Azumanga und Panzer!
by Technomad
Chapter One
The girls stood in silence, looking at the ruins of their town. Finally, Sakaki broke the silence. "We survived the tsunami and earthquake, at least," she said.
"But where will we live? Where can we go to school now?" Tomo Takino was sometimes obnoxious, but this time she'd cut to the heart of the matter. The town was utterly ruined, and everybody who'd survived was sleeping in tents and eating in a Self-Defense Force portable mess hall.
"Let's find Yukari-sensei. She'll likely know." Chiyo-chan suited action to words, walking off toward where they thought that their homeroom teacher was likely to be. Overhead, gulls called out to each other, their sad keening cries echoing the desolation in their hearts.
When they found her, Yukari was in no mood to talk. She was sitting in the mess hall, sobbing quietly, as Miss Kurosawa tried to console her. When she saw the girls, she got up to intercept them. "Please don't bother Yukari right now. She just found out that her parents were killed in the tsunami."
"Oh." At that, the girls moved away, sitting down at a different table. They had all found that their parents were alive, and they knew how very lucky they were. As it happened, they'd been on a field trip inland when the tsunami hit, and finding their families when they came back had taken some time.
The next few days were very busy. The efficient Japanese emergency services had moved in quickly, but there was lots of work to be done. All of the girls volunteered to help out; even little Chiyo-chan did all she could, until she quietly collapsed and Sakaki scooped her up into her arms and took her back to the tent they all shared with a dozen other girls from their school.
There was a mass funeral and memorial service for all who had been lost, and the whole town was there; everybody had lost friends or family. The media was there, but they kept a respectful distance as people spoke, often through tears, of the people who had been lost. Sakaki "accidentally" tripped into one intrusive cameraman, knocking his camera to the ground. His howls were firmly shut off by Mr. Kimura, who'd been doing a heroic job coordinating aid efforts ever since the disaster.
"I guess I never thought of Mr. Kimura that way before," admitted Sakaki. She had just come back from hearing a bunch of people singing their teacher's praises.
"He ain't so bad. Ah mean, we all love havin' guys lookin' at us, don't we? Why should we get bent out of shape if'n one does that we don't happen to want?" All the girls looked at Osaka as though she'd grown a second head. She stared back at them, her eyes wide as ever. "What'd Ah say? That's just plain ol' common sense, that is!"
Chiyo broke the silence. "You have unexpected depths, Osaka."
The next day, news about what was to happen next came through. "Looks like we're being transferred. To a school ship," remarked Tono.
"Oorai Girls' High School…I've heard of them!" piped up Chiyo-chan. "They won the Tankery championship last year! It was in all the papers!"
"Yeah," put in Yomi. "People were really surprised, particularly when they were up against Kuromorimine Women's College! Her big sister commands at Kuromorimine, and her mother runs the Tankery team there! They have lots and lots of tanks, including a Maus!"
"Maybe we can join the Tankery club when we get there!" said Kagura.
A few days later, they were settling into their new quarters aboard the Oorai school ship. "This ship is so huge!" squealed Yomi. "I heard she's several kilometers long!"
"Compared to other school ships, Oorai's not that big," Sakaki said. She was, as she often was, the calmest of the group. "Kuromorimine's bigger, and Pravda High's ship is huge."
"Don't you love these apartments?" said Tomo. "I never got to live all on my own before! This'll be such fun! We can stay over with each other, and have parties, and…oh, it'll be wonderful!" Their parents were aboard the school ship, but there hadn't been room for their families to live together,
so the girls had apartments of their own. One reason for the building of the huge ships was to ease the crowding on the Japanese mainland. They were also proof against earthquakes and tsunamis, something for which all the refugees were profoundly grateful.
"Don't forget, you'll also have school to go to, still," said Miss Tomosawa. She had come up behind the girls, and they all whirled, blushing, to find themselves confronted by their teacher.
"Oh! Excuse us!" The girls bowed reflexively. While Miss Tomosawa was by no means as strict as teachers could be, she was still much stricter than Yukari. Even Kimura, with all his lecherous leers, was stricter than Yukari. He was all business when it came to Classical Japanese. If anything, the more attracted to a girl he was, the harder he came down on mistakes in composition; many girls had been crushed to find that flirting with their teacher translated into harder work and less slack.
"I've come to help you get yourselves the things you need. Accounts have been opened at the school supply shop so you can buy new uniforms." At the thought of buying clothes, all the girls squealed with joy, and they bounced along in Miss Tomosawa's wake willingly.
Sure enough, the shop had been notified of their arrival, and the shopkeepers were all helpful. They were especially enchanted by Chiyo-chan, buzzing around her as they looked through their stock to find a uniform small enough for her. "Oh, the sweet little thing! How brave you must be, to go to school with such older girls!" gushed one.
