A/N: Hello everyone.
I realize this will date this chapter quite heavily (one hopes), but I don't think I can in good conscience publish this without saying something.
To anyone reading this in Ukraine or Russia, I hope that there will be a swift end to Putin's mad war, and that as much bloodshed as possible can be avoided. I hope that all of you who are affected by the war manage to stay safe, and that I can manage to bring even a moment of light and respite from the evils of the world by releasing this chapter. To everyone else in the world, I ask that, if it is at all possible, you can in some small way manage to provide aid and help to those struggling in Ukraine.
It might not seem it, but things will turn out OK in the end, and it's up to us to make this world a better place, and I hope we will all do what we can to achieve that promise in the days, weeks, and months of darkness to come.
Hope is stronger than fear, and kindness is stronger than hate.
Long live Ukraine, and long live peace!
Dein Weg ist Mein Weg
Chapter XLIII
Always Retreating
"Is she nuts?!" Momo yelled incredulously. "She wants us to-?!"
"Surrender, yes," Maho muttered in annoyance, not bothering to lift her gaze from the sands below her.
"Oh yeah?! Well, you can tell that tea-slurping snob that we're fighting to the end, and that she can take her offer of surrender and her tea and shove it all where the sun doesn't-"
"I already told her no…" Maho said shortly. She hadn't even considered the offer, although it hadn't been a conscious choice to disregard it either. She had simply answered on impulse, not even bothering to weigh her options.
"So then…" Yuzu said with relief, her eyes darting back and forth between Maho and Anzu. "We're still in the tournament? We haven't lost?"
"No, we're still playing,' Maho sighed. "She gave us a few hours to reconsider though…"
"Well, what are our odds of victory then?" Oryou asked.
"I don't know…" Maho said coldly.
"What's our gameplan, though?" Noriko asked. "Are we going for a cut shot into a dig?"
"I don't know," Maho said in a low, bitter voice. "They have more tanks than us. Better tanks. More training. More ammo. A superior position. They have the high ground. And we… we have nothing… There is no plan."
"So then…" Saori said worriedly.
"Does that mean we're just sitting here until they start firing again and finish us off?" Ayumi asked, confusion and worry building in her voice.
"If we're just sitting here, I'd rather we surrender," Caesar sighed and sagged down to the ground, sitting herself up against the StuG's treads in what little shade the assault gun could provide.
"We can't just give up now, can we?" Akebi asked in an unsure tone, looking to Noriko for what to do.
"Janus is right," Caesar replied and removed her scarf, before dousing it in some of the remaining water from her canteen and wrapping it around her head. "We're stuck here, and I'm exhausted from lugging all those shells in this heat. And I'm betting I'm not the only one."
"Yeah… me too…" Karina sighed, and collapsed beside the M3 Lee. "Steering the Lee gets really heavy after a while…"
"It's way too hot to play Sensha-Do any way…" Shinobu agreed, and wiped her forehead, sighing.
"Maybe we could play beach-volleyball though?" Taeko proposed.
"Not without a shower and a change of clothes first," Noriko sighed.
"Hey!" Sodoko yelled and pointed an accusatory finger at the volleyball team. "Don't get distracted! This is still a class, and you're supposed to fo-... to fo-..." Sodoko staggered backwards a step or two, and would have fallen over if not for her teammates catching her.
"Sodoko?!" Pazomi cried in worry.
"Are you okay?!" Gomoyo asked.
"I'm… I'm fi-... fine…" Sodoko stammered out as her two comrades from the Public Morals Committee helped her to the ground, putting her in the shade of the Char B1.
"Jeez, you're burning up," Yukari said as she held a hand against Sodoko's forehead, having rushed over to see if she could be of help.
"I'm fuh-... I'm f-fine!" Sodoko growled and pushed Yukari away, trying to sit herself up. "Get off me! I'm fine!"
"No, you're not," Yukari said firmly and pushed Sodoko back onto the ground. "If you're not careful you could get a heat stroke. Water," she added, and looked up at the other members of Heron team.
"I… I already emptied my canteen…" Pazomi admitted.
"Me too…" Gomoyo said, squirming a bit from embarrassment.
"I have some," Taiga announced and pulled out a canteen from her seat in the tank. "It's been in the tank for a while though, so it might not be very cold anymore."
"It'll do for now," Yukari said. "Thanks, Taiga."
"No problem, Yukari," Taiga smiled, and handed the canteen to Yukari, who put it in Sodoko's hand.
"Drink," Yukari said with a stern look, and after a few moments, Sodoko did as instructed.
"Azusa?" Aya asked in a low voice, putting a hand on her friend's shoulder while the rest of the team were focused on Sodoko. "You okay?"
"Y-yeah… I'm… I'm fine… It's just…" Azusa replied, using a finger to clear the beginnings of a tear from her eye, before sighing and showing Aya a brave smile. "It's nothing. I'm fine."
"Maybe… maybe we should just surrender…" Pazomi sighed, looking dejectedly at the ground.
"What are you guys saying?!" Momo cried, looking with a building panic at the rest of the team.
"We have already done incredibly to get this far, have we not?" Hana replied.
"It's just a sport," Mako mumbled, and lay down on the front of the Phoenix. "No point in pushing it…"
"Yeah," Saori agreed. "I mean, we got to the semi-finals in our first year competing. We'll come back next year and go all the way! Right, Maporin?"
"Right…" Maho muttered, and glanced over at Anzu. The pipsqueak didn't say anything in response, but simply nodded instead, leaving Maho to sigh. She had known this moment would come sooner or later. She had always known, since the moment Yuzu first showed up at her apartment at the start of the school year, and she had dreaded it ever since.
"See, Maho agrees, and she's the commander, so obviously we should-...
"It's not that simple…" Maho said gruffly, raising her voice while still keeping her eyes on the ground below her. "If we don't win this tournament, the ministry is shutting down Ooarai."
"Yeah, and then we..." Saori's voice died down as she turned back to look at Maho. "Wait… What?"
"You're… you're kidding, right?" Yukari asked.
"It's like Nishizumi says," Anzu said nonchalantly and stepped to the forefront. "The ministry has decided to close Ooarai, and the only way to get them to reconsider is to win the National Championship."
"But… but why?" Taeko asked.
"Yeah?! They can't just shut down our school like that!" Saemonza protested.
"It's merely a matter of costs," Anzu shrugged, echoing Renta's words from that day back in March. "MEXT wants to cut costs, and I guess Ooarai just wasn't worth the effort to keep open."
"So that's why the Sensha-Do team got restarted all of a sudden…" Yukari sighed.
"Yeah, well, I thought that since we used to have a really good team in the past, there'd be a ton of great tanks lying around. And with Nishizumi joining the school, well, it was worth a shot, right?" She paused as she smiled and scratched sheepishly at her neck. "Well, it turns out that the school was low on cash already back then, so they sold all the good ones."
"Then, that means…" Saori started.
"Yeah, these are the ones they couldn't manage to sell off…"
"But if this is all we've got…" Karina said.
"Doesn't that mean we just can't win the tournament?" Noriko continued.
"Yes, surely there must be something else we can do?" Hana asked.
Maho glanced at Momo, who froze at the question, and shook her head as she looked at Anzu. If the pipsqueak had just taken her mother's deal, none of this would matter.
"I'm sorry," Yuzu said, and took a step forward. "We tried to find other solutions, but this was all we could do. We're sorry we lied to you all."
A disheartened silence fell over the village. One after the other, shoulders began to slump among the team members, and many of the girls' heads slumped from their necks as they looked hopelessly at the sand below them.
"But what about our Volleyball team?" Noriko asked despondently after a few seconds. "If the school gets shut down…"
"Then we're never getting it back…" Taeko sighed and wiped her eyes.
"What about the Public Morals Committee?" Gomoyo asked.
"If there are no hallways for us to monitor, then…" Pazomi said gloomily.
"I guess I'm not going to get those extra units after all…" Mako mumbled from atop the Phoenix
"The Mass Media Club is going to be gone too, huh?" Taiga sighed dejectedly.
"I wonder what will happen to all of us when the school closes down?" Hana asked.
"They're probably gonna ship us off to whatever schools will have us…" Caesar sighed.
"It's unconditional surrender…" Oryou sighed.
