin goes ahead, lifts his mace in the air, and hits his own skull with everything he has.

The entire coliseum went silent from witnessing that. The strike is enough to cause bleeding from his forehead. "This should make it fair and square," he says, as blood trickles down his face. Just like always, he didn't believe a real man would ever accept a victory like that. He goes to leave as well, and as he walks by the watching area, he tells Ruby to go have a talk with her teammate. At this point Blake is once again trying to distance herself, quite like she did in the first volume. Once again, she just says "I'm fine" and runs away.

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Next match is Russel versus Penny, which is undoubtedly quick.

So far Russel has not been used seriously as a character other than action scenes. We haven't arrived at his redemption arc yet — what, believe it or not, is a thing I'll do. It's obvious to anyone Penny is gonna win this fight. He tries with absolute viciousness and dirty tactics to beat her, but Penny is abnormally skilled, and throwing dirt straight into her eyeballs doesn't seem to phase her at all. Plus, she has so many physical advantages just by being an android that Russel can't even begin to counter. The fight eventually turns comedic, once Russel realizes that his only shot at beating her are insults, which surprisingly are very effective against Penny, due to her genuine personality. The insults throw her in a quick depression state, but eventually she gets called out by Ruby, waking her up so she could finish the match in one attack. Penny wins.

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The next fight will be Ciel versus Dove…

This is where the tournament madness truly begins.

If they expected nothing from Jaune, the other characters would often forget that Dove even exists. He doesn't speak, except for a few creepy occasions. Most lines we got from him are details to a plan. Just from seeing his name next on the board, he already sacks himself and sighs in frustration. Cardin has to literally throw him into the arena by the scruff of his shirt. Before the fight actually begins, he and Ciel have a short interaction where she insults him with very descriptive phrasing. Dove for one appreciates a girl that doesn't lie to him.

From the watching gallery of the fighters, Robin explains to the rest of her team why Ciel is a badass — how she's able to craft plans on the spot that always succeed, and her strategies are always perfect and blah blah blah, typical tournament stuff. This time the arena was going to turn into a crowded forest of tall trees and thick branches. Dove just slumps in position with hands on his pockets as the fight is about to begin. Everyone expects Dove to instantly lose with that stance and attitude, but Cardin tells them to shut up and watch.

The fight begins, and instead of attacking head on, Ciel jumps back and disappears at great speed. She starts jumping all around the grass and trees around Dove, while he just stands there and watches. Weirdly enough she's not attacking yet — it seems like she's trying to use her speed to confuse Dove or something.

After she's done, she hides away and states that the entire forest with was surrounded bombs. Dove has no way leave that small area without triggering them. He has one minute to give up, or she will activate them all at once, and Dove is gonna be at the center of a massive explosion. Dove instantly proves her right by drawing his bladed boomerang from his pocket and throwing it towards the direction of her voice. The boomerang triggers the movement censor of the bombs, and gets blown away, flying off the arena. Dove is surrounded by motion-trigger mines, he lost one of his two weapons already, and he has less than a minute now. He just sits against a tree and looks up.

We cut away to Glynda and Corazan, watching the fight from the front stands. He doesn't seem to be impressed by the boy, wondering if he ever fought for real before. Glynda admits that he wasn't one of the best in her class, but nonetheless she trained him. And at that time, something strange rang to her. Despite being team leader, Cardin always let Dove make the plans every time without question. According to the other two teachers, Dove wasn't even one of the smarter ones — he was as uneducated as the rest of his crew, and sometimes worse than Nora. But despite that, his plans always worked to perfection. One day Glynda decided to see how far that rabbit hole went.

She tried to test the boy in her own way — a game of chess. It seems like games tickled his brain more than tests or books. And in the few dozen matches that she had against him for the past five months… she never won a single time. It was one of the most outraging things in her life, but it proved her theory. After that, she gave him a few tests to measure his level of expertise, disguised as puzzles so he wouldn't be bored. In the end Dove wasn't just above average… he was above common sense. He has an IQ level of 200.

Corazan couldn't even comprehend what that must mean, and so they had to watch.

Dove kept staring at the leaves above until he made up his mind, and disappeared into the shadows of the forest. Before Ciel could finish her countdown, she looked back and saw that Dove disappeared. It was impossible. He couldn't have gone anywhere — she surrounded his location with mines. She got a little desperate and got out of hiding to explore, pulling out her super gun and aiming with robotic precision. There was no sign of him at all… but as she got closer to examine, she fell into his trap.

Ciel heard a beep right under her foot, and jumped away just in time to escape the explosion. She was still tossed away by the force, and bashed against a tree. She couldn't understand, "I didn't put any of my bombs there! How did this happen?!"

Just then, speaking from the shadows, Dove went on to explain what he did, which is probably the most we heard him talk so far. Ciel made the mistake of giving him time, and being arrogant to think he would just give up upon being threatened. He was able to figure out how the mines worked during that time. He saw that his boomerang activated them instantly despite flying incredibly fast. But when he looked up to memorize all the places she might have planted mines, he noticed something. He saw a simple leaf, falling down exactly on top of one of the bombs. It made him realize that moving slowly enough wouldn't trigger them.

With that knowledge he was able to collect all of them, using his skills as a professional and smooth pickpocketer. And after collecting them, he planted them again in different places. Now Dove controlled the field, and Ciel could no longer blow it all the hell up without risking herself.

Ciel figured she could at least stay at the places her bombs used to be, since Dove removed them from there. But as she tried to do that, she got herself caught in another explosion, and this time she didn't escape. She was launched back with clear burn marks on her arms and clothes, but she quickly recovered her focus. Dove admits to have lied a bit. He only took more or less half of the bombs she originally placed — picking up all thirty of them seemed like too much of a drag.

Just like that, Dove made the entire arena completely unsafe, and that terrified her. Ciel wasn't dumb though — that doesn't count as an ultimatum at all, since he doesn't control when the bombs explode like she does. He still had to come and defeat her if he wanted to win. Dove laughs, because she was spot on. And so he jumps out of the shadows, and the two stare at each other again. Ciel immediately tries to shoot him, so he has to keep dodging. Her weapon has no Dust bullets, but her super strength allows her to take a very high-caliber gun that packs enough of a punch to blow a tree in half. Dove is pretty quick when he wants to, and his strategy of evasion was good. He baited Ciel into shooting at the trees, and that caused dozens of leaves and branches to fall from above, obstructing her vision and misleading her about Dove's location.

In the end she misses all her shots. She tries to reload, only to realize her back pouch was gone — it was blown away during the second explosion. Now that his victory is assured, Dove walks into the open and pulls his second boomerang. Normally they look like a Japanese folding fan with three modes. In the first mode they stay folded and act as small clawy daggers. In mode two he unfolds then at 90 degrees, turning it into a boomerang that comes back after tossed. And in the final mode he unfolds it completely, turning into a demon wind shuriken that is half his size, increasing its cutting power and speed. He threw it at her, but Ciel had one final trick up her sleeve. Her Semblance.

She breathes in a lot of air, and unleashes a powerful banshee scream. The sound waves are strong enough to sway the big shuriken, and send Dove flying through the woods. They even activate the bombs, so the entire forest around them starts to blow up. Once all the destruction settles down, we see Dove feebly lifting himself off the rubble while his shuriken is stuck to a tree far away. Ciel suddenly appears in front of him, just as damaged up from the explosions as he is. Her voice becomes a little rough and raspy after that scream, and she breaks her perfect robotic character. She demands that he gives up, threatening to scream again and kill him at this range. Dove stays on the ground for a second, looking as if he was about to give up…

But then he slowly stands up, and looks her dead in the eyes. His eyes were open.

He suddenly tackled her. That surprised Ciel and forced her to jump back, without any weapon to defend herself. In the end Dove revealed one final trick, as he uses a metal string connected to his bracelet to pull his weapon back to his hand. He catches it in the air, mounts on top of Ciel, and puts the blade at her neck. With a shocking display of ignorance and surprise, Dove wins the fight.

Ciel immediately questions him, "You dumbass! You were at my mercy- why would you attack?! Do you got a death wish or something?!"

Dove was able to know she was bluffing due to his Semblance, Heartreader. Though she said that "she could use her super scream again", in her heart she knew that she could only do it once a day. He had the power to read that lie out of her soul. She was way more hurt from the explosion than he was, and all she had was a bluff, and so he was able to easily flip the situation. Ciel keeps on whining, outraged by the fact she spent the whole night crafting plans to fight all other students, only to lose her first match. "Darn it... why?! Why it didn't work?!"

"Your plan was genius. It would've won against most other idiots in my class. But underestimating your opponent… isn't very smart." Dove says.

Here we see Ciel even blush a little, because she was flustered to meet someone who she deems smarter than her. Dove wins the match, surprising everyone and making the crowd erupt in cheers. Despite being a fight of two tacticians, this ended up being the most awesome and destructive fight so far. Robin was pretty content about that, because it showed everyone of the other academies that their weakest member in combat is still capable of wrecking shit up. Ciel would spend the next hour or so beside Dove, questioning him what he would've done in any other scenario of their fight, and he would answer all of them. It's a cute way to end the scene. This was unusually long, since there's too much big brain yet too little action, so I could talk more.

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Nora versus Aslan, a fight that is very shocking by the end.

By here we established Aslan to be equal if not above Sun in martial arts, and we've built her up as rival for everyone in this arc. But in the end, her match ends up being against the crazy girl with the hammer. I have nothing to note about the choreography, other than Nora having an untold tenacity due to her retard strength. Aslan will constantly use her superior skills to clown on her without her noticing. Ren cannot do anything to help her this time, saying it was her job to win on her own and prove herself. Here Aslan is also sporting her weapon for the first time — a rope dagger, but instead of a dagger, it's a giant wrecking ball with spikes. After a lot of fighting, Nora manages to literally homerun her weapon out of the coliseum with her hammer strike, but she still had to deal with Aslan herself after that.

Aslan had a Semblance that we revealed all the way back in volume II, and that she constantly uses to punish Sun for his antics. That is the power to generate electricity with her Aura. Given that Nora wasn't planning on going down or giving up, Aslan felt like a good taser to her brain would be enough to knock her out. And so she put Nora on a deadly chokehold and sent a constant stream of 100 volts for a long while.

But then something really strange happened.

Nora was clearly in pain, she was screaming out, but she wasn't falling. Aslan kept pumping more and more electricity until she had no Aura left, and all the while everyone could see orange markings forming in Nora's arms and legs. Aslan had to back away. Nora's hair was standing straight up, but outside of the pain, it doesn't seem like she received any real damage. Her muscles became incredibly defined, and she grew in a few places. Now she's hit with a new surge of energy. Her light blue Aura is shining around her.

Nora's Semblance, "Electric Supplement" has been discovered.

And with it, she wins the fight. Her speed and strength increase tremendously, and Aslan's martial arts aren't enough to save her. Nora lets go of her hammer to deliver a single hook punch that is enough to send Aslan flying to the stands and crashing against the wall, left unconscious. Nora won by randomly discovering the perfect ability that allowed her the victory, but a win is a win. She slowly returns to her usual form. Her muscles softened out, her hair lost static, her tits shrunk back to normal and the orange markings disappeared.

From the gallery, Ren reveals to the others that he knew about her power for a long time — ever since she put a coin in the orphanage's plug socket, and the same thing happened. She activated a bunch of other times after that, but simply forgot about it because it was a power too specific for her to care, or might just have been because of her smooth brain, who knows. With that, half of team JNPR is going to the quarter finals, while Leo can only pull his hairs out in frustration. He realizes that he has to bet everything on Jobi to win this tournament, despite that kid being a dick.

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Sky versus Harriet…

This next fight is much less exciting, because it's essentially about one-note side characters who received no buildup, so to counter that I'll need to make the fight interesting through choice of themes. Sky, the guy with more feminine traits than all girl characters combined, versus Harriet, the violent little tomboy who's quick to anger. Complete opposites, but still share a similar theme.

The fight itself is pretty basic — once Sky realized Harriet was the only woman in the world he couldn't seduce, he was forced to fight. In case we don't touch on this in a previous episode, Sky's Semblance is "Taunt", the power to draw his opponent's animosity towards himself subconsciously. The fight starts with Harriet fighting with him as an equal, but as he begins to insult her appearance, her words, and every little mistake she makes, she easily starts getting snared by Taunt. Once it reaches its highest level, it leaves the opponent in a state of feral rage in which they can't even think straight. Sky is so good at fighting defensively that Harriet was barely able to hit him while enraged, and she was making more and more mistakes. She just keeps telling Sky to shut up over and over again, until she breaks.

When she gets insulted enough by her appearance, she starts having an emotional meltdown. Harriet starts cursing herself and everyone else for having been born a girl. She didn't ask for it. No one understood how humiliating it was, being forced to do stupid things and be treated with pity, just because you were born a certain way. We go so far as to see a small flashback of Harriet, a couple of years before she joined the army. She looked like an average girl with long hair, but she was mocked by random people, colleagues and even her parents for not acting like a proper lady. She changed everything about herself in hopes those comments would stop, but all it did was make people judge her more. Up until now Harriet tried to be as agressive as she could be, so then no one would have the guts to bad mouth her. It worked, but... it didn't make her any stronger against it.

In that moment, her meltdown triggers something in Sky, and he turns off his Semblance to give her a small moral lesson. He was also shunned for how he was back home, and was pretty much the black sheep that everyone wanted to beat up. But what made him strong, what made him a real man in Cardin's eyes despite his mannerisms, is that he never changed who he was to avoid the pain, or the danger. His difference only inspired himself to be even stronger than the people who opposed him. What other people think doesn't matter. He then told Harriet that she could prove to be a real soldier despite being a girl, but she can only do it if she defeats him.

Sky then unleashes the second form of his long battle axe, unloading the heavy weight in exchange for a thin and lighter spear with a hook to increase his agility. Harriet shrugged off her angry tears and accepted his challenge, also unveiling her Speed Force Semblance. It allowed her to generate a special energy by moving, and that energy would make her faster as it built up, but also she could apply the speed force to objects. Thus her weapons are two steel balls connected by wire — clackers is the name I believe.

The fight continued to be balanced and deadly, as Sky wasn't holding back anymore, but refrains from using Taunt. Eventually Harriet is done charging speed force on the steel balls by spinning them around, and so she throws them at Sky. Their speed was too great to register — it looked more potent than a Dust bullet shot. It hits Sky right in the stomach and sends him flying way out of bounds, crashing against the wall.

Harriet was declared the winner. Despite the seriously deadly attack, Sky quickly recovers to praise her for the win. This time he compliments a few of her feminine traits, but instead of blowing out anger like before, she thanks him and helps him stand up. A quick and simple fight with gender dysphoria as the main theme. They called me a madman, but I've done it. Sky will eventually have one of the coolest moments in the show, and it's not even gonna be a fight. I can't wait to get there. For now, this is the only ray of sunshine he gets outside of his comedy scenes.

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Pyrrha versus Fiona… well.

A fight I don't have much to talk about in terms of character. Before it begins, the two girls have a short talk, which actually explains a bit of Pyrrha's backstory. Fiona was essentially trying to trigger Pyrrha by exposing a few curious things about her past. She was born in Argus, trained there, won the regional fighting tournament of the city, but didn't attend the Atlas Special Forces academy. It didn't seem possible, considering that every teenager who awakens their Aura is forced to join the military upon being discovered. Pyrrha's parents had to smuggle her away to Beacon, and Fiona wanted to know why. Her father was still in a lot of trouble for doing that behind the army's back. What does Pyrrha have that is so important?

The simple questions were already making Pyrrha angry. Fiona is a Faunus, so naturally she gets a lot of shit in Atlas. People are mean and look down upon her, even if she's technically as much of a citizen as any human. She would like to quit the army and go on with a normal life, but unlike Pyrrha, she can't just throw everything behind and go. She has friends, goals and loved ones, and she's not a coward to abandon them. And so, Pyrrha speaks out in anger for the first time in the whole series, telling Fiona to shut up and fight. The cowardly sheep girl suddenly gives off a creepy smile as she sees the snarl on Pyrrha's face. From the watching gallery, Robin explains that Fiona has this sadistic streak once in a while. She's everyone's little bitch until the fight actually begins, and she can blow away her pent up stress.

The fight is not that complicated. She attacks Pyrrha head on with bare hands and soon we find out why. Fiona Semblance is "Pocketer" — she can touch stuff, and kind of absorb the entire object within her arms for storage. She uses it to steal away Pyrrha's shield and spear, leaving her defenseless. From then Fiona draws her own weapon, which is a big fucking motor chainsaw — no tricks this time. Pyrrha is forced to keep dodging without weapons to protect herself, and boy does this weapon hurts. Eventually she finds an opportunity to use her Semblance without no one realizing. Fiona accidentally hits the ground with the spinnning saw, and Pyrrha uses her Semblance to fuck up the internal wiring and engine of the weapon, rendering it useless. Fiona wasn't done though, she pulls out Pyrrha's spear from her pocket dimension and uses it against her.

From there is just a cool and short fight to show off the fact that Pyrrha doesn't need weapons at all to fight well. Her martial art of choice is Greco-roman wrestling, and she uses it to suplex Fiona really hard against the arena, pinning her down. Pyrrha wins, but this time there is not even indifference or slight satisfaction when she looks down at her opponent. Pyrrha just looks… sad. It was the result that everyone expected, and now she'll move up to the next phase with the rest of JNPR, who are the team doing best so far.

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Velvet versus Yatsuhashi, the only fight to be outright between two teammates.

These two are no strangers to sparring, and go into the arena with big smiles. Velvet even grabs his hand and happily drags him along the arena. She reveals that, when they first met, she was afraid of him because he was so big, tall and stoic looking. He was a real warrior from the get go, while she was just a farm girl picking a careeer way over her head. However, after all the training she did, she's not afraid of anything anymore. She's not that same little girl who they had to drag around their missions like baggage. Velvet goes on to draw her comically big swiss army knife, and Yatsu wields his Lu Bu spear.

The fight starts and we instantly get a sense of Velvet's Semblance. If we haven't mentioned it already (probably not), "Muscle Memory" allows her to copy movements after seeing them once. She uses moves from all other competitors that we've seen fight so far, and the many weapon choices within her own weapon allow her to inflict a similar damage as well. She is able to use her speed to deliver a disgustingly powerful blow to Yatsu's head, which is almost shocking to see. It looked like that would put him down for years… but it was not the case.

Yatsuhashi gets up, and although it hurts a lot, he quickly recovers from the simple daze. His Semblance, "Wakey Wakey", makes his mind invincible. He doesn't need to sleep, and he cannot fall unconscious. He feels pain, but never gets tired mentally. In essence he is what being immortal feels like, without any other powers that compliment immortality, like a healing factor or eternal youth. But who knows, maybe if his head gets chopped off, he might still be awake afterwards.

Suddenly the match and the tournament are called into question. How will Yatsuhashi ever lose if they can't possibly put him down? And so Yatsuhashi decided to play a little game. He told Velvet that if she managed to break his prized family weapon in two, then he would admit defeat. The battle goes on for a while longer, I have nothing else to add, and by the end Velvet manages to break his spear in two with a powerful strike. Velvet's weapon has so many tools that she's able to recreate team RWBY's ultimate attack, Hidden Gem, all on her own. She slingshots herself against Yatsu, the two clash, and finally his spear is broken in two. Yatsu forfeits.

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Next fight is Ruby versus Coco, which is a very uncommon fight.

The arena this time turns into a bunch of hills with snow and a few pine trees — a typical Atlas location. Ruby is determined to win as she always does, but is nervous since she still believed Coco to be superior to her. This battle is not fought close at all, in fact Ruby will go full on sniper this time, wanting to beat Coco on her own game.

The two immediately hide away and prepare for the countdown. The fight begins and Ruby is immediately being sniped from far away. It's low visibility due to the storm, but somehow Coco is able to land perfect shots by simply listening to her whims along with her developed skill. Her Semblance is "Lucky shot", and in lame terms, it just makes her aware of the luckiest thing she can do — from choosing dinner, to taking a shot in the dark. A sniper bullet gives Ruby a good punch but not enough to kill her. As she gets shot more and more, she begins to wise up. She takes off her red hood and black sweater, so then her white tank top and pale skin can camouflage better with the snow. She tosses her dark clothes around to divert Coco from her current position. She pulls her hair back so then the wet bang doesn't get in her eyes. By the end Ruby looks like a totally different person. She fights through the cold and learns how to hide herself in the snow.

The pace of the fight slows to a crawl, as now the two snipers are searching each other in the snowstorm. Ruby eventually finds Coco, just a single millisecond before Coco found her. She takes the shot, and the bullet goes through Coco's scope. She dodged at the last millisecond, leaving a clear scrape on her favorite beret, and shattering her shades. Upon realizing that, Coco forfeits the match on the spot. That was just too cool to beat.

The fight ends and the snow quickly melts, so Ruby starts running around to get her clothes back so she doesn't die of hypothermia. Coco goes ahead and congratulates Ruby — she undoubtedly will be able to surpass a lot of huntsmen in this world before even getting to her twenties. And now that she looks at it, the ragged beret looks a little bit more stylish than she expected. And so for the rest of the series, Coco will use that same beret with the bullet scrape; just as a little design easter egg.

