Ivana's apartment was small. Very small. All that was in the tiny room was a small camping hammock, a small foldable desk, and a candle. No closet, no bed, not even a chair for her to sit on. Even by Tatra's standards, her apartment was practically a broom closet. Well, it was a broom closet. She'd once lived in an actual apartment. Not a particularly big one, but it had all the amenities of a typical Tatra apartment. But not now. Not after the incident two years ago.

After the incident, she'd been cast away. She'd barely been able to afford her apartment and frequently had to take out loans from the school's bank, claiming it was for "regular servicing of the Ressha-do team's equipment". Of course, the Ressha-do team no longer existed, so that was obviously no longer a viable option. But she had more important issues to worry about.

Like getting caught by the bank. The school's financial problems in the last year had given Ivana some breathing space, as the bank was busy pursuing larger and more important debts. But she knew that it'd only last for so long. Sooner rather than later, the bank would be on her trail, and she'd be toast.

So she started saving up. She relocated to a smaller apartment. She started taking up odd jobs; sweeping roads, delivering newspapers, even once being a professional mourner for a very old, and apparently lonely, woman. Of course, she'd earned little more than spare change for these efforts. She increasingly became more desperate as the days turned into weeks, and the weeks turned into months, and eventually, months turned into a year. She had to move into an even smaller apartment, although "apartment" would be a generous way to put it. She sold nearly everything she had.

But, alas, bad turned to worse. Because while she was busy trying to make whatever scraps she could, she completely neglected her studies. Once her second-year final exam came, she hopelessly flunked. Which means, she would have to effectively repeat her second year. A death sentence for her, who had hoped to graduate as early as possible and find a job in the city. And, combined with having more debt as a result of an extra year of tuition, she was at rock bottom.

So when the hopeless, depressed and exhausted Ivana saw the poster for Ressha-do, she couldn't help but chuckle. She saw the irony of it all. Because she knew what had to be done. As much as she absolutely despised Ressha-do and would rather eat a whole packet of silica gel before ever considering going back to that dodgasted sport ever again, she knew that if Tatra won this year's National Competition, a quarter of the massive prize money would be distributed among the team members. She knew that if Tatra won, all her problems would be solved. I could not live with my own failure. Where did that bring me? Back to Ressha-do.

After school that day, Ivana trekked towards the train depot. She'd been on this route a thousand times, so she knew exactly where to go. So she walked.

And walked.

And walked.

And stopped.

Well, as it turns out, if one is constantly tired from being at school nine hours a day, and they keep working for another seven hours, sometimes without eating or resting for a single minute, every single day, for nearly two years, they tend to overwork and burn themselves out. So Ivana may have walked on this route a thousand times, but her frail, exhausted body was in no position to walk even across the hall, much less three kilometres across a large school-ship.

After catching her breath in the shade of a large chestnut tree, she continued upon her arduous long march. Once she finally arrived, she saw several girls hanging about in the depot. So this must be the team, she thought.

"So, is this everyone? Great, let's get onto business!" said a familiar voice. Svetlana's grown, huh?

"Not everyone," she called out from outside.

The entire group turned around, looked at her, and fell completely silent. They all knew who she was. The second and first-year girls knew her as the girl who'd lost Tatra the Twenty-Second National Ressha-do Championship. The third-year girls, well, knew her as the same. They had an unspoken agreement to avoid any contact with Ivana since the shutdown of the Ressha-do team.

But, for all it was worth, Svetlana in particular, did pity Ivana. She never knew what exactly Ivana was struggling with, nor why she has had to adopt such a frugal lifestyle in the last two years. But she was aware of Ivana's struggles over the last year, and was particularly alarmed when she learned about Ivana's final exam results. She never blamed Ivana for causing the shutdown of the Ressha-do team. But pity was the end of the matter. She never spoke up, never helped Ivana. Never even talking to her, besides one instance where she greeted Ivana in the hallway, a year ago.

