The day right after started out on a positive note. For one, Mio and Perrine had arrived, and had set up a surprise party in the dining "room" when the squad came in. Two, there was no long meeting like yesterday's meeting with Eisen, which meant it was a day to lounge around. Three… Well it was a sunny day without a cloud in the sky. Yoshika woke up at around 8am, and was quite literally the earliest one up considering that she didn't stay much longer after the meal. What she was doing however was actually sort of peculiar to someone who is a commissioned senior officer of the Allied Forces, and also part of the 501st JFW, considered one of the most successful Strike Witch squadrons of the modern time. The moment Yoshika woke up, and looked around, she got out of her bunk and started to grab a dog-eared notebook based on the Striker Unit. It was somewhat like an attraction for her, something that had stayed in her mind since the first time she opened the notes yesterday. In those two days alone, Yoshika had read about 5 notebooks of notes based off of the research her father had done on the Striker Unit. The boxes in the room were now put into a corner unoccupied by anything particularly useful, and were left like that for easy access. Lynne woke up about 30 minutes later.
"Yoshika…" She rubbed her eyes. "Are you awake?"
Without even looking from her page she mumbled, "Yeah, I'm awake. Ah- that's new."
Lynne sighed, knowing that Yoshika was reading more of those notes they had found yesterday. Lynne left right after Yoshika, really because there was no need for her to be there at that time and just decided to relax in Yoshika's and her room. She had brought a few books to read, and they weren't difficult, but they were long. One was called That thing in the middle of War and Peace and it was a decent book for someone who just needed time to kill. But by the time Lynne fell asleep, Yoshika was still absorbed within the books delving deeper into the mysteries of the Striker.
"Well I guess it's a weird way to forget her loss of magic," thought Lynne as she got up. "Though, wouldn't that remind her of her lost powers?"
Lynne got up and changed into her daily outfit. "Hey Yoshika, when's breakfast?"
"I think around 9 or something. We have a different schedule than the rest of the base."
"We should go wake up the girls."
Yoshika looked up from her notebook and turned towards Lynne, "Well from the sound of the chattering behind our door they should be coming in, in 5… 4… 3… 2… 1…"
"SURPIRSE!"
The door flew open and Lucchini entered the room as if it was a safe zone from a dangerous place. The rest of the girls just looked inside.
Lucchini looked a bit sad. "Aww you guys are awake! I wanted surprise you like I did to Barkhorn!~~~"
Gertrude shouted outside the door, "My breasts are not a squeeze toy!"
Everyone started laughing. Yoshika legs were hanging over her bunk, while Lynne was just fixing up the room a little while the laughter was dying down. Yoshika dropped from the bed gracefully, and looked out the door.
"So I guess we are going to breakfast?"
"Yeah, pretty much." Shirley said nonchalantly.
"Ah, let's go then."
They walked out the door and down the hall. The dining room was in the middle of the base, so all the buildings are literally all the same distance from it. The girls walked down the hallway towards the dining room.
"Wow, usually you two are in the Kitchen or something, Miyafuji." Minna said.
"Ah, but we have a full time cooking crew though." Yoshika answered quietly.
"We had one in Romagna also." Elia said as she walked up to the group.
"Did we? I don't remember that…" Shirley said, while thinking back to Romagna.
"Yeah we did, but Yoshika and Lynne took over, and the kitchen crew just cooked for the others."
"Heh, I bet Minna was rather happy that men weren't cooking for us."
Minna glared at Shirley. "Seriously? Though, to be honest, I never noticed that."
Lucchini shouted from Shirley's back, "I would rather have Yoshika's cooking!"
Everyone agreed with that sentiment as they walked into the dining room.
The dining room was much different from yesterday's drab and basically just old structure. The place was covered in tablecloths and ribbons were everywhere. It wasn't hard to say that this was like a party environment. The girls' eyes fell upon the two girls standing in the middle of the room.
"Ahahahahaha, welcome to our welcoming party 501st!"
"Mio!" everyone shouted.
"Don't forget about Perrine here, she's the reason we're late!"
Perrine walked up slowly, without the usual confidence that the girls were used to from their service in Britannia and Romagna.
"Hey guys… I'm back." She said unsteadily.
"Hey Minna, General Eisen told me to give you this." Mio handed Minna a piece of paper.
"Ah, I wonder when he was going to get to that. Barkhorn, Hartmann, and Sakamoto, we have to go to Eisen's office, he needs to talk to us."
Erica looked a bit annoyed. "Awww, but I wanted to talk to the girls more…" She pouted.
Gertrude dragged her out of the room.
Everyone else sat down around relatively large round table. Perrine became even more nervous due to everyone looking at her.
