RWBY REcolored

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.

13. Volume IX (The Soldier's Dreams, pt 1)

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VOLUME IX (part 1)

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Okay, this volume finds itself in a critical state. It's right after the one I personally like the most, and right before the finale of the whole series. The amount of plotlines left to fill in are minimal, and so are the number of characters who I have not explored and developed so far. What I'm saying is: This is first draft territory, and a lot of this volume is subject to change or be improved in some other time. Only the things that link to the next volume will stay the same as far as I care. The story will now focus on the nation of Atlas during the events of the last volume, leaving all the Vale characters in the side plot. This volume might lack a clear real-time progression, but it makes up for it with good individual stories that happen outside of the main conflict, and several long-time coming revelations about character backstories. Let's begin.

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Completely disregarding the climatic cliffhanger at the end of the last volume, we open on a noisy snowstorm. The screen is almost fully white, with heavy wind and snow constantly falling down. Eventually we see a team of five people tracking through, all wearing snow cloaks that hide their identities.

Suddenly, the one leading them raises their hand, and they all stop. They all remained silent, when suddenly the action began. Several huge bodies start burrowing out of the dense snow violently, scaring the five wanderers. It was a pack of Buffalo Grimm, and they all appear to be quite old and powerful. This first fight here is just a basic reintroduction to team PCFHR, to remind us of their skills and showcase their new redesigns.

For now they will all be wearing the same type of blue and white uniform, but with their characteristic differences still noticeable — for example, Ciel still wearing her blue beret and skirt (even with pants), Harriet having a bottom-heavy gear to emphasize the strength of her legs, Fiona having her obvious Faunus traits, Penny having green and black colors to showcase her utter difference to the others, and Robin will still have her bright red undershirt to continue the theme of the red colors on Atlas characters, signifying their desire to rebel. Since this is a fight scene, I'll also mention their powers and abilities in case you forgot. Ciel can create powerful sound blasts with her Semblance, and has a super strong pistol that is strapped to her forearm like a gauntlet, but mainly fights by tossing explosives and other types of grenades. Harriet is a complete muay thai fighter with the Semblance power to generate speed energy through movement, and her weapon are steel clackers that she infuses with said speed energy to toss at enemies. Fiona has the power to, quite literally, remove any soulless object from the battle with her Semblance by touching it, and her weapon is just a chainsaw. Robin has the Semblance power of perfect enhanced vision, and her weapon is a crossbow with a feathered-like shield that also serves as a blade. And lastly, Penny fights mainly with her super strength, ability to fly, firing blasts of pure white energy out of her hands, and once in a blue moon she pulls out her flying sword to cut foes.

With their combined work, they easily take down the pack and watch them melt into the snowstorm. Robin guesses that this might be one of the last packs lurking around the mountain range, and after one final roundup they should be able to go home. However, the snowstorm has gotten so bad that it will kill them if they don't get sheltered soon. They need to find a suitable place.

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Now we cut to somewhere else in Atlas. We follow Ironwood and Winter as they walk aggressively down a corridor. Ironwood now sports his original volume 8 design with the full beard, and personally I would give Winter her version from Rwby Ice Queendom, now looking more mature than ever. The place they are walking through is really fancy, with armed guards watching them rush by while looking worried. Soon they reach the final door, and barge right in. They find themselves in a big open hall, like a courtroom of sorts. This was the great city hall of Atlas City, where all the council members were having a meeting. The people who rule the entire nation are simply the ones with the most riches available, who can buy their way into that position. It's a little over a dozen people, but the three most important people that we focus on are Jacques Schnee, a random old scientist woman with glasses and a cigarette, and finally the man who sits above all of them in a special chair, serving as the head of the council. His voice is deep and menacing — the camera focuses specifically on making him look bigger and taller than ironwood at every given frame, without ever showing what he actually looks like. We can only identify that he is incredibly old by how wrinkled and thin his hand is. This is The Leader, who is simply referred to as "your honor".

They note how Ironwood is late for the meeting, since he's also a council member. However, Ironwood had no time for other stuff, because he came to warn about something big that was going on. Ozpin just sent an emergency alert, warning about the war against the Dark Fang that had just begun. It seems all of Haven and half of Vale were already under their control — not to mention the fact that they are controlling Grimm to their advantage. Ironwood explains all of that in just a minute, and so they are all left in silence. Ironwood requests that they go help them.

And well, their answers were… curious.

The first one to speak was the transportation tycoon. He only cared to know if something had happened to one of his trains. The weapons tycoon saw this as a good opportunity to sell their weapons to Vale, but he ended up bickering with the housing tycoon, who wanted to wait out the war so he could buy and sell more cheap land after everything was destroyed. Jacques was weirdly quiet. Hearing their shit, the old scientist lady just pinches her forehead in frustration. To put it simply, all they wanted to discuss was how it would benefit Atlas and themselves in particular, without actually caring about Vale. The one most shook up by the news was The Leader, and the only reason why is because he hated the very thought of having to deal with Faunus people as an actual threat, instead of just a minor inconvenience. The ultimate consensus was that it wasn't their problem, and they can win a lot by not doing anything. Ironwood is silently upset, and argues this could be their chance for making up for what happened at the Vytal Festival. They literally have a disposable army of metal that they could throw in to support Vale. Maybe having their favor would allow them to expand their territory to the sea, and even claim some farmlands that Atlas so desperately needs. No one was buying it, and even accused Ironwood of having gone too soft for the other nations since becoming general. It's made very clear here that, despite being THE general, that only makes Ironwood some sort of military advisor to the council, and can't take action by his own accord. Before the discussion concludes, we cut back to the girls.

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They manage to find one lone pine tree standing in the snow storm, and use portable tools from Ciel's bag to craft a solid tent for them. It's spacious enough for them to sit around in a circle and light up a fire. They are all shivering to near death, and Penny makes sure to hug all of them since the Dust reactor on her chest always keeps her body at warm temperatures. With nothing else to do, they decide to eat their last rations and chitchat. Fiona can literally carry a month's worth of supplies inside her pocket dimension, so storage is never a problem. At first they just exposition about their mission here — despite the absurd blizzard, they were sent to scout around the mountains simply because the elite of Atlas City have a demand for one team to make a monthly clean up for Grimm, even if there's no chance they will ever be able to approach the city through the mountains, or even want to. They were almost dying just to fill a stupid quota.

It's at this moment, without any eyes on them and with communications cut out, Robin decides to vent her frustrations, and reveal some things that she was always afraid to say. As a child, Robin wanted to become a soldier so she could help the people of Mantle in any way she could. But now, as an Ace-Ops member, she only became a bigger pawn of those who stand at the top. Her home city continues to become even more poor, sick and gloomy, while she's here doing nothing to help those who need it. She even confides in the others about her dream to one day rebel against the council, knowing that those rich assholes in power are the real reason that Atlas as a nation continues to suffer. Given the last scene, we know she's spot on. Two years ago, when she went to Vale for the first time, she saw the new, bright and healthy society that lived in that nation, which completely contrasted to everything she knew back home. Her dream was to see Mantle as a place as colorful as Vale City, and she was willing to do whatever it takes to make that change possible.

In the heat of the moment, she asks the others what kind of dreams they have. She says, "Come on, I know you all didn't want to be soldiers in the first place. What do you want to do once they finally let us go? Ciel?"

"I find it extremely unlikely that our superiors will abide by a discharge request." Ciel replied with her monotone voice. "Even if it does come to pass, I will then become another rogue element, and they will promptly crush me at the first sign of weakness… Just like they did with Major Lieutenant Nikos…"

Robin frowns as she thinks about him, but then smiles again, "Don't be like that! C'mon, Cee, you're a genius! I'm sure any day now they are going to realize that, and they are going to put you in a better place for you to work!"

Ciel coils herself and rests her face on her knees, dodging her eyes to the side. "Do you suggest that… perhaps I could find a place in the R laboratory?… My parents worked there once upon a time, and they wanted me to do the same, but… you know… I wonder what kind of thing hides in there… What all that technology is able to create…"

"I'm sure one day you'll get there. Haha~ you may even go straight to being a researcher!" Robin said, making Ciel blush as she shakes her by the shoulder. Then she looked to the side towards Harriet, "and what about, Hare? What's your dream?"

Harriet doesn't even look at her, and continues munching on her dry fish sticks. "Dream? Who cares about that dumb stuff! I'm no sissy — I don't plan on quitting the army anytime soon, ya hear?!… But… Maybe… Maybe one day I could finally get up there…"

"Oh Hare, I'm sure one day you'll grow to 5'7'' eventually!" Penny interrupted with a smile, making Harriet almost choke.

"PENNY, YOU BETTER WATCH YOUR TRAP!" Harriet shouted. "What I meant to say was… I really… ugh — I WISH I COULD BE LIKE MISS WINTER! THERE, happy now?!"

"Really? How so?" Robin asked.

"Being in charge, y'know! Being everyone's boss! She's right on that sweet spot where she's not as busy as Mr. Ironwood, but still high enough so then everyone has to do what she says! One day I wanna get up there too — being above all those pen-pushing pricks whether they like it or not, like that hag Cordovin, or that fatass Rumpty! Everyone is gonna start being afraid of making me mad, and that's gonna be so fun! They are going to regret every moment that they gave us the short end of the stick, I promise you!… I'll even have my own special squad underneath me. I'll be the one putting new cadets through the grinder. Can you imagine me as an awesome leader?!" Harriet finished.

"Wow! That would be a nightmare!" Penny said, making Harriet immediately lunge at her in anger and start strangling, but Penny just keeps smiling since she doesn't need air. "YOU LITTLE-! UGH! I SWEAR, NEXT TIME YOU SLEEP, YOU'RE GOING TO WAKE UP WITH ALL YOUR NUTS AND BOLTS MISSING, YA HEAR?!"

The others just utterly ignore Penny getting pummeled by Harriet, since it's pretty much routine at this point. Next Robin darts her eyes to Fiona, which makes her jump a little. "And what about you, Fio? What's in your cards after we're set and done?"

"W-well I-I don't know. I never thought about it. I don't t-think I w-wanna leave — I-I m-mean, y-you don't want me to quit, right? D-did I d-do s-something wrong?! I didn't m-mean to upset you! I'm sorry–" Fiona was saying, getting really panicky as she went, but then Robin just pinched her lips together.

"Enough! It's nothing like that, we're just chatting, okay?! I was just curious… I mean, you got to have something you wanna do besides this, right?" Robin asked again.

"Well… I don't really mind it much, but… I think your dream is really pretty! I w-wanna help you make Mantle a better place too- Ahh! I mean, only if you're willing to… have me by your side, that is. I promise I won't be a bother!" Fiona said.

Robin nervously looked away, giving off a half smile. She always gets like this whenever Fiona gets clingy, even back in volume IV. This sentiment of adoration that Fiona has for Robin still embarrasses her, and she has never addressed it. She pats Fiona on the shoulder and says, "Yeah? I guess. Why not?"

And well, there was one last teammate to talk about. Penny is just sitting there with a smile, as she often does. Once Robin questions about what she would like to do in the future, Penny just lists a bunch of stuff out of the top of her head, mostly about childish desires to go places, visit the homes of distant friends and eat certain foods. Penny had no greater idea to her existence, other than pursuing things that charm her in the moment. But then… she started thinking about it.

"A dream?… I think I had one, once… Not too long ago, actually… It was really nice." Penny said.

The others look among themselves in confusion. Ciel then says, "Penny… I am not implying that this is a fabrication of yours, but… you're an android. You don't have a brain, or instincts, so it's almost impossible that you would truly experience such a thing. It wouldn't make sense for your creator to program you with the ability to dream."

"But it's true! I even remember how it went! I had just clocked in for a safe recharge during the morning, and then suddenly… it started appearing… It was like I had entered a photo inside my mind… I looked at my hands, and they were so small… There was a tall man with bright blue hair in the room with me, always talking and talking, but with words that I couldn't figure out… I can't take my mind off him. I don't know who he is, but just thinking about him makes me smile… I think… I think that was… my father… But, if it isn't a dream, then… is it a childhood memory?" Penny asks.

"That makes even less sense! You were never a child, Penny. How come you have childhood memories?" Harriet said. "Besides, not to be bummer, but professor Polendina went missing before you first woke up, so there's no way you could've-"

"HARRIET!" Robin shouted, making Harriet hold her tongue. Penny was clearly getting sad from hearing that. "There's no point trying to make sense of Penny. Her whole existence is nothing short of a miracle, so having memories of her childhood is the least mysterious part about her… No one has seen the professor in a long time, but that doesn't mean he's dead. For all we know he could be out there."

"I hope so too… I really… REALLY want to meet him one day." Penny said.

"I'm sure you will, Penny…" Robin said. "I promise you girls… All our dreams are going to come true one day… We are going to be free… I'll make sure of it."

The girl silently sat still, looking into the fire as they began to close their eyes and rest. The camera pans out of the tent, and fades off into the pure white snow storm outside.

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Okay, now that we have a deeper understanding of our main protagonists for this volume, it's time to kick right into the plot.

Suddenly we cut to the top view of a very tight and square city. We recognize it to be Argus, where we spent quite a lot of time back in volume VI. Robot guards stand at every street corner, stationed in the thick snow as cars pass by the roads. We see just a few short scenes just to reestablish a few characters. Cordovin and her two giant guards are doing a checkup on the main military base of the city, and she monologues about how a great majority of the leg work of the entire army was replaced by androids during the last few months. The mass production was all due to fear that Argus would be attacked by a Grimm legion like Vale was. Ironwood's report after the battle revealed that the culprit was a woman who controlled fire, who wanted to obtain a magical relic hidden within the nation. Cordovin might be high up in the command chain, but she has never heard of Atlas having something like that, and theorizes that their own relic must be hidden somewhere in the safest place of Atlas City.

And lastly, we see the home of the Cotta family, who seemingly got a way better house in the suburbs of the city during the last year. Adrian, now six years old, is watching the snowfall through the window while Saphron is cooking in the kitchen. Eventually Terra parks in front of the garage and enters the house with a bunch of paper bags with groceries. After some chit chat, she reveals that something big was going on with the rest of the world, as suddenly the communications tower received tons of messages warning of some sort of crisis. Yet again the military took over and wanted to keep everything under wraps, but Terra is pretty sure that some sort of war broke out in Vale. And while the two were discussing what it could mean… Adrian saw something in the window.

There was a lanky man walking down the street, all fancied up with a hat and a snow cloak. He looked back at Adrian for just a moment, and he felt something off about this man. He has seen his face on the news once, but couldn't remember when or why.

And so, we continue following the lanky gentleman in the snow. He just keeps walking until he finds two android soldiers stationed at the street, and walks over to them. They warn the man with their robotic voice about the curfew that starts in under an hour, and that he should hurry home to avoid complications with the law. In response, the man said:

"Eleven thirty – twenty fifteen – A.W. – sixty six." he said.

The robots menacingly stopped, and suddenly a red blinking light appeared on the corner of their face monitor. Something changed on their programming, and so the man said, "Report to database."

The robot pressed a button on its forearm, which seemed to have established communications with all other units available in the entire city. A call between over one thousand robots. And so, the android repeated the same code the man just spoke, and the same red blinking light appeared on every single android in Argus. Finally the man pulls out the hood that obscured his face, and we're met once again with Arthur Watts. The man who made the androids. He finishes, "All units, assemble."

Suddenly, all robots within the city immediately dropped all their tasks and started walking towards Watts' location, and so he walked on the streets as a legion of robots slowly formed behind him. The people watch in distress from their homes, and we see that his main goal was the communications tower of Argus, which is heavily protected by its own small military base. Watts simply orders robots to restrain the few human soldiers who were caught off guard, and here we can see again how terrifying they can be. Perfect aim, instant decision making, and a complete lack of self that makes them vicious when fulfilling combat orders. It was a big battle that eventually caught the attention of Cordovin and her boys. They tried to order the android soldiers, but they seemed to have been made incapable of listening to anyone except Watts. With none of the Ace-Ops picking up the phone for some reason, Cordovin would have to act herself. And so she got into a big mecha and rushed after Watts with her two bodyguards, who were actually twin Huntsmen brothers this whole time.

Not to shit on Cordovin for once, the three actually manage to get through Watt's little android army and finally spot him. Watts is still just a pathetic middle-age man, so he just runs and hides while yelling at his robots to fight for him. They prove worthless against Cordovin's mecha, but soon the final backup arrives. Just when Cordo had Watts in her grasp, a figure suddenly appears from the side. It was a red blur, and it easily sliced off the huge arm of the mecha suit, freeing Watts. Cordovin looked to the side and saw a warrior with long black hair. She turns back, and we see her bloody red eyes and apathetic face.

Raven was back, and she wasn't alone.

Just then, Cordovin gets a signal on her tracker and realizes more people are surrounding her. One of them jumped to attack, and he impaled through her mecha with a giant blade that extended from his hand like a switchblade. It was Shay, and he was smiling wildly. His switchblade struck perfectly at the energy core of the mecha, and it was about to blow. Cordovin was able to pull the failsafe button and eject herself out before it blew up. At the same time, her twin bodyguards got destroyed by other warriors in red and black. The entire motherfucking Branwen tribe was in Argus, but why?!

With those three subdued, Shay walked over to Watts and freed him from the mecha's grip. "All set and done, mister boss man. It took a little while, but every single Huntsmen in Argus has been taken care of. We're all good to go."

"Perfect. Astounding work for such a short notice." Watts replied. Then he realized that the scary lady was slowly walking towards him with sword in hand, and so he stepped behind Shay. Raven says, "you better remember your part of the deal, old fart… Don't make me repeat myself."

"Of course- of course! There's just one final step now." Watts replied, making his way to the communication tower. Cordovin had a little card hidden in her pocket, so Watts quickly took it before entering. Once inside he went to the management section, and unlocked the main computer with Cordovin's card. That was the communication's channel made specifically for the Atlas army. It can link to all their ships, all their vehicles, all their bases, and most importantly… All androids within the entire nation.

"Eleven thirty – twenty fifteen – A.W. - sixty six." he said. And so, all at once, every single android in all the three cities, across the roads, in the bases, high up in the walls, driving trucks and even on the trains — all of them were put in the state of absolute control, which alarmed those around them. Watts then finally said, "Begin operation: Hard Pill."

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And so, to summarize, the robots took over. The androids outmatched the human army five to one, and caught them with their pants down. All soldiers were surrendered and shackled, while those who put up a fight were shot down by the androids. Atlas was a relatively small nation, with not more than twenty Ace-Ops working for the nation as a whole. These warriors were simply attacked from all sides by the robots, some even driving mechas and ships to fight them. Quick battles erupted all over the three cities, all of them separated. Ultimately the warriors were all restrained instead of killed, for some reason we will get down to later. Now that they are in their territory, the androids can pull up heavier and more destructive guns that we never saw before. People from all three cities saw the battles take place in front of them, and all the robots said the same thing, "Do not resist. This is a government matter. Please walk along." More and more robots were saying those same words all over the three cities, which made everyone realize that something deeply wrong was happening. Robots with guns were simply swarming the streets.

And so we finally return to Ironwood and the council meeting. Ironwood and Winter's scroll phone started popping off like crazy, and before they could even finish reading about the androids, a series of mechas and ships started surrounding the great city hall they were inside. Suddenly they began bursting through the walls in an attempt to capture and/or kill the general. The two strongest soldiers of Atlas fight, and manage to destroy quite a few of them. However, there was an army forming around the building, and slowly entering the place from all sides. Soon Dust Bullets start to fly off around them, forcing them to hide. It was a horrible situation to be in, and most importantly they had to protect the council members. Thankfully there was a secret passage for emergencies, but they wouldn't be able to escape if someone didn't cover their exit. And so, Winter decided to stay behind.

Naturally, Jacques was there and tried to stop his daughter from sacrificing herself. But in response, Winter gives him a cold stare and tells him, "I'm a soldier, father. You're not the one who decides how I live or how I die anymore… And besides, don't you dare think so little of me. I won't be defeated so easily ever again."

Ironwood tries to talk her out of it too, but she has the duty to make sure the general is safe as well. Winter believes that, whatever the hell happened to the robots, Ironwood's genius will help them solve this problem better than her. Before they could argue more, Winter jumps out through the rooftop and immediately engages the small army outside. She instantly starts slicing shit apart using her sword, with perfect precision. It's a pretty energetic sequence to start the crisis with an amazing fight sequence. The androids start shooting her, so Winter activates her Semblance, making all the guns freeze solid completely once they are fired. Just to recap her magic power, Winter's Semblance allows her to reverse temperatures in a small area around her, creating an ice domain in the process. While she fights, Ironwood takes all the scared rich assholes down an elevator that leads to a tunnel.

The battle keeps going for an awful while. Winter was able to take out a hundred robots before she ran out of steam to abuse her Semblance, and had to dodge all their weaponry. Soon she had to evade flying ships that were tossing big capture nets that release electrical discharges on touch. Naturally it would be impossible for her to escape now, so soon enough Winter gets trapped. She was surrounded, and the robots were preparing to carry out her execution.

However, someone arrived in the nick of time. Just when Ironwood arrived at the other end of the tunnel, he noticed someone was missing.

"I SAY HAULT!" shouted a man who was slowly walking towards the mass of robots surrounding Winter. It was Jacques. The androids point weapons at him, but then he says, "Listen to me, you pieces of junk! Tell your master… that I accept his deal. I will comply. But he has to spare my daughter, and keep the rest of my family out of it. THOSE ARE MY TERMS!"

"Dad… what are you-!" Winter was saying.

"SILENCE!" Jacques shouted. "This is no place for a Schnee to die. Hate me for all I care, I'm still your father. As long as I have power, I won't allow any of my kids to die in such a pathetic way. I'll do anything to make sure our family will come out on top, even if it means serving Arthur Watts!"

"Watts? WATTS IS BEHIND ALL OF THIS?! FATHER! WHAT IS HE PLANNING?!"

"That's enough, Jack." says the robot. His face monitor turned yellow, and the voice was from Watts, speaking through it. "I see you've come to your senses. Sure, it's a bit late for a reply, but a deal is a deal. However, I can't afford to have Ms. Winter wandering around. She will remain locked in the Argus max security prison for now."

"Tch- fine! But don't you dare cross me, professor! I want to see her once a day to make sure she'll be alive. I'll blow this entire nation sky high if you try to mess with me!" Jacques says. Winter starts being dragged away with energy shackles on her wrists, legs and arms. She is still shouting questions, but the other two completely ignore her. Jacques is scouted out of there, as now the androids also obey his orders.

Finally we cut back to Watts in Argus, still looking at the blue screen of the communication's tower. He can see several battles happening all over the three cities, and Winter's was the very last one to conclude. All the council members are in hiding. The army has been surrendered. All the warriors were captured. The people are afraid, and yet the whole matter happened so fast and so effectively that no one can do anything except move on with their day, and hope nothing bad happens tomorrow. Watts won completely, taking over the nation of Atlas solely with his own creations.

"Woah… that was a piece of cake! I didn't expect Atlas to be this weak." Shay said.

"If you had been planning for this moment as long as I did, anything would be easy." Watts replied. "Thankfully now we might have a chance of prevailing over the rest of the world. The real battle has only begun, and to survive… Vale and Haven must be wiped out from the map, as it always should be."

"You really think a bunch of robots can beat all the warriors from Vale and Haven together? It might take years for you to win a war like this." Shay said.

Watts looks back menacingly. "Who said anything about war?… If all goes according to plan, I'll be able to turn their kingdoms into dust all in a single day… There's a lot of work to be done. First things first, I must travel to Atlas City… There's something I must do. It's time I use our great treasures to their full use." He says, and so it cuts to black.

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Two weeks have passed, and so we're back to the current timeline. The battle against the Dark Fang had ended with the dispersion of the Grimm legion, and the death of Adam Taurus. While all this was happening, team PCFHR was stuck fighting powerful Grimm in a snowstorm, moving slowly day by day in an attempt to stay alive in harsh conditions. Finally they see the city of Mantle up ahead. Its wall is connected to the sides of the mountain range, and is big enough to block the view from outside. The girls feebly walk close to the tracks. Eventually they spot a train coming towards the city, so they jump on top to borrow a ride.

They are all incredibly tired, so Robin comes up with the idea to sneak inside through the train station and go have some fun in the city while their superiors believe they haven't arrived yet. Communications got screwed up in the snowstorm anyways, so as long as they keep their scrolls turned off, no one will know. They go ahead with the little plan, eventually arriving at the train station, and noticing the clear increase of androids soldiers everywhere. Not only that, but they were all holding guns and keeping watch everywhere. They kept sneaking through the alleyways and rooftops, seeing the same scene again and again. People were clearly disturbed by the robots as well.

The girls eventually arrive at the small restaurant pub in downtown Mantle — the exact same location Maria and Weiss went to all the time back in volume V. Robin goes to question the bar lady about the androids, but doesn't get any clear information, except that they just showed up one day while all the human soldiers disappeared. Finally, the girls decided to turn on their scroll phones and ask the central command about the situation… but that was a mistake.

Once they connected to the Atlas Military communication server, it was like an alarm rang through every android stationed across the city. The last five missing soldiers were finally found. The girls watch as the robots start circling around the pub, making a buzzing sound that scares all the people away from the battle. With the girls having no idea what's to come, the episode ends.

Commentary (spoilers): Without a doubt, the hardest part about writing this volume is learning to love the new main characters. Sure everyone loves Penny, most are going to think Ironwood is the biggest chad in the series, and Winter had a pretty satisfying character arc in volume's III through V. You can't really say the same about the other girls from team PCFHR. They got their own moments in the tournament, but were merely tools to fuel other character's developments and make some worldbuilding on Atlas. Hell, at first the only reason I picked five members for Atlas was so then the tournament bracket would be an even number. They had fights in the two next volumes, but I was usually so bored about them that I skipped right through and focused on the important aspect of the scene. This is not exactly a volume to redeem them, but just to make them into fully-fledged characters like literally everyone else — these are the only ones left to develop in the entire cast. Having a basic understanding of their goals for the future is the first thing about developing a character, and Penny was the only one to have that so far. Since Penny is already ahead of them, her arc in this volume can be something more specific to her as the new main protagonist, so she will focus on uncovering the truth behind her existence, and the mystery behind her father.

Have I mentioned how little I like volume's 7 and 8 from the original? Well, for that reason I'm probably not going to adapt any kind of aspect from their original plot. I even completely remade the entire lore of the nation. In case you skipped volume VII: Atlas was ruled offhandedly by the descendant of the emperors from five hundred years ago, which was Kalius Schnee, who was pretty much a dictator that ruled the nation by force and caused widespread misery due to his policies. Eventually his son, Nikolas, got hooked up with a poor cabaret girl that fixed his spoiled ass, and motivated him to run away, get stronger, and then come back to kill his dad and free all of them. Atlas was now liberated from the clutches of renegade warriors, and so they began a process of unrealistically-fast development thanks to their abundance of resources from the mines. Big corporations were formed, and those rich guys took over the nation through their influence. Personally I don't remember if the full lore of Atlas is ever explored in the original show, but this is my version. As long as you know that, you'll understand some future episodes. Let's continue.

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The next episode picks up precisely where we left off. Suddenly, bullets started flying into the pub's windows, the girls took cover, and so a huge fight ensued. The robots refuse to listen to their orders, and it's a very familiar situation to them, since they were part of the battle in Vale. The girls fight back, but eventually one of the androids issues the mecha units for support, and so the girls decide to escape instead of causing more damage to the city's streets. What follows is a long chase sequence as the girls are attacked by huge car tanks, mechas and ships, but manage to find a way out by abusing their abilities. Harriet could increase the speed of the entire party by holding onto them as she runs away. Ultimately it's thanks to Ciel that they manage to escape, as she uses her Semblance to shout at a very high-pitched and loud frequency, which breaks every single glass window in the block, but also shatters the face monitors of all robots and mechas chasing them — making them go blind. And finally, mirroring the same nasty practices from our other heroes in Planice, the girls find a maintenance sewer entrance, and jump in.