After an immensely awkward silence involving multiple blank stares into the abyss and checks of watches, Svetlana finally spoke up.

"Uhm, hey, Ivana! How goes?"

"Fine, thank you," Ivana mumbled.

"So, you'd like to rejoin the team? Great!" Being the Student Council president, Svetlana was no stranger to having to feign excitement and enthusiasm. "Oh, but just one thing, Jan, you're okay with this arrangement, right?"

Janosik had been completely silent since Ivana had arrived. "Svetlana, may we speak privately about this, for just a moment? Please, do excuse us, we'll be just a moment."

Janosik and Svetlana stepped outside.

"So, what's up?" Svetlana asked.

"I'm not exactly feeling very comfortable about this," Janosik whispered.

"Look, I get it. You and her, and all of us, really, have history," Svetlana said. "But we have eleven crew members. If someone wants to join, I really can't justify rejecting her, especially when she's one of the most experienced people out there."

"Experienced at what? Missing?" Janosik said, clearly exasperated.

"Alright look. Give her a chance. Just one match, alright? After that, you can decide," Svetlana proposed.

Janosik sighed. "Fine."

Janosik and Svetlana came back to the train depot.

"Good news, Ivana! You're in!" Svetlana enthusiastically declared.

The news was met with near-total silence.

"Anyways, time to finally get onto business! So there's some great news! I've found ourselves a Ressha-do coach! Most of you should get along with her with no problem," Svetlana continued. "Well, she'll come at any moment now…"

A car pulled over. A very familiar figure emerged. Indeed, it was no other than Miroslava Caputova herself.

"Hey, guys! Jan, nice to see you again! You've grown quite a bit!"

"Miro?!" Janosik was almost bubbling over with joy. This is a rather big deal because Janosik never bubbled over with joy.

"Flesh and blood! Glad to see that you're the captain now! And the new team members of the team, as well, pleasure to meet you! We're gonna have loads of fun, I'm guaranteeing you," Miroslava's tone changed significantly when she saw the last member of the team. "Oh, and Ivana, of course."

"I can't thank you enough for agreeing to coach this team, by the way. I hope it doesn't interfere with whatever you're doing now so much," Svetlana said.

"Oh, no worries! I'm taking a gap year this year. Thank you for giving me the opportunity!"

Miroslava's cheery mood spread like wildfire across the team. Even Milada, Cecilia, and Marta, who have still been completely spent by the run, appeared a little more radiant and excited than before.

"Anyways, what have we got here-" Miroslava was cut short by her shock at seeing the Hurban. "Oh, dear. I've forgotten how sorry a state we've put the Hurban in when we left. No worries, we can fix it up like new! If the wheels are still attached to those rails, then we are still set! Anyways, I and Svetlana have some business to attend to. I'll see you tomorrow for the first practice! Janosik here can oversee repairing the train. See ya then!"

Before long, they were already speeding off.

"Hey, Janosik, Marta here is something of an engineer herself. She could help with the repair of the locomotive." Dominika turned to Marta. "Right, Marta?"

"Uh-huh. I guess," Marta mumbled.

"Yeah, she can help with repairing the locomotive," Janosik started barking orders. "As for the rest of you, let's put you all to work on repainting the railcars, removing the rust, and cleaning the interior. Come on, chop-chop!"

So they did. Dominika, Milada, Ivana, and two of the first-year girls, Anastasia and Helena, got to work removing the rust and repainting the train. The other first-year girls, Nikola, Zdenka, Eva, and Monika, climbed inside and started cleaning the positively filthy interior. They removed dead cockroaches and other insects scattered on the floor, along with spent shell casings and machine-gun rounds.

Meanwhile, Janosik and Marta replaced the generator, patched a hole in the water compartment, and upgraded the boiler. They also checked every valve, every rod, every cable, and every component of the exhaust system. As it turned out, Marta was a fine engineer, far superior to Janosik. Janosik simply had to tell Marta what to do, and Marta would do it without any real hesitation. Of course, Marta never talked or even acknowledged her presence either, but that was fine with her, as long as the work was done at the end of the day.

However, the same efficiency was not seen in the other girls. They were completely inexperienced and had no clue how to restore the train into working condition. The rust was removed sloppily and the paint applied haphazardly. Only Ivana, who had been working alone without a word to anyone else since she'd arrived, repainted one of the tank cars to utter perfection. Indeed, it had looked better than it had two years ago, much less compared to what it was before. While in the interior of the train, many of the first-year girls struggled with the weight of the spent shell casings or were scared of touching the insects or were incessantly complaining about the smell and the heat. Add constant bickering and arguing to that, it made progress nearly stagnant.

About two hours later, Janosik and Marta had finished repairing and checking every component of the locomotive. It was in near-perfect order. Once they had finished, Janosik checked on the other girls' progress. What she saw was a disorganised mess that had the collective orderliness of a fourth-grade group project.

Of course, fourth-grade group projects only end one way; one person steps in, does all the work, while everyone else sits and watches.

So Janosik decided to just step in and be that person. She could've been angry, if only she had not been so exhausted. She simply thanked the team and told them that they could go home.

"But, we're not done yet!" Dominika said.

Janosik sighed. "You've done enough for today. Now go, and get a good night's rest."

"Uh, all right then! Goodnight, Commander Masaryk!"

The girls trickled out of the depot one by one. Except one. She was still there.

"I know why you kicked them out," Ivana said. "I'm not an idiot."

"Go home, Ivana," Janosik grumbled.

"If you wish for me to go home, I will," Ivana calmly said. "But if you think that you could just do everything yourself and everyone else can go twiddle their thumbs down in Krivan Park, you're wrong and you know it."

And then she left, without saying another word.

She has no idea what she's talking about.

But of course, Ivana was right, and Janosik knew it. While she spent the next five hours doing what she could've trusted the girls to figure out themselves, Ivana's words stuck like glue onto her mind.

A few hours later, she was done. She'd repainted every single train car, removed every piece of rust, discarded every spent shell, every machine gun cartridge, every insect, even dusted the interior of every railcar. Of course, she couldn't forget her customary checks. She fired off a blank from every gun to make sure that there were no problems with them. She checked the turret drives and the machine guns (although she knew perfectly well that with a crew of eleven, only one could be manned).

Before she knew it, the sun went down. And then it got dark. And then, soon enough, it was midnight. And then an hour past midnight. And then two.

I should get home. Still got school, and, ugh, practice, tomorrow.

Almost everything in this world is easier said than done, except imagining an imaginary menagerie manager managing an imaginary menagerie, which is easier done than said. In Janosik's case, though, getting home was easier said than done, because the thing with waking up at five-thirty in the morning after getting four hours of sleep, walking across town to school, attending seven classes (with a thirty-five minute lunch period, which Janosik spent studying), walking three kilometres across a school ship, insulting the intelligence and ability of the very people whom she was supposed to be teaching, and engaging in heavy manual labour involving a heavily armoured locomotive and all its assorted heavy equipment, several very heavy buckets of paint, and hundreds of heavy spent shells for seven hours without eating dinner, is that one gets tired, to put it mildly. Janosik did not have the energy to walk from one end of the train to the other, much less walking all the way back home. By the time she'd made it a few hundred metres outside, she was positively asleep on her legs.

Maybe if I rest against this tree for a few minutes, I'll feel a little better.

Turns out, every word of what she thought was wrong. For one, She did not rest against a tree. It was a lamppost. Second, she did not rest for a few minutes. It was for five hours. Third, she did not feel better. In fact, when she woke up, she was late for class (she was never late for class), did not have any of her school items, her clothes still stunk from the past day's walk, and her back was aching due to her less-than-ideal posture during the night.