"W-What are you all looking at?" she squeaked.
Lucchini jumped up, "We haven't seen you in a while; that's why!"
Elia nodded and said, "You realize you haven't been keeping up with all the letters we've been sending you right?"
Perrine looked confused. "What letters?"
"What do you mean what letters? We said we'd send each other a letter at least once every other month!"
"I never got any though…"
Yoshika realized why she hadn't been in very much contact with Perrine. Then she said, "Uhh, isn't there a good chance that her last job screened our mail and discarded the useless stuff?"
Perrine was glad Yoshika was sort of helping. However Shirley and Lynne were suspicious. It's notable that her personality has changed, but a 6 month lapse in letters? There was something going on, and she wasn't telling.
Minna led Mio, Gertrude, and Erica to the General's office, which was really a tent. It was small and a bit unfitting for the commander of all Allied Forces, but he preferred it nonetheless. Eisen was inside the tent talking to a younger advisor and writing down things on a scroll. In a way, it felt like he wasn't a general but more of a friendly captain who cared a lot about his men. He saw the girls outside and waved the man off, and rolled up the scroll and placed it inside a bag. The girls walked in. As they passed the younger advisor, Mio noticed he looked eerily familiar, like she had met him before. She couldn't put a name on who he was however. Eisen's tent was relatively big, and for some reason it seemed more luxurious than the dining room in its normal state. Eisen leaned back in his chair and put his feet onto the table.
"Hello girls, glad you could make it." He leaned over to the bag once more and pulled out a stack of papers and another scroll. "So, Lt. Col. Sakamoto, you should have been briefed on the situation on your way here right?"
Mio nodded. Eisen looked at her closely and studied her face. "Well anyway, you girls are the main drill instructors of this training place I am setting up. And right now, I need to discuss where the rest of the 501st will be stationed because frankly, they can't teach these girls as well as you can. However I'd rather have you girls be together rather than apart, but we do have a big group of new recruits coming in so it isn't possible in any sense whatsoever. But that is a discussion for another day. So, I was thinking of it like this. Yeager and Lucchini would be transferred to Research and Development for Test Piloting. I personally think Lucchini shouldn't even be there, but it would be insane letting her loose in the base. Any objections so far?"
Minna thought it over for a moment. "Lucchini is the youngest of our squadron, is there no other alternative? Personally I really think that she shouldn't be test piloting."
Eisen then replied, "Well, consider this base like an island. We just set it up, so it doesn't have anything for her to do really. As an example, we have no freaking baths for god's sake."
The girls choked on those words.
"Hahahahaha, I'm joking, we have basic showers." He was deadly serious on this one however. He sighed, looked up and said, "It would be best if she was occupied with something fun."
Mio, Minna, and Gertrude nodded their heads. Erica was daydreaming and ignoring the conversation.
"Next is Juutilainen and Litvyak, and to be honest, I need someone on night patrols. This one is exactly the same post as last time for Litvyak am I correct?"
Minna agreed. "Putting Elia and Sanya together would be perfect. However, are there going to be other night patrol witches? I don't want to overwork them."
Eisen said, "We'll see, I hope you get what you ask for in these witches and mages. Now for Bishop and Clostermann. I think they are really best for… Damn, I can't think of anything…"
Gertrude said, "How about putting them at base operations?"
"Well, they were pretty deep into our Allied office jobs. I guess that's best. But I want Bishop in charge of the kitchen; I'm so tired of eating shit. Those kitchen boys work hard, but a soldier does not deserve crap at the end of the day." Eisen put his feet down and opened some of the papers placed on the table earlier. "So right here is how we are going to train-"
"What is Miyafuji going to do?" Mio interrupted.
"Miyafuji has a special job and will be briefed on it later. Don't worry." Eisen parried that interruption like a supreme swordfighter would. "We are going to train these kids in two sections. One is based off of Colonel Wilcke's idea of separating the units. The Witches will be trained in Air to Air dogfighting by Hartmann and Gertrude. The Mages will be trained for endurance and magical techniques." Eisen took another page from the stack. "The witches are going to be escort fighters. Assault Mages have no protection from air attack, and Neuroi heavily use their air units to gain an advantage. Each escort fighter squadron will be at first lead by 501st members, bar Miyafuji, and then those members will lead their own escort squadrons. Now, for assault mages, these guys have no concept of their mage potential. To be honest, most of these guys are manipulative bastards who use their magic to get their way rather than learning how to control it. Wilcke and Sakamoto, you two will train these boys to become one of the best fighting forces we have."
The two girls felt a strange surge of confidence as Eisen kept talking. He leaned forward as if he was giving away private information. They wanted to listen to more of it.