With that, Ruby becomes the first and only member of her team to pass to the quarter finals thus far. Don't worry, Weiss is next.

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Robin versus Weiss is a grudge match.

This fight might come off as a rehash of her fight with Winter, at least theme wise. One very important thing to remember about this fight (and also all other fights she has in this tournament) is that her family name is changed to Quartz — a deal worked by Jacques and the organizing staff to hide her identity. Now, to the actual fight.

In a perfect world, Weiss was supposed to be on Robin's team in Atlas. That's how it should've been. She was hoping to have some fun once the little princess was under her, but unfortunately it wasn't the case. She had to run away from her duties and go play ball in another nation, just like any other rich piece of filth. Robin had an absolute distaste of the Atlas elite, especially the Schnee Mining Company for what it made to her home city of Mantle. The Dust mining made the entire city into a hell pit of misery, fumes, pollution and garbage. Pipes everywhere, dangerous working hazards, people dying of weird diseases caused by the chemicals, child labor, and worse shit. Of course, the little princess has no fucking idea what Robin is talking about. She couldn't see their suffering from her mansion in Atlas City. This beatdown would be satisfying to Robin.

Robin fought with her bladed shield crossbow, fighting extremely well in both long and close range. Just like any Atlas motherfucker, she has some special tech — arrows that explode, others have acid, others disperse electric volts, others have ropes and shit. Robin is very versatile overall. Her Semblance just gives her better accuracy by focusing energy on her eyes, called "Hawk Eye".

Eventually Weiss wises up, and starts using her Semblance in more creative ways. She begins by covering the entire arena floor in a layer of ice to mess Robin's footing and aim. I wish to factor a lot of arena hazards into this fight. One signature move from Weiss that we will see a lot from now on is her simply creating huge spikes of ice under the feet of her opponent to hit them. She manages to payback all that damage that Robin gave her, and soon they were back to square one. Robin was the team leader of Atlas, and she was too nettled and had too much responsibility to give up despite her injuries. She's afraid what might happen to her girls if they don't win this stupid tournament.

Once she ran out of arrows, Robin truly begins to shine by using her secret weapon. She kept a pouch of poisoned darts in her belt, and she was able to throw them with absurd precision. The fight becomes ugly once Weiss gets hit by one, and is left under the threat of dying without an antidote. However, she also manages to stab Robin with a dart as well, giving them both a time limit to finish this long ass fight before they die. The end of the fight comes as they get progressively weaker from the poison, but Weiss is able to endure and charge Robin one final time, slashing her chest and making her blond hair come undone. Once both were on the ground, Robin and Weiss exchange a few words. Weiss sees herself forced to agree on many things that Robin said. In fact, she probably dislikes her own family just as much as Robin does. She hopes to one day be a rich and powerful warrior like her grandfather was, and when that day comes… she will try to help Mantle any way she can. Robin looks into the sky and smiles softly, finally passing out.

Weiss is declared the winner, as she kept standing for longer.

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And now, for the last fight of the first phase of the tournament, Ren versus Fox.

By this point Fox is one of the most feared motherfuckers in this series. The level of playfulness he displays while fighting, just like Qrow, implies we are yet to see what he was truly capable of. Last time we saw, Ren and Yang fighting together couldn't hit him once, and though they trained for months, maybe the skill gap won't change any time soon. Fox could probably display an absurd level of brutality if he wanted to, but chose to never use his worst moves on the people he considered friends. It would be a tough fight, but it wasn't all hopeless for Ren. He has been developing a skill that he hopes will allow his victory. The two fight especially at close range so they immediately forgo their weapons for pure martial arts.

As expected, Ren gets his ass kicked initially. Throughout the fight he will try to grab Fox for a moment, applying his Semblance on him. Ren's Semblance doesn't do much as it is, but he claims to have evolved it to a new level. And soon, he manages to do what he wants. Fox could feel as if something was clawing into the inside of his mind, and when he focused to see what it was, he recognized Ren's astral presence.

Ren's semblance isn't just "Tranquility" anymore, it's "Mind Control". Up until now, he could only control emotions — either his own, or from the people whom he could grasp. Now he has the ability to influence people's thoughts, memories and perception, and to Fox that appeared to be quite deadly. Fox relies on his Semblance for everything, and his Semblance only happens within his mind. Ren was able to peer into his mind and make Fox start receiving false information from his own ability. With his constant interference, Fox was reduced to a super strong blind man that couldn't see Ren's movements, and he was able to overwhelm Fox. In the end Ren won, and the entire team JNPR moved to the next phase.

Commentary (spoilers): By now you must see that the entire tournament has been changed and now fully incorporated. In the original we only got a handful of fights that happened sporadically between our main characters, but here I decide to make the hard and tough choice to include each fight. Hard because of the budget, and also hard because I need to make every fight have a point or a theme to it — even if it doesn't matter in the overall story of the volume. A single elimination style is also nice, because we don't get many opportunities to develop individual characters. As usual, old stuff got repurposed, current stuff got better adapted, and new stuff is slowly building up. So far the only anomalies are the de-aged Happy Huntresses and Jobi. Again, if you're wondering why I didn't keep characters like Katt and Flynt, the reason is because I want Penny to be the only "nice" and silly character from Atlas, to make her character arc of wanting to belong hit harder when we come down to it. At first I didn't even realize I picked four girls, but those were the ones I liked the most from Atlas, and their personalities contrast enough to make the team memorable. For now they are not that deep and don't have much story to tell, since I don't have the time to develop them. The fights give them a little more depth, but in terms of story, outside of Penny, the atlas girls don't have the necessity to be here. Also, about Nora, yes I did give Aslan the electric Semblance for this exact purpose. I still wanted Nora to first discover/use her Semblance in the tournament just like the original. I still wanted Weiss to beef with someone who despises her family, like flynt. I still want Penny to reach the finals. Above all else, I want the characters to feel genuine to their arcs, and I want to keep as many similarities to the original show as possible.

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With that, twelve of our twenty four fighters are gone. The losers will still commentate from the gallery and shit, but for some of them this is the last ray of sunshine they will see in a long while. Everyone gets their volume — some before others, of course. But we don't have just heroes, we also have a few villains we have to focus on. It doesn't have to be anywhere specific, it just has to happen somewhere during the first phase of the tournament.

First, Roman and Neo.

The scene starts with him in his bunker, making some kind of medicine soup for Neo, who looks awfully sick. Now that we know her true form, we won't be seeing her in mature fake form come back any time soon. By the dialogue, Roman makes it clear that Neo gets sick very easily if not on a monthly basis. Though his hideout seems to be one of the most well hidden places on the planet…

That crazy fire lady managed to find him.

She suddenly appeared inside his bunker and started talking like she owns the damn place. Roman points every gun he has at her, while Neo can't even muster the strength to stand up. However, even with two guns full of Dust bullets, Roman feels no confidence that he can take this lady on — just by the pressure of her Aura (mind that her face is still hidden in shadows of her hood). She essentially has the two at her mercy, without even lifting a finger. She knows where they live, she's stronger than them, and she came at the worst possible time. However, she didn't came to kill them. The lady has another job for the two, and this time they don't have the luxury of refusing. Of course, she can easily do it herself, but she finds it best to let Roman do it — his life is still useful to her.

This time he'll have to do exactly the same thing he did last time. Sneak into Ironwood's ship, plant the thing into the mainframe, and leave. However, this time it might be even easier. She wants him to do it specifically during the final match of the Vytal tournament. The whole world will be watching TV, so this time he doesn't have to worry about fighting one bit. If he doesn't want to do it, she'll just have to kill him right here and now, along with his little girlfriend. No one would notice and no one would even care — what a sad ending for them.

The threat on Neo was enough for Roman to concede. He takes the storage device, and so the woman walks off through his front door.

"Don't try to cross me, Torchwick" she says with a smile. The scene ends.

Commentary (spoilers): We set Roman as a simple genius crook at the start of the series. In volume II he evolved to occasional samaritan. in Volume III to threatening antagonist, and now in Volume IV he's been upgraded to reluctant villain. It's like I once said, the series will progress in such a way that old villains will slowly become less evil in comparison to the new ones, and now we can even see a bit of protagonism within Roman. His desire to protect and care for Neo already gives him a layer of humanity to boot. In all, he plays a major role in the future events without having made any true evil actions. A very nice thing to learn is loving your own villains, because once you understand the passion you can write pretty much any villain.

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We also have a reintroduction, that being Mercury and Emerald.

It starts just like the beginning of volume II, with the two having their Jules and Vincent routine, up until they arrive at the festival. Mercury was upset to return to Vale after all the heat they received last time, but it seems like they were hired again for a much easier job — plus they can watch the tournament with all those kids whose butts they kicked. For now they just had to infiltrate the coliseum, and to fool security, Emerald rips off two sheets of blank paper and uses her Semblance to hallucinate the security guard into believing those were real IDs (noting the two as a recently-wed couple). With that they were allowed in, and so they just had to wait for next orders.

Having a guy like Mercury just walking around the tournament grounds, being completely uncaring and nonchalant, will result in obvious problems and fight scenes. By not being Cinder's lackeys, these two have much less stakes, so they are kept mostly in the dark about their missions. Emerald just thinks about money and stealing all the time, but we can get an idea that they are doing all these things for what they believe is a good reason, just like when they murdered Tuxson. From now on they'll just hang back and watch the tournament from the crowds, never interacting with our main characters until the time is right.

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We naturally get some down time until the next phase of the tournament begins. Team JNPR celebrates their collective success, except for Pyrrha, who seems to have grown even more distant and worried, not knowing how to explain her PCFHR needed to have the talk afterwards, since they clearly underestimated the power of the students from Vale. Now the chips are all on Penny and Harriet, and they can expect to be heavily shunned by their own nation if they dare to lose. Sun and Aslan drink together and sulk in their misery, until Leo comes along and gives his big moral lesson of, "sometimes we suck, and we get unlucky. It's not the end of the world." They still had a long way to go and much more to show the world other than winning fights in a stupid tournament.

Of course, we have the much needed talk of team RWBY. Yang had to apologize for once again losing her temper and beating up poor Jaune to a pulp. It's a whole song and dance that she does often throughout the entire show so far, but this time she stands up for herself. Yang realizes how she was not able to defeat her enemies when it truly mattered, and her team ended up getting hurt in her place. The power that she gains from getting angry is amazing — everyone can see it. She can use it to destroy those who try to hurt them. Why should she stop using that power? The others didn't talk back, and so Yang leaves to go figure stuff out on her own. She walks around the festival until…

She meets again with her father.

This time even Tai was embarrassed for her, and came over to give Yang a lesson. They go somewhere far away, quiet and private, so the two could have a short sparring match as they discussed. Tai absolutely did not remember training her to be so foolish and violent at the same time. That day, when she begged to be taught how to fight, she wanted to do it from the desire to get stronger and protect Ruby from whatever came their way. Now here she is, giving into anger and beating the hell out of her friend for just a few strands of hair. The worst part is that she lost in the end — that is the real tragedy. How does she plan to excuse herself this time? It won't work on him.

Yang starts to get upset the more Tai questions her. She tries to shift the conversation, but the man is dead serious. They need to talk, because what he saw today was something he did not plan on seeing ever again. In her frustration, Yang comes to reveal that she discovered the truth about her real mother. How she was part of their old team, and that she is now a renegade.

From then on Tai stopped talking as Yang starts ranting. She blames him for fooling around with an evil woman, and it's his fault she came out like this. If he wanted a better daughter, then too bad. She's way past the point of being pushed around and lectured. Yang has a goal as a warrior — she's going to destroy all the bad things in this world with her fists, and she doesn't care if nobody appreciates her for it, not even her family. The conversation is left unresolved, as Yang stares her father with those red eyes. Tai says, "your mother's eyes… They always scared me. There was always so much anger in them. Please, don't let them guide you… It won't end well for anyone… learn this lesson now while you still can, dummy."

And so he left. Yang's eyes regress to purple, and so she turns around to leave.

...

Next time we see everyone, they were back at their HQ in the castle. It was time to question Blake, as she decided to finally show up after disappearing the whole day. Her excuses for not fighting Cardin seem so pathetically flimsy that the others see through it instantly. In the end, Blake decides it's finally time to come clean. She reveals that she has been upset lately... because her home village has spotted a few Grimm in the outskirts. The village, which is as far away from Vale city as it gets, is called Brightcoast, located in the south east. Blake was fearful about what might happen to her family. Of course, we the audience know it's a lie, since we see it from her perspective.

She begs that the team go and help them out, even if the mission takes the rest of the week. It leaves the girls confused, but it at least explains her weird behavior. They decide to help her as soon as the tournament ends. Blake insisted that they move out now, but Ruby and Weiss aren't willing to abandon the sick ass tournament. Blake also refuses to go with just Yang. In the end Ruby promises to do something about it if it means calming her down. Blake failed at her goal, and so the tournament continued for team RWBY.

After all is set and done, we have phase two to look forward, tomorrow.

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Jaune versus Jobi… running for the best fight of the tournament.

Through the entire first phase and afterwards, Jobi has been nothing but talking shit about the other characters, while having enough skill to match his big mouth. Even looking him in the eyes is a mistake — he could force people to contort horribly with his Semblance, just for annoying him. He literally has no chill whatsoever — even his two classmates Sun and Aslan, who he spent two years with by now, can't even say any nice things about him.

Jaune and Ruby were the ones he dissed the most. Their naive outlook on life pissed him off most. The little girl who wanted to be a hero in a world of monsters, and the dumbass who wants to protect others with a broken sword. What a joke. Hearing Jobi speak his mind is genuinely the first time we see Jaune angry in the entire show. While Jobi believes in the cruelty of the world (the strong survive), Jaune holds on to hope no matter what (no one is cursed to be weak forever). He makes the promise to beat the fuck out of Jobi and prove him wrong about everything he said so far. And so it was, the genius born of a noble family in Haven, Jobi, and the failed progeny, Jaune. For those who have a keen eye, this fight will remind you too much of Naruto versus Neji, and that is exactly what I want to sell.

Jobi promises that Jaune won't be able to even touch him, and our boy accepts the challenge.

And as expected, the beginning was a total wash — even more than Jaune versus Yang. Jobi was more skilled than Yang, had ninja tricks, and also all the powers that a wolf head could grant. Through the entire starting beat down, the apparent decisive moments came when Jaune was unfortunate to look into Jobi's eyes, allowing his Semblance to take hold of his body and use his own sword to deliver a near fatal blow to Jaune's midriff. Blood splattered everywhere, and Jaune fell to his knee. The countdown began at that exact moment, but Jaune got up at the last second to refuse his defeat. It's here, at the utmost moment of defiance, when he comes to the risk of dying, that his blue aura begins to shine around him. Everyone who had a remote spiritual awareness could feel something change in the air. Jaune held on to his guts and stood up.

"I'm still… a long way… from losing… to someone like you!" Jaune shouted.

And right there, before everyone in the audience, he uncovers his wound. The flesh around the slash is being covered by golden Aura — his energy has fully changed from blue to golden. And so this new power slowly starts to close up the wound. As Jaune's theme starts to pop the fuck off, the camera freezes the shot on him, and in big bold letters it appears:

Jaune Arc. Semblance: Aura Regeneration… Awakened!

Just like that, Jaune's healing power is used for the first time, on himself. It not only begins to heal his severe wound, but also all the other small injuries and cuts he received throughout the start of the battle. Now Jaune's second wind is coming in, and Jobi is not allowed to relax. Jaune takes the offensive, but he does not do it head on. He starts using his brain, copying battle strategies from the previous phase in order to get the drop on Jobi. Stuff like placing his clothes in different places to confuse Jobi of his location (learned from Ruby's battle with Coco). Use a dog whistle to mess up Jobi's hearing (learned from Sun's battle). Most notably, he learned that he could use his sword and shield as a mirror to look at Jobi without triggering his Voodoo Semblance. Jobi does wise up, and uses a trap of strings to take Jaune's shield away, and toss it out of the arena. In the end Jaune had to bet all odds into one final attack head on. And so he made up his strategy.

He covered his eyes with a blindfold, and was forced to fight Jobi with his hearing alone. It wasn't that good of an idea, since he was fighting a ninja, but eventually he got the opportunity that he wanted. Jobi drew his wavy katana and prepared for the final blow against Jaune. At that moment, Jaune decided that the best course of action would be throwing his sword at Jobi, and then run straight at him while unarmed. The sword was easily deflected, and now Jobi was ready to cut him down. It looked like that would be the end…

But Jaune had one last trick on his sleeve.

Using a tactic that he copied from Dove, he picked up the invisible string from Jobi's earlier trap, and used it to bond his hand and sword together. He jumped in the air, pulled the string, and so the sword came flying back to his hand. Jobi was not expecting that at all. He had barely any time to change his stance and block, so he was forced to clash with Jaune mid air. By wearing a blindfold, Jaune was only capable of delivering a glaring slash on Jobi's face and arm, while he took a slash across his chest. They both fall from the air, landing on their feet.

...

Unfortunately for Jaune he doesn't have demon fox powers to pull out of his ass, so after a few moments of silence he drops to the ground. Jobi won, but it wasn't the perfect win he hoped to achieve. Jaune managed to surpass Sun and Aslan together, and made Jobi bleed with his glaring slash. For the first time in a long while, he was wounded.

The rest of team JNPR invade the arena to help their leader along with the emergency staff. Looking down on his body, Jobi takes a moment to think again. He admits being wrong about Jaune, and that he was actually a warrior worthy of his respect. His tenacity was one of the greatest weapons that Jobi has ever seen in his life, and in the end, Jobi figuratively lost by underestimating him. Jaune was able to touch him. That small compliment was enough to drive Jaune to a tear, and so he passed out relieved that he was able to proved his worth to everyone. At long last, he's officially on par with all the other students of his class.

A beautiful end to a brutal fight, and a sudden dramatic development for Jobi, who so far only has been a prick with no cause. Jaune seems to have begun an awakening in him. And so, the third best fight of the volume is over. Personally I would want this one to be the last battle of this phase of the tournament, because it's too goddamn epic.

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And now, to the infinitely less interesting fights of this phase, Penny versus Cardin.

Naturally he's much stronger and smarter than Russel was, and he could exploit Penny's gullible nature more effectively. This fight might be hyped up by others as the first time Cardin will lose to a girl, an idea that he angrily denies. But Penny is no average girl. She is strong like Yang, she's smart like Pyrrha, she's agile like Blake. How can Cardin, with no Semblance, and no strategy other than "hit harder" ever win against her?

Answer is, he doesn't.

Penny has a counter for anything he had, and so far she was able to beat two warriors with her bare hands. One very important note that needs to be present in this fight is small hallucinations that Cardin was seeing. He was seeing stuff that wasn't actually happening, multiple times. Those moments of distraction helped Penny immensely, and at one point Cardin was convinced that the illusions were her Semblance. He wasn't going to win like that, but Cardin did manage to give her the greatest punch of the entire tournament.

In one last ditch attempt to beat her, he manages to fool Penny into stealing his mace away from him. But that wasn't the standard mace that he used from Volume I through III, this is HIS mace now, the Executioner. All characters have upgraded their weapons thanks to the help of Miss Lucy, and this is no different. Once Penny wields the mace, Cardin presses a button under his wrist, activating an explosive at the center of the mace. It blew right into Penny's face, and for a good moment it seemed like it had won the fight.

Once the dust cloud settled, we can see that her fighting gear was mostly destroyed, and she had to use her hands to cover the scrape marks on her fake skin. After that, she goes 100% serious on Cardin to finish the fight as fast as possible, putting him down with absurd speed and strength. He fell unconscious, but in his infinite hubris, Cardin refused to fall, and blacked out while standing on his feet. As he was dragged out the arena, he told Dove that it was up to him to represent their squad to the entire world now.

As for Penny, instead of seeing her happily commemorate her victory like she has done for herself and others so far, we see her silently leave the arena and rush past her friends. She locks herself in the waiting room bathroom, and spends minutes staring at her reflection on the mirror. The explosion showed clearly that underneath her fake white skin, she has a metallic silver body. It's a wordless scene, but from the sadness in her eyes it's perfectly clear how much she resents being reminded of what she truly is. Eventually Winter knocks on the door, telling her to come along so they can get her appearance fixed.

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Nora versus Dove is the most comical fight of this whole tournament.

Dove went from fighting the smartest girl in there, to fighting the stupidest. The arena was set on a type of mountain with a bunch of fog everywhere. Outside the coliseum, it seemed like the skies were brewing for a heavy rain.

The fight starts and Nora goes straight for him, not wasting time on any strategy. That seems to be the best approach against Dove, giving him no time to think. Once Nora realizes she's not fast enough to catch him in this shitty terrain, it's time to abuse the new Semblance she just learned she had. Nora had no idea where to get electricity, but then she realized the arena was nothing but technology and wires. And so she started hitting the ground with a hammer over and over again, until she got to the bottom of the Arena. She punched her way into the metal plates and pulled a handful of wires colored red, green and white. With no hesitation she takes a huge bite out of that, and immediately is blasted by a ton of electricity.

