Despite the events are changing thanks to Professor Sycamore's entrance into the train, it doesn't free us from the heart-wrenching moments stemming from the mentor's concerns about his missing pupil as he faces the inevitable encounter on the Train.
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Prologue
Effet Papillon (Spectrum)
- Professor Sycamore's slow descent into despair. He spends every day worrying for Alain's safety to the point that he's ignoring his well-being and mental health to continue the search while juggling between his research, lectures, and more. With his hope being on his last legs, it's only a matter of time until he breaks.
- The worst part is that if he actually told Ash about this, it might've prevented a lot of his sorrow as this is around the time Trip arrives to explain about the Infinity Train.
- Sycamore's Rage Breaking Point. After Officer Jenny informs him that the police are canceling the search for Alain, the professor desperately begging her to resume it. But once she asks him to take a rest, it's the last straw as his Nice Guy and Stepford Smiler facade are thrown out of the window, and began ranting he feels that he has a role in Alain's downfall and his worries that something bad happens to him. But once he turns around snaps at them to shut up, he does so right in front of Calem and Meyer.
- One of the things that Sycamore is worried about is if Alain is brainwashed? The worst part is that he's right; at this point, Alain is crucified in a cold cell, lost in a trance, and ready to become the Dream for the Cage of Flauros.
Act 1
The Monster City Car
Follow You Down
- The discovery of Sycamore's sudden disappearance. The worst part is that Calem is desperately trying to create some logical conclusions that his role model isn't truly gone. But the police end up debunking those theories, which leads to Calem's painful conclusion that Professor Sycamore is now in the Train. Even if he remains calm from the revelation, he is internally panicking and horrified.
- It's even worse when he texts his online friends about the situation and their former theory that the Train only takes children.
Calem: Unfortunately, considered it: MYTH DEBUNKED.(Beat)nextChAmP: noooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!musicTechn1c1an: But... That means...Calem: That's right. Professor Sycamore is now on the Train from your pasts.
Epos
- Mairin has not been taking Alain's disappearance well. She was trying to get him something to eat but her back was turned for one second and Alain just vanishes soon after. She's been on every news report hoping Alain sees her and comes back home, but the readers know that he's not going to see them.
- And then Meyer tells her the news of Professor Sycamore's disappearance. She ends up crying her heart out all through the night.
- The werewolf chief's near-death is this to the young werewolf (who will be named Vaillant). After his reckless attempts to destroy the Rock Crushers ended in failure, his father quickly takes his place when the golem tries to grab him. The teenage werewolf realizes too late what's about to happen just as his father gave him his final request to keep an eye on the village. If Rimuru and Professor Sycamore didn't arrive on time, the young werewolf would have been too traumatized and devastated to lose his father over his recklessness.
The Model Diorama Car
Autonomy
- Goh is shown in a Heroic BSoD as he has just gotten Chloe's farewell text from him, blaming himself for calling her out for not having a dream and being so obsessed with Mew.
- Sycamore has to see a denizen of a plastic soldier going to war and his daughter begging and pleading not to go to sacrifice himself from the incoming mecha.
Codec
- While Gloria's Brutal Honesty confrontation is handled much better thanks to her compassion and empathy, Goh is still having his My God, What Have I Done? moment, realizing that his failure to listen or notice Chloe's problems is one of the causes that she ran away into the Infinity Train.
- What finally broke his Horrible Judge of Character on Chloe is Gloria giving him these Armor-Piercing Question.
Gloria: Would you really? If she suddenly asks you to speak to her and begged you not to hang up for some inane reason except, "Oh my dreams are more important than my friend about to kill herself!". When was the last time you actually cared to listen to her? - Yuri falls into a Heroic BSoD after Vaillant sacrificed himself to take his place as Zeon's hostage. After the Zeon left, the chapter ends with him wailing in despair, realizing that he dragged an outsider into the war because of him, causing his number to rise to 230.
Stache
- Yuri's circumstances before the Train is revealed. Turns out that he's The Runaway after he learned that his parents stop buying model kits and video games every month despite he didn't skip any classes or failed his exams as he claimed.note By the time Sycamore finds Yuri, he's starting to beat himself up and thinking that he and everyone else in the White Base will scold him or kick him out thanks to his mistake just like what his parents did to him.
Stars Come Out/The Skill Crane Car
- Goh finally watches the paint can incident video and Class 5-E's confession on the bullying and torment to Chloe. Just after watching the latter almost causes him to throw up.
- After spending a few cars worrying about his fate, Sycamore's fears finally came true during the telepathy car. That Alain is in Silent Hill and hearing him lost his will to something.
The Twisted Lab Car
- The Car is 50% "Technological Horror Silent Hill" and 50% "Trauma" that invokes the sadness in Silent Hill 2 and the famous "nightmare therapy" scene in Blossoming Trail.