"They're very nice to me…usually," Chiyo-chan replied, giving Tomo a frosty look. "They mostly treat me like either just another of the girls, or as a younger sister they all share in common. Sakaki, here, is especially nice to me. We lived near each other in our old home and would often walk to school together." Sakaki blushed as the shopkeeper gave her a beaming smile of approval. She was rather shy and preferred to blend into the background, something her height and busty figure made difficult at best.
Osaka was being her usual distractible self. "Ooh, look at them ornaments," she said, pointing to a shelf. "They's all tanks!"
"They sure are, miss. Ever since Oorai won the national Tankery competition a few months ago, Tankery's all the rage around here," the shopkeeper said.
"I wonder if they'd let us join the Tankery team? We could form our own squad." Chiyo-chan bounced up and down with excitement.
"That would be very nice, Chiyo-chan!" Miss Tomosawa beamed approval. "Yukari would be very pleased. You do know she was in Tankery herself when she was in school? Along with me?"
"No! Tell us about it!"
"Well, when she was in school, her mother wanted her to get involved in a nice feminine activity. I think her mother had something in mind like flower arranging, though. Was she surprised when she found out we'd both taken up Tankery instead!"
"I bet she was!" Chiyo-chan giggled, which set the others giggling too.
"I was loader on our tank, which was a US-built Sherman. Yukari was our driver. Matter of fact, that's where she learned to drive. Before that, she'd never had her hands on a motor vehicle."
"Oh." Chiyo-chan and the other girls exchanged a silent, significant glance. If Yukari had learned to drive on a tank, that explained a lot. No wonder she drives like she's invulnerable! Compared to even the lightest tank, a car's nothing to worry about! The girls all knew that this would be a fertile source for jokes, later.
"Before we talk about the Tankery, we've got to get you girls settled into your new school, though," said Miss Tomosawa, in a voice that brooked no argument. Obediently, the girls followed in her wake, off to the bookstore for their new textbooks. The originals had almost all been lost in the tsunami.
A few weeks later, the girls were settling into their new routine. As it had happened, Oorai Girls' High had needed a new English teacher and gym teacher, the previous ones having left their jobs due to having babies, and both Yukari and Miss Tomosawa were teaching again. Except for the different uniforms and surroundings, it was almost as though they had never left home.
At first, the strange surroundings intimidated them, and the girls clung together closely. Gradually, though, they began to make new friends. One day, Sakaki was chatting with a couple of girls in the hallway, and the subject of Tankery came up. Sakaki's eyes went wide when she found out that the girl she was talking to was Miho Nishizumi, who had led the school's team to victory recently. Miho, for her part, was welcoming and rather tended to downplay her victories, saying that they were as much due to her teammates as her own efforts.
"I have a cousin at Pravda High who's into Tankery," Sakaki said, "and I might want to get into it myself. What do you think my chances are?"
"Oh, I don't think they're too bad." Miho gave Sakaki a long look. "Is your cousin's name Nonna, by any chance?"
"Yes, it is! You know her?"
"We've met. Do you have any friends who might want to help you form a squad?"
"A group of us all came here together after the tsunami. You remember about that?"
"Oh, sure! If you want to join up together, that would be wonderful! It would help you get integrated with the rest of the school faster!" Miho gave an excited little squeal.
"Can we come around and get acquainted with the rest of the club?"
"We're meeting tonight in the garage. We'll look forward to seeing you!"
That evening, the girls gathered together, and went over to the school garages, with Sakaki in the lead. They were met by Miho and her crew, who introduced themselves as Saori, Hama, Yukari and Mako..."the Anglerfish Team," as Miho told them.
"This is our tank," said Miho, pointing to a squarish, angular-looking contraption. "It's a Panzer IV Ausf. H. It used to be configured rather differently, but we upgraded it a couple of times. It was built originally in Germany."
"Ain't that where tanks was invented?" asked Osaka, staring at the tank in wonderment.
Miho and her friends all giggled. "No, the British invented the first tanks. That was back in World War One, though. And here's the Turtle team's tank. It was originally a Panzer 38, built in Czechoslovakia, but we got a kit and upgraded it to a Hetzer."
"Where's the turret? Don't tanks have to have turrets?" wondered Yomi. "It looks like that one over there," she pointed to another machine standing nearby. This one had a hippo painted on the side.
"No, 'tanks' don't have to have turrets," said Captain Chono, who was along. "What you're pointing at is a Sturmgeschutz III Ausf. F, and it's run by a bunch of history buffs. They've all taken names from famous military commanders, and in their first couple of matches, they had their machine all blinged up. However, after they got knocked out because people could see their flags even though they themselves were well under cover, they smartened up quickly." The captain smiled. "These days, they're quite effective, and they're good at coming up with plans and historical parallels to the situations the team finds itself in."
After they'd been introduced to all the teams' tanks, Miho then turned to the Azu girls. "And now for you. What sort of tank do you have?"
This was met with dead silence. Finally, Tomo spoke up: "Er, we don't have one. Our school didn't offer Tankery."
Miho's eyes went wide. "Then you'll have to get one. Somewhere."
END Chapter 01