Chapter 34: Triumphal parade, part 2.

"But it's ... Mako-san!"

"Mako? Are you sure?" Hana asked incredulously.

"Of course I am! Look at it carefully!"

"What are you doing here?"

"And there are also… Rosehip? Nilgiri? Rukuriri?" Orange said, stunned.

"And Alina too!" Katyusha added.

"What does this story mean?" Darjeeling asked.

"Simple, we offered them to join Schwarze Sonne and they accepted. I would like to clarify that we are expecting more requests for membership during our stay here." Himmler replied.

"But they're our students!" Assam protested.

"They are no longer interested in your schools. In addition, their parents, whom we contacted, also gave their consent."

"Mako is an orphan!"

"I know, Miho. But, as we no longer have a family, we decided to take it anyway. " Hilda said.

"We are her family!" Saori intruded furiously.

"You didn't think so when you robbed her dying grandmother."

That answer made her pale.

"H... How do you know?"

"Mako explained everything to me. She was ... Sorrowful, for having been betrayed by two of her dearest friends. I then asked her to join us. And she accepted."

Both Miho and Saori remained silent, not knowing how to reply. For a moment they were tempted to get off the stage to reach Mako and ask for explanations, but surely they would have been blocked before reaching her, and in any case now she hated them and would have chased them away.

"Now the vehicles parade!" Göring warned them.

After a few minutes, in fact, the first cars appeared: Simca 5 and Volkswagen Kübelwagen, which proceeded in rows by four and in groups of 12. Behind them followed the trucks, model Borgward B 3000, painted in gray. But the real show began later, when the tanks entered the scene: rows and rows of panzers of various types paraded on the street with cannons aimed at the sky and the girls that saluted their leaders militarily. Maho, Kay, Katyusha and the others were amazed, in front of them flowed a real armored river, which seemed to never end. At the same time, airships LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin and Focke-Wulf fw 189 airplanes were flying in the sky, giving life to impressive formations. At one point the panzers were replaced by modern tanks, more precisely Leopard 2-A-6, while NH90 helicopters darted over their heads.

Impressive, right? Did you believe it a miserable provincial school?

Himmler thought grinning.

"But how many panzers do they have?" Erika asked, stunned.

"I don't know ... I can't count them!" Maho replied, trying to hide her amazement.


"Am I wrong or can a sensha-do team field a maximum of 20 tanks in a conventional match?" Kay asked.

"Indeed it is, but we always prefer to keep some spare panzers aside, in case one of ours suffers irreparable damage." Hilda replied.

Some?

Naomi thought.


Darjeeling noticed, observing the tanks that paraded, that each group had a different symbol on the side or on the turret.

"What do those symbols indicate?" She asked.

"Our 12 teams: wolves, hawks, eagles, vipers, bears, reindeers, foxes, whales, sperm whales, dolphins, moray eels and lynxes."

"Ah understood."


"If they lined up all their panzers, no Japanese school would be able to stop them ... Not even Pravda, Kuromorimine or Saunders!" Kinuyo said, shivering.

"But the regulation only allows 20, doesn't it?" It reminded her of Haru.

"Exactly, in normal matches. But in the annihilation matches ... They would be unstoppable.


Katyusha instinctively shook Nonna's hand, who was sitting next to her. If that show of strength was meant to arouse fear in any adversaries, well, she did it perfectly. She had no such fear since the final of the 62nd sensha-do tournament, when she had to face the dreaded Kuromorimine, winning only by a stroke of luck.

You do well to be scared ...

Meanwhile Klara was thinking, noting her mood.


"Geez ... To have all those panzers they have to be extra-rich!" Pepperoni exclaimed.

"Look how many heavy tanks ... We only have one!" Carpaccio added.

Anchovy for her part swallowed and, sweating coldly, began to pray to the kami silently, repeating in her mind:

Let them not challenge us, let them not challenge us, let them not challenge us ...


"Owning so many panzers is no guarantee of victory." Marie said.

"Ah, no?" Ruka asked.

"No ... Think of Miho and Ooarai. Three times they faced a numerically superior enemy, and three times they won."

"They won thanks to the stupidity of the opponents ... If Kay had used all the Sherman at her disposal or if Katyusha had attacked the Ooarai immediately they would have lost!" Göring intervened, and the BC Freedom commander preferred not to reply.