Disclaimer: I do not own World of Tanks or RWBY
"Torches off," Gladys lethargically commanded, talking too close to the intercom sheerly on virtue of being slumped so much. She then dropped the intercom altogether, not entirely caring whether the headlights actually turned off or not, and instead focusing on standing back up and peering through her periscope. The good news was that she had a decent view now; the bad news was the reason why. She and her crew had been going since the afternoon of the previous day, and now the sun was rising over the tree tops.
She saw something black, and hesitated a half-second, wondering whether it was something that actually existed or a sleep-deprived hallucination. After a long moment, she determined that it did exist, and ordered, "Gunner, contact at…"
She paused a long moment.
"Thir… one o'clock," she finally managed. The turret moved slightly, and…
Click.
"Where's the damned round?" Ribbans murmured. Emma reminded, "We ran out."
"Coax," Gladys reminded, "Now's the time to see how it works."
Ribbans nodded, then adjusted the gun a bit more, and fired.
Du-du-du-du-du-dun! Du-du-du-dun!
Gladys winced at how loud the noise was-
Du-du-du-du-du-dun!
"How many times are you going to shoot it?" Emma questioned. Ribbans informed, "It still isn't dead."
Gladys could confirm as much through her periscope; the thing was now, in fact, facing them. Even from a few hundred meters away, Gladys could see its piercing, lethal red eyes.
Du-du-du-du-du-du-du-dun!
And then, one of those eyes went out in a burst of red. The thing quickly staggered back… but only for a moment.
Du-du-du-du-du-dun!
Gladys' stomach fell, and she hurriedly ordered, "D-Driver, full ahead! Full ahead!"
The tank lurched forward, and Gladys turned out of her cupola, eyes scanning around with a sudden vigor brought by desperation. Off and off through the low lands they raced, now bouncing from the increase in speed. After a few bounces, Gladys leaned to the side, and didn't quite vomit, but if she'd had anything in her stomach, it would've come out. It was rare for her to go this fast or this bumpily…
…and her mind then turned to Castilla. She'd always been envious of the little Grille's, getting to launch up and steal the good hill from her- or worse, the actual light tanks, taking the center hill. And now, she was in a light tank- or, really, a cruiser tank. Close enough.
Quickly, she dipped back-
"Ow!" she cried, bouncing just enough to hit her head on the cupola as she descended. As she sat down, she ignored the primal urge to grab her head, instead using both hands on her way down. Finally, she was in the seat, and struggled to pick up the intercom for a moment. After that, she finally managed to grab it, then stood up, closing her cupola so she could use her periscope- the cord on the intercom wasn't long enough to hold while turned out.
For a few moments, she said nothing, just gazing at the landscape. Then, finally, a bit of hill that seemed a bit less hill than the rest of the hill; quickly, she ordered, "Bear left! Bear left!"
Quickly, the tank turned- and indeed, it turned. Instead of easing left and onto the ramp, Carney turned fully left, and Gladys heard a swift, metallic crack. Quickly, she ordered, "Reverse, right."
Nothing. She turned out, letting the intercom drop while they were stationary again to be able to see how close the enemies were. Nary a hundred meters behind was one of the black monsters. Quickly, she descended, saying, "Ribbans, turn the turret, we have to leave."
Ribbans nodded, pressing at the hydraulic control… and doing nothing. In the meanwhile, Emma got out. Gladys, on the other hand, was still in, and suggested, "Manual control should do it."
"I know," Ribbans said. He let out a grunt, then a few more as he actually worked the crank. Finally, he stopped, and Gladys turned out. Emma was standing nearby, and Gladys mentally noted that as she scrambled over the turret roof, landing on the driver's position and knocking twice. Quickly, Carney came out, and apologized, "I believe I must have broken the transmission- turning like that is a bit of a dirty habit, really."
"We have to abandon the tank," Gladys said. Carney blinked in surprise, then nodded, "Alright then."
He then climbed out, and Gladys rushed away-
"You expect all of us to end up like you?" Emma questioned. Gladys shook her head quickly, and Ribbans pointed out, "There's no time for that!"
Quickly, he started on the ramp, and Gladys shook her head, "The thing could probably g-get there."
