34 A Roman Mishap Pt.2

The sound of constant gunfire and screeches sounded from a ruined street. Near the end was an opening that grimm poured out of in great numbers.

Roman and Neo watched each other back fighting stragglers while Hanns was at the very front distracting the majority of the grimm.

Weaker beowolves clawed and bit the metal that made up Hanns. Not a single one does any significant damage to the unmoving bunker of steel.

Another shell was fired, and the HE shell flew through the air and detonated at the center of the opening, leaving the grimm to be slaughtered in seconds.

Neo plunges her blade into another head of a grimm while using her parasol to block nevermore feathers heading for her.

An ursa lunges for her, only for the illusion to be revealed and the sound of glass breaking confusing the bear-like grimm.

Seconds later a flare shot impacted the back of its head leaving a chunk flying off into the air.

Neo reveals herself to be behind Roman to block an attack from another beowolf approaching.

Torchwick doesn't bat an eye and fires off another flare behind him without even looking, killing the beowolf in one shot.

Neo smirks and jumps as a creep tries to strike her, she lands on the tail and taunts the grimm.

The creep roars before getting its head caved in by the blunt force exerted by Torchwick's Melodic Cudgel. He twirls off the grimm's black ooze from his cane before ducking along with Neo.

An APCBC round travels over their heads, and both Torchwick and Neo's aura flicker slightly from defending against the pressure. The shells cuts through an alpha creep prowling near its comrades.

They stood up to engage another pack of grimm. A cycle continued where their synchronous attacks and defense culled the incoming grimm into lesser numbers.

After a while, the battle is over and the grimm were gone from existence.

"You see what I mean, Lunchbox?"

Torchwick readjusts his loosening bowler hat.

"Ever since yesterday noon, the grimm started climbing their way up from the underground."

Torchwick points towards the opening the grimm came from.

"It's not that bad since I can't get bored anymore but I don't want to wake up with my face halfway into an ursa's jaw."

In truth, Torchwick was getting nervous that there was a possibility that the grimm was just going to surge out all at once. This is why he contacted Neo and Hanns. Torchwick doesn't want to admit it but he feels more comfortable that Hanns was there. Armored support does that to people.

"I see what you mean, Torchwick. We're going to have to clean out the entire subterranean part of the city, corner to corner, today."

There was a pause from the conversation. The words that left Hanns made Torchwick wonder.

"Lunchbox, I don't know how much faith you have in the three of us but it doesn't bode well for me that we're supposed to clear everything out in… one day."

'Hmm, oh?'

Hanns notices movement from within the ruins. Team RWBY has been listening in during the battle that broke out.

"How about four more then?"

Team RWBY gets startled by Hanns calling out their presence and slowly showing themselves.

"Ah, Little Red and her feline companion Kitty Cat. How was the playground in Beacon?" Torchwick jokes.

Ruby suddenly rushes with a scythe in hand, using the recoil to pack more of a punch.

"Woah!"

Torchwick was surprised at the speed but he quickly recovers from the surprise and deflects the blow easily.

"A little aggressive there Red, you kids throwing a tantrum?" Torchwick taunts.

Weiss comes to her aid by pushing forward with her glyphs and rapidly aims her rapier, Myrtenaster, straight towards Torchwick.

Neo jumps in and trips Weiss who in response stabilizes herself in the air by using her glyphs.

Neo opens her parasol and smiles at Weiss who prepares a stance with her rapier.

Recognizing Weiss' stance, she imitates her movements and mocks Weiss by doing the same readjusting.

Weiss narrows her eyes and begins to fight. Neo only played with her by expertly dodging and even slapping Weiss a bunch of times instead of hitting her.

Weiss kept trying to use her dust inside the chamber of her weapon only for glass to shatter and a slap to land across her face which was now reddening from the number of times Neo slapped her.

Hanns, Blake, and Yang stared at each other. Watching the duels being fought.

"So, are we supposed to fight?"

Blake closes her eyes in acceptance. There was no way she could stand a chance when Hanns fought by shooting armor-piercing rounds. It'd be suicide.

Yang steps forward and punches her fists together. She winds a solid right hook before launching herself towards Hanns. A loud metal clang could be heard as her fist met the armor of the Tiger H1.

"Damnit Yang, you scratched my paint."

Surprised by the lack of actual damage from a punch, she steps back to assume a fighting stance.

"I just want to see how strong you are."

Hanns thought of how strong he would do against a human.

'I think she'll survive this. Yang's supposed to be strong in comparison to the rest of the school year.'

Hanns loads in APCBC intending to shoot just to the right of Yang. He felt his gun recoil and the shell travels towards Yang.

Everyone stops their fight as soon as they heard Hanns fire his gun. The shell strikes Yang's outreached hands, desperately trying to move it to the side.

She felt her knees buckle as she tries to deflect the shell to the side. The aura she had flickered and slowly drained from a bright color to a dulling shade.

The shot gets moved to the side as Yang kneels from the intense kinetic energy she had received.

She moves to check her scroll while she stood up. Yang looked to see her aura being at 0.1% exactly.

"Try me" Hanns responds.

Yang burns gold and her eyes turn red from her semblance, she winds up for another right hook. This time it was empowered and she hoped to get more damage in towards the seemingly invincible tank.

A resounding bang was heard as she threw her punch but she doesn't relent. Her speed increased as she focused on throwing more punches. Sparks flew and her aura flickered as she keeps rapidly punching Hanns' armor. The concrete below began to crack from the power of her punches.

