Moby Dick

Moby Dick is the ability of Herman Melville. It is also formerly one of the Guild's bases.

Description
It is a large aircraft in the shape of a whale, weighing a total mass of 29,000 tons. Herman mentions that Moby Dick is in fact a living being, which once freely roamed in the sky. However, the Guild eventually turned it into an air fortress, with more than 70% of it modified. Because of this, he no longer had control of the whale.

As the former airbase of the Guild, it housed Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald's office, an infirmary, a prison cell, and various other quarters. The weaponized aircraft also had anti-aircraft artillery, was equipped with an aerial sensor that was cut off within 130 seconds of receiving a helicopter that transported its regular supplies, and could activate stealth mode.

When dropped from an altitude of two kilometers, Moby Dick was estimated to have a detonation force equivalent to 140 tons of TNT going off in the middle of a city that could create a giant crater. The Guild utilized this destructive potential by planning to crash Moby Dick to Yokohama during their emergency plan in their pursuit of locating a certain book. Considered as their emergency plan's second stage – dubbed as the "Fall of Moby Dick" (とし) – this descent could only be stopped through a terminal switch, but an external party later hacked into Moby Dick's control system and overrode it to continue its descent to Yokohama. In the end, Kyōka Izumi crashed the aircraft she was imprisoned in into Moby Dick mid-air, which sank the latter into Yokohama waters.

It is indicated that Herman's ability also involves creating volant white whales instead of simply controlling them. For instance, when Ango Sakaguchi took Herman for interrogation regarding the Guild, a smaller white whale that resembled Moby Dick emerged from the bench that he sat on.

Appearances
{{Ability Appearance
 * Chapters =

The Guild Arc

 * Chapter 27 - Upon the Shattering Shores
 * Chapter 33 - A White Whale, into the Oceans of Heaven
 * Chapter 34 - The Last Tycoon
 * Chapter 35 - Rashōmon, the Tiger and the Last Tycoon
 * Chapter 36 - If I May Lay Down This Burden Today
 * Chapter 37 - Closing the Party
 * -|Episodes =

The Guild Arc
}}
 * Episode 20 - Though the Mind May Be Wrong
 * Episode 22 - Part 1: Poe and Ranpo; Part 2: Moby Dick, Swimming in the Sky
 * Episode 23 - Rashoumon, the Tiger, and the Last Emperor
 * Episode 24 - If I May Shed Away My Burden Now

Derivation
The ability is a reference to Moby-Dick or The Whale, which is a novel written by Herman Melville in 1851. It is a narrative of the sailor Ishmael on the quest for revenge of Captain Ahab on the sperm whale known as Moby-Dick that bit off his leg from the knee down during a previous voyage.

Trivia

 * The kanji for Moby Dick is "白鯨" (hakugei), which means "white whale".
 * The ability's reference work, Moby-Dick, is considered by various academics as a notable work representing the Great American Novel. Though the list of candidates for the merit is dynamic and relative, other candidates on the list include works of the real-life counterparts of the in-series Herman's former co-members from the Guild, namely The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck.
 * Interestingly, these works are the exact names or references of the abilities of their corresponding users in the series.