It seems to do the trick, and now Nora's speed and strength were boosted — not as much as her fight with Aslan, but still a lot. With that she's able to chase down Dove and hit him real good a couple times. He had pretty much no way of fighting back, but luckily that power did run out eventually. Nora tried a few more other ways to find electricity, but it seems like she doesn't get how electricity works. She even tried swallowing her own scroll phone, thinking the battery would blast her. Dove then heard the sounds of thunder up above from the brewing storm, and figured it was time to find out the limitations of Nora's power.

He essentially used smart wording to teach her about how lighting works, so then she would come to the idea herself and do something stupid. It works flawlessly. Nora sees the skies raging with power, and decides to get a bite of that — promising that another boost will be enough to defeat Dove and his hiding tricks. And so she jumps up to the top of the mountain, and holds her long hammer up high. A huge lightning came rushing down and struck her, creating a flash that blinded the entire audience.

Everybody watched in awe, wondering how strong will that make her…

But in the end, it happened as Dove expected. Nora passed out instantly from the lightning strike, and fell down the mountain comically. After all, lightning isn't just electricity. It has a powerful punch to it that even a Huntsman would crumble before. Dove won, and so the last member of team CRDL is moving to the Semi Finals.

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Pyrrha versus Harriet…

Now I realize I maybe don't have what it takes to write twenty four different fights. Or maybe it's just this one, I don't know. I don't have any input at all on the themes or what should be said during the fight, I just need Pyrrha to win without using her Semblance in an obvious way. My only idea involves Pyrrha purposefully taking hits from Harriet, realizing that the Speed Force seeps into her if she makes contact with Harriet while she's energized. Because of that, they would start to fight really fast and destroy the arena all over. The battle would eventually conclude with Pyrrha concentrating all the Speed Force into her shield, and so she would toss it at super speed. Harriet would dodge, but then Pyrrha used her Semblance to control the shield, and make it fly towards Harriet even after she jumped to the side. She got hit with the lightning fast shield, and much like Sky, she was tossed off the arena by the force. That decisive blow puts Harriet down, and gives Pyrrha the win.

It's a very bare bones idea. There's not much more to tell about Pyrrha's backstory and I don't want to repeat the same notes of her fight against Fiona, so personally I think this is the worst fight of this phase (possibly the tournament). It concludes essentially the same way as her last fight. Realizing she's now in the Semi Finals, Pyrrha's reaction is one of sadness and not excitement. Maybe some other day I might come back to this one, in case I decide to give Harriet some kind of backstory that mixes with Pyrrha.

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Now we have a fun fight. Ruby versus Velvet.

The two greatest speedsters of their class. I don't have inputs about the choreography or strategy, other than the girls having an absolute blast fighting each other due to their mutual joyful personalities. This fight ends up very different from Ruby's previous fight — raw and quick instead of methodical. Despite me not knowing how to go about the fight itself, here we discover something fundamentally important for the future of the series. After going back and forth, Ruby proved to be in equal status to Velvet despite coming in a year before. However, Velvet explains that there is another way that a Huntsman can evolve. The Semblance is a piece of the soul, and just like the body, it grows and changes as the time passes, and as they learn new things. A Semblance that is trained enough can evolve into something else — that is what Ren achieved in his fight against Fox. Velvet claims also having done the same, and it was time to show Ruby.

And so Velvet prepares her weapon and stands ominously, when suddenly her eyes turn red like an albino rabbit. She entered a mode in which she could instantly move in accord to Ruby with absolutely zero delay, and so she was able to perfectly intercept each attack attempt with her own. All of Ruby's moves were being effortlessly dodged or countered. Once Ruby backed away, Velvet explained the evolution of her Muscle Memory Semblance — "Muscle Reading".

Everyone has a pattern to their movement that can't be altered or even noticed by that person. With this ability, Velvet could memorize their patterns and essentially read their brain signals to figure out when the opponent will attack, and how. Essentially, Velvet entered an absolute counter mode. Ruby can't win like this. Throughout the fight, Ruby realizes she's not being fast enough to match Velvet's instanteneous reaction, but she's getting there. For the past months, she has been training with her Semblance and eventually realized something. There was a clear and tangible limit to Rose Dash. A barrier. She's sure that it is possible to surpass it, but she's fearful of what might happen.

Now at the present, she realizes this barrier was blocking the evolution of her Semblance. She needed to win, and so she needed to surpass the limits of her speed. At this point Velvet was unstoppable, unless Ruby managed to make her movements too fast to be readable. And so she made up her mind, and began running around the arena like a red blur, gaining more and more speed while Velvet stood in the center and kept watching. Ruby started using her Semblance and going even faster. She could see the limit up ahead, like a hallucination. With enough effort, she manages to reach the impossible speed. And so it happens. Just like Jaune, the camera freezes on her. In big bold letters it reads:

Ruby Rose. Semblance: Rose Dash, evolved into… Rose Burst!

Upon reaching her natural barrier, something bizarre happens to Ruby's body. She starts to break apart. Her fingers, her legs, eventually her torso and head broke apart in red petals. Her entire body turned into one huge burst of rose petals, and she became insanely fast with that. Even her weapon came to disappear within the petals. There was no longer a body that Velvet could read, and so Ruby started to rush at her in petal form.

Velvet tried to attack her, but her strike simply went through the petals like she just tried slashing at air. Just then, Ruby reformed her body after going through Velvet, and was in the perfect position to deliver a powerful attack from behind, striking her at great speed. She didn't hit Velvet with the scythe, but rather the blunt side. Instead of being chopped in half, Velvet goes flying away. The coliseum goes wild, and all the warriors react in surprise from the gallery.

The match is called out. Ruby falls to her knees in absolute exhaustion. Blood immediately starts to trickle out of her ear and nose. She felt nauseous and sick. Nevertheless she won, so she and Velvet go together to the infirmary. Ruby successfully defeated Velvet by blowing past her limits. She has to get accustomed to this power, because she has faith that she can win the tournament with it.

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Now for the last fight of the phase, Weiss versus Ren.

Also another short fight in which I don't have a lot of input. In terms of skill these two are pretty equal and elegant, so if anything the choreography needs to be cool like a dance. Just like against Fox, Ren uses his mind powers to disrupt Weiss, and thus ruin the ice creations of her Semblance. He is able to invade her mind to subconsciously ruin her creativity and decisions. Apparently, once Ren is inside her mind, he becomes capable of using her Semblance as well. Ren's own ice creations were being formed against her. She was being held down by chains and weights of magical ice that were colored pink instead of blue. In the end Ren demanded that she give up before this got ugly. The true big moment of this fight happens when Weiss sees herself forced to fight back with her mind. It's all she can do.

Apparently, her inner sense of pride is so strong that it literally manifests as a different entity inside her mind. In the end she was strong-willed enough to completely kick Ren out of her mind, severing their mental connection and putting Ren in a dazed state that allowed him to be easily defeated. With that, the match is over.

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Now there are three fights ahead of us before the final of the tournament.

Team RWBY lost two at the start, but managed to get two members to the semi finals. Ruby versus Weiss will be one of the most hyped fights of this tournament — thank god I decided to be surgically precise about the matchup order. Team JNPR did so well in the first phase, but now only one remains. All the while, Dove is climbing way above his league, knowing damn well he was favored by the brackets. It seems like the audience made a complete 180 on his reputation, and he doesn't like it. CFVY is done for, but content that their juniors got so strong in such short notice. The Haven trio has to put all their bets on Jobi, and he has no intention of losing this tournament. On the same note, team PCFHR have to put their faith in Penny.

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With this phase of the tournament over, it's time for more silly downtime between our favorite characters. By this point Ruby and Weiss are walking around the festival while people ask for photos and autographs and shit. Their constant presence at Oscar's little food stand made it three times more popular than all others.

Most of team CRDL are sulking in their defeat while trying to help Dove figure a strategy to beat the invincible girl next phase. He simply tells them to leave him figure it out alone.

Team JNPR was doing the opposite — they essentially forced Pyrrha to join them at the festival to get her mind off the tournament. She is hesitant as always, but once the fun gets going, she starts to enjoy herself again. She looked so miserable while in the coliseum, but out here, doing stupid things with her friends and playing games, here she starts smiling again. At the end of team JNPR's night out, it looks like Pyrrha had a lot to talk about, but no incentive to do so. Surprisingly, Nora was the one to notice that, so she managed to drag Ren away to get big plushies and candy at the carnival games.

Jaune and Pyrrha were left sitting side by side at the street bench, eating ice cream cones. Jaune tries to encourage her about the tournament, but it seems like that sent her back to square one — she became all small and quiet again. He knew he messed up, but he simply cannot figure out what's her issue. In that silence, Pyrrha suddenly throws in a random question.

"Jaune… do you believe in destiny?" she asks softly, almost cracking her voice. Jaune believed in destiny, but he didn't see it in the same way as Pyrrha. He saw destiny as the future that people want to happen for them — he didn't see the universe in a predetermined way. Then Pyrrha asked him, "What do you think my destiny is?"

Naturally Jaune didn't know how to answer, but he knew it was up to her to decide. To him it just seems she's gonna be an awesome huntress, with or without them by her side. She's just so amazing at anything, she is smart, and will succeed with whatever she wants. In fact, he always evied Pyrrha a lot for her skills, and hoped to learn a lot more from her. Jaune expected that response to totally woo her, but once he turned to look at her again... she was crying in silence.

She cried, because in the end... Pyrrha didn't know what she wanted. She confesses that she doesn't even know if she ever wanted to be a warrior in the first place. All her life she was never given a choice. She was born with talent, a mentor father, legendary powers… Does that mean she has to fight? She decided that if she won the tournament, then that would settle her destiny — she would have to become a warrior. But now she's poisoned with grief from her eminent fate. After she calmed down a bit, she asked Jaune another golden question.

"How do you do it? How can you just go and… do stuff? You make it look so easy." she said.

Jaune saw no other option than coming clean to her. He explains to Pyrrha that… he was never meant to be a Huntsman. It's time to tell Jaune's reworked backstory.

...

The youngest of seven, and the only boy to six older sisters. It is only natural that Jaune's job was to inherit the family legacy of warriors. The Arc family is so legendary in the battlefield that it might go before the first Grimm invasion. However, either by the nurture he received from his mother and sisters, or by his own nature, Jaune came to despise his legacy of blood and violence. He was a little mama's baby in every sense of the world, and his father hated how soft his only son came out to be. By then, the old man Cyrus Arc had lost his legs to a disease and was bound to a wheelchair, becoming a very detestable grumpy guy.

In one fateful day he lashed out against Jaune for denying his destiny, and so the little boy ran away from home on an awful rainy day. He managed to get the entire village searching for his ass in a rainstorm. Naturally his mother was the one to find him in the outskirts of the forest. The storm got so bad that they got stuck in a landslide. And of course, it's only at the worst moments that Grimm decides to show up. It's only their nature. Poor Miss Carmen Arc could only save Jaune by hurrying him up a tree, while she called the monster's attention far away into the storm. She was never seen again — neither her body nor the Grimm were ever found.

At his mother's funeral, Jaune and his father stood there watching her grave for hours and hours, even after their sisters had left. The old man kept shoving the truth down his throat, reminding him over and over that this was his fault. His mother is dead because he was weak, and so eventually Cyrus left him to ponder on that. Poor old Jaunny ended that day heavily traumatized, practically disinherited, but with a new goal to his life. To become the strongest there is, in order to protect everyone he loves from anything. That's the only way he could ever make up to his mom. That's the only thing that is ever in his mind. He has to get stronger, so this will never happen again.

…

Returning from the flashback, we now see again Jaune and Pyrrha sitting at that bench, and she has a deeply disturbed expression after hearing his little story. Jaune concluded by saying that it doesn't matter whether she becomes a warrior or not, because there will always be something that she must fight for. This is a world of battle to the end — this is what being human is. The only thing she can truly decide… is what that thing is.

And so Jaune gets up and leaves her alone with her own thoughts. We linger on her for a long while until slowly fading away to black.

Commentary (spoilers): It's as cliche as sad backstories come, I can't deny that. You can't have every single character backstory be a banger, and I think this fits for the kind of character that I wanted to make Jaune into. Nobody becomes such an unstoppable force for no reason. I don't know if this backstory will ever come up again, but it does explain a lot. By the way, Carmen Arc's is a redhead... who's scarely similar to Pyrrha. That's very important to note.

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After that, we see once again team RWBY at their HQ. Unfortunately… for the last time.

Yep, this might actually be the last time we get to see this room. Once again, it's just the girls having fun with one another, while Ruby and Weiss are constantly teasing one another about their battle tomorrow. By now the room is full of dozens of trinkets from their previous battles — the golden knight chess piece, the jarred sweet sap, selfies of their missions, dust bullet magazines, Oscar's pendant that he gave Ruby, the newspaper of the terrorist attack framed on their wall, and a few of their prizes from the girls night episode, just to name a few. Blake, who started off only with a hammock in the ceiling, now has so much as a desk and full bookshelf for her, with even a few other pieces of clothes and furniture scattered around the room. I'm gonna miss this place, because never again will the characters have a place to call home like this.

Naturally we follow up on Blake's story. She still had to insist on the lie she made days ago, since she wants her team to leave the city as soon as they were done with this tournament. However, the others were a little surprised for her. Apparently Ruby, Yang and Weiss had a talk with team BLT (A-class team of recurring background characters who are friends of Oobleck) to take that mission in her stead. It was a pleasant surprise gift that they made to relieve Blake, and once again she had to play into it. She acts all glad and happy, hugs them in relief, but as soon as she turns around, she has an undeniable face of "god damn it". Time was running out, and she is incapable of telling her team the truth.

…

Once again they go to sleep, and by the time it rolls midnight, Blake starts receiving messages from IV-|)-IV-|\/| again.

Last time he messaged, it looked like an indirect threat. But this time, it looks like he's directly relaying orders as if he knows Blake personally, which suddenly makes this whole creepy situation more intriguing. This random man tells Blake that the attack he talked about will happen in the next couple of days. He doesn't want her to fight anyone of the higher ups like Ozpin — that is not their job. She just needs to run away to a marked location once it starts, only fighting if she has to silence someone or save herself.

This time Blake musters the courage to talk back, telling this mysterious man that they have absolutely no chance against the Huntsman Guild even fighting together. They will be annihilated, and so she tells him to give up on this plan. The man agrees, but luckily they won't be alone in this attack. Vale will fall without a doubt. Blake questions what exactly happened, and who did they ally with. The man can't tell her anything critical, because after all, he'll be just one piece of the chessboard, and he doesn't know the full extent of what's to come.

He insists that she stays sharp, and so he stops messaging again.

If Blake was scared before, now she's having an actual panic attack. She keeps looking between the message "Vale will fall without a doubt" and the faces of her teammates sleeping peacefully. She starts hyperventilating so hard that Ruby wakes up, and soon Yang and Weiss. They get Blake a bit of water as she struggles to stand up and mumbles gibberish, "what do I do… what do I do… Adam… how?"

She tells the others that they have to run, right away, to as far as possible. They are all tired and sleepy, and assume Blake was having a bad nightmare. They ask her to explain what she means… but she can't. She clearly wants to, but she can't. She's psychologically torn apart, and in the end says nothing with nothing. The others manage to calm her down so they can go back to sleep. As a last remark, Weiss insists that she tells them if something is wrong — they are not just a team after all. They are friends. They can talk… and she can trust them with anything.

With that the scene concludes.

Commentary (spoilers): I have no idea exactly how the time frame of the tournament should take place, but I want it all to happen in the same week. The following finals should happen in one or two days, I'm not completely sure. By here we have the culmination of the two character arcs I began in volume II — Pyrrha's search for inner strength, and Blake's conflicted heart. Pyrrha coming clean to Jaune is what ultimately saved her, while Blake keeping her facade out of fear is what ultimately dooms her. By now we're seeing all our previous foes making a move while the tournament is happening; Torchwick, Emerald and Mercury, the mystery lady, and now this Adam guy. Everything is weighing on Blake right now, and even if she talked, there was no helping what will happen next. That's the saddest part about it. If you didn't get it, she's trying to get her friends as far away from Vale city as possible. If you watched so little of RWBY as volume III, you know what is about to go down. Except here we haven't got any insight on what the enemies are doing, since we cut off the whole bit with Cinder infiltrating Beacon and shit. Keep your eyes peeled.

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The final phase of the tournament is at hand.

The coliseum couldn't possibly be more packed. And for this special night, the arrogant Atlas organizers decided to make a special showing. Once all the seats were filled… the coliseum started flying. The end of the tournament would take place in the skies. It was a surprise to everyone, and our smarter characters have to acknowledge it's a questionable idea. The Atlas elite just love to put on a show. Meanwhile on that same morning, something very important happened for both our matched warriors.

Ruby had a meeting with Qrow and Braun, in which the drunken bastard expressed how proud he was of Ruby, after not meeting with her this entire time since his return. She scolds him for not visiting her, but there's no arguing with him at this poor state. At least her third father figure is there. Braun knows Ruby's mom would be very happy for her. Ruby plays off with the idea of joining Braun and the police to fight criminals, since he admits she's finally up to his standards. It's enough for the detective to have a long laugh. He's glad that she grew so strong, and maybe she won't need the help of an old man like him again. The drunken Qrow promises to be sober in order to watch the fight on TV, and so they part ways.

As for Weiss, she received a very pretentious call by her father, Jacques. She criticized him for purposefully and shamefully hiding her name from everywhere, while Jacques blamed her for going into the limelight, which is exactly what he told her not to do. He expects Weiss to win now, or he will be incredibly displeased. Moreso he will lose a very costly bet he made with the rest of Atlas elite. This time he promises consequences. All the efforts he made on bringing Weiss to this moment cannot be in vain. If she can't beat that red shrimp with the garden tool and win the finals, then he'll bring her back home for having failed her promise to become a powerful warrior. With that ominous voice and presence, Jacques once again finds a way to pitch Weiss against her own team. She has to defeat Ruby, or else…

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The first fight of that day was actually fated to be Dove versus Pyrrha.

Nobody had any doubt that all finalists deserved to be there, and the entire time people in the audience were cheering in unison. As they walked together to the arena, the two exchanged a little chat, commenting how they hate all this empty glory. They cheer them on as they destroy one another, but they don't give a shit when they go out into the wild to kill gigantic murderous monsters. Dove wonders if he should give them what they want, or what he wants.

There were a dozen thousand people in that coliseum to watch two kids fighting, but Dove and Pyrrha just kept staring at each other as the match began. None would make a move, Pyrrha even put away her spear and shield. Out of nowhere she asked him, "You're not gonna fight, will you?"

It has been made very clear by now that Pyrrha has a 6th sense of sorts, that allows her to feel surrounding metal objects — something that comes with her Semblance. Now she looks at Dove, and sees that he's not packing his steel boomerangs. He came to the arena unarmed. However, Dove questions if that's really how it looks to her. He was out here, hands in his pockets just like any other fight. How could she possibly know something was different? Pyrrha assumed he was going to give up — after all, Pyrrha was capable of fighting all of team CRDL on her own, so beating a single of its members wouldn't be hard. "You're absolutely right" Dove answers, and then stood silent for a while.

…

Suddenly, with a precise and quick movement that caught Pyrrha completely off guard, he drew his hand from his pocket and tossed something towards her face at superspeed. She could feel a slit in her cheek as it scraped by. The look on her face was of complete astonishment. Pyrrha looked back, and saw what Dove had thrown. it broke to pieces against the wall of the arena. A simple wooden dagger, made for sparring…

She quickly picked up her weapons and looked back at Dove… but he was just smiling. She could see his eyes open for once — he has small cyan pupils. That sight shocked her even more, as he looked scary like never before. Dove giggled and said, "So that's your Semblance, huh?"

Fear instantly began appearing in Pyrrha's face.

But when it felt like the real fight was going to start… Dove raised his hand over his head and declared he was giving up. The cheering of thousands suddenly went silent, and quickly turned to booing. One second to the next, the impressive reputation Dove built up was gone — not only back to zero, but negative. His only response was to smile, and flip off everyone in the audience as he walked away from the arena. Pyrrha promptly followed after him without even waiting to be announced as finalists.

Not more than a minute later, they were back at that same corridor, except now Dove was smiling and Pyrrha was desperate.

"That was a dumb joke right? I've told everyone already, you know I haven't awakened my Semblance yet!" Pyrrha said.

"The ability to control metal… Now it all makes sense. I'm sure of it, and it's still hard to believe-" he was saying, when suddenly Pyrrha grabbed him from behind and pinned him against the wall, "OW- Hey, the fight is over!"

"I can't let you tell anyone! You must not!" Pyrrha said with a cracked voice, despite trying to sound intimidating.

"You think I don't know that? A power like that would be capable of destroying the entire nation of Atlas in less than a day. Undoubtedly they would do anything to kill you… or maybe control you to their will. That must be why you left home." Dove said.

"… How did you figure it out?" Pyrrha asked.

"Many months ago, ever since you first said you hadn't awakened your Semblance yet, my Heartreading ability was able to spot your lie. From then on, it was only a matter of observing and deducting. Your fight against Fiona and Harriet was the ultimate proof I needed. This little demonstration we had… was just to test the results." Dove explained.

