Chapter 86: Power Creep
It was huge, the lake in the middle of Solitas easily ran across a stretch of the continent. Hanns had only seen a part of it after traveling a long distance from the shore but he could tell it was big.
After an encounter with red eyes swimming at the bottom, it was clear the lake was also deep. Very much so, considering the things inside were as tall as a small apartment.
Shortly a while later, they'd go back to the shore a few minutes away even when rushing. It was clear that Hanns was going to face some problems. Ice and tanks never fit together, especially a German tank.
"So… anyone knows how to do ice fishing?" Hanns directed the question to everyone and each raised a hand.
Blake had drool escaping part of her lips, Hanns assumed it was from the word fishing. "With what exactly?"
"I don't think fishing Grimm is a good idea," Weiss responded.
"I can punch them!" Yang answered with vigor and an unhealthy amount of confidence.
Neo did hand gestures to tell Hanns why did she have to be with everyone.
"We could always blow them up?" Ruby remarks.
Everyone looked to the young leader in either shock or awe at just how foolhardy someone could be. Hanns voiced everyone's concerns with one sentence.
"Possibly destroying the lake bed, harming indigenous aquatic life, and potentially making some of them extinct by just shooting explosives?"
Ruby looked around to see the stares she got but nodded anyways. "…Yes?"
"…"
"We could always try electricity?"
"…"
Hanns shrugged before walking back further away. "Eh, Blake could probably use the fish we get in the crossfire."
"What?!" Weiss protested. "Are you serious? You said all those things but it didn't even matter?"
"Well not exactly, the lake is huge, we just so happen to walk to a section that Leviathans call their home. I'm surprised they're even here instead of the deep ocean."
"You're just as reckless as this dolt here-" pointing to Ruby. "-as for the lake, we don't have any real reason other than we didn't check. Grimm are usually too much here, Atlas is very reliant on airships and it would make sense they wouldn't fight anything here."
"Ah, so the reason we can check is that despite the weather, our ground vehicles can do it. I suppose the Paladins were supposed to be released for that purpose but we replaced it with the tank."
Hanns stopped a good distance before he felt his body crack open and expand rapidly, transforming himself into small bursts of metal sliding and producing from inside him.
He finalizes his form as a hiss escapes the hatches all around his Leopard I. The clothes he had on were ripped instantly, he forgot that he had those.
"Whoops, I guess I'll tell Pietro I accidentally tore that apart."
"Haaa… that'll never get old." Ruby's knees threatened to give out as she fidgeted in place. "The only thing missing is for Hanns to become a super cool tank-robot thing!"
"Ruby, please keep your fantasies out for now. I need the two of you to use your magic. I want to test something to see if magic helps." Hanns points his barrel to Weiss and Ruby who both followed his instructions to get to his side.
"As I understand, the magic you have is very similar to the capabilities of dust. The only difference being you have unlimited amounts of it and can output it without the risk of premature detonation."
A part of their head clicked in place as if they got the idea completely. "You're going to try lightening yourself with the use of gravity?"
"Weiss is right, both your magic should be able to use gravity dust-like abilities. So, Ruby… carefully place your hands on my sides and try to imagine me being lifted like those airships. Remember I only need to be lightened."
Ruby nodded and did as told, her hands lifted from their resting point as she felt the cold steel of Hanns. She tried bringing gravity out but wasn't so sure about how it would work.
Maiden powers and magic were finicky, imagination was a good part of it so Ruby needed to think about it. An image pops into view inside her head, the feeling of weightlessness and flight she experienced when fighting coupled with the knowledge she already knew about working with gravity dust.
She could do it. It only needed concentration and a healthy amount of will. Ruby closes her eyes and felt her skin crawl and with one last huff, she feels energy on her palms and pushes it into Hanns.
*VVVBBBSHT!*
"Oh, by the way. Make sure not to overdo i-"
*FWOOSH!*
Ruby cracked her eyes open as the wind suddenly rushed upwards, the team gawked and rushed to panic as soon as Ruby was done with trying to make Hanns lighter.
"Uh…" Ruby blurted out and looked to the sky to see Hanns spinning vertically while going up in the air. She did what was impossible, she made a tank fly.
"-iiiiiit!" Hanns continued from up above. "I'm blasting off again!"
They all yelled, "Hanns!"
One emergency rescue later…
The team was dead tired, except for Neo who stood aside and took pictures of the Leopard I flipping around the atmosphere while everyone else tried to help.
"Ok, let's NOT try to make me fly off into the distance. I'm so glad it removes itself after a few seconds but that wasn't a nice experience falling to the earth."
"Sorry…" Ruby had her head down in shame, she didn't know any better but Hanns insisted it was only an accident.