The image of her and her crew torn to red, meaty shreds by the black monster popped into her head, before she forcefully shoved it away, approaching the cliff face. Quietly, she looked up, seeing hundreds of feet of cliff to climb up. Hundreds of feet for her aching, unathletic arms to pull herself up, hundreds of feet of dirt for her mostly-bare legs to scrape against, hundreds of feet in the air she could be if she passed out from sleep deprivation.
"Let me help you up," Carney said, lifting her by the waist. In any other conditions, she would have blushed madly at how tightly he gripped her. Now, she just grabbed desperately at the rock wall, yelling, "W-We h-have to climb!"
She believed her words, but her stomach felt heavy, with the dread of doing that and the worry that they didn't actually have to climb. To her mind, she'd already put her crew through enough- they were all just as, if not more, tired than she was. It would have been truly wrong, to her, to make them unnecessarily climb a literal cliffside.
The roar of a beast swiftly dismissed that thought from Gladys' mind. An argument could still have been made that if they died, they would just go to the garage and have peace and quiet and tea and biscuits. But any thought of such things disappeared beneath primal fear and self-preservation instinct. It was quite fortunate, too; without adrenaline in her veins to negate the pain, Gladys probably wouldn't have gotten more than two feet off the ground.
As it was, she got nearly fifty before her flight-or-fight instinct finally receded. Immediately, she looked down, horrified that she hadn't checked if her crew was following her before. The plus side was that they were following her, quite closely in fact. The downside was that she was really, really high up. The weight in her stomach from guilt and dread had disappeared with the flood of adrenaline, but now returned as a solid lump of fear. Finally, after a long moment, she continued climbing, her crew not far behind. The sun was, as said before, just a little over the tree tops when they began their ascent. By the time Gladys scrambled over the cliff's edge and onto the plateau atop it, the sun had managed to get nearly halfway up the cliff, too. And in her exhaustion, Gladys simply lay there.
"Commander?" one of her crew murmured. Gladys wasn't sure which; she didn't have the energy to try and differentiate voices.
"Can you stand?" they asked. Someone else retorted, "They damn well better be able to."
Gladys promptly set to crying, knowing that she could not stand. She wanted to, more than anything in the world, to be a shining example to her crew like she always was. But the simple truth was that someone could have cut all the skin off her legs and dipped them in salt, and she still would have been in less pain. Laying there on the grass, she couldn't even smell the sweet natural scent of grass over her own hideous body odor, the mark of how much she had done without any pause or rest.
"For God's sake-"
"Emma, we can take a break."
"Do you see how close it is? It's ripped the bloody turret off!"
"I don't believe the thing can climb. Besides which, was the point of fleeing here not to be able to rest?"
"I could use a rest myself. And it's a fair bet you could, too."
"There's a building just over there!"
"The grass is good enough here."
"I'll keep watch."
Gladys' tears intensified, hearing her crew bickering above her. She could recognize the voices now- it was only Emma who was arguing to keep moving. Gladys made a mental note to give a proper apology later. For now, she just appreciated that both Carney and Ribbans were willing to stay around a crying woman laying on the grass.
"I'll keep watch, so we can get a move on once she'd up."
"Good enough for me."
-Elsewhere
"Schulleiter!"
Ozpin sighed, then sipped his coco quietly. He didn't need to, though; it would have gone unheard anyways, because the psychotic man continued shouting, "Du hast mich angelogen! Ich habe gewartet und der Panzerkampfwagen ist nicht angekommen!"
He turned around a little, to see the man approaching, his hand on his holstered pistol. Glynda shot, "Wenn Sie ein Problem haben, suchen Sie die richtigen Kanäle."
"Ich bin ein Unter-Schar-Führer der Waffen-SS!" Hans raged, "Ich lasse mich nicht von einem Zivilisten beiseite schieben!"
Ozpin sighed, then pulled out his video-pad, already having pulled up a bit of security footage to dissuade the madman from his ranting. Hans took it angrily, and Glynda noted, "Will he tell us anything, or just demand things from us?"
Ozpin sighed, then nodded, "You may be right."
He sipped his coco quietly, mentally keeping track of where the film would be. He'd seen it last night, observing the newcomers- it was specifically of the boxier tank, with the people in similar uniforms to Hans'.
"Otto…" Hans said. Ozpin raised an eyebrow, thinking he might have genuinely found the man's comrades. But, it was not to be; Hans growled, "Otto, du verräterischer Herumtreiber…"
The sound of cannon, and then gun, -fire erupted from the video, just as it had erupted from the tank merely last night. Teams RWBY and JNPR ran by, unaffected by Hans and his needs. Ozpin sighed, wondering if that was the way he should be, too.