"No, I don't want that," Saori protested.
"Me neither," Yukari agreed. "I wanna keep doing Sensha-Do with all of you guys!"
"Yeah, we're sorry guys…" Anzu said. "I never planned for it to come to this…"
"We just wanted to try and spend our last year fighting back and protecting our school, instead of just sitting back and feeling sad as it happened without doing anything…" Momo sighed.
"But… you said Nishizumi was right…" Shinobu said thoughtfully, looking at Anzu.
"Yeah…" Aya realized, and looked at Maho. "Then you… you knew? For how long?"
"Since I joined the team," Maho shrugged. She didn't see any point in hiding it any more.
"But then, why wouldn't you say something?!" Noriko said in a harsh voice. "Why didn't any of you say anything?!"
"Yeah!" Ayumi joined in. "If we had known, we would have been able to train way more and fight even harder!"
"Hey, I'm sure Maho had her reasons," Saori said in an attempt to try and deescalate the situation. "Right?"
"Do you think it would have helped?" Maho asked gruffly. "Do any of you really think you would have fought any better or trained any harder than you have if you had known? 'Cause if you do, then your hearts were never in this to begin with!" She glared at the team as she barked at the accusation. "Would you have done better or worse with that kind of pressure hanging on your shoulders? Knowing that if the school got shut down, it would have been your fault?! That there's no one to blame but yourself?!" She let her eyes scan over the downcast team, and no one dared meet her gaze. "I didn't think so."
"Uggghhhhhhh!" Rosehip groaned. "This! Is! Boring!" she yelled in frustration, kicking up sand with each word. "Why can't we just go in and charge them?"
"Because Lady Darjeeling says so," Rosemallow, her loader, said with nonchalant calmness as she kept an eye on the kettle.
"What if we were really quick about it though?" Roselle asked from atop the Crusader she usually drove, looking down with excitement flaring in her eyes. "We could be in and out of there before anyone even noticed we were gone."
"Yeah!" Rosehip agreed, a similar gleam building in her own eyes. "We go in there, rough 'em up a bit, and come right back. No one would even have to know!"
"The Commander says that we're to stay here and sit tight until the truce is over, so we're going to stay here until it is. Now, the tea's ready," Rosemallow said calmly, and began pouring the tea into cups.
"Yes, Mom…" Rosehip and Roselle sighed in chorus, rolling their eyes.
"Still, this is super-boring…" Roselle muttered as she pushed herself off the top of the tank and down to the ground below, accepting one of the cups, before looking over Rosemallow's shoulder at the last of their crew. Sitting in the shade of the tarpaulin set up against the side of their tank, their gunner Rosemary was busy reading a book and didn't pay her three crewmates much attention. "You're with us on this, right, 'ary?"
"Yeah, you wanna have some fun too, dont'cha?" Rosehip said, more as a statement of fact than a question.
"I am having fun," Rosemary said curtly without looking up from her book. "Besides, Lady Darjeeling gave you command of this platoon, so you should set a proper example for the others, instead of rushing about the place like some child."
"Awww, stop being so boring. You just want to look responsible in front of your crush," Rosehip said with a smile as she walked over.
"I do not!" Rosemary yelled. "And I do not have a crush!"
"No need to be shy, Mary," Roselle said with a sly and teasing grin on her lips as she sat down next to Rosemary and put an arm across her shoulders. "We're all girls here, you can tell us. I've seen the way you look at that infantry-gal. She's probably as slow and dull as her tank, but then I guess that just means you're perfect for each other."
"Hey! I told you, it's not like that!" Rosemary continued to protest, but her words fell on deaf ears as Rosemary continued. "It's not like I like her or anything!"
"Mary and 'Riri," she started to sing, and Rosehip soon joined in, the grins on their faces growing wider by the second," sitting in a tree, S-N-O-G-G-I-N…" The two girls looked at each other, seemingly in an attempt to wordlessly find a way out of their own mess, before both shrugging and pretending like it had been the plan all along. "G."
"Cut it out…" Rosemary said, her voice lower and far more wavering than before, as she hunched over and hid her face between her knees. "Just… just cut it out…" she said meekly, doing her best to hide the tears that began to fall upon the sand below her.
"Oh, would you just leave her alone, you birdbrains?" Rosemallow scolded, and sent Rosehip and Roselle out from under the tarp before sitting herself down beside Rosemary, hugging and comforting her.
"Do you think we went a bit far?" Roselle asked her friend as they took a few steps away from the tarp.
"Nah, she'll be fine," Rosehip shrugged. "It's her own fault she's too thick to realize she likes that brat-nosed brunette. Here, hold this," she added, and handed Roselle the cup of tea she had grabbed as she left the tarp, before reaching a hand down to the hem of her skirt and producing a small, metal hip flask, unscrewing the lid. "Thanks." She took the cup of tea back, and poured a couple glugs of the yellow liquid found inside into her tea, and took a sip of the mixture. "Ahhh," she grimaced with a delighted grin, returning the flask to its hiding place, "That's much better."
"Miss Assam isn't going to like it if she finds out you're still doing that," Roselle said with a knowing look, lifting her own cup to her lips. "I am not helping you scrub treads again if you get caught."
"It's fine," Rosehip bragged. "The Vice-Commander's too much of a primadonna to even bother checking."
"Checking what, Rosehip?" The two girls turned around at the sound of the voice, and were met by a stern-looking Assam, her arms folded behind her back and the tip of her boot tapping the ground. "What are you two speed demons up to now?"
"Nothing, Miss Assam," Rosehip said nonchalantly, and straightened her posture. The obvious reason was to show respect for her superior, but in truth, Rosehip did it just because she knew it ground every gear in the blonde girl's short body to have to look up at her when they spoke.
"Uhuh?" Assam said in disbelief, raising an eyebrow as she locked eyes with Rosehip. "I don't know why the Commander decided to allow someone like you into the Tea garden…" she said coldly.
"Maybe Lady Darjeeling just thinks I'm charming?" Rosehip joked.
"...but it definitely wasn't for your ability to be subtle," Assam continued, ignoring Rosehip's comment and reaching a swift hand towards the hem of Rosehip's skirt.
"Vice-commander," Rosehip said teasingly and feigned shock, having intercepted Assam's hand and now holding it in place against her hip. "You could at least have bought me some dinner first, or maybe you're more the kind to leave letters of confession in shoe lockers?"
"Don't joke around with me," Assam said bitterly, and knocked Rosehip's hand away with her own free arm, producing the hip flask Rosehip had hidden underneath her skirt. She unscrewed the lid and raised the flask to her nose, giving it a quick sniff. "Two weeks of scrubbing treads and taking inventory of our ammunition after practice," she said coldly and turned the flask upside down, emptying the liquid inside onto the dry sand below, which hungrily gulfed it down to the last drop without a trace. "And if I ever find you smuggling energy drinks to another practice session or match, I'll make sure you're off this team faster than that abomination of a tank you command. Am I clear?"
Rosehip didn't answer, and simply rolled her eyes.
"Am I clear?" Assam repeated, glaring at Rosehip with the force of a typhoon.
"Yes, Miss Assam," Rosehip sighed, and reluctantly nodded.
"Good," Assam said. "And just to make sure we understand each other, would you please pour out that tea as well?"
"I thought Lady Darjeeling says not to spill a single drop of tea when in battle?" Rosehip said in an attempt to circumvent the order, but Assam was having none of it.
"Empty it. Now," she ordered once more. "Or I'll extend your punishment to the rest of your crew as well."
"Rosy, just do it…" Roselle said in a low voice as she glanced slowly back and forth between the two girls.
Rosehip didn't move, and instead just looked down defiantly at Assam, but after a few seconds it became clear that the blonde was not budging, and she simply sighed and turned the cup on its head, emptying the spiked tea onto the sand.
"Good. Now, don't make me come over here again."
"Yes, Vice-Commander," Roselle said in a low voice and bowed.
"Stuck-up upper-class goody-two-shoes…" Rosehip muttered under her breath as she watched Assam walk away, following her with her gaze until the blonde disappeared behind one of the Valentines parked a bit away. "Why can't she just mind her own business and leave me alone?"
"I don't know, I think you two look cute together," Rosemallow said nonchalantly from the tarp.