Push Play
- Paul London's trip on the Train sucks. He has a geass on him that prevents him from ever revealing the names of his White Gestalt partners, and if he ever tells his name to someone, they can't say it. He can't even get himself photographed or be on Infinigram because it risks the chance of Grace and Simon remembering the incident in Orange Lily and it also prevents him from aiding the Red Lotus Trio. His only partner is Easter and even that is small comfort.
Fall Into the Sky
- Lain's existence in a nutshell: unlike Maria from, he's fully aware that he's nothing more than a fake and ends up dying trying to do the right thing by stopping a brainwashed Sycamore from killing Yuri and Vaillant. He ends up being stabbed to death for his troubles, but not before he reassures Sycamore (who realizes his actions) that it's going to be alright. And thank him for at least promising to try and save him.
- Yuri has to go through a round of "Nightmare Therapy" that shows how he's so obsessed with his hobbies that everyone around him (particularly his family) is seen as blank slates. He's shown to be so shattered by it that he nearly becomes Blossomverse Goh were it not for Vaillant supporting him.
Slam the Door
- Shadow Sycamore's situation. Yes, he did brainwash his other self. Yes, he didn't show pity for Lain. But when Sycamore sees his past, we learn that Shadow Sycamore was a partner to a previous passenger who supposedly tortured him and he lashes out as others in order to get revenge and find a strong partner to work with. It isn't until Yuri's Persona (Ibn Battuta) appears and tells him that Shadow Sycamore's lashings make him just like the monster who abused him to which the Shadow realizes his actions and breaks down in tears.“I-I didn’t mean to hurt anyone… I-I just...don’t want to be hurt again… I don’t want...to see another outsider...turn into my previous user…I...didn’t mean...to kill Lain…”
- The lesser Shadows don't hate Shadow Sycamore; they're all afraid of his sanity and just want to help him but don't know how, acting like lost children who are wondering why a parental figure is so scared and angry all the time.
- Sycamore has every right to be angry, every right to not forgive his shadow for the terrors he placed on him, on Lain and on everyone else. You can feel the anger and hurt dripping from every word he speaks. Shadow Sycamore's reaction is that if that's the case, he should just die and make everyone else happy with him gone.Sycamore: I heard that if I accept you, you will become my Persona. But after everything you did, how can I? I don’t know if Lain was real or not, but losing him is similar to losing Alain. And those feelings within me are still real and painful. And yet, you care nothing but retribution and catharsis from your tragedy rather than the feelings of others. That’s the reason why the Shadows betrayed you in the end. With that in mind, I cannot condone your actions, and no matter how justified the reasons and motives you have, I will never forgive you.
Shadow Sycamore: I-I see…It’s not like I’ll be forgiven after everything I did. After I brainwashed you, forced you to kill your friends, and murdered Lain, I know I’ll never deserve forgiveness no matter how hard I try as your Persona. In the end, I am nothing more than a terrorist...waiting for his execution to a cheering crowd. I will open the door to the next car. After that, I will die alone or suffer a punishment to repent for my sins. Away from the car I’m supposed to protect. I don’t care if I’m hated anyway. - When Augustine declares that just because he won't forgive his shadow that doesn't means he's unforgivable to others, Shadow Sycamore can't believe it, showing how broken he truly is.Shadow Sycamore: N-No…You’re only saying that because now you feel sorry for me. And yet you never forgive me anyway…Just how long are you playing as a messiah while knowing how much you’re hurt from everything I did to you and your friends?
Sycamore: I am not playing God. And if you think I am playing, then I cannot help you in that regard.
Shadow Sycamore: You’re just like him [his previous passenger partner]. You think I’m useless to change and unforgivable and then leave me alone before you can kill me as your sacrifice. Nobody can forgive me. Nobody will stand by my side. And the only friend I have is gone! I have nothing! I don’t deserve to live anymore...”
- The final scene of the arc has the Red Lotus Trio, with Atticus and Lexi begging Chloe to call her family and tell her she's alright. Unlike the spiteful girl in canon, Chloe is shown to be really unsure to do so, as going back means the fear of returning to how everything is at home: she's insulted, bullied, belittled, and seen as a Professor's daughter instead of the brave, spunky heroine of the Infinity Train. Atticus brings up how she should be lucky she can even contact her parents as Tulip went on the trek for five months without anyway of knowing what her parents were doing with her disappearance.
- Chloe hears that her homeroom teacher is now fired from everything that happened in the confession video because it was her class that was chewed out and Chloe her student who ran away from home. For everything that happened, Chloe didn't want her teacher to lose her job.
