Characters / Infinity Train Blossoming Trail Grace Monroe

Infinity Train: Blossoming Trail Main Character Page
Red Lotus Trio (Chloe Cerise) | Infinity Train (Passengers [The Apex. Grace Monroe, Cage Of Flauros, The Unsub's Crew) | Pokémon World (Vermillion City [Goh Fujihachi, Parker Cerise], The Ketchum Family, Pokémon Trainers)

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Grace Monroe

"What matters is that I become stronger! That my number is the highest there ever is! That’s all that matters on this Train!"

The leader of the Apex, alongside her partner-in-crime Simon Laurent. She's, in fact, the very first member of the Apex, having founded it partially to venerate The Conductor, partially so she wouldn't be alone again. Unfortunately, she never thought to realize that a cult who loves to hurt and slaughter denizens might not be so well loved as she hoped.

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A-D

• Abusive Parents: Her parents were incredibly neglectful, not paying attention to her even when she went as far as to commit crimes in order to be noticed. This is part of the reason why she made The Apex as grandiose as it was, because she could get the attention her parents never gave her and in return will listen to her and whatever lies she spouted.
• Achievements in Ignorance: She was supposed to be reincarnated by Ogami's terms, but his metallic butterfly he snuck into her bag isn't there. This is becaues she sold it in order to get money to eat.
• Action Girl: After spending the majority of Blossoming Trail and Knight of the Orange Lily as a Faux Action Girl that looks utterly pathetic compared to Chloe, she's the one who fights off Henry's monstrous form and takes down Walter — who is in the process of choking Chloe — with her celestial bronze knife.
• Adaptational Angst Upgrade: Alongside her canonical realization that everything she did was wrong, she also knows that Passengers reincarnate into Denizens because she once saw Mark Kessler kill himself, then be revived as Ogami, with the same happening with Arianna (Oleana's sister) resurrected into Romsca.
• Adaptational Badass: In canon, Grace has no real weapon to speak of. In here, she holds control of a celestial bronze knife she took from a Passenger which also happens to be one of the only things capable of hurting Henry and Walter in their monster forms.
• Adaptational Karma: Discussed and Played With. The author notes for Knight of the Orange Lily Chapter 10 says that while Grace did lose a lot in Book 3, she felt like Grace got off too easy. This is due to the fact that she still injured and crippled numerous denizens for eight years, led a cult of children that followed her words without considering their families and worshiped her and never did anything to fix her messes. And considering the size of her number, she much had done a lot (to note, when she confessed her crimes, the number that was on her wrist ends up as either a 4 - 5 digit number on her palm). Hence Blossoming Trail ends with the Apex disbanded, never wanting anything to do with her again, and she must take a walk of shame as she reflects on the things she could have done if she wasn't such an arrogant, haughty bitch. And then Voyage of Wisteria ups this by revealing that she died and was reincarnated.
• Adaptational Sympathy: Despite being played up as a Satanic Archetype that wants nothing more but to make the Train burn, Voyage of Wisteria makes her sympathetic when it reveals how she became the den-mother of the Apex and what would cause her to make the teensy-weensy lie of her being the total expert.
• Adaptational Villainy: Played With. Knight of the Orange Lily — which takes place months before Book 3/Blossoming Trail begins — shows Grace at her worst when she was shown to have murdered Utahoshi with her celestial bronze knife in front of Tokio and casually plays it off as her "saving" him with a reply about his death being a callous "So what?" years later. However, this is not making her worse than she was in canon. Rather, this allows the reader to see her at her worst before she was redeemed and a reminder that many of the things she did was by her choice alone.
• Adaptational Wimp: She's a lot less impressive than in canon, barely being able to rein in the Apex children at times. When in canon, she had complete control of the Apex children who worshiped her and followed her every word, even going as far as to stop them from wheeling her when she reveals the truth about the Condutor they worshipped. She does, however, fight off Henry and give him considerable bruises, tag teams with Amelia in the final battle, and finally kills Walter in the end. She also is terrified of fighting off Walter and Henry's monstrous forms while Chloe is much more determined and just having died by Simon (who had turned into a monstrous dragon) less than an hour prior. Knight of the Orange Lily shows that when she and Simon fought the White Gestalt in the Puppet Hospital Car, she only gets two hits in with the knife: Specter bashes her nose in, and London throws his staff at her face before levitating her and letting her fall into a collection of sharp objects without looking back.
• Adapted Out: Because Grace never goes to the Origami Car like in canon, she never gets her origami bird denizen partner.
• Adult Hater: She doesn't like adults, due to her parents being abusive and unable to give her the love and affection she needed. Which is ironic cause she's 18, and thus an adult.
• Alice Allusion: London mockingly compares her to the Queen of Hearts in Voyage of Wisteria as they're both tyrannical female rulers who want nothing more to cut people's heads off (or in Grace's case, stab them in the back of the head) while being psychotic manchildren who hold temper tantrums when they don't get their way.
  London: "All hail the Queen! And off with all of our heads! Let her dine on our hearts and drink our blood from a paper cup before using our heads for croquet across the train wheels because we are not worthy of kissing her sneakers! A frabjous day, callooh callay!"
• All for Nothing: Everything Grace did to make the Apex was for proof of her strength and so that she can be worshipped, looked up to, loved, adored and not be alone. But the entirety of the Fog Car has her learn very horrible truths that she's nothing more than a serial killer when she finds out that the Conductor she worships doesn't give a fig about her, the numerous denizens on the Train that she either killed or injured were probably humans once and that she must tell everyone the truth else they become subjected to the Cage of Flauros, especially Hazel, the girl that she began to bond with. She also has to deal with the fact that Simon and Sean's deaths are indirectly her fault because she poisoned their minds with lies, Tuba and Chloe die by Simon's claws, and Hazel leaves her behind to stay with her "mom", Amelia, who has nothing but disappointment and smacked Grace upside the head with her gun for her actions. And after everything is said and done, the Apex wants nothing to do with her and she walks back to Le Chat Chalet Car knowing that it will take a long time for anyone to ever forgive her. And given that the Apex encountered Gladion and the White Gestalt, she'll be remembering the atrocities that she did then also. And that's not counting that she ends up dead without a chance to redeem herself.