She steps back to see her punches only stripped the paint bare to the metal. The rest of the spectators were shocked. Everyone there knew if they had even received one of those punches they would be knocked out.

Yang's semblance makes it so the more damage she receives, the more she could dish out. At 0.1% she was supposed to be at her strongest.

"Why won't you die?!"

Hanns smiled and laughed at the question.

"Kruppstahl son, it hardens in response to angling. You can't hurt me, Yang."

Yang angered by his taunting throws another punch toward the tank.

"What did I just say?"

Hanns taps his machine gun to fire a single round at Yang. Her aura shatters and is left exhausted on the ground. Blake helps her up and sighs at her partner's decision to fight a tank in hand-to-hand combat.

Yang is impressed at his seemingly strong armor and whimpers out.

"Damn, strong."

Ruby snaps out from her being fascinated by Hanns' armor and points her Cresent Rose towards a sarcastically surrendering Torchwick.

"Torchwick! What are you planning?!" She yells out.

"Don't look at me Red, Lunchbox here offered me peace of mind in exchange for my cooperation. So technically he's the mastermind." Torchwick points at Hanns.

Everyone in team RWBY turns and eyed Hanns with suspicion.

"Ok before you all begin to try, and I do mean try, to kill me let me explain."

Everyone, including Neo and Torchwick, lower their weapons. Hanns saw the go-ahead and continued.

"Everything I've done up to this point was to foil someone's plans that threatened to destroy beacon and even Vale itself."

Everyone including Torchwick stared wide-eyed at the statement.

"Roman here was just an unfortunate bystander that was roped into her plans."

"Her?" Weiss asks.

"Cinder and some other person who is responsible for everything wrong in the world."

Everyone digested the information being dumped on them.

"How did you find this out?" Ruby asked, losing her confrontational attitude from before.

"Roman, and my investigations and suspicions," Hanns replied.

"How can you trust that he is being truthful in all this?" Weiss questioned.

"Kiddies let me all tell you about something. I value my life probably more than most of you which is why when Hanns gracefully offered me a chance to live by pointing his gun at me, I saw fit that I side with him rather than Cinder." Torchwick admits.

"They are planning things big for the world. I'm here to neuter the source." Hanns declared.

"Why?" Ruby asks.

"For the SL and RP- I mean for world…peace."

"It's why I cleared out Forever Fall and cleaned out the upper layer of Mountain Glenn. That's why I called you all out here, to stop the rest of her schemes." He continued.

"I didn't intend for Roman or Neo to be here as well. I only came here to exterminate grimm." Hanns said.

"Lunchbox is right after a certain cat had been pestering me over and over again. I felt that there would be a time your machine friend over here would come out and kill me in a single shot. I'd simply rather fight Cinder than Lunchbox. The fight you showed me just solidified my choice."

"One massive eight-headed taijitu later and we made the partnership official as long as Lunchbox kills Cinder for me."

"You fought a giant eight-headed taijitu?" Yang stands up as she recovers from her aura shattering.

"That's what you're asking? Not that Blake's friend worked with wanted criminals?" Weiss scoffed.

"Hey now, Blake was a terrorist turned vigilante, Ruby technically helped us destroy part of the industrial district, Yang is Yang, so she probably broke someone's bar or something and Weiss is the heiress to a company that uses slave labor.

We all are criminals here one way or another." Hanns pointed out.

The others look at each other with reluctant understanding. Hanns did have a good reason to get Torchwick in.

"So, if anyone wants to join us in saving the world by confronting cinder then raise your hand," Hanns announced to the group.

Everyone slowly raises their hands, except for two people.

Weiss looks around irritated that she was in the minority again.

Torchwick who also had his hand down sees Weiss. He smirks and raises his hand just to annoy her even more.

"Ugh, fine let's go, team." She finally gives up.

"But I'm still suspicious of working with these two." She points towards Neo and Torchwick.

"The feeling is mutual Ice Queen"

"Why does everyone call me that?!"

"So are we going to use that vehicle of yours?" Weiss asked.

"It's called a tank and we have to go down first before we use it."

"How do you get to the underground anyways."

Hanns makes them follow him to the barely supported piles of collapsed concrete below an old train terminal.

"I use this."

"That looks unsafe. How can that even support you?" Weiss curiously asked.

"Oh, I do this."

Hanns transforms from his heavier Tiger H1 to the lighter and more agile Sd.Kfz.234/2.

"Ruby!" Yang says with panic in her voice.

Ruby started to bleed from the nose. She desperately holds herself up while trying to stop her nose from bleeding too much.

"Iz fphine!"

"Ruby your nose!" Blake yells out.

"Gibe mieh mhay mhilk."

Blake takes the bag and opens it, not questioning why Ruby wanted the milk instead of literally anything else in her bag.

Ruby slowly tilts her head to drink. Moments later her bleeding stopped and she keeps on drinking the carton of milk.

"Phew, all fine now."

'How the heck?' Everyone thought.

"Let's head down!" She exclaims.

Team R+RWBY+N arrives at the underground layer and Hanns reassigns them to a tank. The Pz.IV H drops to the ground and everyone climbs in to ride it.

"Alright let's go."

Hanns returns to his Tiger H1 form and leads the team.

"How about me, Lunchbox? Why do I not get some cool vehicle." Roman complained.

"It's called a tank, you could always ride in the commander's hatch in mine. Gonna be cramped though since you're tall."

Roman climbs over to the turret and sees the dust crates being inside taking up half the turret space.

"Oh lovely…" he sarcastically commented.