"We do not look cute together!" Rosehip yelled in bitter protest, her face growing red. "And even if we do, it doesn't matter because she doesn't like me and I definitely don't like her! She's stuck-up and arrogant and snobbish and tiny and a nerd and so bloody perfect it makes me want to gouge my eyes out!"
"Now now, I'm just pointing out the obvious," Rosemallow said, looking at Rosehip with a teasing smile. "It's your own fault for being too thick to realize you like her, right?"
Rosehip crossed her arms and stuck her tongue out at Rosemallow, before looking away to hide her pout. "Besides, it's not like it matters…" she mumbled to herself. "She's too busy being all lovey-dovey with that tomboy of hers from Saunders to even notice…"
"Maho?"
Maho didn't answer, and let her back simply fall with a thud against the sandstone wall behind her as she sat down in the minuscule shade of a crate.
"Maho…" Saori tried asking again, still remaining a few considerate steps away with Yukari and Hana. "Is… is everything alright?"
Maho sighed, and let the back of her head collide with the smooth stone behind her. Does it look like everything's alright? she wanted to mutter, but ultimately decided to simply give the trio a look.
"Y-yeah… I guess that was a stupid question, huh?" Saori said quietly.
"Is there anything we can do to help?" Hana asked.
"No…" Maho sighed. "I just want to be left alone…"
"You sure?" Saori asked.
"I'll be fine…" Maho muttered, and raised her canteen in the air, the contents splashing around as she gently shook it a bit, as proof that it wasn't empty and that she had water to drink.
"Alright… We'll… We'll give you some time to think then…" Saori said in a low voice, and turned to leave, gesturing for Yukari and Hana to follow. "Okay, so we're all on the same page, right? She's definitely not fine." she said in a hushed voice as they were outside earshot of Maho.
"No, she is clearly not doing well... But what can we do?" Hana asked. "If she doesn't want our help, we can't push it on her regardless. That might only make things worse."
"She's… she's going to be fine. She's always bounced back before, and she'll bounce back this time too," Yukari proclaimed. "Maho's the best tanker there is, and she's definitely going to come up with a way for us to win this!" The lack of response or enthusiasm from her friends made a lot of the confidence leave Yukari's voice. "Right?"
"I really hope so…" Saori sighed.
"I suppose it is best we try and get the turret repaired," Hana said absentmindedly. "If Maho does come up with something, she will want the Phoenix to be working properly."
Even though her eyes were closed, the piercing light of the sun still broke through Maho's eyelids, filling her vision with a yellowish white light, while the sand below her and the stone walls around her, warmed to a boiling crisp from the midday heat, did its best to cook her skin and body, proving the accuracy of the Odawara arena's nickname.
Fighting here truly was like fighting in an oven.
At least the light and airy suede and cotton of her jacket protected her from the worst of the heat, insulating most of her skin from the scorching sand and boiling air, doubly so compared to the others thanks to the unique light shade of blue that made it up, compared to the dark navy of Ooarai's other tankers. Not that it made the situation any more bearable.
Raising an arm and wiping away the sweat that only seemed to accumulate faster and faster on her brow, Maho sighed, and reached for her canteen. The lukewarm water within was far from refreshing, but it helped quench her thirst nonetheless as it ran down her parched throat.
"Well then… How do you plan on handling this, Maho?"
Glancing up, Maho's gaze was met by Ami, casually strolling out from behind the corner of a building, smiling down at her.
"Great…" Maho muttered, rolling her eyes. "I must have gotten a heatstroke…"
"So, the Victory, eh?" Ami continued wistfully, ignoring Maho's muttering and leaning herself against the wall opposite her. "I will say, it was quite the challenge, even for me. But I'm sure you're up to the task."
"Yeah, well. Ooarai isn't Kuromorimine. We don't have a trio of Hummel and a Tiger II to take that thing on, nor do we have any terrain suitable for it. Besides, I'm not Ami." Glancing up once more, she added "And neither are you."
Ami chuckled and shrugged. Her skin began to sizzle and crack, streaks of purple flickering between the shards and chips until her entire form burst into obsidian flames and shrank as it reformed itself, the flames soon crusting over and hiding once more underneath a facade of skin, cloth, and brown hair. Maho's reflection stood before her once more, although it had apparently exchanged the blacks and reds of Kuromorimine's uniform for the whites and navy blues of Ooarai.
"Well, it was worth a try, I suppose," Maho's reflection said with a teasing smile as it sat herself down opposite Maho, the sand below lying still and untouched by its non-existent form.
"Leave me alone…" Maho grumbled, only to then add with a muttering sigh "What do you want?" as if already anticipating her doppelganger's refusal to do as she asked.
"The same thing I always want," the reflection said with a shrug. "Even though I keep telling you, and you keep refusing to believe me, I am here to try and help us."
"Well, who says I want your help…" Maho grumbled. "I don't want anyone's help."
"You've gotten very good at lying to yourself, Maho" the reflection sighed and shook her head. "But that doesn't trick me, as I've told you. You can hear it, can't you?" it asked, looking inquisitive and knowingly at her, as if all its statements and questions were merely rhetorical. "That little voice at the back of your mind, telling you you're nothing but a miserable, worthless failure. That this and everything bad that's ever happened to us is your fault. That anything and everything you will ever try your hand at is doomed to fail and blow up in your face, hurting you and everyone you care about in the process. That you deserve everything that's happened."
Maho didn't answer, but the reflection didn't really seem to mind as it continued its monolog, leaning in close and holding a hand up to its mouth as it continued in hushed tones.
"Those are just lies, Maho. Lies that mother and the world and the pressure you've been under for all our life has imprinted on your mind, and made you believe are true." It paused, and smiled at Maho with a small, gentle nod. "But they're not. They're just lies that keep you down, keep you from truly reaching the boundless potential burning inside you. I can see it, father could see it, your teammates can see it. And I know that you can see it too. Just like you've done before. You've felt the torrential strength and blazing determination within you." Her doppelganger chuckled, and leaned back against the wall, waiting for some semblance of a reply from Maho.
"It doesn't matter… None of it matters…" Maho muttered, and bowed her head. "I can't do this…" She could already feel the cold and uncaring embrace of the darkness within her, clinging to her and trying to drag her further into the inky black depths.
"You can. I know you can. You know it too," the doppelganger said softly. "All you need is to believe in yourself and in your teammates. If you can just do that, you'll be unstoppable."
"And what if I'm not," Maho asked bitterly as she looked up, glaring at her reflection. "What if I jump back into the cupola, go out there, and nothing changes? What if we lose regardless? What if I'm the reason someone gets hurt again, huh? How is that going to make anything better?!"
The reflection closed its eyes and shook its head. "You know you can't think like that… You're letting yourself be led by fear and shadows on the wall, when you should be listening to the determination and inferno of strength inside you…" Its skin started to crack and splinter once more as the doppelgangers form erupted in an ink-black fire yet again, shifting and changing shapes as the flames danced and realigned themselves. A few moments later, they had quieted down and crusted over again, putting Maho face to face with a face that was far too familiar.
"You can't keep using me as a crutch anymore, Commander," the apparition, now reflecting Koume wearing the navy blue uniform instead of Maho, said with a strained and strange voice, sounding more like Maho attempting to mimic her former Vice Commander's voice than the voice of Koume herself. "You can't keep hiding behind what happened to me, or what happened to Emi. If you really want to be a normal girl and not just a Nishizumi, you need to stop running away, and face your problems head on like the rest of us."
"Don't…" Maho muttered. "Don't you even dare bring Koume into this…"
The apparition shrugged, and after another short fiery transformation, Maho instead found herself glaring at Darjeeling.
"Better?" the apparition said with a teasing smirk, a small, final burst of flames forming itself into a porcelain teacup in its hand. Maho simply rolled her eyes and groaned as she leaned back against the wall, her eyes closing in an attempt to shut the spectral torment out and wish it away, an exercise she found little success in as the doppelganger still remained when she opened them again a few seconds later. "Have you heard this saying? 'To know your enemy, you must become your enemy.'" It's voice still seemed strange and forced, more like a pale imitation than Darjeeling's real voice, but by this point Maho was annoyed enough that she didn't care.