• Alas, Poor Villain: The last that is seen of Grace by the end of Blossoming Trail and Voyage of Wisteria that she is a broken mess, ignored by everyone, her cult gone, everyone she ever loved either killed or left for greener pastures and she ends up Dying Alone, crying and whimpering for everyone to run away from a Serial Killer only begging that she was noticed and loved. Quite a cry far from the haughty, proud, know-it-all cult leader who couldn't give a fuck if a denizen died, although most of the denizens and some passengers don't have sympathy for her.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • She supposedly skinned a sparkling vampire once. Not only do we never see the skin itself — barring a reference to it being auctioned off in Voyage of Wisteria — but it's eventually a lot of The Apex's actions, including her own, were vastly exaggerated so worse people could get away with their crimes, making the act questionable.
  • Basically, how many Denizens she actually killed after Utahoshi and before Walter isn't clear, which isn't helped by most potential answers being delivered by people who are too eager to paint her as the absolute worst while ignoring their own crimes. Since Blossoming Trail took place at the beginning of Book 3 — by the time Chloe entered, Grace and Simon just finished the Debutante Ball Car challenge — the readers know that the events of "The Musical Car" happened, in which she injured numerous denizens there and she and her cult had fun attacking the turtle and corgis in the Unfinished Car.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Those who learn about her untimely demise and aren't horrified by it, are elated to know that "the baddest bitch of the Infinity Train" is no longer able to hurt anybody ever again or corrupt a mind to follow her lies.
• Asshole Victim: In Voyage of Wisteria, Ogami kills her in cold blood and leaves her to bleed out and die alone. The heroes — barring London — and what's left of the Apex are basically the only ones who give a crap about it, with everybody else either not caring or celebrating it.
• At Least I Admit It: She doesn't brag or anything, but her guide self in Voyage of Wisteria has no problem admitting that her actions when she was alive were terrible and her death, while not something she wanted, was going to get her eventually. Compare this to Amelia, who has to be called out by Goh and Hazel into admitting that she used The Apex all along in order to make herself seem like the better person.
• Attention Whore: She loves to make a show of herself as "baddest bitch in the building" and den-mother of the Apex, soaking in their attention and love and want everyone's eyes on her. Unfortunately, this leads to more unscrupulous denizens and passengers on the Train to get under the radar because of her "need" to be noticed.
• Authority in Name Only: She's the leader of The Apex, but you wouldn't know that by how the kids tend to do whatever they want when she's not around — particularly when Amelia tricks them to go to the Fog Car after showing her number — and how people generally turn to Simon instead.
• Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work: Takes it upon herself to kill Walter so neither the Apex nor Chloe (who has a 1 on her hand at this point) would have to. And shortly before that, she's the one who disbands the Apex by telling everyone the truth. She even notes that this is something that adults should do.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: Grace wanted to be noticed and given the attention that her parents never gave her. She got it alright...as the utterly detested leader of The Apex whom everybody wants to beat to a bloody pulp, and the main scapegoat used to make worse people get away with their crimes.
• Being Evil Sucks: Being the leader of the Apex isn't as much fun when everyone around you hates your guts, the little girl you bonded with is actually one of the Nulls you like to crush under the wheels, that you were corrupting children who should be figuring out their problems and be safe at home with their parents, and you see how your lies and corruption made the children and close friend who look up to you ready to wheel said girl and gloat that the biggest thorn in their side is dead.
• Believing Their Own Lies: She thinks that the Apex are the strongest, the best. That she knows how the Train works cause her number is big. That denizens are lesser than human and you shouldn't care about them. That she was protecting Tokio from Utahoshi. It takes the end of Blossoming Trail and the horrors of the Fog Car to make her realize she is horribly in the wrong.
• Bluff Worked Too Well: She initially lied about knowing how the Train worked in order to save some face with a younger Simon who wondered why her number is so big^note She had a 142, Simon was at 55. Cut to the present day, and now she has to save face against an older Simon and dozens of new kids who hang onto her word like holy gospel, all the while the Train has both Denizens and Passengers more than ready to tear everything she tried to build down, if not kill her.
• Bookends: As of Voyage of Wisteria, her trek with the Apex began by witnessing Mark Kessler kill another Passenger, and creating the "Nulls aren't reincarnated Passengers" stuff to cope with it, and it ends at the hands of Ogami, Mark Kessler's Denizen reincarnation killing her like she killed others in the past.
• Body Motifs:
  • Knight of the Orange Lily retroactively makes it the stomach based on a scene of Tokio bashing her in the stomach for her callous murder of Utahoshi. She couldn't stomach the truth about what the Train was about, learning the Awful Truth about the situation was a Gut Punch and she's a glutton who wants nothing more than to raise her number forever and ever. Finally, Ogami kills her by stabbing her repeatedly in the stomach.
  • Mouth is a secondary one. She usually trills her lips like a horse whinny as shown in canon, and she ran her big mouth over how she's the toughest of them all, the expert of the Train. Quite fitting as Warbler, she has no mouth.
• Break the Haughty: The entire Fog Car in Blossoming Trail breaks her piece by piece by exposing how everything she did was for nothing because Amelia doesn't even care about her, and how she loses everything she built up over the years over a single lie because she just couldn't admit she was wrong despite everyone beating the truth into her head with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. In the end, after she has been exposed and has seen so much death in Simon, Tuba and Chloe, she leaves the Fog Car without the Apex, without Simon, without Hazel and without Tuba, the only remnant left of her life as the Apex leader being her giant number and her sins to be remembered for a long time. Then Voyage of Wisteria ramps it up by revealing her having nightmares of everyone chewing her out at what she did, the denizens not even giving her the time of day, she sees the Mall Car cleaned up and everything in it put to auction, the entire train is praising Chloe Cerise's bravery, and she ultimately ends up dying alone by Ogami, wishing that she was noticed. Worse, she will never reconcile with her parents as she was dropped in the office of the mall where she was picked up, her soul will be reincarnated into a denizen, and her parents have all the time to realize that they messed up. The only ray of hope in her is that said denizen she reincarnated into not only helped Goh face his troubles, but Hazel will take care of her so no denizen will toss her into the wheels.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • In Knight of the Orange Lily, her reaction to how she murdered Utahoshi in front of a traumatized Tokio years ago is a very callous and apathetic "So what?". She repeats this when she meets the White Gestalt and every member looks disgusted. In the same chapter, we have this exchange:
