A New Definition
Suzuki grunted as she turned her wrench, trying to remove a bolt that had been nearly rust fused in place. The Tiger P was being particularly troublesome today. Having broken down one of the carrier's main streets, large numbers of students had passed them. They had been there for hours trying to repair the tank on-site rather than tow it back to the garage. Nakajima was hoping that the exposure would create interest in the club, maybe get them new members. Suzuki wasn't so sure.
For the moment it was only her and Hoshino working on the tank while Tsuchiya and Nakajima went back to the garage to get a part. The sun was already below the horizon, leaving them only twilight and a few magnetic lights for illumination. She didn't think a lot of students would be seeing them now.
"Suzuki?" Hoshino's voice came from within the turret and Suzuki looked up just in time to see her head pop out of the commander's hatch. "Do you have anymore penetrating oil?" Suzuki grabbed the can of Deep Creep and tossed it to her. "Thanks. Boy this bolt is stubborn."
"They all are, and this is after we overhauled the poor beast."
"It was a rush job." Hoshino conceded. "But with the season closing, we should have time to do a proper overhaul before school ends."
"Speaking of which..." Suzuki thrust her chin out towards the school. Large numbers of students were pouring out of the auditorium, clustered tightly together and chatting excitedly as they made their way home. "What's going on? So many students coming out this late?"
"Oh, I think there was a beauty pageant tonight or something."
"A beauty pageant?" Suzuki shook her head disparagingly. "Seriously, why?"
Hoshino shrugged. "The student council's been trying all kinds of schemes to generate more exposure for the school. They don't want to rely totally on tankery for that."
"Makes sense but… why a beauty pageant. That's so….."
Hoshino smirked. "Girly?"
"Shallow." Suzuki gave the wrench another pull. "They say 'beauty is in the eye of the beholder' for a reason. It's all relative." The bolt finally came loose and popped out of its hole, giving Suzuki her first sense of relief of the evening.
"Well, it's not like we can let guys do all the stupid things." Hoshino chuckled. "Anyway, it doesn't matter; we have better things to do than strut around on stage like prize mares. Let's get this tank rolling."
Suzuki smiled. "Yeah, can't imagine anything worse than standing under hot stage lights and wearing inch-thick makeup."
"Spoken like true losers." The two mechanics turned their heads and saw a girl in a stunning dark green dress, holding a golden trophy in her hands and accompanied by a large gaggle of other girls. The dress matched her eyes and her long beautiful light-brown hair was accessorized with sparkling green hairclips.
"You're calling the champions of the 63rd Tankery Nationals losers?" Hoshino snorted. "I think you've spent too much time under the sun Rukia."
"That was a team effort," Rukia replied calmly. "When part of a team, everyone shoulders the burden, but in a beauty pageant, you have only yourself to fall back on when you're on stage. I did my own makeup, I coordinated my own outfit, I did everything myself." She held up the trophy. "and as you can see, I am the winner of the first annual Ooarai beauty competition."
"Congratulations," Suzuki said in a monotone voice. "But that doesn't help explain why you think we're losers."
"Anyone who puts someone else down is obviously insecure about it. You two were putting down the pageant because you knew you'd lose if you entered because you don't have what it takes to stand up and be judged by yourself. You've always had a team to hide behind."
"We don't hide," Hoshino growled. "We're always up front in our tank."
"But not outside of it, are you?" Rukia snorted. "I noticed that while there are plenty of pictures of most of the other teams posted on the boards and online, yours is conspicuously absent."
"That's because we're always covered in oil and grease," Suzuki argued. "Doesn't make a great promo picture."
"In other words, you're always ugly." The members of Rukia's entourage giggled. "You can't stand to have your pictures taken because you always look terrible. The only way you'd win a pageant is by stinking everyone else out of the building, assuming you didn't get rid of the judges too. Please continue to do us the favor of not putting your pictures up. I'd hate to read all the comments online about how ugly you are. It's bad karma."
"I'll give you bad karma if you don't get lost." Hoshino held a ratchet above her head and waved it threateningly.
Rukia rolled her eyes. "It's no wonder you girls are so camera shy. You're more like boys in girl's bodies with your barbaric mannerisms." She smirked. "Assuming those are girl's bodies. Only one of you even looks like a girl and you never wear the school uniform. Maybe you're hiding something from everyone." She and her entourage laughed and then started to walk away, leaving the two greasy and dirty tankers fuming.
Suzuki let out a growl of anger and she sent her first flying forward with all her strength. Her hand slammed home with a satisfying thud, sending her foe reeling back.
