"Scheiße! It's moving! Did team RWBY come in too early and they got caught? We haven't even reached the cars yet!"

A noticeable metallic tug came from all around the tunnels, an echo of train cars getting slowly hauled. The engine in the front was powerful enough to hear the puffs and thumps coming from the engines.

"Let's get on!" Iosif enlarged for a driving start before letting his movement carry over as he shrunk and chose to stay mid-air rather than shrink to the floor. "Team RWBY might catch on a ride since they're fast but if we don't stop this train no one else will!"

The two other tanks complied, reaching the car itself but not being able to enter the roof because of the lack of platforms they could use. They each enter through the small gaps in the door and they saw a grunt still left.

Tiger puffed his engine as he drove straight to the man while in the Seam. "Don't shoot! Whatever shrapnel could break those bombs could lead to the bomb reacting. Remember that dust is reactive in its active state!"

Tiger enlarged underneath the man as he exited the separated dimension. The grunt couldn't see what happened as his body was walloped straight to the roof, leaving his face bruised and body thoroughly impacting the metal roof.

"Vorwärts!" Tiger yells and the others follow, going underneath another gap through the door and seeing Ruby running toward the car. "Ruby! We're here!"

Recognizing the voice, Ruby looked down as she and the others climbed over the car. "Tiger! Iosif! Centurion! You're all here?!" She asked in a panic, she would've thought that the three were the ones responsible for making the White Fang prematurely depart.

"Yes, unfortunately," Centurion answered back with a clear voice of irritation and disappointment, more towards himself. "They must have been alerted somehow… we might not have enough time to stop this train. We must proceed!"

Oobleck suddenly came and scooped the three up before rushing to the top. "That! We shall! Ruby, open up one of those panels and let's see! Tiger's report says they had bombs, undoubtedly they have something planned but I must see for myself."

Ruby nodded and using her scythe, she pried open the panel on the first car as the team stared. Oobleck brushed his chin and nodded. "It's a strong bomb but it's rudimentary, I can build something better than this in the back of my office!"

"Doctor, I don't think it's the time to say you can make better bombs." Blake deadpans.

"Apologies! See those tubes connecting to the main body? I believe the timer is set on the inside while the payload inside is not reactive while the tubes connecting the external compartments to the outside are!"

"So what do we do to disable it?" Yang asked.

"Simple, the display itself should be removable, once you do, you just separate the inactive dust from the reactive ones responsible as the fuse. Also, we need to make sure that it's not going to trigger at any moment!"

*BEEP!*

"Like that?!" Weiss yells, already moving away from the bomb.

Oobleck calmly stood up and turned away. "Exactly like that."

""Why didn't you tell us sooner?!""

Quickly transferring over to the next car, Oobleck stops Blake. "Blake! Separate the cuffs holding on to each other! If this bomb explodes, everyone here will be tombstones by the time it does!"

Blake leapt to the lower portion of the car and tried swinging her Gambol Shroud, only for her to stop midswing as the thing that connects the train cars together breaks off on its own. "Huh? It separated by itself!"

The car slowly got left behind, disconnected from the rest of the train. Each of the members watched as the bomb detonates.

*BOOM!*

"That was too close… why would they disconnect them by themselves?" Ruby panted at the sheer heart attack she had received after Oobleck had failed to notify them of the imminent explosion.

*BEEP!*

"Not again!" Ruby complained as everyone moved on to the next car.

*BOOM!*

"No.. no… no!" Oobleck started to curse himself. "There's a reason they want to do this! They're leading Grimm into the tunnels by making openings for them to intrude! As they follow the emotion-filled train here and eventually hit the wall blocking off Vale from Mountain Glenn, the Grimm will breach into the centre of the city itself! You three! Head inside and disable as many bombs as you can using the method I have provided! Ruby, the tanks, Zwei and I will stop this train!"

"What about the Grimm?" Ruby asked, looking back at the increasing horde of Grimm moving behind the train.

Tiger gave the answer before their Hunstman professor could. "Sherman and Pershing can handle them they must have already pushed far enough to notice the lack of the train and the increase of Grimm."

"I don't think Sherman and Pershing can take care of everything else." Weiss pointed out, the leading horde of Grimm had no obstacle in their way and was free to chase them, without the Americans having been able to prevent it.

The British tank decided it was time for his part in the whole plan. "Fret not, I will volunteer as dropping myself and demolishing these miscreants. Tally ho!"

"What no! You can't!" Ruby tried to stop the tank but failed as he had the absurd ability to go into another dimension. Centurion reemerges only a few inches off the edge.

"Will all due respect, your majesty… we Brits might not be the most remarkable land army compared to the likes of continental rivals… but we know how to endure a fighting retreat! For Queen and Country! Have at thee!" He yelled, rolling off the edge and enlarging.