  Gladion: You murdered children! Remember Dar?
  Specter: Or Queen Cutie?
  Lampetia: Or the hundreds of other denizens you slaughtered?!
  Grace: Don't know, don't care!
• Caged Bird Metaphor: In Voyage of Wisteria, a flashback of her has her sleeping in a birdcage run by giant parrot denizens before she breaks down and destroys the furniture when everyone's accusations start ringing in her head, symbolizing that she's now a prisoner of her own lies, manipulations and apathy without anyone to help free her from the Self-Inflicted Hell she placed upon herself.
• Cerebus Retcon: Everything about her philosophy on "treat denizens as Nulls to be killed and crushed into pieces cause they're not human and trust me more than anyone else cause I know everything due to my large number" becomes this in Act 3 of Voyage of Wisteria. Her first car was the Pirate Car and she saw someone — Arianna, Oleana's sister — devoured by the Demon of the Deluge and become reincarnated as Romsca. Then she had to see the boys who would become Tomas and Ogami be killed by Ogami himself, and then she had the same initial realization as Tulip about the death tornadoes, causing her to think only for herself out of fear of dying, believing that she knew how to survive the Train was to hurt other Nulls and see them as NPCs since it was easier to do than accept that the passengers were all scared humans like her. However, as she admits to Amelia, Goh and Hazel, her thinking is an explanation and not an excuse for everything else she did and put onto Simon, the Apex, all the denizens she injured and eventually having Chloe indirectly dead from her actions.
• Composite Character: Amusingly, she actually shares a lot of traits from Kez in Book 4. Like Kez, she does whatever she wants and whenever she wants to, and she has a shit-ton of denizens who hate her guts while she doesn't seem to understand just why everyone wants her dead. Not to mention that anyone even associated with Grace are hated just as equally as the cult leader and they live in their own world that states that whatever they say and do matters. And by the end of Blossoming Trail, she has to apologize for her mistakes just like Kez has to admit that she messed up.
• Conspicuous Gloves: She wears a pair of lavender gloves to hide her number. The gloves come off when she confesses how she messed up to the Apex.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Grace's knife is good for non-humans. It's good for practically everything made by the Train, but it's useless against humans, like Paul London, who has telekinesis.
• Cruel Mercy: The last days of Grace's life is to have the denizens ignore her and let her be, all while they sing praises about Chloe's achievements to the heavens, and she is left alone ruminating on her choices and the denizens she hurt for her fun. And as if that wasn't enough, she gets murdered by the reincarnation of the same Passenger who made her realize the Awful Truth regarding reincarnation on the Train, and dies all alone with nobody to mourn her, but celebrate her death instead.
• Death by Recognition: Ogami offs her just as she realizes he's actually Mark Kessler.
• Defiant to the End: Despite being confronted by a serial killer while she has essentially nothing on her, Grace stands her ground and refuses to be intimidated by him. It's only when he actually kills her does she start to panic.
• Did Not Think This Through: What Grace wants is an adrenaline rush so she doesn't really care about her actions as long as she has a fix.
  • Her attempt to get her parents' love is through shop-lifting, not considering that they probably wouldn't see that it was a cry for love but rather a blemish to their reputations.
  • She and Simon buried Lexi alive in his own car, not considering the possibility of someone eventually digging him up and how he'd be significantly pissed off that the passenger he trusted backstabbed him in the worst way.
  • It never occurred to Grace how many denizens on the Train want her dead for all that she did or how a lot of unsavory cars want the Apex slaughtered or that some of those denizens that were offered up for the sake of her "glow-in-the-dark" tattoo were once human, that they had loved ones, and how she effectively made the Apex serial killers long forgotten by their families.
  Amelia: She got them in this lousy situation to begin with without thinking of the long-term consequences like friends, family or education. I imagine they’re not looking forward to seeing her again, no more than the rest of us [the Red Lotus Quarto (her, Goh, Hazel and Lexi) and Paul London] are.
  • The situation of the plan of separating Hazel from Tuba. By placing that Apex mark on her face, it just made Hazel a bull's-eye for the Cage of Flauros as the components will kill every single member of the Apex and mistake her for one. Then there's fact that Hazel was a denizen this entire time, and sooner or later, Grace wouldn't be able to keep lying to save herself. Ultimately, there would've been no possible way for her to keep Hazel secret and the Apex placid at the same time and even she has no remarks when the Red Lotus Quarto call her out on it because the only way out of this situation is to confess to everything.
  • And last she never thought of what would happen where her little lies and denial about the Train would affect Simon and the Apex themselves and how it would negatively affect their mental health when it call came crashing down. Not to mention that by praising the kids for being apathetic monsters, they happily cheer at Chloe dying by the hands of Simon the dragon and stated she desereved it because she got in the way of their fun.
• Dirty Coward: In Knight of the Orange Lily, she only got to kill Utahoshi because his back was turned to help comfort Tokio. She still believes that she was "protecting" Tokio from a nasty rabbit (who only summoned a barrier to knock everyone back because her little cult attacked him first.)
  Tokio: You [Grace and Simon] only get lucky because you attack cars filled with peaceful denizens who have the happy lives you were denied.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • Grace, a black woman, is consistently demonized and made to seem like an absolute monster by just about everybody on the Train, who go on either exaggerated or outright fabricated tales of how horrible she is. This is in contrast to Amelia and Chloe, both fair-skinned females, the former whom nobody really gives much crap despite being active for far longer than Grace, and the latter whom gets constantly praised and hailed as a hero and savior of the Infinity Train who will save everyone from the evil Apex despite being on the Train for at most two months.
  • Despite being the leader of the Apex, and basically the reason the cult is ruining everyone's lives, neither Walter nor Henry take notice at her. They want her friend, the caucasian male Simon, for their plans. Even Simon turns on Grace and gives her a slur, "Void".
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: She gets little to no sympathy in the Fog Car when the Red Lotus Quarto meet her, despite her being the leader of the Apex, and they spend all their time to tear her viewpoint into shreds. Henry and Walter also pay no attention to her, choosing to focus on turning Simon into destruction to complete their ritual so that she gets slaughtered by her own words and philosophy.