Somehow they are less safe there, despite not being shot anymore. Besides sewer water, the underground of Mantle had huge pipes running through them, used only to expel the dangerous gases from the Dust production of the mines. Those pipes had leaks everywhere, and so the gas kept floating around by their ankles. The girls desperately push forward while holding their breath, but eventually they would start suffocating. Penny didn't need to breathe, so she rushed ahead until she found a little break room with spare gas masks, and managed to return just in time to save the rest of their team.

Now they all gather at the break room, and let Penny and Fiona patch up the wounds they all received. They are so confused, and yet they can't risk turning up their scrolls again and calling Ironwood because the robots will figure out their location again. They needed a safe place to rest and get information that isn't the military base, and to their surprise… Fiona knew a place.

…

The girls followed the pipes up until they arrived inside the mines of Mantle. There were a good hundred people working that day. Heavy machinery digs down in a huge spiral inside the cavern. The workers carry these heavy barrels of raw Dust on their carts, all the way to the refinery that is also inside the mines. The girls were able to grab some uniforms left lying around, so they threw away their Atlas army uniforms in order to blend in — just a bunch of heavy-duty boots, cargo pants and jackets. Once the swarm of people ended their shift, the girls were able to leave the mines.

Once outside, they just had to stay deep in the crowds and not look at any robots. Mantle is not as advanced as Atlas City, so they didn't have to worry about cameras or any of the sorts. Soon they start questioning Fiona about this place she knows, but she's really afraid to say it. It's something she never planned to tell anyone ever since she joined the army, but she trusts that her team won't flip out when they see it. Eventually they take a turn into a dark alleyway between two large buildings. There was a basement door in there, but it was locked. Fiona quickly crouched around the place until she found a secret key, hidden inside a crumpled piece of paper behind the garbage cart. It opened the trapdoor, and so the girls entered the secret basement of the building.

"Fio, what is this place?" Penny asked.

"W-well, it's kind of hard to explain, b-but, u-uh… I'm sort of-" Fiona was saying, but then…

"DON'T MOVE!" said a voice in the dark. The dark hall suddenly lights up, and so they see a small crowd of people up ahead of them. Two or three were pointing guns and broomsticks at them, but for once, they weren't robots. They were people, but not just any people. Big fluffy ears, some with snouts and whiskers, others with tails and patches of fur — all of them were Faunus. They seemed equally relieved to see that team PCFHR weren't robots, and quickly lowered their guns.

Finally, Fiona welcomed them to her old home — the secret Faunus community of Mantle. It's widely known that Faunus get no respect in Atlas because of some stupid quarrel with Haven that happened hundreds of years ago. The few dozen Faunus families that live in Mantle had gathered together and made up this little cult so they could help each other in this racist environment. This here is their secret base, in case the worst happens to some of them, as it was the case to Fiona. Basically, she's a White Fang enthusiast who never met the real White Fang.

The Faunus people recognize her and start to surround her in joy, as she hasn't visited them in many years since joining the army. There were plenty of adults, some old folk, mothers and a few children who all knew and respected her as some kind of hero, though the sheep girl doesn't act the part. Fiona was always so privy about her life, so this comes as big news to all the others — not to mention that a secret society of Faunus was something they never even considered existing. For once the girls were treated to a nice cooked meal as they all made a little feast to celebrate Fiona's return.

…

In the following scene we get two important moments. The first one is about Penny as she starts to interact with everyone in order to make friends with all of them in the background, until eventually she arrives at one of the teenagers in the corner. To put it bluntly, he's just Marrow Amin — loosely around the age of fourteen, wearing basic civilian clothes. Once she approaches him, he immediately becomes aggressive and demands to know what the Atlas army did with Fiona. Penny has no idea what he's talking about, so he explains Fiona's basic backstory.

Fiona was supposed to be the daughter from the Atlas elite, but being mysteriously born a Faunus to fully human parents, they couldn't endure the shame that would bring, and left her in the doorstep of an orphanage at the neighboring city — just to make sure she would never find them again. She grew up being picked on by the other human kids and disrespected by all the adults she came across, until finally she was noticed by their secret society and brought to live in this hidden basement. From there, Fiona became strong and obstinate to pay back the kindness that the other Faunus showed her, and vouched to one day change Mantle and Atlas as a whole — the same dream as Robin. Once her Aura naturally awakened and she was taken by the army, she made a promise to all of them that she would rise the ranks and use her influence to make all the humans pay for mistreating them over the centuries.

But in the following years, Marrow watched as that edgy Fiona disappeared. She became more laid back, calm, and even subservient to her human squad leader. Marrow was absolutely convinced that they had brainwashed her, as she couldn't possibly have given up her dream. Penny didn't know how to respond, because in truth she joined the squad one year after they all got together, so she never got to meet the original Fiona.

And for the second scene, the actual important part.

The Faunus elder tells it all to them. Basically, one day the robots just went fucking crazy, overwhelmed all the officers, threw them all in the prison of Argus, and finally hunted down all the warriors in the kingdom until they were all in shackles. Team PCFHR is quite possibly the only ones who were able to escape the takeover. Nobody has a clue as to who is behind all of this, but whoever is controlling the robots, he surely isn't a fan of the Atlas military… or so you would think. For some reason, the military commander of Mantle is still free, and is giving order to the androids. The only reason they know this is because he set up a warrant to arrest all Faunus residents in all of Mantle, for some reason they don't know, which explains why everyone has locked themselves in here.

Ultimately, despite the crazy scenario the girls just found themselves in, Robin knows it's their duty to try and fix things. Their first order of business is to go have a talk with the commander — a man they all know quite well for his incompetent leadership and downright ugliness. Commander Rumpty.

Fiona drops off all their food and weapon supply from her pocket dimension, and so they start to prepare. The plan is very simple — they just need to not raise any alarms and then capture Rumpty. He's not an awakened warrior, so it should be really damn easy. The girls get dressed in a new set of battle armor that they had in the supply box, so they are back to the default timeskip costume. With one final word of encouragement, the five leave the hideout and immediately go for the rooftops.

They slither across the city with surgical precision and evade all the robots camped on the roads and buildings. However, eventually they are forced to take down some of them in order to pass, which automatically reports that some androids were destroyed to the main base of the city. The commander is immediately notified, and he assumes this must also be team PCFHR, after having gone dark yesterday. He knows they are coming after him, and tells his robots to prepare to capture and/or kill them when they arrive. Finally we get our very first view of the man.

Since I erased OG Pietro from the story and substituted him for Neptune, I guess we can repurpose his design philosophy to a new character. Rumpty is a fat dark-skinned dude with gray hair and glasses, and he is bound to a special vehicle. He has no legs, but walks around by using this uncomfortably big scarab chair, like Urgot from League of Legends. He is a cyborg quite like Ironwood, but mainly looks evil as shit instead of badass. That's all I have to say about him — he's not meant to be an important character in this volume.

…

Finally the girls arrive at the base and start infiltrating. Just imagine a big open space, a few hangars to stash their heavy machinery, and the main office building at the end of it. They try the sneakiest and most methodical approach possible, going through each of the hangars one by one and evading the cameras. They find weapons and a bunch of sleeping androids, but nothing alive to notice them. However, they were already being expected, and the easy going was nothing but a trap. Robin and Harriet went inside while Penny, Ciel and Fiona stood outside, keeping a watch on the building. The true fight began once Robin entered Rumpty's office, only to find the radio playing with no one inside. She tried to investigate, but there was a sensor mine hidden in there — quite a dozen of them actually. They only gave a soundly beep before going off.

"Tch-" Harriet snarled, she immediately jumped in with her super speed and pushed Robin with all her strength, sending her through the window just as the bombs went off. The explosion goes off on the top floor of the building, scaring the girls outside. Robin goes flying out and lands outside as she screams for Harriet, who was caught in the explosion in her place. And so, the loud buzzer started to echo across the base. All the robots who were sleeping inside the hangars instantly woke and walked out into the open. At the same time, a few ships came out of nowhere and covered the girls from the sky. They were completely surrounded.

Finally Rumpty appears with the obnoxious pipe sound that his walking chair makes. He explains that the girls are under arrest for renegating against Atlas and for an attempt to kill the general of the nation, which is now Rumpty. Robin shouts questions at him, but Rumpty just ignores them. He then starts scratching himself and says, "You know what? I really can't stand the sight of four! Always complaining and disregarding the orders I give you! What have I ever done for you to disrespect my authority this much, huh?!"

"May I remind you of that time you forced us to shower in the open while you watched?" Ciel said.

Rumpty choked up as the androids comically turned their heads towards him. "T-T-THAT WAS STRICTLY PART OF YOUR TRAINING! Y-YES, ALL CADETS GO THROUGH THAT ALL THE TIME! I'VE DONE THAT TO EVERY OTHER FEMALE SOLDIER THAT EVER TRAINED UNDER ME, YOU HEAR?! YOU'RE NOT SPECIAL!" He shouted angrily, not helping his case at all. "Argh! No matter! Now that I get to call the shots, I reckon that going to prison is too good for a bunch of ugly girls like you! I only need one of you alive anyway… All of you, get rid of them! But don't destroy the target!"

The robots all start to take aim. Robin looks Rumpty dead in the eyes. "I'll let you know I just wanted a quick talk with you, commander… But now, we're going to have a REALLY long one, once I get my hands on you…" she says, as her eyes start to change by the effect of her Semblance. It prompted Rumpty to scurry behind the bodies of his androids and shout, "WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR?! KILL THEM!"

"Fio, do it." Robin said, and so Fiona stepped forward. She raises her hands as they start glowing green like her Aura, and so a huge box comes flying out of the light from her pocket dimension. The crate bursts open to reveal it's a box full of different explosives and grenades that they stole from one of the hangars. Robin points her crossbow at it, firing an explosive bolt that makes the entire thing go boom. Fragment bombs, incendiary bursts and flash bangs all go out at the same time. The front row of androids gets instantly annihilated, and it creates enough of a mess for the girls to jump out of fire.

They all get in a corner behind the office building and ask Ciel for a battle plan. If they have to take down all these forces as fast as possible, as well as incoming support, they have to kill the communication signal that links the database of all androids, just like they did in volume IV. They can see the huge radio tower at the corner of the huge base, so they just need to get there. Fiona volunteers to do it while Robin and Ciel give her cover fire. As for Penny, she gets to do her flying thing and take out all the ships shooting at them.

That's basically the whole fight scene, as now the girls decide to fight instead of run away. Robin is just sniping away the androids with the bigger guns, and Fiona is going around the android formation to try get to the tower, constantly having to dodge Dust bullets and take cover. Eventually, Harriet would emerge once again from the flames spreading in the top floor, with a bleeding forehead and several bruises, but just pissed enough to keep on fighting. She takes matters in close range, jumping straight into the android formation and simply being too fast for them to shoot. She would get in between the androids and make them shoot each other while also hitting them with her kicks and punches. Rumpty was constantly backing away from the action as the girls started to win against his small army. Eventually Harriet had all the attention to herself, allowing Fiona to arrive at the spot. She pulls out her chainsaw from the pocket dimension and uses it to saw through the four legs of the radio tower, finally pushing it down and making all the energy cables be ripped out of it. The military communication channel in Mantle went down, and with that, so did the robots.

They simply stood idle and ceased their attack, all at once. It was as if the connection problem bugged their system, and they needed to be told again what to do. They all said in unison, "Awaiting orders from the commanding officer."

"What?! You morons, GET THEM! SHOOT THE GIRL!" Rumpty said, but the robots simply didn't understand what he wanted. Rumpty had no idea how to use the technical lingo that the androids speak, but someone else did.

Ciel walked out of hiding, putting her gun away. She put her hand close to her throat, making her blue aura spark up. "Ahem… All available units, enter peace mode and shut down! " Ciel said, using her Semblance "Mixer" to perfectly replicate Rumpty's voice. It's really funny to imagine this old bastard's voice coming out of this petite young girl. The robots all replied in unison, "Voice recognition identified. Entering Peace Mode. Shutting down."

And so, all the robots drop their guns, and kneel down on the floor as their lights turn off. It won them the battle, but it started to give Penny some troubles.

She attracted the flying ships towards the city and kept dodging their fire as she flew. She was able to make two of them crash against the mountain surrounding the city, but there were still two more to go. Then suddenly, the robots driving the ships had their communications cut off, and they stopped piloting. The two ships started to plummet towards the populated city underneath. Penny was able to pull one of them towards a rooftop and make it park there, but the other was falling fast. She blasted underneath it and used all the power of her jet boots to slow down its fall, even allowing herself to be crushed against the road, causing no harm to anyone due to her efforts.

Now Robin, Ciel, Fiona and Harriet gather back again, only to realize that Rumpty went missing. Somehow the son of a bitch was sneaker than they could've possibly guessed with that big ass chair. They shout at him to show himself, knowing he couldn't have gotten far. Unfortunately for them, the battle had just begun. Another buzzer began echoing in the base siren, but this was not a "we're under attack" signal. It was a request to clear the landing site.

…

You see, Atlas can get pretty ridiculous with their showoffs of advanced technology. It all makes sense once you realize they don't have much else to do in these parts of the map except fish on the frozen rivers and work in the mines. As a nation that was eternally preparing for a war, it's only natural that they come up with the best and most bombastic defenses. Once upon a time, one of their previous generals once looked at the brand new mecha suits that were developed, and demanded that they simply made… bigger ones. However, the Atlas Mechas are already wide as a road and big as a house, so an enhanced version of that would be too big for practical use in any situation besides a city-wide battle. And thus, the Three Sleeping Giants of Haven were born. One of them is rising right in front of them.

The floor split in two like a secret hatch, and out started to emerge some kind of tank. It was a bunch of metal pieces all coiled up, still turned off. Only after the robot stopped ascending, it began to awaken. Its limbs started to unwind, and lift the carcass off the ground. It was a gigantic, spider-like mecha with eight legs, made of dark steel — known as the Black Widow. Rumpty was piloting it, and loudly laughed through a speaker as he looked down at the girls, looking like bugs.

"RUMPTY YOU IDIOT! GET OUT OF THERE! THAT THING IS GOING TO DESTROY THE CITY!" Robin shouted.

"HA! I've been meaning to test this thing for the last seven years! It's going to destroy something alright! ALL OF YOU!" Rumpty replied. Machine guns and missile launchers popped out from the body of the spider and shot at the girls, sending them flying apart after the explosion. He tries to shoot them dead, but his aim sucks. After fusillading his own entire base, putting bullet holes and explosions everywhere, he ran out of ammo. He somehow missed every single shot he had. Since he didn't manage to cause any harm to the girls, he had to go with physical attacks. The eight legs of the Black Widow started going after the girls. They were malleable coil legs, acting more as whips and wires. Still, though the giant could tank all their attacks, Rumpty simply couldn't fight back for shit. He cannot comprehend how to properly work the giant, and is just barking orders while pressing random buttons. And in his idiocy, he fucks it up.

He accidentally pressed a button that activated the "automatic war mode".

The system went into auto pilot, and started attacking the girls on its own — with robotic precision no less. Two of its legs were able to grab Fiona and Harriet, and so the giant tossed them around before finally smashing them against the floor. It proceeded to swipe Robin and send her crashing through the main office building. Ciel had disappeared from the battle, but came back just as quickly. She pulled out a dead android from one of the smaller mecha they were fighting against, and started piloting it. She tries to run around and shoot at the spider with all ammunition left, but the mecha was already damaged from the battle, so the Black Widow easily caught it and ripped it apart with Ciel still inside, before finally tossing it back inside the hangar.

The Black Widow didn't see any more foes to fight, so it turned around… and saw the city. The automatic war mode has one simple function — it destroys anything in front of the giant. It only recognizes other androids and soldiers wearing Atlas armor as allies. A good hundred people were just watching the fight inside the base from afar, since there's no police force anymore to keep them away. The giant saw the city as its enemy, and went to attack. The girls walked out of the wreckage, looking beaten and in pain, only to see that the Black Widow began attacking Mantle. Rumpty was just pressing any button he could, but he didn't know how to turn it off anymore — he was useless.

The people saw the spider coming after them, and ran away screaming. All the robots in the streets were still awaiting orders after communications were cut off. Thankfully, thanks to Rumpty sucking ass, the robots didn't have ammo or explosives left to shoot anyone, and it has just too many targets, so it took a while to process its next move. Once it finally decided to start stomping shit, the girls picked up the pace and came to help. Robin swooped in and caught the civilians before they were crushed. The Mantle Giant was so big that it kept causing a lot of damage just by walking on the street and brushing against the sides of the buildings. The girls were absolutely wrecked, but kept attacking the monster to draw its attention and spare the citizens. Their weapons couldn't do anything to seriously damage it, and one by one the girls were knocked down. The battle only took a turn with the arrival of Penny.

She saw the destruction and her wounded party members, and knew she had to act. She had to take down this monster with all she has, and so Penny draws her flying sword from her back. And finally, her very own "Rules Of Nature" moment. One robot girl with a sword versus a massive behemoth of metal. And no, this is not the last of MGS references we will see in this volume.

At first the sword is not fast or strong enough to cut through it, nor are her laser beams hot enough to pierce the defenses. So at last, she pulls up a new trick that she learned over the last year. She holds onto the sword with her hand for once, and notches it to the little holes in her palms that shoot energy blasts. The pure raw energy starts to be transmitted into the sword, making it glow white with strange smoke flowing out. It became a hot blade made of energy, like a hot knife cutting through butter, but Penny could no longer fly around or remove the sword from her hand. She started the process of cutting the eight legs into several tiny pieces, littering the entire neighborhood with them. The Black Widow would climb the buildings to try and chase Penny, but the automatic mode made it too stupid to realize it was losing its limbs, so it eventually fell down without balance. It caused a lot of damage to the entire block. Thankfully everyone was smart enough to get away from the battle, so no one was harmed outside of property damage.

The body of the spider was left as a worthless hunk of metal with Rumpty stuck inside. Team PCFHR all gather around it, just as Penny cuts a hole open for them. Rumpty had the biggest fuck face ever seen, sweating bullets. He was saying, "I-I-I DIDN'T MEAN FOR THAT! IT'S THIS STUPID CONSOLE! IT DOESN'T LISTEN TO A SINGLE THING I-"

Robin walked menacingly towards him as he spoke, and then grabbed him by the neck. She threw a fast gut punch that instantly knocked out the bastard, and so she just pulled him out of the scarab chair, ripping out all the wires linked to him. Rumpty in truth was just a fat old guy that was crippled in battle and rose through the ranks by simply sticking around, and couldn't offer a fight to save his life.

Once they leave and drag the unconscious commander into the street, the people are quick to return to the battle and start crowding around them. They were some of the most famous Ace-Ops all because of their participation in the Vytal tournament, and a good portion of them seemed to know Robin personally. The people were afraid and uncertain — they weren't given answers about anything in the last two weeks. And so, with the other girls absolutely tired, Robin handed the body of Rumpty to Harriet and stepped up.

"Listen everyone… Our nation is under attack. Someone has used the androids to take control of the city, and the army has failed to stop them… I'm sorry you have to be told about it this way… Whenever you would come to us for help, we would always say that we would try to fix it. As you know, most times it was just… a lie. Your cries for help always end up lost in piles of bureaucracy, only to be forgotten… And now, I can't even promise you so little as that. Me and my squad are going to do everything we can, but if we aren't enough to win… it will be your turn to fight as well." Robin said. Some people were recoiling and whispering to each other, but she continued:

"It's clear to me that the powerful people in this nation have never looked your way, or even plan to. You cannot rely on them to help or guide you anymore. It will be up to all of you to free yourselves from whoever is threatening you, with your own hands… Trust me, I know a lot about you. About your spirit… If we weren't so busy scrounging around for food or money, the people of this city would be strong enough to shake the mountains!... You are all stronger than you realize… You can't allow your fears to tell you what to do, because we've been doing it for a long time now, and it didn't help us with anything!… If push comes to shove, I trust that Mantle will have the strength to fight back. We can't allow ourselves to be at the mercy of people like this idiot any longer!…Everyone, listen carefully. Whatever happens next, even if my team fails, I know that YOU will be able to win… as long as you do it together… Farewell."

Robin jumps away to a building's rooftop, as the other four follow her. The crowd is left utterly speechless, as well as the people watching from the buildings and the windows. There's that very special vibe that they are all doomed, but at the same time, they can still do something to stop it. With that, it fades to black, probably ending the second episode.

Commentary (spoilers): You know, the whole concept of Atlas is pretty bonkers, and that's all because I'm terrible with keeping dates and timespans. It's not like it's my focus anyway. Technically Atlas only started going high tech after Nikolas killed his evil dad, so in the span of 40 years they went from steam trains and lightbulbs, to flying jets and androids. You really have to eat up the idea that all of this was built in ridiculously small amounts of time. The military sucks up most of the money of the nation, and that explains all the bullshit weaponry they have, including the three sleeping giants. In the end, I just wanted a futuristic setting to complement the already absurd world of Rwby. I didn't think ahead of the implications, and ultimately you have an unrealistic setting. I don't know if the worldbuilding is this bad in the original, since I didn't watch all of volume 7 and 8. To make this less ridiculous, I might throw in a plot device to make their fast development more logical, like using their relic.

This whole episode was pure action. Last volume we couldn't give two steps without character development happening in some way, and this volume is gonna be the opposite. Also I hope you didn't care for Rumpty — he will be the only new addition to this volume. His fairytale of inspiration is obviously Rumpty Dumpty, to follow the same line as Cordovin's naming convention. He's simply an old creep that did not learn how to use technology, and serves more as a joke than an enemy. I won't need a gallore of OCs to fill the enemy ranks like I needed with the Dark Fang, and instead I chose to make them fight characterless giant robots that are only memorable due to their cool design. Let's continue.

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With that, the third episode picks right back up.

Rumpty wakes up, strapped to a chair, with a single light hanging over him. He calls out for the girls, until eventually two of them step up. Fiona walks in with her sweetest smile, followed by Harriet with the same creepy expression. Fiona was carrying a heavy duffel bag of stuff. "Hello commander~ How was your nap? Did you sleep well?"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! WHERE AM I?!" Rumpty shouts.

"Oh, don't worry about that~! We just want to have a little talk, you see?" Fiona said. She put the bag down on a table, and pulled out two dirty, rusted aprons from the inside — one for her, and the other for Harriet. "We've kinda been out of the loop for the past day, you know. Some guy put us to work while freezing in the mountains, and we couldn't contact anyone since. You remember that, don't you? Oh~I'm just being silly — of course you do! You're the one who gave us the mission, after all… I bet you didn't expect us to come back, huh? Hehehe~"

Fiona was continuously pulling out stuff from the bag, and slamming them into the table louder each time. It was nothing but a long list of torture devices, with rusty spikes and blades. She continued, "So, would you be a darling and tell us what happened in the last week?"

"I'M NOT TELLING YOU ANYTHING! WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?! YOU THINK YOU CAN KIDNAP THE GENERAL AND GET AWAY WITH IT?!"

"Aw~ somehow I knew you would say that. What a bummer. Well, I tried. I'll leave you and Harriet to it. In a few minutes I'll try again, okay?" Fiona said, stepping away from the light. Now Harriet steps in, still with a creepy smile of joy. She weaves her hands over the several torture devices, carefully judging which would be best… until she decides on the hair trimmer.

She walks in front of him and says, "Rumpty, Rumpty, old buddy, old pal… this is like a dream come true to me, not gonna lie… Say, what was that thing you would always call me? Somehow it just slipped my mind… Can't you remember?"

"No… Y-y-you w-wouldn't dare!" Rumpty said, looking straight at the thing on her hand.

"Oh yeah, that's right… You called me… Chickenhead … didn't you?" A scary vein sprung on Harriet's forehead. She turns on the hair trimmer. "Well… how about we figure out a nickname for you too?"

"no… No!… NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO-" Rumpty screams echo, and so it cuts to black.

…

The other girls were just patching each other up in the next room. They were back at the secret bunker with all the other Faunus, and have barely recovered since the battle yesterday. Robin was just thinking to herself, while Ciel was doing some stuff with the laptop from her purse. She disabled its ability to transmit a signal but managed to make it keep its ability to sense other ones, and believes this will be useful to detect the androids in case they are attacked again. As for Penny, she was sleeping in the corner while Marrow poked her with a stick. She used so much energy on her sword technique that she needed to shut down temporarily to go back at full capacity. After hearing Rumpty squirm and cry in the other room for a few minutes, Harriet and Fiona walk out. "He folded."

"What? Already?! Geez Hare, what the hell did you do to him?" Robin asked.

"Not nearly as much as I would like to. Come on!" Harriet replied. She then went to the corner and kicked Penny awake, making her open her tired eyes with a yawn. Penny is gonna remain on low energy for the entire next episode, which affects her voice. Ciel had just finished the modifications on her laptop. It now displays a black screen with several red dots surrounding the center. Those were signals from android units across the city. Still, she can't help but notice that there's a signal in the same building they are on. It could be a robot in one of the floors, so she decides to ignore it for now and follow the others.

The girls enter into the dark room and turn on all the lights, revealing the legless fatso with his hands tied behind his back. Harriet had cut his hair and beard into a completely stupid style that defies logic on how funny it looks. For a visual basis, think of the bald bang cut. He was already crying by the time they arrived. "WHY?! What more can you possibly do to me?! Please, no more, I beg you!"

"You have five minutes to explain everything, unless you want her to start taking pictures." Robin said.

And so, Rumpty explains everything.

I'll just summarize it. He explains that Arthur Watts was the one responsible for the android takeover. He didn't use a virus like he did in Vale, but rather just activated a secret programming that he made himself while the android systems were being developed. All the human soldiers were thrown in jail at Argus, and all the Ace-Ops were sent straight to the maximum security prison with them. Ironwood and team PCFHR were the only ones left to capture. Rumpty was the only officer of the whole army who was spared, revealing that he was the one who helped Watts hide for the past year. Rumpty owed him one, since Watts was the one responsible for the scarab chair and the few cyborg parts that allow Rumpty to live after his fatal accident. Rumpty doesn't know why Arthur suddenly decided to attack, but Rumpty was promised the place of General if he helped Arthur with his plans, and so he gladly did. Apparently they don't have to worry about Vale or Haven interfering with the takeover, as they are busy with a war against the Faunus race. That's why Rumpty was ordered to arrest all the Faunus in Mantle for good measure, just in case this war gets to Atlas. And lastly, Arthur specifically wants Penny alive and well, but didn't explain why. That's all that Rumpty knows, and now the girls are officially updated with the plot.

And so, just as quickly, the plot comes knocking back.

The laptop that Ciel was working on began to beep continuously. She opened it to check, and suddenly the radar revealed to her that several red dots, signifying the androids, have surrounded the building. She looks back, and realizes that the signal that was coming from the building actually belongs to Rumpty. He had a tracker somewhere in his cyborg parts, and so the androids must have followed after him. But it didn't make sense! All androids across the city should've been turned off. With all the other soldiers gone, who's commanding them now?

…

We change perspectives to the androids, as they enter the building in search of Rumpty. They start kicking people out of their apartments until all floors are empty, but couldn't find the commander. Finally they go outside, and report to the new commanding officers. "Target not found. Awaiting new orders."

The three humans all wore red rags and armor. They were members of the Branwen Tribe, who after the takeover were turned into Watts' personal elite warriors. I noted back in volume V that there were fourteen members of them, and here are three of those same guys. Let's call them Morris, Leslie and X (Eks). I can't bother to think of a cool design for them, or even their weapons. I rather leave that to the B writing team and continue to focus on better shit. Nevertheless, the three guys enter the building, and stop dead on the first floor. After a long silence, they can sense that there are warriors in here. They can feel them… below.

And so they break through the floor, scaring the girls as they burst from above. Suddenly they are thrown into another fight, and this time it's quite hard since they aren't rested or prepared. Penny can't even muster the energy to throw hands or fire blasts, so she's basically a normal person in this current state. The Branwen were told that their number one priority was Penny, and being completely skeptical about Watts' plans, Robin tells them to defend Penny no matter what. So you have a three versus three, while Fiona stays to protect Penny, and take all the Faunus out of there.

