Hey, Uena here. Just a little one-shot for all you GuP fans out there. Read my GuPxPMMM fic once it's been rewritten!
I do not own Girls und Panzer. Now, read on.
Operation: Secret!
October 23, a school day after the match with Pravda.
Sunlight flooded in through the curtains of a certain girl's room, stirring her from slumber underneath the blankets. Like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon, Nishizumi Miho slowly made her way out of her covers.
When she flopped on the floor of her bed, she cracked open an eye, instantly seeing the clock clutched by a stuffed teddy bear with bandages wrapped around its arm and ears.
Five minutes later, a very frantic Miho ran out of her apartment, the door locking behind her and a croquette dangling from her mouth. She tried –vainly- to arrive at her and her friends' meeting place on time, but she was already fifteen minutes late.
Upon arriving at the intersection where her friends often waited for her, she found herself alone at the crossroads with only an elderly storekeeper sweeping the front smiling at her.
"Ohayo, Miho-chan. If you're looking for your friends, they already went ahead. They were saying something about keeping a secret?"
Confused, Miho thanked the old man, before walking to school at a more leisurely pace, her breakfast already half-way done.
What did the man mean about 'secret'? She can think of a few things, but that is not what is important right now. She has to get to school, and at the same time not give herself indigestion.
Arriving at school with only a few minutes to spare, she hurried to her class, unaware of the whispers going on around her. She spotted Erwin, Nakajima, and Noriko talking with each other in front of her class. They saw her, a bit of surprise on their faces.
Miho tried to ask them what they were doing there, but the bell rang before she could, so the girl didn't have a choice but to enter her class, lest she be declared late.
At her seat, she finally noticed the stares and conversations directed at her. Each time she looked at one of her classmates, they would either look away; stay quiet; or more often both.
Even her friends were the same. Saori said that it was just her imagination, but her eyes kept on darting around the room. Hana, for her part, simply smiled at her, said to not worry about it, and nothing else.
Throughout her lessons, Miho could feel the stares directed at her back, distracting her from her studies. She tried not to show it, but by the time Lunch had rolled around, her hands were already shaking.
When the Lunch bell tolled, Miho stood up, walked to Hana and Saori's table, and found that her friends were gone again.
After eating a rather lonely lunch at the cafeteria, the girl decided to search for someone to talk to.
She saw Mako sleeping under the shade of a tree, and thought better than to bother her.
Erwin and the others were busy with something in their club room. Something about it being the day Operation Lightfoot started.
Noriko and the rest of the Volleyball club were nowhere to be found.
Midoriko and the others were roaming around the school for any troublemakers, so Miho couldn't bring them side just for a simple talk.
Azusa was showing her friends a picture of her mother playing in a High School band, and since Miho knows little about it just stopped by to say hello. It was interesting to note though that Azusa's mother shares the same name as her daughter.
Nakajima and the others on the other hand were busy repairing the tanks after their match against Pravda.
So that left Saori, Hana, and…
"Yukari!" Miho shouted, seeing the girl hiding behind a bush. Miho approached her, unaware of the dawning horror on the other girl's face. "What are you doing over there?"
"Uhm… Ah," Yukari tried, brushing away leaves that got stuck on her hair. "Well, you see I'm… Uh…"
The brown haired girl backed away, stumbling not only over herself, but also over her words.
"Uhm… Look! Lunch is almost over, so I gottogobye!"
Miho watched crestfallen as one of her closest friends ran away from her.
"I don't get it." Miho told herself, leaning on the rooftop railing and hidden from view behind the staircase. "Why are they avoiding me?"
"Did you hear?" a girl, Miho realized as a senior, said from somewhere on the rooftop.
"Hear what?" asked the second voice, this one a junior.
"About Nishizumi Miho?" Miho leaned forward, eager to hear what the two are talking about.
"Oh, that? Yeah… To think that the school… And to keep that secret?" the second girl's voice lowered, so Miho could only catch snippets of the conversation, but already she thought she knew what they were talking about.
'They know about the school closing down!' Miho thought frantically.
Recently, the government of Japan decided to decommission a couple of the School Ships, since they were expensive to maintain. Ōarai, a school with minimal student enrolled was one of the candidates to be closed down.
Anzu, the Student Council President, told Miho that they were able to buy themselves time. Should they win the Sensha-dō tournament, they would prevent the school from being decommissioned. Of course, she also told her to keep it a secret, since at the very least they had until the end of the school year to attend.
Much to everyone's surprise, Miho was able to lead a rag-tag group of tanks to win matches in the tournament, eventually reaching the semi-finals against the previous champions, Pravda.
During this match, they were severely overpowered. Coupled with the fact that the secret of the school closing down was leaked to the whole of the Sensha-dō club, they were in dire straits.
By some miracle, Miho managed to turn around the match with her clever use of each of the member's abilities, snagging the win from the jaws of defeat.
Could the secret have leaked during that match to the whole school?
With that glum thought, Miho Nishizumi returned to her class.
With the ringing of the dismissal bell, Miho lethargically stood up from her seat, packed her things, and left the classroom, looking very much like an enervated zombie.
A metaphorical cloud of depression hung over her head, thinking of ways to bring up the morale of the school. Really, she shouldn't be the one thinking about these things, but she feels like she's also responsible for the leak.
So lost is she in her gloomy thoughts, she never saw the person sneaking up behind her until someone snagged her before blindfolding her.
Minutes later, she was guided somewhere, pairs of footsteps walking beside her on both sides. Finally, they stopped, and then the blindfolds were taken off.
"Happy Birthday Miho!"
The girl was left speechless.
In front of her is a banner with the words "Happy Birthday Commander Miho!", and under it was the whole of the Sensha-dō club, her whole class, a couple of her schoolmates, and even a few adults from town she often got along with. They all wore smiling faces, and Miho couldn't help but smile too.
"Mou, Miho. Do you know how hard it is to keep this a secret?" Saori complained.
Mako nodded, holding up a cat. "You kept wondering around that it was hard to set up the party. Even Yukari-san couldn't keep track of you."
"Nishizumi-dono managed to sneak up on me." Yukari poked out a tongue, rubbing the back of her head in embarrassment with her free hand.
"It didn't help that most of the students were talking about it. I just don't get why Anzu had to announce it over the PA… What would have happened if you were there?" Saori said.
"Miho-san, are you crying?" Hana, who was standing to her right, asked.
Blinking in confusion, Miho reached up to her cheek to find it wet. She was so relieved about a lot of things, that her friends weren't avoiding her, that she didn't let down the school and that they remembered her birthday that she was crying tears of joy.
"Y-yeah. S-Sorry about that." She said, wiping her face.
"Hai." Yukari handed her a box. "My gift."
"Here's mine." Saori said.
"Mine too." Hana laughed.
"… Here." Even Mako has a gift.
"You can open them now if you want." Smiled Anzu, standing behind a line with a gift in hand. "We can wait."
The Birthday Girl nodded.
From Yukari, she received a Tank Model kit of the Panzer II Aust C., Saori gave her a teddy bear that Miho realized is one of the few not in her collection, Hana's was a bouquet of her favourite flowers, and Mako 's was a book on Ghosts and how to avoid them.
"Thanks. Thank you so much."
Miho Nishizumi smiled, glad to have so many friends since coming to Ōarai.