F-M

• Faux Action Girl: For being the supposed leader of the Apex, and said to have even skinned a sparkling vampire in the past, she gets trounced around easily. Against White Gestalt? She can't get a hit on them while three members injure her (including the Non-Action Guy and a little boy who got traumatized by her!). In comparison to Chloe? The "princess" tackles almost every single Silent Hill baddie — including Pyramid Head — with a pipe and her determination to get things done. Against Walter and Henry? She can only go off against Henry whereas Chloe summons Lucifer to incinerate Walter's final form, but it's Grace who ends up unleashing the killing blow by stabbing him in the head. And then she's unable to save herself when Ogami stabs her in the stomach. All in all, you have the feeling that Grace is only so feared because of gossip, not by her actual skill.
• Females Are More Innocent: Grace was a stubborn and terrible person, that's for sure, but part of the reason she was so horrible is because nobody bothered to tell her what she was doing wrong in a non-vague manner and she didn't have the best parental figures growing up. Not the Denizens, not the Passengers, and certainly not the former Conductor, Amelia, cared to raise her properly or tell her what she was supposed to do. And those who did try to let her know did so only long after she had given up on learning the truth or because she absolutely rejected reality and substituted with her own headcanon that she was "Miss Total Train Expert" because she had such a big number so that definitely meant she was improving, right?
  Author Notes for Hazbin Car Pt 2: You can blame the Train for not having instruction manuals. You can blame Amelia in the pumpkin car. But at the end of the day, it was Grace who made the lie and kept it going over the years. She hurt others for her fun and pride. And she spared no one.
  • While it was Ogami who indirectly made her think that the tunnels to go home = death, it was she who made the lie and kept it up for years without thinking of alternatives or asking someone what she was supposed to do. Even if she did protect the children from certain death and gave them the skills to help them survive this trap, most of these acts of altruism was for her needs for love and adoration, never of theirs to be mentally healthy to go home or addressing why they got on the Train in the first place.
• For the Evulz: She didn't have to stab Utahoshi like she did. She did it because she couldn't care less about a Null who even dare breathes in her presence.
• Four Is Death: Her backstory had her first car be the Pirate Car and she met up with three other passengers (Ariana, Horace and Mark). All of them end up dead one way or the other and she's the fourth one to kick the bucket.
• Friend to All Children: Zigzagged; Grace does care for the Apex — from being horrified of Sean's drowning, telling Walter that some of them have food allergies and listing off many names, and she wants to protect Hazel from Simon — but she also has corrupted them, convinced them to harm others and not care about the consequences of their actions. And her kindness is only for the Apex; any other kid who gets in her way (like Tokio, Gladion and Chloe) can go die for all she cares. And then she sees Chloe dying by Simon's hands and the Apex proudly saying she deserved it...
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Downplayed. While Grace isn't royalty, two of her motifs relate to a queens — the Tarot Card Queen of Swords and London calling her "Queen of Hearts" — and she is a ruler of numerous children who follow her every lie as it was the holy scripture, causing death and destruction no matter where they go. This also makes her stand out to how Chloe is constantly called a "princess".
• Gone Horribly Wrong: The Fog Car has Grace learn that her ideas of making the Apex follow her lead go this route. Sean's death is indirectly her fault, Simon becomes Destruction by her influencing him to hurt others, the Apex happily cheer that Chloe is dead, hooray! and are about to wheel Hazel when she reveals her Null form and don't care about Tuba's sacrifice to protect Hazel. That's also not mentioning how the entire Train and many of its denizens are fully aware of what she has done and have every reason to hate her guts.
• The Greatest Story Never Told: Grace is ultimately the one who kills Walter with her divine knife, but nobody's ever going to learn about this tale because the few who do know about it are either off-train soon after, or much more busy with more important matters. And even if they knew, it's unlikely anybody would care because a black woman like Grace Monroe would never do anything heroic unlike Chloe of ther Vermillion, right?
• Hates Being Alone: Grace hated being alone due to her backstory and made the Apex so she'd never have to deal with it. But as The Fog Car continues, her actions to avoid the pain of being left with no one have ruined everything in her life and she ends up more alone than ever. Her last words as she succumbs to the knife wounds to the stomach even has her stating that all she wanted was to be noticed and loved by her parents.
• Heel–Face Door-Slam: Grace decides at the end of Blossoming Trail to try to atone. Voyage of Wisteria shows that she never gets that chance as Ogami murders her.
• Heel Realization: As more and more truths come to light in the Fog Car, Grace learns that she was a horrible person with Simon killing Tuba and Chloe, and Sean's death indirectly caused by her, making her open her eyes to what she's created. By the end of it all, she is left to think about how her actions have destroyed so many lives both human and denizen alike, wondering how things could have been better if she wasn't such a proud and boastful girl and actually worked on actually caring for the kids instead of her own fun.
• Hidden Depths: Grace actually took the time to take note of any food allergies the Apex kids have.
• Horrible Judge of Character: Her biggest flaw outside her arrogance.
  • A young Grace met the Conductor in the Pumpkin Car several years ago and thought they were strong and powerful because of the large number on their arm without making a connection that the Conductor was also a human like her. This misbelief, along with her thinking that denizens were lesser beings that needed to die and her pride, caused so many problems on the Train throughout the next decade.
  • She also didn't understand that the 'death tornadoes' were a symbol of someone going home. That, combined with seeing a boy (who would become Ogami) commit murder to understand the idea of "denizens = reincarnated passengers" made her decided that she had to be the toughest bitch on the Train to survive, not to mention passing this trait to dozens of children who made it their mission to hurt others.
  • On a lighter note, she assumed Chloe had a father similar to Steve Irwin. Goh has to tell her straight that Professor Cerise was not like that. She also assumed that Chloe was insignificant compared to the other Pokémon Trainers before her due to because she had no Pokémon and the fact that she was, well, a little princess living a daydream over the possibility of toppling her empire. But instead Chloe ended her reign of terror and ended up much more powerful than the Trainers before her despite not having a Pokémon.
  Grace: Here I was, the leader of the Apex, she who spread fear upon the denizens when they saw my face, and the ‘baddest bitch on the Train’...and this little girl in a dress, Lady Destiny, stood up to a literal God and told him to shove it. And she was from the same world as you [Goh], the kid with the green serpent [Trip], the lily knight [Gladion] and your...other friend [Tokio]. Heh...all those creatures I thought would be my biggest threat, and it’s the girl who didn’t train them or was associated with them that wiped me out.
  • This also applies to her, as everybody on the Infinity Train immediately latched onto the rumors and slander about her that were spewed around, and instantly believed her to be a sociopathic satanic archetype and not a woman who spent trapped for years in a place she didn't know how it worked.
• Horrifying the Horror: Grace would proudly boast that she's the "baddest bitch in the building" for leading the Apex into mayhem and destruction all for the sake for a higher number and being showered with love and adoration by those little ankle-biters. But when she's confronted by Henry and Walter's true forms and the truth of her actions, she's absolutely terrified and Walter's true form is described as so horrific that she would run screaming her head off. To compare, while Chloe was initially freaked out by Henry and Walter's true selves, in the final battle, she's the one standing her ground and blasting Walter to smithereens and she just died about an hour ago to Simon's destruction form, by the way.
• Humble Goal: All she wanted was to be noticed (as in, just wanted her parents to be parents and wanted them to love her, albeit she did this by convincing her friends to do some petty larceny). Which isn't exactly selfless, but compared to becoming a knight, annihilating a group of people using ritual magic, and especially demanding an entire city grovel at their feet and beg for forgiveness, it's a rather simple objective.
• Hypocrite:
  • She tells Gladion in Knight of the Orange Lily that denizens are to be crushed and who cares about them since they're not human. Two stories later it's revealed that she knew that denizens were reincarnated passengers the entire time and just denied it because it was easier to do.
  • Grace tells Chloe that the past doesn't matter, rather than the present...except her past mistakes of her lying her ass off is what's causing the present.
• Hypocritical Humor: Downplayed as there's no humor in her remark but she tells Chloe that the girl shouldn't be the one to kill Walter as that's something adults should do...before Chloe looks at her as a reminder at how Grace (age 18) taught all of the Apex to injure, kill and look down on denizens ( not to mention cheered when Chloe herself died by the hands of Simon) for their own amusement. She immediately tries to rescind her statement when she realizes how insensitive it was.
• I Am a Monster: While she never directly says this, this goes through her mind throughout the Fog Car as she gets confirmation after confirmation that she is by no means a hero, but an utter sociopath who destroyed lives without considering their feelings.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: All she wanted was her parents to just love her and part of the reason the Apex was made was because the children would listen and adore her. Unfortunately, just because you want to be loved doesn't necessarily mean you're necessarily right about things...
• I Need a Freaking Drink: A frequent customer of Maccadams, and in dire need of a round or two when the Fog Car finishes. She never makes it there.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: She boasts on how she's the "baddest bitch in the building" and builds herself up as a formidable threat, but she only does it because she's afraid of being looked down or wrong, not to mention that she only goes after denizens who have no chance of defending themselves. And as Voyage of Wisteria shows, she never wanted to admit the truth of "denizens = reincarnated humans", though this was mostly a defense mechanism made to cope with the revelation.
