The Ark Royal was certainly larger than the Zuikaku, especially when you count how many right turns you have to make to get to the top.
"Uurgh, why are we taking the long way up, again?" Saori grumbled, pouting in her radio operator's seat as Mako made the 18th consecutive right turn up the decks.
"Because the car elevator up is broken," Hana told her, as she worked to re-adjust the gun sight, which took a hit during the previous match.
"And we didn't bring enough money to park the tanks in the garage," Yukari said, chuckling lightly.
As the three of them continued on their conversation, while Mako made the 20th right, Miho sat back, working quickly on her computer.
As much as Tony Prince was her partner, she wanted to make sure everything ran as legitimately as possible. Having the money coming in but getting your door broken down by the police due to running an unlicensed business would not be a good thing to go over with her Mother or Grandmother.
As such, Miho began opening government websites to try and find out where she can apply for a business license.
While Miho began opening up the Yokohama City website, a low-tone ping alerted her to a text message from Tony. She specifically changed it so that he'd have a different alert tone of text from her friends or her family.
She pulled out her phone, and began to scroll to Tony's text.
[UsedToRunThe80s] Hey Miho, I'm finalizing the work for the venue now. Your Grandma put up half of the cost, and cut the cost by about 15%. Doing the math, we're left with more than enough to completely overhaul this place. I'm also calling over a few friends I made in the states, they'll help set up the club. Don't worry, they're nice guys. Just…don't ask them what they did for a living and we're clean.
Miho sighed, and laid back in her seat as the tank slowly continued its climb up. There was no way out of this now, she already had signed her name on that dotted line, but it was always a constant of being a commander to keep on asking if this is the best course of action.
Within the span of three days, she had met a wanted fugitive from the United States, reunited with her grandmother, nearly agreed to sell off her body for money, and decided in a split second to open a nightclub. On land no less. Was it the right action?
But as Miho's gaze wandered around the tank, it fell on each of her crew.
Saori, ever so pouting and complaining at this long drive.
Yukari, who was giggling at Saori's little rant.
Hana, who simply smiled at the event as she tested out the newly fixed optics.
Mako, who was simply in her own world listening to music as she kept her hands on the drivers sticks.
They all looked so happy playing this game, hanging out and enjoying one another's company. If she was forced to, if there was no other option, she'd have gone down on her knees and started sucking.
But that was an option in the past. Now, she had money in the bank, enough to keep them running through the summer semester. Now, she has her grandmother back. Now, she had a way to save her beloved team and keep herself clean at the same time.
It may have not been the correct course, but it was the one she was on.
"...xcuse me, excuse me!"
"A-ah!" She seemed to have dozed off. Standing up and popping her head out of the cupola, she found Nilgiri working one of the toll booths today.
"Ah, Nilgiri," Miho said, "How are you today?"
"M-much the same," Nilgiri gave a smile, although Miho noted that it looked slightly weak and strained, "Purpose of your v-VISIT?!"
"Eh?!" Miho asked, as Nilgiri's voice suddenly squeaked, and she clenched on her clipboard which squeezing her eyes. Miho didn't notice it, but behind the tollbooth Nilgiri's legs were twisted tightly and shaking, "Nilgiri-san, are you alright?"
"I-I'm…fine, hehe," Nilgiri chuckled away, playing it off. "I need to go to the b-b-bath…room, the bathroom!"
"Oooookkkkaayyyy," Miho chuckled nervously, "We'll try not to keep you long. We're visiting Darjeeling-san, she's invited us for tea."
"Le-let me ch-check-Oh!" Nilgiri involuntarily let out a small moan, as she tightened her legs even more.
"Are you sure you're okay, Nilgiri-san?" Miho tilted her head in worry, "We can come back another ti-"
"No! No, no! I'm…fine," Nilgiri said, taking deep, slow breaths to calm herself, "I'm fine. You're cleared to enter, Darjeeling-senpai is waiting for you at the Botanical Gardens."
"Thanks Nilgiri-san!" Miho thanked her, and smiled, before going into her cupola, "Did you hear her, Maho-san? Botanical Gardens, please."