The Anthem/The Poring Village Car
- The call between Yuri and his family back in Celadon is this as Yuri can't do anything but listen and apologize while hearing his father calling out his selfishness all because they were trying to cut down his allowance. But when his father starts ranting that he's running off onto a Train on his silly adventures, Yuri finally snaps and rants about his experiences on the Train just sees his selfish ways and his fears of being alone because of them. Considering that he called right after the horrors of the last car, it only took his father ranting about a silly Train story for him to let out his frustrations and sadness from his Nightmare Therapy.
- After hearing the poor boy's traumatic experiences, his father can't scold him any further, seeing how much he is more traumatized than guilty from his experiences from the last car. He and the Ichiro can't do anything but hear Yuri wailing on the other line.
- Eventually, Yuri's family quickly comforts their only son, assuring him that he's not alone thanks to Victor informing them about him traveling with Sycamore and not to give up his journey through the Train. This allows him to regain some of his hope as the chapter ends with Yuri letting out of his negative feelings along with relief.
The Ninjala Car
Lost in Japan (remix)
- Goh getting to chew out Chloe for how she also had a hand for not explaining things sooner, tired of being harassed and beaten about for how he neglected her. At the end of it all, Chloe is a sobbing wreck who accepts that yes, everything is her fault because she wasn't Goh, Ash or her father. If she was like them, then she'd never be abused or bullied. And Goh has to reveal how horrified he was to be so ignorant about his "friend's" problems and his recording her fight with Ash was just a way to cement how she was taking the first step to liking Pokémon.Chloe: Goetia, it all sounds so selfish now, like Sara. I wanted ice cream, curry, to join a school club, be free...and I never thought to ask for them. There’s just this...fear I have, and it’s hurting me and everybody else. Fear of never being enough, fear of being different and weird for liking demons and monsters, fear that no one likes me unless I was like you or Ash or my father…
Icarus Lives! (Remix)
- The flashback that reveals why Chloe kept refusing the suggestion to go with Ash and Goh: she once wanted to go to a softball camp that had her favorite team supervising and her dad said that she could go if she was on her best behavior. So she did everything to survive the bullying and wait for that faithful day...and then a last-minute conference came up and she couldn't go, even when she asked for alternatives. Then the dear old Professot told her that it wasn't important to her now and she could go next time and Chloe decided that Pokémon would always be more important than her wishes, thus giving her a reason to never speak up about her problems.
- Gloria bluntly surmises that Chloe is a parallel to an abusive victim because she's always staying in "abusive households" (her school, home and the Institute) where people constantly get her hopes up and make promises, only to crush them so easily through neglect or abuse. And the worst part is that Gloria actually makes a good point: everyone in the Institute ignored her, broke their promises and pretended the problem didn't exist, her teachers never stood up for her, and Goh hypocritically can remember to go to school for testing but not give a damn to arrive when Chloe asks him to, promising to not do it again. If only one person did more for Chloe, the biggest one just talking to the girl, she'd be happier and not wanting to be like Icarus.
- However, Gloria's words eventually lead Professor Cerise to suffer a breakdown, yelling how he at least cared for Chloe unlike the parents of her bullies, who did nothing to stop the bullying even after it got on the news, but how despite everyone trying to paint him as a neglectful, abusive father who doesn't care for Chloe, he's really just a Bumbling Dad who's worried over how his daughter's gone on a train to stop a cult with a very high chance of dying and wishes people would just stop pining the blame on him. This not only leads to Gloria realizing she repeated Trip's mistake, but everybody else in the Institute pointing out how they're to blame for what happened to Chloe.Professor Cerise: Do you [Gloria] realize your words are hurting more than helping me right now?! Sure, I made mistakes on how I wasn’t spending more time with my daughter and not actually getting to know her, but I was not, nor will I ever, an abusive parent! Compared to the neglectful ignorant parents who allowed the bullying on my daughter and didn’t tell them to stop after it was on the news and they got suspended! Or the teachers who knew what was going on yet didn’t care to help because, oh it was just a phase that Chloe would grow out of! I wanted to do what was right and protect her...You don’t know how it felt that day when I learned the news that my daughter nearly killed someone! You don’t know how it felt when I had people talking about it to me everywhere, even now, that I’m a horrible father who is raising a murderer! All I wanted was to just have my daughter be safe, be in a place where no bully can touch her, and I even asked her if everything was okay during dinner. She said...she said everything was fine and I never questioned it. Never looked at her. I just...focused on my work and my research fellows. And I read some of Chloe’s notebooks, read how she was wishing, begging, that she could join Ash and Goh but so afraid that they would hate her for not being more like them.