Pyrrha let go of him, and he started walking off. "Don't worry, I didn't tell anyone else, and I don't plan to. This was all just… a little gripe of mine.

Good luck on the finals… invincible girl." he finishes.

With that, Dove lost the title match, but won the battle in every other way imaginable (at least for himself). This dialogue of his also comes packed with not just foreshadowing, but his deduction is worldbuilding as well. Dove is absolutely right about all he says. This is no fight at all, but goddamn, it's a badass scene. By this point I'm counting for Dove to suddenly rise in popularity way more than the cool characters we introduced this season.

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Ruby versus Weiss…

Despite being a hyped fight in and out of universe… There's nothing for me to talk about. Most about it I already made it clear before — not only the two characters have an emotional input against one another for literal FOUR SEASONS now, but they both have reason to not lose. Ruby wants to make her parents proud, and Weiss might get taken away by her parents if she loses. The most friendly and joyful, but serious fight of the volume so far. Their mutual respect will make them not afraid to hurt each other or draw blood, so we can go wild on this one.

I do have a vague idea of how the fight should play out. Ruby begins by exploiting the newfound evolution of her Semblance to evade all attacks. She gets accustomed to it, and doesn't bleed from her ear this time. The start of the battle is mostly Weiss losing, trying to figure out how to counter her ability. Eventually she does. Turns out Ruby can only phase through attacks if they are thin or fast enough. But let's say a giant wall of ice falls on top of her; she won't be able to phase through that head on. The attack is enough to heavily bruise her all over. Getting hit for the first time in rose form, it makes Ruby realize that her Aura becomes more frail, and instantly learn the weakness of her new power. From then on Ruby takes the back foot of the fight, as it seems that Weiss has a reveal to make.

Turns out… she also did manage to figure out the true evolution of the Ice Carver Semblance, and was merely holding out until the finals of the tournament.

If she wanted, Weiss could create structures and objects from her imagination. But they were nothing more than that, objects of ice. She could only reproduce the physicality of something by her memory. But sculptures are different from a simple object. The clear difference is that sculptures have an undeniable essence to what they are mimicking. Sculptures are imitations of real living creatures. To make them perfect, she had to imbue them with what made them alive. A personality, or a goal. Now she will show Ruby what she means.

The glyph appeared on the ground, and so the summon began. Weiss formed a creature who was not unfamiliar to Ruby — she fought it hundreds of times by now. The Fenrir Grimm, a big bad wolf made of magic ice. It didn't end there. Weiss's blue Aura started glowing around her body and it was flowing into her new creation like currents of water. Soon enough the giant wolf opened its blue eyes… and began moving around. The wolf posed and howled behind Weiss as she held up her sword.

Ice Carver has evolved... into Ice Deacon!

Soon enough, Weiss and her Fenrir started attacking Ruby. She was suddenly thrown into a 1v2, as it seems the fake Fenrir was just as strong as the average elder Fenrir she killed in the past. By here I am completely empty in the brain. I just know that Ruby has to defeat the summon somehow (probably using arena hazards), leading to her and Weiss to completely run out of Aura by the end. Their fight that started badass, epic and destructive, eventually divulged into two girls just feebly boxing each other without their weapons. The arena was mostly destroyed, and everyone was on their toes, eyes glued to the arena as they waited for the conclusion.

Here we need to insert the famous Cross Counter shot, just to continue the trend of having at least one in every anime. Weiss kicked Ruby in the stomach while Ruby punched her in the face at the exact same time. They were already bleeding and damaged, and that decisive strike on each other was enough to put both out on the ground. Everyone watched in absolute silence, waiting for the victor to get up. The referee enters the arena and checks the two girls. The man raised his arms and announced that the two were deeply unconscious. The result was a draw.

"SHOBU ARI!"

Yeah, I'm not fucking crazy to decide which of our two main rivals is the best at the goddamn first third of the series. The fight ends in an epic draw that leaves the entire arena destroyed. They had no proper way of deciding which of the girls should go to the finals, and neither of them wanted to accept a win they didn't earn. The solution was to eliminate them both, and keep the final of the tournament between Pyrrha and the one who wins the next fight.

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Jobi versus Penny… a fight that seems important to Jobi.

He started out bored from the tournament, but his fight against Jaune seemed to have sparked up his interest to see it through. With every new fight, he realizes how he underestimated the strength of the other students. Meanwhile, Penny also had the biggest cakewalk of her life. She fought two guys who couldn't offer anything against her arsenal of android tricks. Jobi saw her as a personal match, because surprisingly, his Semblance doesn't work on her. So far he had used his Semblance on literally everyone who tried looking at him wrong, usually making them contort or hit themselves, or simply paralyze them. He couldn't do that to Penny, even if he made an effort. Her body was not normal, either that or she had a Semblance capable of defying him. In this fight we will see the most competitive of both warriors.

Jobi believed it was his duty to destroy Penny, as she was labeled the bright incoming star of Atlas. Defeating her meant surpassing an entire nation, the likes of which he despises. The intro of this fight is Jobi's exposition about all the evil shit that the nation of Atlas has done, way before they called themselves Atlas by the way. Their leaders are nothing but remnants of an old regime of powerful warriors and rich assholes. They mercilessly destroyed their enemies, they sought out to enslave the Faunus, and they were nothing but scummy to their own people. Even to this day they desire dominance in times of peace, and have unregulated control over the only source of Dust in the world. They continue to create more soldiers, more weapons, more power, and for what?

Jobi knows what might happen if the person in charge changes his mood. It will all come down to a horrible war between Atlas, Vale and Haven — the likes of which Jobi does not intend to lose. He even pities Penny, knowing that she was never given the choice to not fight, just like the other cadets. If anything, Atlas will probably throw her under the bus forever if she dares to lose the tournament. If Jobi beats her, then maybe they will think again about their evil plans.

It was a fucking awesome speech, but in response… Penny just yawns. She has no idea what he's talking about. She doesn't care at all about the history or what the boring higher ups are doing, she just came here for the tournament. That comment pissed off Jobi, and so they began the battle.

Finally we get to see the full extent of Jobi's ninja gear bullshit, and also the full extent of android abilities that Penny has in her body. The fight can be summed as: Jobi pulls off a new sick trap/tool, and Penny unveils a new secret function to counter it. Sticky traps, invisible strings, paper bombs, smoke screens, bear traps — Jobi even cheated. He used Voodoo to control the body of Robin in the gallery, and forced her to shoot Penny with an arrow in the back. That would've ended the match, but Penny refused to win by disqualification, and pulled the arrow out of her shoulder as if it was nothing. Jobi's last dirty trick is biting Penny with a special poisonous concoction hidden in his wolf teeth, capableof paralyzing anything that moves. She easily endures even that, which makes Jobi certain, beyond reasonable doubt, about his suspicion.

She's just another robot created by Atlas.

He couldn't even begin to understand what kind of sick things were done in order to make Penny, and who must've lost their lives to give her a true and genuine Aura. Her existence was a crude mistake made by sick people in search of power — giving a robot life just so it could be a better tool of war. Jobi was utterly revolted, and his words soon make the people of the coliseum start gossiping to each other. Penny just looks down in shame, as she can literally hear people calling her names using her super hearing. Ironwood clenches his fist in rage as he looks at poor Penny. There's nothing he could do. He knew Penny would run away any second now to escape this torment.

However, it's here that the true theme of this fight is made evident. Penny, after seeing the growth made by everyone else over the course of all these battles, felt like it was time for her to do the same. Just now it was revealed to the entire world that she is a robot, which is something she was deeply afraid of for the past two volumes.

But no more.

She would not allow herself to be fearful, or be defined by what she is, or what others expect for her to be. She's a robot, so what? She has friends, she has emotions, she feels pain, and she wants to help the world even if they reject her existence, because that's what her father would've wanted. She proudly proclaims that she's not a pawn in Atlas war, she was no naive loser, and she was not just another stupid robot. She was Penny Polendina, daughter of professor Polendina. Her prime directive is to be happy, and have awesome fun.

And now for the first time, Penny draws her weapon. The sword has always been on her back, but she never needed to draw it until now. The green and black blade that she can control in the air with bluetooth or some shit. Jobi also draws his family sword, and so we get an awesome sword fight sequence. The two are past the point of tricks, now it's a pure skill contest. And well, the mind-controlled sword is just a little too goddamn broken. The worst of all was that, just like Cardin, Jobi was seeing hallucinations the entire fight. Suddenly Penny had two swords instead of one, and then she had three, then four. He didn't know which was real, and eventually he got wounded pretty badly by a slash. But then, as another battle suddenly started happening in the stands, the hallucinations stopped (I'll talk about it in a pinch).

Jobi wasn't going down so easily. He had put all of his pride on this battle. But he unfortunately starts to lose after that first strike was dealt to him. In his inner monologue, as he thinks of any strategy left… it starts to dawn on him. He wasn't fighting a soldier, or even a real warrior for that matter. He was fighting a pure free spirit. The incarnation of freedom. It doesn't need to eat, or breathe, or pick a side. She doesn't obey rules. She has no connection to this world whatsoever. But despite that… Penny elected to be a good person anyway. Why? What makes these people so hopeful? Why does she want to protect the people who, just now, called her an abomination? What does she see in this world that he cannot?

Penny was exactly what he thought didn't exist in this cruel world, and that realization seemed to change him as the fight dragged on. He had long lost his motivation to attack and was merely dodging. At that moment, to him, hurting Penny was a crime that he would never forgive himsef for. Beating her would be crushing the last speck of hope within him. And so, once the things calm down for a moment, Jobi simply puts his sword away… and walks off the arena.

"I've been… completely… defeated…

Hope does not just exist somewhere… It needs to be created." Jobi said with his back turned. Only Penny could hear his words, and even she didn't get it. To him it was best that way. He had no more reason to fight her. Jobi has finally found someone that he would never consider to be an enemy. Penny was immediately declared the winner, fated to fight Pyrrha in the final match.

...

With that, our pseudo antagonist found inner peace, and became a slightly better person as a result. Sun managed to find him at the end of the corridor, having an awful smug face. "I expected to see you come back crying with your tail between your legs, but… I think this is better. Is that a smile I'm seeing? I never saw you happy before…" Sun said.

"I don't expect a stinking monkey to know anything about virtue." Jobi replied.

"I'm proud of you, man. Maybe you can stop acting like a dick one day." Sun replied.

"Don't make me cut off your tongue, Wukong." Jobi says, ending the scene.

That fight more or less redeems our pseudo antagonist, but this leaves us with a glaring problem. Who's gonna be the new antagonist for the Volume? Well, we have several candidates. Let's see what they are up to.

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Somewhere in the third phase, Mercury ran into problems.

He was being all casual in the crowds, when unfortunately for him, he bumped into Yang. She immediately recognized him, and remembered how he owned her a beating for last time. She was forced to fight Mercury on her own inside the coliseum halls (while another fight was happening at the arena, so it's all empty). Yang manages to put on a way better performance than the last time she faced him, but she did one terrible thing. Yang allowed the anger to take over and gain more power. Her anger blinds her to basic strategizing, and she easily falls for Mercury's new trick. He managed to buy a few modifications for his metal leg since last time. Now it shoots bullets, and has a hidden blade at the tip of his foot. He was able to mess up Yang a bit, but he never got to the point of truly hurting her. Soon the cavalry arrives.

Fox sensed the fight happening with his Semblance. This is essentially the Fox redemption fight, since despite being one of the best he lost to Ren in the first phase. Mercury found his match, and their edgy personalities and fighting styles bounced off each other perfectly. Fox slowly starts hitting Mercury more and more, all the while dodging all his attacks like a god. The fight doesn't actually conclude, it ends once Yatsuhashi and Coco arrive for backup, and Mercury is forced to run away. Fox is not able to track him down in the middle of the crowd outside, so he escapes.

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Now you might be wondering, where's Emerald?

She was actually doing the job she was supposed to. Her mission this time was to fix the tournament match of the finale. Someone big paid them a lot of money to make sure that Penny reaches the finals. She accomplished this feat by using her Semblance on Cardin and Jobi multiple times to confuse their senses and make them see hallucinations (didn't work on Russel for some reason). Thanks to her small contributions from far away, Penny was able to reach the finals, and it ended from there. Emerald could've easily allow her to win the fight against Jobi, but during the battle, Emerald was found by Blake. The two have a very short skirmish, but here Blake actually wins and chases Emerald down. It's not a long fight, but it serves to redeem the fact Blake didn't fought any opponents yet. Emerald would nulify her senses in order to get the advantage, but Blake learned a new skill. She was able to manifest her shadow into a perfect clone of herself, and Emerald's semblance didn't work on it. It was a technique similar to what Sun did, except with darkness instead of light. In the end she beats Emerald enough for her to run away.

Emerald's next mission was a bit weird. She had to find the coliseum's energy core, hidden in the employee underground section. The core was just this huge metal cylinder with a window to see the glowing white Dust reactor inside; all hooked up to the ceiling and floor. This is the core that allows everything to happen smoothly — from the corridor lights all the way to the flying propulsion. Once she found it, she had to inform her employer through a phone call. And guess what...

Her employer just happened to be that same lady in the robes who recruited Roman.

Now that her mission is done and Mercury got found like a dumbass, they had to leave the coliseum. They spend the rest of the volume enjoying the festival before going back home with a huge briefcase of cash that was left for them in a drop point. With this money they will finally be able to buy a new house for their endevours back home, and Mercury could drown in as many mindless garbage that he could possibly think of.

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Who could forget our good pals Roman and Neo, literally fighting for their lives.

They had the job to sneak into Ironwood's ship and do the exact same thing as last time. Except now, the ship was flying in the air for some reason — probably a security measure. Roman made a plan to get them inside, and it was pretty simple and effective. He found retarded Atlas robot soldiers, and turned himself in to confess his involvement with the situation months ago. The robots simply followed protocol — they cuffed him with the super shackles and took him to be jailed in the mothership. Once they got there, Neo easily uncovered her illusion and killed the two robots to free Roman. She struggled with it a bit due to her sickness, but Roman was able to destroy the last robot with his cuffed hands.

Now they just had to disguise and go plant that shit; Roman needed to get this done so can focus on making he and Neo disappear from Vale for a while, and leave that woman's grasp. This little infiltration of his was happening right at the same time as the final battle between Pyrrha and Penny. How about we go back to that?

...

As the final battle was about to start, the other students were all reunited in the waiting room. They had something very important to discuss. By this point team RWBY was uncovering something big. After reconvening with Yang and Blake, they realized Mercury and Emerald are here, and probably up to no good. Suddenly Blake starts connecting the dots. She realizes that the White Fang might be involved with them again. The time has run out, and she decides to tell everything she knows.

She finally reveals all about the plot, telling her team that some kind of attack was meant to happen today. They can question how she got all that knowledge later, because shit was getting serious. The other warriors were willing to believe something was up, but by then it was, unfortunately… too late.

RWBY, the rest of JNPR, CRDL, the rest of PCFHR, and the Haven trio all rushed to find Ozpin, Leo and Ironwood to tell them about this attack. I kind of completely went unmentioned about these three, but they are constantly making commentary about the fights just like everyone else. They have been in this special booth at the top of the coliseum. The fight between Penny and Pyrrha has just started, and the climax is brewing.

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How about we take our final moment of peace to talk about the Minisodes?

This volume I expect to have the minisodes following the same nature as the three last volumes — this time exploring the new Atlas girls of team PCFHR. Just simple short videos of them hanging out so then we can humanize them. We sure as shit won't get the chance for that in the actual show. Some ideas include:

Fiona having an absurdly clingy lesbian crush (unreciprocated) on Robin, just like in the original series I guess. She follows wherever Robin goes, she does whatever Robin says, and she even enjoys being reprimanded by her. There's no backstory-related reason for her attraction to Robin, she just thinks she's hot. It's kind of a clever joke on sheep mentality, as Fiona is more than happy to be ordered around as long as it is by the girl she likes. She's a simp.

Ciel has more talks with Dove in order to perfect her strategies against a smart opponent, only for Dove to slowly realize she speaks exactly like a dating simulator girlfriend. The perfect woman to his eyes. However, Ciel is simply too blunt and methodical. She just sees people for the most basic aspects of their person, and only interacts if it's for a spress purpose. She accepts going on a date with Dove, but dumps him the second that she sees no more value in studying his brain.

Another one would be Harriet exploring feminine stuff with Penny. Penny always wanted to do that sort of crap with someone, as we saw in volume III, and Harriet decided to tag along because her fight against Sky convinced her to not be ashamed of herself. only to come to the conclusion that she still hated all of it. She puts on a few dresses, changes her hair style, puts some make up, and by the end she looks like a completely different person. It didn't take her long for her to realize she still hated all those things. Being a normal girl is lame — she'll stick with the tomboy look.

We also could get more of Qrow being a drunken nuisance and ruining the festival for background characters with his bad luck. Braun is just having the worst day of his life. He keeps kicking Qrow out of the festival grounds over and over again, but the son of a bitch keeps finding new ways to get back in. Qrow was determined to go watch Ruby's final fight, but there was a literal poster of Qrow at the check up station, saying to not let this man in. Qrow was forced to stay in Simon's bar and watch the fight on TV.

One weird concept that I would love to insert here for the Minisodes would be "the interviews". Those would be clips where a TV crew would interview our 24 competitors of the tournament, just like booth commentary. I think that has boundless potential for comedy in a similar note to Total Drama Island, commenting on everyone's victories and losses, each having their own takes on why they should win the tournament. I would advise against making funny ones about Jobi until this point, since we want to build him as an ominous menace, so we can't make jokes at his expense yet.

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While our characters were figuring out the villain's plot…

Penny and Pyrrha were going to have their match.

People were going fucking crazy in the audience, but between these two there's absolutely no animosity at all. No hatred, not even a bit of envy or fear. Penny was always weird to Pyrrha, since she could always feel that Penny was made of pure metal, so the big reveal of her fight with Jobi didn't change much. Of course she couldn't use that to her advantage — it would be too cruel and would expose her powers instantly.

The two have a very light start to their fight, nothing crazy yet. Penny was having fun being cheered on by so many people, and she wanted to take her sweet time. It's made very obvious throughout this entire tournament that she does not get that much love or affectionate attention as this. Her small speech in the last battle made the audience respect her, and by this point they don't really care (or even know) if she's a robot or not — they just want to watch a cool fight. Penny decides to not underestimate Pyrrha, and draws her cool flying sword from the beginning. Unfortunately for us the audience, we never truly see this fight heating up.

...

Ruby and the others managed to reach Ozpin and explain a little bit of what was happening… but they were missing a final component. They found the paws, but all the other pieces of the chessboard were already in motion.

Torchwick and Neo succeed at their mission. They implant the hard drive into the ship's main frame. But instead of copying data, this one seems to activate something. Suddenly all the blue screens in the entire ship turn to red, and the pilots apparently lose control of the entire system. A terrible virus is spreading like fire, attacking everything that is connected to it. Its target was clear. The android soldiers began turning. Back at the coliseum, all of the androids have their facial screens slowly turn to red. There were at least several hundred of them in there, meant to protect the peace, work the jobs and do maintenance. Everyone watched in confusion as the stationed robots around them suddenly stopped moving. And so, without even so much as a second thought…

Order 66 was issued.

All the robots suddenly turned violent, all at once. Those that had nothing in their hands started punching and kicking the people who stood on their way. Those who had guns started shooting without a warning. They emptied their magazines towards specific people in the audience. Their main targets… were the Huntsmen hidden among the crowds.

The desperate screaming began.

Those few hundred android soldiers instantly became killing machines, and some of their fire ended hitting innocent people in the crowd. Ozpin, Leo and Ironwood were watching everything from their VIP booth with all the students — eyes of pure shock looking down to the stands. At that moment they looked at each other, and suddenly everyone drew their weapons. All of them had each other's throats, between the students of Beacon and the rest of team PCFHR. Ozpin pointed his cane at Ironwood's neck, and Winter did the same to Ozpin with her sword, making Leo stand up. One wrong move and everyone there would taste cold steel. Everyone was locked into this absolute standoff — at the brink of war. The look of their faces was nettled but reluctant. They didn't want to kill one another, but if this is a war that started, what other choice do they have?

Ozpin's eyes were sharper than a sword. "Stop this, NOW!" He said.

Ironwood only had absolute confusion in his eyes. "I have no idea what is happening! Something went wrong!" he said with genuine despair.

In that awful silence, Dove spoke from the very back. "He's not lying... I can tell."

Ozpin looks Ironwood in the eye and slowly lowered his cane, making everyone else also lower their weapons. It was no war yet, but if they are still on the same team, they have to stop this madness. Ozpin stands up and breaks the window ahead of them with a single touch of his finger. He orders, "Ruby, Juniper, Cardinal, neutralize the robots at once!"