Ankou's engines rumbled and spun to life, and the tank began to move forward. "Thank you again, Nilgiri-san!"
"M-my pleasure, Miho-san!" Nilgiri got out, as Miho's tank left the booth.
"Oh, I've always wanted to see the Botanical Gardens," Saori gushed. "You know, they say that it's so beautiful there than if someone proposed there, it would be too perfect to say no."
"Why are you always thinking about marriage, Saori?" Hana chuckled, which Saori met with a pout.
"A girl can dream," she mumbled, as they drove around the corner. However, just as the end of Ankou rounded around the bend, they heard a cry come from the booth.
"Was that Nilgiri?" Miho asked. Mako, however, didn't hear the supposed noise, and simply continued driving.
The Ark Royal's Sapphire Botanical Gardens were the best in the country, bar none.
Designed by Lady Ceylon's predecessor, Lady Rosehip, for the Golden Jubilee of St. Gloriana Girls Academy, it boasts a surface area nearly the size of the University of Oxford's Botanic Gardens, with roughly the same amount of plant life within its premises. Situated right behind the school, it was a perfect circle surrounded by a dense pine forest, keeping it encircled and hidden from plain view year round.
While known to the public, only three-quarters of the Garden's area was accessible to them. The last ¼ was cordoned off, meant only for the events of the school specifically. More often than not, this included dances, simple social gatherings, club meetings, and the like.
Even more specific within these walls was the Flower Field, a small area barely the size of a school gym, which was barred from entry for anyone that was not of, or invited by, the school's exclusive Tea Garden student society.
This group, with little exception, was regarded as the best girls that the school ever fielded. Adorned with their distinctive tea names and custom-tailored dark-blue blazers, its members were some of the most popular and well-respected members of the school. Common members include the Valedictorian of the graduating year, club leaders, team captains, and no shortage of the most gifted and proper students within the Academy.
Of course, there was always a more prominent group that made the majority of the team. That group, besides the given kids of alumni Tea Garden Members, were the ladies of the St. Gloriana Sensha-Do team. While, yes, Sensha-Do teams choose their newcomers based off of their skill in showcase matches, most schools also applied a secondary test, one designed solely for their school, to see if the potential team members would mesh well with the theme their school was known for.
Saunders had the All-American Cook-Off, Pravda had the Comrade Katyusha Welcoming Camp in 'Siberia', Kuromorimine had the CREEP (Critical & Rapid Efficiency Evaluation Program), ChiHaTan had Hiroshima, and St. Gloriana…well St. Gloriana had none.
Knowing full well that if they did offer a sort of elegancy test for potential members to join their ranks, it would be very easy to just fake your way through it, St. Gloriana made away with a secondary test, instead employing a branch of MI6 to watch and rank the girls in the Youth League all the way back to when they first began playing in order to look for girls who were naturally polite, respectful, elegant, and the like. This way, they would have little hardship with making sure the girls they accepted really were as they seemed on both the inside and outside.
This method of cherry picking the best girls that represented St. Gloriana often meant that the girls that made up the Sensha-Do team were practically a shoe-in for the needed requirements to be admitted into the Tea Garden, with the annual acceptance group being made of nearly 70% Sensha-Do girls on average.
Of course, it also helped that admittance into the Tea Garden was based on a membership acceptance vote, massively skewing it in favor of the Sensha-Do team members and their friends, but that was neither here nor there. What one needed to know is that the majority of the Tea Garden was made up of Sensha-Do members.
This often meant that the Flower Field was used for the more…popular methods of fundraising by the team. That was why, as Rukuriri and Rosehip were busying themselves with setting up the tea party in the lower floor of the Flower Fields three-story pagoda tower, Darjeeling was upstairs once again briefing Assam and Pekoe on their true job.
"I feel really bad for the Oarai girls," Pekoe muttered, as Darjeeling finished her summary.
"What can you do?" Assam asked, once more looking at the vibrator given to her, "The cost to run any Sensha-Do team is so astronomically absurd that even if every Yen, Dollar, Euro, and Pound flowing into the Student Council's coffers were transferred to us solely, we would still be in debt by 20% annually."