The start of the fight consists of the girls and the Branwen constantly going through the ceiling of each floor as the battle as a team, ending with three separate battles happening in three separate floors. If it looks too stupid to fight in such tight housing environments, we can change the place into those big parking garages instead of an apartment building. Ciel fights Leslie, a guy who can minimize himself into the size of a bug. Harriet fights Morris, a guy who can multiply himself into several clones. And Robin fights a guy who can copy objects he touches, who was named "X". I have absolutely no clue how to choreograph this fight, but the girls are painfully losing. Even the trashiest of the Branwen are still quite formidable, and it was impossible for all of them to win. However, they only need to hold on for a few minutes, while Fiona escorts Penny out of there. The only one to sort of win her fight is Robin, thanks to a new ability.

X starts the battle by immediately making a copy of his weapon, which are specifically small shurikens. He seemingly can make an infinite number of them, and can set them to multiply mid flight to catch the opponent off guard. Robin gets stabbed by them a couple of times before saying fuck it, and uses all her Aura to fuel the evolution of her Semblance. She discovered this technique in the last few months, and it's called… "Deadeye".

Her eagle eyes start to mutate, until eventually her pupil splits into two. Now Robin not only gets the power to see perfectly, but to also see everything in slow motion. She starts grabbing his own shurikens and tossing them against him. If this fight were to drag a little longer, Robin would've killed him, but she's running out of Aura fast and Fiona already completed her mission. She single handedly fought the small android army around the building, and also managed to help all the Faunus to run away. She hid Penny in an alleyway with Marrow and then returned to save her friends. Ciel and Harriet were kicked out of the building after having lost their fight, but the arrival of Fiona stopped them from being killed. Soon Robin and X jump down from the rooftop as well, and the scene is this. Robin was really wounded, Ciel and Harriet were unconscious, and the Branwen are still at peak.

Fiona is doing better than all of them, so she whispers, "Robin… take Ciel and Harriet out of here. I left Penny with Marrow. Find him, and get out of this city."

"Fio, I'm not gonna leave you behind—" Robin was saying, when suddenly Fiona grabbed her by the collar and pulled her face closer.

"I don't care what you have to say, I have to do this! The way I see it, you are our only hope to fix everything. If you stay, we're all going to die for nothing… Please, Robin… I would rather die alone than knowing you'll die with me… I don't know how to explain it, but I feel like this will be your chance… If you stop Watts, I know that things will change. Atlas is going to change for the better… Just promise me that you'll never give up on your… on our dream."

Robin grabs her forearm back. "If you die, then my dream won't mean anything anymore… Don't you die on me, sergeant! That's an order… YOU HEAR ME?!"

Fiona blushes profusely, realizing how close their faces are to each other. "Y-yes M-MA'AM!"

Robin grabs the unconscious Ciel and Harriet from the floor, and starts to run away to the street corner. X sees them try to leave, and immediately tosses his shurikens at them. However, Fiona sways her arms to the side. The dozen shurikens disappear in a blink of an eye. Then Fiona points her hand back at them, and so all of them come out of her pocket dimension, with the same speed as they entered. The Branwen boys are forced to dodge, and so Fiona charges them. Finally she gets her very own Sakuga Moment, pulling out the chainsaw. This next fight shows Fiona at her most broken and most skilled she has ever been, because now she sees herself fighting for her friends and the girl she loves. She immediately counters them by absorbing their weapons into her pocket dimension, making them less deadly, and uses their own stuff against them over the course of the fight. Still, even without their weapons they still have powerful Semblances and skills to fight back. She puts up an effort, but can't win such an unfair battle, with three trained bastards jumping her at once. In the end she was able to wound and tire her three opponents a little, but ended up bleeding and beaten on the road.

X starts to kick her on the ground repeatedly, as it was thanks to her that they lost the android. The sad music starts playing, as Fiona's memories start to wander back to how she met her friends as cadets, and the many times they had fun together despite their miserable lives as soldiers. It's just a simple slideshow. We see how Fiona was overly serious at first, not wanting to have any contact with her human colleagues, until Robin's kindness and genuine embrace broke her old racist self, and she fell in love. She explains in inner dialogue that Robin was the first human to give her hope that a better Atlas was even possible, and so she chose to follow her no matter what. Finally, X stomps her face for the last time, and the screen cuts to black.

…

We cut to way later, maybe a full day. We see the perspective of Penny as she wakes up from her recharge nap at long last, only to find herself in a small room with Robin, Ciel, Marrow and Harriet. The girls were covered in bandages, and the overall look of the place gave the vibe of a hospital. Robin explains to her that a nice doctor offered them a place to hide and patch up in the hospital basement, and here they are. To conclude, they have no idea what happened to Fiona, and they can't bear the idea that she's dead. Robin won't even allow it to be discussed, and tells all of them to shut up and rest for their next mission.

However, soon they start to hear sobbing and whimpering. It was none other than Penny. Somehow… she was crying. Water was leaking down her cheeks, and it deeply shocked the other four people in the room. An android that cries. It was so bizarre, but at the same time so contagious. Soon Ciel, Marrow and Robin were crying with her. With that, the scene slowly fades to black.

…

To cap off the third episode, we see a scene of our villain. The establishing shot reveals that we are in Atlas City, and everything seems to be relatively peaceful. We cut to a scene in the middle of the city, of Arthur Watts arriving at the military base in a fortified truck. The place was pretty much the same as the others from Argus and Mantle, and quite like any other military base in any game or movie ever. However, this one in particular was built right beside the wall of the mountain. There was some kind of tunnel entrance into it — protected by a round door of thick steel. Watts was slowly walking towards it, as Shay followed behind him with two other android soldiers, who were carrying a big and heavy black coffin with the help of a forklift.

Shay asks, "So this is it? That's where you keep all the treasures?"

"There's much more than just 'treasures' in there, but that really shouldn't concern you. I'm here just to solve a personal matter." Watts replied. "I'll go in alone. Once I get out, your escort won't be needed anymore. I won't have anything to fear ever again."

"Alright, be as cryptic as you want to be, sheesh." Shay said, and so Watts and his two androids walk towards the entrance with the huge black coffin. He waves his hand, making the android security guard open the door for him. The mechanism makes a loud sound as the door slides open, revealing the tunnel path to an elevator. Arthur gets in the lift and presses the button to go down into the underground, and just as he disappears from view, it cuts to black, ending the episode.

A post "ending" scene would show us that everyone completely forgot Rumpty was stuck to that chair. He's calling out for help, but no one hears him. He'll not come back for the rest of the volume. That's it.

Commentary (spoilers): Personally I don't know how to make Fiona's fake death work. The truth will be revealed next episode anyway, so making a big deal out of it might seem dumb. Still, if there were no tragic elements to their first defeat, their journey would feel really cheap and easy. It's really important for Penny specifically, because she needs to be confronted with this idea that one of her friends died to protect her. She always had such an easy going across the entire series due to her strength, so she needs to develop emotionally really fast this Volume in order to make her final character arc work. Like, really, she still has the mind of an immature, happy-go-lucky child, and though that makes her endearing to fans, it doesn't make for a good protagonist in such a dark story as this. She has to get her shit together, stat.

Btw, if this never comes up again, I would like to say the girls' rank in the army. I don't know jack shit about how a real army works, so I don't really care for how the Atlesian army works either. We would have to hire a military advisor to get shit right. The ranks are there merely to signify the power level of the Ace-Ops. They have special duties but get ranked just like the normal people. Penny is a private, Ciel, Fiona and Harriet are first class sergeants, and Robin is a lieutenant. They are below commanders, the major lieutenant and the general. The army is quite small if you remove the androids, so it's perfectly reasonable to not have fifteen generals or several commanders for just three cities. Most human soldiers rank as corporal, and most Ace-Ops are lieutenants like Robin — she being the youngest one of all. I guess that covers everything.

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The next episode opens up a couple of days later.

The androids worked day and night to bring the army radio tower back up, and so all the other androids across town started working again. However, something had changed in the people. Robin's words spread like fire, and the population is already looking at the androids with angry gazes everywhere. Soon enough, shit is going to start sparking.

The girls have fully recovered, and now they come up with a plan. They need to kill Watts at all costs, and for that they need to find out where he is. If he dies, the army will have no one else to obey. Before they can discuss any further, Marrow barges into the room. He has something to show them urgently, and so he pulls out his shitty phone and plays a video for them to see. Apparently, some robots around town are repeatedly announcing, "Squad code 21, report to base number three immediately. Sargent Fiona Thyme requests assistance. Bring the android."

They have all been told to repeat this dialogue to all people they come across, probably wanting to get the word around. From this the girls immediately spark up with hope to know Fiona was still alive, but also understand that they are trying to bait them. They want to exchange Penny for Fiona, and Penny is the first to agree with these terms. Fiona was captured saving all of them, so they can't abandon her. Penny cannot understand why Watts wants her so badly, but she'll go. That's final. Base number three is in Atlas City, so they will have to travel in order to get there.

However, Robin has a bonkers plan. She will go with Penny to save Fiona, since she's responsible for both of them. As for Ciel and Harriet… They will travel to Argus. If what Rumpty said is true, every other Ace-Ops is stuck in the Max Security Prison. If capturing Penny is so important to them, all their eyes will be focused on Atlas City. Robin and Penny will get all the heat, and so Ciel and Harriet need to take the chance and go free their comrades. It will be their only hope of winning. The girls have one last fist bump, and so they split off.

…

Now we have two scenarios to follow.

I'll focus on the Ciel and Harriet's side of the plot for now, since it wraps up with how we ended the last volume, and personally I like their sequence events more. The two stowaway into a train to Argus while disguised — Ciel took the lead and even forced Harriet to wear a girly wig and a dress in order to fit in. The train ride took a whole day, but they finally arrived in the city, and it seems not much has changed around here. Robot soldiers still hound the streets at every corner and there are tons of cameras everywhere. It seems like the only part that has changed is that now the rest of the nation gets to live like Argus always does. The cameras aren't able to identify them, and neither did the robots.

Eventually they are able to find a safe alley to prepare. The train ride forced them to abandon their weapons back at Mantle, so they will have to be smart and quiet about it. The two had to travel a little more, as the prison of Argus lies outside of the city territory. From a far they can already see the prison — a gigantic complex with several floors and huge concrete walls. There was no way to approach without being seen in the barren open land surrounding it, but they were lucky to arrive just as a truck was going towards the prison to deliver some cargo. All they had to do was sneak aboard. The outside area of the building was being used to keep hundreds of human soldiers that were arrested, and we even see Cordovin somewhere in the middle. Ciel theorizes that the real max security prison is underground.

They encountered one big problem once they infiltrated, and that is the dozens of android soldiers roaming the building and doing the jobs that human soldiers used to do. They had to sneak past all of them, but they had perfect hearing, perfect sight, and would investigate even with the slightest suspicion… But their efficiency was their downfall. Though they were very well programmed, they have no such a thing as intelligence — Ciel realized they acted exactly like enemies from a stealth videogame. She just had to create an automatic noise dispenser inside a big room, and wait for all the androids to come check it out. They couldn't figure out what was wrong, and kept calling more androids to help. Once there were nearly fifty of them just standing there, she locked the door behind them. They weren't allowed to break the door while in peace mode, so they just stood there for the next two hours saying, "strange behavior detected. Calling backup."

Then, they just needed to find their way to the elevator. Pretty much anything in this base is locked by a codepad. Ciel has to repeatedly break open the panels and play with the wires in order to open doors, especially when working the elevator. Harriet is completely bored and useless throughout the infiltration segment, since stealth is not her strong suit. While they were busy breaking into the max security hall, someone else was trying to break out.

We take the perspective of Winter, inside a dark and cold underground room. She is completely alone, looking vaguely ahead. After consecutive attempts to break out, she was put in the absolute bottom of the prison. Her solitary cell is a small round room, and the bars surrounding her are made of beams of light that instantly incinerate a bug that tries to walk on it. Winter is dressed on white clothes, with a steel mouth mask on her face, and heavy shackles that cover her entire arms and legs. She can literally do nothing except sit down, but not for very long. Suddenly she hears a beep. A hatch opens from the ceiling, and a block drops down. It's just a block of condensed minced meat and vegetables. Her mouth mask opens slightly, signifying meal time.

However, Winter was not hungry. She had the mission to get out.

She starts taking quick and deep breaths, before finally using the shackles to hit herself on the side of the face really hard. She did it repeatedly until there was blood coming out of her mouth. She was able to knock loose her own back teeth, and used her tongue to pull it out. She had to be quick now — meal time was just two minutes. She got as close to the laser bars as she could, and looked up. There was a camera at the wall, looking straight at her. She took aim, and once ready, she spit out her own tooth towards the camera like a bullet. It hits the lens square on, cracking them and covering the blindspots with a bit of blood. The stupid robot watching the cameras said, "Malfunction detected. Initiating restoration procedure", and it sent another android beside it to go fix the camera.

In the meantime, with no more eyes on her, Winter started to slam her arm shackles into the ground repeatedly until they dented, making it easy for her to rip her arms free. Next she used her super strength to twist apart the metal and free her legs. Now she just needed to get out of this cell. She was already breathing heavily and spent nights without sleep while famished. It was the last attempt she could muster, and so she activated her Semblance. Suddenly all surfaces of the room are covered in a frozen layer, and as for the lasers surrounding her… they instantly turn into solid bars of blue ice. A simple kick is enough to break through, and she immediately picks up the ice spear from the floor.

Just in time, the shut door from the cell room opens, and it's the android who came to fix the camera — he brought a new one, a screwdriver and a small ladder. Winter immediately impales its head with her ice spear, but unfortunately, it isn't enough to kill the android instantly. He survives for just a few seconds more, enough time to sound the alarm through his database. Winter has escaped… again. She picks up the screwdriver and starts running across the dark halls.

Normally her plan would be immediately thwarted, as the entire base above would come down in the elevator and gun her down with the non-lethal weapons. However, this time she had help outside. Ciel failed to hack into the lift system without a keycard. Harriet's solution was to literally hit the elevator until it plummeted to the underground. The robots were alarmed by the breakout, so they kicked down the door that Ciel had locked and prepared for battle. However, they merely stood by the elevator, pressing the button thinking it would come up eventually. Their level of stupidity varies a lot — clearly they weren't meant for every situation imaginable. Ciel and Harriet survived the fall just fine, but now there was another ridiculously big door to try hacking.

They had no idea that Winter was fighting for her life inside. She was able to take down all the androids who were already down there, just by using the screwdriver as a rapier. Now she had to do something about her allies, who are locked in separate rooms just like her. If she kills the power, the laser cells stop working. And so she starts digging into the walls with her fists, until eventually finding the electric cables that power everything. They were ridiculously big, but she was able to slash them apart with the screwdriver. She took a deadly electrical shock, but her sacrifice resulted in the entire max security ward losing power. All the other Ace-Ops found themselves free at last. They started ripping themselves out of their restraints and breaking through their cell doors.

Here we would see some familiar faces, like Elm, Clover, Katt and Flynt, Kobalt, Ivori, Vine, Tortuga, Joanna, May, Cordovin's bodyguard twins, and whoever else from Atlas that I don't care about. They immediately come to Winter's aid, as she's half-dead right next to the giant power cable she ripped off. Maybe one of them has a healing Semblance to help her out, but she's officially out of commission.

The thick steel door is right in front of them, and they get ready to bring it down one way or another. But just as they are about to charge, it slowly slides open, revealing Ciel and Harriet at the other side. She was able to hack it. The two sides stare with confusion at each other. Ciel is quick to explain what they are trying to do, and so everyone agrees to work together to escape.

But then, Ciel checks her laptop, and sees that they have a problem. hundreds of android signals have completely surrounded the prison, warned by the breakout. It seems someone finally started giving them direct orders, because suddenly androids start throwing themselves down the elevator shaft to try and get them, this time trying to kill them all instead of keeping them locked. The Ace-Op prisoners have to get pretty crafty to fight, even ripping apart the androids to use their limbs as weapons and stealing their guns. They are able to fight off wave after wave, until everything goes quiet…

Ciel's laptop started beeping louder, and so they started to hear… steps.

They were echoing through the ground and making the walls and ceiling shake. A big war machine has just arrived, and they can take a wild guess as to what it is. We cut to the surface, where we see hundreds of androids pointing assault rifles at the prison building from outside the walls. A few dozen of them are piloting mecha armors, and other several dozen flying ships are stalking the skies with their guns ready. And finally, we see the sleeping giant of Argus approaching. A humanoid behemoth that is about fifty feet tall. It's the colossus from the original volume 6 — I'll call it the Gray Titan.

A whole army and a gigantic robot are ready to storm the prison. The human prisoners get really scared — they can see the Argus giant far away, even with the huge wall blocking most of the view. Finally we see inside the huge metal behemoth. It was being piloted by several other androids together. Suddenly, we hear a voice from inside the control room. It's Watts, but we don't see him, only hear his voice. He said, "Do not start firing yet. The android might be with them."

Then, his voice starts being transmitted to loud speakers on the Gray Titan, allowing everyone to hear him. "Listen to me, Ace-Ops! Your futile struggle is becoming rather annoying. You simply cannot comprehend what I'm trying to do. All I ask is that you remain in your cells for just a few more days, and let me save our nation for you! Once this is all over, you will get your freedom back, and you will return to the same Atlas you always knew. You may even thank me someday. All I ask is that you come out with hands behind your back, and so I will spare each and every single one of you. If you don't, I'll just blow this entire prison sky high with everyone in it! I trust you'll make the right decision. You have five minutes!" Watts finished.

The normal soldiers started panicking, and soon all the Ace-Ops climbed up from the underground and reconvene with them. They have absolutely no hope of winning or escaping all together — they don't even have enough weapons for a single squad. If they surrender now it's all over, but they also don't have much time left. They needed a big distraction, and above all, a savior.

…

For the last three years, a certain man has sat deep within the underground prison. He literally had nothing else to do. He was considered a threat by all the council members after the things he did, and so they ordered him to be locked up forever. Just one visit per month, made only by his wife. And the great crime he committed? He neglected his job to save others.

He was asleep during the entire breakout, and only woke up now. His laser cell was turned off, the halls were unguarded, and there's a huge commotion outside. He decided to go check it out. He effortlessly broke down the steel door and jumped up the elevator shaft, showing how he's still sharp with his powers. Absolutely nothing stood in his way out, so he walked out into the courtyard. He looked up, and for the first time in three years he got a glimpse of the sun, and a breath of cold fresh air. He had grown so much hair that he looked like redhead jesus. Finally he pays attention to the Ace-Ops discussing their options in the courtyard, and slowly approaches them.

"Hey hey… What's the big idea, everyone? (yawn) some people are trying to sleep in here." he said. One by one the warriors turned to him, their faces lighting up in surprise one by one. Seeing his ugly mug again after three years, it made Ciel and Harriet smile like they never did before. "Honestly, look at all the mess you guys made…"

"MR. NIKOS!" Ciel and Harriet said in unison. He was in fact Troy Nikos. Ex-Major Lieutenant of the Atlas Army. More notably, he's Pyrrha's dad.

"Wait, you two are… Cee? Hare?… By the gods, how did you get this tall? How long have I been down there?" Troy asked, scratching his beard. "Is that you too, Winter? Not on your best day, I see."

"Oh, shut up old bastard…" Winter said with a faint smile. "I knew it was only a matter of time before I found you down there…"

The others quickly explain the situation to him, with Watts taking over the nation and the prison break. Recognizing the urgency of the situation, as well as their impending doom, Troy decides he will help. Given the situation, the only way they are going to get out of this one is by hijacking one of the flying ships in the sky. Still, for that to work, they are gonna need a distraction… a lot of it. The soldiers are willing to act as a decoy to disperse the android's attention, knowing the Ace-Ops are much more important than they are. Even so, someone will have to keep the Gray Titan busy, so then Watts doesn't realize their plan until it's too late. Troy volunteers to do it.

"Once all hell starts breaking loose, they will have no idea which of the dots in the distance will be a warrior or just a soldier. You all will need to use that opportunity… If you don't mind, I'll have the honors to go first." he says. The others protest against him going alone without weapons, but then Troy stops walking and says, "Ironwood is busy somewhere else. Winter can't fight in her condition. My old friends and mentor are long gone… And if they aren't around, then I guess it's my turn to rise up… as the strongest Huntsman in this nation."

With that he walks off, going straight after the huge front gate of the concrete walls. And so, my fifth favorite scene of this volume begins.

The gates soundly open as Troy pushes them apart. He's met by a plain, snowy land in front of him, with robots in ships littering the view. The giant is standing there, menacingly. Troy yawns a final time, before slowly walking forward with hands on his pockets

Inside the giant, the giant monitor of the control room zooms in on the person coming their way — his red hair making it clear who it is. He was literally known as "the Red" in the old days. Finally the camera pans back, and we see a shadowy figure standing in front of the monitor, who we can assume to be Watts, given what he says next. "I want… every gun we have… to fire on that man… DO IT, NOW!"

The order is passed through all androids in the database. They all turn their rifles, machine guns, missile launchers and whatever the fuck towards Troy, and so they fire. Hundreds of Dust bullets, several dozen bombs and over a million lien in ammo went flying towards him. The result was an insane explosion, and a lot of smoke. Everyone watches quietly as the smoke settles.

The ground had been completely destroyed — turned into nothing but a black crater in the snowy earth. However, Troy stood above it, exactly as he was, without a single scratch across his body. Everything simply bounced off, even the Dust bullets. The screen freezes, and the card appears.

Troy Nikos, Semblance: Impenetrable.

With this power, Troy can become totally and utterly invincible, as long as he stands completely still and doesn't move a muscle. He comes out smiling after receiving all the power that the androids could muster, and then suddenly, he jumped forward, and started sprinting super fast towards the giant. They start shooting again, but this time Troy just dodges everything. Watts thought he would only need to worry about that, but then something happened back at the prison. Both the West and East side walls blew up at the same time, and the androids could see several dozen people start running out. From this distance they couldn't identify their faces. Watts got desperate and told all his robots to shoot at them, and so all the soldiers threw themselves in the snow, and kept crawling in with gunfire right above their heads. With the robots unable to take aim from that position, he told his flying ships to move in and identify the targets… And that's all they wanted.

Little did he know, the Ace-Ops were coming from above.

Either they used their powers to propel themselves to the sky, or they just had muscle mommy Elm throw them as high as she could — either way, they were all now falling down to the battlefield. They were able to dive towards the ships, taking them out and hijacking one that was big enough for all of them. All Ace-Ops were now on the air, and Watts couldn't do anything about it because he had to focus on Troy quickly approaching. He was beating the shit of the android up ahead with his bare hands, and soon was face to face with the Gray Titan. Watts decides to fight, and so we have Troy versus the giant. This fight is just to show how insanely fast the big robot can be despite its huge size, because it's gonna have a much tougher fight later. It has guns mounted on its shoulders and forearms, but it mainly fights with its kicks and punches. Troy had no weapons and was acting just as a distraction. The giant's moves were easily telegraphed but they were too big to effectively dodge. He could always just stand perfectly still and take the hit — it wouldn't damage him, but it would send him flying a good few miles away.

He distracted Watts well enough, giving time for the Ace-Ops to fly over their battle. Ciel was driving the ship for everyone, and she points out that Watts is apparently inside the Gray Titan. If they get him, this civil war against the androids will be over. Without hesitation, Harriet jumps off the ship and lands on top of the giant. On its head there was a hatch, which was the only way to get inside. The Gray Titan tries to shake her off or grab her, but its arms just couldn't reach where she was. Harriet unleashed a fist barrage onto the hatch until eventually it broke, and so she jumped down in the control room. The androids pull out guns to shoot her, but she takes all of them down with ease. It was time to give Watts a good beating, but…

It wasn't Watts. It was merely another android, which he was speaking through this entire time. We didn't reveal this at all earlier so this comes as a surprise, and ties in with what we see in the Robin and Penny scenario. With all android pilots destroyed, the Gray Titan stopped moving. Harriet immediately gets out and jumps down to meet Troy, who had taken quite a few giant punches. "Come on, Troy, let's get out of here!"

"Heh… Sorry, but my place is here. Gotta make sure the troops back there don't get themselves killed… It's up to you kids now. You've gotten stronger since you trained under me. Winter did a good job… I'm sure you'll be fine… Go now, they are waiting for you!" Troy replies.

Harriet hesitantly nods, and starts running after the big ship with everyone. She jumped up as high as she could, and was caught in the air by Vine with his Aura hands. Now they were all together, but the chase had only begun. There were twenty ships flying after them, and they were opening heavy fire. Ciel is able to fly this big ship with an unbelievable level of talent, and dodged almost everything they shot at them. It was up to the Ace-Ops to use their abilities and bring down some of them. Eventually they arrived back at Argus, but they were ambushed by more ships coming dead ahead. Ciel couldn't dodge those, and their ship ended up shot down.

She was able to make an emergency landing on the empty city park, near the stone coliseum. Everyone was still okay inside the ruins of the ship, more tired than hurt. The other ships continued shooting the smoking carcass, and they had to do something quick. To their luck, the train station was just a few blocks ahead, and the train had just arrived. Mantle is the weakest city in terms of security, so it must be the safest for all of them to hide. The Ace-Ops will have to rest and prepare to fight against Watts once they find him — there's no other way to win.

But then Winter, still injured and tired from the prison, suddenly grabs Harriet by the forearm and says, "Sargent Bree… This won't be enough… We won't be able to stop Watts in time… My father told me his plans… He is trying to build a weapon… and if he succeeds, all the other nations will be doomed… You must tell them what is happening to Atlas… Their help is the only hope we have."

Harriet looked her in the eyes, clearly sweating, but still putting up a brave face. "Alright, I get it… Heh! Listen to me, everyone! I can get to Vale City faster than any of you scrubs combined, and so I'll do it! I want you guys to gun for the train, and I'll distract the ships before skipping town. Next time you see me, I'll have all the strongest guys in Vale right behind me. That's a promise!"

"But Harriet-" Ciel was saying.

"NO BUTS! I ALREADY MADE UP MY MIND! Do you want to help me? Then make sure Penny, Fiona and Robin are okay while I'm gone. Take the train straight to Atlas City and go help them!... I'll see you later, Cee." Harriet replied.

And so, she took her starting position, and finally jumped out of the destroyed ship in a flash. She kept running as yellow trails of light followed behind her, drawing the attention of all the remaining ships outside. The other Ace-Ops wait for them to go before jumping out as well, and so they immediately go to hijack the train. Ciel looks back to her friend one final time before leaving. The Ace Ops have gotten away, but we keep following Harriet.

She just made a mad dash across the city, getting progressively faster due to her Semblance. Androids occupied every single street, so she had to constantly dodge fire from all sides until she finally arrived at the city wall. She was able to easily climb it by just running vertically on it, before finally jumping from the top. Three ships kept chasing after her, and now she couldn't run as fast as before because of the thick snow on the ground. While she still had speed energy gathered, she decided to take out some of the ships. She roundhouse kicks a tree in half, then kicks the upper half to the sky, sending it crashing through one of the ships and making a big explosion. Then she drew her clackers, and kept spinning them around until they moved fast as lightning, and so she tossed them like a cannonball, destroying the second ship.

In response, the last ship just shot her as she slowed down. There were hundreds of bullets and she wasn't able to dodge the android's perfect aim. For a Huntsman, being showered by a minigun it's like being hit by hundreds of baseballs all over the body. Harriet just put her fists up to protect her face and took an entire round while on the floor. She got heavily bruised with bleeding in a few places, and her clothes were ruined. She wasn't going to survive attacks like this for very long. The ship is too high for her to jump, and she ran out of things to throw at it. Thankfully, she had the terrain on her side.

The region outside the walls of Argus had a lot of traps and automatic defenses set up, since no one is meant to enter the nation through anywhere other than the train station. It's the same defenses that attacked team JNPR in Volume VI. Harriet just had to keep running and endure all the bullets and missiles they shot at her, and eventually the traps would take down the remaining ship by accident. She had won, but now comes the long part.

