Ruby brings the plot

As Ruby stood and cringed at the sight of her denuded ginger friend preparing to continue squaring off from the entryway, she heard a door slam open behind her and heavy, sharp footsteps.

“Alright little brat it’s time to-“ Mercury attempted to menace only to cut himself off, “Is she naked? Why is she just naked!? I thought she was supposed to be in pieces!”

“Aaaaah!!!” Ruby screamed, the stress of the last few days and the rapidly unraveling situation getting to her head as she panicked and caused a whirlwind with her powers. The resulted backdraft blew her and Mercury out into the arena. Drawing both the crowd’s and the cameras’ attention much to the relief of more prudish observers.

“Ruby? What are you doing down here?” Penny asked as she turned to see her friend and some silver-haired boy pick themselves off the ground. “Did you want to see me win up close?”

“Hey Penny” a groggy Ruby greeted as she unsteadily stood, “Sorry, no. I was just-“ Then she gasped and whirled to where Mercury swayed on his feet and clutched his head. This was her chance.

“Everyone look! Mercury Black is okay! My sister didn’t hurt him, he faked it!”

“Well, young Mister Black certainly does seem to have recovered curiously quickly for being shot in the knee!” Professor Oobleck concurred from the commentary box, as much to keep the focus away from Penny as anything else. “But that begs the question of how and why and what this all means.”

“He and his teammates are trying to turn everyone against each other and cause negatively through the broadcast to stir the Grimm to a frenzy!” Ruby continued to shout as the audience listened to her raptly, “They put an illusion on Yang to think she was being attacked, and then they did the same just now to Pyrrha! Except... all Pyrrha did was rip off Penny’s outfit... for some reason.”

“Hey! I didn’t mean to do that!” Pyrrha defended herself indignantly, only to yelp as she ducked from a flying blade “Penny we’re still talking about this!”

“Sorry, Opponent Pyrrha, I got overeager!” Penny apologized with a wave of her arms which caused a distracting bounce of her bust.

“Yeah, don’t listen to these crazy girls!” Mercury called out as he tried to defend himself, “I didn’t fake anything! The reason I’m up already is because they went ahead and replaced my leg with a metal one, it was so mangled it couldn’t be saved, see!?” And he pulled up a pant leg to illustrate, except-

“That’s the wrong leg you wORTHLESS IMBECILE!!!” Emerald furiously screamed at her despised co-conspirator, only to clasp her hands over her mouth in horror at outing them all and turning to stare bug-eyed at her leader, while Cinder’s eyes blazed as she watched her secrecy get obliterated and the entirety of the stadium turn to face her, accusation and suspicion in every pair of eyes.