44 Merlot's Island Pt. 1

Hanns sat on the forest floor, with himself in tatters from the bumpy landing he had just gone through.

The groaning of metal and pieces of his metallic frame fell on the ground as he idled, waiting for the repairs to finish.

'I should contact Torchwick to let him know I'm here.' Hanns sent out a quick telepathic message.

It was a simple message, it would take minutes or hours depending on how close Neo was to Hanns. Roman anticipated this and already made Neo wait near the entrance.

Operation Barbarossa was way too important to delay relaying its success of it to Hanns.

'Ok, now just to wait.'

After finishing his repairs, he felt the gaping hole in his left-wing close. The metal stretched out while somehow generating new metal from it.

His detached right-wing dissolved in the air similar to how Ruby's semblance roses left by her semblance disappeared after she uses her speed.

The wing grows back from where it was torn from and looked brand new. His landing gear also fixed itself, propping him upright.

'Looks like it's all done.' Hanns switches back into Tiger II (P) form.

The movement of twigs and bushes caught his attention. He pivoted his gigantic turret around while using his tracks to turn faster.

"Neo, that was quick."

Neo smiled, she closed her parasol and set it aside.

She pulled out her scroll kept in her pockets and turned it on. With a few swipes and keyboard presses, she places the screen right in front of the turret.

"Operation Barbarossa was a success. (͠≖ ͜ʖ͠≖)👌"

Hanns stares at the message for a while and looks at Neo before repeating the action over and over.

"Hold on, is this what you named it?"

Neo happily nods while erasing her message and typing out a new one before showing it to Hanns. "It came to our heads suddenly, like it was there all along."

Hanns was taken aback. "You mean to tell me that this name suddenly showed up when you thought of a name?"

'How, did that name even come out? Was it something related to my system?'

Hanns was curious. "Did Torchwick think the same? Hard to believe someone as serious as Torchwick would even let you name it like that."

Neo tilted her head up while placing a finger on her chin. She closes her eyes, thinking of whether Torchwick ever got the same idea.

She held up her scroll and started tapping away at the screen. "No, Ruby was the one to suggest so. Roman thought Ruby didn't take it seriously but the name was liked by him after they suggested it."

'Huh, WYBRN was the one I assigned as a crew. Are they just going to start speaking german now too?'

This was way too weird for Hanns. Team WYBRN acting like the country's stereotypes if he assigned them to their nation's tank would be cool and bizarre at the same time.

'I'll think about that later. For now, I need to contact Blake. She should be eating lunch so I'll just talk to her scroll so she could send the numbers immediately to me.'

"Neo, do you think you could call Blake for me? I want to send a message to her to give me the numbers I made her write down during my time in Merlot's lab."

Neo quickly found her contacts and started dialing.

Back at Beacon…

Team RWBY sat across from their sister team JNPR during lunch.

While the events of Mountain Glenn and Operation Barbarossa were happening, team JNPR had been hanging out with members of team RWBY for a while.

They were just across their dorms which meant they got acquainted with each other for the past weeks.

After an event unfolded in Forever Fall where Jaune managed to win against team CRDL during their attempt at a dangerous prank they reconciled as a team and started being together more.

Of course, his win against team CRDL was a fluke. He was aided by Pyhrra's semblance to block incoming attacks and swing his sword properly.

A discussion between them occurred while they sat at their tables.

"So Ruby, what about you? Do you prefer waffles or pancakes?"

Ruby was currently being accosted by Nora, the only person energetic enough to power an entire building.

"Uhhh, are they not the same?"

Nora gasped and felt betrayed. She stood up and placed a foot on the table which Weiss voiced her complaints but was ignored.

"Heretic!"

"Wha-?"

"It's sacrilegious! Ruby Rose, tell me you like pancakes to make me forgive your sins!"

Ruby was a bit frightened but she really didn't know the difference. "If pancakes have more milk in them than waffles, then sure."

Nora sat down and contemplated "How much milk is in them anyway?"

"Well, apparently they have the same amount…" Blake suddenly joins the frankly absurd conversation and pulls out her scroll to show them an article.

The rest of the table giggled at their antics. Ruby keeps getting interrogated by Nora but during the conversation, Pyhrra tries to look for her scroll.

"You lost something, Pyrrha?" Jaune noticed her checking her pockets.

"I think I left my scroll in the locker."

"We got combat class after this no? You can head out to take it."

"Thanks, Jaune," Pyrrha said as she stood up.

Pyrrha walked out, while the table now turned into a whole debate on how different pancakes are to waffles.

She reached the lockers inside the changing room and searched for her scroll. She found it after opening her locker, a sound caught her attention though.

'Is that a phone ringing?'

She followed the sounds towards Blake's locker. Not wanting Blake to miss an important call she uses her semblance to unlock it from the inside. A solid click was heard as she manipulated the metal inside the lock.

She takes the scroll hidden under some clothes and looked at the caller. "Ice Cream Delight?" she confusingly asked herself.

She accepted the call and put it up to her ear to tell the person on the other side that Blake left her scroll. Pyrrha began to open her mouth before realizing 'Wait, didn't Blake have her scroll earlier?'.