Harriet's whole body was hurting, she was freezing with dry blood on her skin, and she was tired from all that running. However, she's the only one who got out of the nation, and so she must tell the world what is happening, and get help for everyone. She finds the train tracks, and starts running as fast as she can towards Vale. That concludes Harriet and Ciel's scenario.

Commentary (spoilers): This chapter mostly builds up for the final battle of the volume. Besides that, it gives us cool moments of the characters using their own abilities to complete a mission. Characters like Ciel and Harriet don't have much place in the plot or have important backstories connecting them to it, so I can only use them for cool moments and fight scenes, making them likable by what they do, instead of who they are. Everyone got to use their abilities, and we have the much awaited reintroduction to Pyrrha's dad. He's such an important guy to the plot of the whole show despite only being mentioned. So far we saw him as a shadow in volume VI and a small side character in volume VII. In case this never gets to matter in the plot, his basic story is this: Troy was a disciple of Nikolas Schnee that was forced to join the army once the council came up with the Ace-Ops policy. Troy was just a chill guy that everyone respected, but behind the scenes he was going against the rules. Whenever he would find a kid that was beginning to awaken their powers, he would try to send that kid away from Atlas so they wouldn't be a slave to the council. Eventually it happened to his own daughter. He used his high position in the army to stall for time, promising that Pyrrha would be delivered into the army, but only when she had her eighteenth birthday. Of course that never came to be — he sent her away to Vale, and we know the rest. Troy was soon caught, put on trial, and he confessed not only to have sent Pyrrha away, but also dozens of other potential warriors over the years. He regrets absolutely nothing, and so he was locked up for life. His wife Helen still is allowed to come talk to him once in a while. Maybe we can turn this story into a series of minisodes. As for Harriet, she is going to take a little while to return.

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Time for Penny and Robin. Note that these two scenarios happen simultaneously in the two following episodes, I just decided to focus on one at a time for simplicity sake.

The two had the job to go to Atlas City, save Fiona, kill Watts and whatever else they can manage. Of course getting there wouldn't be as easy as it was for Ciel and Harriet in Argus — the robots were back after the signal tower was fixed, and they were literally all over the place. The only way to Atlas City was through the tunnels of the caves and the train station, given that the city is surrounded by the mountain range. It would be too risky to go in the usual way… so they just had Penny fly them over the mountain. She was able to fly at least half their way up, but soon they had to climb slowly due to the snowy weather. Robin had the perfect kit for climbing, with her rope arrows and such. While they went, Penny surprised Robin by revealing she had another dream while she was recharging again.

It was a dream of her childhood like all the others, but this time she wasn't alone in the laboratory with her father. There was another person in there with her, a lanky old man, but the vision was so foggy that she couldn't figure out who it was. Somehow, she felt happy to see him too. The three of them had fun together. If only Penny can figure out who it is, maybe she can have a clue to what happened to her father.

…

After climbing for the entire rest of the day, they only had to track through the absurdly cold mountain top, constantly fighting against the blizzard. It was only in the next morning that they were able to see Atlas City from high above. With this perfect angle, Robin can scout the entire city with her Hawk Eye. The city is simply having a normal day — she expected this place to put up more of a fight, but it seems that the elites of the nation couldn't care less who is in power as long as it doesn't affect their business. She can also see that the number of androids across town is minimal compared to Argus and Mantle. Fiona is supposedly in base number three, at the very end of the city, but given how shady Watts has been so far, it might not be the case. It might all just be a trap to grab Penny for whatever reason. Because of that, Robin devised a plan.

First, they are gonna get into the disguises that she bought in Mantle. The fanciest clothes they could muster, and wigs for the two of them. Every street corner has a camera with facial recognition, so they are gonna use the cold as an excuse to wear scarfs across half their faces. Once there, Robin is going in alone inside the base while Penny stays hiding in a faraway building. If they attack or kill Robin, Penny needs to flee back to Mantle and hide. However, if Penny is really that important to Watts, then they likely won't do it. She'll try to extract as much as she can, and then risk it all to try and kill Watts when he shows up.

…

And that's exactly what they did. They just went casually across the city, had a possibly-last coffee break, and so it was on. Penny stood hiding inside a building not far from the base, just hearing all play out from the wire Robin put on herself.

Robin walked straight onto the base's main entrance and was confronted by the two robots. She easily slices through them and kicks open the gates. She goes into the courtyard, unveils her disguise, and in no time flat there were over fifty rifles aimed at her from all sides. She screams, "WATTS! I KNOW YOU CAN HEAR ME! IF YOU DON'T COME OUT HERE NOW, YOU WON'T SEE PENNY EVER AGAIN!"

With that, suddenly one of the robots changed their colors to yellow, dropped its gun and then stepped forward to talk with her. It was Watts yet again. "Ms. Hill. Impressive that you managed to get here completely unnoticed. I severely underestimated how much damage just five of you could do."

"Just cut the crap! In case I didn't make it clear, you will do exactly as I say, or Penny will be gone. Don't worry, she can hear and see everything that is going on. If something happens, she has my orders to run away and never come back. Now, first I want all the androids out of here, second I want Fiona Thyme safe and sound, and third I want you down here with us."

"So you can try and put an arrow between my eyes? Quite tempting, lieutenant, but I pass for now. I'll throw you a bone though" android Watts said, and so he snaps his android fingers. All at once, the androids lower their weapons and return to the warehouse they were locked in before. At the same time, something began echoing in the base, coming from the main office building. Soon, we see those three Branwen guys again — Morris, Leslie and X. They are pulling Fiona by her hair and ears, before finally showing her to Robin. She was still as beaten as three days ago. Her arms and legs were tied by the same shackles that we saw in the prison, with the same mouth mask to stop her from talking. She barely opened her eyes and saw Robin in front of her, making her spark up immediately. Her gaze already said everything — "Why are you here? You're gonna get yourself killed! I didn't want you to do this!" And so on and so forth.

Watts continued, "Let me guess… You'll try to quickly grab her, and miraculously outrun these three warriors in front of you. Then you'll hide in a hole like rats for another couple of days, waiting for the opportunity to try and get me. Is that it?"

"It worked a thousand times before, with monsters much more dangerous than you. You'll get what you deserve eventually, I'm not worried about that. And besides, you really think you can just snatch all the power to yourself and get away with it? It's almost as dumb as my plan."

"You think so? Well, haven't you seen the world around you since you came back? The people are working, the clocks are spinning and Atlas is doing perfectly fine, aside from the destruction YOU caused with your reckless battles… But you see… I'm willing to forget everything." Watts said. "In truth, I dislike that I had to resort to such tactics in order to draw you out, Ms. Hill. We are both Atlisian men and women — we shouldn't be fighting in an hour such as this! If time allowed it, I would much rather have you Ace-Ops on my side as well. Taking our great nation by force was never my preferred method to achieve power, but the moment was dire, and I knew that no one would believe me if I tried any other more reputable way."

"WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?!" Robin replied.

"Bear with me, lieutenant. Know that I would've never come this far if what I'm about to say wasn't the absolute truth. And the truth is… We are at the brink of war." Watts said, with a cool line to mark the halfway point of the episode. "Both Vale and Haven have already begun their battle. This war is not being fought for territory or resources, but rather a battle for survival. A battle to decide which of the nations gets to live past this year. Allow me to explain…

Several years ago, I came to meet a certain… woman. She exuded power on every aspect of her being, and that wasn't for nothing. That woman was called Cinder, and she spoke for the Grimm. Some sort of emissary, if you will. Our relation was vapid, but it culminated into what came to be known as the invasion of Vale City. You were there, weren't you? Back when you embarrassed your nation by losing in the first round of the tournament… As you know, somehow the blame managed to find its way to me… And to this day, I simply cannot understand! Why should WE give satisfaction to OUR enemies? Why must I be JAILED for having the courage to do the ONE THING we all wanted?! WHY DO I… sorry, I'm getting a little ahead of myself… The point is, recently that same woman came to meet me again. She warned of the war that was coming.

At the end of the year, all Grimm in the world will band together for a Second Invasion. They will wipe out everything we know from the map, leaving as few survivors as there can be. However, it doesn't have to be this way. Once she came to me again, she offered Atlas the promise of survival, as long as we defeat and destroy our enemies before the day of judgment comes! She made it as simple as it could be! Do you understand it now? I'M TRYING TO SAVE OUR NATION FROM DOOM!"

"That… That can't be true… You're lying! YOU HAVE TO BE LYING!" Robin said.

Then, Watts played an audio through the robot. It was a voice message from Ozpin, stating that Vale was attacked, and that they will fight back against the enemy, asking for the support of Atlas to help him. It was followed by other messages of normal people, saying that their villages were attacked, and that the Faunus from Haven were responsible. Robin and Fiona's faces started to sink into despair. She was speechless. Are the other nations really fighting right now?!

Watts continued, "Do you see it now? I had the privilege to be warned beforehand, because Cinder knew I best represented our nation than anyone else! She knew only I had the courage to do what I must to save Atlas!… And so I will destroy Haven and Vale, and make sure our empire continues to live forever!… Once you stare at a whole wide world, free for our taking after the war, only then you'll be able to appreciate what I did for you! WHAT I ALWAYS DID FOR ALL OF YOU!… The council will understand. They will give me my freedom back, they will let me stay in power, and yes, even rebellious soldiers like yourself will find a place once everything is settled. Maybe one day, you'll look me in the eyes and bow as thanks…

But for that to happen… For us to win… I need THE android… I know that Professor Polendina's secrets are hidden somewhere inside of her… Once I take it out, I can replicate THAT weapon, and with it I shall destroy those pitiful mouth breathers from the face of the earth!"

Robin covers her face with her eyes wide open, breathing faster each passing second. Watts sees that and says, "So… Are you finally beginning to understand? Will you surrender now?"

"I can't… I can't believe it, just… how much… How much… HOW MUCH OF A FOOL ARE YOU?!" Robin shouted, getting reaction shots from everyone. She continues, "WE ARE AT THE BRINK OF WAR AGAINST THE GRIMM, AND THE FIRST THING YOU DO IS TRY TO DESTROY THE OTHER NATIONS?! WE SHOULD BE JOINING TOGETHER TO FIGHT BACK, NOT GUNNING EACH OTHER TO DECIDE WHO GETS TO LIVE! HAVE YOU GONE MAD?!

I'LL NEVER GIVE PENNY TO YOU! I DON'T CARE IF I'M FROM ATLAS! I'M NEVER GONNA FORGIVE MYSELF IF I LET SO MANY PEOPLE DIE JUST SO THEN WE CAN LIVE! WE HAVE TO FIND ANOTHER WAY!" Robin finished.

The silence from Watts was palpable. After letting her breath, he says, "You're mistaken, Ms. Hill. You're not going to find anything… I thought at least one of you fools would understand, but I was… painfully mistaken. Maybe it would be best if you join your comrades in the maximum security prison. And when you get out of there, maybe several years from now, you'll be welcomed to a perfect, astounding and inconceivable New Atlas of my own creation. You'll see the people happy, the cities getting bigger, the army growing stronger, and you're going to say to yourself… he was right."

"Keep dreaming! You can tell your dogs to try and catch me if you want. By the time it's over, Penny will be at the other side of the map. You can give up your little plans of building this weapon of yours, and prepare to fight a war that you will not win. You idiot…"

Watts cackles. "Pardon me, lieutenant, but it seems that I know your own soldiers more than you do. Don't worry about me. The very second you set foot in here, I was already ten steps ahead." He says, and so the yellow screen of the android turns blue. Watts is off.

With that, Robin was left alone with the three Branwen bastards. X says, "Wow, that really went down exactly as he said it would. Not gonna lie, I'm glad I'm on that guy's side. As for you missy, you heard the man. I still gotta pay you back for what you did to my hand, you bitch."

Robin's pupils split into two, activating her power. "This time I'll rip it out of you, scum!"

Morris then steps over Fiona. "Nuh-uh-uh! Who said you could fight back? I don't know if those big eyes can see, but we have a-!"

While he was talking, Fiona just straight up freed herself. Like, she literally just had to use her "Pocketer" Semblance on the shackle, and that was it. She could've gotten away any time since she woke up, she just didn't have the chance. She immediately frees herself and gets up from the ground with a horse kick in Morris' face. It surprised the other two, and allowed Robin to jump in and cover her. Fiona was already tired and beaten. Robin asks, "Can you run?"

"Did I ever?" Fiona replied with a smile.

"Hmph. Good point." Robin said. The two took stances as Fiona summoned her chainsaw from the pocket dimension, and so it was on. Naturally they were bound to lose, I'm not gonna even waste time thinking of a script or choreography for it. They sustain themselves quite enough, but then the robots start coming out from the hangar and aid the Branwen boys in battle. The real important part of this small fight is Penny.

You see, she had strict orders to dip in case anything happened to Robin. But tell me, would any protagonist in any series ever do that? Hell no. Penny couldn't shrug off the fact that now two of her friends are at a real risk of dying because of her again, so she needed to act. Once it was clear that Robin and Fiona would lose, Penny came in in the most bombastic way possible. She was combat ready.

With little to no effort she starts killing all the androids in the back line with her flying sword before targeting the three stooges along with her teammates. It was a glorious beat down that they absolutely deserved. As I said a million times already, Penny doesn't have a Semblance, but her many android abilities give her enough functions to supply an army and fight pretty much any opponent with any set of powers. It looks like this would be yet another episode where she kicks everyone's ass and saves the day.

But then… Everything went dark.

Penny looked up, and saw something block the sun. It was Ironwood's dreadnought. It finally clicked. Watts isn't just at the safest city, he's at the absolutely safest place in the world — a fortress hidden in the clouds. Its shadow covered the whole base, and made the scene really ominous. And with the arrival of the fortress, something else descends.

Penny only caught a small glimpse of it, before it landed right behind her. The ground shook and a crater was formed in the concrete. Penny slowly turned around to see an armored knight, doing the super hero landing. He was completely covered with black steel and yellow details on its borders, also wearing a helmet with a yellow visor that glows. His cape was flopping in the gust of wind that he created from the impact. Finally he stands up, towering over Penny — being at least twice her size and more muscular than anyone she ever saw. He didn't say a single word, and before she knew… he grabbed her by the neck.

His movements were lightning quick, and his grip was devastatingly tight. Penny was probably top three in sheer strength of Atlas warriors, and she simply couldn't make him budge. His assault didn't end there — yellow cybernetic lines started to glow from underneath his armor, and suddenly, his boots started to release a torrent of fire, sending him and Penny flying in the sky. He had jet boots, just like her. Fiona and Robin scream her name, but they were already too far away.

The black paladin, as I will refer to him, simply drags Penny across the sky, before finally slamming her against a nearby building. Then he continues holding onto her as they plummet to the ground, slamming her into the road and scaring everyone away. The paladin doesn't say a word, but he seems dead set to kill Penny. It didn't take her long to figure out that this guy was an android, but not like anything she ever saw. In fact, she could feel it was an android of the same kind as her.

And so, for the first time in this series, we actually have a fight that is dangerously similar to dragon ball. Two characters without tactical magic powers, flying around and shooting energy blasts at each other. They were literally going all over the city and causing a lot of damage, but this scene needs to make clear how much Penny is getting wrecked. Penny never really lost any fights thus far, she always won her battles, and was put out of commission for all the other ones that she would have potentially lost (aka, her two fights against Pyrrha). Once she starts getting a lot of battle damage, we even see her fake skin being scratched off, showing the silver metal underneath. While she had her sword, the Paladin had a very different weapon. A weapon that I removed from the plot long ago in anticipation for this moment. Velvet's original weapon, Anesidora .

A small box in the waist of the paladin was capable of creating solid holograms, which he could turn into shields or a big heavy sword. That thing was already strong enough, but it wasn't the only thing that allowed him to beat Penny. Once she had enough of all the destruction she caused, she decided to put this android down for good. She focuses all of her leftover energy into her hands in order to release one massive blast of energy and destroy its body. She fires, and then…

The paladin remains completely still. He merely raises his hands forward, and so Penny watches as all that raw energy is absorbed. It was all being sucked by these orbs that were engraved in the middle of his palms, and soon enough, he had absorbed everything. Not only didn't he receive any damage, but Penny could sense that he only got stronger. From then on, it was over. She was weakened, and it turns out that the black paladin just needed to grab her in ANY part of her body, and it would immediately start draining energy from her core. Penny was now fighting on low-battery mode, and just like last time, it didn't go well for her.

Fiona and Robin tried to keep up with her and the paladin, but they were fighting against the Branwen as well, so each time they tried to turn their backs, it resulted in a new wound. They only arrived in time to see Penny completely defeated inside of a crater, with the paladin looming over her, completely unscathed. Soon her eyes went black, signifying that she shut down. The paladin grabs her by the midriff with his giant hand, and starts flying away with her towards the dreadnought in the sky. They couldn't even begin to think of a way to catch up to them. Penny was gone.

"Don't worry, boss. We'll handle them. No promises they won't die while we try to capture them, though…" X said, approaching the scene with Leslie and Morries. The three immediately attack Robin and Fiona with all they got, so we get one final scene of them getting the shit beaten out of them before the episode ends.

However, not all hope is lost. As X makes a stride to cap off Robin, he prepares a gun to shoot her in the heart. But then, at the same second he was about to pull the trigger, another gunfire rang across town. A dust bullet was fired, and Robin watched in shock as it went through X's head. Despite all his shit talking, he was taken out like that. He falls on the floor like a bag of potatoes. The other two are not given the time to think, as several other shots started flying their way, grazing them in the arms and legs. They are forced to run away, leaving behind their friend like it was nothing.

Fiona and Robin just keep sitting there completely still as they leave, too tired and scared to make a move. Eventually, their savior starts approaching. He appears from far down the road, and walks towards them. It was Ironwood. He was wearing dark blue pants and a white dress shirt that received a lot of slashes and was stained with old blood. In his hands he was carrying a heavy-looking assault rifle, with the barrel still steaming from the shots he fired. With his epic reveal, it cuts to black, ending the episode.

Commentary (spoilers): The whole war against Grimm and the judgment day mystery has absolutely no reason to take place in this volume as well, given that we spent the last one slowly building it up to the end until its climatic reveal. It's better for Watts to outright reveal it from the start, so then his motivations become as clear as day and gives him a real reason to act into the story, and is also important for Robin to contrast his idea immediately, so then it's clear that the main heroes are fighting for more than just ownership of a government. It would be fair to say that Robin is a better protagonist in this volume due to how proactive she is, but in truth she's literally just that — she moves the plot along, but has no horse in this race beside the simple goal of freeing Atlas. Meanwhile Penny has the chance for a lot of development and backstory to be told, and a better connection to the main villain than anyone else, even if she's mostly taken along for the ride.

This is the last light that the three Branwen stooges are gonna get. They still show up, but just as background fodder. If I'm just gonna give them basic designs, I would have Leslie be really fat, bald and stupid looking, to compliment his power, and make Morris short, hairy and aggressive to mirror him. X just has to look like an assassin that covers his face with hats, mask and goggles so then he can look as inhuman as possible and automatically censor his death scene. In truth I just needed any Branwen tribe member to do the job here, so these can easily be replaced by any other original, and frankly better characters. I just didn't want to use Raven, or Shay, or Niko and Odion so that they maintain their reputation for the final battle.

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The next episode FINALLY slows down the action for a second, and dedicates some time to characters just explaining stuff to each other. It might even be boring, but let's see.

It starts as we expect, with Ironwood carrying Robin and Fiona as he runs across the city and hides. Drones and ships are going crazy around the streets in search of them, but Ironwood knows the secret strategy of entering buildings and pressuring random citizens to let them inside their homes while holding a gun against them. Nothing to worry though, he just needed to wait until nightfall to have a better chance of getting across town and reaching his hidden bunker, and he refused to explain anything to the girls until then.

And so it was. Once it was dark outside, the three beaten warriors just sneak around and avoid the lights like a bunch of ninjas, until they arrived at Ironwood's house. It's kind of silly that they hide at the first place the enemy would search, but that only made the hiding more unexpected for a strategic genius like Watts. They just had to use a secret entrance at the other side of the block to arrive in the hidden bunker underneath the house itself. Here they can finally patch themselves, refill ammo and talk a little. Ironwood explains what has happened in his perspective.

Basically, in the last two weeks, Watts used the robots and took over the nation. Ironwood kept hidden with the other council members, but then one day he left their hideout to try and gather some clues, and came back to see that some had abandoned him. Atlas was just running as usual without them, so they decided to stop hiding in fear like rats and pledged allegiance to Watts as the new ruler in order to continue being part of the elite. The only ones that stood with him were Professor Tess, the old lady who managed the R lab, and The Leader. However, the other ones just straight up revealed to Watts where they were hiding, and so those two ended up kidnapped while Ironwood escaped. For the last few days he has been looking for a chance to kill Watts while he was in Atlas City, but he couldn't find him at all. Then, Robin and Fiona showed up.

And so, Robin and Fiona explain all they've learned, which we saw in the last several episodes. It's not a lot, but it puts into a new perspective once Ironwood reveals something important. He knows why Watts wants Penny, because he too knew professor Pietro Polendina. They were actually really good friends, since it was Pietro who helped Ironwood by turning him into a cyborg years ago. Suddenly the girls question why he never talked to Penny about it, and he reveals it was Pietro's plan that she didn't know anything about her creator. He left Ironwood a final message before disappearing, saying that he wanted Penny to live her own full life completely careless about the past or what her origin is. Ironwood apparently knows massive amounts of lore about Penny, but decided to abide by his friend's last request and never tell her anything about it. Ironwood has no idea what is this "weapon" that Watts wants out of Penny. They can only hope Watts is completely wrong, because now her fate is uncertain.

Before we cut away from this scene, we need to focus on something small. Fiona's back is really itchy for some reason, and she can't stop trying to scratch herself. A close up shot reveals that there is something stuck in her back under the shirt, and its blinking red every now and then.

…

Now we take the perspective of Penny. She's unconscious, and now we can finally see her dreams along with her. All her past dreams were foggy and vapid, but now her memories finally cleared out, and she can see everything perfectly. She can see the huge lab and all its tools and computers, and there she also saw her father. His red lab coat and blue hair made him stand out so much. She walked in and pulled on his leg, making him turn around. He was clearly upset about her, and told her to go away. It was then that suddenly Penny was grabbed from behind by someone, and raised in the air. She turns her head to see who is holding her, and the dream abruptly ends.

Penny barely wakes up, slowly opening her eyes, until she realizes that she's in a cold, dark room with the lights turned off. She can't move at all, and upon looking down only with her eyes, she realizes that her head has been severed from her body. She screams loudly at an ear-shattering pitch, but soon realizes that it's not hurting, so she stops. Soon someone enters the room with her, turning on the lights. Finally we can see that Penny's body was torn apart and hooked up to a wall, with several cables coming out of her neck and connecting her to a computer on the side. The person who entered was the professor lady of the council from episode one. "Hey there, Penny…"

"Professor Tess! It's, uh… I'm sorry you had to see me like this." Penny replied, blushing. "This is the dreadnought, isn't it? Where are the others?! What happened to my friends?!"

"I don't know. Besides, you should start worrying about yourself… Listen to me, Penny." Tess got really close and whispered to her, "he wasn't able to get through the encryption of your system. He's trying to access your 'memories'. His last resort is interrogation. Don't. Tell him. Anything. Whatever your father left behind, he can't get his hands on it."

As she spoke, heavy steps could already be heard approaching the room from outside. Eventually the big door slides open, and so The Paladin enters the room, still dawning his black armor, helmet and cape. Tess looks back in fear and says, "she woke up on her own. Apparently she can do that. Go figure… Anyway, you should probably leave this to me. You don't want to break her, do you?-"

The paladin raises his hand, signifying her to shut up. At long last he speaks with a foggy and slightly muffled voice, "Your help with the android is no longer needed, professor… You may return to your quarters."

"Tisk." Tess says, slowly leaving the room with a nervous sweat. Two androids waited for her outside, forcing her to go to her room. It was all up to Penny now. "Alright, have it your way… Artie."

The door closes, and so Penny is left alone with the massive dude. He takes off his cape and some of his more cumbersome armor pieces, revealing that his whole body is sectioned by small lines, but it still greatly resembles a big muscular man wearing black spandex. This makes it very clear that he's an android like Penny. "It's you again?! You brute! People almost got hurt because of our fight, you stupid, dumb android! This time I want a rematch! That whole thing back there was just a fluke! A cheap shot! A-"

"And yet, you lost. Shout all you want, it won't make you any less inferior to me. Just try to not annoy me with your little voice, or else we'll be saying goodbye to that jaw of yours." the paladin interrupted.

Penny snarls. "I don't wanna talk with a puppet like you! Where is Watts?! I WANT HIM HERE RIGHT NOW TO EXPLAIN HIMSELF!"

"Well, it's your lucky day, little android…" The paladin said, and so… he finally starts to take out his helmet. He turns around to see Penny eye to eye, and so we get the kind-of-obvious epic reveal.

The Paladin was none other than Arthur Watts.

His face had become more full and square, compared to how scrawny and thin it once was. The only trait that remained was his grizzled mustache and hair. Lines running across his face reveals that it isn't natural either — even his head was a robotic construction that was pieced together. Penny had a face of utmost confusion and shock. "Professor… is that… really you? How? What happened?!"

"The same thing that happened to you, in a way… I realized the weakness of my age and declining health. A body like that would not be fit to fight for Atlas, much less rule over it. And so I disposed of it, and put my soul into this android body that I have created and perfected over the last year, using the same method applied on you, android." Watts replied.

"The same method applied on me?! You're not making sense! How could this be possible?! Atlas doesn't have the technology to remove souls from people's bodies! That's what everyone always told me!" Penny shouted.

"And they were right. No technology can do such a thing, and as good as I am, there are limits to what I can achieve in such a small amount of time. And so I decided to abandon science and try something… more daring. It seemed to have worked just fine, don't you think, my little android?"

"STOP CALLING ME THAT! I'M PENNY!" Penny said.

Watts pulls a chair and sits in front of her. "No. No you're not… You're just a hunk of metal, wearing the skin of that lovely young girl I once knew… You're a fake. A disgrace to her memory — That's what you are!"

"… What… what do you mean?" Penny replied.

"So Ironwood really never told you? That coward… Listen here, you. You weren't made out of someone's dream or research… You weren't build to help others, or to "have fun"... You were built in the image of the REAL Penelope Polendina, the professor's daughter… who died nine years ago." Watts revealed.

The camera starts going crazy, getting really close to Penny's face and capturing every bit of shock on her expression. Soon it seemed like she was just staring blankly at him, while lost deep in thought. Watts continued, "I had watched that girl grow up since she was toddler. I took the time to feed her! Befriend her! Teach her! And when Penny was just sixteen years old, she started working as a valued member of the research lab… Without a doubt, that girl was headed for great things. If there was someone who I could trust with the future of Atlas, I knew it had to be her… But then… That!… Pietro, that worthless, infantile moron!… To that bastard, the glory of the things we were building together just wasn't enough! He wanted more, ALL TO HIMSELF, that traitor! Just like the rest of his family, he wanted to go down in history by creating something of unmatched power. Not just any weapon, but the ultimate weapon…

He started stealing equipment from the lab in order to make experiments in the basement of his mansion. To this day, I still don't know what drove Penelope to help him. That idiot always made her head with his stupidity, holding her back from her true potential! To his own luck, his daughter was such a pure and kind girl — she refused to see him for what he truly was, and had faith in him until the very end. But then, one day… the experiment went wrong… The result was an explosion. Penelope was struck by it, and her life ended before help could even arrive.

And that idiot Pietro, after he was released from prison, he spent years building you, as a sick form of grieving for causing the death of his own daughter! It took him many years of sleepless nights, but his work culminated into you. I still fail to fathom just how much effort he spent on perfecting every aspect of your worthless existence! He even gave you a soul to make you as real as possible, but in the end, you lack any memories! You're nothing but a stupid infant, pretending to be a grown person! You will never hold a candle to what the REAL Penelope was!" Watts finished, and that seemed to have done it. That last line broke Penny spirit in a million pieces. She couldn't do anything but mumble in confusion. Everything he said just felt so familiar.

