PvP
Written by Miles Luna, Monty Oum & Kerry Shawcross
Directed by Kerry Shawcross, Gray G. Haddock & Miles Luna
Directed by Kerry Shawcross, Gray G. Haddock & Miles Luna
"This is what happens when you hand over your trust, your safety, your children, to men who claim to be our guardians, but are, in reality, nothing more than men."
— Cinder Fall
Mercury fights Ruby to prevent her interfering with Penny and Pyrrha's fight. The tournament match ends in disaster, and Cinder hijacks the airwaves with a grim message for the world's audience.
Meanwhile, Roman and Neo sabotage the Atlesian military ships, while the Grimm and the White Fang begin their attack on Vale.
This episode contains examples of:
- Accidental Murder: Pyrrha is manipulated by Emerald to see more swords around Penny then there really are. This, in addition to her already frazzled mental state, causes her to use more of her polarity powers than necessary, which results in Penny being bifurcated by the wires attached to her swords.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: Roman Torchwick and Neo hijack an Atlas military airship and lay waste on the others in a sneak attack.
- Breaking Speech: Cinder uses the chaos from the past few fights to deliver a terrible verbal attack on the governments and schools of Remnant, which brings public distrust to new heights. Which, of course, draws the Grimm right to the heavily populated stadium...
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Implied: Neo is seen casually strolling through a devastated Atlas military airship, implying she took care of all the soldiers herself.
- Half the Man He Used to Be: Penny is torn in half with her own wires during the match, after Pyrrha is tricked by Emerald's illusion into using more of her polarity power than necessary.
- Heroic BSoD: Pyrrha is left paralysed with shock and horror when her power tears Penny to shreds.
- Kill the Cutie: Penny has a cheerful, bubbly personality and is always trying to be friendly and kind. Cinder manipulates her death and then gives a speech where she emphasises this point to portray a sweet, innocent looking girl that was actually a killer robot designed in secret by General Ironwood for supposedly nefarious purposes.
- My God, What Have I Done?: When Emerald's illusion disappears and Pyrrha realises she just ripped her opponent to shreds, a look of absolute horror and despair crosses her face, plunging her into a Heroic BSoD.
- Not Worth Killing: Mercury spares an emotionally broken Ruby, either due to this, because Cinder needs her for her future plans, or the overall plan was just to distract her.
- Pun-Based Title: "PvP" as in Player Versus Player, but also as in Penny versus Pyrrha.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Appropriately enough, Pyrrha. She did win her match, but brutalized Penny in the process, which allowed Cinder to sway the people into distrusting the kingdoms, boosting the invading Grimm.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Cinder lays a reserved yet vicious one on the leaderships of all the kingdoms, calling into question their authority, effectiveness, and entices the civilian population into mistrust, strengthening the Grimm even further.
- Slasher Smile:
- Sported by Adam and his soldiers as they airdrop Grimm into Vale.
- Mercury sports a particularly smug version of this when he sees Ruby weeping over Penny's death before leaving her alone.
- There Is No Kill Like Overkill: Emerald's illusion made Pyrrha see Penny generate a wall of swords large enough to blot out the audience.
- They Look Just Like Everyone Else!: Used as a point of rhetoric in Cinder's Breaking Speech. She points out that Atlas has disguised a super-competent Attack Drone as a human girl and the public has no way of knowing who among them are robots as well.
"Bring them to their knees!"