"You can take your sayings and go to hell…" Maho muttered. "And whatever you think you're doing, it's not helping…"
"You disappoint me, my dear Nishizumi. I thought the Nishizumi style demanded that you never give up and never run away, no matter the situation."
"Yeah, well if you hadn't noticed, I'm not very keen on the Nishizumi style's teachings anymore…"
"Thank you," Darjeeling said and accepted the glass from Orange Pekoe, taking a sip of the cool beverage within. "Most refreshing, my dear Pekoe. Iced tea truly is most suitable on a day like this."
"Of course, Lady Darjeeling," Orange Pekoe replied, and began pouring two more glasses, one for Assam and one for herself. The three of them were sitting around a small table behind the Victory, with a large umbrella covering them from the heat of the midday sun.
"Thank you," Assam said with a smile and a small nod. "It is very tasty."
"Thank you, Miss Assam."
"So, Orange Pekoe…" Darjeeling said calmly and set her glass down on the table, looking curiously at her protegé. "Tell me, how have you found your first command so far?"
"It has been quite exhausting, if I'm to be honest," Orange Pekoe sighed and leaned back in her chair, raising her arms above her head and stretching them out. "There's so much extra thinking and talking and keeping track of everyone else both in the tank and the platoon, and…" She paused and glanced between her two seniors, before letting out a small, sheepish laugh and nervously straightening her posture while her shoulders slumped, as if only now realizing how brusque her words might seem. "But… but it's also been really exciting…" she tried to add with an uncertain smile. "A-and I'm really grateful for you giving me this opportunity, Lady Darjeeling…"
Darjeeling didn't answer and instead simply raised an eyebrow, before glancing over at Assam. An uncomfortable silence fell over the table, with Orange Pekoe racking her brain for a way to salvage the situation, but after a few seconds, the silence broke on its own as Assam began to laugh.
"Yes, I imagine it must be quite the change of pace for you," Darjeeling chuckled, waving a hand before her to assure Orange Pekoe that she had done nothing wrong. "I felt much the same when I started out as a commander."
"At least you got to go in completely blank. I can't imagine what it must be like having to unlearn all that training you did as a loader," Assam noted, giving Orange Pekoe a small nod and a teasing smile. "Don't worry. For a complete beginner, you've done excellently."
"Indeed," Darjeeling said and raised her glass in Orange Pekoe's direction. "It's a great relief to know St. Gloriana shall still be in capable hands once we graduate."
"Uhm… th-thank you, Lady Darjeeling," Orange Pekoe said, and looked down at her clasped hands resting on her knees to hide her blushing. "But… well…" she said and looked up again after a few seconds, her voice uncertain.
"Yes, Orange Pekoe?" Darjeeling replied and nodded, signaling for the first-year to continue.
"Well… I was wondering… why? I mean… why are we just sitting here, drinking iced tea?"
"It's the middle of summer, the air is hot, the sun is shining, and there's hardly a cloud in the sky," Darjeeling answered with a sly and teasing smile. "What reason could there be not to drink iced tea in the shade, conversing with friends?"
"No, that's… that's not what I meant…"
"Come on, Darj…" Assam said, and looked at her friend. "She's supposed to be taking over for you, and besides, she's commanding the flag tank. She should at least get to know why we're just sitting here doing nothing."
"Oh, I don't think we're doing nothing," Darjeeling teased and took another sip from her glass, but Assam raising an eyebrow and crossing her arms made her relent. "Very well," she shrugged,and put the glass down on the table. "But let me answer the question with another question. Why do you think we're sitting here, drinking iced tea?"
"Commander?" Orange Pekoe asked, not understanding the question.
Assam simply rolled her eyes and sighed, leaning back in her chair with an amused look on her face.
"You're going to be commander of this team one day, Orange Pekoe, and that means one day you might very well find yourself facing a situation like this yourself," Darjeeling clarified and leaned forwards, resting her elbows on the table and steepling her fingers. "So again; why do you think we're 'just sitting here'? If you were me, what possible reasoning would you have to act as I have chosen to do here?"
"Oh…" Orange Pekoe looked blankly at Darjeeling for a few moments, but soon bowed her head and rubbed her chin as she pondered the question. "Well…" she said thoughtfully after a while, and looked up at Darjeeling, "it's to conserve the team's strength, isn't it? After all, Sun Tzu says that 'the supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting'."
"Yes, very well done," Darjeeling said and nodded approvingly. "That is certainly part of it. Once this match is over, we shall need all the strength we can muster in the finals."
"And since Kuromorimine had their Maus knocked out in their match with Pravda, you want to make sure to keep the Victory operational so we can bring it into the finals, right?"
"Also true. You've learned well, Orange Pekoe. But," Darjeeling continued enigmatically, leaning back with a small smirk as she tapped a finger against the table, "consider this: if my objective here was to preserve the team's strength and to keep the Victory out of harm's way, why would I not just deal a swift and decisive blow, taking out their flag tank when we first laid sights on Ooarai?"
"So, is everyone alright?"
"Everyone's had their canteens refilled, but we're down to our last dozen liters of water," Momo said bitterly as she walked over. "We can't just sit around here and let that snobby tea slurper whittle us away without even firing a shot! We should fight back, attack right now!"
"But," Yuzu said with worry, "isn't it really risky? Someone could get hurt…"
"As long as we take out their flag tank, we're fine," Momo muttered. "We can't back down. We need to save Ooarai!"
"We can't risk someone getting hurt, though," Yuzu countered. "We need to be smart about this and think things through-…"
"We don't have time to think things through, Yuzu!" Momo protested. "And if the President had just taken Nishizumi's deal, or that idiot of a commander hadn't led us into a dead end so we could all die of thirst, then none of this would have happened, and we wouldn't even need to think things through. But no!" she grumbled. "The President didn't take the deal, and Nishizumi didn't stand and fight, because none of you will take this seriously! None of you are ready to do what needs to be done to save our school!
"Sweetie, there really isn't any point in pointing fingers…" Yuzu said and reached for Momo's hand.
"Don't call me Sweetie!" Momo yelled in annoyance. "And besides, if you had just let me command the team like we decided before that brat showed up, then we wouldn't be in this mess!"
"Gamble," Anzu said shortly and nonchalantly upended what little remained in the bag of dried sweet potatoes into her mouth.
Momo and Yuzu both turned to look at where Anzu was sitting, casually leaned back against the 38(t)'s wheels.
"Madame President?"
"It's a gamble, not a mess, Momo," Anzu clarified. "And as for Nishizumi, I'm confident she'll do the right thing."
"But President, she's-"
"Actually, Imma go have a chat with her," Anzu continued, ignoring Momo's protests as she rose to her feet, and began walking away from the 38(t) and her colleagues.
"Okay… I… I think that should do it…" Yukari called out. She was kneeling on top of the panzer IV's rear, her attention focused on the open engine compartment before her, her hands covered in oil and sand, and her face far darker than normal on account of the soot and oil smeared across her cheeks and forehead. "Rev it up, Mako!" She called out, and a few moments later, the Phoenix' engine roared to life. "Try it again, Hana!" A low electric whirring began and he turret of the German tank started looking like it would move, even nudging itself a few centimeters to the side, before coming to an abrupt halt as the whirring was overpowered by a loud, grinding noise, until a few seconds later the engine once more fell quiet as Yukari sighed.
"Hey, Akiyama!" she called out and waved towards the Phoenix as she drew closer.
"Huh? O-oh… Miss… Miss President…" Yukari looked up in surprise, before sliding down to the ground off the Phoenix' rear. "Is… is there a problem?"
"Not at all," Anzu said and shook her head. "How's it going?"
"Oh… it's… we're working on it…" Yukari answered, unsure. "It should be fixable, it's… it's just going to need some work is all…"
"Good to hear. You know where Nishizumi is?"
"Maho is… she's… uhh…"
"She wanted to be left alone…" Saori said as her head popped out of the Phoenix' hull.
"Y-yeah…" Yukari agreed. "Although… I do kinda worried about her…"
"Me too…" Saori sighed, and glanced around for a moment. "So… yeah… Sorry we can't help," she added, and gave a quick nod of her head towards a building close to the cliff wall.
"That's too bad," Anzu shrugged with a knowing smile. "Well, keep at it, I guess. We're gonna need that turret if we're gonna break out of here," she added, and reached out a hand.