Suddenly, a little beep started coming from inside Watts' chest, and that seemed to have urged him. There was a strange flask on his waist, so he picked it up and opened it. The liquid inside of it was pure white and glowing — liquid Dust. He proceeded to drink it as if it was water, making the cybernetic lines across his body begin to glow yellow as well. The beeping stopped. He says, "Even though my creation has far surpassed you in combat and usefulness, it still has… a simple missing piece. Once Vale and Haven are obliterated, I will focus on crafting a portable reactor that produces infinite energy, but much better than the one within you. You can count on that…

Well… I believe I already said everything I wanted to tell you. Now, the same tool that brought you life, I shall use it to extract everything that Pietro has hidden within you. After that, well… Maybe you could still be useful. I'm not one to throw my pawns in the trash without reason." Watts finished. Finally he snaps his fingers, and so an android enters the room. He was holding something long that was enveloped in a long briefcase. After delivering it to Watts, the android says, "Sir, the barrier wasn't able to stop the rogue train from crossing the border. They may arrive in Atlas City in five hours."

"What about the three fugitives?" Watts asked.

"The target already stopped moving. Should we begin the operation?"

"Hmph. Now that I have the android, I don't care about them anymore. If the Ace-Ops insist on going rogue, then it would be best to eliminate them all. That train will have to stop eventually. Wait for that moment, and send the Branwen to attack them. Maybe if some of them die, it will convince the rest to give up. As for those three… use the Golden Eagle . Just wait until sunrise so then the townsfolk don't complain about the noise." Watts replies, making the robot leave the room.

Penny could see blue light glowing from inside the black briefcase. "What… what is this thing?"

"Tell me, android, what is the most valuable thing in Atlas?… Maybe its people, who were able to craft such a powerful nation with so little time. Maybe it is its Dust reserve underneath the mountain, which powers all our inventions. I personally value its ability to breed one genius after another, like me… Now if you ask me, what is the most valuable thing in Vale? Well, that would be an unfair thing to ask, since the most valuable thing from that nation is no longer there at all…

This Relic right here was stolen from them, hundreds of years ago during the trying times of the First Invasion. The previous empire needed many things to sustain its people, and technology was as barebones as it gets back then. They only trusted magic to do work for them, and to supply their city and villages, they needed supreme magic. The power to grant wishes, and bring thoughts into reality… I used this same artifact to wish for my soul to be placed in this body, and I shall use it now to uncover your secrets."

Watts opens the briefcase, revealing the glowing staff of blue light. The Relic of Creation.

Turns out this was the thing he fetched from the vault underneath the military base of Atlas city. Penny is mesmerized by the sight of it… up until Watts points it at her, then she gets nervous really fast. The whole room started getting darker due to the light from the staff, and so Watts orders it to unlock all secrets within Penny, which makes the staff shoot a strange lighting bolt at her. The magic directly reacts with her green Aura, and starts running rampant across her mind.

And so, Penny starts to scream progressively louder, as her missing memories all come back one by one in a matter of seconds. We merely see small frames of the past as they flash on her eyes. She saw herself growing up. She saw herself smiling and playing around with Pietro and Watts, who looked like adorable gay dads. A younger Professor Tess was also there in the background, and she would scold the three for messing around in the lab. Finally she started remembering her last days, when she looked exactly as she does now, wearing a lab coat like Pietro and Watts. They were working on things in the hidden basement lab, and because of a mistake from Penny herself, it all fell apart. We only see small flashes of that, but we will get down to a flashback episode eventually. In the end, one final memory flashes in her eyes. The memory of herself studying the blueprints for Pietro's ultimate weapons. After that, Penny passes out.

After using the staff, Watts looked at the computer that was hooked up to Penny. He can see that all the hundreds of encrypted files inside her system were wide open for him to mess around with, so he could finally get his answers. But mysteriously, he saw that new files were being created on their own, something that he didn't understand, and simply didn't make sense. How can Penny soul and the system work in such perfect functional synchrony? Perhaps Pietro had worked harder on her than Watts had thought possible. He can think this over later, because now… he has finally found it. The blueprint to Pietro's ultimate weapon…

The Dust Atomic Bomb.

…

The episode ends with two final scenes. First one, it shows Harriet, wounded and nearly passing out, finally spotting Vale City in the distance. She waves her hands up before falling to the floor, finally connecting the two volumes together.

The second shows Ironwood waking up Fiona and Robin to give them some food for breakfast. Robin got up just fine, however, as he shook Fiona awake, he noticed a red light blinking on her back, appearing through her clothes. He pulls out her shirt, making her scream and blush as she covers her chest. Now all three of them can clearly see that she has a tracker on her, hidden in the patch of white wool on her back. Before they can even start to understand how fucked they are, they start hearing loud sounds coming from outside. It sounded like… a plane?

Suddenly, they are forced to take cover as something explodes outside. The ceiling starts to crumble from above, burying the three soldiers into rubble. Once they climb out of the dust and debris, they realize that Ironwood's house was completely obliterated. Looking up, they find the culprit behind the explosion.

It was flying in the air, perfectly still, with its guns pointed at them. The sleeping giant of Atlas, the Golden Eagle. With another death battle about to begin, it cuts to black, ending the episode.

Commentary (spoilers): I don't think there's a single series safe from having an entire episode dedicated to exposition. We had quite a few dozen of them, since this series canonically has more than a hundred and forty episodes by now. Still, I'm glad I finally get to dump all this lore. Honestly, since Penny first appeared on screen in the original volume 1 of the original show, a part of me already had all this headcanon made up. How she was made after a human girl that died in order to carry out her spirit. It's a very played-out concept in fiction, but it's way better than being created just because "Pietro wanted to have a daughter". The simple mystery of her creation is more interesting than it's reveal, and it serves more to the plot than to her as a character. Discovering her true origin would give her a lot to work with, BUT… I kind of fucked up… truth is, Penny won't have any time for that, nor the opportunity. Watts has her in his clutches and she's basically a damsel in distress right now. She will only come back at the fucking final act, after she's rescued. It's sad really, but it's more natural like this.

And well, with this episode, we're officially done with the A plot. How much was that, seven episodes thus far? It's time to check with our girls at Vale, The Branwen's mission, Ozpin's quest, and even the quarrel of the Schnee family, all before we come back to this fight against the eagle. And you thought volume V was a bungled up mess of plotlines, huh? Well, let's go.

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The next episode starts off a little unexpectedly.

The first thing we see is a mansion, in the most high-class place in the city of Argus. Something is a little different about it. The place is dirty, and there's a sense of emptiness all around the neighborhood. Looks like everyone nearby left in fear. Finally we look inside the mansion, revealing that it was the Branwen's headquarters. All the garbage, stolen furniture and little things were all brought along and tossed around the place, making even the pretty mansion look like a huge mess. Everyone of the mercenaries were given their own room with their own luxuries being provided by android servants.

Finally we see the boss herself. Raven had turned the dining table area into a nice living room for them all to rest at. All of them are sitting around in the room right now, listening in silence to the news about their comrade. Raven is smoking like a chimney and still has the same bored look on her face from the last twenty five years. Leslie and Morris were in front of her, awfully scared. They reveal to everyone that X was killed, and so they all wait for Raven to react.

"Is that so?… Hmph. Pathetic… To think we kept such a weakling for all these years. What a waste of good food he was." She said, and that was literally it. Absolutely no respect, and so she resumed smoking. The others all followed suit, mocking X and revealing that they never even liked him. This scene is important, so then later we don't feel any kind of sympathy for any of these fucks.

Eventually Shay arrives at the mansion, and calls everyone else for another mission given by Watts. Raven doesn't like working for anyone, but their partnership will allow the Branwen to survive the end of the world, so then they can go back to the wild once it's all over and claim everything that the Grimm left in one piece. As his hired assassins, they just had to take out the people who were causing trouble. Apparently, all the Ace-Ops broke out of jail just now, and they escaped to Mantle on the train, which is still moving. He wants them to go after them, and meanwhile he has other people who he wants dead outside Atlas. Watts wants to make sure these people are dead before he attacks, to make sure there is no retaliation whatsoever.

The targets are: Ozpin Kurtin, Leo Lionheart, Pyrrha Nikos, and Qrow Branwen.

Ozpin, Qrow and Leo are obviously pretty big targets for being the strongest warriors of their nation. Pyrrha as well, since Watts knows for a fact she can destroy Atlas in a single day with her power, and that she's a traitor. To take these guys down it will require the absolute elite of the Branwen, while the rest focuses on going after the Ace-Ops before they are given the chance to recuperate. They were given photos and information about all their targets, so they could plan ahead their battle.

Taking down Pyrrha will be easy depending on the situation. All they need is to not rely on any metal weapons on armor while executing the hit. Shay, Niko, Odion and Neil decide to take that job. Naturally, Raven prohibits anyone from touching Qrow besides herself, as she sees this as an encounter of fate. The battle to the death that was always meant to be, and that she has been postponing for far too long. Once they were all done with the Ace-Ops, Pyrrha and Qrow, they should all band together and face Ozpin, and then Leo. It was gonna be a difficult fight, but as long as they bring her along, it should be a piece of cake.

Just then, she walked in.

"Why am I not surprised… that no one called me for this reunion?" said the voice of a girl.

The doors of the dining room are open by a gust of wind. All this time, a certain member of the Branwen has been eerily missing from all their scenes. The camera goes all around her new outfit, but it's pretty obvious that it is Vernal. Now at age sixteen, she's a little bit taller, and she matured in the worst way possible. Her gaze has nothing but hatred and indifference, exactly like Raven's. The most notable change was her new hair. Her long brown hair full of flowers was cut short to perfectly depict the loss of innocence, so now it's just a pixie cut and a headscarf. Her clothes can be summed up to an angst-ridden goth girl — her color scheme went from primarily red with a bit of black to mostly black with a small bit of red. A purple ribbon on her wrist can be a good reference to Yang.

"Hey, cherry. Didn't think you'd be interested in saying goodbye to our buddy X." Shay says.

"I couldn't care less about what happens to any of you mooks. I heard you say the name of one of the new targets. Ozpin Kurtin, wasn't it? The head of the Huntsmen from Vale… If he needs to be killed by someone… then I'm gonna do it. Alone." Vernal said.

That would be something to laugh at. To say you're going to fight Ozpin alone and kill him. However, being Vernal the one who said it, no one dared to laugh. Everyone just kept quiet and took it with utmost seriousness. After all, if there's one person who can take down a god of warriors, it's probably going to be someone who has an Ancestral Semblance as powerful as the one she has. Suddenly Raven stands up, putting out her cigar on the arm chair. She walked up to Vernal and looked down on her. "I don't remember giving you the right to call the shots, missy."

Vernal doesn't back down as she used to. She steps forward, meeting Raven with her same gaze and getting all up on her face. "That's funny. I don't remember asking either… This time I don't care about what you have to say. I already made up my mind… I will make them pay for what they did to her. "

After a few painful seconds of staring, Raven is the one who backs down. She returns to her chair as she says, "Suit yourself, then. It'll be nice having two less mouths to feed at the end of the month… Just don't come crying back when you're missing an arm or a leg."

"Well, though I like the enthusiasm, you're gonna have to wait. The information says he's currently in Haven right now, walking around with his buddy Leo. It will be a whole world of trouble finding the right time to get him." Shay said.

"That's fine, I'll just kill both of them together." Vernal says, not even looking back. Shay questions if she's not even gonna wait for Raven to give her a ride. Just before exiting through the door, she looks back and says, "I don't need help from any of you. Besides, it's more fun my way."

And so another gust of wind comes in and slams the door shut, causing the wall to crack. We continue following Vernal as she walks through the mansion, finally arriving outside. She holds onto the purple ribbon on her wrist as she takes a deep breath. Wind started rushing around her, and soon enough she took flight. She was blasted by the strong wind, and was going fast across the skies. She locked the fuck in.

As for the others, Shay has a good idea on how to deal with Pyrrha. He'll prepare all the things, and they will attack tonight. As for Raven, she wants to prepare more before going after Qrow. She'll help with the Pyrrha mission then.

…

AND NOW, finally we take our eyes away from Atlas for an episode.

We pan over a small town somewhere in between Vale and Haven. It's quite small, but it is being used for a very important purpose. Over three hundred people visited this place in the last few days, as it was being used to tend to all of those who were wounded in the war that happened last week, but more importantly, it was being used as a sanctuary for the captured enemies from the Dark Fang, so they could reform. It was all thanks to one man and his team, actually.

Suddenly we cut to the important scene happening in the biggest house of the village. We see a faunus man was forced inside, wearing handcuffs. Without the masks that the Fang always used, we can see how they look dead inside, almost like a vegetable constantly repeating Dark Fang jargon about how humans are evil and the Faunus will rather die than be imprisoned by them. Once inside, we are met again with Ren by the door, as well as Nora and Pyrrha. Ren asks, "This is the last one right?"

"I can't say for certain if he's the last Faunus guy with his brain scrambled, but he's the last one on the waiting list from the prison." says the guard who was handling the Dark Fang goon. "You think your friend can do his trick one last time?"

Ren, Nora and Pyrrha look back at the fireplace of the room, where someone was sitting at the fancy chair. He turns his head to reveal it's Jaune, but he looks different. He has dark circles under his eyes, and is wearing a rug around himself as if he's sick. "Sure!… Trust me, I can do this all day if I have to." He says with a kind smile. He stood up feebly and walked over to the goon. He places his hand onto his forehead, and starts using his Semblance. The yellow light started leaving Jaune's hand and entering the goon through his eyes, and soon enough his expression changed.

In just a few seconds, Jaune had healed his broken soul. In the last volume, we learned that the Dark Fang ninja soldiers had their souls shattered in exchange for more power, which turned them into completely empty servants. Jaune is the only person in the world with a power to heal souls, and so he was put to work with fixing these poor people, made slaves by the White Fang.

Once he was done, Ren came to the side and used his Semblance to peer into his mind, revealing that it was a success. The goon, finally becoming a real person again, falls to his knees and starts crying immediately. His gaze gains light once more. He starts questioning what he did, and couldn't contain his emotions. Years upon years of unconscious actions start to return to memory, and so a lot of shame, anger and regret. He wonders what happened to his family, and how they have managed without him for all these years. They warned him not to take that deal with the Fang, but he ignored them. He could only lament at the fool he was. Finally the guard uncuffs him, and so the Faunus man immediately goes to Jaune's knees and bows to him for helping his mind return. He can't even start to think of a way to repay him, but Jaune didn't want anything from him. He should probably go — his family has waited enough.

Now that the Dark Fang soldiers lost their powers and had their souls fixed, they were pardoned for their crimes, and allowed to walk away back to their lives before the Fang. Jaune's sorry state is due to how much energy he used for the last few days. He healed hundreds of people who came over, at least more than fifty each day. Despite his look, he doesn't let down on his spirit, and hopes the other Dark Fang members are found, so then they can all be healed.

After the Faunus and the guard left, someone else suddenly appeared in the room like a motherfucking ninja. "I really can't thank you enough for what you're doing…" says Ilia. They all look at her appearing in the air by decamouflaging, and she continues, "They would all rot in jail forever, if it wasn't for you… I am in your debt, Arc."

"Hey, don't worry about it. My part in all of this is the easiest. I can't even begin to think how you're gonna deal with the aftermath of this war… maybe some people will never trust Faunus ever again." Jaune replied.

"Yeah, maybe they really won't… But I have to try. I'll try to rebuild that trust, step by step, little by little. There's no other way. It might take years, decades, but I won't give up and repeat the same mistakes of the ones that came before me." Ilia said. After a heartfelt silence and some nods of encouragement from team JNPR, she continues, "By the way, I know it's a little rude of me to say it now, but I promised a friend you would help him. They should be arriving any minute."

"It's alright, trust me. I just (yawn) — I just need some more coffee…" Jaune replied.

"I'll get it, don't worry!" Pyrrha said, going into the kitchen.

Soon later, they hear a knock on the door. Ren opens and sees none other than Sun and Aslan. You see, after he learned that Jaune could heal pretty much any wound instantly, the gears in his tiny brain started to spin. He had requested Ilia if he could bring Aslan over for Jaune to heal her broken arms, after her fight against the Kraken. Once she's inside the house, we can see that they were completely bandaged, just dangling by her sides as she can't move them at all. Jaune welcomes them in, and soon uses his powers on her. The wound was so bad that it took him almost everything he had left to heal her, but he did it.

Aslan could feel her fingers again. She flexes her biceps, tearing apart all the bandages on her arms, and showing that she had recovered. Her smile is contagious. She immediately grabs Jaune and lifts him off the ground with a hug, and he was so low on Aura that it probably shattered his ribs a little bit.

"Ahahaha! I can't believe it! BLOND BOY, YOU'RE THE BEST! I couldn't possibly imagine that the dork from Beacon would become such a hunk with the best power ever! Ahaha~!" Aslan says, finally dropping him on the ground. Jaune falls with his back on the floor, and Aslan immediately sits on his crotch, probably shattering his pelvis too. She got really close to his face. "You know what, mister? I'm like, totally broke right now, so how about I pay you up with a date, huh? I'll make you forget about all the girlfriends you ever had, pretty boy. hmhmhm~ Ahahaha~!" Aslan says with a seductive tone, but then laughs from how embarrassed Jaune looks.

"That—sounds—cool—Aslan—but—That's not really—Necessary—" Jaune was speaking through his gasps of air. He didn't finish though, because suddenly they all heard a noise.

CRACK.

They all turn to the side and see Pyrrha standing by the kitchen door. She just dropped the coffee mug from the platter, and was staring blankly at Aslan on top of Jaune. Suddenly she gets beet red and says, "s-sorry, I-I h-have to g-go get some fresh air…", and so she just runs out from the back door.

"Ah crap… HEY PYRRHA, WAIT UP! IT WAS JUST JOKING!" Aslan said, jumping up and quickly going after her. Nora and Ilia follow right behind, leaving Sun, Ren and Jaune in the room. That was certainly melodramatic.

"Oh brother… So many hot girls out there, and it's such a pain to figure each one of them out." Sun said, helping Jaune stand up. "Don't worry, I'm sure it will all be fine tomorrow."

"I don't know about that… Pyrrha and I haven't talked in a while now. We were too busy during this whole war situation… And last time we did talk, I just screwed things up more. I tried to push her away… I don't even know what to do anymore. Sometimes it feels like she hates me." Jaune replied.

"She's not angry at you, Jaune. She just doesn't know how to tell you what she's thinking. Perhaps it would be best if you took responsibility for the way you feel towards her. Maybe if you say it, you will help her get around her feelings, too. It's clear that you both like each other very much." Ren said.

"REN! STOP SAYING THAT KIND OF STUFF OUT LOUD, IT'S INAPPROPRIATE! How would you know how she feels anyway?!" Jaune replied, angrily blushing.

"I've literally been inside her head over a dozen times — and yours too, for that matter. It's not a mystery to anyone, either. The only weird part about you two is that you aren't together already." Ren explains. "I can sense that your problem is fear. You are afraid to hurt each other."

"Well then, enlighten me on this one: How do I protect Pyrrha, if the only reason she ever gets hurt at all is because she's with me?! She doesn't want to be a Huntress, but she refuses to quit, because she thinks that she owes me for saving her. Tell me, how do I tell her to get away from me, without breaking her heart?!" Jaune asks.

"That's the sad part… you cannot…" Ren said, making Jaune turn to him. He continues:

"I lost count of how many times I hurt Nora, and how many times she got hurt because of me. Our lives would be better if I just chose to drop my weapons and never look back. I know for certain she would follow me… But I chose the path of a warrior, and she came with. After everything we saw, and all the friends we made on this path, we can't just abandon them to start anew. Nora would never accept it. And so, all I can do is use my full power to make sure she never has to suffer again, and have faith that we will be fine. I'm sure Pyrrha feels the same way towards you… You're not dragging her back from a peaceful life, Jaune. You're the one who gave her a reason to fight. She wants to be at your side… If you don't hear what your heart is telling you, this regret will never fully go away, even if she chooses to leave you. I know that deep inside, you don't want her to go… You have to give your love a chance."

Sun cuts the deeply wise speech by stepping in front of Ren. "Hell yeah, Johnny boy, Ren just said it all! Listen, as a guy who failed to get a girlfriend over fifty times, I'm forced to tell you, THAT girl is TOTALLY into you! Like, I never seen anything like it in my life! You have to shoot your shot, dude! The worst she can do is say no… or run away… like she just did, BUT THAT'S BESIDE THE POINT! You have to give it a chance! And you know what? We're gonna help you!"

Sun suddenly grabbed Jaune and forcefully dragged him along, promising that they were going to help him ask Pyrrha out on a date. Jaune literally doesn't even have the strength to say no, so he accepts his fate.

At the same time, Aslan, Ilia and Nora caught up with Pyrrha, and were having pretty much the same conversation — how Pyrrha is scared that their destinies as warriors will never allow their story to end on a happy note, so she rather not even try to be intimate with Jaune, fearing that it will only hurt even more when their bond is inevitably broken. The girls convince her to not give up on love so easily, and make a plan for her to seduce Jaune, TONIGHT!

"W-W-WHAT D-D-DO YOU MEAN TONIGHT?! No way, I'm not doing anything weird, it's getting late, and-" Pyrrha was saying rapidly as she got all red, but Aslan put a finger in her lips and replied, "The night has only begun for you, missy! Let's get you a dress, let's make a reservation at the restaurant, let's find you a spot to be alone at, and then we'll let destiny do its magic! Hehe~"

"No-no-no wai-wai-wait, hold on, let me think it over!" Pyrrha was saying as Aslan continued dragging her away. Nora was excited to help despite not understanding a single insinuation that they made. And Ilia, she couldn't possibly resist hanging out with these three baddies.

And so the episode just becomes a little montage. The boys are teaching Jaune how to be a pickup line machine, and the girls are teaching Pyrrha how to be a slut. Sun made Jaune dress just like himself, with a single black jacket without shirt to showcase his hot abs. Aslan took Pyrrha to the local tailor, and forced her to keep changing into progressively revealing dresses. Once she was able to cause Ilia to severely nose bleed, she was ready. They dispatched Nora to go and find a nice and lonely clearing in the woods for after their date to end at, and that's the whole setup.

Soon they are set to meet in the town, right where the villagers were making a party festival to celebrate the victory in the war. Jaune and Pyrrha immediately fumble all the things the others have taught them due to nervousness, and so they decide to just act normally and go have a normal dinner together at the place Pyrrha reserved.

They go eat some of the local food and do some small talk, reminiscing about all their previous battles and moments from their academy years. They sure had a lot on their plate compared to any other Huntsman in history. They spent more time fighting against super-powered psychopaths than protecting public routes or villages from Grimm. It's a little insane that they are barely two years out of the academy, and people already consider them the strongest people they got. And soon… they are gearing towards an all-out war against the Grimm and Cinder. Knowing the imminent conflict, Pyrrha can't help but get really nervous and depressed, but didn't want to think about it in order to not drag down everyone else. In her mind, there's absolutely no way things are gonna turn out fine. This dinner might be one of the last moments she'll get with her friends.

Jaune of course tries to calm her down and prove that there's still a chance for them. They don't really have to destroy the whole army, they just need to destroy the person controlling it, which is Salem. Jaune has total belief that all their friends can win, considering just how many powerful enemies they overcame in the past, no matter how much suffering and pain they went through. And after that, when they win, they will probably see a whole new world. A land without Grimm, where Huntsmen won't be needed anymore, and so they can be free to do whatever they want.

"And… what would you do in a world like that?" Pyrrha asked.

"I… I will… Well, I certainly won't let things stay the way that they are. That's all I know." Jaune replies.

"What do you mean by that?" Pyrrha asks again.

"You know, there's some stuff that I should start focusing on, I guess?" Jaune says.

"LIKE WHAT, exactly?" Pyrrha asks, almost jumping out of her chair towards him.

Jaune looks away from her massive rack, "I'll figure something out when I get there, alright?! No need to get anxious about it! I told you already, we're all going to pull through whatever comes next. I just know it!… And I know you'll be there to see it."

The two then realize that everyone is looking at them, so they sit back down and blush silently until the plot kicks in. Let's see what the villains were doing.

…

The Branwen made their move. Raven teleported them somewhere in the wild lands on a marked location near the small town. The members present were Shay, Niko, Odion and Neil (a background character in volume V). Raven will stay in that spot and trust the others with the mission. They were given very strong weapons by Watts, which are quite deadly but don't have any metal on them, so it should be perfect to kill Pyrrha with. In this backwater tower she won't find large amounts of metal to fight with, so this is their only real chance. In case they completely fuck it up, Niko has to come in clutch and use his OP Semblance to instantly win the fight, and put Pyrrha down. And so the four warriors leave.

At first they just spy the town from a distance, until they eventually spot Nora leaving the village to search for a private spot. She heard of a natural hot spring spot just outside the walls and followed the trail to find it, but at the same time, the Branwen found her. They came from up the trees while she was distracted, and put her down before she could have a chance to fight. Odion alone was strong enough to restrain her and shut her mouth. The other three approached Nora as she tried to free herself. "I'll be damned… It's you again, gingy? How long has it been, huh? You grew up a little." Shay says, playing with her hair. Odion asks if he should break her neck, but Shay replies, "Nah… I want her… I'll find a way for her to pay me back for our last fight."

With that, he simply points his finger towards Nora, and activates his Semblance. In case you forgot, Shay Semblance is called "Decay" — it allows him to create tentacles that destroy living beings from the inside. The tentacles of light came out of his hand and pierced Nora's chest, directly attacking her soul and making her scream in pain despite not doing any damage to her real body. Her screams are terrifying, but eventually we cut away to Ren.

He along with Aslan, Sun and Ilia were just watching Jaune and Pyrrha have their date from a far, until Ren is hit by a sudden disturbance, almost as if he can feel that Nora is in great pain. He starts walking off and looking around, until he realizes that Nora is taking too long to return from the woods. Soon later, Aslan receives a message on Pyrrha's scroll phone that she took away before the date started, and Ren decided to check what it is. Nora just texted Pyrrha, telling her specifically to come and help her, with a "girls only" problem.

From the very first second Ren knew this was a set up. First of all, Nora doesn't know what a "girl only" problem is. Second, the text doesn't have a dozen emotes like all other texts she ever sent. And finally, Nora would've known that Pyrrha is busy and would call Ren instead, like she did every other time for the last ten years. Ren decides not to warn the others for now, so he just gears up and goes after the signal of Nora's scroll.

Meanwhile, the Branwen were just waiting for Pyrrha to take the bait. Odion kept restraining Nora as she screamed and struggled, while Shay continued trying to break her soul and turn her into a vegetable, so he can bring her back with them for every creepy reason you can possibly imagine. Eventually Neil comes over and warns that someone from their team is showing up on the tracker, but it's not Pyrrha. Shay is forced to drop the bone for now, so he stops torturing her and leaves Nora unconscious. They leave Nora's phone with Neil, and so they hide around in order to ambush Ren when he gets there.

Neil was hiding in the branches of a tall tree as he kept looking at Ren's signal on the radar. He would get there in just a minute, but then… he stopped moving. He stopped just a little farther away from them, and so Neil moved around to try and get a visual of him. What he saw was… Ren's phone, lying on the ground.

And then, he felt a knife to his throat. Ren appears behind him like a shadowy figure, and we can only see his pink eyes looking directly at Neil, looking slightly bloodshot. He says, "Sadly for you… I already got familiar with ambushes like this, last week… Now… Tell me where she is… And if you lie, trust that I will know… and I will be… unhappy."

Neil is clearly sweating, afraid to make even the slightest movement. But he responds with a giggle, before saying, "Let me tell you, kid… It's really not that smart to hunt alone, don't you think?"

Ren dodges his eyes to the side, as he feels a presence approaching him from behind at great speed. His instant reaction is to grab Neil and pull him around so they switch places. It was a good call. The one behind him was Shay, and he completely disregarded Neil in order to attack. He activated his Switchblade weapon, making the long sword jump forward. It went right through Neil's torso, and managed to pierce Ren in the stomach a little bit. They all fall down from the tree, and stand face to face under the moonlight.