Leo said the same to his students, and so did Ironwood. Everyone, including Ironwood, Leo and Ozpin, suddenly jump out of the VIP cabin at super speed. The robots immediately spot them, and start to open fire. All of our characters who were watching the fight; Glynda, Corazan, Port, Oobleck, Tai, team CFVY, as well as dozens of others background Huntsmen characters from both Vale and Haven, they all started an all-out brawl against every single android in the coliseum. Fights were happening all around, and people were being surrounded by gunfire and blades. A nice fight to start this whole madness with.

Against the trained Huntsmen, these robots were a joke. But once issued to fight level S-level threats, suddenly the robots switch their magazines to Dust bullets. Their robotic-perfect aim, mixed with deadly ammunition traveling at high speed, made the whole scene a complete hell. People were either running in fear or crawling down to not get hit. But the real worst part was happening in the festival down below.

Robots who were supposed to act as security for the festival started destroying everything and attacking innocent people. The police force being led by detective Braun were forced to fight them alone. Mercury and Emerald (who were eating at Oscar's stand btw) were forced to fight as well. And amidst all this chaos, the final battle was still happening in the coliseum arena.

...

Penny was the first to realize something was wrong, since she was also connected to the ship and other Atlas paraphernalia with her cerebral chip. But sadly for her, the virus got her too. It started to invade her mind and cause insane pain. She was screaming, and the whole situation unfolding around them made Pyrrha terrified. Penny begged her to run away, but it was too late. Penny suddenly looked up with those robotic red eyes, and attacked Pyrrha with killing intent. She became a complete terminator, with no regard to her own safety as she attacked with all her android abilities. Pyrrha refused to fight like that, and merely kept herself safe. Penny was still able to take control back for a few moments, but it was clear that she was in a losing battle. At one point her pain becomes so unbearable that she begs Pyrrha to terminate her. Pyrrha can't force herself to do it, and begins crying nervously.

In the end the two are left in this clash, with Pyrrha down on the ground while Penny's flying sword is inching closer to her chest. Pyrrha is forced to use her metal control Semblance to stop it, and the two are left in this force push battle. Pyrrha can't concentrate due to her injuries, and slowly is getting stabbed by the tip of the blade. At that moment, half of Penny managed to get control back. Her body was shaking — she was sure to lose control again. She had to stop herself. With all her will, she managed to draw the sword away from Pyrrha…

And use it to decapitate her own head.

Her head falls to the ground, along her limp lower body and flying sword. She closes her eyes. Pyrrha looks ahead in complete despair. She repeated Penny's name again and again, but she wasn't waking up. Pyrrha started to tear up. She slowly made her way to Penny, and fell to her knees before reaching her. After a long and arduous battle against an army of robots, the Huntsmen of the coliseum come out on top with a few injuries to none. Once they were allowed to stop, they all saw it. Pyrrha was holding Penny's head in the middle of the arena and crying.

Ruby was the first to jump in, followed by everyone else. It was a classic death scene, as more and more people begin to surround Penny's body. The men looked down in shame and anger. The girls cried. Robin, Harriet, Ciel and Fiona look at her now, and suddenly confess their guilt about never truly accepting Penny's genuine offer of friendship while they could. They were wrong about her — she was real all along, and these tears… are proof of that.

Upon seeing that scene, Leo suddenly took action. He grabbed Ironwood by the collar and slammed him to the ground. "You stupid moron! WHAT IS ATLAS PLANNING WITH ALL OF THIS?!"

Leo demanded to know, but Ironwood had no answer. The only person that would have known what happpened… was Penny.

…

And so Penny talks. "It isn't Mr. Ironwood's fault!"

She opens her eyes and reveals that she is not dead. Everyone screams in shock — the weak hearted like Weiss and Fiona just straight up faint. Penny explains that she's still half-corrupted, but since she cut the connection to the middle and lower body, she won't represent harm anymore. She reveals that the robot's sudden outburst was caused by a virus that entered the system through the dreadnought's main frame. It affected not only these robots, but all of those still in the city and the festival. They needed to catch the culprit and protect the people. It seemed like Penny wasn't going to be of any help for now — her reserve battery will end shortly. She tells the others to hurry to the ship and turn off the android systems.

Unfortunately for them… it wasn't going to be this easy.

...

A shadowy figure, that is very familiar to us, struts down the underground maintenance halls of the coliseum. She's doing that sexy walk, confident as all hell. Her face is still covered in shadows, yet we can still see that smile from yards away. She eventually finds the core reactor of the coliseum — that same one Emerald had found earlier. The room was empty. No one to stop her. With that devilish smile, she raises her hand and prepares a fire blast. "let the games begin."

.

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An explosion echoes around the entire coliseum, shaking the ground and making the people scream. Before anyone could react… the god damn propulsion engine shuts off, and so the coliseum starts falling. It's really a devastating scene, because nobody knows what to do. They were falling fast and things were chaotic — the coliseum would crash on top of the people in the festival, and also kill everyone inside. They needed a miracle to save everyone.

It was at that dastard moment that Jaune saw Pyrrha stand up. She walked out in front of everybody and raised her hands to the side. Glowing green aura started surrounding her body… and so, the coliseum started slowing down. Pyrrha seemed to be doing an extreme effort, but it was working. She stabilized them, and descended the coliseum perfectly in place using her Semblance. Using her Semblance for the very first time in front of everyone, she saved thousands of lives.

Once the coliseum landed on the ground, she fell to her knees and started breathing heavily. Pieces from the top of the dome started to break and fall down, but Glynda used her powers to hold everything in place. They kept looking at Pyrrha in complete awe, waiting for an answer, an explanation… anything really. She turned back and said, "Can we talk about it later?"

...

Everyone rushed outside and glanced upon the city. The festival was dozens of times worse than the coliseum. It looked like the place was on fire. The sunset was always used to signify the ending of a volume, but here it's only the beginning of the nightmare. The following events all take place at night, illuminated by flames and the moon.

It looked like Detective Braun and the police force was capable of defeating the robots around here, but the people are still in shock. Ironwood took front and told Braun to start loading people inside the coliseum where they will be safe. Braun punched Ironwood in the face, but Ozpin held him back and explained that a third party is responsible for all of this. It seemed like the situation could be cleared out once they caught the culprit… However, they were just beginning to step on the shit.

The episode ends on the most dramatic note possible. Far away, at the other side of the city, a huge explosion suddenly appears.

Everyone turns to see it, and the episode ends.

Commentary (spoilers): This section is hard. If the pacing is bad, if the characters don't work, if the build up is scrambled; if even one of these things turn out wrong, the entire final act fails. I'm actually nervous to start writing this, because I feel the buildup as well, and I feel the pressure of arriving at such a moment. The pressure to use each and every character to their maximum, and at the end… I gotta choose who has to die. At this point I don't know where to split the action, I just have a final handful of fights that necessarily have to happen before the volume ends. So help me god.

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The next episode starts from the point of view of shadowy figures, looking on the illuminated city of Vale from the shadows. They are silent, and one of them is making an iconic pose in front of the shattered moon. Eventually they see something in the distance. The coliseum begins to fall from the sky. One of the robbed goons says, "that's the signal, sir."

The camera angle changes to show us their true identities. By the masks and color pallet, they can only be members of the White Fang. The guy leading them is wearing a fancy black suit and mask, has a katana on his hip, and his iconic red hair makes him look evil as fuck. He has a tall and strong phisique compared to the soldiers around him. Just like Bane from volume II, he must be an elite of the White Fang. He tells his soldiers to move to phase one of the plan. Suddenly a hundred shadows jump out from behind him, moving towards the big wall of Vale City. They climb up the defenses and work together to take down the wall guards. They managed to act so perfectly that not a single alarm was raised. The man in the suit then orders his men to kill them, even as they are surrendered. They are just disgusting humans after all.

Now it was time to make their part. They needed to open a hole in the wall. They don't know why they have to do that, but orders are orders. The man with red hair tells his subordinates to prepare the bombs and leave the rest to him. The goons start to load up the wall with black explosives across a straight wide range. The leader steps forward and draws his sword, preparing a basic kendo sideway strike. Suddenly his crimson red Aura starts glowing around his body. His sword slowly takes a red coloration. And so, he slashes towards the wall. He was too far away to cut it… or at least that's what it seemed.

It was a fast and precise slash. there is a complete silence until he sheathed his sword back. The result of his attack is a gigantic explosion, leaving the man surrounded in flames and flying pieces. He still has no expression in his mouth — not even a hint of fear, joy or anger. He looks ahead, and the wall is wide open. Pieces crumble to the ground as the houses are cast ablaze.

That is Adam Taurus.

His soldiers ask if they should attack now, but he says no. He tells them to stay in the shadows and only attack if it's an absolutely safe kill — he doesn't want no one of them dying tonight. Their goal now is to get all other Faunus residents of Vale off the streets, even if it's by force. Next, they should immediately take out their assigned target. The main threat of this invasion will be coming shortly. And so the White Fang soldiers enter through the broken wall, and start swarming the city — a good fifty of them. Before entering along with his army, Adam turns around to see something appearing in the distance. The explosion itself was another signal, a chain reaction that preceded victory. Suddenly, the sunset on the horizon turns completely black…

What Adam sees… are a thousand Grimm, coming his way. So many monsters that they block the view of the sky.

He can't help but smile. "Today… humanity falls."

…

Suddenly we cut to the perspective of Qrow.

He was drunk, just like he was the entire goddamn volume — face planted on the counter in Simon's bar. He didn't care who won the tournament now that Ruby dropped. He was having chit-chat with Simon, when suddenly we hear the door opening behind Qrow. Suddenly he's hit with a headache, as he can feel a disturbing amount of Auras flaring up all over the city with his astral senses. It's almost like a huge fight started all around him, all at once. He got goosebumps in his arms.

Simon says, "Hey there, you lumps of crap, you're not allowed in here!"

Qrow turns around, only to see two android soldiers, with their face monitors turning red. They recognize him instantly, and open fire with Dust Bullets. Qrow is capable of throwing himself behind the counter with Simon, but the old barman unfortunately gets shot by one of the bullets. It was a near fatal wound — the old man was bleeding out. Qrow tells him to stand down while he finds a doctor. He easily disposes of the two android soldiers and goes outside, but there were more. From every corner and even the rooftops. They were waiting for him.

All of them start shooting Qrow with Dust bullets from all sides, but he's able to dodge them all and destroy his attackers. There was screaming everywhere — the path to the coliseum and the festival was sparking up in fighting and flames. Qrow looks at Ironwood's ship up in the sky, and sees more Robots being deployed through these flying containers. Soon enough, he sees those strong Mecha robots being deployed and crashing into the rooftop of houses and the roads. Their red interface was familiar to Qrow — they turned evil like this a few months back as well.

The robots are heading towards Qrow and surrounding him, and so he starts slicing through everything with insane speed and strength. An entire battalion of robots and mechas wasn't enough to stop him at all. The problem was that Simon's bar was at the outskirts of the city. Qrow was near the west wall right when the White Fang assault began. His battle against the robots is cut short, as the explosion caused by Adam destroys the wall, creating enough force to send Qrow flying in the air with a bunch of rubble.

...

He woke up a minute later, with a buzzing in his ear and his senses skewed. He opened his eyes to see dozens of figures in cloaks jumping through the rooftops above him. He then gets up and looks ahead. The wall was destroyed, and a legion of Grimm is heading toward the city. He stands alone in the road, holding his sword while bleeding from his arm. Rage was slowly building up in his face. There's nothing else he can do other than get his shit together and run towards the incoming legion to fight. He intended to guide the Grimm away with his presence, running off into the wildlands with the whole legion behind him. However…

They simply went right past him.

He could see their eyes glancing at him, but they ignored Qrow. Their goal was the city. They were intelligent. Qrow was completely flabbergasted, but he needed to start killing shit.

"DON'T YOU DARE IGNORE ME!" he yelled, jumping inside the legion of Grimm and cutting through everything in sight. He turned his sword into scythe mode, so he can go ape shit even harder. If they won't take the bait, then he will force them to slow down with his fists. Even if he's surrounded by multiple elders, it just seems like Qrow is not the least bit worried. In his mind he wonders, "The android soldiers… Assassins… and the Grimm… What is happening here?!"

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After all that we cut back to everyone at the festival, right where we left off.

The explosion sends everyone into panic, and they start running inside the coliseum. Vale City was under attack. Soon Braun received a call, telling him that the west wall was breached. The entire watch was killed, and Grimm are soon to invade the streets — a thousand strong at a minimum. Upon hearing that, Ozpin grabbed his scroll phone, and soon enough he was able to issue an emergency warning.

The scroll phones of every single Huntsmen in the entire kingdom suddenly began to ring, and so they were notified of what was happening. They had to gather at the festival grounds, and prepare for combat. Ironwood was able to get in contact with his few human soldiers and ordered them to help people get sheltered inside the coliseum. He also ordered team PCFHR to stay behind and protect them in case the Grimm get this far. They also needed to find a way to fix the core, so then the coliseum can fly again and take everyone to safety.

Soon, more and more Huntsmen started appearing there at the circle. These few dozens, plus everyone who was inside the coliseum, should give the Huntsmen forces close to a hundred warriors to fight this whole Grimm legion with, without mentioning the android soldiers in the city. Of course these odds are… abysmal. Ironwood explained that the robots can be turned off if a team manages to get into his dreadnought and deactivate the system. However, it seems all the ships have taken off, piloted by android soldiers. Their only hope was for a flying squad to get there, but apparently the closest we got to a flying person here is a guy with the Semblance to glide in the air.

Most of the forces were ordered to engage the Grimm directly and buy them time, while the rest would focus on evacuating the people to the coliseum. Ozpin ordered Glynda to go ahead and activate "the beacon" inside the castle. That is the only thing that can save them if things turn for the worst. And so all the Huntsmen jump to action — running through the roads and the rooftops.

But before the teachers could join them, suddenly they heard from behind,"And what are we going to do?" Ruby asked.

Suddenly they turn around and remember the kids are still there. Glynda orders them to stay behind and protect the coliseum; they are not in shape for a war on this scale. However, they were having none of that shit. They spent a hurtful year of tough training; they studied and practiced endlessly for a moment like this. They will not be content to stay behind while all the adults are fighting. "Please, let us help!" Ruby begged.

Ozpin turned around and saw courage and determination on their faces, even in the face of such a situation. And so he said, "Class 144th, I now present you with a new mission. Cardinal, Coffee, you shall follow Ironwood, Winter and Corazan to the front lines, and stop all Grimm from passing by. Juniper, Ruby, go with Glynda, Oobleck and Port to the north side and start evacuating people away from the fighting. Either the castle or the coliseum should be safe!"

Leo fake coughs and then says, "Sun, Aslan, Jobi... leave no prisoners."

"HAI!" the three say in unison, jumping in without further instructions.

"See, that's how you do it." Leo finished.

Everyone started to leave together, but Weiss then told her team to wait up. She believes they can shut down the robots, and ask permission for her team to focus on that task. Ozpin allows it, and so the girls head out, following Weiss. First they needed to get as close to the dreadnought as possible.

Naturally (because I almost forgot) we need Ruby and Yang to have an interaction with Tai, since he was there at the coliseum, and shit is getting dangerous. He tries to cheer them up despite the sheer brutality of what is happening around them, but he can't help to be extremely worried about his daughters. Yang eases his mind by reminding him, "Come on, old man, wasn't you who taught me everything I know? I promise, no one in this squad is getting so much as a scratch while I'm around!"

And so the girls run along. Tai couldn't bear to watch his daughters fight while he stands around. He cracks his knuckles and decides to help the main assault. "A warrior doesn't stop being a warrior just because he settled down. Ruby, Yang, Qrow... don't you dare leave me behind!" he says, jumping towards the battle of the west wall.

...

Now Ozpin and Leo are the only ones left behind. Before they jumped into action, they discussed something.

"I'm feeling something strange. This… presence. Can you feel it too, Oz?" Leo asked.

"I have. It's strong, just the same as that day… We need to end this as soon as possible." Ozpin says.

The two disappear at a speed too great to be perceived.

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.

.

Now we get one of the coolest shots of the entire show.

We get a long, wide shot of an army of Huntsmen, all with different weapons, different colors of hair, skin and armor — all of them running through the rooftops and the streets; holding their weapons up front. We cut away to the opposite side, showing Grimm of all sizes and types, running the same direction with a savage drive. We keep cutting in between these two until they finally clash against one another in the middle of the city.

What follows is an absolute slugfest of side characters killing shit for a whole minute. Eventually they were joined by Ironwood and Winter, right behind them were team CRDL, CFVY and the Haven trio. By here we know Winter is a badass, but we had no idea Ironwood could throw hands. He immediately saves a fellow Huntsman from an attack by taking a direct bite of a huge Fenrir into his arm. The monster pulls and twists, but it can't damage Ironwood. It only damages his clothes and demonstrates to the audience that he has not just a robotic arm, but half of his chest is covered in metal as well.

From then on he absolutely wrecks the fuck out of every Grimm in his way. Ironwood has an insane level of strength, given by both his Aura and cyborg parts. His weapon is not only a revolver full of Dust bullets, but also his robot arm. It has several functions, such as minigun (like Barret), hand cannon (like Guts) and a sword (like Elric). If they were just fighting the Grimm it would be an easy, but sadly the Huntsmen forces are also facing artillery from the robot soldiers, ships and Mechas. Due to their unalive nature, they aren't being targeted by the Grimm at all. Ironwood demonstrates his Semblance here for the first time, "Hyperbolic Mind". Allows him to essentially freeze time in the world outside his mind while his eyes are closed. He then proceeds to use his genius mind to think of a strategy for the Huntsmen army, taking just a second to formulate a huge defense plan. His coordination and battle tactics are peak, and allows the Huntsmen a pretty good shot at pulling through this crisis.

...

Meanwhile, team JNPR, Braun and the teachers were also doing their part, fighting off the Grimm who invaded the north district so then the people could run away. The monsters were literally clawing holes in the houses to kill people. Here we see the full power of the older characters like Oobleck and Glynda, including Port's Semblance. He has the power to turn himself into a giant, and so he is able to manhandle giant Grimm, tearing them apart with his bare hands. He hasn't fought in years though, and he cracks his old back almost immediately.

The rescue squad did run into problems though. The White Fang soldiers suddenly popped out of the shadows to attack them while they were distracted by the Grimm, trying to stop their advance. They managed to get a few cheap shots on JNPR, but luckily Pyrrha was there. By now she doesn't care about hiding her powers anymore. She literally used her Semblance for a second, and turned the enemy's weapons into crumbled metal balls, rendering them useless and forcing them to flee. For a moment it all looked clear ahead… but something horrible happened.

In every single big city of this world, there are these big towers that essentially allow communication in between the nations at long range. We've seen the tower plenty of times in the last three volumes, but never paid any mind to it. Now it is revealed what was the immediate plan that the White Fang needed to do. Together, with even more explosives, they surround the communications tower, and trigger another huge explosion. The rescue team saw the big boom not too far away, and so the entire tower went crumbling down. Vale was essentially turned off from the rest of the world. Braun then called Port and Oobleck to come see what happened, while Glynda took team JNPR away for a talk.

They still wanted to help, but Glynda insisted that their goal should be reaching the castle. Glynda will stay behind and help the battle, but team JNPR needs to activate the ultimate defense plan. In Ozpin's office there is a painting of the previous headmaster, and behind it they will find a control panel to activate The Beacon. That will undoubtedly win them this battle, even if the Grimm surpass them in number. Being given the most important mission, team JNPR had to run ahead.

...

Of course, the most we see from this battle is Team RWBY's perspective. They simply run through the city, killing all the Grimm and robots on their way and saving the people. Here we include a scene of them saving Oscar, since we need to have one for every volume. Once they got closer to the flying dreadnought, Ruby asks, "How are we going to get up there?!"

"Let me show you!" Weiss replies.

Once again, the glyph appears on the ground as Weiss begins to summon another creature. This time she summoned a Nevermore Grimm made of pure ice, with blue eyes instead of red. The creature bowed to them, and so they hopped on top. Soon the giant bird took off, and they were going in the skies. The dreadnought was just a minute of travel up.

But of course it wouldn't be that easy. Suddenly the girls are surprised by a pack of real Nevermores that attacked them mid air. They were forced to fight off the monsters in limited space to protect their ride. At one point Yang wrapped Blake's grappling hook on Ruby, in order to turn her into a yo-yo of spinning death to toss against the incoming Nevermores. Unfortunately the ice Nevermore suffered too much damage and started to break apart. Ruby was able to grab her team, and use Rose Dash to fly the remaining distance to the dreadnought, breaking through the window. Now they were inside, but they were thrown straight into another fight. The human soldiers were fighting the android soldiers on the ship, and so the girls had to help them evacuate.

All this time, after having implanted the virus, Roman and Neo were just looking for a way out, when suddenly it became clear what they had done. The robots now turned into killing machines, and were destroying the city. Roman was a crook, but he wasn't stupid — he won't allow the people of HIS city to be annihilated for no reason. He tried to remove the virus by pulling off the hard drive, but it didn't work, so he and Neo rushed to the control room and started ravaging the systems for a way to turn off the robots. They were about to succeed, but at that moment team RWBY opened the door behind them.

"You... You psychotic moron, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" Ruby shouted, not waiting a single second to jump and attack.