"It doesn't help that all of the major suppliers of Sensha-Do parts and tanks always overcharge us for them," Darjeeling moaned, annoyed, "But it's not like anyone else is bothering to sell them. At least, not without charging us even more for the transportation costs or the trade-off that the products are of substandard quality."
*Low-ping*
"...That was Nilgiri," Assam reported, putting away her secondary phone, "The Oarai girls are on their way to our location now."
"Ahhh, it can't be helped, I supposed," Darjeeling muttered, "Have Rosehip and Rukuriri make sure that the camera's are in position, then assume your places. Our benefactors are paying us double our rate for this event, so we must give them a show worthy of our title as students of St. Gloriana."
"For some reason, that doesn't sound like a nice thing today," Pekoe said, as she began her preparation.
"Uwwaah! The Gardens look so beautiful!" Miho giggled in glee, as they entered the center of the Botanical Gardens. They were said to have been the best in Japan, and one of the best in the world. Inspired by the Oxford Botanic Gardens in the United Kingdom, Miho could say that was a well-earned title, considering the garden held everything its British counterpart had with even more from its Japanese roots.
They passed under an archway shaped from a sakura tree and a sycamore tree, a small framed blue gem that was the namesake of the Gardens hanging in between them. The roads underneath them changed from paved asphalt to gravel. The light of the noon sun shone right enough that it bent through the gaps in the leaves and left a nice haze over the area. She could see rows and rows of flowers, set up in tiered flower beds with wooden walkways between them. British-style lamp-posts dotted the beds at regular intervals.
As they crossed over a neatly designed steel bridge painted to look like a classical Japanese arch bridge, they stopped to admire the small lake in the center of the garden, which housed a well-made, as well as functioning, ecosystem carefully managed by the St. Gloriana Agricultural Club.
Taking a moment to stop the tank and take some pictures, they saw a girl in a dark blue fishermans overall wading into the pond slowly. Miho recognized her as Lemongrass, President of the St. Gloriana Agricultural Club and its only member present in the Tea Garden.
"Lemongrass-sama," Hana called out, bowing slightly and pulling Lemongrass's attention to her.
"Ah, Hana and friends," Lemongrass answered, waving. "May I have a second? I need to check this well of tadpoles."
Nodding and giving her space, Lemongrass slowly trudged through the water, sinking deeper and eventually settling at midway on her chest. Peering through the very clean water, she spotted the well which housed a small amount of tadpoles, no more than a hundred left in it.
"Hmm, seems to be doing well," Lemongrass confirmed, "There's enough tadpoles here to keep the frog population at a steady pace, though I may have to call Kemi and tell her to stop production of more tadpoles lest they overpopulate."
"Aren't most tadpoles eaten before they mature?" Hana asked.
"Yes, but we've had a streak of unusually large amounts of surviving tadpoles this year. Yearly survival rates are around 20% higher than they are supposed to be. We have to cut off the flow until we get to a stable population."
"Have you considered a lack of natural predators?" Mako lazily asked, flicking through one of Saori's magazines while sitting in the tank, "Small fish usually eat the tadpoles, so do other birds and bugs."
"Fair point," Lemongrass mused, rubbing her chin, "The school hosted a fair the other month, and we gave off a good portion of our minnow population as prizes at the booths we ran. I'll call up Xiu and ask her to get some more fish to put back into the pond. Though we're going to have to check the levels of fishing and make sure they themselves can be checked by what animals we have in the pond."
"Ah, running a functioning ecosystem must be hard, huh," Miho mused.
Lemongrass nodded, "It's a constant job, since we don't have the luxury to simply let nature sort itself out. Everything we put into the pond and everything that's in it has to be properly accounted for and carefully managed so it doesn't destroy the rest of itself."
"But for now, everything seems to be in working order," she waded out the pond and took off the suit, "So, welcome to the Botanical Gardens, girls." She bowed to the team, who returned the gesture, "What brings you to our humble abode?"
"We've been invited to a tea party by Darjeeling-sama," Yukari told her. "Unfortunately, we might be in the wrong spot."
"Darjeeling-sama?" Lemongrass asked, wiping her brow, "You're not far. If she invited you, she's probably in the Flower Field, that way," Lemongrass pointed to a simple dirt road off the main path and around the pond which leads to a small, walled-off section of the gardens. With only a simple steel gate blocking access, a sign hanging on it neatly pointing out its name and restrictions.
"Thank you, Lemongrass-sama," Saori said.
"My pleasure girls," she waved them off, before gazing back at the gate. "It's a bit strange though…"
"How so?" Saori asked.
"Supposedly there has been a large influx of visitors to the Flower Field the past few months," Lemongrass mentioned, "As in, more than average. The Flower Field is only accessible by members of the Tea Garden and those we invite, yet we've recorded excess of 15% more visitors than there are members. The Council, wary of our exclusivity reputation, has begun an investigation into the increased numbers, but have come up with nothing so far."
"And you haven't noticed anything out of place?" Miho asked.
Lemongrass shrugged, "Not really. I'm the only member of my club in the group, so our share of knowledge is minimal. Usually all of those affairs are delegated to GI6 and Assam-senpai."
"I see," Miho mused, "Well, we've kept Darjeeling-sama waiting enough. We better go meet her."
"I hope you girls visit again soon," Lemongrass waved to them, as they climbed in the tank and drove down the marked path. Reaching the entrance, Yukari opened her side-hatch to see an intercom standing on the side of the entrance. She hit the button, and the intercom buzzed.
"Ah…ah…" came a small voice from the intercom.
"Cranberry-san?" Yukari asked, recognising the voice from the ChiHaTan-Oarai friendly match.
"Ah! Y-Yukari!" Cranberry sounded shocked, and paused for a moment. "Darjeeling is waiting for you girls. He-ere, I'll open the ga-OMP!"
Before Yukari could ask what was happening, the intercom shut off, and the gates swung open.
"What was that?" Miho asked.
"I dunno, the intercom cut off before I could ask."
"Hmm, we'll tell Darjeeling-san. Mako, take us inside please?"
With a soft grumble, the tank trudged forward into the area. They rolled underneath the tree canopy, before emerging out on the other side. Here, the Flower Field certainly lived to its name. All around, in semi-circular shapes, were flowers arranged in layering heights, acting as little walls for quaint picnic tables and meeting places. Around them, girls from all years, clubs, ages, and otherwise congregated and conversed about their daily lives and happenings, serving tea or munching on sandwiches.
The black, rough, large, oily, and disturbing figure of a tank did not look like it fit in it, and by the looks of a Wind Orchestra playing in the center pavilion, did not sound like it did as well. All conversations and activities halted as the girl's attention was fixated on the newcomers.
"U-um…" Miho muttered, as she slowly poked her head out of the top hatch. "We're sorry…where is Darjeeling-sama?"
One of the Orchestra members, a flute player, stood up and pointed towards a pagoda tower outside the Field, beyond the large meter and a half tall hedge rows that made up the perimeter. She then pointed behind them to a directions sign overhanging the entrance, Pagoda Tower etched onto it and pointing to the right.
"Oh…my apologies," Miho said, quickly shutting the hatch close and ordering Mako to put the tank in reverse. Slowly, and with great caution, the steel hull backed its way out, with all of the girls still watching them, before cutting across and heading left down a separate path towards the Tower.
"My, that was embarrassing," Hana giggled, smiling.
"We looked so weird rolling in with the tank," Saori pouted and muttered, "I bet you they thought we were some trespassers or thugs."
"No they wouldn't," Mako said, as she continued to drive, "They're St. Gloriana. We'd have been more 'interlopers' and 'ruffians'."
…
"Was that a joke, Mako?" Yukari asked.
"Yes." She said.
"Mako has a sense of humor, it is truly the end of times," Miho chuckled.
"I've had a sense of humor, I just don't show it often," Mako said, smiling softly as they continued down the road.