Virtual Reality Ensues
"How did we do, Nishizumi-san?" Nekota asked Miho after a practice session. The tournament had ended, but the tank crews continued practicing, hoping to hone their craft and be as well prepared as possible for the next year. Team Anteater was especially determined to improve themselves, so that their contributions to the team's next victory would not be accidental.
"You and the rest of the team are coming along quite well," Miho said. "Keeping in mind most of us hadn't even been in a tank before we started at the club I'd say you started on the same level with the rest of us. And taking into account how long you've been on the team, your progress is about on par with most of us- that is to say, you're improving in your roles."
"It's quite an adjustment from the game we played," Momogawa said. "You pushed the arrow keys to go forward, and could essentially turn on a 1-yen coin. Here, well, reversing into the path of the shell wasn't quite what we had in mind, even if things worked out in the end"
"You used the mouse to aim and fire," Nekota said. "You didn't have to worry about loading as long as you still had ammo, and aiming was essentially pointing at the target and firing. Having ammo and a straight line of fire was all you needed to attack your target."
"Interesting…" Miho said. "I had heard that tank combat games were simplified from their real world counterparts- they had to be, with one person filling the roles of an entire crew- but I had no idea that it went this far."
"You seem like you have a lot of experience with tanks, Nishizumi-san," Piyotan said. "Considering that you started at a young age, I wonder how well you'd do on those games. Surely you'd be better than a complete newbie."
"I'd be interested in finding out," Miho said.
Saying goodbye to the girls of Anteater Team, Miho set off to find her teammates, and get them together to see how they would fare.
At the local arcade, Miho and the rest of the team looked at the Battlezone machine they had seen earlier. Having discussed what Miho had talked about with Team Anteater, they were curious as to how they would fare using their real tank experience in a video game.
"So why don't you go first, Miporin?" Saori said. "You've been doing tankery for the longest."
"All right," Miho said.
Miho stepped forward to take the controls, inserting a coin. She found herself reaching for the ignition, then the shifter, but when a small tilt on the joystick sent her tank sliding forward, she realized she had no need of either.
While she was still familiarizing herself with the controls, an enemy tank crept up behind her, and shot her.
"Wh-what?" she said, startled at being defeated so easily.
"You got shot from behind," Mako said, pointing at the radar, which displayed an enemy behind Miho.
"Oh…" Miho said, more surprised at the feature than the realization of what had happened. She then wondered how the inclusion of a radar would affect her strategies, particularly since she could not so easily hide her tanks to ambush others, deceive enemies about the number or location of her forces, or be subject to any of those stratagems by the enemy.
On her second life, Miho crept toward another tank in the distance, and pulled the trigger. The bullet came out more slowly than she anticipated, though, and before it could reach the enemy, an enemy shell that had been fired a moment before, while Miho was hesitant to attack such a distant tank, reached her.
"Those must be relatively slow shells, if we can view them in mid-flight," Hana said. "It makes me wonder how they could pierce this tank's armor so easily."
"I don't think such things matter," Yukari said. "Based on the speed and the distance, it shouldn't have been able to pierce the tank's armor, unless the shell is exceptionally strong or the tank is exceptionally weak."
"I do know that there were times when I knew I could hit the enemy tank in my sights, but could not pierce its armor at that distance," Hana said. "It appears neither Miho-san nor her enemies are bound by that restriction, enabling them to fire with abandon."
On her final life, Miho managed to take the enemy tank by surprise, shooting it from behind, and destroying the others, advanced to the next level. However, she still struggled to adjust to what she could do that she could not in a real tank, and vice versa. An enemy took advantage of that shortcoming and snuck up on her from the side.
"To your right, Nishizumi-dono!" Yukari said, and Miho struggled to turn her tank. It was too late, and a shot from the enemy ended Miho's game.
"It's tough when you can't turn your turret," Miho said with a sigh. She had grown used to several vantage points inside her Panzer IV, including the ability to stick her head out and look around when she could.
"It certainly is," Yukari said. "It's a bit like the StuG III, except you can't aim the gun, either." She then pulled out a pen and piece of paper from her pocket, and made three crude drawings of tanks from a bird's-eye view. The left showed a tank with a circle around it, indicating a 360 degree firing area. The representation of the StuG had a narrow cone in front of it. But the Battlezone tank had a straight line extending from the barrel of the gun. "See what I mean?"
"Still, you do not have to worry about ammunition," Hana said. "If I had unlimited shells, and could fire without waiting for Akiyama-san to load, I would not worry as much about missing when I made my shots, although I wonder if I would become somewhat reckless as well."