"Dammit!" Suzuki started a series of rapid punches, hitting with all the anger and bottled up aggression she could muster. "Why did that hypocritical bitch have to say all that and put me in a bad mood. Thinks she's all that just because she won a stupid contest!"
"Atta' girl Suzuki, tell the bag how you really feel."
It was hours after the incident with Rukia. Suzuki and Hoshino had worked another ten minutes before Tsuchiya and Nakajima arrived with their needed part. After that, it was another hour of refitting before the tank could move again. It still wasn't all together but they would finish in the morning. Despite the long day, Suzuki had gone to the gym to work out and release the pent-up anger inside her safely. Taking them out on a punching bag instead of Rukia seemed like a less troublesome option.
Her friend Mina was holding the punching bag steady for her and helping her work out. The blonde had her hair tied up in a long ponytail and wearing the regulation school PE shorts and t-shirt. She was trying to help Suzuki overcome her anger without too many Star Wars references.
"I'm not ugly just because I don't stand in the spotlight or because I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty."
"Some people find that a very attractive quality." Mina agreed.
"So why doesn't she know that if she's such an expert on good looks?" Suzuki snarled as she released a vicious flurry of jabs at the bag.
"Because she's a girl and most girls only think of that as a possibly attractive quality in guys. I guess they never consider that sometimes it can go both ways."
"Maybe." Suzuki punched the bag again. "Damn girl thinks she's all that with her long pretty hair and those curves and her big pretty eyes and fair skin and…" Her voice trailed off and she stopped punching. She looked around to the other side of the bag at Mina who was looking rather sheepish.
Suzuki felt ashamed. "S-sorry Mina I - I didn't mean it that way."
"I-it's okay." She insisted "I know you're just angry."
"Yeah well… I think you're better looking now since you've slimmed down. You lost twenty kilos, right?"
"Twenty-one." She smiled. "I do feel better being fitter, but sometimes I do miss all that extra body. I may have been a bit of a porker but all that meat went to all the right places."
"Yeah well, unfortunately, it doesn't go there for all of us." Suzuki resumed punching the bag, her frustration boiling up again. "It doesn't seem fair. It's not like I'm jealous of Rukia's body, I like how I am, but why is it that most people think the way she looks is best? Why do you have to look like you're from a magazine to be considered good looking?"
"I heard Yuuki got second place in the competition and aside from the skin tone and the colour of her hair, she doesn't look like Rukia at all." Mina was referring to Yuuki Utsugi of the tankery's team's own Rabbit Team. Knowing that one of their own members had done so well did make Suzuki smile despite herself.
"Well, good for Yuuki I guess. How much did Rukia beat her by?"
"Around a hundred votes. Considering the total pool was over two-thousand, that's pretty good. Rukia's a third-year though, so she would have more people on her side. Contests like that are sometimes decided more by popularity than the actual conditions of the contests."
Suzuki snorted. "Yeah, I guess I'd never win that."
"Suzuki, you've never cared about being popular before. What's really eating at you? What did she say to you that's gotten you so riled up? It can't be just that she won a contest and was rubbing it in your face."
"That pisses me off too." Suzuki punched. "She called me ugly." She punched harder, "She called us losers!" She punched harder still, knocking Mina with the bag. "She said that we were just boys pretending to be girls!" She brought her foot up and gave the bag a mighty kick. The bag hit Mina hard and caused her to stagger backward and fall over.
"Mina!" Suzuki ran over to her friend and quickly assessed her for any damage. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to do that."
Mina patted her arm. "It's alright. I'm glad you finally got it out of your system." She stood up straight and flexed her shoulders. "Now, is that what's bothering you most? That she called you boys?"
Suzuki sighed and looked back at the punching bag still swinging from her hit. "I'm tired of people always saying and thinking that a girl is someone who looks and acts a certain way. Why can't I be a girl and do what I love doing? What's wrong with being a girl who gets her hands dirty?"
"And her face, and just about every other bit of exposed skin." Mina smiled and Suzuki couldn't help but find it infectious.
"Yeah. You don't think we're basically boys, do you?"
"So, it's we now?" Mina shook her head. "Well, you have to remember Suzuki that this is an all-girls school. Of course, doing stuff that's normally associated as masculine is going to make you look stand out more and seem boyish compared to the other girls here. Heck, in some of the other schools, it would probably make you more popular with the student body, since you'd be like a surrogate for all their romantic and sexual fantasies."
Suzuki crossed her arms over her chest and fixed Mina with a firm stare. "That doesn't make me feel better."