• Inseries Nickname: "Little Miss Gracie" or "Gracie" is constantly used to mock her although London sarcastically likes to call her "the baddest bitch in the building" to reflect his complete disgust with how she proudly boasts on being a denizen killer and because she acts like, well, a completely haughty bitch.
• I Reject Your Reality: A reality or mindset that doesn't involve everything revolving around her, the Apex and her whining needs is a reality she doesn't give a fuck about and everyone can just die for all she cares if they want to change her mind. Voyage of Wisteria explains that she kept her mindset both because she's so stubborn and also because she learned the truth about what dying on the Train really meant while not realizing the glowing tunnel was actually there to take Horace home.
• Irony:
  • She got the idea of numbers are the equivalent to strength by seeing the Conductor, without ever realizing that the "Conductor" she worshipped was also a human since that very same Conductor had a number. And only passengers have numbers.
  • She claims that what she's doing is to help passengers survive on the Train. While she did make the children she gathered to be able to withstand most of the Train, she ultimately causes everyone around her to suffer, denizen and human alike.
  • She denied the idea of Passengers who die become denizens to avoid feeling pain. Once it finally sinks in what she's done, not only did she feel immense pain, but it also brought about her own death.
  • Grace saw Chloe as a nobody/pathetic princess and was more focused on stopping the Pokémon Trainers (all male) who kept coming after her. What Grace didn't know until Goh tells her is that Chloe herself was also from the same world as those trainers (who didn't know if she liked Pokémon and was actively trying to get as far away from them as possible) and yet it's she who gets Grace to end the Apex not by fighting her, but by being dead and confronting the monsters that were trying to kill Grace herself. She herself lampshades this.
  • Was shown to speak ill of the dead with a very apathetic "So what?" The same thing happens to her when ' 'she'' dies, with numerous denizens cheering that she's dead and not giving a fuck about the scared girl underneath that haughty facade.
  • She doesn't like adults but she's 18 and technically is an adult.
• It's All About Me: Her philosophy: the train was built for passengers, and therefore they have a say in what happens. Denizens are lesser, "nulls" who don't have feelings or numbers and are just programs so it doesn't matter if you hurt them, steal from them or hell, murder them because they don't exist! So what if the children under her wing are being corrupted by her to destroy the denizens? So what if she's hurting others along the way? And so what if the denizens aren't human? As long as she gets attention and love from her little Cult of the Conductor then it doesn't matter in the slightest of who she hurts and damages along the way. Let the train burn for all she cares because she's going to be the Queen of the Infinity Train for all eternity and everyone can just suck it! Then the Fog Car comes creeping in and she realizes how foolish she's been...
  • Voyage of Wisteria reveals that her philosophy was based on the trauma of learning how dangerous the Train was and seeing the boy who would become Ogami murder another child and then cut his head off with shears, and assuming the death tornado would incinerate her, rather than seeing that it was going to let Tomas go home. She made the philosophy up as a self-defense mechanism that eventually bled into paranoia and suffering for others.
• It's All My Fault: Reveals to the Apex that everything that happened in the Fog Car was absolutely her fault as the first sign that she's ready to start redeeming herself. This continues in Voyage of Wisteria when she admits that her denial about who denizens really are and refusing to admit that her philosophy is wrong ended up hurting thousands of people in the end.
• Jerkass Has a Point: She mocked Lapis Lazuli by telling her that for all the power she has, the only thing she seems to want to do is run away. While Lapis is quick to spit back, Grace isn't entirely wrong; after all, she's just a woman with only a knife in a Train filled with horrors who's out of her depth, while Lapis is essentially a water god who's basically invincible as long as she has water nearby. Even without water, she still has more powers and a better chance of survival than Grace does, and she still insists on running away.
• Killing in Self-Defense: This is what she gives as the reason as to why she killed Utahoshi in Knight of the Orange Lily, when the flashback clearly shows that Utahoshi's back was turned to her as he was helping Tokio and he was the one who attacked in self-defense by pushing the Apex away with a barrier.
• Know-Nothing Know-It-All: She proclaimed she's such an expert on the Train cause her number was higher than Simon's — 142 to 55 a the time — thus distilling the belief that all he and the Apex has to do is follow her lead in order to survive. This belief stems from her seeing Mark Kessler — the boy who becomes Ogami — killing another passenger who zeroed out and was about to go home — and rather than admit that she had to be better, she decided to make a defense mechanism by proclaiming she knew everything rather than asking what was the right thing to do. Her memory self glumly admits to Goh, Hazel and Amelia that this was nothing more than an explanation for her actions, not an excuse.
• Know When to Fold Them: After Grace registers that there's a lot of denizens on the train who all but want to kill the Apex, and she's being targeted by the heroine of the Train and a former denizen she Buried Alive, she starts making plans to retreat the group from the Mall Car and throw away whatever plans they had of killing the Conductor. At the end of the Fog Car, there's no more Apex to raise, no more Mall Car to retreat to, and a long, long road of redemption that she must take if she ever survives long enough to get that number of hers down to 0. She doesn't.
• Lack of Empathy: When White Gestalt brings up the names of victims she hurt, all she goes is "Don't know, don't care!" When reminded of Utahoshi — whom she killed via knife to the head — she just shrugs and says "So What? That pathetic weak null had it coming" When it comes clear that Chloe is going to topple her, she tells Simon that they will break her down and tell her that she is a good for nothing worthless princess. She changes her tune once she enters The Fog Car and sees how this trope has ruined so many lives particularly that of the princess who is dead because of her apathy.
• Lame Last Words: Her final words while she lays dying from blood loss is pathetically crying over how she just wanted to be noticed and apologizing for everyone she hurt.
• Liar Revealed: The end of The Fog Car saga has her finally come clean to The Apex regarding how she never actually knew how the Train worked, and how she's been sending them on a wild goose chase for a game that never existed, and effectively kept everybody away from their families for the past few years. Needless to say, her pedestal gets broken hard due to this.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: She's the supposed leader of The Apex, a group who go around ransacking Cars and wheeling Denizens for the sake of a "higher number" while showing no signs of apologizing for the harm she's done and is hindering the growth of children just for her own satisfaction, believing that kindness and empathy makes you as weak as a small number on your hand. This is pretty bad, and does make her seem worse than Chloe, who wallowed in spite and anger for so long she indirectly caused hell to her hometown, but when you compare her to a pair of actual cult leaders who break people as part of their ritual in order to kill Grace and her child cult, a Serial-Killer Killer with delusions of grandeur and a plan to topple the Train to achieve paradise and is indirectly the reason Grace became the woman she is in the present a young boy who uses the power of ancient mythical beings to turn his hometown into a living hell under the pretense of doing it for his sister, and a woman who spent 30 years ruling the Train with an iron fist and allowed the Apex to get as bad as it did so she could make herself seem the lesser of two evils, then she starts to look like a saint in comparison.
• Malevolent Masked Man: Or "woman" in this case. Flashbacks involving her usually has her wearing a golden mask to hide her identity.
• Made Out to Be a Jerkass: If you were to learn about Grace solely from the rumors about her on the Train, you'd be forgiven for seeing her as some sort of antichrist who only wants to bring pain and misery to the Train. And while Grace is no saint and has a lot of blood on that purple satin glove of hers, she's ultimately just a woman who only wanted her parents to love her and never got to learn how things properly worked on the Train whether due to her stubbornness or because nobody was willing to give her the time of day.
• Meaningful Echo: Her stabbing a denizen in the head with her knife to "save" someone. In Knight of the Orange Lily she was doing this under the pretense of "helping" Tokio when in reality she could care less about anyone anti-Apex. In Blossoming Trail, she did it so that Chloe — who died thanks to Simon — can make it back home to her family and now in full understanding of her actions.
• My God, What Have I Done?: It takes a while, but Grace finally gets the epiphany that she messed up a lot of lives once she enters Silent Hill.
  • In The Fog Car, Grace realizes she has seriously fucked things up beyond repair when Walter tells her the Awful Truth about many of those denizens she injured/killed were presumably once human and how Amelia chews her out for giving Hazel an Apex mark since the Cage of Flauros will mistake the girl for an Apex and kill her along with the other Apex members. This also isn't counting how she has been trapping the children longer than they should from their families because she got the numbers game completely wrong, or how Simon has completely become Destruction which culminated in Hazel broken, and Tuba and Chloe dead by Simon dropping them from the sky — although the latter gets revived — has to see Simon be killed by Sean, and watch how the Apex are completely apathetic to both gorilla and Chloe of the Vermillion dying, to the point that they want to ensure Chloe died by asking if they should steal Atticus's Pendant of Life and use it on Sean and stated that Chloe deserved to have her head cracked open like an egg.
  • Her guide self in Voyage of Wisteria has realized that hiding the truth that denizens are reincarnated humans to everyone she met was a very bad idea that ruined numerous lives because she was too much of a coward to admit that she's wrong.
• My Greatest Failure: Voyage of Wisteria reveals that she was paralyzed to in fear to save Ariana from being killed by the Demon of the Deluge in the Pirate Car, and then traumatized by seeing Mark killing Horace. Both these events would eventually shape her to "Miss Total Train Expert" and Apex leader by the time she appears in Knight of the Orange Lily.