"Shay… WHAT THE FUCK?!" Neil mumbles as blood comes out of his mouth.

"Sorry, pal, the bastard was a little faster than I thought." Shay says, he then looks at Ren. "So it's you — the guy with the mind power. Funny seeing you here… What's with that angry face? We were just having some fun with your girlfriend. She's just fine, don't worry about it… after I kill you, I promise I'll continue taking REAL good care of her."

Ren silently stared at him with a murderous gaze, before closing his eyes and saying, "So it's you… Shay, wasn't it?… How bold of you to come attack us again, after what happened to you last time… You know, the only reason you're still alive is because my captain wanted you alive… But my captain… isn't here to save you this time."

"Funny, I was about to say the same thing." Shay replied, making Ren laugh. With that, the two start to battle.

Ren got several times stronger since these two last fought, while Shay remains somewhat on the same level, which creates a balanced fight at first. But something is odd about Ren. He attacks with viciousness and dirtiness that would make Qrow and Russel seem like honorable fighters. Ren completely dropped any pretense of honor and mercy, because there's nothing that he wants more than to see this bitch get killed. He DESPISES Shay more than any other person he has ever met, because he once read his mind and thus knows just how evil he is. And to make him suffer as much as possible, he even pulls up a sick new technique. He touches Shay with his hand, applying his Semblance and entering Shay's mind. From there, Ren is able to create horrifying illusions by messing around with Shay's mind and emotions — an idea he stole from Lord of the Flies in the previous volume. Shay found himself strapped in a tree as it burned, scorching him alive with tremendous pain, until he broke free from Ren's grasp. It felt like an eternity, but it was just one second. The technique does no damage, it merely fucks with the opponent on a personal level, and that is exactly what Ren wants to do to him.

Basically, Ren here should beat the crap out of Shay using his many tactics, as a sort of redemption to how he was fodderized by him in Volume VI. It doesn't last long though, since Shay calls out the rest of his squad as soon as he starts getting pushed back. Odion and Niko appear to back him up, but despite that Ren manages to stand his ground and dodges their cheap shots. As a last resort, he pulls a Scorpion and uses his arrow with rope to shoot Neil on the ground, and pull him close in order to use him as a meatshield hostage. He creates a standoff, but one he could not win.

Suddenly Shay comes back to the fight, but now he carries Nora by her throat and threatens to kill her with his switchblade. It doesn't take long for Ren to realize that these bastards don't care about Neil nearly as much as he cares for Nora, so he's forced to surrender, and so Odion and Niko start beating the shit out of him. Thankfully for Ren, even his edgy self was a genius. Before he even approached Neil from behind, he had already sent an emergency signal to Jaune and Pyrrha in case he were to fail. He just needed to endure a bit.

Those two were just enjoying their conversation through the village festival until Jaune saw their scrolls start beeping. They immediately return to the big house they were at and Pyrrha gears up, but she will not allow Jaune to come with due to his condition after overusing his Semblance. She literally turns his iron armor into a straight jacket using her metal powers, and locks him in his own room before running off. Jaune, naturally, wouldn't stay restrained for too long.

Pyrrha then arrives midway through Ren's beating and saves his ass, but being met with Nora at the clutches of Shay, she cannot fight either. This moment of her meeting again with Shay needs to be really impactful to her. This is the guy who tortured her with his powers until her soul literally shattered, and other offscreen things that we may never disclose. She recoils in shock from his smug smile as she is struck by traumatic flashbacks. Shay compliments her looks, saying that she looks much better than when they first met, in more ways than one. She doesn't have to worry about being enslaved anymore, because they are here just to finish her. With that, she's thrust into battle against Niko and Odion.

Just to recap these two since they were just side characters from plot D of Volume V — Odion; giant black guy with a bunch of scars and tattoos that behaves in an inhumanly cold, even robotic way. His weapon is a baseball bat with barbed wire. Niko; Faunus squirrel guy who's 2ft tall, dresses like a masked ninja, and is the most annoying and arrogant little prick of the bunch. Think of Kennen from League. His weapons are throwing knives and his own claws. Pyrrha immediately realizes they are not packing metal, so she figures this all planned to get her specifically. It seems pretty hopeless due to them having Nora hostage…

But then Nora wakes up. She takes a quick look on the situation, sees Ren on the ground, and then immediately headbutts Shay with all her strength while he was looking at Pyrrha. With that she frees herself and comes to Ren's side. Now the Branwen have lost their leverage, and it's time for JNPR to fight back. The three versus three begins, and since no one here actually gets to use their powers in any creative way, this is just plain average. At max Ren will use his nightmare illusion technique again, and Shay may use his energy tentacles to block attacks, since they are quite solid. At one point it seems that Odion is going to do something big, as he starts to huff loudly after being wounded from Pyrrha's spear. Shay and Niko tell him to not do it, since they will have to leave him behind if he loses his mind and destroys the entire town. This is just to set up for way later in the volume.

The fight ends when Jaune comes in, after having freed himself. He is literally too tired and too weak to fight, but he could never call himself a team leader if he let his team fight without him. And now, Shay sees himself with some sort of predicament. Neil is dying, which is kind of his fault, and that makes them outnumbered. Team JNPR is surprisingly stronger than they anticipated, and they haven't even got a scratch on Pyrrha. It will be pretty embarrassing to admit to everyone else that they couldn't kill a single girl, but whatever. If they can't win the cool way, they win the cheap way.

Suddenly Shay cuts his inner monologue and puts up this ridiculous act where he becomes incredibly scared of team JNPR, grabbing Neil from the floor and calling the others to run away. His teammates immediately understand what he's trying to pull, as they planned this outcome. Shay and Odion dipped, while Niko calls them cowards and decides to continue fighting. Jaune and Nora are told to hang back while Ren and Pyrrha easily take him down, and so that's exactly what happens. Niko relies on cheap shots while his buddies fight head on, so being the only warrior proves how pathetic he really is. Ren and Pyrrha soon had him on the ground with a spear to his neck… and that's exactly what he wanted. Turns out, he's a prick in more ways than one. The two merely stare at the yellow eyes hidden in the darkness of his hood, as he says, "Gotcha…"

Niko then uses the claw of his index finger to prick the palm of his other hand, activating his Semblance, "Eternal Slumber" .

Immediately, a ring of light appears in a wide range around him, trapping both Pyrrha and Ren inside this zone of yellow light that he created. They had no idea what it was, but they could feel themselves engulfed by Niko's Aura. They couldn't move, looking down and realizing that roots of Aura grabbed their feet tightly and were growing quickly until they enveloped their torso. Jaune saw the situation from outside the circle and immediately jumped in. He tackles Pyrrha into the ground and yells at Ren to come closer, but Ren is stuck. Niko says, "I hope you have some good dreams… IT WILL BE THE ONLY THING YOU'LL HAVE LEFT!"

The Semblance's spell finally activates, and the yellow light becomes completely blinding. Nora cannot see what is happening inside, and after several seconds, the light breaks off into nightly darkness once more. Nora looks ahead and sees that everyone was knocked unconscious, even Niko himself. The light show is over, and so Odion and Shay return, already laughing their asses off. They quickly explain that Niko's Semblance allows him to put people to sleep forever, and that her three friends will never wake up again. However, just that isn't enough. Now that they are asleep, might as well finish them for good. Jaune was still on top of Pyrrha as Shay was about to stab them both, when suddenly a whip lashes against him, swaying his blade away.

Ilia arrives, followed by Sun and Aslan. Those three were wondering where the others went in the middle of the festival, but couldn't find them. Then their astral senses started to pick up the battle, and finally the light warned them of the location. Aslan was ready to test how strong her new arms are, but Shay decided enough is enough. Pyrrha is as good as done anyway. He takes Niko's body, and so he and Odion get the hell out of there, making Sun and Aslan give chase.

The two continue running after the Branwen trio until they arrive at the spot where Raven and Neil were. She promptly opens a portal right next to them, allowing them to escape the two powerful Huntsmen that would kill them pretty easily to be honest. They get back to Atlas in the blink of an eye, and already celebrate their success. Pyrrha was gone… At least, they thought so.

Suddenly we return to the woods, as Nora desperately tries to wake up her friends. They are still breathing, their hearts still beat, and yet no amount of shouting, shaking, or pain seems to wake them up. That until… she shook up Pyrrha. She was the only one who managed to escape, explaining that Jaune jumped on top of her, and covered her with a bubble of his own Aura that protected her from Niko's Semblance. In turn, he got hit with the Semblance as well, and was put in eternal slumber. It's a pretty frantic scene, as they literally don't have a clue on how to help Jaune and Ren. They were out, no matter how much they called their names. With that, the episode ends. No commentary until later.

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Man, I got really descriptive about this section, huh? Let's go back to really fast summation.

Jaune and Ren were immediately taken to the hospital of Vale City. Try as they might, the doctors couldn't wake up those two through any means possible in the last several hours. Now it's almost noon of the next day, and all Nora and Pyrrha have done is stay beside them in the hospital room. Eventually Pyrrha just goes out to the roof to get some alone time. She knows this is happening again because of her, and her confidence already starts to waver. But then she hits herself and remembers she already went through that arc last volume. It was time to stop crying about it and try to fix the situation by any means necessary, exactly as Jaune would've done for her. Just then she looks down, and sees a new ambulance arrive in front of the hospital. Her keen eye is able to spot that it is Harriet Bree from Atlas, who's butt she kicked back in the Vytal tournament. She jumps down the roof and follows her inside the hospital corridors, and soon meets with Tai Xiaolong, who came to see the situation. In case you forgot, he's the current Huntsman detective of the Vale City Police. He explains how they found her, and how they weren't able to make contact with Atlas since two weeks ago, when the war started.

Then, while the doctors were in the middle of her check up, Harriet wakes up again and panics. She doesn't know where she is and starts kicking and punching the walls, making everyone run away in fear. Pyrrha and Tai have to restrain her, and she comes to her senses while breathing heavily. Without a single break, she explains that she needs to speak with Ozpin right away, but unfortunately for her, he went on a trip to Haven along with Leo. And so, Harriet just asks for them to call all the Huntsmen in the nation for a meeting at the castle, and let her speak.

…

Then, we can now cut away back to team RWBY for the first time. Just a few days ago they were fighting against the toughest enemies they ever faced, and so they are just taking their time to recuperate. The battle that happened in Vale City left the place a mess but no citizens were killed. People were just cleaning the roads and fixing their rooftops and windows that were broken. Here we see just an individual scene for all the girls.

Ruby was just running around town to check the damage done, where she bumps into Oscar and the two have a little conversation about what happened back in Planice. She hypes him up a lot, since now he awakened an Aura on his own, meaning he was chosen by destiny to be a cool and badass warrior like her. Oscar has no combat training whatsoever, but he seems to have naturally mastered his Semblance to create the green bubble barrier. Ruby is really busy with world-ending stuff right now, but she promises to train him personally once they both get time. Who knows, even though he's late, he can one day be one of the strongest of them all.

As for Weiss, she's repeatedly trying to contact Atlas to no avail. It's not as if the communication tower is broken, it's just that the calls get automatically rejected by the service provider. Someone from the inside has blocked the two nations from talking, and that makes Weiss worried that Atlas was attacked by the Fang as well. To her utmost surprise though, there was one last message left to her by her own father before the line was cut. Jacques demands her to return home at once, and tells her to forget all the trouble they had in the past just this one time, because it's an emergency. She needs to come back home as soon as possible, and can even bring all her other friends if she must. It was a very ominous message from her father, who she didn't talk with at all since he disowned her one and a half year ago. It made her so worried that she actually decided to listen to him for a change, but couldn't call him back to ask about the situation.

Yang spent a long time searching for Blake, since after being declared free of all charges, she just disappeared without a trace. Eventually she was able to find her, sitting alone at the very top of Vale mountain. The top was like a wide plane circle, shaped like a fighting ground, and from there she could see the entire city and the castle. Blake was sitting on the edge and looking down, when Yang suddenly appeared from the other end after a long climb. She realized that she needed to approach slowly, so she just sat beside her and the two kept quietly staring at the city down below for about an hour. Just this once, Yang decides to drop her overly-optimistic mommy attitude, and just be real with Blake. It seems like they are quite screwed. Even if this war was over, they know that Cinder is still alive out there, and planning something much worse than they can think of. The future looks pretty bleak and dangerous, but… it will be terrible if they start losing hope now. Too many people sacrificed themselves for the girls, and they shouldn't answer them with despair. They have to keep fighting to not disappoint all the people who believed in them.

Blake finally talks back, and explains the few things that Adam confided to her. About how he was proud of her for not turning up the same way he did, and having the courage to overcome her past. Even if Adam knew that all the meaningless violence was wrong, he wasn't strong enough to overcome his hatred, and was consumed by it. If it wasn't for Cinder, Blake thinks it could've ended differently. Maybe she could've helped him find the way to inner peace, so he would return to being the Adam that she knows deep inside of him, who loved his friends more than anything. However, this brutal and bloody ending was the one they got, and she can't reverse it. At the very least, Blake will continue the path that Adam carved out for her. The path where she destroys all the evil things he believed in, and crafts a world of genuine peace for both humans and Faunus. She doesn't care that Cinder is alive — she will take down anyone who threatens the peace of this world. With that, Yang gives her a surprise hug, just to remind her that she is a person with many loved ones, and not just an expendable pawn that fights until her death. If they will really get Cinder again, they will do it together, and they will WIN together.

And then, basically at the same time, all the girls get a notification, demanding that they show up at the castle main hall for another emergency announcement. They barely got to clear their heads, and shit is already starting to pick up again. Without choice on the matter, all the girls move out.

Harriet was taken to the castle still with bandages over her body, and awaited for all the available warriors to show up. However, she waited for a couple of hours, and the only ones that turned up were team RWBY, Pyrrha, Qrow, Sun and Aslan, and a dozen other Huntsmen warriors that fans created. Tai explained to her that they just got out of a war, and their city was under attack not long ago. Almost everyone is wounded and tired, while a few died. Atlas sure didn't help, or even cared to know about it.

With everyone there, Harriet begins her speech. She explains all the basic stuff she knows about the situation on Atlas, how Watts took over the military, hired Branwen warriors, arrested the Ace-Ops, and now pretty much rules the nation. The Ace-Ops are free now, but all of them combined won't be enough to beat the army of androids that they themselves created. Not only that, but every second that passes, the factories are making more and more android soldiers. Harriet needs as many of them as she can in order to help save Atlas. If they don't, the evil psychopath will obviously attack them for certain in the future, as he has done so in the past. This speech was very blunt, as if Harriet doesn't realize how much she's asking of them. The response from the small crowd… is silence.

Harriet then opens up more, acknowledging how terrible Atlas has treated the other nations, but then the warriors in the crowd started giving her a piece of their mind. Even if they never admitted, there was always this lingering idea that a battle between Atlas and the other nations would break out in the next few years. Atlas just keeps building more, inventing new weapons, making a bigger army, all the while Vale and Haven dealt with the real danger of Grimm. Even during the invasion of the last Vytal Festival, they refused to take any blame or responsibility for the attack that they took major part in causing, and failed to catch the main culprit. And now, they didn't help at all with this war against the Dark Fang. The Huntsmen have absolutely no reason to care what happens to Atlas. Some of the warriors start throwing those facts at her face, and she has to stand silently.

Harriet started shaking, finally dropping to her knees. She shouts, "Okay! I get it! I… I know it was foolish of me to ask… I know I'm just terrible at talking, anyway… It would be really stupid to help a nation that despises you. I get it!… But if you won't help Atlas, then… please… Just this once… PLEASE HELP US !"

Harriet's last three words echo across the grand hall, kicking in the epic music. She bows her head even further and continues, "My teammates… my only friends… They are all fighting right now!… They are all fighting, because they want to be free!... Because they don't want to be ruled by another evil bastard, like all the damn others!… They want Atlas to change for good… I don't know how long my friends will last, and I don't want them to risk everything, only to lose in the end!… I don't want to disappoint them all for coming back with nothing to show… I am from Atlas, but now, I ask you also as a fellow warrior… Please… THEY NEED YOUR HELP!…

I'm sorry for how my nation has treated all of you… I'm sorry for all the times we turned our back to your cries for help… I wish there was something, ANYTHING I could give you in return, but I have nothing else but my word… My promise that, one day, we're going to stop taking orders from selfish idiots… and that we will make up for all the times that we left you hanging, right when it mattered most… And I know that… My words mean absolutely nothing… You don't have to suffer more than you already did this past week… I understand… I'll go back alone if I have to, but I won't run away!… BECAUSE MY FRIENDS NEED ME, AND EVEN IF I HAVE TO FACE AN ENTIRE ARMY TO HELP THEM, I'LL STILL FIGHT LIKE I ALWAYS HAVE!"

She finally raises her head, showing her tears to everyone. And well… what a sight to behold. Harriet, one of the proudest warriors of the proudest nation, bowing in forgiveness for their past, and begging for help. Something like this is completely unthought of from Atlas, at least for several hundred years. The part about the friends specially struck a sweet spot with everyone, because all of them are in the same shoes. They will do anything to help their friends and teammates, just like Harriet is doing right now — even stomping over her pride if it means getting any help for the people she loves. They were all still silently watching her bow to them with tears falling on the red carpet. Finally she gets up and decides to leave the hall, but then someone steps forward.

Qrow starts walking towards her. He was saying, "There, there… No need to cry, now… I think we can all get the picture… ALRIGHT, you bunch of heartless bastards, you can all stay here and mope around if you want! I'll go with her. You guys will only slow me down anyway."

"Oh please, as if crying for help was ever needed." Weiss suddenly speaks from among the crowd, walking ahead as her team follows behind her. "Don't treat us like a bunch of mercenaries… As long as there are people out there in need of help against a monstrous enemy, it's a Huntsman's job to help them. It doesn't matter who they are, or where they come from… Ms. Bree… you will not return home empty handed… You have my sword."

"And my scythe!" Ruby says. "And these fists!" Yang continues. "And my blade as well." Blake says.

And so the other Hunstmen all continue to step up, until everyone is surrounding Harriet. All of them are going to help. She immediately starts to shrug her tears as Weiss pats her on the back. Everyone is getting really hyped up about finally going to Atlas for the first time in their lives, and it's an awesome scene of pure comradery. Harriet was just mumbling as she scratched her eyes, "Thank you… Thank you!..."

And then, we focus on Pyrrha, still looking at the crowd from behind. What she just heard is that Watts has united with the Branwen to take over Atlas, and so that must mean… the people who put a spell on Jaune and Ren must also be there. She quickly leaves while everyone else surrounds Harriet.

She immediately flew back to the hospital, coming to warn Nora of what she found out. She was still just idly holding Ren's hand since they got here. Pyrrha explains her plan to go to Atlas, fuck everything up with her powers, and find that short guy who put the spell on them. Hopefully if she gets rid of him, Ren and Jaune might wake up again. However, Nora has another theory. For the first time she turns around, and we see her face. Her eyes were sharp and serious, an expression that Nora literally never made before. Like literally, she never looked serious so far, not even when angered. She says, "Don't worry, we'll find a way to save them… But you're not going alone. If this ability didn't fade away yet, it must be tied to something more than his presence. There might be a secret that only he knows, and we need him alive to cure them. We're taking them on the journey, even if they are asleep."

Pyrrha just kept staring at her weirdly. Nora's speech lost all her usual mannerisms and jolly tone, leaving only a focused and cold voice. She even sounded smarter than usual, making a pretty good point. "Uh… Nora? Are you… feeling well?"

"Of course, I can fight just fine. Now come on, I have to get my Ren back." Nora replies. She picked up Ren from his hospital bed and put him on her back, urging Pyrrha to do the same with Jaune. The nurses try to stop them, but a single glance from Nora makes them back off. Suddenly, Nora became team leader.

…

After a fade to black, we see the west wall of Vale again, with the same two guards who spotted Harriet that morning. They are surprised when suddenly a dozen shadows jump down from above, landing on the wall. Harriet was leading the charge, still bandaged. Weiss points out that she should probably stay in the city and rest for one more day, but Harriet won't forgive herself if she's left behind. They were checking if everyone was ready, when suddenly Pyrrha and Nora arrive with Jaune and Ren on their backs. Team RWBY had a lot of questions, but Pyrrha promises to explain everything as they travel. They should arrive at Atlas by noon tomorrow.

"Robin… Penny… Cee… Fio… Please, hold on! I'm coming!" Harriet says to herself. And just as she thinks back to her friends… let's cut to her friends, shall we?

…

In the end of the previous Atlas episode, Ironwood, Robin and Fiona just got their bunker blown up by the sleeping giant of Atlas City, which is a giant golden eagle robot. They are going to fight it now, but it looks like a pretty hopeless situation, all things considered. Robin and Fiona are tired and wounded, and this time they don't have Penny to clutch the win, so it's all up to Ironwood. The camera changes to faraway, revealing that the androids evacuated the entire range of the battle, so they could go all out without worrying about civilian casualties. The three grab their weapons and prepare for a sudden fight.

This bird is WAY stronger than the Black Widow from Mantle, and well, the girls couldn't beat that one either without Penny, so of course they are not gonna do anything useful. The Golden Eagle was somehow fast and agile enough to dodge anything they threw at it, being able to fly at any direction at any angle. It has several built in guns, but its melee weapons are its claws and wings, which are powered into hot cutting blades by an energy discharge at their edges. It can pretty much cut through anything, even their Auras.

Like I said, this is mainly an Ironwood fight. Ironwood's Semblance doesn't give him any crazy powers, besides freezing time outside whenever he's in deep thought. His real power comes from his insane cyborg strength and the fact that he's a weapon specialist — having hundreds of different guns hidden in his bunker, INCLUDING his own twin revolvers weapons, "Due Process", which are the same as the original show, even having different modes. His cyborg arm also has all sorts of shit in it, like grenade launcher, minigun, rocket punch and wrist blade. Even with all that, he still has too little ranged capabilities against such a strong foe who stays permanently in the air. Bullets rarely land, and everything inside the Golden Eagle was more androids controlled by Watts, so the piercing damage didn't do any real harm to its passengers. He spends most of the fight jumping over rooftops, dodging fire and shooting back without much substance beyond that. Ironwood's only hope now is to use the canon mode of his twin revolvers to deliver massive damage to the eagle's weak point, but… where the hell is it? It was built before he became general, and he never cared to learn about how it works despite being the only person authorized to use it. It would take a while to defeat this enemy.

Unannounced to both Watts and Ironwood, another force had entered the city. The Ace-Ops that escaped prison yesterday have blasted through the train tunnels, all the barricades set by Watts, and have arrived directly at Atlas City on the same train they took in Argus. The train station was heavily protected to slow them down, but even without most of their gear or armor, they were able to plunge through. Most of the Ace-Ops stay behind to fight the android horde, while only the wounded Winter and Ciel decide to move ahead and go check out the battle against the Golden Eagle at the other side of the city.

Eventually they arrive to back up Ironwood, Fiona and Robin, but can't offer much either since the eagle is quite OP as long as they don't have the means to fight it in the skies. Winter is really messed up, but claims she can use her Semblance to freeze the super hot energy core of the eagle once she gets close, which will definitely defeat it. However, Ironwood realizes that she will die if she uses any more energy, getting all up on her face and shouting at her to not even try it. He expresses how he felt horrible for letting her behind to fight that day, and spent all this time grieving at the thought that she was killed. He won't let her sacrifice herself for him any longer. In this situation they are no longer lieutenant and general, but fellow warriors and friends, and he sees way more value in her life than in his. This absolute chad line is enough to make one of the coldest ladies on the planet noticeably blush and say, "…V-very well…"

The battle is nowhere close to being done, but the episode is near over. As our hook for the end of this fight, one of our main characters seemingly is taken out. Ciel wanted to make absolutely sure Robin and Fiona didn't get any more hurt than they already were, just like Harriet asked her to do. And so, in one decisive moment, she pushed them out of the way from a big homing missile that the eagle had fired. Ciel is caught at the center of the explosion, and her limp body flies away from the smoke. Her beret falls off her head, and Fiona screams her name in pure shock. We cut to black, and the episode ends.

Commentary (spoilers): It's crazy that Jaune and Pyrrha scenes are the only remaining piece of what the show used to be. It used to be quite goofy, and it was a show about teenagers learning to be heroes, with very minimal stakes in each of the first three volumes. Their romance is the only thread left to conclude from the early days, and I think its full potential can only be used if the romance is resolved only at the very end of the series. Jaune started out as a big main protagonist on the same level as Ruby, but we ran out of plotlines for him to be the lead in. He has nothing to prove as a warrior anymore, and he literally saved everyone's asses hundreds of times by now, directly and indirectly. For that reason, I think we reached a very bad point in his character, where we can feel a lot of emotion from seeing how much he achieved, but we can't develop him in any major way without ruining what is liked about him, so we can only focus on the small stuff. All of this also applies to Pyrrha, except she had really good development in the last volume, given that she was straight up kidnapped and forced out of two volumes in a row by the plot, so naturally she had to catch up to the others in that department. Also, Nora locking the hell in after possibly losing Ren is a concept I always wanted to use. I want to give her something small but profound in this volume, which will setup a bigger moment in the next volume, where she might actually lose everything.

Harriet also gets a big moment of development here. In volume IV she gets a very minor character arc during her fight against Sky, which is about taking pride in who she is and not letting anyone's opinions ever drag her down. She didn't get much else since then, so I decided to give her something else this volume. In the first episode she states her dream to be stronger than others, feared by everyone, and with the power to command her own squad. I like the way her dream is resolved, but in a method she didn't believe it would work. The strength she craved was not her physical prowess, but her will to not give up. She is respected by everyone not by inducing them with fear and a fancy title, but by showing her real thoughts and emotions for the first time, and earning their respect by simply being a courageous person. And now, she leads the special squad that she wanted, going after a big mission. Seeing her cry is a cherry on top of it all, because she's one of those characters who you think will never let others see her weakness. Pretty sweet moment for her, but again, it's as good of a sunshine as she'll get.

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I hoped you liked the hook from the eagle fight, because it's time for my trademark moment to completely abandon a fight for a whole episode and focus on something else. Not something bad, whoever. It's time for the audience to FINALLY learn the backstory and characters of both Jacques and Willow Schnee, in a two-part episode. It's all gonna go back to the fight, trust me.

…

It all begins with a little narration. We don't know who it is yet, because we never heard this woman's voice before. All we see are still shots of the surrounding snow, on what it seems to be a graveyard. The woman says, "As always… things have only become worse since you left us… Where do I even start now?… Well, everything always starts with one evil person, doesn't it?… An evil man and his army have taken over our home… all he wants to do is destroy the people he hates, and command everything without question… How familiar, isn't it?… Perhaps this is the fate that Atlas cannot escape from… It's almost like all that you did for us, simply didn't matter at all… things just return to how they were, forty five years ago…

I feel so useless… Without you by my side, I forgot who I was… I forgot how to be a wife… how to be a mother… how to love… And now, look what has happened to our family… all because I'm weak… I'm sorry… Father…"

Finally we get a revealing shot of her full design, and it's Willow Schnee. She is staring directly at a gigantic tombstone, with many engravings to look as majestic as possible. It was Nikolas Schnee's grave, as you might have guessed. Her design can remain the exact same as the original, I just want her to use a big snow coat or cape that purposefully hides her waist. She's holding a bottle of expensive wine. She continues, "Our family hasn't been the same for years now… Whitley has locked himself inside his room for days at a time… Weiss has moved on from us… Winter is in the clutches of the enemy… and Jack is doing all that the evil man wants to, just to keep us all alive… And me?" Willow questions herself. She looks at the bottle on her hand and frowns. She lets it fall, making the bottle shatter on the stone path. "I just spent the last eight years… trying to forget the pain of losing you… and the worst part?… The one who suffered the most… were my children.