"Let's try this again, I'm not an airship. So whatever you do, don't apply anything to that level of structure. You just need to lift me enough for my tracks to still have an effect on the ground but not enough weight to destroy the ice."
Ruby sheepishly nodded before placing her hands on the side again. 'Don't make him fly… Don't make him fly… Don't make him fly…!' she repeated to herself.
Hanns feels the hull of his tank get lighter, his tracks started leveling off while the suspension felt like they were disengaged.
His eyes widened, if he had any eyes as a tank, at the possibility that as a German main, his transmission wouldn't break anymore. He felt uneasy at the thought but he could potentially easily win the fight.
"Hanns! I did it!"
"Wait! Ruby, your hands are still glowing! Turn it do-"
*VVVBBBSHT!*
"Uh oh." Ruby squeaked.
*FWOOSH!*
"-oooown! Why?!"
Another emergency rescue later…
"Ok, Ruby - if we're going to fight like this I might as well become the first-ever intercontinental ballistic missile from you launching me into the stratosphere. Weiss, do you think you can do the same to your own?"
"We're going to join you with a tank? I'm not against it but wouldn't that sacrifice mobility?"
She had a point but Hanns believed something else. "You have your glyphs to try and manipulate the direction of the tank while you move. Besides, Ruby and I will do the baiting."
"That makes sense but didn't you say there were two Leviathans? One is hard enough for even Atlas to fight without the aid of a huge machine."
Hanns was offended, Weiss considered HIM of all people to not be a huge death machine? He would prove her wrong, he'd been practicing moving around in his Overclock.
"Weiss, we have the power of gunpowder, magic, and armor-piercing cannons mounted to a thick-as-hell steel casing. You won't fight up close but the Leviathans would have to go through doubled armor thickness if they fight me, not to mention my ability to manipulate any part of myself freely to the point where I can shift my entire body down to the bolts that keep me together to dodge or do anything else."
Hanns wasn't without practice, handling unnatural ways to form your body is a tough hurdle to leap. It's like learning to bend your knees in the opposite direction or twist your spine like wringing out a towel.
All those movements need a different way for the body to adjust, it's like having no solid part of your bones. Breaking them and rejoining them is easy but hard to master.
"Now then, Ruby. This time I mean my words, please don't overdo it."
Ruby nodded furiously as she got inside the commander's hatch of Hanns' Leopard I. He feels his tracks once more get softened in their strain. It was touching the ground but enough of his weight got canceled out that he could try driving over the snow-covered ice.
He wasn't sure how thick it was but Hanns can always test now before anything would happen later. "Ruby, try doing double to compensate when I shout my semblance to you."
"Ok, I'm ready."
Hanns drove over the ice and traveled a bit further away. He relaxed his head before he said the word, "Overclock!"
The ice cracked for a brief second before it stopped, it wasn't as thin as Hanns thought. He weighed from about 50 tons to nearly 1/20th of it before Overclock and while doubled meant he only weighed 5 tons, maybe more.
The ice was still able to get seen through despite the thickness if he moved away the snow covering it. He tested the stability by driving slowly across the icy plain.
"Slippery as heck, I can't stop properly and my tracks can't accelerate me as fast but that's an easy fix." His metallic tracks groaned and with a few changes by Hanns, the edges of the track frayed and spiked downwards as a way to get grip on the ice.
"There. Ruby? Are you doing good?"
Her eyes look to the nearly frost-ridden lake as she grimaces. "I don't know about this Hanns, is this really a good choice? Fighting on ice of all places?"
"Well, not exactly. We're going to take advantage of being able to shoot at them while they are stuck swimming. It's literally a fish in a barrel, this time it's a Grimm inside a massive lake."
"Don't projectiles get slowed down when they go under water?"
"I know, it's why I have you in here as opposed to anyone else. We just need them to get close enough to the surface and make you do something magical."
Magic is a literal cheat in Remnant, producing and controlling the abilities suspiciously associated with dust was full of possibilities to Hanns.
"Won't they just try to escape?"
Hanns didn't get the problem. "They can try."
Ruby finally got it. Hanns didn't have the concept of being tired once he had a goal set. A gamer by himself is scary but a motivated gamer is worse, especially when currency is involved for Hanns.
"Let's prepare and head for the others, I won't use Overclock until I can be sure they won't escape but I have a plan for that."
~
The first Leviathan, let's call this one Bill for ease, swam peacefully. It had known no human contact for almost 3 centuries by now and he was glad that was the case.
Yet, hunger still stung him as a reminder of his purpose. To hunt and kill those of mankind and faunuskind, a feeling of starvation that couldn't be satieted without killing.
Bill was yearning for more as he swam, his legs touching the frigid waters were already evolved to handle the temperatures as he pushed on the water to propel himself.
Suddenly…
He felt a reverberation throughout the sea. It was a harsh echo that almost wrecked its orientation. Humans, Bill thought. The large bellowing sound passed through its body with a fierce thump.