"Blake!" a voice that sounded like it came from old radio equipment emanated from the speakers of the scroll.

'What a weird voice.'

"I need those numbers you listed. Just send them here to this number." Hanns said.

Pyrrha raised her eyebrow before replying "Sorry, Blake left her scroll, I'll forward your message through her."

Hanns from the other side of the call recognized the voice. 'Oh, shit it's Pyrrha.'

Hanns quickly made Neo hang up the call.

"Crap, someone else took the call Neo." Hanns panicked.

Neo shrugged and motioned for her to kill the person who took the call.

Hanns started to swing his barrel around to deny the suggestion. "No, Pyrrha is part of team JNPR. They're friends with team RWBY so don't kill them."

Neo pouted. Disappointed that she couldn't shank another person. It was a while since she had been let loose and the kill from Operation Barbarossa wasn't enough for her.

"Anyways, while I wait for Blake. Can you tell me everything that happened during Operation Barbarossa?"

Neo started typing but after a few seconds of continuous tapping, she stopped to think before erasing everything she wrote and displaying something else.

"Too long, just let team RWBY explain."

Hanns rolled his eyes if he had any, he turned to face the length of the runway and turned back into a plane to prepare for flight.

After a while of waiting, a message popped up from the scroll while Neo placed it in front of the cockpit.

"124 ,75 ,256"

The message was a picture of the numbers Blake wrote during Hanns' visit to Merlot's lab. Hanns looked at the map and focused on the numbers below.

'It's a far way off.'

Hanns started to turn on his engine. It let out small combustions before getting louder and more numerous. The propeller starts to slowly spin as Hanns prepare to take off.

Neo tapped her umbrella on the plane, Hanns felt the knock and stopped the engine.

"You want to join this one too?"

Neo nodded while climbing up towards the cockpit. Hanns opened it and Neo climbed in, seeing the multitude of controls and gauges present in the plane.

Hanns restarted his engine and the propellers starts turning rapidly. The engine roared into life as it starts loudly letting out its sound.

The Bf-109 F starts moving, it keeps steady as it traveled down the runway. Neo sat comfortably inside as she felt the plane slowly ascending.

Hanns was in the air, waiting for the speed to pick up as he went into the sky. He retracted his landing gear and adjusted his flaps.

Hanns looked at the map while randomly going in the cardinal directions. He deduced where he needed to head to end up in the same coordinates that he saw in Blake's message.

'Looks like it heads towards the ocean.' Hanns thought.

The ocean was strangely more calm than land. Grimm was more numerous on the ground than at sea which Hanns was okay with.

"Neo? Can you handle G-Force?"

His plane suddenly tilted shook side to side, startling Hanns.

"Right, can't talk. Don't do that while I fly though, the wings are going to break if I improperly fly." Hanns advised.

Hanns saw the numbers on the map going up while he traveled the seas. The blue waves pushed themselves with the tide while aquatic grimm were lurking below.

'Man, I wish I had a depth charge or torpedoes.'

Neo had made herself at home in the cockpit, she used her scroll while letting Hanns focus on flying around. It was almost a half-hour ride towards the coordinates.

Eventually, though, Hanns had spotted land in the distance. He looked at his HUD and saw the island is in the middle of nowhere on the map.

'Is this unmarked?'

"Hey Neo? Do you know that this existed?" Hanns asked Neo.

Neo woke up from her small nap and answered by tilting the wings just like before.

'Huh, I guess this isn't known anywhere.'

He finally reached the boundaries of the island and saw the multitude of man-made facilities inside.

'Holy crap, how does this thing not get discovered?'

It was larger than Hanns thought. Merlot's Island had more freedom to move around ever since Merlot himself disappeared from his original location in Mountain Glenn.

'Where do I land?'

Hanns circled the plane, he was trying to find a good place to land but found nothing straight or spacious enough to land his plane.

'I need to crash this thing in the ocean and slowly travel down the shore.'

"Neo, prepare for a bumpy ride." Neo held on to her seat at the warning as Hanns started to slow down his plane by reducing the throttle.

His altitude slowly went lower and lower as the sea was getting closer to the belly of the plane. Hanns planned to clear out an area once they were finished exploring the island.

Now that he had inventory, it may be a fruitful chance to take something expensive looking or interesting enough. He could sell it or finally start making Ruby work on him.

He got the green light from the moderator that he could modify his tank outside of the ones available in warthunder. It would take a long time to modify a tank if Ruby worked on him but he could rope in the rest of her team to help.

The underside of the plane met the water and bobbed up and down as they rode the waves. The plane came to a stop as it washes on the shore.

'That went better than I expected. Only scratches.'

Neo got out of the cockpit and landed on the sand while taking in the surroundings. Hanns formed back into a Tiger II (P) and did the same.

"Well, Neo are you ready? I don't know what to expect here."

Neo simply nodded, flourishing her umbrella to cover from the sun while they made their way into the entrance of the industrialized part of the isolated landmass.

A camera beeps, its lens zooming in on the new entries of the Island. Behind the screen was a disheveled graying-haired man. His visible cybernetic eye whirred as it focused on the new appearance of people and a machine.

He gripped his table in interest "I wasn't expecting visitors…"