I can't think of a way to apologize to them… All the moments when they needed me the most, I was drinking away my sorrow, far away… I don't think I even have the right to call myself their mother anymore… I was supposed to be the pillar that kept our family together… but I couldn't last a single day without you, holding that weight with me…

I can't change the past, father… I can't erase the damage I've done… but this crisis has made me realize something… I cannot just leave things the way they are… I need to help fix everything, just like you would've done… But first, I need to destroy the evil that poisoned our family… That's the only thing I can do…

I promise you, father. I'll bring our family together again." Willow said. She kneels down and prays in front of the tombstone for many minutes. However, the graveyard wouldn't be lonely for long. Someone approached her from behind. We only see their feet, but we see a drop of blood fall on the snow as they pass. Soon, she speaks to Willow.

"I knew I would find you here, tyke… But I didn't think I'd get to see the old you ever again." a woman says. Willow quickly turns her back, recognizing the voice. And it's…

Maria Calavera.

She looks beaten, with her clothes torn a bit, and something that looks like a bleeding injury on her stomach. She's dressed in her dark blue dress, with the two scythes by her waist. Casual reminder for those who just joined in, but she's not a cartoonish granny in this version — think of her past-self design , but with grizzled hair and the high-tech goggles.

Willow says, "It can't be… Big sis? Is that… Is that you?!"

Maria smiles. It's been some long years since they last saw each other, and maybe even more since Willow called her "sister". Maria falls to her knees in pain, and Willow quickly raises her up. She explains that she has been on the run for the past two weeks. Somehow Watts was fully aware that she lived secretly in Mantle, and he made sure to take her down along with all the Ace-Ops. Maria saw the future and escaped, but couldn't do shit to prevent what happened to the nation due to the fact she could only look three hours into future events, and it was all so quick and sneaky. Then she spent two weeks hiding with several different friends and escaping from combat as much as she could. However, they managed to find her while she was recharging the battery of the goggles, and she got shot in the stomach by a Dust bullet while trying to run. Winter is the last person she can rely on, which is something she absolutely didn't want to do, so as to not put her in danger. She only has a few more seconds of battery left on her goggles, and then she will become a completely useless blind lady. Maria looks into the future one last time, and explains that enemies are coming their way right now, and that they need to run. And exactly as she finishes saying that, the blue light from her eyes is turned off, and so she is trapped in darkness.

Willow quickly walks Maria out of there on her shoulder. Her personal ship was parked just out of the cemetery, however the problem that Maria foretold appeared just as they were about to enter. They are approached from behind by two android soldiers, holding guns. They call out her name, and so she hides Maria behind her.

They explain to her that Winter has escaped confinement in Argus, and has gone rogue. However, since Watts still wants some leverage on both Jacques AND Winter now, he finds it best to kidnap Willow and use her as a hostage to keep both of them in line. The androids expect she won't put up a fight and tell her to come without question…

But they were very, very, very wrong.

Willow unbuttons her long white coat, revealing that she has a small dagger on her waist. She draws it really fast, and with quick successful slashes, she turns the two androids into minced chunks of metal in just one second. Yeah that's right, she can fight in this version. After their pieces fall to the ground, Willow realizes, "Winter… she's free?… So, that means… Now it's our chance!"

Willow puts Maria inside her car-like ship, before blasting off into the sky. Destination: Schnee Mansion at the northern suburb of Atlas City.

…

In the next scene, we take the perspective of Jacques. Note that in this rewrite, Jacques is redesigned to be buffed, tall and intimidating — built quite like Ironwood so he actually looks threatening enough to feel like a villain. He's calling people on the phone and telling them what to do with all the Dust they have in store across several places all over Atlas. Klein was there just watching the dude have a nervous meltdown as soon as the call was off. Watts just kept asking for more and more free Dust to fuel his army and weapons, and now something big was happening in Mantle, causing most people to stop going to work at the mines. They are gonna run short of it soon. Jacques decides to go take a smoke break in the garden, and leaves Klein to do some basic paperwork without him.

Soon after Jacques leaves, Whitley enters the room with a cup of tea. We already saw his new design back in the last volume's first episode, but to summarize, he got a new slicked haircut, with a nice white suit that is exactly like the one Jacques wears. He offers Klein the tea, and soon after drinking it… Klein passes out on the table. Whitley apologizes, but knows what must be done to ensure a better future for Atlas. He pushes the butler to the side and starts working on the computer, opening the main database of their company's security systems.

Meanwhile, Jacques was standing outside, just smoking and mumbling to himself. No matter how much of a pain it is, he has to do it. He needs to win Watts favor to continue being powerful. He has to continue keeping their family at the utmost top of the ladder. He has to make as much money as he can. Nothing else matters to him. He says to himself, "old man… I made my promise… I won't fail again… I won't fail all of them as I have failed with you… I'll do whatever it takes!"

And with a climatic fade to white, it's flashback time.

…

Let's go back, thirty years into the past.

Atlas City, also known as "The Capital" before the fall of Kalius, was still in the process of building itself as a strong, free nation without an evil super-powered emperor. Its main trades were mining from the mountains, and inventing new doohickeys when they had free time. Everything was still developing slow as shit, since they still used coal for everything. And in the middle of this legion of miners, there was a certain man called Antony, and his son, Jacques — also called Jack by literally everyone around him. He was a bright little white-haired boy who lived in poverty with his father, who made a living by selling precious stones and gems that he found in the open mines. Despite how grueling and exhausting working on the mines is, the young boy still found it in himself to go to the public library and study as much as he could in his free time, because he wanted to be an inventor when he grew up. He was dedicated to his dream of becoming someone important to the city.

It was on his afternoons at the library that he came to meet Willow Schnee, who was ten years old just like him, and looked very much like kid Weiss with long hair. She would come there often to read, but mostly stuck to story books. It seemed like everyone was afraid and careful around her, for a reason that Jack didn't know yet. He found her kind of cute, and liked that she was also conveniently white haired just like him, so one day he inevitably struck up a conversation. Willow was surprised that a boy actually talked to her. Everyone in this town fears her because of her father, since he can be a little overprotective sometimes — like when he threw a random guy through a window for making her cry, or when he split someone's car in two for almost running over her, or when he pinned a dude to the top of a light pole for being rude to her, and other dozen situations where Willow was put in slight danger and made Nikolas commit war crimes against the people who were indirectly responsible.

These two talk about dumb child stuff, like their dreams and their favorite things. Willow tells him her dream of marrying a handsome prince from a far off land one day, just like the princess from the books she reads. Her little fantasy makes Jack laugh, and thus makes Willow cry for not taking her seriously. Everyone else in the library runs the fuck away from the scene as fast as possible, and soon someone else enters the place — a teenage girl in blue, with black hair and silver eyes. It's young Maria, still before she left Atlas to go train in Vale. Willow runs at her to cry against her chest, and Maria scolds Jack for making a girl cry. Thankfully for him, she saw the future and knew this would happen, and came to pick Willow up before Nick heard about it and crashed out. Little Jack is lucky to walk out of that library alive. He watches the two go away with the biggest poker face imaginable.

The next day, he would meet again with Willow at the library, and apologized for having laughed at her. Willow forgives him, and calls him to go play in the snow outside. She always wanted to have a snowball fight against the other kids, and promises she won't cry this time, so then her big sister or dad won't pick on him. And Jack, making his first friend ever, follows her outside to play. It looks like a beautiful friendship was under way.

With that it begins a little montage, showing as the months and years passed, and how the young Jack continued to study, and continued to hang out with Willow on a regular basis, and even meet her father one day. Soon they became two young adults, in a city that continues to grow larger as the years pass. Jack was now sixteen years old. Despite how much he studied, he couldn't find anything better to do, except continue to help his father dig in the caverns. And now, we have a very important scene to showcase.

While down there, hammering the wall with their pickaxes, eventually they encounter the white liquid of death. It starts seeping from the stone and quickly filling the floor. Tony tells Jack to pick all their shit and leave as fast as he could. Back then, Dust was only known to be this strange, useless liquid that caused terrible illnesses to miners who interacted with it, or the gases that it released. Though Tony was quick to leave, Jack kept on staring at it. In the mystery of the white liquid, Jack saw his chance to make something special. In all the books he read, it was commonplace for genius across the ages to come up with great things while studying dangerous stuff that everyone was afraid of. That makes Jack want to grab a sample of the white liquid in a bottle, and bring it back to their house for research.

And so, for the next full year, Jack spent most of his time studying more and more samples of the white liquid. His father always told him to stop focusing on that weird shit and just go to work with him, but Jack grew bratty and obsessed with his research. One fateful day, Jack got angry with his father and set his foot down, leaving him to go work alone while he stayed at the house to continue playing with his experiments. Twelve hours later, he got notified that a cave-in happened at the mines, and his father was one of the many people who died by being buried.

Jack spent the next month just grieving endlessly, for he believed that his absence was the real reason his father died. Maybe if he was there, he could've helped him survive. In his distress he just started drinking booze every day, and abandoned every other aspect of his life, becoming this young bum aimlessly brooding in the dark corners of the bar, and passing out in alleyways. He couldn't even muster the will to return to their house.

However, someone still cared for his ass, and that was Willow. She realized that he went missing for all this time, and came to bring him back to reality. She convinces him that what happened was not his fault, and that his father wouldn't want him to spend the rest of his life like this — much less continue to work on the same job that killed him. Willow is well aware of his experiments with the white liquid, and urges him to keep trying. Now he has nothing else to get in his way. It's his chance to follow his dreams and use his knowledge to make something good out of it. Willow proceeds to give Jack a ton of money that she saved up for years, urging him to continue his experiments until he succeeds. She leaves with a little hug and a kiss on the cheek. That was enough for Jack to understand — he had nothing else but his dream. And so, he had to keep going.

Jack locked himself in his house and dedicated 24 hours of every day to continue his experiments. He made all sorts of mixtures and made the white liquid react with any chemical that Atlas had access to at the time. After weeks of lonely and grueling work… he had done it. He made a discovery. First, he had to remove the acidity from the white liquid, revealing a different component that was mixed with it — some viscous, bright layer that began floating above the normal white liquid. Jack collected it, and put it through a distillation process during the cold winter nights. After some time, the viscous liquid solidified like ice, but it was so frail that even the slightest touch would make it crumble… to Dust.

At first he didn't know what to do with it, until some accidental shenanigans caused the powder to be set ablaze inside his house. And so Jack just watched as it burned… for one whole month. The minuscule pile of dust, barely 10 grams of that shit, was capable of keeping a really hot fire going for thirty days without stopping. It lasted so long that he even brought Willow to see it with him. Jack went through the creation process again, and this time he started to analyze his invention in comparison to the basic coal that everyone uses. He came to the conclusion that his compound was about TWENTY FIVE THOUSAND TIMES more energy dense than the common coal.

Jack had done it. He single handedly invented something that can change the world forever.

From then on, with Willow's help, it was only a matter of advertising his new invention, acquiring customers, and not revealing to anyone how he made it. She helped him get the word out across the entire city, and was even the one who came up with the name "Dust" to begin with. The product started getting a lot of hype once Jack proved that one pound of his brand-new Dust was capable of powering the train that goes across the three cities for one week straight. That poor kid from a poor neighborhood, who once worked all day in the mines for a cheap living, was now an adult making HUGE amounts of money, and he didn't even know what to do with all of it. He just expanded his business a little, and made a little machine that carefully makes Dust on its own, speeding up the process of creation by a lot. Several coal mining companies went bankrupt in a very short time after the creation of Dust, but instead of being a dick about it, Jacques offered all the workers a place on his upcoming business, collecting the white liquid for him in the mines, so he could work only as the manufacturer of the substance. Since so little Dust could make machines, vehicles and stoves going for days, he could sell small portions of it for a very good price, and thus pay all his new workers with way more money than they ever made by just selling coal. By the time he made his eighteenth birthday, Jack had a whole ass monopoly made with his creation, going across all the other cities of Atlas, and soon beyond. Other geniuses of his time recognized his achievements, and already started building new inventions all surrounding Dust as its main power source. Cars became smaller and more high-tech. Flying machines became way more manageable and possible without constant recharging. Soon methods were invented for Dust to supply electrical power, and since then, Atlas City became a city of the future, where people worked non-stop and new crazy inventions appeared every day. Willow couldn't be more proud of what Jack achieved, and his only regret was not being able to pull it off while his dad was alive, and give him the good life they always wanted.

And well, everything went fine and dandy… until THAT happened.

One day, Jacques was approached in his office by a younger Troy Nikos, who was requested by Willow to call him to the Schnee School for gifted youngsters , which is just a cool castle in the middle of the city. There he met with several different warriors that Nikolas had trained over the years. All of them were present and worried about what happened, and even team MOHL was there as well. Jacques then arrives at the master bedroom, where he meets again with Troy, as well as Willow, Mia Lulrid (new character), Maria, and old Nick, resting on the bed with his daughter crying over his chest. Willow explains that he fell terribly ill and wounded after returning from battle against an abnormal monster that he faced on his own. All the local doctors patched him up, but he won't wake up due to his sickness, which they couldn't cure. Jack was absolutely devastated as well, since he grew to see Nick with as much respect and care as he had with his own father. Everyone looked really miserable, and no matter how much Maria searched, she couldn't see a future where she could save him. She could see five days ahead in the future, and told everyone that by that time they still couldn't find any way to treat him. Willow gets angry and demands that she stop looking into the future and have faith like the rest of them, which makes Maria start crying as she nods.

Jack was watching the girl he loves and his second father figure hit rock bottom. It was up to him as a man to solve this problem through any means necessary. By then he was easily the richest man in all of Atlas, and so he decided to put all his money to good use.

On the first day, he sent out a message to all people on all nations through the oldschool communications tower, which could only telegraph morse code through radio waves. Basically he sent out a long list of symptoms, and a reward of one gazzilion Lien to the doctor who could cure someone with this affliction. Once the people started sending telegrams back, Nick's disciples went to fetch them wherever they were, so they could come to Atlas as fast as super-humanly possible. In the first five days they only received a huge amount of phonies and guys who overestimated their abilities, just like Maria had predicted. It seemed truly impossible for a doctor so skilled to exist.

However, on the seventh and last day, when they were all losing hope, they received one last call from an old man in Haven. He was a disgustingly old dude, but he decided to put his abilities to good use one last time before his eventual death. The old doctor made magic, and in just a few hours, he was done. Whatever was affecting Nikolas, he managed to solve it with acupuncture and medicinal herbs alone. And to prove it… Nikolas comes out of the room with him, finally awake.

The entire Schnee school and the street surrounding it all celebrate and cry to see the hero of Atlas finally return to them. Literally everyone in the whole city was there to see this decisive moment of fate. Nick's fighting days are over, but he'll live.

For his efforts, Jacques presented the old man with literally all the money he had saved up since his company started. The old man at first refused having such a huge amount of money, so close to his death. Jacques insists again and again until the old man accepts, and so he leaves Atlas in order to give the fortune to his kids and grandchildren. That's the least that Jack could do to show how grateful he is.

Though everyone helped, it was only thanks to Jack using his money to get the word out that they were able to rescue Nick. And for his efforts of saving the person she loves the most in this world, Willow agrees to marry him on the spot.

It was a beautiful ceremony with all the strongest beings on the planet all present to see this normal girl and normal guy kiss one another. From then on, the next several years were truly heaven on earth for the Schnee. Fifteen years of memories, good fortune, lots of money, a place in history, and one adorable child after the other — plus the cool grandpa that everyone liked. The Schnee all sat back and watched as the entire nation became a better place, almost solely thanks to their efforts.

…

Finally we return to the present, with Jacques having enough of his smoke break. He was looking down on the city he helped build and said, "If I wasn't such a fool then, perhaps you could still be with us… Nick."

Jacques goes back inside the mansion, only to find out that power was cut off. He wanders around, calling Klein and Whitley until he arrives at the main entrance hall of the mansion. There, he met his son looking down at him from the top of the staircase, sitting on the rail. Whitley sees this as the perfect moment to talk about something incredibly important, given that a battle is taking place in the city as they speak. Whitley tries to convince his father that serving Watts is a mistake, and that he can backstab them at any moment, just like he did when he tried to kill Jacques, one year ago. But there's a way to pull a fast one on him. The security measures with their several Dust storage facilities make sure that only authorized people can safely open the Dust crates, either from codes or digital recognition. If they remove all passwords and erase all authorized people from the database except the Schnees, suddenly they become way more valuable. Whitley already made preparations and is one button away from executing his plan, making sure that no Dust crates are opened on Atlas unless the war is over. He just needs his father to give the order.

Jacques immediately shouts angrily at him, saying that their alliance with Watts not only ensures that they stay on the top, but it allows his big sister to stay alive. If they defy Watts, they are going to lose everything, and he'll find a way to hurt them. Whitley explains that he already has a safety plan for all of them, and that defying Watts is the only way to bring peace to Atlas again. If he really plans to destroy the other nations, not only will the people suffer in war, but their business will suffer as well. Facing him is the only way to make sure Winter is truly safe, because Watts will trade anything to keep the Dust coming.

Jacques still insists that Whitley is being foolish. Whitley takes a very deep breath, and realizes that his father has truly gone mad. All he cares about is keeping their family at the top no matter what, even if he has to serve someone like Watts for that to happen. He's bringing shame to the name of their grandfather and all the things he fought for, not to mention his sisters. For that reason, Whitley decides he will end everything right now. He throws something down below to Jacques' feet…

It was a gun.

Jacques looks up again, and he can see that Whitley is crying despite holding a cold face. He says that the duel begins now, pulling another gun from his breast pocket, and running off into the corridors of the second floor. Jacques just kicks the gun away and tells Whitley to come back this instant. He rushes the staircase, but the second he puts his foot on the second floor, the gun goes off, and Whitley shoots the railing that Jacques was about to put his hand at. Jacques takes cover and looks back, seeing that his thirteen-year old son is actually shooting at him.

And so begins this scary, desperate and morbid sequence, where Whitley continues to chase his father across the mansion, firing towards him several times as Jacques runs and hides. This fucked up sequence is put right next to Willow returning home on her flying car, as fast as she possibly could. It ends with her finally going into the front door, leaving Maria behind for a bit. Klein had just woken up from being drugged, and Willow told him to go give medical care for her in the car. They both can hear the gunshots, and so Willow runs as fast as she can up the stairs.

At the same time, Whitley chased his father to the rooftop of the mansion. His hands were shaking as he prepared to go through the final door, and shoot his father dead. He's crying, because the planning part was way easier than the actual execution. Just as he was about to open the door to the penthouse, he heard a voice coming from behind. "Whitley!"

The boy quickly turns around, and sees his mom standing there. She slowly starts walking towards him, and he tries to explain what he was trying to do — lying to her that this was a fake gun, and that he was just playing with his father. There was nothing for her to worry about, and so she should return to her gazebo in the garden to continue drinking as usual. He promises to join her later and offer another bottle of her favorite brand as a gift. Whitley knows his mom as a depressed, ignorant woman, so he fully believed his bullshit would work this time… But it wasn't the case.

When he least expected it, his mother suddenly kneels down… and hugs him.

She hugs him tightly, putting his forehead against her chest. Whitley went completely speechless, because this was the first time in ten years that he was hugged by his mother. The first time in a long while where he could feel her warmth. He didn't know how to react — he was just paralyzed. Willow says, "Whitley… my little baby boy… my special little man… How many years has it been since I called you that?… I can't even remember anymore… You were so little when your grandfather died… You barely even remember him… and since then, even though you needed me, I failed to show you the same love that I showed your sisters… You have no reason to still like me, but please… just this once… let me hug my son… just this one time."

With that, Whitley finally gives up, dropping to his knees. The ice cold genius boy, who prepared his whole life to be a great leader and a cold businessman, suddenly found himself crying against his mother's chest, like any kid is supposed to. It was embarrassing, humiliating and corny, but he couldn't help it. It was something too special to fight back — being hugged by his mother after so long, and hearing her soothing voice after years of neglect. After a long embrace, she lets go of him, and grabs the gun out of his hand. Whitley starts shrugging his teary eyes as she says, "don't worry, baby… Mommy is here… she is going to make it all better now… I promise."

Finally, Willow goes towards the door, but it seems to be stuck. A stronger push from her makes the door break from the wall, knocking away all the weights that Jacques had used to block the door. He was not counting on his wife with super strength to show up — he turns around scared and sees her of all people, looking him dead in the eyes and holding a gun.

"Willow, what… What are you doing here? What are you doing with that?!" Jacques asks.

"I don't really know…" Willow says.

"Okay listen, you have to stop Whitley, that boy is going insane! He simply doesn't understand — he's too young to understand! He thinks I have gone INSANE! ME! Just because I'm trying to protect all of us! Can you believe that?! All I ever did for this family is give EVERYTHING THEY EVER NEEDED, AND MORE! And what do I get? My daughter hates me! My other daughter runs away! AND NOW MY SON TRIES TO KILL ME!

TELL ME, WILLOW, WHAT HAVE I DONE WRONG?! WHY CAN'T NONE OF YOU APPRECIATE WHAT I'M TRYING TO DO FOR YOU?! WHAT AM I MISSING?! WHAT IS IT THAT YOU ALL WANT, THAT I DON'T HAVE?!… ARE YOU JUST GONNA STAND THERE?! SAY SOMETHING!" Jacques finishes his rant.

"You've done nothing wrong, Jack… And I'm sorry… This is… This is all my fault." Willow replies with a cracked, emotional voice — both sad and afraid to see his anger. And with just those few words, everything changed. Jacques was shocked to hear his old nickname again. Not only that, but his wife actually talked with him for the first time in several years. Her voice had so much pain, and her eyes showed so much sadness. He felt terrible. We can see the expression immediately change on his face, as if all the anger just washed away. He says, "… Willow?"

And so, the final flashback begins.

…

Like we saw previously, their lives couldn't be more perfect. A huge mansion, crazy successful business, three children growing up healthy, and one more baby planned out for Whitley's fifth birthday next week. The two were about to get busy with the "present", when suddenly, they are interrupted by Winter. She barges into their bedroom, and warns that grandpa collapsed in the garden. They were just practicing swordplay again, when suddenly he clutched his chest and fell over.

They quickly bring him to bed and call the doctors to examine him. Diagnosis shows that Nikolas was suffering from the exact same stuff that hit him fifteen years ago. Now he's getting to his mid fifties, and so the probability of survival decreases even more. But no problem right? They are even more rich than back then. Atlas medicine advanced exponentially with the advancement in robotics, and Nick is awake for the whole thing, so it must be less deadly than last time.

However… shit just failed again. The great modern medicine of Atlas was completely incapable of saving Nick. Not a single doctor in the entire fucking nation knew what to do, no matter how much money Jacques offered them. Besides, once the government and patriotism started exerting a lot of power around that time, Jacques wasn't allowed to send his message requesting skilled doctors from other nations, as the council wouldn't allow Atlas to seem weak and ineffective. Jacques even reserved a meeting with the old council, and tried to explain how a Havanese doctor was able to cure Nikolas once upon a time, so maybe it can happen again. However, his idea was shot down immediately, since now, all of the sudden, the elites decided it was a big issue to ever interact with Haven. They were a rival empire who beefed with them a lot in the last hundreds of years, so asking for their help was illegal as of now.

Jacques started going mad from their cold response. "Is that so?… IS THAT REALLY IT?! Is that really how you're going to treat me?! I gave life to this nation! I am the one who invented the Dust you so casually use in your businesses and in your homes! I AM THE ONE who put Atlas at the top of everything! The new army that protects you, the technology you use, the cars you drive, the ships you fly, and the very fire that heats your food — ALL OF IT WAS MEEEE!… DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I SACRIFICED?!"

The council remains silent. His special request was denied, and so Jacques walks away angrily, kicking down any furniture on his way out.

And when he returned home, Jacques was confronted by his daughters, begging him to save grandpa, and stop him from feeling pain. When it wasn't their daughters, it was his wife, crying and begging him to do something, ANYTHING to help her father — like he once did in the past. He was being driven insane. Even when talking to Nick himself, the old man's only request was for his daughter to be happy no matter what, and he trusted that Jack would be able to do it. However, Nick being gone is precisely what will make her unhappy. He had to stop him from dying, at all costs!

In his desperation, Jacques decided to go undercover with Klein to Haven, searching for the whereabouts of the old doctor that once saved Nick's life. Their long journey only led them to find out a horrible and disgusting truth. The old doctor was killed several years ago, along with his children and grandchildren, all because the local Malachite Yakuza wanted to steal all the money that Jacques had given them in the past. Because of Jacques, the last family who knew the secret healing arts were killed, and he had to return to Atlas empty handed.

With that, the family merely watched day by day, seeing Nick getting older faster, and feeling constant pain, until he eventually died. He left his will to Weiss and Winter, and passed away with a smile on his face. Despite the absolutely glorious life he lived, his family was left with nothing but crippling depression.

Weeks passed, and Jacques watched as his family quite literally died. Winter became a cold woman, focused only on becoming a powerful soldier and nothing else. Weiss grew rebellious, bratty and distant, wanting to leave home and never come back. Whitley was raised mostly by Klein and his own computer, since his mother… fell into absolute depression. Willow was like a walking corpse, just drinking every day in silence, and with a face that would never smile again. Jacques knew that his lovely wife was gone, and that their 4th child would never be born.

Seeing the destruction of his family, Jacques only blamed himself. In his torment and grief, he believed that the reason Nick died was because HE wasn't powerful enough. He never wanted anyone in his family to ever suffer again, and to do that, he needed to become the most rich, most influential, most cold and most smart person in the world. He would completely surpass the council, and leave every single person in Atlas at his mercy. No one would ever say no to him or his children again. As long as he's the most powerful person in the world, he can protect his family from anything. He already accepted that they won't love him anymore, which made the following steps much easier.

He started making all sorts of friends, both in high and shady places. Once Winter joined the military, he pulled all the strings he could, so she would climb the ranks and arrive at a high position as fast as possible, and would never need to do any dangerous work with the other Ace-Ops. After that, he paid his way into becoming a council member, and used his influence to stop the government from ever messing with Weiss after she gained her powers, as well as her subsequent trip to Vale. He advanced his entire company system to the digital age, and already started preparing Whitley to succeed him one day. And after long years of hard work and resource extraction, the mines of Atlas City were completely dried up from Raw Dust. Nothing else remained there, so it was time to set his business somewhere else.

Jacques started building Dust factories in Mantle, and built all the infrastructure for the mines as hastily as possible, so business would start running quickly. The mines dominated the job market to the point it was the only thing that 80% of the Mantle population would work at, due to its high payment and despite its risks. At the same time, Jacques altered the formula of the Dust production, so it could produce more pounds of Dust despite it giving less energy overall, just so he can make more money faster. The new formula caused even more pollution, which messed up with the people of Mantle even further.

And to increase his profits even more, Jacques eventually delved into the arms race. He made a new solution to Dust that could explode all its energy in one go, instead of slowly. He put that new solution in place of a bullet's gunpowder, made some few changes to the bullets design, and thus created the Dust bullets — little pieces of metal that fly fast as lightning bolts and as hot as the sun, piercing and cutting through anything that exists. By that point, Jacques had already turned into a monster that only cared about gaining more money and more power, even forgetting why all of this started in the first place. He became a heartless, selfish and impatient man — and above all else, he got an evil bastard mustache.

…

Back to the present, with Ms. and Mr. Schnee staring at each other on the mansion rooftop. Here Willow will go to confess all the same things she said in the intro monologue of the last episode. How it was due to her failure that the family turned the way it did. She had the job of helping them stand together after Nick died, but she was too weak to do that. She allowed her family to break apart, and hate each other. The worst part is that she blamed Jacques for it. She was so taken by grief that she wanted everyone else around her to suffer the same pain she was feeling. It was all her fault.

For the first time in years she apologizes to Jacques. She thanks for all the things he did in his quest to protect their family, but tells him that the things he did aren't right. He has become a bad person — someone that both she and her grandfather would have hated. A person who doesn't care about the suffering of others. However, Willow knows that the man she loves is still inside of him. All he needs to do is let go of all the grief and fear that has been plaguing both of them for all this time. He doesn't need to be a monster for their sake anymore. It was time to stop being afraid of not being good enough. Willow finishes, crying profusely, "Jack, please… We don't need to be rich… we don't need to be powerful, famous, or strong… all our family ever needed was… each other… My son just wants his father back… My daughters just want their father back… And I… And I!... I DON'T WANT TO DISAPPOINT THEM ANYMORE!"

