Board Thread:Episode Discussion/@comment-26512661-20200118161649/@comment-14909251-20200202223459

73.Anon.52 wrote: It suggests nothing of the sort, All that was suggested is that Salem picked Tyrian up herself, no reason was given for Pickerel's getting pulled but it can be presumed from the transcript to be Atlas being Atlas; "no one would dare take our prisoner, no added security needed" or Corrupt Mistralian management, which is a major problem in Mistral having a vast criminal underworld. One shouldn't assume that Salem had or needed help picking him up, why would she even bother with pretense to save herself the trouble of another walking corpse across her path? Who would have the authority to remove Pickerel from the transport detail? There is no indication given that this was an Atlesian decision and it seems far more likely that it was a decision in Mistral. Presumably, that decision would be made by Lionheart since only Atlas integrates the huntsmen and huntresses into their military. It is not as if him exposing hunstmen and huntresses would be a revelation.

There is a large amount of area to cover from Mistral to Atlas. Hard to imagine Salem knew on her own where and when to intercept the exact transport carrying Tyrian or are we assuming she just sort of coincidentally ran into them? No, the far more plausible sequence of events is that Salem was told when and where Tyrian's transport would end up by Lionheart, Pickerel was something of a problem so was removed at Lionheart's direction, and because of this the story changed.

Pickerel may have decided to change the route and time in transit out of his reasonable caution and the story would have played out as normal, with both dying in a crash after Tyrian attacks him mid-flight over water. I don't know why you would so emphatically shut down such an idea of Salem using Lionheart in this way. Again, we already know Lionheart was working with her before Ozpin died and we know he had no qualms sending his own people to their deaths. Why would this be any different?