N-Z

• Non-Protagonist Resolver: It's she, not anybody in the Red Lotus Quarto, who ultimately not only takes down Walter, but ends The Apex once and for all just by telling them the truth.
• No More Lies: After spending a good deal of her Train trip lying her butt off about how she knew better than anyone how the Train actually worked, she eventually comes clean to the remainder of The Apex so they at least know the truth, and can start working on themselves.
• Obliviously Evil: She doesn't seem to understand that a lot of denizens have justified beef with her. She thinks that she's the hero of the tale, who must struggle to overcome obstacles, raise her number to prove her worth, build a safe haven for children also traumatized and to kill any and all nulls for the sake of an apathetic shell of a Conductor who doesn't give a fuck about her. It takes her until the Fog Car to realize that, in actuality, she's the bad guy.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Grace apparently skinned a sparkling vampire with her celestial bronze knife. Said vampire became a mat in her room in the Mall Car.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Spending eight years on the Train without knowing the main point of it, training children to survive the hellish landscape and even killing a sparkling vampire actually is badass. Unfortunately, this is only badass if Grace wasn't compared to Chloe and her accomplishments, ranging from fighting the Erlking, braving the Hidden Temple, going through CarnEvil like it's a walk in the park, surviving Pyramid Head, etc. Not to mention that most of Grace's awesome points also come at the sacrifice and blood of the hundreds of denizens she's killed over the years.
• Parental Neglect: Neither of Grace's parents had time for her and would not even realize that her crime of shoplifting was just a way for her to be noticed. They also never taught her to learn how to accept her mistakes as she ruined so many lives (human and denizen) for her own satisfaction.
• Pet the Dog: At the tail end of the Cyan Car, she starts to realize that Hazel may be a denizen and vows to protect her from Simon if he ever finds out. She also told Sean that he didn't have to raid any cars that had bodies of water "bigger than a bathtub."
• Poor Communication Kills: A lot of problems could've been solved if Grace didn't run her big fat mouth and instead used it to be honest.
  • It never occured to Grace to just tell her parents that she wanted love and attention. Instead, she decides to go shoplifting which led her on to the Train and everything that came after it.
  • By not accepting that she may have been wrong about the Train, and thinking only about herself, she creates the Apex and keeps children who should be figuring out how to navigate it to survive and drop their numbers down and go home, she ends up destroying hundreds of lives leads to the death of Utahoshi, Sean, Simon, Tuba, and Chloe, made Tokio brainwashed into the White Rabbit and has him trapped on the Train for almost two years, nearly lead to the destruction of the Tape Car, has Tiffany's father — Chairman Rose — create a project that would derail the Train and everyone in it, and ultimately, ends with herself killed. All because she could never accept that she wasn't right.
  • Adding onto the above, if she asked someone to help her clarify what had happened between Marc and Horace, then she would've been able to let go of her trauma and be a helpful guide on the Train, instead of the despised cult leader who purposefully held this information back for her own selfish desires of attention and love and ended up hurting dozens of denizens and passengers for her own fun.
• Present Absence: She hasn't been seen throughout Voyage of Wisteria but her actions have heavily affected the entire Train: from Hazel wondering what her life could be if Grace never used her silver tongue, to the Apex that are separated and now hunted down by angry denizens, to the denizens themselves glad that she's finally gone...And then the Comm-Switch Car in Act 2 heavily implies that Grace was killed and reincarnated as Warbler, Goh's denizen partner. The Hazbin Car cements it.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality: She ilkes to think she's the main character of her life story and all the denizens are just spiting on her for no good reason. In actuality, she's the villain and she's not happy to realize that when the truth finally hits her.
• Real Women Never Wear Dresses: Zigzagged; Grace has short hair and mostly wears pants and sneakers (not counting the dress she wore for the Debutante Ball Car challenge) and twirls around like a ballerina due to her dancing background. She also has a motherly side to her while also being ruthless when it comes to murdering and crippling denizens. However, when push comes to shove against Walter and Henry, she is the one terrified out of her wits compared to the dress wearing "Princess" Chloe Cerise with her animal sidekick, paper prince and long flowing hair who willingly fights back without a second thought and who died about an hour ago to Simon while Grace stands there doing nothing prior to the Final Battle.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Like in canon, she did everything she could to avoid being alone even if it means corrupting the Apex and Simon to follow her world views so they would look up at her as having all the answers. And by the end of the Fog Car, all of her actions made her completely isolated and no one, except Chloe, Hazel, Goh and perhaps the Cat, showing empathy for her.
• Shout-Out: London likes to call her the "baddest bitch in the building", actually a reference to one of the wrestlers in Lucha Underground, Ivelisse.
• Snowball Lie: Her original statement that she "knew" how the Infinity Train worked because her number was bigger than Simon's somehow spiraled into painting her as a sociopathic cult leader, who leads a group of rapscallions who want nothing more than to bring chaos, hatred misery and death onto the Train.
• The Social Darwinist: Her quote above says it all: the Train is all about survival of the fittest, and the number represents how strong you are. The irony here is that her big number actually makes her weak because she's running away from her problems.
• Spanner in the Works: She ends up throwing a monkey wrench in Ogami's plans because she sold the soul-stealing butterfly he put in her bag in exchange of money. So when she dies, she ends up being reincarnated into a tiny music note that would end up being the denizen partner of Goh Fujihachi, who would end up defeating Ogami.
• Speak Ill of the Dead: When she's made to remember how she killed the leader of the 400 Rabbits Car, she just gives an apathetic "So what?" to White Gestalt. She also replies that she doesn't know nor care about the hundreds of denizens that she killed, showing off that she sees them as completely lesser begins that are to be crushed under her dirty sneakers for a worthless number. Averted with Chloe; she is nothing but horrified to see her head cracked open, and this is the turning point where she realizes that she realizes how much she has fucked up and how so many people have been hurt because of her actions, and when the Apex start stating that she deserved to die just because she was ruining their fun.
• Stealth Pun: Grace's body motif is her mouth. She likes mouthing off at others who don't believe in her world views and it's her big mouth that caused the birth of the Apex and the deaths of everyone else.
• Sudden Sequel Death Syndrome: She dies in Voyage of Wisteria by Ogami and becomes reincarnated as Warbler.
• Taking the Bullet: She takes a brick to the face when an Apex kid is about to attack Hazel, who has just transformed to her denizen form after Tuba dies and just after one of the Apex kids stated that it was good that Chloe — who died just seconds ago to Simon and was trying to save their sorry butts — deserved her punishment for "ruining their fun", realizing what type of monster she became and what she's passed onto the Apex.
• Tarot Motifs: The Queen of Swords. Knight of the Orange Lily and Blossoming Trail primarily tries to paint her as an inverted Queen of Swords, which can represent a manipulative woman who doesn't learn from her mistakes nor care of the consequences. And while this does apply to her in regards to how she worked with the Apex for years, the end of The Fog Car Saga has her become an Upright Queen of Swords, meant to symbolize a woman who's willing to protect those under her care and be honest; not only does she actually fight to protect everybody from Henry and Walter, but she eventually tells the truth to the rest of The Apex over how she didn't know any better about the Train, so they can start working on themselves. Fittingly her weapon is a knife, which is essentially a tiny sword.
