Chapter 14: Garai's Decision

"SUOU GARAI!"

The Subjugator's voice echoed in everyone's ears as they stood in stunned silence, before glancing at Garai.

"As the Infiltrator for the STU, your reports were supposed to provide us with up-to-date intelligence on the strength, morale and abilities of the Oarai tankery crew. And you were under strict orders to, when faced with a critical opportunity, delay loading a shell, giving us long enough to take out the Panzer IV, thereby winning the round. Your failure to do the former satisfactorily, and the latter at all, cost us the match."

"Hey, Garai... this guy's just talking crazy like he did until now... right?" Saori said, unwilling to believe anything she had just heard.

"The enemy has an agenda, so it's possible he would lie to sow the seeds of discord among us," Miho said, but paused as she realized that while the Subjugator's previous ranting often flew in the face of what she knew to be true, this revelation would likely explain much of what she did not yet undestand "Or is he…?"

"Everyone, I…" Garai said. "There is much I have not told you…"

"Indeed," the Subjugator began. "I shall now tell them your story."

The truth was that Garai's impeccable memory had not failed him regarding his past- prior to his time with the STU, which he was hesitant to talk about, there was simply practically nothing to remember.

He had been born in the STU headquarters, a large office building on a school ship, and raised there. His guardians and caretakers never revealed their names to him, and their superiors never even showed him their faces, although it was an easy matter to learn their titles and recognize their voices.

He did hear that he was involved with the STU, the reason why the organization existed, and that the man in charge was known as the Patriarch. There was much about this mysterious organization that he did not know, but the STU was all he had ever known, and so he felt compelled in a sense to do what they told him to, never considering anything else.

Some time later, the STU gave Garai a battery of tests in order to gauge his abilities and prepare him for how he would be told to use them. When they had Garai go to a small room with a desk, the first station in a test of his memory, he complied without hesitation.

Garai looked over the document at his desk, a map and a set of blueprints for a tank. After reading the document, he walked away to another station. With the pen and other tools at his disposal, he slowly reproduced both documents as they saw them. The Infiltrator's memory was useful for gathering information, both in remembering it without having to risk compromising oneself by writing it down, as well as retaining small details.

His work completed, he laid out the documents on the table and pressed a button to signal that he was done.

"Excellent work," the Patriarch said over the intercom. Although Garai never saw his or any of the other council members' faces, Garai recognized his voice.

Garai smiled. To be praised at his given role was meaningful for him, especially when he did not hear such words very often. If he was good at his role, all was well. If he was not, what else could he do with his life?

Garai sat at his desk and read over his personal dossier. Part of it was true, mainly his name, age and gender. Most of it was fabricated for the purpose of covering up that which they were unable to supply, such as his birth certificate, past school transcripts and so forth. It was a large amount of information to process, and he had to do it perfectly, but this difficult task was well within and well suited to his ability.

He walked into a small meeting room where two boys his age sat at a round table, next to each other and across from him. One of them had a glass eye in his right eye, with a large scar over it, and the other had a prosthetic right hand.

"Yo, man, are you new?" the one with the glass eye, Minazuki Reito, said in a somewhat awkward way, as if he were trying to read off a script.

"Yes, I am," Garai said, listing off his information in the order that seemeed relevant. "I transferred out of Fukuyama All Boys' School for my senior year. The school was shut down due to consolidation. My name is Suou Garai and it's a pleasure to meet you."

Most of Fukuyama's students save for a few first-years who had been set to attend Fukuyama had gone to other boys' schools; the vast majority of the new Oarai boys were former Higashizawa students. The Patriarch had chosen that school as part of Garai's cover story so none of his classmates would ask questions.

"Same here, Suou," the boy with the prosthetic hand said. "You're from Nara prefecture, aren't you? I'm Tezuka Hisao, and I'm also from around there."

"No, I'm from Ibaraki," Garai said.