The jingles from his suspension rang, the Centurion fired, and uses his machine guns, pelting every smaller Grimm he could see and blasting larger holes into ones that couldn't be penetrated. A King Taijitu lunges for him but disappears under the Seam and pops out to his side and blasts the white end before disappearing again.

The Grimm couldn't hit him, disappearing over and over while taking the time to move and keep shooting. It was a great distraction but he needed to keep moving backwards to delay and not defeat the entire horde.

It was an amazing spectacle by Ruby's standards. "Wow, I have never seen them fight seriously. I can't imagine facing someone that can do that!"

Iosif laughed "Well if you give us monsters to fight, we are unhinged. If only you could've seen what Tiger did to those juvenile Goliaths last night."

"What did he do?"

"Went small, entered the smaller Goliath's mouth and enlarged. It ripped apart the poor beast but it's what these mindless monsters deserve."

Ruby imagined the event and grimaced. "...Gross."

Oobleck caught their attention with a massive yell. "Now is not the time to speak! You three head down and see if you can defuse those bombs somehow we need to stop this train-" He pauses and points to the front. "-up ahead!"

What looked like the same mech they fought before had jumped to the roof, making everyone falter but the tanks felt ecstatic. Iosif voice it. "Wait they can support that weight? Hell yeah!"

Iosif enlarges and his barrel rumbled with the sound of a shell exiting and shooting the left leg of the mech, crippling and sending the machine and its pilot below leaving loud crashes and metallic crunches in their wake.

"Uh… Welp, I guess he's dead but as long as the others can hold the Grimm, they might still be alive for us to recover." Iosif wasn't sure the pilot would live but at least he tried the peaceful option… not as peaceful as everyone thought though.

More of them arrived, and one by one each of the ran toward the group. Oobleck looked at the corgi beside him. Zwei barked and his eyes shone, almost telepathically letting Oobleck know what to do next.

Zwei hopped to the level of Oobleck, the Hunstman mecha-shifts his weapon from a thermos to a flame bat before hitting the corgi as hard as he could. Leading to a dog homerun which kind of made Ruby gawk. The others already headed down before all that, she really wished they had seen how Zwei demolished those mechs.

"What the hell?!" Iosif screamed. "How did a dog even do that?"

"Woof!" Zwei replied from afar.

"Don't get distracted, Ivan, more of 'em!" Tiger enlarged and an orchestra of cannon shot after cannon shot let the mechs fall apart, even though they tried shooting missiles, Ruby and Oobleck would take care of it.

They led forwards, jumping each gap while Ruby carried the tanks each time and eventually reaching close to the locomotive, they could see the lead train itself and they could start figuring out how to stop the entire thing.

Even when they had defeated so many, more mechs arrived behind them. Tiger sighed out loud at the numbers they were sending, it was like PTSD to him back when he was not dead, including both his own experiences with the allies.

"There's more of them!" Iosif yelled. "Now I believe the fact you Germans fought us outnumbered!"

"Do you now know how I feel fighting 10 tanks at once against the allies?! I might not have reached Russia but I heard plenty from the Americans on the myths surrounding how many you fuckers fielded!"

Iosif chuckled. "I do! Now I really want some of my brothers to be here with me! I might run out of ammunition faster than they run out of mechs!"

"Do not worry!" Oobleck announced, Zwei trailed behind him after Ruby had nodded to the corgi, giving her approval for a dog to kick some White Fang behinds. "I will teach them a lesson, derail or stop this train at any cost. Your teammates may have done their jobs but there's more to be done, let's go Zwei!"

Ruby was left alone but was soon joined by her other friends while Oobleck and Zwei fought the remnant of mechs still functional. "Girls! You're all here! How did it go?"

"We disabled what we could find but if we can't stop this train, the impact might set off the reactive dust in them," Weiss replied.

Each of them then dashed to the locomotive, intending to stop it with everyone but was stopped when a familiar blade entered their sights, mainly recognition from Blake as her ears dropped down to the lowest they could.

"No… Adam?"

Tiger noticed the gloomy look on Blake's face, he had heard of Blake's history from Ruby retelling her story on Blake's momentary departure from the team. "Bullhorns? Should I make a joke about you spouting bullshit now?" Tiger joked.

"Of course a typical human being the scum of the earth again! When will you people learn your place?!" Adam then lowered his stance, intending to fight them all at once."

"Well, I am not human, I'm a tank."

"I've heard, weapons that the Atlesians created! Not even our acquisitions can stand up to that machine! You're all worthless without the toys you put yourselves in, humans!"

"I'm not being controlled, I'm a sentient machine that wasn't made. I was born here." Tiger saw the bull-faunus somehow soften his gritting teeth.