"Why don't you try next, Hana-san?" Miho said. "You're not only the gunner, but you have also driven before, so I'd like to see how you do."
"Very well, please watch me," Hana said as Miho got up and Hana took her seat.
One of Hana's first tanks was at a distance, and slowly rolling toward her. Most gunners would have taken the shot, but Hana, believing neither of them were close enough to hit the other, hesitated while trying to line up a shot.
"How long or far away do you think this tank is, Miho-san?" Hana asked while looking at a tank that was rolling across her field of view.
"The aiming distance?" Miho said. "I… I don't know what kind of model that is, and didn't see any indicators like that on the crosshairs."
"Me neither," Yukari said.
"Does it matter?" Mako said. "Like you said, it's not like you have a limit on ammunition or that your shell won't be effective."
"That may be true, but I would like to zoom in more," Hana said, fiddling with the controls in a vain attempt to find a zoom gauge. During this time, her tank was struck by the enemy's fire. Hana, hearing the sound, recalled that it was nothing like the pleasing sound of the tank gun firing that had convinced her to become gunner for Team Anglerfish.
"Oh, my," Hana said. "No wonder you had trouble here, Miho-san; you're outnumbered and facing entirely different rules of engagement."
"It reminds me of the practice battle we did, in that our tank is one facing several," Miho said. "But I wonder what level of skill these enemies are meant to represent."
"I have yet to see one take its tracks off just by driving, so I'd say, better than most of us started out," Saori said.
"Or lucky enough not to have to deal with such mechanical issues," Mako said. "Either way, we seem to be on the same footing as the rest of those who were amateurs back then."
Hana managed to adjust to the game, getting past a few levels. Eventually, though, Hana ran out of luck, and as a result of her initial mistakes, ran out of extra lives as well.
"It seems difficult to multitask like this," Hana said. "Shooting and driving are tasks that each require my and Reizei-san's full attention, and now I have to do both at once."
"Well, Mako is quite talented, so why don't we have her give it a go?" Saori said.
"Ok; I guess this should be over fast," Mako said as she took the controls.
Mako glanced over the instructions and then started the game. To everyone's surprise, she, unlike Miho and Hana, completed the first level without losing a life.
"Wow, Mako-san, amazing!" Miho said.
"How did you do it so well?" Hana said.
"Doing everything you didn't and not doing what you did, I suppose," Mako said.
"Remember, Mako learned how to drive a tank just by reading a manual," Saori said. "It's possible she learned to do this just as quickly."
"I suppose it's just a matter of temporarily forgetting everything I know about driving a tank while learning the new rules," Mako said. "Once you get that down, anyone can do this."
In spite of her skill, Mako eventually was a second too slow in turning around to face an enemy, and was defeated, losing her final life in the process but gaining a high score. She entered her initials and let off a sigh.
"That took a while…" she said. "Why don't you do it next, Saori?"
"Ok!" Saori said, putting in a token and starting it up as Mako stepped away.
"This might come off as a stupid question, Miporin," Saori began, as she played the first level.
"Go ahead, Saori-san," Miho said.
"Well, I just noticed; someone like Yukarin isn't needed because this tank doesn't load like ours does, right?"
"It would seem so," Yukari said, and Miho nodded.
"And I'm not needed, either, because it's just one of us- or do we even have a radio?"
"In teams consisting of a single tank, the radio operator doesn't need to do anything, and it's often the crew position shared with someone else, generally the commander" Miho said. "Back in elementary school, I had a Panzer IV like the one we use now, and I and my three friends operated it."
"I see," Saori said. "I'd say I'm doing pretty well despite my lack of experience, but it's more like because I don't have any assumptions about how tanks work, right?"
Shortly afterward, Saori quickly tried to turn around to face an enemy tank, but was too slow and lost her last life.
"I never knew just how hard your job really was, Miporin," Saori said. "I knew I was out of my depth as commander in our first run with the tank, but didn't truly realize how much."
"You're actually doing my job, Hana-san's job and Mako-san's job all at once," Miho said. "For a tank to fight, three people is the bare minimum, although it's technically possible to drive around with two people, or one if you have a model with a periscope or open hatch."
"To think lots of people who have never operated a tank play this…" Saori said. "Or perhaps, it's a game meant for such people; a lot of them probably do better than we did."
"Yukari-san, why don't you take a turn?" Miho said. "We saw you playing before."
"Leave it to me!" Yukari said, saluting before taking the controls. "This takes me back…" she said after a while of playing. "I was completely obsessed with tanks back then, but without any friends, I couldn't crew a tank. With that in mind, and no tankery program, this was the next best thing."
