Maya walked over to her seat in her Period 4 study hall. She sat down and sighed. Next period would be physics. She did not like physics and the fact that she might have to endure the whole class with a bombardment of English. After a short period of time, the bell finally rang. Maya was not exactly excited. During the study hall she found that her physics class was an AP class (it was AP in name only: it was more like an honors class) and her Programming one was AP as well.

Why did she sign up for this…?

"Hey, Nagase!" Maya looked up in surprise. Up ahead she found Karl waving to her.

"Same physics class, right?" Karl was standing next to a room. Inside was a model roller coaster.

"Room number 319," Maya said to herself. "Yeah, same class." She couldn't help but smile at having at least one friend.

The two sat down next to each other as the teacher passed out the syllabus. Karl handed Maya a copy written in Japanese and pointed to one of the lines.

"You'll probably ace this one," he said. Maya shifted her eyes to the line he was pointing at.

"Armor Penetration and Angling."

Maya smiled. Maybe she did not have to worry about this class.

XXXXX

The next class was AP Computer Science. Karl tagged along with her, as he happened to have the same class. There was not much to see here.

XXXXX

Lunch was rather uneventful. Because this was the first day of school, no lunch was served. Maya sat alone and bored at one of the lunch tables. She looked back at where Karl was sitting. He was playing cards with his friends. His friends were laughing, wide grins on their faces as they watched everyone else's faces slowly turn into looks of fear as they realized they were about to lose.

Karl threw his remaining cards onto the middle of the table.

"I win. " he said in English. He then pulled out a laptop from his backpack.

"You're not playing?" one of his friends asked.

"Nah, I got other things to do."

Karl plugged in his headphones as his laptop booted up.

There were a series of clicks and the clattering of the keyboard. Maya thought about joining them, but she decided to simply take a nap. Jet lag is a very annoying thing.

XXXXX

Karl was having a dilemma. His mouse hovered over three tanks. One was medium. The other two were lights.

"Coby," he began. "Which tank?" His friend, Coby, peered over the screen.

"A T-44, Chaffee, or an AMX 12t…" Coby thought about it for a while.

"Use the stronk tank," he said. Karl sighed.

"T-44 it is." Before he could click on the icon however, the bell rang.

"Typical," Karl complained. "Just typical."

As the massive mob of students trudged their way through the overcrowded hallway, Karl turned to Coby.

"Hey did you hear?" he asked. "There's going to be a school that is coming over to help us out with our exhibition match." Coby perked his ears up.

"Really?" he said. "Who?"

"No idea," Karl replied. "Still, I'll make sure you guys are trained up good to face them." Karl had a mischievous sneer on his face.

"This is going to be fun."

XXXXX

The second day of school was uneventful. Classes went by, study halls went by, and everything went by in a blur. Maya sat in her chair during physics class, trying to make sense of the worksheet in front of her. She looked up at the clock. The class was about to end. She slid the worksheet into her folder and sat around for a few seconds before the bell finally rang.

She felt a tap on her shoulder.

A piece of paper slid off the top of her head. Maya jumped a little bit in surprise before realizing that it was indeed simply a piece of paper.

She looked around to identify who exactly placed the paper on top of her head and, for a second, thought she saw Karl look over with a slight grin on his face.

Curious, Maya took a look at the paper in front of her. It read:

HORNETS!

The first annual inter-scholar Wargaming League is upon us! The time has come to prove yourselves!

ENLIST IN THE NEWLY FORMED BATTLE CLUB!

PANZER VOR!

Maya read paper with an ever so slightly depressed face. Flashes of cold rushing water, suffocation, and being trapped in a tank turret floated up into her mind. She walked out of the room, stuffing the paper into her bag. She walked into her study hall (AP Com-Sci was every other day) and sat down in her seat.

She took another peek at the paper in question. Maya just noticed the logo underneath the words. There was a green and gold capital E and a Panzer VIII Maus.

An E and a Maus.

E-Maus.

Emaus.

Emmaus High School. (This is a real place! Look it up!)

The puns.

Maya let out a frustrated sigh at the pun that she just noticed. The smile on her face was now even more noticeable.

XXXXX

By the time school ended, Maya decided to walk to the room where the Battle Club was said to be located. There was a mediocre-sized crowd in front of the room. Out of curiosity, she walked over to ask one of the people crowding the door what was going on.

Then she remembered her English sucked.

Maya then tried poking over the heads of the people in the crowd. As she observed for a second, she felt her lips slowly curve into a nostalgic smile.

The room was filled with computers but only five of them were occupied. There was a random student sitting at each computer with a student wearing a Battle Club armband standing over them. One of the students wearing the armband was Karl. He was giving instructions to a boy sitting at the computer, who seemed to be stressing. Karl, after looking at the screen for a moment, jotted down some notes.

After a while, the boy threw his hands up in defeat and pulls a pair of headphones off his head.

Karl said something to the boy in English, gave a light pat on his shoulder, then sent him away.

"Is that all of them?" Karl asked. One of the other Battle Club members looked up. They too had just finished up with some of the other students.

"We got one left," the member said. He pointed in the direction of Maya. She jumped at this.

"Um… Wait! Um…"

Karl raised his eyebrows in curiosity. Then, with a smile, he pointed at the computer next to him with his thumb.

"Want to try?" he asked. Maya walked over to where the computer was and took a look at the school.

"You know how to play World of Tanks?" asked Karl, his small smile slowly growing into a grin.

Maya's lips had by this time become a full smile. She sat down, selected the first German tank she found (a Panzer III) and clicked on the battle button.

One of the Battle Club members walked up to Karl and tapped on his shoulder.

"You sure she knows what she is doing?" he asked.

"She'll be fine," Karl replied. "And besides…" He looked over at the screen. The countdown to the battle's beginning had neared zero.

"It's just a game, right?"

The countdown hit zero.

Maya took a moment to type something into the chat box before hitting the W key and moving forward. The other club members smiled when they saw what she typed.

"Panzer Vor!"

Author's notes: Hey guys! It's Karl the Arty. I'm back with an update to mah GuP und WoT fic (that should be the new title XD ). I would like to take this time to notify anyone that this is a work of fiction and all names and locations are simply based on reality. Thank you.

And with that, I hope that I'll see you all in the next chapter. (I will also add that if you read my Kancolle fanfic, you might know the ending of this story. Don't spoil it for everyone.)

Please review. It keeps me motivated.

-Karl