No Brakes
There are no brakes on this train!
Dr. Oobleck: It's the cars! They detach and explode, creating openings for the Grimm!
Blake: That's insane!
Blake: That's insane!
Ruby has been taken hostage by Torchwick and the White Fang. Her rescue convinces Torchwick to set his plan into motion early, triggering a determined effort by the heroes to thwart a bomb-loaded train that's heading straight for Vale.
Tropes in this episode include:
- Big Damn Heroes: When Neo and Yang fight on the train, Neo thrashes Yang who can barely touch her. When she beats Yang into unconsciousness, she draws a hidden blade from her parasol with the intention of stabbing Yang to death. Just before she can, a woman wearing a bird mask appears through a mysterious portal. Neo takes one look at the woman, recognises her in horror and immediately flees. The masked woman pauses just long enough to make sure Yang is okay, then departs through another portal just as Yang comes round.
- Call-Back: Blake being sent to detach the caboose, complete with her pose, calls back to her detaching the train cars in the Black Trailer.
- Chekhov's Hobby: When Jaune first joins the school, Pyrrha explains to him that all living things have a soul, including plants and animals. Anything with a soul generates an Aura, which is the source of the supernatural resilience and Semblance powers that Huntsmen rely on in battle. When Oobleck teams up with Zwei to send Zwei, covered with flames, hurtling into an oncoming Atlesian Paladin, Zwei is completely unharmed. It's the first time animals have been shown using Aura.
- Curb-Stomp Battle:
- When Neo and Yang fight, Neo dances all around Yang, who is unable to hurt her. Even when Yang does land a hit, Neo somehow redirects it, turning it into an attack on Yang and escaping unharmed. It doesn't take her long to beat Yang into unconsciousness.
- Blake uses Dust for the first time when she confronts Roman on the train. Whereas Roman has always held his own against the girls in the past and escaped unharmed, Blake's Dust-powered clones take him completely by surprise, which allows her to defeat him very quickly. She ends up knocking him unconscious.
- Zig-zagged with Weiss' battle against the chainsaw-wielding White Fang Lieutenant. She strikes him from several different directions at once, easily parrying or dodging his counter-attacks, but is much more resilient than she initially thought and stops her attack cold with a single Facepalm of Doom, slamming her head into the train-car floor and then punting her unconscious body into the next car.
- Didn't See That Coming: Roman attempts to fight Blake with the same moves he's used to get the better of her in the past. This time, however, she has a Dust cartridge. Her clones are no longer temporary, insubstantial distractions, but real, solid and capable of hindering Roman significantly. He's so surprised that Blake defeats him very quickly.
- Elemental Powers: Blake's clones are initially brief, insubstantial copies of herself. However, when she starts using Dust, her clones become solid and gain elemental aspects. She uses a shadow clone, earth clone and ice clone when fighting Roman.
- Fastball Special: Oobleck uses his flame-thrower weapon as a bat to hit Zwei into an Atlesian Paladin at great speed. His flame-flower sets light to Zwei, turning him into a fireball for the attack. The plan is implied to have been the dog's, with Oobleck somehow understanding what Zwei wanted to do.
- From Bad to Worse: The whole damn episode. Team RWBY reunites only for Torchwick and the White Fang to start up shipping all their weapons and military tech out to some unknown destination via train. Then its revealed that most of the train cars are carrying bombs. Then it turns out the bombs are being used to blow holes in the tunnels for Grimm to swarm right in. Then team WBY splits up to handle the various White Fang elites; Yang vs. Neo (loss, saved by mysterious woman), Weiss vs. The Lieutenant (loss, saved by Blake), and Blake vs. Torchwick (Win, for what it was worth). THEN the train crashes through the sealed wall that leads straight into downtown Vale, opening up a path for the aforementioned Grimm horde to wreak havoc.
- Kubrick Stare: After the train has crashed into the middle of Vale, Grimm exit the opening the train made and are causing havoc. Ruby initially is shocked as she witnesses the potential carnage this incident would bring. But then, her face shifts into one of determination to defend this town, as the episode ends on that shot.
- Oh, Crap!:
- When Neo is about to kill the unconscious Yang with her blade, she's grinning like a fiend. However, a masked woman suddenly intervenes to save Yang's life. Neo takes one look at the woman and backs off immediately; her face is filled with horrified recognition and her eyes turn white. She then turns tail and flees as fast as she can without even attempting to engage the woman.
- When Oobleck and Team RWBY investigate why the train they're on keeps detaching carriages, they very quickly realise the carriages all contain bombs. They are all horrified, especially when Oobleck realises the bombs are to give the Grimm a way to enter the city.
- Pinned to the Ground: After Blake's use of Dust in combination with her Semblance results in Torchwick getting thrown to the ground, he tries to get back up only for her to pin him back down with her foot on his chest.
- Runaway Train: Team RWBY's objective is to get to the engine room to stop the train, since it's dropping bombs behind it to allow Grimm a route into underground railway tunnel. The train is on a collision course for the city to create a hole that will allow the Grimm to invade.
- Screw This, I'm Out of Here!: When the masked woman turns up to save the unconscious Yang's life from Neo, Neo takes one look at the woman and backs off, horrified. When the woman makes a show of slowly drawing her sword in a threat display, Neo turns tail and flees.
- Stock Scream: When Blake knocks a White Fang terrorist off the train, his scream is a Wilhelm Scream seguing into a more natural-sounding scream merged into a single sound sample.
- Took a Level in Badass: Blake is able to beat Torchwick alone, thanks to the dust Weiss gave her, when before in the season one final, she and Sun together could barely handle him. Case in point, she's the only member of RWBY to win a fight while inside the train.
"What do we do?"