"I'm just explaining the reasoning. Look Suzuki, yeah, all four of you are tomboyish and pretty masculine compared to most girls, but there's nothing wrong with that. Variety is the spice of life after all. Besides, I bet if you girls dolled yourselves up, you'd give Rukia a run for her money, but you're just not the type of girls who do that sort of thing. That doesn't make you inferior or make you less girls; it just makes you different. I think what's bothering you is that you want Rukia and people like her to understand that."
Suzuki lightly bit her bottom lip and considered Mina's words. Maybe she was right. People had said worse things to them than Rukia had. Maybe it was just that she had uncorked all the feelings they'd been keeping bottled up.
"So, how do we do that?"
Mina grinned. "All you have to do is show as much about you and what you stand for in a way that is both succinct and expressive."
"Succinct and expressive huh?" Suzuki tapped her chin and thought about what they should do. Some way to show them what they loved, what they represented, what they wanted out of life. Slowly, a grin spread across her face. "I've got an idea."
Mina giggled. "I thought you might."
The Ooarai school ship bustled with activity. Decorations were up everywhere welcoming more visitors than had been seen in decades. It was the last festival of the year, a last chance for students to relax before exams and the student council elections occupied all their time. It was also the school's last chance to woo any potential new students from middle-schools across the country, and Ooarai Academy was pulling out all the stops to get a surplus of new students this year.
Every school club had been given ample room to advertise, every school program a place to shine. Businesses were given places to advertise free of charge, hopefully providing more incentive for students to arrive. Of all these things however, nobody was put on a higher pedestal than Japan's reigning tankery champions.
All the tanks were being parked outside of the tankery garages for everyone to see and to interact with the team and the tanks themselves, but the Tiger P was conspicuously missing and Miho Nishizumi, the tankery team captain, was growing concerned.
"Are you sure there's nothing wrong?" Miho asked her second, Momo Kawashima. "I mean, it's not like the auto club to be late."
"They said they had something planned." Momo looked at her clipboard and then the clock with a distressed frown. "They still have a few minutes but they should be here already."
"Maybe the tank broke down." Hana Isuzu suggested. "It does happen quite often; unfortunately."
"I don't think they would let it break down so easily on a day like today", assured Yukari Akiyama. "I'm sure they're just waiting until the last minute for some dramatic effect."
Momo gritted her teeth. "Well, we have to let the public into the vehicle yard at exactly 9:30 so-"
"Attention, attention!" The loudspeakers interrupted her. "All visitors, please direct your attention to the vehicle grounds for a demonstration by Ooarai's Auto Club and tankery Leopon Team."
The tankery team members looked amongst themselves, confused. "What demonstration?" Momo demanded.
Suddenly there was a roar of engines, one the familiar growl of the Tiger P, but it had much smaller capacity friends. Suddenly the tank burst out from behind the garage in a long skid with sparks beneath its tracks, followed by a coupe and a sedan, both sideways and trailing white smoke from squealing tires.
The Tiger P slowed and then changed direction skidding close to the crowd kept behind the gate. They thought they were safe until the sedan skidded past in a flash, barely a meter from the gate. Everyone jumped back in surprise as they were obscured by white tire smoke.
The coupe moved in front of the Tiger P, leading it in another long skid before it suddenly veered out of its way and the tank screeched into a pendulum turn that slotted it perfectly into line with the rest of the team's tanks.
The coupe meanwhile started doing donuts in the lot before it was joined by the sedan drifting in a big circle around it in a kind of dance. The two cars then took off side by side towards the Tiger P and spun completed around and slid backward before stopping just in front of the tank.
The awed crowd watched as the car doors opened and the tank hatches popped and received another surprise. The autoclub girls were not wearing the regulation school uniforms or even the tankery uniforms. Instead, they were wearing white thigh-high boots, a very short green skirt with white frills and a green halter top with 'Ooarai' written in stylized text. As they stepped onto the pavement and got into line the placed small wedge caps on their heads and struck a pose.
"We're a new definition of girls. the Ooarai Auto Club!"
Everyone's jaws were on the ground for several moments before the crowd erupted into cheers and tankry team joined in. Well… most of them.
"What were you doing!" Momo shouted at the top of her lungs. "You think you can just show off like that and make the rest of us look bad?"
Sodoko was also shouting. "That was reckless and dangerous! Totally against school regulations!"
The autoclub girls just smiled and waved at the crowd as they were finally let in and rushed to meet the team.
"That was amazing!"
"How did you come up with something like that?"
"Can I join your club next year?"
"Those outfits are so cute!"
"You look gorgeous!"
Above the rushing crowd, Suzuki spotted a familiar blonde perched on the concrete wall bordering the vehicle area, smiling as brightly as her hair.
Suzuki gave Mina a wink and she winked back. This probably wouldn't change Rukia's mind, but if it changed somebody's, that made it worth it.