• Team Mom: Serves as this to The Apex, keeping an eye on the kids' wellbeing whenever she can.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The tomboy to Chloe's girly girl, as she wears shirts, pants and sneakers while Chloe is fine with her flowing red hair (until it got cut) and dresses.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: She wears her hair short, goes for pants and sneakers and is a skilled fighter. She also has a dancer background (even wearing a dress for a challenge) and a motherly side to her.
• Trauma Conga Line:
  • The last days of Grace Monroe's life are not kind to her. She's ostracized by the Train (and in particular, cars that venerate Chloe as a goddess), has to see everyone celebrating the end of the Apex, the Mall Car is cleaned up and everything the Apex owned is put up to auction. She has nightmares of everything she did and what everyone said to her because she could never admit she was wrong. And then she ends up dying by Ogami, alone, crying at how she only wanted to be noticed with all of the Apex kids having to hear her being stabbed to death, and her body dropped off at the police station where she was first picked up and never reconciling with her parents.
  • And then we see the trauma that she got when she first entered the Train, seeing another girl (Ariana) devoured by a beast and then reincarnated as Romsca, the two other boys she befriended dead — with one boy becoming Ogami — and then the "death tornadoes" that drove her into seeing denizens as "Nulls" as a self-defense mechanism to protect herself and other children from what she suffered from.
• The Unapologetic: She never apologizes for everything she did throughout Knight of the Orange Lily or Blossoming Trail, particularly in how she killed Utahoshi or indirectly made Simon kill Chloe. The only time she actually apologize is when she's about to die, finally admitting that she was a selfish woman who hurt so many others because she couldn't admit she needed to change.
• Underestimating Badassery:
  • She dismisses the little princess Chloe Cerise as someone who could never topple the Apex. Chloe didn't topple the Apex, but she did shatter their philosophy with her death that lead to Grace to stop the Apex before things got worse, along with having to run through an entire Silent Hill gauntlet from Desire and Pyramid Head, dying at the claws of Destruction, and putting her willpower into a summon that utter destroys Walter after she gets revived. Her guide self in Voyage of Wisteria even notes that she paid more attention to the Pokémon Trainers than the pipe wielder (who, ironically was also from that world but was trying to not be pushed into that role) and bitterly remarks how funny it all is.
  • On the flipside, neither Henry nor Walter saw any reason to see her as a threat. Then she uses her celestial bronze knife to injure them or stab them in the head.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Amelia may have usurped One-One, but she's not the sole reason why a cult caused a trail of dead bodies behind them. In fact, almost every single problem in the trilogy (Train side) can be traced back to one Miss Grace "I absolutely know how the Train works and all you have to do is trust me with your life because I'm the baddest bitch in the building who holds all the answers" Monroe.
  • Grace telling Simon "Oh I totally know how the Train works because I have a bigger number than you" after The Cat abandoned Simon to save her own furry ass is what started the entire Apex project, creating an eight-year reign of children raiding cars, destroying them, the lives of many peaceful denizens either by killing them or traumatizing them, and the fears that they could possibly go and usurp One-One so that they can forever do whatever they want without anyone else ruining their fun. Because she couldn't accept that she had no idea how the Train worked.
  • In Knight of the Orange Lily her smart "decision" to murder Utahoshi in front of Tokio ends up being this. This caused Tokio to become the White Rabbit, Kisaragi became much more vengeful and it would end up causing the birth of the White Gestalt and the events that would make Gladion plan to trap the Apex in their memory tapes. In Voyage of Wisteria, it's revealed that that action is still remembered.
  London: Oh by the way Apex, Kisaragi says "Hi".
  • The creation of the Apex means that Ogami was able to continue his killings unnoticed due to Grace's desires to not admit that denizens are reincarnated humans and then use the Apex to pin the blame on his murders.
  • Of all the children she had to take under her wing and brainwash them with her lies, it was the daughter of Chairman Rose, who will unleash Darkest Day to bring her back and endanger thousands others on the Train.
  • Her being a toxic influence to Simon culminates with him snapping, transforming into Destruction and brings about the death of Tuba and Chloe, along with radicalizing the Apex so badly that they 1) were happy to announce that Chloe was dead and 2) would've nearly killed Hazel (the denizen that Grace bonded with) if Amelia didn't threaten to massacre the brats.
  • Bottom line: if Grace accepted she was at fault and admitted that she wasn't the know-it-all she aspired to be, or perhaps asked what the hell was going on, none of this would have happened..
• Vasquez Always Dies: Played with. The girly Chloe actually dies prior to Grace, but gets resurrected. But when the more tomboyish Grace kicks the bucket, there's no Pendant of Life to revive her.
• Villain Has a Point: For all the things Grace has done wrong, she's sometimes right.
  • Grace's answer to Titus's riddle ("What do passengers have in common?") was that the passengers were on the Train to get stronger...metaphorically speaking.
  • In the Fog Car, Grace makes a remark that it doesn't matter who they were before the Train but what matters in the present. Chloe internally admits that if Grace wasn't a villain, she'd agree with that.
  • When Grace points out how the Train is dangerous and questions if the "false Conductor" actually cares for them, Chloe admits to herself that Grace's not wrong on the former and that while the latter does want everyone to fix their problems, his morality is quite skewed given how Glad-One doesn't seem too shocked that Sean died, except that he'll have more time figure out his problems. Not to mention that prior to even Amelia entering the Train, he just basically went "They either learn or they die, there's no in-between".
  • She told Tokio when they met in a flashback — just after he's become the White Rabbit — that the rabbits were actually using him. Well, granted, it would never had gotten to that point if she didn't kill Utahoshi, but her words have some truth when it's revealed that Kisaragi isn't ready to part with him just yet...
• Villain Reveals the Secret: She is the one who ultimately reveals the truth to The Apex over how she actually doesn't know how the Train works, and how she's been guiding them aimlessly for years on a crusade that was absolutely pointless.
• Was It Really Worth It?: After the Fog Car ends, Grace has to ask if everything she made in the Apex was worth the suffering, pain and the near death of a girl, the death of a denizen that she saw as a mother figure, separation from a little sister figure, destroying the lives of dozens of children for her own happiness, and the final death of her closest friend.
• We Will Meet Again: She vows this to White Gestalt in their fight just before she gets thrown into a door created by a Dormouse. Not only did One-One do a memory reset so that she doesn't even remember White Gestalt, by the time she actually does meet them again, she's already reincarnated into a denizen and only gets to see London who happily notes how she is the "baddest bitch in the building" and the Queen of Hearts ready to massacre everyone.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: She freaks out at a sudden storm of butterflies in Knight of the Orange Lily. Two stories later, it's revealed that it reminds her of her encounter with Ogami back when she first entered the train.
• Would Hurt a Child: If this child goes against the Apex, she'll crush them beneath her feet. In fact, that's how she got her celestial bronze knife — by kicking a child off a cliff for it. Oh and if you're a denizen, you get it worse. Just ask Margaret's son, Dar.
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!: After she formally disbands the Apex by telling them the truth, Grace notes that if she'd been better, the Apex could've been a beneficial force for passengers.
• You Should Have Died Instead: In Knight of the Orange Lily, Tokio screams that she should die instead of Utahoshi — who she murdered just minutes prior — because she was an asshole who didn't care about what she did. Then Voyage of Wisteria reveals that she's now reincarnated into Warbler...