"My mistake," Hisao said. In hindsight, however, Garai noticed that Hisao's "mistake" seemed to be more of a deliberate test as to whether he could recite the right answer even when someone, for whatever reason, made a wrong assumption.

The exercise continued for several minutes, as Garai was tested on his ability to memorize and correctly recite details about his past in a casual social setting, such as his birthday, where he grew up and went to school, and so forth. Garai had memorized all his information, and eventually, memorized the answers he would give to various questions.

The one hole left in Garai's carefully constructed false past was his non-existent family. Rather than establish an entirely new family in case people wished to contact them or ask about them, the Patriarch and the Council decided to pass off Garai as an orphan. A STU secretary who had top secret clearance as part of his position in personnel, was listed as his legal guardian, and instructed to forward any information to the Council should the need arise. Garai was told never to talk about his family, and that if he was asked, he should change the subject or allude to their being dead.

Garai had several more sessions over this over the next few days, with Hisao and Reito, as well as others who would never have any contact with the Oarai girls. Even when Hisao and Reito, under the Patriarch's instructions, tried to get him to contradict details of his past that had been established in prior conversations, claiming that they forgot what he had told them or that he had said something different, Garai was still able to stay to his story. He remembered what he had been given, as well as what he had said, enabling him to avoid any mistakes or inconsistencies, while learning more about the other two boys with whom he was talking.

The exercise was intended to help Garai keep his story consistent, even in the face of suspicious schoolmates who would try to catch him in a lie or an inconsistency. Garai was told that if his schoolmates were suspicious of him, they would not tip their hands by expressing that suspicion, but would keep on a friendly facade, forcing him to keep his guard up. If he had made a mistake, he was not likely to find out until too late.

But a thought occurred to Garai during all this- wouldn't it be nice if this identity were, in fact, his own? What if such people were asking not out of suspicion, but curiosity? Weren't there things he wanted apart from the acknowledgment of his superiors and colleagues at the STU?

One relevant skill, however, was conspicuously and intentionally absent from Garai's training- how to command, drive, load, man the gun of, or operate the radio of a tank. The Patriarch realized that most of the Oarai team had started out as amateurs, and teenage boys with tankery experience would immediately stand out as unusual. Perhaps the rate of Garai's learning would raise some eyebrows, but it would be easier to answer questions about that than how he was already familiar with operating a tank. Garai's getting a spot on the team would not be in doubt, and he would at the very least have a position from which he could gather information.

If nothing else, Oarai, lacking even ten tanks, was unlikely to turn him away unless there were no vacancies in any of the existing crews; with many only crewed by three or four people, and some of the crew they had graduating, this possibility was deemed unlikely. Even if few of the other incoming boys seemed interested in tankery, and even if including him meant they had to bend or outright break the rules, they were unlikely to turn away Garai.

Eventually, Garai's training came to an end, as a new school year was about to begin for Oarai.

"You have performed well on your training, Garai," the Patriarch said as Garai sat in a darkened room, listening to the voices of the STU Council but not seeing their faces. "Now, you are ready to begin your mission."

"I am ready, sir," Garai said. "What would you have me do?"

"You will enter Oarai academy as a student, one of the first generation of male students at that school. You will join the tankery program and observe them. Every day, you will submit a report to us via e-mail regarding the school, the tankery team and other matters of importance. The other male students will be submitting their reports once per week, and as such, you will not stand out."

"And what about the girls there?" Garai said.

"Do not get too close to them," the Patriarch said. "They will understand before too long that we are the enemy, and do everything in their power to win against us,, including doing their best to force you to say or do something that will compromise you. Your mission runs in opposition to theirs, and you must, at a critical point, interfere with their efforts and cause them to lose the match. If you find yourself doubting yourself or our cause, remember this- if word of your secret got out, your so-called 'friends' would turn on you in a heartbeat."

"Yes, sir," Garai said. "You can count on me to provide the information you need."