"Y-yeah… S-sure!" Yukari said and reached out to shake Anzu's hand, before quickly pulling it back as she realized just how dirty it was from all her fidgeting with the engine compartment. She looked around in a panic for something to clean it off on, but found nothing. As Anzu began to snicker, Yukari's panic only grew until she ultimately just scraped the worst of it away by dragging the hand through her armpit, and then finally she took Anzu's hand.
"You know… I never actually wanted to be President…"
Maho looked up, wincing a bit as the sun struck her eye, and as her eyes readjusted, she saw Anzu standing a few feet away from her. She had been too lost in thought to even notice the pipsqueak approach.
"I actually never wanted to be on the Student Council at all," she continued nonchalantly, walking past Maho and jumping up to sit herself down on the crate Maho was using for shade.
If it had been anyone else, Maho would have muttered and told them to go away, but by this point she had ample experience to prove that it wouldn't really have any effect at all on Anzu. So instead, she simply sighed and leaned her head back against the wall, glancing up at the diminutive girl. "Is that so?"
"Yeah. Student Council work is for boring, ugly, serious people. The kind of people who go to law school, and think they're gonna be prime minister one day. You know, people like Yuzu," she added with a small but innocent laugh. "I was perfectly happy to just coast through high school and not make a fuzz of things. Grades weren't going to matter for me regardless."
"If you think you'd get into university on a Sensha-Do scholarship, I think you should reconsider…" Maho muttered, closing her eyes once more to try and block out the worst of the sun's light.
"HA! And you say you don't have a sense of humor!" Anzu chuckled. "But no, my plan was always ballet. Me and Momo had been doing it for years, even got to the intermiddle regionals a couple times. High school was just a formality, really. Three years, and then it'd be off to Tokyo. Arts school for us, and some fancy high-brow university for Yuzu. Study through the day, party through the night!" She sighed, still keeping a small but regretful smile on her lips, and rested her chin against her palm as she stared wistfully at the wall opposite them. "That was the plan…"
"So what changed?" Maho asked, almost subconsciously. It wasn't that she particularly cared about Anzu's story, but she also didn't have much choice but to keep listening. The only real alternative would be to go back to where the rest of the team was, a choice she had even less interest in.
"Just before we were supposed to start high school, our troupe was putting on a production of Swan Lake. I was gonna play Odette, Momo was Odile. The director kept wanting to swap our roles because of how short I was, but Momo kept insisting on keeping the roles as they were. Everyone already agreed I was the best there and no one else could play the role better, so it wasn't an issue for long. But I guess it just wasn't meant to be. During the final dress rehearsal, I tripped and fractured an ankle. So no Odette for me. And as it turns out, no more ballet either." Her voice trailed off for a bit, but the smile remained on her face as she leaned back against the wall, locking her fingers together behind her head. "I spent the first half of the semester with a cast. I couldn't even be in gym class until fall came around. And well, it got really boring. So when the Student Council elections kicked up, Yuzu convinced me to run. Everyone from the old Student Council was graduating, and there honestly wasn't a lot of buzz around it. Another girl we had shared classes with in middle school was running, and there was some second-year who dropped out really early. Yuzu would have probably gotten elected just fine on her own if it wasn't for her stage fright. So she asked me to run for president and, if we won, I could just lean back behind the desk while she did all the important stuff."
Maho couldn't help but snort at this. While she had definitely gotten the impression that Yuzu was the one running most of the day-to-day operations of the Student Council, Anzu had in no way struck her as simply some uninterested puppet who signed whatever she was told to.
"Yeah, turns out having power is pretty swell. And I guess I'm pretty good at it too. I did get reelected after all." The smile on Anzu's lips thinned into a satisfied smirk as she simply let herself bask in the sunlight for a few moments, before she leaned forwards once more and looked over at the wall again. "And yeah, once I could actually move properly and not hurt myself, I was already neck-deep in Student Council work."
"Sorry to hear that…"
"Nah, it's fine," Anzu said with a confident smile and looked down at Maho. "Looking back, I was really just better than the rest of my troupe, and it gave me a bit of an ego. I was never really anywhere close to being great. There's gotta be hundreds of girls like me just in Japan…" she sighed.
"That's a worrying thought…" Maho sighed, and glanced up at Anzu. The pipsqueak glanced back at her, and before long the two were snorting with laughter. "So…" Maho continued, once they had composed themselves again, "what's the plan now? Are you going to law school, like all the other boring, ugly, serious people?"
Anzu remained quiet, and instead of answering just looked thoughtfully up at the sky for a few seconds. "Nah…" she said after a while, looking down at Maho once more with a wide grin as she leaned back against the wall again. "To be honest, I haven't really thought about it. I think I'm done having plans, though. It's way more fun just going with the flow and playing whatever hand fate deals you." She winked at Maho and leapt back to the ground, brushing some sand off her skirt before beginning to walk back towards the square, but after a few paces, she stopped. "Look…" she sighed, "I'm not an idiot. I know what happened to you. What you've had to go through. And whatever you might think of me, I'm not cruel. I'm not going to force you to put people in danger just to win some stupid game. If you don't think it's worth the risk, then it's not worth it."
Even though her back was turned, Anzu's tone made it more than clear to Maho that she was letting her mask slip a bit. "You really think the Cyclops is going to let me?" Maho said unenthusiastically.
"If she has objections she can keep them to herself. I've made it clear that this team is your domain, like the school is mine," Anzu said shortly, her shoulders slumping. "I always hated folding a winning hand…" she muttered and drew a deep breath, seemingly to compose herself once more. "But, Dad did always say it means I keep holding the losing ones and overcommitting too, so I'll trust your judgment on this one, Nishizumi. If you think we should concede, we will. Our school might be on the line, but I'll find some other way. We'll all go back home again, safe and sound, and I'll figure out some other idea. And then another one, and another one, and another one… Either we make it all work somehow… Or I run out of ideas…" She glanced over her shoulder at Maho, her characteristic smug grin having returned to her lips. To most others it would have been convincing enough, but Maho could see the anxious doubt that flickered in the pipsqueak's eye. "Don't worry about it, Nishizumi. If MEXT wants my chair so badly, they can damn well try and take it from me. I'd like to see them try…"
"Lady Darjeeling…" Orange Pekoe said cautiously, lifting her head and looking back to the table from where she had been pacing back and forth, lost in thought. "I… I think I might have figured it out…"
"Is that so?" Darjeeling asked with a small smile, but gestured for Orange Pekoe to rejoin her and Assam at the table. Once she was seated again, she made sure to refill all of their glasses, before locking her eyes on Darjeeling.
"When the match begun, you told me to move the Superb and the Matilda's directly into the path of Ooarai's ambush, and you made sure to send Rosehip's platoon on a course where not only would Ooarai see them, but they would think they were going far away from our flag tank, only to then swing back and strike from the North. You also kept the Victory well out of sight, just like you did our Valentines. All of this points to you wanting to trap Ooarai in a trap when they committed themselves to their ambush. Any other commander, given that opportunity, would have done so."
"It would seem so, wouldn't it?" Darjeeling smiled, and sipped at her tea. "But?"
"But even when our forces all attacked Ooarai, and we could easily have taken out their flag tank, you ordered us not to," Orange Pekoe continued. "You told everyone to hold back, to only make it look like we were fighting at full strength. The only aggressive moves you allowed us was for Rosehip to cut off their flanks. You only cared about making sure Ooarai didn't have a path to get away from us." She paused to drink a bit of her own tea, before continuing. "You never wanted to preserve our strength for the finals. You just wanted this battle to go on for longer."
"Guilty as charged," Darjeeling admitted with a shrug. "You are quite right, Orange Pekoe. Any theories as to why?"
"It took me a long time to figure it out, I admit," Orange Pekoe sighed. "You are not a cruel commander, nor are you one to waste opportunities. You always treat your fellow tankers with respect, friend or foe. But then I realized…. I can't only take into account your actions on the field of battle. I had to try and consider who you are as a commander, Lady Darjeeling, and I understand now that who someone is off the field is just as important as who they are on it." She paused once more, looking to Darjeeling for approval, who gave it with a nod.
"Good. I've taught you well, it seems," Darjeeling said, her smile widening with pride.