"Look, I know you have fought Neuroi for a long time now and lost loved ones. I am the same as you and would prefer not to sacrifice our men. But let's face it, we lose more and more men if we keep Neuroi around and not take the initative and attack them on their turf. This is our world, and we have to take it back. I know you probably aren't happy about teaching boys, but a few of my advisors told me, there is no way we are going to win without more help from witches. We can't keep this little siege game going forever, it has to end somewhere or otherwise we die trying to help the world. Every second we let the Neuroi live, we get closer to being enslaved, or worse, extinct. I swear on my life, I will never let this happen. So please, girls, don't do this because you have to, do this to protect the people you care about… no… to protect all of humanity!"
Eisen took a deep breath and fell back in his chair. "Oh that's fun to do once in a while." The mood imploded spectacularly. The girls still felt very confident about themselves and felt ready to face the storm that would soon pass their way. They saluted the general.
"Oh just go back." Eisen smiled and saluted them then sat back in his chair. The girls left the tent.
The advisor who left earlier returned right as the girls left. Eisen gave a scroll to the man; it had been laying on the desk for quite a while now. "Ichiro, the spies are reporting weird things are happening deep in the heart of Karsland. They can't investigate and we need an opening. When the Recon units are ready, launch the units ASAP."
The man protested, "But sir, there are still major problems with the unit. We haven't been able to remedy them yet."
"Don't worry, I'll send a specialist to check them out soon. Now go back to the research facility and see what you can do." The man saluted left the tent. Eisen sighed and muttered, "Now I need to get his daughter Yoshika involved."
"Hey Yoshika, have you tried this bread, its sooo good…" Lucchini said sleepily. The girls in the dining hall were waiting for Mio and the others to return from Eisen's tent. The food had come already, but the girls there decided that they would wait until everyone was here so they could celebrate. It had been almost 30 minutes already.
Perrine became annoyed, "How long are they going to take?"
Lynne sighed and tried to entertain the bored girls. "So, did anything fun happen recently?"
Everyone looked at Lynne and sighed. It reminded them that they were bored. Shirley slumped over and said, "Okay, so how does everyone like the new place we have? Seriously, it's huge!"
Elia poked her head up from the table. "Eh, it's not that big, and the place is freaking empty. So many barracks and no one in them. Just mechanics and cooks for now."
Shirley looked at Elia and said, "Well we are training recruits, so it's a wonder why they are empty…"
"Couldn't they have just filled it with recruits and then get us?"
"Do I look like I know every freaking answer? I'm not the owner of this place."
The doors opened into the dining room.
"Man that was brutal. I thought he wouldn't stop talking.", Erica said as she walked in yawning. Then Gertrude followed in.
"Admit it, that speech was pretty cool."
"It was alright. Then he killed it."
"Right…"
The two girls looked at everyone at the table. Erica asked, "What's wrong with you?"
The girls at the table glared at her and then slumped back into their old positions at the table.
"Are you mad, I can't teach boys!"
"Yes you can, and I'll be there to help!"
Mio and Minna came in arguing.
"You're better at dealing with delinquents; I don't want to deal with them." Minna sighed.
"I'm going to need help though. Also, everyone has a job here now." Mio replied back.
The girls looked up from the table. Mio noticed their questioning faces and turned towards them. "Yeah everyone you have jobs here now, so here goes. Lucchini and Shirley, you're back in your old spot with Test piloting. Elia and Sanya, Night patrol. Lynne and Perrine, Operations Command. Miyafuji, Eisen said he'd have something for you to do soon.
"Oh, I'm not worried. I have no magic, so it won't be a problem." Yoshika said while looking out of the grimy window in the dining room.
Mio paused. She wanted to say something, but Yoshika had accepted her new state of normality. Mio was taken aback by how quickly Yoshika accepted it, but the question still lingered in her mind.
Was she happy?
AN: Wow, that took longer than I thought. Well, talking to a fellow FanFic writer, he noted that the pacing is slow. I plan to remedy that in the 5th chapter. Anyway, going back to this chapter, I think this chapter is just the set up for the big events that I have planned. Boys will appear in the next chapter, and I don't think I can postpone it any longer for you Strike Witch purists out there. Eisen is a bit of the fatherly type of general that I thought was generally awesome, and a bit snarky. Yoshika isn't a major component of the early chapters, unfortunately, and Perrine gets her limelight for a bit in the next chapters. The 5th chapter will be released at least by the 16th, but I am completing a few applications for scholarships and etc. so it may be late.
That's all for me now!
The One Wish of Suzumiya Haruhi is on indefinite hiatus due to unfortunate circumstances. (My present mindset would truly f*ck over the storyline horribly. I leave it to you to imagine what happened.)