"Zumindest wird er sterben," Hans murmured. Ozpin sighed. Any second, now, the Grimm were going to appear onscreen in what he was sure was one of the more compellingly last-stand-ish happenings in the forest in the last decade. It had been inspiring to watch, as the people in the tank popped out of their hatches with guns, desperately rattling off thousands of rounds into the horde before finally being overwhelmed.
"Nein! Das sollte ich tun! Warum leistest du ein letztes Gefecht, du unterlegener, schlecht erzogener Blutegel!" Hans yelled, "Jemand, dreh dich um und erschiess ihn! Tu es!"
Glynda's eyes widened in surprise, and Ozpin guessed, "This is not how the military conducts itself, either."
She shook her head, "Ironwood would never say something like that."
Ironwood wouldn't, but Hans already had, and continued to spout off such things, screaming, "Nein! Steig in die Kuppel wie der Feigling, der du bist! Du weisst, dass es klüger wäre, also sei wieder der Feigling und verstecke dich, wo es sicher ist! Draussen zu stehen und die MP40 abzufeuern, ist mein Ruhm, mein Ruhm, nicht deiner!"
Ozpin sipped his coco, suppressing a chuckle at just how unsympathetic Hans was being. Far from being comrades, the other people in his uniform seemed almost more like enemies than anything.
"Ja, ja, reiss ihm den Kopf ab! Reiss ihn auseinander und lass ihn den Schmerz eines langsamen Todes spüren!" Hans cackled. Glynda sighed, and Ozpin noted, "He can't very well go into society, either."
"It would reflect badly for us to send him," Glynda agreed. Ozpin sighed, trying to think of what they could do with the madman…
Finally, the film ended, marked by the screams of the dying finally stopping. Ozpin hadn't recorded most of it; he'd thought it would have traumatized the man. Instead, Hans groaned, "Es war so ein guter Schmerz…"
Ozpin quietly turned, and Hans handed the video-pad back, informing, "Diese Ausrede ist nicht gut genug. Du wirst mir bis zum Ende des Tages einen Panzerkampfwagen geben, sonst wird die Wut des Reiches über dich kommen!"
Ozpin sighed, nodding quietly and honestly debating on just sending the man back into the forest. This thought died, though, from a noise that he'd gotten to learn fairly well; a creaking, rattling noise, of a track moving a tank along. Hans quickly turned, and Ozpin raised an eyebrow, confused at what he was seeing. He hadn't shown it in the film he'd shown Hans, but the tank had ultimately been destroyed, its turret ripped off so the Grimm could grab the crew from within. That was to be expected, of course.
What wasn't to be expected was for the same tank to suddenly appear and roll casually around the corner. It had, after all, been destroyed, its crew killed. And one such 'killed' crew member popped out of the cupola, holding the same gun from last night. Immediately, he lost his grip on the weapon, letting it be held by its sling as he raised his arm at an angle, addressing, "Herr Unter Schar Führer!"
Hans returned, "Sturm Mann. Was hat Ihren Kommandanten so lange warten lassen?"
The newcomer explained, "Wir haben uns im Wald verirrt, Herr Unter Schar Führer!"
Quickly, Ozpin glanced at Glynda, who already had her riding crop out and at the ready in case things got violent. Of course, this was Hans; the man had been visibly itching to get to use his pistol most of yesterday. And he had just finished throwing a temper tantrum over someone stealing what Hans thought was his glory. That someone being the person now in front of him, the person giving answers Hans found unsatisfactory, the person who was in his position.
Few good things can be said about Hans. He wasn't sociable, both because he was an ass in general and a Nazi. He wasn't good-looking, on account of his rotund frame. He wasn't really very brave outside of his tank, and in it he was suicidal more than anything. Even his German could be criticized as being out-of-date, with his usage of an 'ss' rather than a 'ß' and his insistence on saying 'Panzerkampfwagen' rather than the more modern 'Kampfpanzer' or the near-universal 'Panzer'. A thousand more bad things could probably be said about him. But he did have a very few good traits, and one of them presented itself here; an incredible ability to quickly pull a gun on someone.
Pop!
