Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-4141313-20181215021300/@comment-14909251-20181223231346

On the whole, "villains aren't even near them" matter. Do we actually know how long the team were on the train to Argus? We don't know exactly where Argus is, but my best guess it is at the bay area on the northwest side of Anima. That would mean they traveled at least as far as the trek to Mistral in Volume 4 and that took them weeks. When they were on the train it didn't seem to be going at a particularly high speed. Given they walked to Brunswick and Yang carted them on her motorcycle for what seems to have been just a few hours at best, they must have already been pretty close to Argus when the train crashed. Obviously, the train would go faster than RNJR went by foot, but that kind of trip could still take days.

We also have a little room to fudge things on timing. "Two weeks" can mean 14 days exactly or 13 days, 15 days, or even 16 days. "Approximately a month ago" could mean 35 days, 30 days, or 27 days. "Last week" could mean five days ago or ten days. Malachite mentioned "a few weeks" regarding when they were last seen. If it had been four weeks she would have more likely said "about a month ago" so it probably means around three weeks. That could mean 21 days or it could mean 19 days, 24 days, and you get the picture. Point is, if the trip to Argus by train were to take two full days under normal circumstances (presuming optimistically a constant speed of 60 mph over 24 hours each day), then they probably arrived at Argus about three days after Qrow's "two weeks" message. Since they arrived at Dusk, that means this episode was the fourth day and it was already night by the end. In other words, they are likely to be on at least the fifth day since departing come the end of next episode. Easy enough to see them tack on a few days from here before the big finale if we assume there isn't a larger gap.

So, let's say they departed for Argus 16 days after the Battle of Haven and Cinder asked about them 27 days after. This would put her about 13 days or two weeks behind them as of this episode. Hard to imagine her being able to make it to them in that time unless there is a larger gap of time allowed. If we assume Salem's group asked about ten days prior to Cinder, that could have been just a day after the team left for Argus. So, they could have ample time to go back to LoD and head to Argus. Plausible that the time lines up as Hazel's report wouldn't matter much if they would have presumably arrived at Argus days prior. No reason for Tyrian to think he could intercept them before they reached Atlas.

Having said that, there is one argument for there being a time gap. If anything big happened in Argus, such as something involving a giant monster Grimm attacking the city, then presumably people in Mistral would know about it by that time. Either that means nothing big is going to happen, or there is a bigger time gap then we know. Perhaps the train was going slower than I presumed and there will also be a large gap at Argus. If we assume Argus doesn't have direct communications with Mistral, then word of the incident could take anywhere from a few days to a week to reach anyone in Mistral. We could assume the train is going much slower on average, the distance is a little greater than I surmise, or both, and add a few days. Then all we need is a few more days to tack on to their time in Argus if we allow that it would take a week or so for word to reach Mistral.