There were suppressed groans of discontent among the rest of the council. Each wanted to be the one whose efforts succeeded in defeating Oarai, and each wanted to bring about the new age of Tankery on their terms. They thus wanted credit for the victory to go to themselves or their subordinates, rather than the Patriarch's personal subordinate. But in this competition, in which no single individual or tank could win, they had no choice but to work together. And they realized that perhaps, Garai's information might prove useful to any of their efforts, as well as the STU's overall mission.

"Good," the Patriarch said. "If you fail or betray us, we will find out, and you will pay dearly."

Garai had no way of determining whether the Patriarch was serious about or able to follow through on his threat; did he have another operative in Oarai, or some means of covertly monitoring him? It was likely that the Patriarch would not tell him, so that Garai would not try to circumvent the countermeasures if he tried to defect, and that he could not leak it, willingly or otherwise, to the enemy. However, Garai was virtually certain of the Patriarch's willingness, and mostly convinced of his ability. Every time he doubted his mission, that threat echoed in his mind.

Garai found the Patriarch's advice to avoid becoming friends with the girls more difficult to follow than he initially thought, given how they had accepted him soon after his arrival. But he still had a report to fill out for the Council. Knowing that they would deal most harshly with his failure or refusal to fulfill his obligations, and not knowing the full extent of the implications their plans had for Oarai, he wrote up his report to the best of his ability.

"So these are Oarai's tanks?" the Centurion said, reading over Garai's first e-mail report, in which he gave a basic description of the tanks and number of crew. "In short, exactly what my Shirosame Academy has."

"Garai told us nothing useful about the commander, except for the word of one of her fangirls," the Patriarch said with frustration.

"What can you expect from women?" The Subjugator said disdainfully, as well as with a small amount of satisfaction that the one he snidely thought of as "the Patriarch's pet" was not doing as well as had been advertised.. "Our mistake here was getting him to talk to them for information, rather than have him collect his own observations."

"I had hoped that he would command the Char B1 Bis, the Hetzer, the Chi-nu or the Porsche Tiger, making him more strategically important, and likely privy to more information," the Necromancer said, "But I suppose that the team commander won't entrust such a task to a newcomer."

"It seems that in the battle with Anzio in the last tournament, former loader Akiyama Yukari was its temporary commander, along with Oono Aya, a first year from the M3 Lee, and… Matusmoto Riko, also known as 'Erwin', from the StUG," the Progenitor said, reading off a printout of the roster in the Anzio battle. "Perhaps they're re-using Akiyama for that role rather than breaking in a new commander. In any event, we will need more information on this from Garai."

"We will have some time," the Centurion said. "My people are still making their preparations."

After getting home after his talk with Mako late at night, Garai's mind went back to what had happened before, what had brought on the conversation with the girl who hardly said anything. He had confessed that he did not remember his parents, deviating from the carefully planned script. He should have said that his family was not a topic he was comfortable discussing, instead of the euphemistic answer regarding their fate, that later became an outright admission that he did not remember them.

He realized that he had let down his guard around Team Anglerfish. When he was practicing with Hisao and Reito, he did so with the understanding that theirs was an adversarial relationship; their job was to try to trip him up, and while they did not have to succeed, they had to present a reasonable challenge to him, and condition him to be cautious around Oarai girls asking about him. Garai had come to see any apparent kind or friendly overtures toward him by Hisao and Reito as a ploy to get him to lower his guard, and as such, did not become friends with them.

But Garai not only liked, but trusted the Oarai girls. They seemed to accept him for who he was, and wanted to learn more about him while not violating his privacy or forcing him to talk about sensitive subjects before he was ready and wished to do so. A part of him wondered if it was long-term manipulation on their part, but he suspected that they would have pressed him harder after he let secrets slip if they were trying to get him to out himself.

In any event, he concluded that the STU could not learn of this lapse on his part, and omitted it from the report, as well as the various things he had heard from Mako. Frantically working to finish the report, he barely submitted it before the deadline, a more hasty job than he would have done in most circumstances.

As he pressed "Submit" he realized the doubtful feeling he had was not entirely based out of concern over how his superiors would take the report.

After Oarai had defeated Shirosame Academy, Garai oddly felt something of a sense of accomplishment, even if the "enemy"- for whatever that meant to him- had won this time. Every shell that the Panzer IV had fired against an opposing tank was one he had loaded. Granted, he had to do well enough to keep up appearances, but he had caught himself trying to think of what he could do to load more quickly or be more useful to his team. And when the team exchanged congratulations after the match, he felt joy in hearing praise from his new friends that he had not felt when hearing his superiors commend him on his progress.

But Garai still had a job to do; the conflict was far from over, and Oarai's success was by no means guaranteed.

Garai submitted another report, this time being required to report on the course of the battle as well as the status of the Oarai team. While his perspective on the battle from the loader's position was limited, there was another factor limiting what he included in his report. When the time came to report on Miho's strategies regarding the other tanks, Garai plead ignorance. What was a loader like him, someone whose job was merely to pick up the shells and put them in their place, to know about what all the other tanks, including the ones halfway across the battlefield, were doing in that time? But there was another element to it. The Council didn't need to know, he thought, and if it was possible to omit this tactically sensitive information, he should do it for the sake of his team.

He came to the point where he had to explain why the team lost. The explanation was simple- under the rules of the match, a single tank was unable to do much to offset the course of the battle, especially considering that the Shirosame team had lost almost half its tanks before the Oarai team suffered its first casualty. Furthermore, it was another tank that had achieved the kill shot on the last remaining Shirosame tank. There was nothing he could have done that would have accomplished anything more than delaying the inevitable.

He submitted his report, but two questions lingered in his mind- how long could Oarai stand against the STU? And what would it mean for them if they lost? The questions filled him with fear, and he began to realize that fear was for his teammates at Oarai, rather than of them.

The Council received Garai's report about the battle between Oarai and Shirosame. Most of the information was in line with what they had heard from other sources at the match, but he said very little apart from that.

"The information about what Garai saw from the Panzer IV is very detailed," the Storyteller said. "The problem is that he's said barely anything about what the other tanks were doing in that time. For example, he says they were all following them as they pursued the Shirosame forces, then that they split up."

"I have to wonder…" the Storyteller said. "It would be easy for Garai to simply put in the minimum necessary information, if he intended to betray us. He would tell us nothing of value, in an attempt to avoid arousing our suspicions when we verify what he told us,while ensuring that we did not benefit from the information in any significant way."

"That may be the case," the Patriarch said. "But at the very least, he has taken our warning to heart. The girls will never learn of his mission, or what little he knows about us. And most of all, while his information can benefit is, it is, as the Advisor told us, ultimately up to us in order to win."

But as he said that, the Patriarch remembered what the Advisor had said had become of Garai's sister- whom some of the Council had initially assumed to be an Oarai student, perhaps even Miho herself. Garai's sister had been intended to be used as a pawn by those who once had similar goals to the STU, but the only way her master could use her was to leave her to her own devices. Garai's purpose required a different approach- he had to cooperate actively, albeit not necessarily willingly. The Patriarch believed that as soon as Garai stopped thinking of his situation as one in which he could choose his allegiance, he would fully commit himself to the STU and provide them the intelligence they needed.

Garai began to write up another report after he and the others met with the Advisor. This time,the conflict in his mind was not over what he should include in the report, but over whether he should do it at all. Not only had the Oarai team accepted him, but they thought of him as more than an asset. His reports had been less and less detailed over time; perhaps it was time for him to stop supporting the STU, even in name.

But the STU was not completely ignorant, and it had other ways of figuring out the information, as it had reminded him. They would likely realize he had not told them about something as major as the Oarai girls making contact with an individual who knew about the STU's goals and members. Oarai and the other female tankery teams would now not merely be putting their full effort into winning, but doing what they could to thwart the STU and its plans, on and off the battlefield.

For that reason, Garai felt that if there was a time at which he could disclose his affiliation with the STU, he had long since passed it. Now that they knew what their enemy sought, they could no longer afford to have one in their midst. Now that so much time had passed, they would be angry with him for not telling them for so long, in addition to what he had concealed from them in the first place.

But there was a part of Garai that could not accept his decision, which knew he was rationalizing and believed that it was only a matter of time before his secret came to light. But that side merely told him to tell the truth, not how to tell the truth, and while he often wondered if he was not doing the right thing, he did not know what exactly the right thing to do was.

With that in mind, Garai put out an e-mail to the STU, informing them that the Oarai girls now knew what the STU was after and how they planned to accomplish it, but not mentioning that they knew about Maho being challenged next. And so, Garai remained paralyzed with indecision, torn between his obligation to his STU masters and his loyalty to his friends in Oarai, until the time came and the Subjugator made the decision for him.

"So you girls were not the only ones unpleasantly surprised by this development," the Subjugator said, after concluding his side of Garai's story. "We, at the STU, wondered whether he had turned on us some time ago, but it seems he was too cowardly and stupid to do even that. In trying to chase two hares by helping both us and you, he caught neither."

The girls glanced at Garai. There was more to him than he had first let on, but he was not fully devoted to the STU, nor did he seem to be someone who played both sides against each other for his own benefit. What, then, was he?

"I… I wanted to tell you," Garai said to Miho. "I'd grown to like you and trust you after all the time we spent together. But I believed that you wouldn't trust me if I did."

Miho's face sank in disappointment, wishing that Garai could have trusted them. The rest of Anglerfish Team's reactions were similar. The Subjugator took little pleasure in this, still smarting from his defeat against Oarai.

"You were given two simple tasks, Suou Garai," the Subjugator said, without missing a beat. "The first was simply watch and observe the enemy, while telling us everything you saw and noticed. The second was to fail at a crucial moment, something that comes naturally to people in absence of or even in spite of their best efforts. You succeeded at neither. This degree of failure is unacceptable by most people's standards, much less those of the people who will stand tall atop tankery in the future. We have no further need of you, and after what they've learned and what will become of you, neither will Oarai."

"Wh-what do you mean?" Garai said.

"You are about to find out, just as he has," the Advisor said, arriving on the scene. "The STU has been given a task that most would consider of great difficulty- defeating some of the foremost tankery teams in Japan- but it has also been given powers that, for most people, would make the task child's play when combined with their abilities. Such powers, however, were given provisionally on the requirement that you use them to accomplish your goal. If the STU fails with them, it is proof that they could not possibly succeed under normal circumstances, and so do not deserve their special gifts. And now that you have failed, you will now have to see what it is like to live without them."

Suddenly, Garai felt a terrible headache, which lasted for several seconds. Struggling to calm himself down, he started to try to think back to a pleasant memory, but his recollection of it was more hazy than it had been in the past- his memory had failed him.

The Advisor then turned to Suou Garai.

"Suou Garai, the abilities you gained as the Infiltrator are no longer yours," the Advisor said.

As everyone gasped in shock, the Advisor then moved to depart, but shortly before leaving, turned around to address Oarai and the Subjugator's group.

"Only one more battle remains for the STU, but they also only need to win once," the Avatar said. "Prepare for battle, but consider that your enemies may try alternate methods of defeating you. Their goal of becoming the force that shapes tankery can be accomplished different ways. If they want to prove that they are the best at tankery, they can prove it by defeating you. If they want to change the world in this specific way, they can do so by proving their influence over others. It is up to you to prove your own worth in relation to theirs."

The Advisor then departed without another word.

Garai looked around at his female teammates, who were struggling to comprehend what they had been told. At this point, he had not only been exposed as a spy amongst his current teammates, but he had also been left behind by those he had once served.

As he looked around at the silent Oarai masses, he realized he was no longer certain of where life would take him in the future. For the first time in a long while, he felt truly alone.

Omake

As news of Garai's being outed reached the Council, as did his passively failing to report critical information, the entire leadership of the STU, as well as those aware that there was a spy in Oarai, if they did not know his name, asked why he would do such a thing.

One theory that floated around was that Garai had fallen in love with someone at Oarai, and a betting pool arose among the office workers. Naturally, they laid down odds on who might be his girlfriend. Some of the more frequently cited possibilities were put up on a list.

Nishizumi Miho: (1:1) Over two fifths of the wagers were for Miho. It took two people in a row voting for Isuzu Hana before they considered other options.

Isuzu Hana: (2:1) One person asked if Hana had an arranged marriage in the future, but was reminded that the same possibly went for Miho.

Takebe Saori: (3:1): Some said that it was possible Saori already had a boyfriend, and she thus qualified for longer odds

Akiyama Yukari: (4:1) A small group argued that the odds should be higher, given that if she was in love with someone outside of her love of tankery, it was likely Miho. This figure was what they arrived at after some debate.

Utsugi Yuuki: (5:1) The odds were increased by the belief that she was not yet over her boyfriend.

Reizei Mako: (6:1) Her somewhat withdrawn nature increased the odds, but her membership in

The following entries only received one wager each from the STU employees participating.

The rest of Duck Team: Ayumi (6:1), Azusa (6:1), Aya (9:1), Karina(10:1), Saki (13:1)

The History Team: Erwin (6:1), Oryou (8:1), Caesar (10:1) Saemonza (11:1)

Gomoyo (12:1) Pazomi (12:1): Some argued that they would be against dating, but it was pointed out that the rules bound everyone else.

The Student Council: Yukino (15:1), Shizune (16:1) Haruka (18:1). Since the three of them only became well known this year, the organizers gave them longer odds.

The Volleyball Team: Akebi (8:1), Taeko (9:1) Shinobu (10:1) Noriko (11:1): Getting relatively lazy, the organizers calculated their odds according to chest size.

The Automobile Club: Tsuchiya (14:1), Everyone Else (18:1): Their talents with repairing and using vehicles to great skill were seen as being less attractive to potential suitors, save those with prior interest in tankery.

Anteater Team: Nekota (10:1), Momogawa (13:1) Iruka (20:1): The organizers believed their odds were hurt by their introverted personalities, although Nekota's appearance worked in her favor.

A male: (40:1) When the riotous laughter after this proposal died down, the employee who suggested it- who had a reputation as something of a practical joker- said Oarai was no longer a girls' school. He nevertheless stood by his bet, although he was unable to name a specific boy Garai might have ended up with.

No One: (100:1) Everyone present thought the person who had proposed it- the same person who brought up the possibility of Garai having a boyfriend was joking. He admitted that he was, but suggested that they add it for completeness' sake. When the news came back that Garai had no girlfriend at Oarai, he regretted jumping on the Garai x Miho bandwagon.

Author's Notes

Thank you for the reviews.

Garai represents the typical OC who integrates himself into a canon setting, and makes friends with the protagonists, this time exploited by the STU as a way of gathering information. However, he's significantly less outspoken, assertive and headstrong than many of the other OCs, which is why he ultimately hesitated and, despite his growing friendships with Anglerfish Team and Yukari, couldn't overtly betray the STU, as he took their threat against him and warning that Oarai would abandon him if he was found out at face value. This entire experience will be a turning point for him, in more ways than one.

The betting odds were inspired by the chances of certain Girls Und Panzer canon characters getting paired with OCs. I've noticed Miho seems to be an extremely popular choice to pair with OCs, as are the rest of Anglerfish Team and Erwin. Most other people don't even seem to be considered unless the story involves multiple pairings.

Ending Theme Team: Hippo Team