It could feel whatever was happening at the surface. He didn't know what it was but he ignored it, Humans were the last thing on his mind but at the back of his thoughts, Bill wanted a slaughter.
He would get a slaughter but one that he hadn't imagined.
The sounds came closer and closer, beginning to be painful more than the last. Vibrations kept shaking its body and the water deformed each time.
Bill rested for a while, letting his body float aimlessly before another shockwave almost threatened to screech his mind to a halt. It was loud and obnoxious and it had been happening all over the lake.
It had enough.
He swam to where he felt it last but met another Leviathan on the way, let's call this one Charles. Bill howled in greeting, it was the other friend he had. A friend was an over-familiar word but he was the other Grimm of his kind.
Charles was the first to arrive at the scene, poking and prodding near the surface and gauging where the target was.
There! Charles noticed a weirdly rectangular shadow beneath the ice. Charles readied his body and charged, all the while preparing his breath to spew out concentrated energy.
His concentrated force and monumental size leaped through the ice, wrecking a whole section of the lake before trying to swallow up whatever it tried to target.
*BOOM!*
Bill waited, and waited, and waited for what seemed like an obviously longer amount.
Charles finally lands back into the ocean but thrashing and howling in pain. A massive hole in its temple was present, something incinerating the inside of the wound as it started to regain its composure.
Something had happened with Bill and Charles was not happy.
~
Moments ago…
"Is it tight enough Ruby?" Hanns asked as he waited on the ice. Dozens of his shells were getting taken out and used, unlike the Army who couldn't do such a thing, the only exception was Hanns.
The shells themselves were a lot as they strapped together into 12ths, Ruby had cobbled all of them together to explode at the same time. It was homemade but professionally built as much as possible with on-hand tools.
"Done. Hanns, do I need to use my uhh… magic for creating more explosions? It's underwater though, I don't know how to do that yet."
"I don't think so, storing magic into something is not a concept I'm aware of unless you're the one casting it, like making your guns fire flame bullets. WYBRN's tank is the exception and I have a theory on how you can use your gravity for this. You don't change the weight of something, but you simply change how much gravity it experiences and in what direction."
Hanns didn't know fully well but judging from the moments where people fly or could do telekineses in the show, he guessed it was just a manipulation of gravity.
Ruby nodded. "The way I set these up should have the warhead and the explosive propellants detonate together. Why are we making it like this Hanns? So many too…"
"Ruby, have you never fought something like submarines?"
Her eyes glowed a sense of curiosity, first the tank, then planes, and then came the helicopter. Ruby was receiving so many ideas for weapons and Hanns was aware of this.
She nodded with a clear intent for Hanns to continue. "No! Tell me what it is!" She almost jittered with joy.
"Well, for now since time is already wasted so it'll be a quick explanation - Submarines are ships that can go underwater for extended periods of time. They use this to their advantage in being stealthy in their approach to other seafaring ships. It's devastating to be on the receiving end, so someone invented a way to fight these."
"So this?" She points to the quickly made bombs made out of Hanns' shells. "Is supposed to be the counter to… Ah! You recreated this since the Leviathans are underwater!"
"Precisely, I introduce you to the concept of a Depth Charge. It's not going to kill the Grimm when they're tough but it's going to make them hurt a lot. Enough to maybe make them charge to us."
"So we're dropping these into the lake and detonating it? Hanns, we don't have an adjustable timed charge for that. We only have 5 seconds every time, there's no way to change it."
"That's where you come in, if you increase how much these things feel gravity then it should accelerate faster or slower depending on how much you adjust it."
'At least, that's what I hope it does.' Hanns nervously thought to himself. The show wasn't insightful in telling anything about how these things worked. Besides, it's magic, one way or another.
Ruby unfolded her scythe and cut a sizeable hole into the ice, when she couldn't reach further, she burned and melted using her new maiden powers. Ruby finished and looked into the dark abyss of water.
"I'm throwing one in."
She carefully placed the first strapped-together bomb and slowly let it fall. Using her control over gravity, she increased it for the makeshift depth charge before running away from the site and towards Hanns.
"Now we wait," Hanns said.
*BOOM!*
A large volume of water gets shot up from the hole and destroys part of the ice along with it. Ruby was enjoying it too much judging by how much she had stars in her eyes.
But there was a distinct lack of Grimm rising from the depths even after minutes had passed. Ruby was disappointed but Hanns was patient.
"Get the others but ask Weiss to make Neo hide the bottom of their tank. We need them to be ready because I have a plan. If I'm correct then the tank itself will have the ability of maidens. It should be easy for her to come up with what would be next."
~
Later…
"Another."
*BOOM!*
"Another."
*BOOM!*
"Another."