The nine-millimeter round he fired wasn't particularly impressive- nine is, after all, a rather small number, and millimeters are rather small units, making for a rather small noise. Hans' aim, though, was impressive; the round sailed smoothly through the air and straight through the eye of the person he wanted to kill, going through the brain and leaving the man- who hadn't even really done anything- dead in an instant. Quietly, Hans put his pistol away, as Glynda paled at the far-cry from true military standards that she was seeing.
"Fritz, du bist jetzt der Lader! Karl, schiebe die Leiche des Verräters aus dem Weg!" Hans yelled, approaching his new tank. From below, the corpse was lifted, and Hans stopped a moment, letting it fall unceremoniously to the floor, before he paused, doing a slower, more dramatic unholstering of his pistol.
Pop!
Anyone who had ever seen a dead body- not even a dead human body, but even just a dead chicken or some such- could have told you that the man on the ground was already dead. Nevertheless, Hans put another round through the corpse's head, staining the clean sidewalk with a splatter or red blood, soon becoming a puddle as more bled out from the poor man's skull. Despite the blatantly theatrical performance, Hans didn't even spend a moment looking at the corpse before mounting up on his tank, barely fitting in the cupola.
Ozpin nodded to Glynda, and the tank was swiftly split in half. Hans made an awkward sort of T as his arms held onto the turret, his feet wiggling around in the three foot of air Glynda put between it and the hull. Ozpin informed, "Jetzt, da Sie Ihren Tank haben, werden Sie sofort und ohne meine Schüler zu stören, gehen."
"Feuer frei! Feuer frei!" Hans shouted, "Töte sie! Jetzt!"
Ozpin sipped his coco, confident that they wouldn't do anything. They had, after all, just seen their tank's turret be lifted in the-
Pa-pa-pa-pa-pa!
Instead of doing the smart thing and not pissing off the two members of Beacon staff, the crew followed their commanders orders and started shooting- with small arms, of course, since the turret and its attached cannon was elsewhere. This was already a grave mistake; a further mistake was that one of their bullets shattered Ozpin's mug. Swiftly, the turret rotated in the air, and then fell through the sky.
The upside-down turret wasn't a perfect fit for going in the turret basket. However, it did still provide less room than a right-side up turret would have- not just in terms of crew ergonomics, but also in terms of basic physics. When a man is stood beneath where a large weight is falling, and the weight is able to get to where the man's head is, the result is, after all, obvious.
This experiment was performed, multiplied by two- three, if you count Hans, though his inversion would have made him disqualified from a proper experimental group- right then and there. The result was as predicted; their heads were messily crushed beneath the weight of the turret crashing down on them. The mess was only mostly kept in by the turret, as well.
Unfortunately, almost all tank crews have come in two sections; the turret crew, which were crushed when the turret came down, and the driving section. In the case of Hans' Panzer III, that driving section would have been a radio operator- Fritz- and the driver- Jerry. Fritz, though, had been quick to get into the loader's position; but Jerry was still alive.
Any sane man would have come out of the hatch and surrendered then. Jerry, though, having just witnessed his comrades being crushed by what was, to him, magic, was slightly less than sane. So, instead of surrendering, he fiddled with the driving sticks, turning the right all the way back and the left all the way forward. The transmission groaned and protested from this idiotic maneuver, but the tank nevertheless did swiftly turn in place. Ozpin silently readied his cane, and Jerry stared into the headmaster's bespectacled eyes for a moment, before pressing the right lever all the way ahead, going full steam forwards.
Quickly, Ozpin ran ahead, and gave a swift lunge of his stick. That lunge managed to pierce through the front armor easily, spearing through Jerry's head very messily. Jerry's corpse fell back, taking the steering levers with it, and the tank ground to a swift stop. Ozpin sighed, dislodging his cane, while Glynda noted, "I'm sure they would have caused more issues."
"Let us hope the others aren't the same way," Ozpin murmured. He was about to wipe off his cane when the gore on it suddenly disappeared. Turning, he found that the tank, too, was gone without a trace.
Author's Note: I recently went through and looked at these in hindsight, and it seems like I was using a kind of break-up marking which the site didn't much like. Hence, there were quite a few areas where I would have had a semi-clean cut between POVs, only for the marking to not be there and the entire context to suddenly shift. For this I apologize; reading through the chapters was really quite difficult because of the issue.