Gabriel and Casti arrive at the abandoned building to tie up loose ends with the rest of SOL, informed this was their last known hideout. Once there, Clyde makes himself known, and Gabriel offers to forego the violence and work together to help Skyber defeat the Machine. However, unreasonable as always, Clyde goes on the offensive, blaming Skyber’s team for getting Lily imprisoned and playing the victim under her protection. He sends Bob to take them out, but Casti, thanks to Gabe’s planning, comes prepared and counters his attack. Clyde uses a Gold card based on Nova’s nullification to remove everyone’s Electi and card abilities, however failing to consider it wipes out his party’s abilities too. Bob is de-armored, revealing his true form for the first time as a Raven Therian. Able to speak for the first time in years, he levels with Casti while Gabe and Clyde are consumed by irrational hate and violently take each other out. In their conversation, Casti is able to convince Bob to help them in their upcoming final battle, both knowing the dangers ahead. When Gabriel and Clyde come to, they realize they are the spitting image of each other’s fathers–Hernando Torres, kingpin of a currently unknown cartel in Argentina, and Abraham House, son of the late founder of the House mafia, Cain. Clyde reveals his true name and identity, and the two form a strained bond.
Exhausted from his most recent battle, Enzo meets Ravien, who informs him of everything going on above ground. She shares that Big Top has teamed up with the Clover Team and is planning on taking down Skyber to stop the Machine, requesting him to listen to reason and help them, instead of indirectly causing everyone more trouble by carelessly spawning in more cards with each fight. Enzo refuses, as he already “knows his next move.”
- (FLASHBACK TO ACT ONE) Enzo finds a fighting ring by Black Market members in the upper floors of the abandoned building and beats all of them, leaving all the cards for the spectator crowd watching them. Learning about the basics of the simulation’s effects, they all split off into different directions, growing more and more powerful and creating a feedback loop to challenge Enzo. -Immediately after Val and Skyber’s talk, Val leaves and finds two kids fighting and a card is dropped. She confronts the winner, learning what’s causing and encouraging people to fight in broad daylight. Knowing what she knows from Skyber and sensing value in the cards, she immediately tries grifting and swindles her first bronze from the winner, because she believes she can start a card trafficking ring specifically to spite Skyber and cause more chaos for her.
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The Da Silva twins reunite in the school hallways, discussing their findings and sharing secrets about the simulations. Taking advantage of the Black Market’s “just a game” perception of the simulations, Val convinces her brother to keep fighting to stay on top so she can “control the flow” of their dropped cards, and make some money in the process. She willfully neglects to inform him of her vendetta against Skyber, as well as only promising the card flow to stop, but just on her brother’s end. In fact, she’d much prefer to see everyone else suffer from card bullshit.
- (FLASHBACK TO ACT TWO) Enzo confronts his own Manifestation, Pride. He defeats it, dropping a Gold. He pockets the Gold, remembering what Val said about the cards and believing this one to be too powerful and dangerous in the wrong hands, instead choosing to keep this specific one for himself. Val elects herself to find and stash any other Golds he finds, for “safekeeping”, unless for VERY good trades.
- Having collected several Golds from farming Pride (due to its nature as one that never admits defeat or weakness, it always spawns in as a Gold tier), Val’s card trafficking “business” garners the attention of Ravien. She tells Val that her goons are trading for Golds Enzo had farmed from Pride, as well as many more Silvers and Bronzes unseen, and knowing all too well who’s behind it, strongly advises Val to stop the card grifting so balance in the Market can finally be restored. Val “politely” declines, knowing at this point, Ravien is completely powerless against the card trade, and those under her influence.
(BACK TO PRESENT) Val and Enzo meet up again. Enzo realizes he’s getting hurt despite the previous effects of the simulations, and Val patches him up. She explains to Enzo everything to him from her end—the politics of the underground, her talk with Skyber, her rivalry with Ravien. As he explains the nature of the cards, Manifestations, having actually experienced all the brutality firsthand, they call everything off.
Valentina realizes she unintentionally circulated the wrong cards to the wrong people, inadvertently making her enemies more powerful and more dangerous. Valentina cites Occam’s razor and bypasses the cards’ indestructibility by simply burying the binder in which she has them all collected deep underground, and allows Enzo to finish fixing the mess they made above ground.
Charlie visits Lily in the medical ward, who is awaiting transfer to the holding cells. Lily claims she can’t remember a single thing under SIR’s control, though Charlie realizes SIR had been manipulating her religious traumas and promising her salvation, except really to punish her for failing Him. Eventually she realizes he has read her file as the daughter of the Children of Purity, a religious hate group against Electi and Therians, and was put in ERA due to the false allegations that she ate her parents. Charlie relates with her, as he is here because ERA had pardoned him for the false allegations of conspiring with the Children in commencing a devastating domestic terrorist attack on Detroit while he was in service as a police officer and forced into exile for a decade. He assures her he doesn’t believe her allegations (considering it’s implied he probably killed them during the attack) and promises to help clear her name as long as they’re here and confiscates her cards.
Over SMS, Brown and Artemis retire from the fights, apologizing for ever doubting Kay and quietly withdrawing from further activity with the Clover Team—they are met with full support from Nova, encouraging them to rest for all their hard work, and goes to them to let them bank their Gold and Silver cards. Gyssabel voice messages shitface drunk. Meanwhile, Charlie’s squad texts each other if they’ve seen either Gyssabel or Joan’s stash of beer. Charlie and Oliver go looking for her.
Charlie finds a drunk Gyssabel throwing herself a party in her private library study room. He scolds her and takes her beer, thinking she isn’t taking any of this seriously, though figures out that she’d been distracting herself from the traumatizing sight of SIR.
- PLOT TWIST 1: During the Lily fight, Gyssabel had stealthily spectated the fight to see Brown and Artemis take her down, though was not expecting SIR to appear as he had in the photograph Suzy had taken earlier. Terrified of his overwhelming power, she fled before He could notice her.
- PLOT TWIST 2: All this time, Gyssabel’s involvement in the arc was orchestrated by Charlie, having learned his lesson from the Orbeez arc. Ever since Suzy had defeated her and took her into custody at the Lodge, Charlie approached her off-screen to become a double agent with the Security to spy and collect information on the Clover Team, just to make sure they’re doing what Skyber had promised they’d do as per their alliance terms, while also scouting campus and targeting groups of students for the guards to take down (Black Market, FFA, TAD)
Charlie comforts her and grants her permission to leave campus until everything is fixed, as her job with him is already done. However, despite everything, Gyssabel refuses to leave, offering to stick it out with Charlie, accepting him as her family, seeing the job through to the end. Charlie accepts this, assigning her to help him with a sketchy plan—recruiting Ridley to their side for good.
Charlie sends in Gyssabel to talk to Ridley, knowing their bad chemistry will instigate a fight to prove he’s not as spineless as Gys thinks he will be for the plan. She notices he’s making Wildcards from stacks of drawings of his personal interests (Norse Mythology, Pokemon), and creates an empty snow forest illusion to illustrate her analogy of current events leading to “Ragnarok”, though SIR spectates turns it into a Tournament-esque arena. As they antagonize each other and start fighting, Charlie intervenes to help his daughter, finding that Ridley’s boundless creativity combined with the indomitable human spirit will be more than enough to remind the Machine who is still in control of who. Proving himself more than capable, Ridley realizes the gravity of the situation (and was already willing to join from the beginning), and the three move onto the next phase of the plan.
In the midst of all the violence, Goldman and Phoenix hold a sanctuary for all non-combatants in their lecture hall, where Brown briefly attends to get his mind off the cards. There, he sees Sean helping out Phoenix (who already knew Brown wouldn’t like seeing him there) and questions Goldman as to why he’s here, accusing the professors of letting a dangerous convict walk free like nothing happened. Stunned, Goldman corrects Brown, informing that Sean was and is never to be trusted, but allowed to at least attempt to right his wrongs. Sean then apologizes directly to Brown, but Brown does not forgive him, though refrains from crashing out as he normally would.
Pearl and Kay meet at dorm 2 to discuss their findings with Skyber, who is trying on a human form for when the Emissary is over. They report to her about their encounter with SIR, which had explained to them of Skyber’s past as a former goddess, who had erased herself along with a past iteration of humanity for reasons unknown, and from the chaos and destruction birthed Nova, the incarnate of the void Skyber left behind. The girls don’t understand any of this, but Skyber remembers everything, and starts crashing out hard. She regresses into a primal form, lamenting that humanity and her will never understand each other (Kay and Pearl have none of this). She decides to handle SIR herself, warning the students to stay away. When she throws herself out the window, Brown arrives shortly after to see what’s wrong. Kay gives him the choice to walk out now so he won’t have to deal with this, knowing Brown never had the opportunity before. Brown, for once, chooses to stay out of it. Pearl starts referring to him as Mason.
In the Lodge, Penny arrives to order coffee and make amends with Kay and Pearl after their fight, so there’s no hard feelings. There definitely still is, but Kay and Pearl take the time to explain their side of the story and just what the Machine and Skyber are. They forgive Penny for not knowing any better, but Penny still regrets everything she’s done to them and their friends, and humbly requests she help them figure out the rest of the game plan together, knowing full well she’d be going against the current goals of Big Top. They immediately accept.