*BOOM!*
It was safe to say that Hanns was going nuts with the explosives. The rest of the team within another tank was waiting from a good distance away. Weiss was alert as ever while she waited, the tank she had could channel magic as if it was the one producing it.
You heard about the magic school bus, now it's time for the magic M48A2 C.
They were patient and it finally had results. A roar sounded in the water, it was not as loud since they were at the surface but they could finally prepare to blast some Grimm entrails.
"Yang! Wake up!" She crouches down and slapped the blonde woman awake.
"Bwuh?! Is Zwei eating the comic books again?"
"No! Who's Zwei? Never mind, get ready. We might need to drive away since Neo's semblance will shatter if we attack."
Yang snapped awake and alert as she handles the controls while peering into her own view. Neo smiled and Blake nervously grasp the shells on the rack. Without Ruby, Blake had to compensate for the lack of a loader.
A roar came it got louder and louder as everyone in the M48A2 C was worried for Ruby. The ice sang an eerie tune, a ton of water was being displaced, and it was coming.
The ice cracked and webbed in front of Hanns, and he waited until the right moment came.
"Overclock!" He yelled. Ruby responded quickly, adrenaline pumping through her body as they fled with Ruby making Hanns lighter, she would need to reapply it but she was confident. A mass of black shadow started coming closer.
He surged forward, knowing that his reverse was slower, moving forward was smarter than trying to go back into the trajectory of Charles.
His tracks sharpened and gripped the ice, gripping as much as they could before moving at an accelerated speed. The Grimm powered through the lake and the Ruby looked back to see.
They dodged to the side and move to the front as the Leviathan cut through the ice and leaped with its jaws wide open. A blast of energy came with it and Ruby narrowed her eyes.
It was massive as it was. Shorter than the Vale Goliath but it evolved to have more power through its beam streaming out a wide gaping maw.
The water surged.
The waves came.
And the beast had awoken.
"FIRE!" Weiss commanded.
Neo had a lock on its head, the trigger and pin clicked and connected. The shell was emblazoned in a case of fire magic that the tank personified into itself.
The DI-APCBC shook inside, the propellant was put into full force and expanded within the barrel, and blackened remnants of gunpower left a trail as the shell shot into the air.
It escaped with heated gas, warming the surroundings as it connected its mark. Neo smiled, her accuracy undimmed as the shell delved deeper into the monster's flesh.
Like a flower in spring, the wound bursts as the warhead detonated. A second explosion came, the fire cast by the tank unto the shell spun and cauterized the freshly made injury.
The creature screamed… no it pleaded with pain and shrieked while alarmed by the devastating hit.
It was a small shell but within was a package full of reactive explosive mass. It's a creation of earth interacting with powerful dust and topped off with a hint of pure magic.
Weiss saw the shell strike true, she got to the radio and yelled,
"Hit!"
Hanns turned and rushed to where the beast had gone down again. The waters were freshly opened up but Hanns wasn't done. "Ruby! Do it!"
Ruby leaped from the hatch, using her speed to get further from Hanns. It was a risk but Hanns trusted his guess. Her fingers crackled with electricity, her hair stood up from the static as she smiled at the magic coalescing.
She harvested every inch of her arms to react to her commands. A bolt of lightning came from her fingertips and directed it to the water.
"Thundershock!"
"Stop screaming your moves!"
"But it's cool!"
At least Hanns had a purpose for screaming his semblance to Ruby, unlike her who did it because she saw it in a cool pet fighting game.
The lightning came and struck the water, Hanns couldn't feel it but some discharged to him, thankfully it wasn't damaging but the water was cruelly shocked. The creature enveloped by the conductive water spazzed and jittered.
The sound barrier cracked from the strike, the area was bathed in the glory of pure energy striking the surface of the water and spreading through the water.
Ruby landed back into Hanns with a metallic thump, she got back into the hatch as per Hanns' instruction.
Not taking chances for retaliation by more attacks, Hanns drove to the opening with more depth charges in his rack while they stopped short of the unblocked ice lake.
"Another!"
Ruby hefted the homemade depth charge, using her magic to help her carry the weight and she threw it into the water. It didn't need gravity manipulation because they were sure this was going to be the last strike.
*BOOM!*
"Is it dead?" Ruby asked, looking for any signs of movement in the water.
"I don't know… maybe throw in another shock. I'm saving the last depth charge for the other one-"
"Hanns!" Weiss' voice echoed from the radio.
Hanns switched viewports to where the rest of the team was. His tracks started moving immediately and suddenly, enough to spook Ruby.
"No time to check! The other one's under them!"
Bill wasn't going to take these humans lightly, perhaps it was foolish but his smell for humans and faunus didn't go down. Rage filled him, such was the case for a negativity-sensitive creature.
Bill was going to kill them, starting first with the weakest link.
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone