This is the final chapter of Tank Academy. Almost three years of investing myself in this world and its characters, we have reached the end… I hope you're ready.

"Three, two, one, go!" Birch Gun shouted, and both he and Cadence smashed the doors open in unison. Cadence drove to the left and Birch Gun the right, but what made him stop was that massive gun looking at him. He jumped forwards and narrowly avoided its shot, which produced an indescribably terrifying sound. After Birch Gun recovered from the sound, he realised it had entered the wall and penetrated straight through it.

At the helm of the gun was Hetzer, who was spinning the gun around to meet Birch Gun. His main gun was not in that stupidly overpowered howitzer form, which gave Birch Gun some temporary confidence. "I knew I would see you again. You don't know when to quit, do you? Today, we meet for the last time, Artillerie." He loaded the gun with a shell, but Birch Gun fired first, blasting near Hetzer and throwing his aim into the ceiling.

"Cadence! Shoot him!" yelled Birch Gun, beginning to drive forward, watching Hetzer's every move. "Shoot him!" he repeated desperately.

"You won't ruin my plans! Tank Academy will become the best breeding ground for chaos!" Hetzer turned to Cadence, firing straight at her and hitting her track, making her full speed go to a measly zero kilometres per hour. The chains on her track broke and she was soon without a track on her left side. "Do you even know how stupid you're being right now?" he snarled.

Birch Gun had gotten around Hetzer's flank, but under the extreme pressure, his shotgun shot had sent itself straight above Hetzer's rear and into a window, causing a satisfyingly depressing explosion. Could it all be over?

"If only this gun was more accurate," Hetzer growled, enjoying the feeling of having Cadence's shells bounce off his frontal armour. Cadence cried as the German tank destroyer sent a shot straight into her turret, and the resounding boom made Birch Gun speed up the process of reloading. "Now you cannot fire. Just stay there like a good girl, and I will make sure to give your friend a spectacular death, querido."

"Hetzer!" Birch Gun fired a shot into the Jagdpanzer's flank, but the pathetic payload of the shell had not stopped him from turning around. He then wished he had loaded a premium shell.

"Come on, Birch Gun," replied Hetzer, who had turned to face the self-propelled gun, but was not firing at him for some reason.

Birch Gun had no time for his games. He reloaded a shell and fired at Hetzer again, but the shot did little more than cause him to roll back slightly. Suddenly, Hetzer's gun supersized itself into the huge howitzer, and he leapt onto the barrel, firing himself into the air and doing a flip. Birch Gun only barely dodged Hetzer's grand slam attack, which was caused by him firing himself downwards and trying to crush Birch Gun by landing his tenderiser of a gun on him.

Cadence could only watch as his friend luckily dodged every swing and slam that Hetzer tried to perform. It seemed that he wanted to humiliate Birch Gun by beating him to death with an oversized cudgel. Even though the Birch Gun was a hopelessly slow tank, this particular one was able to utilise dodges and jumps like no other.

Hetzer threw himself into the air again, and Birch Gun used this as an opportunity to fire into Hetzer's roof as he flipped. The shell penetrated straight through his thin roof armour, causing him to scream with pain, but Birch Gun was too slow to dodge the slam. A loud crunch was heard as the unusually heavy gun crumpled Birch Gun's gun shield into uselessness (assuming it had any use in the first place, of course).

The melee attack threw Birch Gun off, and he rolled back as a result of it. Somehow, Hetzer was still swinging (literally, in this case), and he tried a horizontal swing at Birch Gun, which he took the full force of, making him spin into the wall.

"How the heck are you so powerful?!" Birch Gun spluttered, firing another shot at Hetzer, only to have it explode on his frontal armour. The shredded part of his roof was expelling some foul fumes, which indicated to Birch Gun that he wasn't so healthy. "Why won't you die?!"

"Hahaha!" Hetzer cackled like a witch. He lunged forward at an incredible speed, slamming Birch Gun into the wall again and leaving a large imprint in his side. Hetzer reversed, seemingly impressed with his work. "Black Barrels technology, son! You can't kill me, Birch Gun!"

"I can try!" Birch Gun snarled, firing another shot at Hetzer, who jumped backwards like a kangaroo, avoiding the shot.

"Oh yes! It's no coincidence that Amwolf and I are both German tank destroyers! You see – I'm related to him, and I inherited the Black Barrels technology after he died! I'm basically their leader now, and when this school is captured, I will be using it as a rally point to get them back into action! It's a great opportunity to let me…"

As Hetzer was absentmindedly droning on about stuff that nobody in the room cared about, Birch Gun, in his damaged state, painfully made his way behind Hetzer. He reached into his bag and took out a premium shell, loading it into his gun breech. He would only have one shot at this…

"...I'm going to destroy everything, starting with you, Birch Gun – wait, where have you go-" Hetzer tried to say, but an armour-piercing shell drilled into his engine before he could finish his question, making him exclaim the loudest profanities that Birch Gun ever heard. Hetzer tried to turn around, but his engine didn't let him move, and its increasing temperature was an indication to him that it was probably about to set ablaze.

That wasn't the end of him, however. As Birch Gun was about to fire another shot into his engine, intending to give it the appearance of Swiss cheese, Hetzer pitched himself forwards just enough to give him momentum whilst firing. Very quickly, Birch Gun realised that he had shot at the air instead of Hetzer, who was now behind him, with the help of his gun.

Hetzer's next shot was one of confusion for him. He thought he had hit his target and reduced him to tank giblets, but he had accidentally done it to the wall instead. Out of the gaping hole, he could see his precious machines being obliterated, and this sent him into a rage. Tens of innocent machines that only wanted to kill, now reduced to mere pieces of scrap and corrupt black smoke. "Was it not good enough?!" he shouted, firing again in anger. He was unable to take the recoil of this shot, and it sent him through the wall, just as it had done before.

Birch Gun emerged from the clouds of dust that had been created by both the explosion and Hetzer's sudden disappearance. He could only assume that he had disappeared through the Hetzer-sized hole in the back of the room. "H-Have we done it, Cadence? Is he gone?"

Cadence didn't reply; rather, she decided to continue quaking in her tracks.

"He almost killed me," Birch Gun muttered, driving over to the window that Hetzer was looking out of. The freak tanks hadn't even been able to breach into the school. Only the paratrooper light tanks had entered the school, and they were dropped in through helicopters.

Birch Gun motionlessly watched such a helicopter appear in front of him. He barely registered the anti-tank guns placed on either side of the helicopter before it started firing at him. He threw himself backwards, avoiding the helicopter's guns, but they did not stop after one shot. Every single time one casing of a shell dropped to the earthy ground, another shot had been released from the barrel.

"It has an autoloader as well!" Birch Gun shouted over the devastating fire of the machine. Each shot penetrated through the wall and created a small hole, but none of them hit Birch Gun or Cadence. Regardless, needless to say, both of them were frozen with fear. After the helicopter clearly expended its autoloader, Birch Gun raced forwards, ignoring the pain that was circulating in his side, and loaded his gun.

The window had already been shattered by the helicopter's fire. It hovered in the air imposingly, and Birch Gun could see two more helicopters coming over the horizon. This one needed to die quickly. Birch Gun quickly aimed the shot and fired. The shell pounded the helicopter, causing a moderate explosion and causing it to lower into the ground at a high speed, creating an even larger explosion and devastating the treeline that it crashed into. Fire began to blaze wildly along the trees, but Birch Gun didn't care. His turret turned towards one of the helicopters, and he loaded his gun again.

One of the helicopters was going in the direction of where Hetzer had fallen, and Birch Gun did not approve of that. His turret moved and he trained on the helicopter as it hovered in Hetzer's direction. With a well-placed shot, the helicopter had soon exploded into bits of corrugated metal, and one of the pieces flew by him, almost hitting him.

"There's one left," he stated. "I think the helicopters are trying to recover Hetzer." Instead of ignoring the artillery as the other helicopter had stupidly done, it turned towards Birch Gun and started firing at him, but the shots were too inaccurate to hit Birch Gun; they merely pounded the wall around him – and penetrating, of course, which didn't do good for his morale.

Cadence was completely silent during all of this, but her turret tracked Birch Gun's motions. She could have been in some sort of shock, but Birch Gun was too busy focusing on everything else to let that distract him.

Birch Gun rolled back after he fired the next shot, as the helicopter was closing in on him. The helicopter continued to fire on him until it expended its ammunition, when it turned around and tried to land near Hetzer's location. Birch Gun wasn't having any of this, so he darted forwards at his disappointing top speed.

Peeking out of the Hetzer-shaped hole, Birch Gun could see the helicopter landing next to Hetzer. He gasped when its gun pointed in his direction, and he was too slow to react before the helicopter's dual guns sent out shell after shell, perforating him like a professional darts player with a box of a hundred darts having a go at a dartboard. One of the shots drilled straight into his hull and went out of the other side. Quickly, Birch Gun felt the enthusiasm to win spill out of him as he withdrew from the hole.

"I-I got shot…," he muttered, reaching into his bag to pull out a repair kit. He then realised that a repair kit wouldn't fix large holes in his armour, but he could give one to Cadence. He took out a repair kit and tossed it at Cadence, yelling at her to use it.

He was so close to winning. So close to destroying Hetzer and declaring the battle won. He couldn't give up just yet. His engine hummed exasperatedly as he began to accelerate over the edge of the building through the hole again, narrowly dodging the helicopter's fire. He instantly drove backwards, feeling the air blast by him, accompanied by the shells that were being fired at him.

The din of the helicopter was now shifting upwards. The helicopter was going to escape with Hetzer! Birch Gun waited for the aerial vehicle to rise up into the air, and when it did, he noticed that Hetzer's intent wasn't to escape, evidenced by his ginormous gun staring at him.

Even though Hetzer was a heaving wreck with his top lopped off, grey noxious gases expelling out of said open top, and the corners of his hull clearly crumpled, he still turned around and, without saying a word, fired himself at Birch Gun, creating a blinding, cataclysmic explosion in the helicopter he was in. It was soon a distant memory to Birch Gun as he narrowly avoided Hetzer's overhead slam.

"I'm not done with you yet," the tank destroyer snarled with pure hatred, firing behind him to create momentum for a spin. Birch Gun realised that he would be knocked into the sky like a golf ball if he were to be hit by Hetzer at that time, so he cut his campaign short by shooting at his tracks. This caused Hetzer to lose his control and smash into the wall as his track fell off.

Dazedly, the tank destroyer got himself up and tried to move, but he traversed only in a circle. With a yell of anger, he switched to his normal StuH gun and fired at Birch Gun, who jumped forwards to dodge the shot.

Birch Gun was a greater athlete than he (and Hetzer) had originally thought. He was one step away from doing combat rolls and drifts. Not that a tank can drift, of course. He looked to his side and saw that Cadence was working on repairing her track, as she had already repaired her gun with the repair kit.

Birch Gun began to roll forwards, crushing an oak table in his tracks and driving straight in Hetzer's direction. He looked at Cadence and motioned towards Hetzer, and she nodded. She knew exactly what she had to do. Hetzer turned in Birch Gun's direction, firing a shot at close range, but the shot flew straight over Birch Gun, impacting the wall and causing a meaty explosion.

Cadence's gun flashed several times in the span of a few seconds; each flash came with a small shell that rammed into Hetzer's side armour, making him growl. Hetzer turned to face Cadence, but she shot out his drive wheel, causing his traversing to halt abruptly and leaving his gun awkwardly placed just out of the reach of Cadence.

Hetzer didn't take this lightly. With the last of his strength, his howitzer folded into the super large gun. Cadence was able to stare down its barrel; it got wider at the end, and its rifling went all the way into the darkness of the barrel. An ear-shattering sound was heard, and as Cadence recoiled from the sound, Hetzer was in the air. He hit the wall, but not with as much force this time, so he didn't smash straight through it. The wall was weak though, and with some force, he could easily be pushed off to drop down to his death.

Now, Cadence was unable to penetrate his armour, no matter how much she tried. Armour-piercing shots were bouncing, armour-piercing composite rigid shots were bouncing… there was no hope for her. Not without Birch Gun's assistance.

Cadence was now in Hetzer's gun's full frontal view, and he intended to teach her a lesson. Once again, his StuH gun rose out of his superstructure, and Birch Gun was amazed that the mechanism was still working. The British self-propelled gun was advancing to his left, but the tank destroyer did not care. "Spanier! Du wirst sterben!" Hetzer spat. He prepared to fire at Cadence, but Birch Gun threw himself at Hetzer before he could, and the force of twelve tonnes of metal threw his aim off. He tried to move his gun to compensate, and he was successful. Cadence was not prepared for the shell that hit her – not only did the shell tear her frontal armour open; it also made her flip over. A sickeningly loud screech was heard as Cadence slid across the floor painfully, and witnessing this gave Birch Gun even more drive to end this battle.

"Cadence!" he yelled. Hetzer could feel the SPG continue to drive into him, trying to displace him, but he was too weak. Birch Gun reversed and slammed into Hetzer again, which did just enough to throw Hetzer's aim off again, making the shell he aimed at Cadence whizz straight past her, through the Hetzer-sized hole.

Birch Gun knew that there would be reinforcements on their side soon. Policetanks were storming the school and taking out any remaining light tanks. They would inevitably come up to the second floor and save them – if they lived long enough against Hetzer. The Jagdpanzer tried to turn to meet Birch Gun with his howitzer, and it was working.

"B-B… Birch Gun, j-just shoot him!" Cadence yelled with weak, strained words. "H-He's going to…"

Hetzer tried another shot, which gave him some momentum against Birch Gun's force. Birch Gun now knew that it could not go any other way; he loaded a shell, and fired straight into the angled side, detonating the ammo rack and causing a vivid flash of intensely bright colours. Reds, yellows and oranges were all Birch Gun could see as the force of the explosion flung him across the room, like an angry child throwing a toy. The vehicle did not land on his tracks; rather, he landed on his gun shield, and rolled over to his side before righting himself.

It would be clear to anyone that Birch Gun was now in a critical condition, just like Cadence. Both of them were mangled, but not as mangled as Hetzer's remains, which continued to explode as every last shell in the ammo rack had its own go at making the biggest explosion

"How… how did that g-gun even work? Did h-he create something from n-nothing?" Birch Gun croaked weakly, his gun lowered out of fatigue. He wished he had paid more attention in physics class now.

Cadence only managed a wheeze before said wheeze escalated into a shrill scream, which was caused by her realising that Hetzer's wicked explosions were causing structural damage to the school itself. Cracks were forming and a terrifyingly loud rumbling was heard as the second floor threatened to topple on itself.

Is this really the end? Birch Gun thought, feeling the floor daring to collapse under him. At this point, he didn't even care. His battered engine continued to work, though he wasn't sure for how long. He could quickly feel himself losing the strength to even move. Birch Gun blacked out as quickly as he had woken up, to the sound of Cadence screaming his name and the feeling of something under him cracking.

"Birch Gun?"

"Is h-he awake? Is his engine humming?"

…

"Cadence! He's alive!"

"Oh my… w-what a relief… I thought neither of us w-would have m-made it out of there!"

"And you almost didn't…"

Birch Gun's vision slowly came back, but every tank he saw took the appearance of being behind a very smudged window. He tried to focus on the tank closest to him, but all he could see was a green smudge.

"They're going to fix us up, Birch Gun. We're not dead…," Cadence muttered.

I can tell that, thought Birch Gun, turning his turret in the direction of Cadence's voice. She was sitting a metre or two away from him, and a tank was inspecting her damage. "Cadence!" he croaked. "Are you okay?"

"Estoy bien," she responded.

"Birch Gun!" a shrill voice called out from behind, and Birch Gun quickly felt the warm embrace of T57. "I'm s-so sorry I didn't come to help! Please forgive me!"

Having T57 there was comforting for the SPG. "You could have died, T57. It's a good thing you didn't come."

T57 muttered a few incomprehensible words, and then inspected the SPG. "Oh my… you're damaged all around!"

"Yes, I know." Birch Gun tried to turn his hull, but he was only met an overwhelming pain in his side. Unsurprisingly, he did not move even a millimetre.

T57 studied her surroundings. They were outside Tank Academy's gates, and there were paramedics dotted everywhere, aiding injured tanks. It seemed that Hetzer's attack had failed completely. In fact, the main force hadn't even reached Tank Academy before the police force had taken them out. The tank destroyer mastermind had over evaluated the effectiveness of his troops – and this cost him his life.

Therefore, only the light tanks had breached the school, and as Birch Gun and Cadence had encountered, they carried a huge gun on a fast, crudely made chassis. One of those guns could easily kill a heavy tank, let alone a student.

Hetzer had failed in his plan to destroy Tank Academy (or whatever he was trying to do… T57 still wasn't very sure), but he did succeed in making the entire second floor topple over, which turned the once new-looking school into something that a five-year-old could have created with some glue and a few stale pieces of Conchiglie pasta. Downscaled, of course.

In other words, the academy wasn't looking so good. In the distance, T57 could see an ARL 44 being towed off by a policetank. Birch Gun also saw the tank, and he created a low cackle which reverberated through his hull spookily. Whatever that was, it was not like Birch Gun.

"Birch Gun? Are you feeling alright?" she asked.

It took a few seconds for Birch Gun to reply. "Yes, T57. I'm feeling great," he responded triumphantly.

"It looks like the school won't be open for a while. Are you okay with that?" T57 asked.

"Yes. Yes. Yes, I'm okay with that," Birch Gun replied.

It appeared that Birch Gun was a bit unhinged from everything that had happened to him. T57 sighed as a tank attached a tow cable to his front and dragged him off to the hospital. She wasn't sure if he'd ever be the same again.

Birch Gun woke up. His gun shield was warm and bright from the sun beating down on it. He crawled out of his tank bed and let his gun shield twirl around to the interior of his room. His stay at the hospital had been awfully quick, as due to Tankville Hospital's destruction, he had to go to another hospital nearby. They fixed him up, and now he was back in bed.

It was early in the morning, and the sun was high in the sky. He exited his room and drove down to the ground floor, making sure not to wake up his mother, who was still asleep. He found it strange that T57 wasn't sleeping in her usual location, and plus, she hadn't even woken him up for the daily exercises!

He was really happy about not having to go back to Tank Academy for a while. Hetzer's final attack had been on his mind since it had happened, and that was about a week ago. This did help Birch Gun in a way, as he now knew that he could take out the worst of foes. With his shiny repaired hull and gun, he was capable of anything!

He intended to watch some cartoons, as it was a nice Monday and he knew that good cartoons were always on the channel on Monday. But as he neared the television, a letter was pushed through the door, and softly landed on the floor.

Birch Gun drove over to it, picking it up and checking the back of the letter. It was addressed to him, which was interesting. He normally didn't receive mail. What he read was something that terrified him when he opened it.

"Dear Mr. Birch Gun. We have great news! Tank Academy is reopening earlier than expected, and I, Centurion Mk. X, am your new head teacher. Starting from Monday, we're all going back to Tank Academy!" the SPG read aloud, his voice lowering and becoming more confounded with each word he spoke.

At the exact moment when Birch Gun pronounced the last syllable of the text, with a voice taking the sound of a dying person, there was a forceful knock on the door. Birch Gun already wanted to go back to bed, but he opened the door anyway.

Standing on the doorstep was Cadence and T57, with Churchill Gun Carrier in the background, driving up to them. On cue, the two girls announced in unison: "It's time to go back to Tank Academy, Birch Gun!"

Birch Gun looked at the tanks in front of him, and then peered at the school in the distance. Half of the building was still destroyed, but they never used the top floor... that's how it was fixed so quickly… "Oh… oh, please no…," he murmured.

And that was the last we heard of Birch Gun… until the sequel comes out. If the sequel comes out. I am planning on a sequel, you know. If it isn't out by July, then give up hope…

I know the ending was rushed, but there's really nothing else I can do with Birch Gun in school now. I've run out of ideas, basically. Now I'll be moving onto something more exciting!

If you've really gotten this far without skipping to the end, then I am so grateful for your persistence – it's amazing that you've kept going.

Even though Tank Academy may not be the best story, I think it's still entertaining to read. Though, I am obviously NOT biased, since I am the creator of the entire thing.

That's all I have to say, really. This is not the end of Birch Gun's story!