Roman tries to hold the situation down but he fails. Neo wasn't in the best condition to fight — her sickness only got worse as the days passed. Besides, the girls are much stronger than last time he fought them. He had to make a run for it, and quickly they ended up at the landing zone above the dreadnought. Roman was without any way out, so he was forced to fight the four girls alone. He played defensively until the girls allowed him time to breathe, and he could explain. "Do you think I'm stupid, Red?! Do you really think I wanted this to happen?! This was all a mistake! I was about to stop it before YOU showed up!" Roman shouted.

"But… why did you do all of this, then?!" Ruby asked.

"Someone is playing all of us, Red, I had no choice! There are some things… I can't afford to lose…" Roman said, putting himself in front of Neo. Suddenly all of team RWBY drop their guards, feeling no need to continue fighting this guy. There was a bigger fish that planned all of this, and Blake knew he was telling the truth. "Listen, let's go back to the control room so then I can-"

Suddenly they are all surprised by a rain of huge sharp feathers coming at them. That pack of Nevermores from before were now attacking the ship. Team RWBY and the criminal duo were forced to fight them off, but there are too many of them. They were overwhelmed and surrounded. Just then, one of the Nevermores was about to swoop in from the sky and strike Roman from behind. That sight seems to trigger Neo, and so she gains a burst of energy through her body. She dashes to push him out of the way, getting hit by the powerful strike in his place. She was tossed off the ship.

"NEO!" Roman shouted. She was free falling, and seemed to have lost consciousness. Roman gritted his teeth and then looked at team RWBY. "Go to the control room and delete the archive System55cc. It will cut the connection of all androids. And Red, if anyone asks you… tell them you killed us." Roman said, tossing his bowler hat to Ruby. He tightens the grip on his cane, and then does the Goldeneye jump to catch Neo. The Nevermores decided to follow him.

What follows is my personal favorite fight scene of the volume. It's just an awesome action short of Roman fighting five Nevermores while in the middle of a free fall. His absurd amount of guns with Dust bullets (including his rocket launcher cane) allows him to kill all his attackers mid air. It ends as he takes a nose dive and catches the unconscious Neo, saving them both by opening her umbrella. She slightly opens her eyes and smiles upon seeing him. It wouldn't be a swift landing, as they were about to land right in the middle of the battle.

The girls watch in silence as he jumps. Ruby decides to keep his hat on her belt, ordering her team to rush into the control room. They do exactly as Roman said. Deleting that executable managed to fuck up the entire system in errors. All the connections around the entire ship were cut off. The virus had infected the shared database of all androids. By cutting communications, the virus stopped affecting their artificial inteligence. Throughout the entire city, the Huntsmen watched in relief as all the robots and mechas simply stopped moving, and fell on their faces. Everyone cheers, and the teachers look up. Ozpin says, "those girls never fail to surprise…

—!

Everyone was looking at the dreadnought. Their expression quickly went from joy… to pure terror.

Team RWBY were commemorating their success with a hug, when suddenly they looked ahead through the front window. They saw a huge snout, covered in white scales and gigantic red eyes looking at them. It was waving its wings and flying towards the dreadnought really fast. They froze in shock, and before they could get out of its way… a giant fucking dragon Grimm breaks through the control room front window with it's head.

The girls are launched back by the force, and the creature starts clawing and biting the entire room to get them. They had no option but to run away, as the Grimm suddenly took a deep breath and spat a fire blast at them. Unfortunately, the dumbass monsters destroyed the control room and deactivated the ship's engine. And thus, the dreadnought began falling from the sky. There was nothing that the girl could do, other than brace for impact.

The dreadnought fell into the city, far away from all the fighting and near the empty docks by the sea.

That's the last we see of team RWBY for a little while. Let's get back at our other characters.

...

For team JNPR, on their way to the castle, Ren and Nora are distraught by a scene unfolding in the distance. There are Grimm rampaging through the area of their orphanage. At that point, Ren evolved his Semblance to the point he could see people's emotional condition from a far, and he could feel the fear of dozens of kids stuck inside the houses. He tells Jaune and Pyrrha to continue moving into the castle, while he and Nora protect their old home.

Meanwhile on the front lines, a much scarier battle was going on. Many warriors were being heavily wounded, and the streets were starting to look like hell. Team CRDL and CFVY were not even in the deep of it, but those scenes of fire and blood were frightening even to a tough guy like Cardin. They were relegated to helping the wounded Huntsmen escape the battle. It was getting harder and harder to fight, and Grimm continued following them at every corner. Despite all of that badass scenes up until now, they barely got rid of the first third of legion. More and more are entering the streets, and now they look up and see a giant fucking dragon Grimm — an abnormal flying around in the skies and giving them ear shattering roars. And the worst of all… they had a bit of infighting as well.

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Ironwood was essentially leading the charge, and was out there killing a lot of Grimm with Winter by his side. The problem was that, eventually, they ran into the other end of the battle. The Grimm were being attacked from behind as well, but the other side of the defense was being done by a single man. Ironwood and Winter turn around as they hear a primal scream of rage coming from afar. The streets ahead were littered with black ooze of dead Grimm, but no one had been there yet.

And there, standing on top of a pile of Grimm bodies, was Qrow.

His clothes were almost totally ruined. His face was that of unbridled anger and madness — no pupils in his eyes. He was covered in his own blood, the blood of the White Fang soldiers who attacked him, the black ooze from the Grimm he killed, and also a few white dusty marks from the android robots he slashed in half. The fire spreading behind him, as well as his flowing red Aura, gave the apparition of a demon. It's impossible to know just how many Qrow has killed in his spree, but it doesn't look like he's stopping any time soon.

He looked back at Ironwood and Winter, and wielded his weapon.

"IRON-WOOOOOOOOODDDD!" Qrow yelled viciously.

He immediately jumped towards them like an animal — his body lowered down and his jaw opens wide as if he was about to bite. Winter stepped in to block the attack, but Qrow's sword slash was so strong that she couldn't deflect it. That one attack sent Winter flying in the air, crashing through the wall of a house. She was knocked out instantly. Ironwood was able to stop Qrow's next swing with his robotic arm, but he was having the ultimate drunken rage. He started swinging down at Ironwood over and over again while he was shouting:

"If you done anything to them… if you done anything to Ruby… I'M GONNA KILL YOU! I'LL KILL EVERY SINGLE ONE OF YOU BASTARDS! I'LL WIPE YOU ALL FROM THE FACE OF THE EARTH!"

Eventually Qrow managed to chop off Ironwood's metal arm, breaking his guard. At that moment he's about to deliver the killing blow, but then his sword is stopped by a purple energy that surrounds it, and he can't move. Glynda suddenly appears, but it seems like she can barely contain Qrow at this berserker state. She's forced to kick him away. She steps in front of the wounded Ironwood and says, "It wasn't him, Qrow! The girls are… they are fine! Think, god dammit! Intelligent Grimm- an attack of this scale- something never seen since the first invasion! This is all HER doing!"

Qrow stops for a moment and starts shaking his head. Suddenly everything mde sense, but it only made his rage even more unbearable. He tossed off his weapon and screamed into the heavens again, punching the ground and making the whole block tremble. After that he took a deep breath and looked back at them. "WHERE THE FUCK IS OZPIN?! WHAT THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO DO ABOUT THAT FUCKING THING?!" he shouted, pointing at the dragon on the sky.

"… He and Leo are onto it." Glynda said.

.

.

With that done, we cut to a weirdly solemn scene. It's a shot of Leo and Ozpin, standing side by side as they watch the dragon flying in the distance. The city was on fire, but their eyes are glued on the giant monster. They slowly begin taking off their fancy clothes as the discussed, preparing for a long fight.

"There it is… that feeling again." Ozpin said.

"The dragon?" Leo asks.

"Maybe… but I don't think so. I think there's someone else… I think it's him… See how it's not attacking anything or anyone? it's simply looking around."

"Looking for us?" Leo asked.

"Hmph… Let's find out."

They were on top of the bell tower of the city this whole time. Ozpin suddenly hit the giant bell with his cane, putting a dent into it, and creating a sound that echoes throughout the entire city and beyond. The dragon manages to hear it from up there, and suddenly its locked onto them. The monster twirls around in the air and changes his direction towards them. As the giant behemoth approached, and the two simply stood in silence until it was time to jump. The dragon destroyed the bell tower with its tackle, but the two legendary warriors jump behind it, and knock it too the ground with a double kick. They immediately start beating the fuck out of the dragon, but the monster is too tough to actually damage it with just their weapons and fists. The dragon soon takes flight again, and they jump on top of it. They get some good footing on its wide back, as the dragon spreads its wings and stabilizes.

It was at that moment that Leo and Ozpin… spotted the true threat.

He emerged from the dragon's back — literally emerged in the black ooze, as if it was water. A humanoid, but its skin was pitch black like all other Grimm. His legs and arms were covered in white layer, but it wasn't the same as other Grimm. It looked like he was wearing actually detailed white armor. Most notably, his face was covered by a mask of a Nevermore. He came out laughing creepily, and took off his mask to speak.

"Found you…" he said. His face was human, but his eyes were glowing red.

Here it would be nice, climatic point to end the episode, but lets keep going.

...

The humanoid Grimm continued speaking while Leo and Ozpin carefully observe with sharp eyes. "You two look awfully calm for someone face to face with their demise…

I am Wrath, one of the Severus. You might find me a little bit familiar… I was called here tonight to rid ourselves of the two strongest warriors of this land. Naturally… that would be you two."

Ozpin stood quiet for a second, before saying, "I'll be honest, I was not expecting... another one."

"Is that so? Well, I remember you. It has been twenty three years ago since that day, hasn't it? What an unusual day that was. I never understood why we allowed you to live. I am here to finish what my colleague started. You will be glad to know that I'm much stronger than that fool was. And this time… there will be no mercy." Wrath finished as his voice distorted. "So, how is it going to be?"

Leo and Ozpin didn't even need to look at each other.

"Leo… you take down this dragon… leave him to me." Ozpin said.

"Don't be a fool. Do you really think you can beat him on your own?" Leo replied.

"I'm not the man I used to be… but I'm still the same warrior." Ozpin said, taking off his glasses and wielding his cane. "Tell me, disgusting monster, what do you say we fight in a better place? The top of that mountain, perhaps? No one will bother us there."

Wrath giggled. "Fine, I'll let you choose your grave."

The dragon listened to his order, and thus it flew to the mountain beside Beacon castle. The very top of the mountain was actually flat, and the overall feel of the area makes it seem that people have fought in there before. Wrath, Ozpin and Leo jump down. Ozpin says, "Leo, take that thing to the red forest and finish it off there."

"Don't worry about me, Oz. I'll be done in a minute. Don't die until I'm back." Leo said, throwing off his fancy shogun cape, and showing a cool tattoo on his back of the symbol 誉. We've seen snippets of his Semblance during volume II and the minisodes of volume III, but here is the first time he'll use it for combat. And god damn, what a power. His Semblance is "Shockwave" — pretty self explanatory. The first thing he does is take a stance to unleash a powerful clap. The sound wave creates an invisible force strong enough to clear the skies of the forest and knock the dragon out of the air. Leo quickly jumps after it, hitting the monster again with another shockwave.

Ozpin is left alone, and so he wields his cane on a classic fencing stance. He presses a small button at the handle, making a very small blade pop at the end of it.

"You're too bold for your own good, human!" Wrath said.

"Likewise…"

The cinematic riser starts going fucking crazy, but unfortunately we don't see the beginning of this fight.

.

.

.

Now we have to pick back up with our protagonists.

The four girls woke up in the crumbling halls of the dreadnought after that horrible crash, but it looked like they were all alive. They crawl out of the wreckage and find their way outside. The docks were completely empty, so it doesn't look like anyone was killed from the landing. They thought about helping the others at the front line, but just then they were interrupted. Once they start running through the rooftops, dozens of hooded men in masks suddenly pop out from the shadows and surround the girls. The White Fang was here. While the three drew their weapons and prepared… Blake didn't. She froze up.

"Blake, what are you doing?! Get it together!" Weiss said, but it was too late.

The leader suddenly jumps in, shaking the roof and making a sound that seemingly silences everything else around them. Blake sees the man with bloody red hair and black suit. It was Adam, and he smiled at her. "Bee… I'm glad you're safe. I didn't meet you at the marked location and I got worried." Adam said. He begins walking towards her, but then Ruby, Weiss and Yang dashed in front of Blake, who was shaking in fear. "Get away from her!" Ruby shouted.

"Oh, right, I get it. I see that your… "team"… didn't make it easy for you. It must've been a tough year. I'm sorry, Bee. But thankfully it's all over now. You can finally go home. These humans won't bother you anymore." Adam said, and suddenly all the White Fang members drew their weapons. More and more of them were appearing from the shadows.

"Blake, do you know this man?" Weiss asks.

Adam began laughing and clapping for a long while, making even his own men unsettled. "I can't believe it, Bee. You were so great that even to this last moment… they still don't suspect a damn thing. Absolutely incredible, I'm proud of you."

"Adam… please… don't…" Blake was stuttering.

"What are you talking about!" Weiss said, pointing her rapier at Adam.

And so… Adam tells all. "Tell me, girl… who are you talking about right now?… Who is it that you think you see?… That girl behind you, Blake Faux — born in some backwater village on the south coast? Your precious little teammate? What a joke."

"I SAID, WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" Weiss repeated.

"This "Blake", whatever you like to call her, joined Beacon academy one year ago with a single purpose. To fulfill the mission I gave her… as a White Fang agent." Adam said.

"Wh… what?" Ruby mumbled.

"She was given the mission to infiltrate the Huntsman guild as a student… and pass on vital information about their operations to us. Their secrets, their teachings, and every move they made since then. She also provided us with a detailed description of every single warrior in those walls… Let me guess… Weiss Schnee, obviously… and you're Ruby Rose… and you are Yang Xiaolong. Is that right? Bee had a lot of remarks about you. She thought very highly of you three."

The more Adam spoke, the more the girls lowered their weapons. The more he said, the more the fire in their faces started to vanish. Their expressions began to sink more and more as the revelations came. Yang stepped ahead and interrupted Adam. "SHUT UP!… Blake, who the hell does this creep think he is, right? Making up lies like that- WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?!

Tell him, Blake… tell him he's a liar!" Yang said, but her willful ignorance was clear in her face. Blake was still silently looking back at her team, incapable of talking. Yang bursts in anger, "I SAID TELL HIM! WHAT'S WRONG WITH YOU?! SPEAK UP ALREADY!"

"She was never your friend, you idiot. Why would she be friends with a bunch of worthless humans? Her real place is with us, her people. I can't even imagine what a pain it must have been, to spend all that time next to despicable creatures like you. Come on, Bee. Why don't you make the honors of being the first one to hit them? I know you must be itching to do it."

Ruby was the first to tear up. She walked up to Blake, dragging her scythe on the floor.

"Blake… say something… Anything… Just… just tell the truth." she said.

Blake was looking blankly at Ruby's eyes. Her tears were genuine — Blake was almost tearing up herself. But at that moment, she dodged her eyes a little to the left, and saw that Adam was about to draw his sword and slash the girls from behind. She instantly reacted, grabbing Ruby by the collar and throwing her against the floor, as that made Adam stop. Yang and Weiss were frozen in place. Ruby didn't react. She didn't even blink as her head hit the tiles with force.

Blake mounted Ruby and put her sword to her neck. "How can there be any more to say?… I hate you. I hated every single second… that I had to be with you. Didn't I make that clear? I didn't expect you three… to be so stupid… to try and be my friend." Blake said. All the White Fang members started to laugh one by one, as the three little warriors girls started crying. Surrounded by their noise, Blake then got really close to Ruby's face and spoke something silently, so then just the four could hear it.

"You three… please… run… forget me…

Please… be quick!"

…

The three stopped crying for a moment after she said that, but they still couldn't make a move… Except for Yang. She grabbed Blake by the scruff of her shirt and tossed her away from Ruby. She threw her towards Adam, who caught her in the air. Yang then wrapped her arms around Weiss and Ruby, and made a run for it. She knocked down two White Fang soldiers with her kicks on the way out, and so the entire force surrounding them gave chase.

Adam and Blake were left behind. He wanted to join the chase and kill the girls, but then, to his utmost surprise, Blake stopped him by holding his wrist. Only after everyone is gone, Blake allows herself to cry.

"Bee, what's wrong?!" Adam asked.

"Adam… We were wrong!" Blake said, with the most amount of emotion we've ever seen on her.

…

Adam's smile disappears. "… what?"

"We were all wrong, Adam… I was wrong… The humans, they… they don't deserve any of this!"

"Hey… what are you talking about?"

"I thought I had seen everything… All that evil, that arrogance, that lust… I wanted to cleanse the world from it just as much as any of us, but… we were wrong to blame all of humanity. I've seen it, Adam. I've seen the evil, again and again… but I also saw the good! I met humans who didn't care I was different. They respected me. They trusted me. They called me their friend… they… they really loved me.

How… how could I betray the people who gave me everything I wanted?!" Blake shouted through her tears.

Adam was clearly growing distressed the more she ranted, even biting his lip. "Please, Blake… Please don't say anything more. You are confused, you are-"

"I'M NOT!" Blake shouted, pushing his hand away. "I'm telling you Adam, you need to stop this! All of it! Innocent people don't deserve to die for the evil of others!"

"People?! YOU'RE CALLING THEM PEOPLE NOW?! Blake, haven't I shown you what they've done to us — all throughout the ages, and even now?!" Adam sparked back.

"And what about what we're doing now?! What is the point of fighting if we allow ourselves to become as disgusting as the thing we are fighting against?! WHAT IS THE POINT?!" Blake shouted.

"… I don't know what those humans did to you Blake. They twisted your thoughts, they brainwashed you!… I'm gonna kill all of them for what they've done!" Adam said, and so Blake drew her sword and took a stance against him.

"I wasn't brainwashed… Now I know the truth." Blake said, shaking her hands as she has no will to fight him, but still prepares. "Please Adam, you have to stop this madness… I won't allow you to hurt my friends!"

We can't really see the expression on Adam's face due to the mask. His mouth movements and body language is all we have to go about. He was shaking his head and looking back and forth — being bombarded with memories and regret. Adam then covers his face as he begins to whimper a little, shrugging off his eyes as he was almost crying. "I have failed you, Blake… I have failed you."

He began drawing this sword, and took the same stance as she.

"I'm going to get you out of here."

.

.

From here on it's just sad scene after sad scene. All the destruction and mayhem is being accompanied by sad instrumental music. Ruby is desperately crying like a child, while Weiss hits herself with the hilt of her sword to stay focused. Yang seems to be disassociated, given her blank stare ahead as she runs. Now… It's time to sack some people.

The sad music is accompanied by static shots of Huntsmen who are currently… in a less than favorable position. Surrounded by monsters and fire while heavily wounded. Entire teams at a time going down. In one of these images, we see professor Port struggling to fight four elder Grimm at the same time, biting his giant arms, legs and chest. Qrow was still covered in blood, fighting through sheer adrenaline and hate. Team CRDL was surrounded, and Cardin suffered a notable slash on his face. Coco was being mauled by a Grimm and her entire team rushed to help her. Glynda, no matter how much she tried, couldn't save everyone. Ren and Nora were fighting for their lives while alone and separated from anyone else, having the lives of children on their hands. Team PCFHR (without Penny) were trying to shoot down several Nevermores in the sky to protect the people on the coliseum, but it was just too many of them.

Nonetheless, team RWBY was still being chased by dozens of White Fang soldiers. They did receive help eventually. Sun, Jobi and Aslan appeared to defend them. Despite being separate students, the three work together amazingly well, and in short order they had put down all the chasers. The rest tried to flee, and Jobi gave chase to finish them off. Things didn't look good for team RWBY though… or RWY I guess.

This the weakest we've ever seen Ruby. Her friends came to be the thing that gives her strength and courage. But once faced with the loss of a dear friend, she simply broke down like she was a kid again. Weiss was equally a mess. Just like Ruby, her grief made her revert back to her old spoiled-bitch self. Ruby's orders were to go back and help Blake, perhaps still in denial of the truth. Weiss immediately exploded against her, and the two started arguing. Blake didn't even try to defend herself, she kept all those secrets all along, and in the end she stepped on everything they built together. "She was a filthy, traitor, piece of trash! WHAT ABOUT HER?!" Weiss shouted. With the two fighting among themselves, Yang was forced to take point… and just like her father warned her against… anger started to take over her head.

Without a warning, she appeared behind the two, and gave them the classic karate chop at the neck, knocking them out. Sun and Aslan looked in shock as her eyes turned red again.

"Take these two out of here." Yang said, preparing to move back.

"But Yang-" Sun was saying.

"NOW!" she shouted, causing a shockwave with her Aura. She waited until the two left in order to make her move. Yang was planning to go help Blake alone, so help her god.

.

.

.

With all our characters being fucked left and right, front and center, things seemed really bleak. The battle of Ozpin versus Wrath had already begun, and even to overpowered standards, it is essentially impossible to watch it. We merely see frames of them appearing in the air, only to quickly disappear as well. Everyone else was in Naruto, meanwhile these two fuckers were in Dragon Ball Z. The mere collision of their weapons caused shock waves that shook the mountain. Eventually they returned to their starting positions for a talk.