(Ash and Goh look ashamed)
Cerise: Chloe vanished because I was trying to cheer her up about her loss and all I wanted to do was reassure her so she could try again next time. But instead, I made it feel like I was punishing her, made her feel like Ash and Goh and knowing so much about Pokémon were more important than her...and now she thinks that going on this Train and stopping a cult that’s her bullies but if they were upgraded into serial killers will give her all the attention and love and everything she never got at home. But what if she dies?! What if they somehow cut her hair or...or they throw her into the wheels or injure her worse than Trip? Would they laugh at her, tell her she was pathetic, beat her down until she’s too afraid of trying again? What about that boy, Simon, he’s a teenager...would he go and…(starts sobbing) I want my daughter back...I want her to know that I love her so much…I want to give her everything I can, the sun, the moon, the stars...I will do anything to bring Chloe back and will never ever abandon or neglect her again just as long as she stays...Is that too much for some dunderhead professor like me to ask for? - And speaking of Parker, Gloria and Goh pulling their Not Now, Kiddo routine when he was about to reveal why Alex Shepherd to not be trusted hurts him as it reminded him of the bullies who laughed and mocked at him and said he was nothing. Upon him giving that reveal on Alex Shepherd = Pyramid Head, both Gloria and Goh heavily regret asking him to stop talking.
- Parker loses it when his innocent belief that Chloe's poem about being Icarus wasn't just an I Just Want to Be Free wish, but really a desire that she's Driven to Suicide...and given that Pyramid Head in his game was a manifestation of James wanting to be executed for killing his wife...
- Chloe's talk to Sycamore and Asher, just when she can start trusting him, loses steam immediately when Asher looking at the seal of Marchosias on Chloe's donut hole sheath makes him terrified and question why she has that drawnnote Chloe takes that fear of fire for fear of her freakiness and interest in the macabre, so embarrassed that she'll decide to conform to his desires and starts to scratch out the seal in hurt.
- Chloe is so used to the bullying that not only is she ready for any insults the shadow can give her but she can list every single thing she has had to go through like it's the weather. Augustine is terrified and angry about how not a single adult helped this girl out.
- In turn, Chloe coldly seeing Asher paralyzed traumatizes him since it makes him remember everything he put on Sycamore. When Sycamore explains how Chloe is making Asher want to kill himself, Chloe points out that's how she also feels.Chloe: (in regards to the desire to commit suicide) ...Guess that makes two of us. You wouldn't believe how Lexi felt when I told him I was tired of everyone wanting to be what they want me to be and wanted a way out of it all. If the train didn't come and my class learned of my epic fail against a champion, it would be all I needed to climb the school rooftop and jump off it. And then I'll be forgotten, cause no one cares about some weird loser like me unless I was their favorite punching bag.
- Chloe is not ready to trust Sycamore; she has had her trust and faith broken repeatedly by everyone, innocently or not. So what makes Sycamore so different?
- Dr. Yung gives her a deal to have a Mirage Pokémon and Chloe nearly takes it because she just wants nothing more than to stop being afraid for her life, to finally get her classmates to stop bullying her, and to never be the girl who stupidly Tackled a Gengar. Even with Sycamore and Asher telling her what the consequences would be, Chloe can't hear it because she's so scared of facing the same-old, same-old and never getting a chance to be this free (and she'll have to leave Atticus and Lexi behind forever), always isolated and never given any hope that things will change. Thankfully her father has a long text going into detail what's going on and promises, true promises, that they will all work on being better and explaining the story about why Yamper loves her so much — he knew she was lonely and wanted to be her friend.
The Chocolate Car
- Gloria is still stuck in her Heroic BSoD from the last car, and Victor sadly confirms that it's worse than just the recent incident - another Analogy Backfire in her past required her mirror self to be destroyed, and she's been carrying that for a while.
- Mallow has a flashback to the last time she saw her mother before the train picked her up, and it's still difficult for her to talk about her experiences.
- Lillie breaks down crying when the seriousness of what happened between her and her brother sinks in.
- We finally learn the full story of the White Gestalt...and it's a doozy. Gladion's hope to force the Apex to face themselves not only doesn't work, it makes them even more determined to take the train over and try to spite them. This ends up getting Lampetia destroyed and leaving everyone with a massive Guilt Complex and making One-One create the harmful Geass
Routine
- Tokio finally letting everything out for Victor, revealing the depths of his anger and depression.
- The collective farewells given to the White Gestalt members...the is the first time that passenger's loved ones have advanced warnings about people going on the train, and it's very hard for everyone involved.
- Mairin is inches away from going with the Elipzo cultists because of her fears for Alain, only being stopped by Chespie.
Act 2
The Palimpsest Car
- The fact that Professor Sycamore is so horribly broken by the events of the last Act that Paimon is forced to essentially reset him back to what he once was in order for the man to have some sort of hope of moving on.
The Harvest Moon Car
- The reveal that Goh's parents have been deliberately driving a wedge between Goh and Chloe after the latter took the former on a ghost hunting trip that led to him nearly drowning when he attempted to catch a Vivillon for her.
- Chloe's mental downward spiral as she's consumed by her suicidal thoughts. It's now to the point where she starts begging to have her head cut off. Fortunately, she gets better.