"As if you ever taught her anything," Assam laughed, and gestured for Orange Pekoe to continue. "Go on then, show her how clever you are."
"Ah… w-well…" Orange Pekoe stammered, suddenly anxious at both the praise and attention she was getting. "Lady Darjeeling, she… she has made a point of watching all of Ooarai's matches in person… a-and she's always taken a particular interest in Miss Nishizumi. So… so I started to think that… that maybe today had something to do with that?" Her eyes darted back and forth between her two seniors in a futile attempt to gleam some confirmation or further information from their expressions. "When Ooarai's Panzer IV took out Anzio's flag tank, and defeated Miss Anchovy, Darjeeling took an incredible interest in the last shot. She pointed out that Ooarai, or at least Miss Nishizumi, is capable of things that shouldn't be possible. A-and ever since Miss Nishizumi visited the Ark Royal, she has spent every night rewatching old matches of Miss Nishizumi's, both under Ooarai and Kuromorimine. It was almost like she was searching for something. Almost like she was… performing research…"
"Of course she did," Assam shrugged. "Any commander worth their salt reads up on their opponent before a match, especially one as important as this."
"No!" Orange Pekoe protested, exasperated. "I-I mean… Y-yes, of course one should always know one's enemy, but this… this was different… Lady Darjeeling, you… you haven't just been doing research on Miss Nishizumi. You have been doing research on her, have… have you not? We have more than twice Ooarai's numbers. We have better tanks, more heavily armed and armored, and crewed by more experienced tankers. You already knew there was no chance of Ooarai defeating us, so you didn't worry about this match. At first I couldn't understand why, but then I remembered last night, when you asked me to bring you a recording of the other semi-finals. That's when everything made sense!" By this point Orange Pekoe had stood up once more, seemingly taking great enjoyment in her deliberation and in the attention of her audience. "Ever since Miss Nishizumi defeated Anzio, you haven't been preparing to face her, because you knew she couldn't win. But you weren't interested in whether she could win either, you were just interested in what she could do. Because if Maho Nishizumi can do the impossible, then it stands to reason that Miho Nishizumi can do the same. You want this match to go on for as long as possible, because every moment this match drags on is another moment that you can further your understanding of what the Nishizumis can do. It's all a big experiment, right?"
Darjeeling's smile narrowed, but after a moment she began to slowly clap as she nodded. "You're so very correct, my dear Pekoe. Excellently deduced."
"Th-thank you, Lady Darjeeling…" Orange Pekoe replied, and gave a light bow to try and hide her blushing cheeks. "It.. it was quite elementary, once I figured it out…"
"And while I certainly hope that Maho Nishizumi shall pose a formidable and honorable challenge to us, I am far more worried about her sister. For it is as you say; if Maho Nishizumi can accomplish the impossible with a ramshackle collection of tanks and a team of beginners, Miho Nishizumi is almost certainly far more dangerous," Darjeeling continued with a worried shake of her head.
"Y-yes… well…" Orange Pekoe said cautiously. "There's… there's just one thing I haven't been able to figure out…"
"And what is that?"
"I still don't understand why you forced Ooarai into this siege… or why you offered her a chance to concede the battle… If you wanted to drag the match out and see as much as possible of what she is capable of, wouldn't it be best to keep the battle going, and let her do as she wanted on the battlefield instead of forcing Ooarai into the town where they can't escape?"
"It would, except that you've overlooked one small detail, Orange Pekoe," Darjeeling said with theatrical smugness. "If I allowed Miss Nishizumi to escape and run wild across the desert, she would make Ooarai disappear in a puff of smoke, and we would only see her again once she has calculated the best way of isolating and defeating the Superb. But once we face Kuromorimine, we won't be facing a Shimada. We shall face the Nishizumi style, with all it's wrath and might thundering towards us like an unstoppable force. To learn what I need to know to defeat Miho Nishizumi, I need for Ooarai to fight like tigers, and it is only when they're trapped in a corner that a tiger is at its most dangerous."
"Oh… I see…" Orange Pekoe said. "But.. what if Miss Nishizumi accepts your offer, and concedes the match?"
"It would be a great shame, it's true," Darjeeling shrugged. "But I believe Maho Nishizumi won't retreat from this fight forever, and I look forward to when she will face me. I suppose it's possible that she comes over here to concede, but considering how blunt she was with me when I first offered it, I highly doubt she will. And even if she does, I will still have succeeded at maintaining our strength for the finals."
"Well, if you ask me, I think you have taken far too great of an interest in Nishizumi," Assam said with a teasing smile, taking another sip of her iced tea.
"Much like you have in our dear friend Rosehip then, no?" Darjeeling retorted, making Assam choke and spit out her tea at the accusation.
"I have not taken an interest in her!" she protested once she had recovered enough to stop coughing. Whether it was her choking that caused her face to grow red, or whether it was embarrassment at Darjeeling's words ringing true, none could say. "She's an inelegant, obstinate, uncivil, arrogant, speed-addled brat, and she is the last girl in the world who I could ever be prevailed upon to take an interest in!"
"Surely there's no need to be that harsh?" Darjeeling asked. "Have you heard this saying? 'Opposites attract'."
"If that's the case, I'll make sure Kay gets a love letter with your signature on it the moment we're done here."
"Hey…" Karina mumbled, her voice low and dejected, "When we get back to the dorm, what do you wanna watch?"
"I don't know…" Yuuki sighed, and took a swig of her canteen. "Something with a happy ending, at least…"
"I don't think I'm in the mood for a happy ending…" Ayumi groaned.
"I guess…" Karina agreed. "So… if you got to pick… where do you want them to transfer you?"
"Well… Saunders is supposed to be nice, right?" Aya wondered out loud.
"I don't think Saunders would be good for us…" Yuuki said.
"Why's that?" Karina asked
"Apparently they only eat hamburgers and fried chicken every day… Just think of the calories…"
"Oh… right…" Ayumi sighed.
"You'd probably be fine though, Ayumi…" Yuuki said in a half-hearted tease. "They'd just go to your chest regardless…"
"Hey!" Ayumi said in annoyance, but didn't protest any further.
"Well, it's not like we're going there anyways…" Karina mumbled.
"Yeah… my parents would never pay for it…" Yuuki agreed
"Mine either…" Ayumi concurred. "I guess we're probably not even going to end up at the same school either, huh?"
"Yeah…" Karina said in a low voice, and the four of them all sighed in unison.
"I'm gonna go check on Azusa…" Aya said and got up from the wall they had been leaning against, wiping her slew across her forehead as she walked over to the M3 Lee. Grabbing a handkerchief from her pocket, she wrapped it around her knuckle and gave the scorching armor of the tank a series of quick knocks. "Azusa… You still in there?"
"Yeah…" Azusa's downcast voice answered from within the tank's hull, and a few seconds later, her equally downcast face appeared as the side hatch opened. "I'm here…"
"Whoah…" Aya recoiled as the heat inside the tank bellowed out through the hatch. "You really should not be in there. Come on, let's go back to the shade and get you some water and snacks."
"No…" Azusa mumbled, and crawled back inside the armored oven of the M3 Lee to continue trying to work on the 75mm's crumpled sponson. "Not until I get this fixed…"
"Azusa…" Aya said worriedly, and looked at Azusa as she started climbing back in the tank. "Come on… there's no way you're going to be able to fix that. There's no way any of us can fix that, especially out in the middle of nowhere. Let the Automotive club fix it back at school instead. Besides, what does it matter if it's broken? It's not like we're going to fight any more with it."
"What?!" Azusa exclaimed, looking at Aya with panic in her eyes. "We surrendered?"
"No, but like…" Aya answered, shrugging, "that's what we're going to do, right? I mean, we all know there's no way we can win this…"
"But… but think about it!" Azusa protested, practically diving out of the tank to make her point. "We can't give up now! We're so close to winning!"
"Uhhh… What?" Aya said, a blank look on her face. "You lost me…"
"Darjeeling! She wanted us to surrender, and Mah-... Commander Nishizumi… didn't take her up on it, right?!"
"Uhh… Yeah…? I… I still don't follow…"
"Then… then that must mean she thinks she's losing!"