"Hahaha! Human, you are much better than I hoped you would be!" Wrath said.

"If we are done warming up… Why don't you show me your true power? I know you're not like the other monsters. That's why you're here, isn't it?" Ozpin said.

Wrath laughed again, and this time he decided to indulge him. He was not a normal Grimm — way above an abnormal, in fact. Not only did Wrath have something close to an Aura, but now he also shows to have a Semblance. His arms start to distort horribly, but he doesn't seem to be in pain. And so, his arms turn into two giant sickles. Wrath explained that his Semblance allowed him to turn his entire body in whatever weapon he can imagine. Thanks to this ability, he was labeled "the living weapon", and the title of strongest of all Grimm. Wrath seemed very cocky all of the sudden, but upon that revelation…

Ozpin starts to laugh. The smile on Wrath's face disappears.

"You are… laughing?!" he said.

"You said you were stronger than that friend of yours that I fought twenty three years ago? Oh please, that's one of the most insane jokes I've ever heard in my entire life! I WOULD NEVER LOSE TO THE LIKES OF YOU IN A MILLION YEARS!" Ozpin said, angrily. That seemed to have triggered Wrath, and so the two immediately engaged back in their hyper-speed fight.

...

As for our pal Leo, he was fighting the giant dragon in the red forest.

He was just a tiny dot against the massive behemoth, but even so, he could create a balanced fight. His shockwaves were strong enough to knock the creature around like gigantic bashes of air, and he could also use the shockwaves to achieve a form of flight by launching himself with force. The fight was almost entirely in the middle of the air. The dragon's only strength was being able to breathe fire, but Leo could fight it with his shockwaves, creating a repellent wall against the flames. A cool moment of the fight was when he used the shockwave on the forest down below, making all the trees fly into the air. And then, with a loud scream towards the skies, he sent all those trees flying straight towards the dragon, hitting and impaling it on multiple spots. The dragon was tough though, it will take much more than he expected to kill this thing.

.

.

And finally, we have to cut the most important part.

Jaune and Pyrrha, without access to any flying vehicle, were forced to run through a long stairway that goes around the mountain. Pyrrha tried raising them to the top by levitating their iron armors, but she was disturbed by flying Grimm, and forced to fight them while pressed against the mountain. Jaune purposefully took most of the fighting to protect the fatigued Pyrrha, and by the end he would be dead if not for his regeneration Semblance acting up on its own.

Eventually they arrive at the gate, and they are able to contact Miss Lucy to open the castle entrance for them. The inside was pure chaos, as many people took refuge there. Lucy was a completely different person than we ever saw her — she was in a constant state of maddening worry. The thing she feared the most was happening right in front of her. In that moment her Grimmphobia left her unable to help the two, or even behave like a rational human.

Jaune and Pyrrha ran to Ozpin's office, and there they found the secret panel behind the painting of the previous headmaster. It seemed to control a lot of things within the castle. Eventually they find a secret option hidden way below all others. "Activate Beacon" was the name. And so they press it.

Suddenly the entire castle began shaking, because a new tower simply burrowed out of the floor and started growing in the middle of the courtyard. It rose taller than all other towers of the castle. And so, once it reached its peak, the little sphere at the top started opening. From within… an absurdly bright blue light emanated. That blinding light was actually coming from a small blue trinket, encased in gold. The greatest secret of this castle, and the greatest weapon of the entire Nation of Vale.

The Relic of Knowledge.

Its blue glow reached all the way down to the city, casting off the darkness of that night covered in flames and blood. Everyone looked in awe. Glynda knew that Jaune and Pyrrha managed to get there safely and complete the mission. The crisis has finally ended. If there's one thing, which has been observed through the last five hundred years, is that the only thing Grimm want more than human blood… is that stupid blue thing. And so all of those monsters stopped for a moment, and raised their heads as they saw the blue glow. Their red eyes looked at their prize. Regardless of who they were fighting, or where, or why — they all stopped what they were doing, and went straight for the relic.

The Grimm were all leaving the streets one by one, moving straight for the plateau of the mountain and forgetting all else. Hundreds of them scaled the mountain, while others flew their way to the castle. But once they got close to the gate, the defensive systems activated. The amount of tech lying secretly on this castle would make Atlas scientists jealous. The gates shut tight, and as Grimm approached the castle, they started being annihilated by hundreds of weapons that popped out from within the wall. Heavy anti air, spinning saws and ground fire — the monsters simply didn't stand a chance. In about a few minutes, the five hundred Grimm who were still invading were turned into a couple dozen, as they were mowed down by the castle's automatic defenses. This was the moment of their salvation.

But little did they know… they were still playing on the hand of someone this entire time.

And that someone… will finally reveal itself.

...

From afar, once again we see that sexy woman in robes. By this point we almost forgot she started all of this. She's watching the Grimm being destroyed by the wall's defenses. Slowly she starts taking off her disguise in close shots, as she monologues about how every single bit of the plan worked perfectly. Finally we get a true reveal of her appearance.

From her high heels, her crimson red dress with long sleeves, a black choker, her silver eyes and long black hair. Cinder Fall finally reveals herself (not yet named either). The camera zooms out, revealing that she was riding on the back of a powerful abnormal Grimm, flying in the air. It was a giant Manticore, colored more white than black. She told her pet to distract the big shots down in the city, while she goes for the prize. She jumps down, and the monster flies away at high speed.

We continue following her perspective as she does her sexy walk, going towards the castle with a big sadistic smile on her face. She is able to walk around the monsters, bullets and explosions without a single worry in her mind. The system doesn't seem to recognize her as a threat since she's a human. She was in the middle of hellfire and death, yet she smiled. Once again she raises her hand and prepares her fireball. Without any effort at all, she's able to blow a molten hole in the great wall of Beacon. That seemed to make defenses malfunction.

All the dozen remaining Grimm look at her in silence, and so she says, "Don't let anyone inside." It seems that Cinder has the power to control the Grimm, as they do exactly as she orders her — guarding the hole behind her. And so, she alone continues doing the cat walk towards the castle. A few Huntsmen spotted her from afar and tried attacking her, but she quickly dispatched them without a glance, shooting powerful volleys of fire at them. She continues exploding her way into the castle, as the people run in fear from her presence. Just one person remained hidden under the counter of the main hall; Miss Lucy. She was crying in a fetal position. Cinder approached her and calmly asked where the Relic was, and so Lucy pointed to the door that led to the courtyard.

It looked like Cinder was going to get exactly what she wanted, uncontested. She created streams of fire out of her hands, allowing her to fly upwards to the top of the long tower. Once the relic was in her sight, she moved slowly, enjoying the moment. Meanwhile, Jaune and Pyrrha were just observing the moment in shock. At the last second they understood something critical. Whoever that woman is, or whatever is that blue thing… they can't let it fall into her hands.

They jumped through Ozpin's window and landed already on the courtyard. Pyrrha immediately used her Semblance to pull the huge tower down, breaking it in half and interrupting Cinder. The tower crashed against the castle, and pieces went flying everywhere. The two start searching for the relic among the rubble, and they manage to spot it at the same time as Cinder. She was about to grab it, but then Pyrrha used her powers to pull the Relic to her hand, since it was encased in a gold ornament. Jaune and Pyrrha stood there in shock as Cinder's smile turned into a frown, and those silver eyes were looking right back at them in hatred. They had absolutely no hope of fighting that absurdly threatening Aura… so they ran.

They start a giant chase through the castle. Cinder was faster and more deadly, but Pyrrha used the structure to her advantage. She would use her powers to bring down the walls and ceiling to slow down Cinder. They were absolutely destroying the whole place. Naturally it was only a matter of time before they ran out of places to run.

At that moment, Cinder intended to obliterate them with another one of her huge fireballs. She aimed it and fired at Pyrrha, but at the last possible moment, achieving an insane speed as his Aura flared up, Jaune jumped in front with his shield and took the explosion head on. Naturally that entire section of the castle was sent straight to hell, and Pyrrha was sent flying from the explosion.

...

There was dust and fire everywhere and debris falling. She was dazed and kept calling for Jaune's name until she found him. He was in terrible conditions — his shield was destroyed, his arm was more meat than skin, and he was bleeding heavily from everywhere. His new Semblance wasn't working fast enough to help him. Despite that, Jaune still got up, eyes dead, determined to continue defending Pyrrha. Just then Cinder found them in the middle of all the destruction. Pyrrha observed that situation in silence, looking between Jaune and the enemy slowly walking towards them. He would die if he kept fighting. She had to make a decision.

Cinder said, "Give me that thing… and I will give you time to save him."

"Don't listen to her, Pyrrha… Get out of here now!" Jaune said, holding up his sword. But then suddenly, Pyrrha stood by his side and began lowering his blade with her hand. Her face was no longer that of fear, shock or anger. She had an honest and solemn smile. She caught Jaune off guard with a tight hug. It was so random, but it was still filled with strong emotion. Pyrrha whispered in his ear as tears began sliding down her cheek.

"Thank you… for everything."

Suddenly Pyrrha put her arm against his chest and levitated him in the air using his armor. Jaune began protesting, but before anything could be done, Pyrrha simply throws him through the broken ceiling. She tossed him so high and in such a way that he was not just launched out of the castle, but he was falling off the plateau, and into the city. "PYRRHAAAA!" Jaune shouted, but his voice coudn't be heard anymore. After that, Pyrrha and Cinder stood there on the burning hallway, alone.

"You poor girl. Pyrrha Nikos… Such good friends you have, and how talented you are. Tell me, is it really your destiny to throw it all away and die, fighting a battle that you have no chance of winning?" Cinder said.

Pyrrha continued looking down and shrugged off her tears.

"Who knows?… Whatever my destiny was supposed to be, I don't care… I COULDN'T CARE LESS!…

I finally know what I really want… I will protect my friends.

That's my destiny." She finished, drawing her weapons.

What follows is our first fight in which Pyrrha uses 100% of her power and her brain, which maintains a balanced fight against an S-level threat. There's metal literally everywhere in this castle — even small decorations can easily turn into a powerful weapon or defense with her Semblance. She could also instantly mold the metal objects into whatever shape she desired. We only see the beginning of this fight before cutting away. The real spectacle is yet to begin.

...

We continue following Jaune's free fall into the castle. He's able to use his sword and slash against the side of the mountain to slow his descent a little bit. At the same time this was happening, Ruby and Weiss finally woke up from that neck chop. Aslan was still looking over them, as it seemed like the battle in the city was over. Ruby and Weiss were still terribly mopey about what just happened, they lost track of what to do. It was then that they witnessed the poor Jaune falling straight through the rooftop of a house in the distance.

Thankfully he was still alive, but horribly scarred from Cinder's attack. His Semblance would heal him in due time, for now he only begged Ruby for one thing. "Please, Ruby… please save Pyrrha."

And so he passed out. Ruby's team was fragmented, Yang was missing, the city was in chaos and flames… but at that moment, she only wanted to abide by the request of her friend. Ruby and Weiss immediately started going up the mountain, while Aslan carried Jaune away to warn everyone else about the fight in the castle. Thanks to their abilities, the two girls manage to quickly scale the mountain much faster than Jaune and Pyrrha did, and also fight their way through the few elder Grimm who were ordered to guard the hole by Cinder.

.

.

By now the front of defense against the Grimm were allowed to rest and patch up. Cardin had received a slash in the face that almost blinded him. Team CFVY was in a terrible state — Coco was half unconscious and bleeding on the ground, asking the sobbing Velvet if her clothes got dirty. Ironwood lost an arm to Qrow, Winter almost got killed by Qrow, and Qrow himself fought half of the army on his own, and now is licking his wounds. Glynda was trying to help the other wounded, but seeing so many dead people made her cry in despair without being able to control herself, probably dealing with past trauma. Corazan had to stay right behind to help comfort her.

Unfortunately their battle wasn't over.

That giant fucking Manticore found them, and landed on the ground with such speed and strength that it made the whole block tremble with a quake. Qrow was horribly tired, but once he looked at that thing in the eyes, he said, "You…!" It seems he and this specific Grimm have history. Its mere sight was enough to shoot Qrow with vengeful adrenaline again. The adults were forced to start fighting this thing together, as it was too much of a threat just for Qrow alone.

.

.

Meanwhile at the docks, Blake still had her fight with Adam, which was short and hopeless. Blake was emotionally broken after all that happened. She did demonstrate a new technique though. She stepped over Adam's shadow, and wrapped her Shadow Twin around him, paralyzing his movements. Unfortunately, Adam points out how her Aura has weakened from her emotional state, and easily breaks free by unleashing his own. Adam completely dominates the fight but doesn't do a single harm to Blake all throughout. He ends their match by delivering a samurai slash on her with the back of his sword, knocking her out.

He cradles Blake in his arms and promises, "Don't worry, I'm going to fix you."

Unfortunately, on his way through the rooftops, he eventually bumps into a wild Yang with red eyes. She delivered a strong surprise punch on Adam, enough to knock Blake out of his arms. "Get your filthy hands off her!" Yang shouts, catching Blake in the air.

Adam was furious. "You stupid, brainless creature! Didn't you hear what I said?! She's not your friend, she never was! It was all a lie!"

"I DON'T CARE! No one will take my family away from me again!" Yang said, putting Blake down and preparing to fight. She's able to match Adam equally, since he's more worried about grabbing Blake than winning the fight. Yang just blocks him from reaching her, and he's able to dodge her attacks. Eventually she receives some help. Just like every other time, Sun does exactly what he was told not to, and he followed Yang. She didn't allow him to join the fight, but ordered him to take Blake away. This time he obeys, and so Yang is left alone against Adam. By this point he's so enraged that he promises to use his full power to make Yang suffer as much as possible — blaming her for turning Blake against him. Yang smashes her fist together and welcomes the challenge.

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At the utmost time, Weiss and Ruby manage to beat all the Grimm guarding the hole on the gates, and enter. They saw that the castle was completely destroyed, and an explosion in the distance revealed that the fight was still happening. The ceiling to Ozpin's office was gone, and so they rushed up there to find the duel between two ancestral warriors. Ruby and Weiss arrive just in time to protect Pyrrha from Cinder's next attack. The two sides back away for a moment. The silence was heavy, and the wind was smooth. Ruby is able to look at Cinder in the face, and immediately recognizes her presence as being the same as that woman from four months ago. "It's… it's you!"

But then, as Cinder looks at Ruby in the eyes, it seems to trigger a hallucination on the girl. That face. Those silver eyes. An image flashed on Ruby's mind as she kept staring. The image of her mother appeared beside Cinder for a moment. They looked identical, except for the hair color. No one else in the entire world that Ruby saw has silver eyes like that, except for her and her mother. She was more confused than anything, but at that moment she shrugged off her vision and said, "You were behind all of this? You… YOU MONSTER!"

Cinder spotted Roman's hat on her belt. "You took care of Torchwick for me? You're strong… And those… those eyes… goodness, could it be that you're-!" Cinder said, but held her tongue.

From then on she decided to entertain these three. She was getting a little rusty after all — now they would fight hand to hand. Just then, Cinder made a surge of fire in her palms, and slowly molded into the shape of a weapon. Her power allowed her to make weapons out of pure fire, and she started off with two basic swords. The girls couldn't fuck around with those, as they were hot enough to melt their weapons.

Commentary (spoilers): And here, ladies and gentlemen… we begin the money fight of the volume. It seems crazy to think we still have it, considering this is the volume with the most fights of all. Like I said before, this is the make or break of the series. And THIS… this is the most important moment of the first third of the series. There are five fights happening now (Ozpin, Leo, Yang, Qrow and Ruby); all of them being instrumental to all the characters. I don't want just one of them to be well animated; I want all of them to be well animated. The way it's going to be done is by having all the fights happening at the same time, and we are merely cutting back and forth between each other just to showcase the best moments of each one with high definition and 60fps animation. Just simple and wordless action, backed up by a soundtrack ON THE LEVEL of It Has To Be This Way.

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Now I'm just going to describe how each fight ends, from least to most important.

Leo, after having beaten the fuck out of the giant dragon for a whole hour, only managed to kill it by using his strongest move. First he sent the monster plummeting to the forest. He launched himself far up with the clouds, and then charged up air in his lungs as he began to fall, preparing the greatest attack of his career. The dragon looked up as the puny man was fast approaching. It's only natural that a cocky guy like Leo would be one of the few who names his ultimate attack. Leo held his hands together and began reciting the name slowly, "Celestial… King's… ASSAULT!"

And so Leo cupped his hands and unleashed the most powerful shockwave upon the dragon. It cost him a lot of Aura, but the power was so great that the dragon turned to mush as it was pressed against the earth. The black ooze splattered everywhere, and a gigantic crater had surged. The iconic red forest had been completely destroyed after that fight — probably never to be seen again. Ultimately, Leo was able to kill the dragon Grimm, and he immediately created a shockwave to launch himself towards the mountain, and help Ozpin.

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Qrow and the others didn't manage to kill the Manticore at all, even fighting together. Despite its size, the monster could disappear into thin air from how fast it moved. It beat the fuck out of the armless Ironwood, and the current power level was just too big for Winter. Glynda almost got killed, but Corazan was able to tackle her out of the Manticore's slash and gets mortally wounded in her place. Qrow felt like he could fight this monster forever, but eventually it seemed to have lost interest in them. It seems the monster heard a sound somewhere, and suddenly it took flight towards the castle.

Soon after that, Aslan came running with Jaune on her shoulder, and they warned that the castle was under attack, and that Ruby, Pyrrha and Weiss were fighting a woman with fire powers up there. Qrow simply began mumbling the word "no'' over and over again, as he rushed ahead towards the castle. The others followed right behind.

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Ozpin was stuck in a battle of speed in which he couldn't really win, given that the versatility of Wrath's power was greater than he had thought. Ozpin knew that the only way to win this battle would be using his Semblance. And so he showed it to Wrath.

He tossed off his cane and raised his hand. Wrath could feel Ozpin concentrating a lot of Aura onto them. The result was a flame that suddenly enveloped his hand. A purple flame. He titled his Semblance as "the touch of death". Wrath got the hint from the name and figured that he should stay away from that hand. Unfortunately for him, Ozpin didn't give him that advantage. He rushed with insane speed and grabbed Wrath with his flaming hand. The effects of his Semblance don't seem to cause any damage whatsoever… at least on the outside.

Once it made contact with Wrath, he could feel every inch, every molecule, every nerve, organ and part of his body screaming in pain. An unbearable pain. The purple flames were spreading over his body, almost breaking his mind with sensory overload of pure agony. He was able to shake off Ozpin, and the pain disappeared. His dark body began melting from the stress and fatigue like sweat, while Ozpin seemed serene and sure of his victory — eyes still sharp. "DON'T YOU MOCK ME!" Wrath shouted.

Wrath tried to attack him several times, but simply being touched by Ozpin's hand made him regret that instantly. Wrath allowed blind anger to guide his fighting spirit, and in the end he decided to simply duke it out against Ozpin to finish him off, hoping that going berserk would nullify the pain. Wrath added pikes to his fists while Ozpin made a purple flame appear in his other hand, and so they just started boxing one another at hyper speed. Their feet were firmly planted on the ground — only their upper body moved with phasing speed as they dodged and punched. Wind and light was rushing around them, just from the intensity of their movements. Electricity was being deflected off, and pebbles were slowly rising into the air. Ozpin's desire to kill Wrath started to take over his mind and feed his Aura, to the point he became just as berserk as his opponent. As their squabble continuously grew in intensity, Wrath felt more and more pain.

He began to realize, "This… can't… be! This… human… is… something else!"

His demise eventually came, as Ozpin overpowered Semblance made it impossible to maintain his Aura. The pain made his mind vulnerable, and eventually Wrath flinched. That half of a milisecond was all it took. Ozpin quickly drew back his cane, and sliced Wrath's arms with the small blade at the tip. His two arms were slashed clean off by a mere sleight of hand and a nice stick. Everything stopped moving at that moment, as the humanoid Grimm simply started backing away in shock. Black ooze was gushing from his chopped arms. His eyes now display fear for the first time, and he sees Ozpin's cold and merciless gaze. Without a single word, Wrath eventually walked back to much… and he fell off the edge of the mountain.

They were so high up that Wrath's body disappeared from Ozpin's view, falling to the destroyed red forest way down below. He hasn't fought someone so strong in decades. He can only hope he's dead, because in truth Ozpin did not had that much more energy to keep going. Finally he could fall to his old man's knees, and take a deep breath. Leo eventually came to help him. Both won their battles with perfection — they only got stronger with age. Now they look down to the castle and see that it is in ruins. They had to rush and see what was going on.

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Yang was having the beatdown of her life. She managed to balance her power against Adam by using "Burn" to increase her strength. Of course, her hot head only made things worse from then on. Adam was also enraged, and was fighting to kill in bloody vengeance. Yang's Impact Absorption fueled her with Aura, but it didn't heal her wounds. She was getting slashed everywhere, all across her body. Adam's red sword was cutting through her like butter, and she couldn't understand why. She got soaked in her own blood, and at one point her purple scarf was stripped off of her.