"So… you're not human?"

"Yeah, Tiger H1 nice to meet ya." He made a point to emphasise his name as an animal. Maybe it could be relatable to the Faunus.

"Oh, it seems I have misplaced my anger, apologies."

Everyone seemed caught off guard by this, Blake being the worst one out of all of them. Her tears were replaced by confusion and then fury, mostly at Adam. "What?! Adam, don't you dare try tricking anyone!"

"Blake, he's accepting me unlike you." Tiger was happy Blake had completely forgotten about her woes, jokes were a good way for anyone to cope.

"You're a tank!" Blake had this talk before, she was irritated. "Why are you siding with him?!"

Even Adam was almost heartbroken at the revelation. "My love… I can't believe I'm hearing this… You are so racist right now."

"Yeah Blake, rude," Ruby then added.

"Can you all take this seriously?!" Deciding to take the first step in the fight, Blake mecha-shifts her weapon into its pistol form and empties a magazine but only for Adam to easily dodge or slice through time with ease.

Iosif spoke and prevented his words from reaching Adam. "We'll stop this train, distract him."

Ruby narrowed her eyes in worry. "How are you gonna do that?"

"We can always shoot the locomotive itself but since it may have a bomb, it's too risky. Derailing the locomotive itself might be good but at this speed, the rest of the cars being towed would still have most of their momentum so we need to stay in between the tracks and train for a while…"

"No… no! I can't let you do that! You're gonna get destroyed if you do that, it's too risky! We can always let it happen and fight the Grimm afterwards!"

"We're going to stick ourselves between the front and hopefully, the friction and weight we have might be good enough. We just need to shrink and enlarge at the right time to grind down the speed.

"...But you'll get destroyed-" She was interrupted when the team suddenly surged forward, as Blake started fully engaging Adam. Tiger and Iosif already had moved forward intending to follow through with their plan. "...J-just promise me you both will come back!" she yelled at them before assisting her teammates.

""We will!"" They both replied back, bypassing Adam under the seam as he was distracted by everyone fighting him.

""Für das Vaterland/ для Родины. Für Ruby Rose!/Для Руби!""

As the tanks left, Blake recovers from a near strike and landed on her heels while Yang countered. "You won't get away with ruining the lives of others, Adam!"

Adam while receiving long-range attacks from Weiss grunted while blocking with his sheathe and slicing off a large amount of ice that was reaching for his feet. "My love… you can't stop the true purpose of the White Fang!"

"M-maybe I can't… but we will!"


The tanks sped to the front and reached the very front where if you peered over, you could see the tracks and where the train met with it. The two tanks swivelled to each other as they prepared what had to be done.

"Are you ready Tiger?"

"Never thought I'd potentially die with a communist."

"Didn't think I'd fight with a fascist."

They both laughed. "We'll both live for Ruby though!" One last declaration and their hulls reached the ground below, as track met rail, they could feel for just a split second that they were right in between the tracks.

*SCREECH!*

Sparks flew, tracks crunched and their armour was getting shaved like ice. Their parts were wedged in between, and they could feel the heat rising from the front armour, Iosif was faring better but they both had their suspension already ripped apart, the train bounced, most of it still stayed attached to the rail but the front was lifting, enough for them to jostle around and start sliding.

"Is it slowing down?" Tiger asked, another of his side skirts ripping off while his 6th wheel did so as well.

"It is!"

It was slow but the train was seemingly slowing down, the combination of their weight and the friction being caused by their entire lower half being scrunched to the wheels of the train made it possible but it wasn't all good news…

"Fuck the wall is close!" Tiger yelled, with him the only one being able to face forward because, at this point, Iosif's angled armour had made the train climb over part of his turret and tore apart his barrel. "We can't make it!"

As the wall came close, Tiger had hoped he would've done enough. But in these times, a miracle whether it was there from the beginning or not, the tanks could feel someone close by. It wouldn't make sense, Sherman, Pershing, and Centurion were far.

They all finally felt a third presence.

*BOOM!*

The largest crunch of metal-on-metal action had been heard, the impact was hard enough that it sounded like a cannon had just gone off. As Tiger swivelled left to see who it was, he gawked at the size of that lad.

"Holy shit…! Who are you?!"

"...Maus."

The hulking behemoth almost weighing 200 tons had slammed into the train, giving enough of its weight and stoppage to drastically slow down the train. But because of this, the train itself had ramped up using the two tanks wedged in front! Lifting the entire locomotive and sending the two tanks of Tiger and Iosif barreling under the cars.

Maus' weight had been enough, the train slowed down to where it was amenable. The train screeched, almost hitting the roof before the high-pitched noise of metal grating metal ceased.

The train had been stopped.