"Okay…" Aya said with a small sigh, closing her eyes and clapping her hands together in front of her face. "So, let me get this straight… St. Gloriana, one of the best teams in Japan, who kicked our butts halfway to Hokkaido last time we faced them, has us trapped in a tiny village with their entire team's sights trained on the only way out. Their commander has twice as many tanks as us, every single one of them better than what we have. She came and asked us to concede, and you think that that means she thinks we're winning?"
"Uhm… Well…" Azusa mumbled, fidgeting in place.
"Because if you do, and I say this as your friend, I really need to tell you that you sound completely delusional."
"W-well… I… I mean… she… she wouldn't want us to think we can win, right? Because… if she could beat us, she would want to do that properly, right? She wouldn't want to win a match she could easily win just through us surrendering… So… so if she makes it seem like the smart thing for us to do is concede, then… then that must mean she knows that she can't beat us, right? A-and so that's why she came and talked to Commander Nishizumi… To… to trick us into surrendering…"
Aya simply raised her eyebrows at this, and gave Azusa a curious, inquisitive sort of look. As if she, despite the inherent madness and delusion of her theory, just wanted to try and understand the utter nonsense her friend was rambling on about.
"Fine! Okay!" Azusa snapped back and clenched her fists in annoyance. "When you put it like that it sounds crazy, I know, but I… I…" Her voice died down and her shoulders slumped as she stared blankly down at the ground, mumbling quietly to herself.
"What?" Aya asked, concerned, and took a step towards her friend. "What is it, Azus-"
"I DON'T WANT TO JUST GIVE UP, OKAY?!" Azusa yelled, putting her foot down defiantly.
"Hey…" Aya said calmly and reached out to give Azusa a hug. "It's okay. We did everything we cou-"
"No! It's not okay!" Azusa protested and knocked Aya's hand away, looking up with tears streaming down her cheeks. "And we didn't do everything we could! We haven't done anything close! I haven't done anything close!"
"Azusa…"
"During the practice match! We didn't do a thing! We just panicked and ran away!"
"You're not being fair, Azusa," Aya said cautiously. By this point, the conversation had captured the attention of the other crews, and the rest of the M3 Lee's crew had walked over.
"We were scared, Azusa…" Karina said.
"And complete beginners. All of us," Yuuki argued. "What could we have done?"
"We could have helped!" Azusa said coldly. "But we didn't. We just ran. We've just been dragging the whole team down in every match."
"That's not tru-" Ayumi began, but Azusa cut her off.
"Saunders took us out right away! And Anzio completely hoodwinked us! Now we're fighting St. Gloriana again, and you just want to give up? Even though it means our school is gone?!"
"It's not like we want to give up," Ayumi shrugged and looked away, not being able to look Azusa in the eye. "We just can't fight their tanks. They're way too big…"
"And heavy…" Yuuki added.
"And scary!" Karina joined in.
"I don't care!" Azusa snapped back. "When they come and close our school down, I don't want to stand there and know that I did nothing even though I could have. And if you're not going to help, I'll man the Lee myself!" She turned on a dime and turned to walk brusquely away, but before she didn't get more than a step or two away before a hand grabbed at her wrist and held her in place. As she turned to knock the hand away, she saw Saki looking at her.
"Together…" she said quietly, giving Azusa's wrist a gentle squeeze.
"Saki's right. We do this together, or not at all," Aya said and grabbed hold of Azusa's free hand, smiling at her friend. "Besides, you're going to need someone to fire the 37mm."
Karina, Yuuki, and Ayumi looked back and forth between each other for a few moments, a silent but short-lived debate seemingly playing out until Yuuki shrugged and walked over towards Azusa, putting a hand on her shoulder.
"You're going to need someone to man the radio, too," she smiled.
"And drive it!" Karina cheered as she skipped over.
Ayumi remained in place for a few more seconds, glancing back and forth between her friends and their tank with uncertainty, until finally she simply sighed and bowed her head, before looking up with a smile. "Don't think I'm letting any of you steal my seat," she joked as she walked over, and all six of them embraced each other tightly in one big hug. "Although," Ayumi added once they had all let go, and looked skeptically at the drooping 75mm, still hanging limp and unmoving from its sponson, "We're going to have to fix that before I'll be able to hit anything…"
"Right…" Azusa laughed, glancing back at the M3 Lee before looking back to her friends. "Thanks guys."
"Well, we can't let you have all the fun, can we?" Aya said with a smile. "We're in this together. Womb to tomb."
"Yeah!" Karina cheered. "One for all!"
"All for one!" they all responded, throwing their fists in the air.
"You'll have us too!" Noriko said and stood up from where she and the rest of the Volleyball team had been sitting.
"Yeah…" Taeko added, rising to her feet and standing beside Noriko. "We joined the Sensha-Do team so we could get our Volleyball club back."
"And we're not giving up now!" Shinobu said with a confident smile, as her and Akebi joined their teammates.
"Finally, someone is showing some fighting spirit," Momo muttered, crossing her arms and glaring over her shoulder towards the alleyway where Maho was keeping to herself.
Yuzu didn't say anything and instead only looked over at Anzu with worry in her eyes, but once Anzu shrugged, a small smile spread on her lips as relief seemed to overcome anxiety.
"So…" Oryou said calmly, nodding gently with her eyes closed.
"Certain defeat…" Saemonza added.
"Small chance of success…" Caesar continued.
Erwin looked at her three companions where the four of them sat lined up against the side of the StuG, sharing glances with each of her crewmates until, finally, she simply shrugged and rose to her feet. "Well then," she said in a casual, matter of fact-sort of way, as her friends rose with her. "What are we waiting for?"
"Hey!" Sodoko called out in protest, pointing an accusatory finger wildly back and forth between Noriko, Azusa, Erwin, and Momo. "None of you are the commander! And the commander is the one who decides, so stop breaking the rules! Tell them, Gomoyo!"
"Uhm…" Gomoyo looked anxiously between Sodoko and the other tank commanders. "I… I think…"
"A-... Azusa's right, though…" Pazomi said, putting a hand on Gomoyo's shoulder. "If… if the school shuts down… then…"
"Then.. there's not going to be any halls for us to monitor anymore…" Gomoyo continued.
"No uniforms to check…"
"No detention slips to hand out…"
"B-but… but…" Sodoko stammered, looking with dawning horror at her two crewmates. "Then… then what about… What about u-..." Her voice did down and she shook her head, stomping her foot and trying once more with renewed determination. "What about the rules?! Without rules there's not going to be a school either! It'll just be… it'll be… it'll just be chaos…" she added with a mumble, her head bowing.
"Maybe…" Pazomi said and walked over to Sodoko. "Maybe sometimes…"
"Rules are meant to be broken?" Gomoyo continued, taking place on the other side of Sodoko as her and Pazomi each took one of Sodoko's hands.
"That's right!" Saori said as she, Yukari, and Hana walked over to the small commotion.
"But…" Sodoko said meekly, looking up with tears in the corner of her eyes. "But what about…"
"No buts!" Saori said definitively, putting her hands on her hips. "'The rules' also say we can't beat a school like St. Gloriana. But we're gonna rewrite the rules!"
"Yeah!" Yukari cheered, throwing her hand in the air. "We can do this!"
"Did you manage to fix the Phoenix' turret?" Yuzu asked.
"Yes," Hana said calmly and nodded. "We do not know for how long it will hold out, but as long as we do not take another hit too close to the turret ring, the Phoenix should be able to fight at full capacity."
"Then…" Azusa said, looking around the gathering and trying her best not to let the panic and fear she was keeping contained within escape and reach her voice, "Then we just need Commander Nishizumi… Right?"
"I'll go fetch her!" Noriko said and began to sprint away towards the alleyway.
"No point," Mako mumbled as she walked over. "She's not there," she added, and instead pointed lazily past the Phoenix, out into the open desert, where a lone figure was walking towards St. Gloriana's lines.
"Maho!"
"Wait up!"
"Slow down!"
"Leave me alone!" Maho yelled over her shoulder as she continued across the sand without stopping. "Go back to the village!"
"Maho, please, slow down!" Saori begged as she got closer. "We want to help!"
"You can help by leaving me alone."
"Maho…" Yukari said uncertainly as she walked alongside Maho. "Please… please just stop."
"We just want to talk," Saori said.
As Maho showed no signs of slowing down, Yukari looked to Saori before bursting into a short sprint and put herself right in Maho's path.