Despite that, Yang had no fear at all, and continued fighting even if she shouldn't. Thankfully she would receive help. Detective Braun found Sun with Blake in his arms, and he explained what Yang was doing. Braun arrived at the fight, and was able to hold off Adam for a while, keeping Yang away. It worked until Adam literally slashed Braun's weapons in half, and he too started getting wrecked. Adam promised to kill each and every human in this city, and that includes them. Yang was still running on pure rage, and refused Braun's orders to leave. They tried to fight Adam together, but they were both too wounded to continue. Regardless of how things would play out in the fight to that point, in the end Yang goes ahead and uses her blast charges to impulse herself towards Adam for one final haymaker punch with all her power. Adam stood in pose, and was ready to slash her in two.

Braun had half a second to make a move, and so… he simply did as his instincts told him.

In a blink of an eye he dashed in front of Yang, staring her face to face while holding her back. At the same time, Adam unleashed his sword, and pretty much slashed Braun's entire back. He used his own body as a shield. It's a slow scene, going almost completely silent to reflect Yang calming down. As Braun's blood splatters on her face, her eyes slowly turn back to purple. They just looked at each other, and Braun forced out one last smile to ease her.

"Why do I always gotta clean your messes?… dumb brat." he says.

The last thing he does is take off his detective fedora and place it on Yang's head… before falling on the ground. He was cold and motionless. His eyes slowly close.

…

Yang started to slowly back away as she stared at his body — looking back and forth between him and the blood on her hands. She started crying, but couldn't let any words out. She was in complete emotional shock. Her heart was beating louder. It was only natural that once her adrenaline was down, Yang would also succumb to her injuries. With tears on her face and blood all over her arms and legs, Yang falls to the ground, and thunder strikes on the clouds above.

Adam proceeds to clean his sword on his sleeve and look around. That monkey boy who took Blake was not White Fang, and he was nowhere to be seen. He lost her. Adam gritted his teeth and yelled in anger, before turning his back to the two dying warriors he just fought — hoping they would die naturally and slowly. Once alone he was able to sulk in what just happened, and he even started to cry a little, calling out Blake's name in vague hope she would listen. Eventually he's found by one of his soldiers, and he immediately recompose himself. The soldiers said, "Sir, all special squads are ready. The wounded Huntsmen are scattered around the city. We can take all of them down. Let us end this once and for all!"

"… The attack is over. We're leaving." Adam replied.

"What?! But sir, these circumstances are perfect-"

"WE'RE LEAVING!" Adam grabbed the guy by the collar and shouted in his face. Adam was so emotionally distraught that he couldn't continue on the mission. The White Fang all leave the shadows and start evacuating the city one by one. Suddenly boats appeared at the docks to help them escape, and so the army of assassins is gone. Their mission was almost a total success, but Adam didn't feel like a winner. If anything, he just got one step closer to absolute madness.

...

Yang and Braun's bodies were left side by side in the middle of nowhere — probably not to be found in time to save Yang.

She was going to die like a moron…

But it was in that quiet moment, when the wind was passing by, that a very familiar thing happened again. Yang was lying on her face, and suddenly her back started to emanate that same red glow it once did, from the previous volume. And just like then, that same woman with long black hair and mask jumps out from the light. She readies her sword, but it seems like there are no more enemies.

She looks back and sees Braun and Yang on the floor, and kneels down to their side. Yang was still breathing barely, but Braun was dead. The red lady was visibly upset, shaking her fist in rage from not feeling his pulse. She could still save Yang though. She looks around again, and sees the city completely destroyed. No one in sight to help her. This place is doomed, and so the woman makes a decision. She cuts the air with her sword, and there appears a red portal. Without saying a single word, she takes Yang in her arms and jumps inside it, as it closes right behind her.

Yang… was gone.

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And of course… The conclusion.

Ruby, Weiss and Pyrrha had no chance. Not after all the fighting the three suffered on the way here, while fighting an extremely powerful and skilled opponent who hasn't even broken a sweat yet. Weiss was the first to go down out of the three, getting tossed off the tower and crashing on the castle rooftops. Pyrrha and Ruby against Cinder was a fight filled with despair. The two strongest, most skilled combatants of their class, being completely destroyed without causing so little as a scratch. Cinder went so hard as to break Crescent Rose in half with her fire weapons. Worst of all was that Cinder seemed to recognize Ruby as they were fighting.

"I can't believe it… it's actually you. Ruby Rose… your mother… she spoke so much about you." Cinder said, what threw Ruby in a fit of rage and confusion. The fight ends up so unfair that it becomes borderline torture. In the end Pyrrha was left unconscious, and Cinder had Ruby by the neck. All the girls were beaten and bloody, not having the strength to get up anymore. Ruby was completely at her mercy. Cinder raised her up and began squeezing her neck.

She asked, "Tell me, my little Ruby… would you like to see your mother again?"

Eventually Ruby's body went completely limp, and she closed her eyes. With everyone down and the Relic in her possession, It looked like the end to our heroes. Cinder gave a loud whistle to call her Manticore back, and grabbed the Relic off Pyrrha's hands. Cinder now holds Ruby's body is a gentle way, looking down on her with a faint smile. Her face seems familiar to Cinder, as she runs her fingers against her cheek. We totally don't get what this is about (yet), but soon the scene is cut short.

Just then, Cinder felt it.

Throughout this whole invasion and battle, this bitch has been doing nothing but smile. She's completely sure of her victory, knowing there's nobody to stop her. The moment she felt Ozpin's Aura, all that confidence disappeared. Her smile was gone, and her eyes were open wide with shock. She looked back and saw the two legends, Ozpin and Leo, beaten and bleeding in a few places, but still standing up and exerting a terrifying presence.

She stutters, "You… killed Wrath? That's… that's Impossible…!"

They both immediately attack her, without wasting any words. Finally she's cornered, but even against the likes of them, she's still somewhat of an equal. Leo couldn't use his Semblance without killing the girls, and Cinder was using Ruby's body as a shield against Ozpin. In the end they manage to knock away the relic from her possession, and Ozpin grabs it. Cinder analyzes the situation and decides to do a bit of subterfuge. She raises Ruby up by the throat and steps over Pyrrha's chest while pointing a fire sword to her face. Ozpin and Leo stand at one side with the relic, but Cinder stands at the other side with two hostages.

As it happens, more and more people start showing up. First, the Manticore suddenly lands behind Cinder, making the whole tower tremble. Right after it, Qrow, Glynda, and Ironwood. Winter protected Weiss in her arms. Everyone arrived for the conclusion, but what they find is another standoff. Ozpin steps forward, Cinder steps back. Qrow grabs the sword on his back, and Ironwood grabs his arm so he doesn't do anything stupid. Glynda's untied hair starts to levitate with purple energy. The Manticore roars menacingly. Qrow saw Ruby half dead on Cinder's grasp, and he started seeing pure red.

"Look at all these familiar faces…" Cinder says. "How long has it been?"

"You should watch what you say, woman… If you make a slip, I promise that your head will be rolling on the floor before you even realize." Ozpin said.

"You really think so?" Cinder replied, squeezing Ruby's neck more and inching the blade closer to Pyrrha. "You know what I want, Mr. Kurtin. Give me the relic… or the girls die. I'm sure you don't want to add them to the list of children who died in your watch… do you?"

The silence between the two sides was so dense that it felt like an eternity. The hatred in everyone's eyes was so powerful. Ironwood was struggling to hold Qrow back. Cinder felt like she needed to entice her proposition more. "Just think about it, Ozpin… The last Silver Eyes that you'll ever see in this world… or that glowing thing that you don't even know what it does. Seems like a win-win for you."

No one else had a single input about it — they didn't have the nerve to take any sides. It was all on Ozpin. In the end he made a decision. He held up the relic, which levitated in the air, and tossed it to Cinder. At the same time, Cinder threw Ruby towards them to free her hand and grab the relic. Qrow moved at super speed to catch Ruby in his arms. There was still silence. Ozpin said, "The other one too."

Cinder looked at Pyrrha and giggled. She picked her up from the ground, holding her by the neck. "Right… I'm sorry, Ozpin, but I promised someone that I would take this one with me. I'm sure you understand the importance of promises."

"… I do… But let me promise you this, then" Ozpin said. He then pointed his finger at her, sparking it up with his purple flames. The purple light made his face look extremely evil and menacing. Veins of pure anger were popping out of his forehead — he was frowning too hard. He said, "I promise you… You're going to pay for this!"

"Aren't we all?" Cinder concludes.

The others could do absolutely nothing, since they didn't want Pyrrha to die. They simply watched as the Manticore bowed down for Cinder to jump on its back. With Pyrrha and the Relic on her grasp, the manticore sets flight… And so Cinder is gone into the night sky. They watch her fly away in complete, dreadful silence. There is nothing else to say, and there are no more tears left to cry. The castle is a mess, the gate was breached, the city was filled with fire and blood… and so to close it all with the lowest note possible… The heavy clouds start to rain over the destroyed city. All the strongest warriors can do is look at each other… and realize how badly they fucked up.

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Before the episode finally ends, we take the perspective of several Huntsmen down on the city. They all look up to see the falling rain. Aslan was watching over Jaune and Corazan. CRDL were patching themselves up next to CFVY. Jobi mired down the destroyed city from a high point, and lowered his head in shame. Team PCFHR was still back at the coliseum, trying to calm down the crowd as they desperately searched for their missing loved ones. Tai was searching for his daughters, but ended up being the first one to find Braun's body and Yang's purple scarf lying around. Oobleck was heavily injured, and he was trying to shake Professor Port awake, but couldn't. Ren and Nora got so wounded that now the orphans had to work together to patch them up.

Our heroes survived… but they lost.

...

Sun was guarding Blake by the rooftop of a house. She's lying next to him, and finally wakes up. Sun's face was sad and miserable, and her's wasn't any better. He comments on how the battle seems to be finally over. At least, that's what the rain usually symbolizes. "I know it's not my type to say this, but… I don't think this could've been any worse." he said. He turned around to look at Blake again, but this time… she completely vanished. Without another word.

"Blake?" Sun says. He keeps looking around for her, as the camera finally, slowly… fades to black.

Commentary (spoilers): Holy… Fucking… Shit this was hard. I can finally, after two years, get this alternate version of events out of my head and into the page. It all culminated in exactly what I wanted. Our heroes are scarred, broken, and above all… separated. I guess with this, The Beacon Saga is completely over. All our four girls are in a state of mind absolutely perfect for the separate character arcs that I want to give each one. And yes, Yang will not lose her arm. Losing a limb would throw her in a different character arc that doesn't fit her role in the story. The consequences of her rage ended up being Braun's death, since I couldn't allow a character to do dumb shit and come out unscathed either. The fact that our heroes lost is the most important aspect of it all. Even to the end of the series, what they lost here will never be brought back; nor the city, nor the simple times of their youth. This was a miserable, absolutely miserable ending for a show that, thus far, was known for butt rock and anime girls beating shit up. So many powerful moments that have been foreshadowed so far; Qrow going absolutely berserk, Ozpin and Leo fighting full power, Grimm becoming smarter, Torchwick's redemption, evil robots, Pyrrha's character arc, the person that was waiting for Blake's return, the whole reveal of Blake in general.

Now I look back… and I almost forgot that this whole volume started with a tournament. A whole tournament section that had its own character arcs within it. The first two thirds of this volume have a tone so abruptly different that it gives you whiplash. It's almost damning and impossible to watch the tournament episodes, now knowing what happens at the end. And don't worry, this is not the end of the volume yet. Like always I love to give one final episode that gives off closure.

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The next episode will follow solely the perspective of Ruby.

She wakes up in her bed, back at Tai's house. Her muscles are stiff and hurt. Qrow was there in the room, but he was sleeping with a bottle in his hands. Once she takes a few seconds to think, the memories come back. Blake, Yang, Weiss… and Pyrrha. The last thing she remembered was the face of that woman, who reminded Ruby of her own mom. The more suffering she remembered, the more her face sank into sadness. Qrow only wakes up once he hears her crying.

With all the kindness and subtlety that he doesn't have, he slowly tries to explain what happened. Ruby has been in a coma for a few days — she was visited by a ton of friends, but she wasn't awake to talk to any. In the meantime, after a lot of "disagreements" with the Council of Vale, Atlas and all its soldiers were forced to remove themselves from the country. Weiss apparently was forced by her father and sister to come along, so she's no longer around. Leo and all the Huntsmen from Haven that survived also returned back home, fearing that their main city would be attacked next. Ruby's classmates all managed to pull through, some better than others.

And as of now… Yang and Blake are still missing. And… he figures she should see the rest for herself.

Ruby dresses up, and sees her broken scythe at the corner of the room. Her leg was still somewhat broken, so she had to walk with a crutch. The forest outside her house was normal, just like it always was. The city got fucked up the most — she glanced at it from atop the hill. It was a slightly-less harrowing sight during the day. People were working left and right to retrieve stuff from the destroyed houses and rubble. The coliseum was gone along the dreadnought that the girls crashed, and they left only destruction underneath. People were crying and suffering left and right.

Qrow guided her around town to see a few friends. Oscar was out there, offering food and water for the people who were working. He apologizes for all that has happened to Ruby, even though it has nothing to do with him. Later she found Glynda, using her Semblance to try and clean the city a bit, but she's clearly tired from overwork. Upon seeing Ruby, she's overcome with a motherly love that we never saw from her, hugging her and expressing relief for her recovery. She also met professor Oobleck, who was nearly crippled, covered in bandages head to toe and stuck to crutches just like her, but still keeping up the good energetic spirit to not worry her.

When she asked about professor Port, or Braun, they remained in dreadful silence… and that was enough for Ruby to understand. She started shaking her head in denial again, and suddenly she ran away despite the painful limp. Qrow, Glynda and Oobleck just stand there in shame. They had failed her in every way imaginable. She's so young, and yet now her life is ruined. They couldn't protect her from ending up just like them. Qrow's gaze was quiet, but his eyes reveal a profund sadness. He closes his eyes and walks away.

...

Ruby ended up in the park, which after being cleaned up from all festival stuff… was turned into a cemetery for the fallen. Hundreds of white crosses, stuck side by side on the ground, and more being made as she stands there. Several peope were silently crying or praying to their lost loved ones. She saw that up the hill there was a special memorial for the Huntsmen who had lost their lives, and decided to go there. Now we see one of my favorite scenes of this volume. A static shot, showing Ruby as a little red hood, in a sea of white crosses. She's silently walking across, looking around in disbelief.

At the end she spotted her father, Tai. He didn't look back at her. His eyes were focused on something else. Once by his side she silently turns to see the thing he's looking at, and her heart skips a beat. Tai sat on the ground with a resentful expression, while Ruby just looks down in blank horror. Eventually she falls to her knees. Finally we reveal what is this thing in front of them…

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Yang Xiaolong

"she, who brought more joy than she ever knew, shall now rest in peace."

Born 514, died 533.

---

Ruby naturally starts crying. Her breathing becomes erratic and she starts shaking, until Tai puts his hand on her shoulder.

"What a joke, right? I kept telling them to not make one for her… but they didn't listen." Tai said. He then stands up, still staring down at the grave in anger. Suddenly he delivers a fast kick that instantly turns the tombstone into pieces and dust. Ruby is in complete shock at what he just did, and so he tells her, "My daughter is not dead, stupid bastards… remember that, Ruby."

Tai gave his younger daughter the little purple scarf that belonged to Yang. Then he walked away, leaving Ruby behind to pick herself up. She calmed down, because she could also feel it in her heart that it wasn't true. The bond between their Auras was strong. Yang was still out there, somewhere — she knew it.

Of course the scene would not end there. She had to look out the few dozen graves of Huntsmen around her. She walked along and read name by name, remembering their faces as she went. They were so strong and cool… how could this happen to them? She didn't get it. Out of the few dozens that died, two names are more striking for Ruby here. Peter Port… and Marrow Braun.

In her memory, she reminded herself of professor Port saying, "Miss Rose, you need to apply yourself! I'm not teaching a fourth-rate warrior, am I?" As well as many other times that she was acting like a clown in his class, and underestimated how useful his teachings were to her. She deeply regrets all the mean things she said now. She also remembers what Braun told her before the finals of the tournament. "You're becoming too strong, Ruby. Maybe you won't need this old man to bail you out of trouble anymore."

As she walks, their spirits begin appearing behind her, standing side by side to watch her pass. She doesn't turn around, she just keeps walking along and crying. Reading Braun's grave was the hardest one. He has been there since her earlier days. Though all she did was irresponsible and dangerous crap back in the day, he would always come to help her escape punishment. He always tried his hardest on Ruby so she wouldn't end up a bad girl like Yang, and it worked. Ruby would never grow up without him there to help her. Now she will never be able to thank him one last time. Ruby barely woke up… but she already felt like crying herself to sleep again.

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There was one last mile to cross — the castle. She had to take the long walk, slowly circling around the mountain path until she reached the plateau. The castle already looked fucked up from outside the gate. But before she could enter… she bumped into Jaune. Just like Glynda, he immediately hugged Ruby, seeing that she was still crying. She apologized for not being able to help Pyrrha as he asked, but Jaune said it didn't matter anymore. Ren and Nora then reveal themselves to her. They explained that everyone else (CRDL and CFVY) were stuck watching the border to make sure the enemies were gone. However, Jaune will now take his team for a different mission.

He looks Ruby in the eyes and promises her that Yang and Blake are okay. He also promises Ruby that the mysterious lady will pay for all of this, and Jaune will bring Pyrrha back. The three were packed up for a long journey, so without wasting time, they said goodbye to Ruby and went on their way.

...

Ruby goes inside the castle, where it seems like Miss Lucy is the only one there — cleaning up and fixing stuff. She tries to pick herself up to be nice, but she's still an emotional wreck from the invasion. It's clear that she'll never be the same again, or at least it will take years before she can overcome yet another trauma. Ruby goes to the dormitories, and finds the corridor destroyed after Pyrrha and Cinder fought nearby. Team RWBY HQ was completely wrecked — bed flipped, prizes and trinkets smashed, and window shattered. All of Weiss's stuff was gone. On the counter by the window, there was a goodbye note, left behind by Weiss. It's rather simple, it reads:

"We did what we could. It was good... but it wasn't enough. Forgive me, and if you can… forget me."

There were a few water droplets on the paper, as if Weiss cried writing this.

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Now she just had to go to Ozpin's office.

It was still completely wrecked, the rooftop was missing and the stairs leading to it were crumbling away. There was nothing left there, but she found him sitting by the edge where the glass wall used to be — looking out into the morning sun. She silently approached him and sat by his side. It mirrors how they first met in volume I. After a long silence, Ozpin began saying:

"Every time… when we receive new candidates that want to become… heroes or legends… The first thing I always tell them is the dangers of this life. That they will get hurt. That no matter their greatness or power, they can't avoid meeting face to face with tragedy… or even their own deaths… And they always take a deep breath, accept it, and move on… But even so… whenever this happens… I can't help but feel like… it is still my fault." Ozpin finished.

Ruby just kept quietly sitting beside him, just listening to his words. She didn't try to comfort him, or argue back, or blame him. At that moment, out of confusion and sadness, there was only one question that she wanted to be answered. "Professor Ozpin… please, be honest with me…" Ruby said.

"Of course…" he replied.

"Who was that… Who was that woman?"

…

"Her name is… Cinder Fall, Ruby… and she…

She was the one… who killed your mother." Ozpin finished.

Cut to black. No music, no other lines, and no aftermath. Just credits, and no post credit scene.

With a miserable end, with uncertainty, and with a big, bombastic reveal… volume IV ends.

Commentary (spoilers): So… Ozpin is alive, Pyrrha is alive, Yang still has her arm, and most of the new characters that I made up are either dead or gone. Maidens are no longer a plot point, and there are many new things to explore. Many sub bosses that I need to take down before we arrive at our main villain. Whatever similarity that I had with the original will be promptly tossed out the window now. We're officially threading new territory, except for Blake. Her plotline can remain the same for a while more. Now we're at the heart of defeat, so naturally the next volume will be all about picking the pieces back together. This volume was just too much on all fronts. In the original, the third volume was the most popular of the whole series. It was a volume great enough to continue the popularity wave for SIX more seasons after the main creator had died. If RWBY, being the normie piece of shit that it is, manages to get SIX more season, I'm more than confident that a better, more consistently written, more action packed version of RWBY would last upwards to TWENTY more seasons; at least if you use the same scummy employment methods as Rooster Teeth I guess. But don't worry, I've made up my mind and we're clocking it at ten. We have officially six more volumes to go, one of them being kind of filler mind you, and three of them lasting a god damn eternity to get through. It all ends on Volume X. The series can be divided essentially as Beacon Saga, Fall Saga, and War Saga (name pending).

All the decisions I made for the first three volumes were changed or created all with the idea of making the final act of this volume make sense and be more impactful. I'm very proud of everything I've built. With essentially all past threads cleared, I can move up the story with completely new ones. I hope that you'll be there, wherever it is that I post the next volume. Thank you for reading so far. And I'll let you know… that we haven't even arrived at my favorite written volume of RE:colored yet.

Bye bye.