And so, we slowly see a transformation begin in Jacques. He looks away from her, with a face of pure pain, close to tears. He's shaking his head and pacing around without reason. He wants to be angry, he wants to be outraged, but… he can't bring himself to say any more nasty things to her. Hearing her voice again was like a magic spell. It was so strong — Jack could feel all the years of careful planning, all the years of seething for power, all of it washed away with her words. Eventually he falls to his knees, as visions fill his eyes. Visions of him being cruel, and greedy, and a total asshole, even to his own family. Then he saw visions of the past, of how he used to be in his youth, and how he brought joy to so many people. All this time, he was truly blinded by his own fears of ever failing them again.

Suddenly, Jacques starts crying as well, saying that he has no right to call himself their parent anymore, just like Willow did. Everything that Weiss and Winter ever criticized was true, but he refused to see it, because he fully believed that it was the best way to help them. All he ever did was try to cage his daughters from the world, not protect them. He didn't realize that he was merely giving his children even more pain, without ever really protecting them from anything. He was a complete failure, and doesn't deserve their forgiveness.

Just then, Willow rushes to his side and hugs him, saying, "It's okay, Jack… I know our kids have a heart as good as their grandfather's… Even if we don't deserve it, they will find it in themselves the strength to forgive us… Despite all the hardships that we put them through, they grew to be wonderful people of their own right… That's all that matters."

After a long and silent embrace, Willow ends up remembering.

Not too long ago, Watt's androids tried to capture her, as it seems that Winter has escaped the prison in Argus. That information sends a shock in Jacques's system, and he stands up. He looks back to the city in the distance, and sees the battle with the Golden Eagle happening far away. Something inside of him yells that his daughter is there, and if that's really the sleeping giant of Atlas City, she has no hope of defeating it. However, he knows how to help. HE KNOWS how to destroy it.

At the far end of the rooftop, his personal flying jet was stationed there. One of the best and fastest public models on the market, and the keys were in his pocket. He looks back at the rooftop entrance, and sees Whitley standing there, watching the whole scene from the half-closed door. Jacques yells, "Whitley! Do that thing you told me! Make sure only OUR thumbs are capable of opening all the Dust crates in the nation! Watts won't use MY product anymore!"

Whitley nods and runs off, and so Jacques walks off towards the ship. Willow asks, "Where are you going?"

"Help. That's the only thing I can do. You stay here." Jacques said.

"Like hell!" Willow says, holding his hands and stopping him. He almost falls down due to her super strength. "I'm not letting you go without me… I'm not leaving you to bear any burden alone ever again, you hear?… We have much to atone for, both of us…"

The two stare romantically into each other's eyes, before Jacques accepts her help. They are going for the battle, but before that, Jacques had one last gesture to make. He grabs the left end of his mustache, and comically rips it off, leaving a red mark on his upper lip. He groaned a little from pain, but felt like he needed to do that. Willow now looks at his face, and doesn't see Jacques anymore. She sees Jack — a little older, but undeniably him.

With that, the episode ends.

Commentary (spoiler): I never introduced Willow in any previous volume, and it was all because of this moment. We saw snippets of her, but always too cold and distant, just to maintain this idea of a person who doesn't care about anything, and is never present. Like I once said, I only introduce characters when they are important to plot. She's not a complex character whatsoever, so you really just need one episode to build her, and give her a small character arc. I guess this makes official the idea that we know the lore of every single character AND their mother. The only change I made to her was giving her a past and having her Aura awakened. It just makes sense to me that she would have powers, considering she would be surrounded by warriors through most of her life. Also, despite not wanting to fight, her having basic sword skills by being Nikolas daughter isn't something impossible to happen. I thought about giving her an insanely broken Semblance like time freeze or reverse, but nah — give it to Winter instead lol.

Now, Jacques… I gotta be honest, in the first draft of this rewrite as a whole, he was just meant to be a simple villain, like he was in the original. I didn't give him a section in the character revision, because he was really that minor. But then, over the course of writing this series, I played a certain game called Chrono Cross. Absolutely shit, at least 70% of it — it has a strong beginning and ending, but overall it doesn't live up to Chrono Trigger at all. Point is, in that game I came across a story of a father, and how he ends up in two different dimensions. One where he's rich and greedy and his son hates him for being absent, and the one where he's poor and honest and his son hates him for being a bum. It's a really touching sidequest to follow, but its main message struck me hard. The idea that a good man would follow a path that doesn't fulfill him, just in search to give a better life to his children, but doesn't see how that affects them negatively as well. It's a common theme for crime or Mafia stories, but it hit me the hardest in Chrono Cross than in those. It inspired me to go into this diversion for Jacques' character. At first I just wanted to give Dust a backstory, but then I decided to simultaneously develop Jacques' backstory along with it, as the creator of the substance. Above all else, I think it would feel cheap if Weiss' dad remained a villain, considering the entire arc involving all the Schnees is about apologizing for their past mistakes and becoming better people. Leaving him out of it would just be wrong, and make Weiss' dream to reunite the family feel cheap.

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Well, those were some nice twelve pages of an actual story.

Let's go back to unmitigated fighting for an entire episode.

The Ace-Ops still had to deal with the big yellow eagle. It had just shot a big missile that blew the hell out of Ciel, giving the impression that she died. Robin is able to catch her body, and Fiona starts doing the full-course CPR immediately. Meanwhile, Ironwood continues to take on the eagle all by himself, getting more damaged this time. They still haven't found its weakness, and half of the team is nearly dead.

But then, of all people that could've showed up to help them, it was Jacques and his wife. They pick up Ironwood and Winter on their jet and start flying away. Winter pushes her mother out of the driver's seat and starts to pilot the jet, going around the tall buildings and the sky as the eagle gives chase. The giant robot stopped firing its missiles once it left the permitted combat zone, but still continued going for them with its claws, which Winter was able to dodge. Meanwhile, Jacques is in the back, debriefing Ironwood on what to do to defeat it. Apparently Jacques was personally responsible for overseeing the creation of all three sleeping giants, as they wanted his input on how to use energy consumption in the most effective way possible. And so he explains:

Basically, the eagle is the strongest of all giants, mostly due to its ability to fly with jet propulsion for a full day without needing to stop for a recharge. However, there's a catch. The giant needed a lot of Dust to work, but overcharging its core would make it explode with heat. In order to fix that, they left its core completely exposed on its back, so then the rushing cold wind of Atlas would naturally cool the engine as it flew. So basically, Winter just has to fly above it, and Ironwood needs to target the huge battery-shaped engine on its back.

And well, I don't want to waste time on this crap anymore, you know how it is. Winter pulls a cool flying maneuver, finally getting above the Eagle and giving Ironwood the chance to jump on its back. From then it was only a matter of playing Shadow of the Colossus with the robot, and unloading his entire clip on the engine until it went kaboom. The Golden Eagle loses control and crashes against the side of the Atlesian mountain that surrounds the city, but it wasn't destroyed. Remember that.

With the battle over, it was time to focus on Ciel. To their luck, Ironwood could use an electrical discharge from his cyborg arm as a makeshift defibrillator, so they are finally able to resuscitate her. However, it seems like her legs are quite broken, and she can't move. At least they all survived the battle…

For a few minutes more.

Suddenly, they realize that all the other Ace-Ops at the train station were still fighting, but the androids were no longer the problem. The Branwen have arrived to kill the Ace-Ops, as Watts had instructed — minus the five strongest, minus Neil for being critically injured, and minus X for being fucking dead. Just those six are enough to wipe the floor with all the dozen Ace-Ops, since those guys literally just fought a lot of shit on the way here, and don't have any gear either. They all just keep getting destroyed by the Branwen until Ironwood, Winter and Robin arrive, but they weren't in the best conditions either. It seemed like a sure loss, until…

The actual strongest person in the nation showed up.

Maria Calavera jumps down like a flash of blue lighting, shaking the ground and sending all the Branwen backing away on Aura pressure alone. The blue glow under her hood reveals that her goggles are back to work, as Whitley and Klein helped her recharge and patch up the gunshot on her stomach. She already foresaw how most of this battle will play out, and welcomes them to run away if they don't wish to die. The Branwen dudes can sense her terrifying presence, but don't recognize who she is. One of the idiots tries to hype up the others to fight — if they can't take down a single random gilf, Raven is gonna kick them out of the tribe or straight up kill them, so they can't lose. And so, all of them attack her simultaneously.

Needless to say, Maira completely NEG DIFFS the Branwen tribe. Even their most powerful fighting techniques and Semblances are already engraved in her mind from seeing the future, and she knew how to counter all of their attacks. She's simply dancing around all these fools, dodging every single attack and dishing out some nasty scythe slashes at any given opportunity. In just six minutes she leaves all of them critically injured, and can even kill one of them for all I care. The point is: They get absolutely shit scared by her power, and decide to escape as fast as possible, ending the battle.

With them gone, Maria is finally able to fall to her knee and take deep breaths. She was just pretending to be okay, but her severe gunshot wound was still hurting all along, and it seems to have started bleeding again. The Ace-Ops are all in shock to see her there, since most had no clue that Maria was still alive for the last twenty years. Here we would see this touching moment, where Maria reunites with the older Ace-Ops like Elm, Clover and Tortuga, who were all members of the Schnee School in the past, and looked up to her as a teacher. Finally coming out of the shadows after such a long time, Maria can't do anything but apologize to them. She spent all these years thinking that her weakness had doomed the world, and so she was too ashamed to ever face her old friends again. She didn't even have the courage to show up at Nikolas' funeral, and rather pretend that she wasn't Maria Calavera anymore, just to ease her pain. However, the events of previous volumes (mostly meeting Weiss) had changed her perspective, and gave her hope to fight again. Maria expected that they would feel outraged that she was hiding like a rat for all these years, while they had to continue fighting. She expected them to flip out against her… but they didn't. For all these years, the old classmates continued holding nothing but respect towards her, and only felt happy to know that she returned. Maria's lips were trembling, and she would probably cry as well if she still had eyes.

Despite the happy mood from all the battles won, it was a good time to get everyone out of sight before more forces showed up to get them, so Ironwood decided to take everyone to the city's hospital as fast as possible.

Now it's a good time for Ironwood to reveal that Penny was kidnapped, which means that it's only a matter of time before Watts gets his hand on the weapon he wanted. Winter says that they spotted the flying dreadnought passing overhead Mantle while they were on the train, and it was flying towards Argus. With that in mind, they only have one goal right now — either they go to Argus and rescue Penny, or they go to Argus and stop him from using the weapon. However, getting to him and winning against his entire army of androids, now with just seventeen wounded Ace-Ops on their side, it's god damn impossible. Ciel reveals that Harriet left the nation to get help at Vale, so if they attack Argus simultaneously, they might have a shot at winning.

With the Golden Eagle defeated, something seems to activate within all androids in the city. They all cancel their normal duties and proceed to all gather at the military base as fast as possible — literally running across the streets and jumping out of the rooftops. They received orders to take every ship and every mecha inside the base, and take them to Argus as well. Once all the bigger and smaller ships were all loaded up with ammo and mechas, the androids prepared to blast off. However, some stuff remained in the base, and to make sure that the Ace-Ops didn't get anything, they turned their guns down and lit the entire base in flames and explosions with their guns. Everything was destroyed.

Ironwood saw it happen from a far and immediately understood what was happening. Watts was a pretty clever strategist — this just reduces their chances to prepare even more, and slows them down. At least they know that he is scared of their power. He probably never thought that they could defeat the Golden Eagle, and so he finally has changed to the defensive. However, Ironwood knows that Watts is at his best when he isn't cocky. The real challenge begins now.

…

The rest of the episode follows some scenes that continue building on what we have seen previously, and sets the table for the final act a little bit. Firstly, Ciel is not capable of fighting on her condition, so they drop her off at her parents house in Atlas City, and we see that they are equally weird and robotic as she is. Don't worry, she'll make an epic come back. Meanwhile, Maria was put in intense care for having fought the way she did, all the while being mortally wounded. Sorry, she won't make an epic come back. For now the heroes decide to rest a little, as they have all just escaped prison, while others fought for entire days.

…

After the Ace-Ops side is done, we see a scene on the dreadnought.

Doctor Tess was walking through the corridors in stealth, on her way to the room where Penny was being kept. She wanted to see what was happening, and maybe free her. Tess walked in front of the door, but before she could try to open it, the door opened by itself. Watts was standing at the other side, towering over her. "Funny seeing you here, teach. Do you wish to have a word with me?"

He had the Relic of Creation on the black briefcase at hand. Tess demands to know what happened to Penny, and Watts explains that everything went perfectly. He already has all the information about the weapon copied to his own database, and will begin making the weapon as soon as the ship lands in Argus. As for "the android", he believes she'll be far more useful now than she ever was before.

Now for the actual important thing: Tess explains to him that Watts just lost his access to Dust. All smart locks of the high-tech Dust crates are denying access cards, facial recognition, keypad codes, everything. The configurations must've been altered in the Schnee company system, and the only person who could've done it was Jacques — which means he betrayed him. His only option now to access their own supply was to slowly disassemble each and every crate very slowly, since opening by force will cause the Dust inside to explode. It was a clever security system.

Watts wasn't surprised — as a matter of fact, he knew it the second it happened, since he shares his mind with the database of all the androids, which allows him to control their actions. There was nothing to worry about, after all they still control Mantle, and therefore the Dust supply, so they just have to skip the middleman. And yeah, about that… The people of Mantle are kind of revolting right now. Ever since Robin did that speech to inspire them, something started to change with the people of the city. And without any actual person for them to shift their complaints to, they took upon themselves to riot, skip work and disrupt all their factories — both the Dust manufacturer and the android factory.

Upon hearing that, Watts seems to have a little meltdown. He feels completely outraged that the people of his nation chose a time like this to throw a fit. And because of what? Just because he took over? He is millions of times better than anyone else they could've chosen to be their leader! They should be thanking him for taking this tremendous burden! But after all, he's not surprised. It's almost silly of him to think that the stupid masses of commoners from Mantle would ever understand what is at play here. They were never anything more than one sore spot in their great nation. He'll have to aggressively convince them to bow down so things can start running smoothly again. And you know what?… It's the perfect chance for him to test his new recruit.

Watts stands aside, as the door behind him opens again.

And so, we get our first peek of Evil Penny.

We immediately realize that her face became completely devoid of life and emotion, but it's still her face — freckles and all. Her new eyes only show a red pupil devoid of any glow behind it. Her adorable short orange hair had become straight and smooth, losing all its color until it was fully white. It's almost like Watts tried his best to make her look nothing like who she was. To top it all off, she now dawns an armor of black steel that is similar to Watts' paladin suit, and quite literally is just a copy of Pyrrha's Iron Maiden outfit. Her reveal ends the episode, and oh boy, what a good hook to split the volume in two. But nope, let's go for just one more half-baked episode.

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This next episode follows the same story but I still have nothing impressive to talk about. Basically, Watts starts using the androids in the city to force people to work, or else they would start getting arrested or fired upon. It shows perfectly how Watts doesn't really care for Atlas or its people, as much as he cares to be at the top, no matter how many times he has to go back on his beliefs. Now the androids push workers into the mines and retaliate against anyone who attacks them back. Anyone doing anything suspicious gets arrested. Thanks to that, order had returned to Mantle, but not for long.

The episode actually starts with a very dark scene, as we pick up with the real Penny again. She opens her eyes and finds herself in some sort of void without ground, and she's just floating there. Far, far away she can see this huge screen, which basically shows her what is happening outside of her mind. She tries to get close to it, but a barrier made of literal code fades in and stops her from moving. She was trapped inside some sort of invisible cage of numbers, and she seemingly lost all control of her body. She keeps screaming for help, but to no avail.

Now we cut back to our other heroes.

Ironwood is leading the charge for Argus with a team of six people, including Winter, Robin and Fiona. They were able to get some good rest and heal all their wounds thanks to how good Atlas medicine is. The more grievously-wounded Ace-Ops were left at Atlas City to continue resting along with Maria, and Ironwood also ordered some of them to stay and protect the Schnees from being kidnapped again.

Their first challenge was getting through the heavily-protected train station and tunnel, which is the only way to get from Atlas City to Mantle without anyone seeing them. It was easy enough fighting through the androids set up in the tunnel, but eventually they arrived at the other side of the mountain, where there was a whole ass barricade set up, with hundreds of robots and heavy weapons pointed at the tunnel entrance just waiting for them. Now, depending on which Huntsmen they bring along for the mission, they will be able to pass through without fighting with a different method. It can be any fan-created Ace-Ops warrior with an evasive Semblance, but for the sake of simplicity, let's say they have May Marigold on the team, and her Semblance ability to turn shit invisible is what allows them to pass unnoticed.

It's been seven episodes and two canonical days since Robin left the place, and it all changed dramatically. The streets are almost empty, with everyone hiding inside their apartments. Androids now march everywhere, and whenever they find a person minding their own business, they explain that the person was selected for involuntary service for the betterment of Atlas, and so they would kidnap that person and drag them to the mines in order to work. The output of Dust has never been greater, but the people working aren't doing so well. There's not enough safety gear for everyone, and even the slightest touch of raw Dust will make people severely sick. Normally the priority would be killing Watts in Argus, but Robin makes a good point about staying here and saving Mantle while they can. He will not be able to continue powering his army if he loses his Dust supply. Ironwood agrees, and so they start to work.

However, they are just seven warriors, and the city has thousands of android soldiers everywhere. Taking them all down would take too long, but Ironwood divides a plan that he believes will work. He realizes that the people are already against Watts, but they lack the strength to fight for themselves. If he helps them with that, they will fight the battle alongside him.

First they meet again with Marrow, who takes them to see the "city elder" of Mantle. The old man wanted to bring peace to Atlas as well, and he had the contact of every disgruntled citizen in the city who was just crazy enough to pick up arms. If Ironwood manages to give them weapons, they will fight alongside him to save the nation, and that's exactly what they would do.

The plan was pretty basic — a crowd would start protesting at one point of the city and then retreat, just to make sure the android forces are distracted. While that happens, Ironwood and his team raided the military base and the weapon storage bunkers across town, so they could steal its guns and deliver them back to the elder, and thus start arming the population. With Fiona at their side it was crazy easy, as it seems her "Pocketer" Semblance only gets stronger over the course of the volume. After repeating that mission a few times, finally they had enough civilian soldiers to storm the mines of Mantle and help all the people who were being forced to work. The brave civilian army is able to shoot down all the android soldiers, while only a few of them get wounded back. Everyone was set free, and now with most of the population out of Watts control, it was time to storm the android factory and stop it from producing more enemies. However, predicting what would happen, Watts prepared an entire barricade in there as well, heavily weaponized and armored. It would take a legit civil war to free Mantle now. By the way, this all happens in just one day. I'm really nailing that One Piece time dilation shit.

Ironwood leads the charge to destroy the factory, but in the middle of the battle between robots and people, a new foe arrives. We the audience recognize it to be Evil Penny, but the characters do not, since she's wearing a big helmet this time. She arrives by flying down with tremendous speed, and starts kicking everyone's ass immediately, with cold silence. She even draws her flying sword from the get go, and doesn't restrain herself from taking aim at the civilian soldiers who shoot at her. She ends up mortally wounding a lot of them, prompting Ironwood himself to go fight her. Though he seems like an equal opponent at first, finally he is able to break through her helmet and reveal her face. Her hair and eyes changed, but they could perfectly recognize Penny. Looking back, they can even feel her presence stuck inside this carcass, like her soul is still somewhere inside.

From then on the battle becomes really hopeless, because none of them really wanted to hurt Penny, but she wouldn't listen to any words, and merely continued trying to kill them. They can only keep each other from being gutted by her flying sword, while keeping the humans away from the battle. It's only when Penny completely stops fooling around that we understand how truly strong she is, to the point that Ironwood, the strongest soldier in the nation, is having a hard time keeping up with her. And throughout all the fight, we keep cutting to shots of the real Penny, still trapped inside that void in her mind. She keeps screaming again and again, trying to regain access to her body and pass through the wall of code, but simply couldn't. Even though she had a soul, Watts had erased all the code that worked in synergy with her mind, and replaced it with the programming of a basic android. She was like a file that has been completely surrendered by an anti-virus, and yet can't be deleted no matter what.

Meanwhile, Winter was leading the people into the factory, and was able to break through the barricade while the others fought the strong new foe. There she prepared explosives to blow it all to hell, and finally the factory came crashing down to rubble. After that, Winter finally came back to fight Evil Penny, but seeing that she failed at her goal, Penny decides to fly away back to Argus. She had strict orders to not let herself be kidnapped. With that, the Ace-Ops and the civilian army won the day, but the news that Penny was brainwashed by the enemy only makes them look down in dread. Robin, seeing that it was her fault that Penny was kidnapped in the first place, promises that she will bring Penny back by any means necessary.

As a final scene to end this episode with, we see Watts already at Argus. He's simply looking ahead as his androids start to work on the bomb that he's going to launch. They are welding metal and shaping plates in order to create the huge outer case of the bomb, as well as its jet engine. They are so efficient that they turn days of work into just a couple of hours. Tess was standing far behind him, still smoking a cigarette. She says, "So you really did it, huh?… A long-range missile that can fly in between the nations… Man, you kids always surprised me in the worst way possible. How is that better than just dropping it from a ship?"

"Why, because I don't want to give them a chance to stop it, even if they somehow find out that the bomb is coming. Isn't it genius? Don't worry, it will all go according to plan. So long as it arrives within ten miles of Vale, the blast radius should still wipe out the city and most of its surrounding villages. I assume that you have seen the blueprints I sent you. Have you come to help me prepare the explosion mechanism?" Watts asks.

"Hmph! As if I would waste my time on crap like that. That thing is going to kill thousands of people in one second to the next! They can't possibly fight back, and it will poison the land for decades to come! It's not just cowardly, it's MADNESS!" Tess shouts.

"I don't understand you anymore, teach. You will seriously deny the HONOR of being one of the people responsible for the victory over our enemies? Maybe you should really quit smoking already, it's not good for you." Watts replies, making Tess scoff at him. "Well, if that is your answer, then you may return to your room. I'll see you again after the war is over. We'll still need bright minds like yours to continue improving our nation in the future."

Tess gets escorted out, and soon after she's left, Watts hears a familiar blast sound. Penny lands inside the military base they were on, and approaches him. She robotically explains how she failed on her duties, but Watts is already well aware since he can see everything through his shared database. He immediately hits Penny with a backhand punch, knocking her to the floor and continuously kicking her as he yells. He's outraged that she let the Ace-Ops destroy the best android factory they had, and cut their Dust supply. Now they will surely come here next, and they will have to destroy all of them when that happens, since he only has enough Dust to power his army for just two more days. The bombs will only be ready to launch at tomorrow's afternoon. Watts is afraid that he's losing the perfect control he had of the nation, and he'll have to continue to use force to gain it back once the Ace-Ops are out of the picture.

Penny merely picks herself up, apologizes, and walks away to rest and naturally recharge her core. On the inside, we see another scene of Penny, stuck inside her own mind. She's still screaming and floating around in the void without being able to control herself. By now she's just crying and begging for someone to end her, because she doesn't want to hurt anyone again. With her cries of suffering, the episode ends.

Commentary (spoilers): You know I just searched for the plot of Volume 8 of the original Rwby, and it turns out Penny also gets hacked there as well. It's amazing how little I know from the franchise I've wrote 800 pages of content about. This is my first time writing a story about robots, and Penny getting hacked is such a good way to inject drama into the story, because otherwise the final act would be way easier for the heroes. That's what I meant when I said Penny wouldn't get to develop this volume anymore, because now she's a villain character until the final act. I wanted to make sure she gets a redesign when hacked, because that's just cool and makes the idea of bringing her back feel more difficult or unlikely. Overall, this volume is going way faster than the last one, despite having an equal amount of shit happening. Now it's time to slow WAY the fuck down, with FIVE episodes that focus mostly on character than action.

Now, I have a few ideas for Minisodes that I would like to describe shortly before ending the chapter.

First one that comes to mind is about Terra and Saphron during the events of the civil war. The very first one showcases right at the beginning that Saphron has bought a wedding ring, and intends to ask Terra to marry her after years of living together. All the minisodes would focus on the two going on dates at places like restaurant, the park, the top of the wall, where Saphron would try to shoot her shot, however the new restrictions that Watts implemented on the population start to cockblock her at the best possible moment. A robot always shows up to say, "this area is restricted, please leave the premises", or "the curfew hour was reduced again. Please return home", or better yet, "The consumption of fine products that come from Outside of Atlas have been prohibited. Please give up the goods to us". And as they went, Sapphron gets progressively angry, which is hilariously uncharacteristic for such a sweet woman like her. In the very last one, with the two stuck at home, Saphron decides to just show her the ring without the need for build up, and asks her hand. However, Terra just comically rejects her. Not because she dislikes Saphron, but because she doesn't care about fancy ceremonies or great demonstrations of love. They already know how much they like each other, and Terra knows that their love is pure, so she prefers things to stay exactly as they are right now. We might end this little story with an actual kiss this time.

…

Another would focus on what is happening to the normal Atlas soldiers in prison after the breakout. They have salvaged some weapons to fight with, but they are still surrounded by a long range siege of robots that were kept there just to make sure they can't escape. They are incredibly irrelevant in comparison to the Ace-Ops anyway. Troy is basically in charge since he's the only warrior left, but he doesn't have much to do. He seems to be extremely lazy. Most of the soldiers were really hyped up to receive orders from him again, but he mostly lies down on the courtyard and spends hours just yawning and scratching himself under the warm sun. He sees no reason to try and leave the prison yet, as they will only get into more trouble than they can't beat. It's better to wait for the androids to be distracted before making their move. Until then, they should entertain themselves with cards or play ball. No one understands how a guy this lazy was second in command of the whole nation for many years.

…

Another one would be solely about Watts. He was in the process of creating the bomb, and so he was following the blueprints down to a tee. However, without any scientists wanting to help him, he had to use his androids as helpers. He's trying to focus on dangerous chemistry but gets constantly annoyed by his own robots. They are constantly asking new orders at every second that passes, since Watts is literally the sole remaining person leading them without any kind of chain of command, and they don't have intelligence to work orders on their own. When Watts finally has the time to work on the bomb, he keeps failing to create the proper reaction described in the blueprint, which would turn the Dust blue for a short period of time and make it hyper-volatile. He's just too impatient to follow the instructions as slow as he should. As a last resort, Watts looks at the Staff of Creation, lying on the corner of the room he was in, ending the minisode.

This just showcases how pathetic Watts can really be despite how much he glazes himself. The master plan he prepared for years was destroyed in a couple of days by five girls. His masterpieces can be so idiotic that they even get on his own nerves, and he's not nearly good a scientist as he believes himself to be, so much so that he turns to pure magic to conclude half of his plan.

…

Another one shows how Ciel managed to start moving shortly after Ironwood's team left. She wanted to go fight and help them, but the other Ace-Ops convinced her that she was not in the best shape to fight anyone for at least a good week. With all the other Ace-Ops making little case of her abilities, she drops her calm and coordinated self for one of the first times, telling all of them to go screw themselves — she wouldn't let her friends go fight without her no matter what. They made a promise that they would all pull through this together and be free, and so she won't stand around like an useless burden.

Later she's convinced by her parents to use her brains and try something else — though she's good at many fields, direct combat is not one of them. Her friends will probably want her to stay behind as well instead of risking her life, but if she really can't bear the thought of not being there for the final battle, she needs to find a different way to fight.

Soon, gears start spinning in Ciel's mind, and something clicks. She gets up and asks for a place where she could get a lot of tools. There's something she can do, but she'll have to be as quick as possible.

…

Yeah I guess that's all of it. This volume grew unexpectedly large, so I see myself forced to split it in two right here in the middle, just like I did for the last one. I'll make sure to post both chapters at the same time. Later.