"Maho…" she said, her voice full of anxiety and regret. "I… I don't want to do this…"
"Get out of my way, Yukari," Maho growled, but the brunette ignored the order.
"I… I can't…" she said, and put her feet in position to better be able to hold Maho back.
It proved little use however, as once Maho reached Yukari, she swiftly and without stopping swiped a foot behind Yukari's leg and pushed hard against her shoulder, sending her tumbling into the sand. She continued on her path without another word, but Yukari managed to grab a hold of her ankle and held her in place.
"Let. Me. Go, Yukari," Maho said bitterly.
"No…" Yukari said. "I… I don't want to."
"Maho," Hana said calmly as she reached the others. Mako was a few steps behind, on account of her having leisurely walked into the desert instead of running like the others. "Please, what is it that you are planning to do?"
"What do you think?" Maho muttered, and shook her foot free from Yukari's grip. "I'm going to concede the match."
"What?!" Yukari said in astonishment as she rose to her feet. She tried her best to keep within range to grab Maho should she try to walk away again, but for the moment the four of them remained in place.
"You… you can't!" Saori protested. "Everyones' really fired up to fight again!"
"They shouldn't be," Maho said in a low voice. "We can't win this."
"Sure we can!" Yukari said. "We… we've overcome worse odds than this!"
"If you really think that, then you're not even half the Sensha-Do fan you say you are," Maho muttered.
"Look, we can win this," Saori reiterated. "We've fixed the Phoenix, everyone's ready to fight, and as long as we all work together, we can win! All we need is to land a single shot, right?"
"And you think Darjeeling's just going to let the Churchill drive in front of our sights like its a shooting range?" Maho scoffed. "We can't win. End of story." She turned to continue towards St. Gloriana's lines, but Saori and yukari both grabbed at Maho's wrists.
"Yes, we can!" Yukari said.
"Why won't you let us help, Maho?!" Saori asked. "You don't need to surrender. As long as we have each other and you let us help, then we're gonna win. We're your friends after-"
"THAT'S EXACTLY WHY!" Maho roared and pulled free from both Yukari and Saori's grip, looking at the four with burning rage and bone-chilling fear mixing in her eyes. "I'm not going to risk my friends getting hurt ever again! And I don't care what the rest of the team thinks! We can't win, and I'm not going to get people hurt just to prove it!" Tears were beginning to form in Maho's eyes, blending into the camouflage of sweat as they started rolling down her cheeks. "I'm not going to go through this again!"
"Go… go through what…?" Hana asked, reaching out a hand towards Maho's shoulder but she recoiled.
"I'm not going to let anyone else get hurt because of my arrogance and ego ever again! I could have gone to help sooner last year, but I didn't! I could have saved her, and I didn't, so now I'll never see her again! I was too preoccupied with trying to win some stupid flag and beat a lousy record! I could have stayed at Kuromorimine, but I didn't! I could have stayed there and helped them, I could have protected them… But I didn't. I just ran away from everything and thought I was better than that! I could have taken the burden myself, and protected her, but I didn't! I just deluded myself into thinking that I was good enough to make her immune! So no! I'm not going to risk anyone else ever getting hurt because of my stupid mistakes and my lousy arrogance ever again, and especially over something stupid like a school! Why should I care about that?! Why should any of you?! It's just a stupid building on a lousy ship! There's dozens like it!"
"Not like Ooarai…" Saori said in a low voice.
"Yeah…" Yukari agreed. "If… if it wasn't for Ooarai… I wouldn't have met any of you guys… I'd still just be some tank otaku weirdo who couldn't talk to anyone and didn't have any friends, at least not that I didn't glue together and paint myself…"
"I agree," Hana said. "If not for Ooarai, I would never have gotten to experience how exhilarating Sensha-Do can be, and how stimulating it is to fire a cannon. I would still have been quietly arranging flowers and feeling like I was missing something deep inside…"
"If Ooarai closes, I'm never getting my extra units," Mako mumbled. "And I'm never getting all those late arrivals overtur-OW!" She took a step away and rubbed her arm where Saori had jammed her elbow into it. "I'm just being honest, but fine… I guess I'm glad I got to drive a tank… And… I want to keep doing it too… With you guys…"
"I feel the same way," Saori said with a reassuring nod. "I'm really glad I started doing Sensha-Do too, and I really hope we manage to win, but what I'm the happiest for is getting to know all of you, and to spend so much time with you. If Ooarai shuts down, we're all going to end up separated, and I don't want that. I want to keep doing Sensha-Do, with my friends, at my school. And besides," she added, and smiled at Maho, "we're your friends. It's not up to you to decide when and where and how we get to put ourselves at risk. It's our choice to stand beside you, and kick those British cosplayers all the way back to Yokohama. That's what being friends means! So come on! Let's go back and figure out how we're going to win this!"
Maho stood silently for seconds, or maybe even a minute. She couldn't tell. She looked back and forth between Yukari, Hana, Mako, and Saori in silence. Her friends. She watched them smile caringly at her and gently opening their arms, gesturing for her to join them in a hug, but she felt frozen in place, as if the scorching desert sands had turned to freezing winter ice around her feet as her darting looks slowly changed into a soft, reluctant shaking of her head.
"No…" she whispered. "I can't…"
With that, she turned and continued on her way, rubbing her sleeve ferociously across her face to try and get rid of the tears.
Next time on Dein Weg ist Mein Weg: Maho makes a choice that will decide everything, and her world is turned on its head...
Author's Notes:
Hello again.
I know I have once again ended this chapter on a cliffhanger, and I do apologize for it. On the other hand, this is turning out to be the longest battle of the series yet, already beating out the Anzio vs Ooarai-match with almost 12000 words worth of content. I promise that next time we see each other this battle will reach its end, one way or another.
As for the tone and lack of real action this chapter; I always felt that the siege of Ooarai's forces during their match against Pravda in the anime went by surprisingly quickly. Of course, this is because a 20-minute episode of TV needs to make certain sacrifices, but I always felt like the siege needed to be a bit more drawn out and a bit more uncertain in how it would go, and so that's what I have tried to create here. The other key difference in this chapter versus canon is obviously the way Ooarai and particularly Maho handles the situation. In canon, Miho's optimism and Boko-fuelled belief that one can and should always get back on their feet obviously informs her actions and is the catalyst for Ooarai's return to the fight, but Maho doesn't have that. She has suffered a lot more than Miho has, and in many ways believes herself responsible for all of it, and so her desire to fight is far, far more difficult to reawaken here. We can only wait and see what shall happen next time, and to what extent Darjeeling's devious plans come to fruition.
Which neatly brings us onto Darjeeling. In the Pravda vs Ooarai match, Katyusha is obviously very proud and heavily fuelled by her ego, which is why she happily toys around with Miho and Ooarai. But Darjeeling has never struck me as a character who would do that, and so I needed to figure out a reason as to why she would "go easy" on Ooarai, and the answer ended up being quite simple. I tried my best to gently hint at it during the past few chapters, but yes; she knows Maho can do a fair deal of Nishizumi-bullshit, she has seen Miho do some Nishizumi bullshit, and so facing Maho seems like the perfect opportunity to experiment and conduct research into exactly what the Nishizumis are capable in a more-or-less risk-free environment. Surely there is no risk of anything going wrong by prolonging the experiment to get more data, right?
We also get some, to me at least nice character work for Anzu and Azusa, which is always fun to write, and we get a little cameo of the so-called "Rosebush", Rosehip's crew in the excellent fanfic Speedster and the Spymaster: An Unlikely Love Story by Rosy the PIAT-teer (who also helped me out a bit with this chapter, so thanks for that), so if you want more Assam and Rosehip in your diet, you know where to look.
As always, I thank you all heartily for reading and, if you like this chapter, please do let me know via a review or comment. It might not seem like much, but hearing what you guys think of my work makes it infinitely easier to keep writing, and I always love to hear your thoughts, positive and negative alike.
I hope I can get another chapter written and published sometime during March, but with the world like it is, Russia making threats against Finland and my native Sweden, and everything in general being really scary and uncertain at the moment, I can make no promises.
All I ask is that you stay safe and try your best to be excellent to one another, and I shall see you soon again.
Скоро побачусь знову
/Rhino