As Fraise stands guard of the Greenhouse, Ulah makes one last attempt to assert her ideals of perfection upon woeful students, now targeting the next best candidate for perfection, Mr. Vice President himself. Fraise declines to challenge her at first, but Ulah gives him an ultimatum to agree to her modified fight terms, appealing to his love for plants. He agrees, and the simulation automatically factors in the changed rules, a feature seen more often before in the Tournament. Fraise is forced to fight Ulah while avoiding touching death traps littered around the greenhouse. This fight never concludes. (see below)
Kay and Pearl bump into Charlie and Ridley in search of Skyber outdoors. The girls tell them Skyber went to fight SIR, and Charlie informs them he has mobilized his team, who will be joining the group. Although none of them have a plan to defeat SIR, they know that in Skyber’s vulnerable state, if the Machine takes her out first it could win its own Tournament simulation, thus be absolutely unstoppable. Ernst arrives coincidentally and is met with immediate skepticism, until he brings forth his blueprints for “Operation: Wildcard Emissary.” He devises a unified strike force of three different teams—Sword, Shield, and Hammer—contingent on the fact that they get as many people as possible together for the plan to work.
- Team Sword is solely responsible for the summoning of Skyber with the Golden Statue, and will focus primarily on attack and big damage builds against her. Their only goal is to take her down as fast as possible.
- Team Shield will provide an iron curtain around Sword in the event of Manifestation attacks, looking to distract or intervene with Sword. Their goal is to take down the Machine’s enemies before they take down Skyber.
- Team Hammer fills in the gaps for both teams, serving as bonus flex support for scouting, distracting, healing, deck building, counter flanking and counter attacking, skills that don’t necessarily fit into purely offensive or defensive roles.
Just as the group assign themselves their roles and leaders, the sky turns off and the Manifestation of War falls from the clouds, indicating Skyber’s fight with the machine—thus the final battle for ERA—has begun. Everyone goes off to gather as many allies as they can. The rest of campus are sent into a panic.
- Artemis and Brown are interrupted from their movie night. Knowing something big is going down, Artemis can no longer sit still while her friends risk their lives without her help. Brown, still choosing to stay behind, gives her all his cards and wishes her luck. She kisses him a “be back soon.”
- The Clover Team catches up with one another and makes their final plans over text. Sybil adds Clyde to the GC, confusing and angering everyone. Kay also adds Ridley, who is mostly . Petty arguing aside, Clyde is finally brought up to speed. Nova is informed Skyber went off to fight alone, and they ominously go offline. Gyssabel informs everyone she’s out looking for Skyber, but when she does after climbing the library rooftop, she sees something horrible and incomprehensible in the distance and suddenly goes offline, freaking everyone out. Gabriel calls Brown out on staying behind while everyone goes to fight, but Brown tells him he wouldn’t understand. Casti goes to gather everyone in the Art Department. Pearl sends everyone the Operation plans.
- Kay and Artemis double check their gear to prepare for the climactic finale. To calm their nerves, they tell each other how great they are, until they end up kissing, sealing the deal with the love triangle and getting together.
- Charlie also sends his team and the Emergency Unit the plans and gets them to mobilize. He informs that he sent Gyssabel to locate Skyber’s whereabouts, but has not heard back from her and wants the first person out to find her. He gives a rather corny pep talk over text.
- Penny sees the sky turn black from her dorm room. The initial shock of the situation is further edged on by the appearance of a smoke covered letter at her door. It’s a card care package from Ravien saying she knows Big Top is in talks with the Clover team. She gives Penny extra cards for her new fight and promises to help from the shadows. She expects Penny to meet with her if this final battle ends well. Penny takes these cards and decides to hit the streets to get more information. Unfortunately her first stop at Pearl’s dorm ends up with a grave image of a hole in dorm 2’s wall. She decides to head to the shopping district instead.
- Charlie makes a quick stop to the security department for more firepower, but is joined by Claude, who presumably hadn’t been involved since the Raid. Claude asks if Ernst can be trusted, and Charlie responds it’s their only plan that involves everyone working together, instead of causing more violence keeping people separated like what the Machine wanted this whole time.
- Fraise and Ulah’s fight is interrupted by the sky, each believing the other caused it but quickly coming to their senses, a rare sight for this arc. It is unanimously agreed to settle their differences, while they face a greater threat than thorny plants.
Kay and Pearl find Nova in the gardens, who is currently tweaking hard (literally) over the fact that Skyber and them were supposed to handle everything together, but now she went alone without even telling them. They begin crashing out so badly they bend and almost break reality, exposing the black hole trapped inside their chest and traumatizing Pearl and Kay. The girls try their absolute best to calm Nova down, and barely succeed. A deflated Nova tiredly resigns themself to the girls, who take them to the shopping district with what little time they have to recuperate and prepare. Not wanting to die on an empty stomach, they spend their last calm moments at a vacant burger joint, everyone absolutely exhausted from the arc already and barely holding on to sanity. Kay and Pearl’s only saving grace is the Plan, which they share with Nova.