Warbler (UNMARKED SPOILERS)

Warbler

A music note in The Music Car that becomes Goh's denizen partner. Later, during the Comm-Switch Car, she turns out to be the reincarnation of Grace Monroe.

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• Action Girl: Once she's revealed to be a girl, and the reincarnation of Grace Monroe at that.
• Animate Inanimate Object: A living music note.
• Ambiguous Gender: Warbler's real gender is not outright stated for their inhuman nature as a music note, but Goh considers them to be a girl. He's right.
• Armor-Piercing Question: When Raboot tells Warbler about how Goh was horribly insensitive to him back before his Train trip, all the music note has to do is ask if that's how Goh's acting now to get the rabbit Pokémon to start considering his trainer's feelings.
• The Confidant: Becomes one to Goh, hearing him out about his conflicting feelings about...well, everything that happened to him in Blossoming Trail.
• Cute Mute: They're a living music note who, despite being incapable of talking, still provides Goh a shoulder to cry on and generally act as the support the boy never got.
• The Empath: Their humming and warbling of music has the ability to influence emotions, as displayed when they hum to coax and calm Goh into singing his song, or nudging him to feel anger again and stand up to Lexi.
• Foreshadowing: The Comm-Switch Car is a plethora of foreshadowing but one remark that Warbler shouldn't know is in regards to the two rabbits. Of course she wouldn't know, but Grace would...
• Heel–Face Reincarnation: Back when she was Grace Monroe, she was the leader of the cult known as The Apex, who were more than willing to wheel Denizens and attack Passengers who got in their way. As Warbler, she's a lot more humble and happy to help, giving Goh the reassurance he desperately needed and helping him grow a spine once again.
• Irony: Regarding Warbler's previous life, things make a lot more sense about her once she's voiced in the Comm-Switch Car:
  • Grace traumatized Tokio by killing Utahoshi and her lies indirectly made Chloe die. As Warbler, she's helping their friend Goh with his problems.
  • Practically everything she tells Raboot about Goh is this, particularly that line about a "ten-year-old" out in the world making a humongous mess. Grace herself ruined many lives just for her fun when she entered the Train at ten-years-old.
  • Grace's main trait was her running her mouth without a care of what she says and ultimately hurting thousands with her lies. Her reincarnation can't speak at all because of a lack of a mouth and yet is more empathetic, honest and understanding than Grace ever was in her entire life, being the one who ultimately helps Goh become better.
• Jerkass to One: Usually kind to others, but she really hates Lexi. This is somewhat justified since as Grace, the duo never really liked each other, and when Lexi begins to act rather terribly to Goh, the first person she tries to help in her new life, this, coupled with Grace's previous dislike of him, makes it so she especially hates him.
• Karmic Jackpot: Kind of. Back when she was Grace, Hazel was one of the only Denizens she treated nicely, with her trying to keep her safe and sound even after her relationship with her was irrepairably damaged. Once Hazel discovers that Warbler is a reincarnated Grace, she decides to repay the favor by doing everything in her power to keep her safe.
• Karmic Transformation: In life, Grace Monroe ran her mouth, was proud that she "knew the train", showed no concern or empathy about denizens except that they weren't considered "human", and could care less about who she hurt as long as she had her fun. As Warbler, she's a tiny music note with no mouth who is empathetic to Goh's feelings and is actually beneficial in actually helping someone get better as opposed to corrupting them and only satisfying herself.
• Meaningful Name: They are named Warbler, after a songbird, and can hum or warble music.
• Pintsized Powerhouse: They're a tiny music note that is capable of generating a hum that can cause an earthquake.
• Reincarnation: The Comm-Switch Car heavily implies that Warbler is the reincarnation of Grace Monroe and then confirms it in the next car.
• Reincarnation-Identifying Trait: Her voice, oddly enough. Once the team goes through the Comm-Switch Car, she ends up gaining a voice of her own... which happens to be identical to Grace Monroe's, confirming she's her reincarnation.
• The Silent Bob: Cannot speak with words due to not having a mouth, but can hum and... well, warble music. If given a voice like in the Comm-Switch Car, she sounds like Grace Monroe which Hazel knows.
• Stealth Pun:
  • Grace's reincarnation is a mouse-like mute music note. The girl with the big mouth has now become as quiet as a mouse.
  • Warbler is a black music note. What's Grace's ethnicity? Black.
• Suddenly Voiced: She's among the most shocked in the group to hear them actually speak, while the Passengers are reduced to Pokémon Speak. Of course, the shock gets worse when it turns out her voice is rather familiar...
• Teach Him Anger: When Lexi decides to once again try to snap at Goh over how everything is his fault, Warbler nudges Goh in order to make him feel a surge of anger that not only gives him the confidence to not take Lexi's trash talking anymore, but shut up the haughty book once and for all.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: Averted. There's absolutely nothing about Warbler's form that confirms she's supposed to be female, let alone a reincarnated Grace Monroe.
• Walking Spoiler: Just one line from the end of The Comm-Switch Car changes everything about her, not to mention the fact where this folder actually is.

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