Miho's expression turned sad, as Yukari's comment had reminded her of her own experience. She had once tried to bond with others through tankery, but found that they were uninterested, or even intimidated, by tankery, and so were not willing to participate. Since she had spent her childhood practicing tankery to the exclusion of almost all other hobbies, she had no common ground with which she could establish friendships until she met Hitomi, Chihiro and Emi late in elementary school. Yukari had not been so lucky, and Miho realized from Yukari's father's surprise at seeing friends come over just how long she had spent without friends in her childhood.
Shortly thereafter, Yukari lost her three lives in relatively rapid succession- first to being slow on the trigger finger, then to accidentally poking out of cover, and last to missing a shot. She did better than Miho, Hana or Saori, but her score was not high enough to qualify as a high score.
"It looks like I'm out of practice," Yukari said with a slight chuckle. "Before I started crewing a real tank, I got scores like Reizei-dono's all the time."
"I'm not all that good," Mako said. "There are people out there who have caused the score displays to max out and reset. Maybe I could get that far if I tried, but it seems like it would be too much trouble for me to practice so much or play for that long."
"Really?" Saori said. "More trouble than… your driving a tank to win a national tankery tournament? Doing extra practice with us for it? Helping Sodoko and the others out with driving a tank? Helping me study for a radio operator license?"
"In the sense that it's not as worthwhile," Mako said with a slight smile coming to her face.
"So how did it go?" Nekota asked Miho the next day after practice.
"The rest of Anglerfish Team and I tried Battlezone at the arcade, and we found that we're better at regular tanks," Miho said.
"It took us a lot of practice to get good at our video game, which is a bit more complex and realistic than that one," Piyotan said. "I think you'll get better if you keep at it, just like we have in video games and real tankery."
"Still, I don't think there's any substitute for the real thing," Miho said.
"Neither do we," Momogawa said. "Now that we've discovered what it's like to pilot a tank in real life, we're going to keep doing it together, working on getting better for the sake of enjoying it to the fullest and helping out those who helped ensure that we have another year to do it."
"Let's all work hard together!" Miho said, pleased at Momogawa's resolve.
Notes
Thank you for reading this fic. This was inspired by something I was curious about; considering that the girls who played video games couldn't operate a real tank, how would the Anglerfish girls fare on a video game? The "I Don't Know Mortal Combat" trope comes into play here, since skill at the real thing doesn't necessarily translate to skill at a video game.
The aiming sights and effective range come into play quite a bit, as shown in the training, in which it isn't quite as simple to hit a stationary target as it seems, and in Episode 11, where, as the Viewers are Geniuses entry in the TV Tropes page about the series details, Anzu couldn't get a disabling shot on Maho's tank at her distance with her tank's gun.
The title is derived from the "Reality Ensues" trope, in which storytellers forego typical storytelling convention for realism, often at crucial moments, a trope that is said to apply when Anteater Team tries to tak eaedvantage of their video game experience in a tankery match.
What follows is an omake to show what things might be like as video game technology advances.
Omake
Twenty years later…
"I'm home, Mother!" Nishizumi Hinata, younger daughter of Nishizumi Maho said.
"Welcome home, Hinata," Maho said. "Did you have fun at your friend's house?"
"I did," Hinata saisd. "We played 'Tank Commander: A Time For Heroes' on the Immersion Reiko-chan got for her birthday."
The Immersion was the product of Kitamura Corporation, an electronics giant that had produced hardware and software but was only recently branching off into consoles. Maho, familiar with the technology from Immersion's work in making tank training simulators, nodded in comprehension.
"Did you like it?" Maho said.
"It was quite fun," Hinata said. "You get to actually choose which role you want to play in the tank; I was the driver, while Reiko-chan was the gunner and her older sister was the loader- and you get to look around and move things with your own hands and the motion sensors. You even flip the switches around to make the tank go forward, and if the tank pops a tread, you have to fix it yourself, grabbing the parts with your hands and putting them into place."
While critics and some players called the breakdowns an annoying and tedious part of the game, Hinata, having studied tanks since she was young, but not yet ready to join a tankery team like her middle school-age sister, liked the attention to detail.
"Video games have come a long way from when I was your age," Maho said. "Back then, you sat at your desk or on your couch, looking at a two-dimensional screen. One of my opponents made the mistake of confusing video game experience with real experience."
"Still, it's not quite the same as doing tankery for real," Hinata said. "Reiko-chan can't wait to go into tankery and neither can I; I'd like to be just like my sister, Aunt Miho, and you, Mother."
"I'm looking forward to that as well," Maho said. "I'm sure you'll do us proud, Hinata."