As soon as she found out that it was seven in the morning, she had already darted off. She was no Dominika, but she kept herself reasonably fit. And when she had somewhere to go, she ran like the wind. Miraculously, she'd gotten to her apartment within ten minutes, grabbed her school supplies, and was at the door of Mr. Neklan's history class by 7:15.

"Nice of you to join us, Ms. Masaryk. The delay has been logged," he said. The other students were positively rooted in their place. They'd never seen Janosik being late. Actually, they'd never seen Janosik being on time either, because she was always early. Some of them had never even seen Janosik enter the building in the morning.

After she'd finished panting, Janosik took her seat. However, the journey there was only half the battle. The other half was actually concentrating. Between the upcoming practice, Ivana's words, the expectations of both Miroslava and Svetlana placed upon her, and the Twenty-Third Ressha-do championship in a month, her teachers' lectures went into one of her ears and out the other. There's no way this team will become ready in a month-

"Ms. Masaryk?"

Janosik was jolted up by the voice of Mr. Neklan. "Uh, what?"

"I said, what was the result of the Siege of Vienna in 1529?" he repeated.

"Uhm, I'm not exactly sure…"

There were scattered snickers throughout the classroom. Clearly, a few students were enjoying this. None of them had ever seen Janosik in this state before.

"Well then, Ms. Masaryk, you'd better be "exactly sure" by the time we have our test, eh?"

"Yes, absolutely, sir," Janosik replied.

The rest of the day more or less went the same way. Janosik essentially sleepwalked through the day, with the energy and assertiveness of a 2-year-old perished ham. In her next class, she staggered the world's mathematics communities with phrases like "Since nine is an even number…" and "Eleven minus seven equals nine". In science class, she mixed up the chemical formulas for glucose and salt. In her next five classes, there were opportunities when she could've made a half-awake blunder, but unfortunately, she was fast asleep.

But, at last, the nightmare day had ended. The easy part of the nightmare day, that is. She had to head out to the first Ressha-do practice next. By the time she'd arrived, the entire team, plus Svetlana and Miroslava, was there.

"Hey there, Jan! I see the train has been repaired to perfection last night. Good work, everyone!" Miroslava said, with her signature cheeriness.

Janosik was too tired to do anything more than nod hello. Not that her usual greetings were much more complicated, anyway.

"Actually, we weren't of much use at all," said Dominika. "Janosik did most of the work. She sent us home early, and she must've finished the work by herself."

Miroslava's mood shifted significantly. "I see. Janosik, I'd like to have a word with you, please. Oh, and Svetlana, join us, as well."

They stepped out of earshot.

"So, what's wrong?" Miroslava began.

"I don't know, Miro. I look at this team, and what do I see?" Janosik asked. "Eleven students, most of whom don't know their left from their right hand. Look at the other schools, even the smaller ones. Waffle's got forty-five students participating in Ressha-do, Bonple has sixty-five, and Vabadusrist has over a hundred well-drilled, professional athletes. And what do we have? A month to turn them into some sort of fighting force? We'll get humiliated in the first round!"

"Look, I get it. A lot of pressure has been put on you. I felt the same way when I was captain. Do you remember how strict I was? Anyways, who cares if we get humiliated in the first round? It'll be a learning experience!"

Svetlana winced. It's too early. No one, not even them, should know what's going on down there.

"Yeah, I guess," Janosik said.

"Jan, you must believe in your team. You can't expect them to learn everything right as they start! You can't do all of this by yourself, and you know it. Anyways, the team is waiting on us, let's go back," Miroslava said.

They went back into the depot, where the team had been waiting.

"Sorry for the delay," Janosik began. "Anyways, the first order of business is deciding your roles on the train. So-"

Before she could finish, the first-year girls had already been fighting over who should be what.

"I call dibs on the front gun!" Anastasia yelled.

"Oh, give me a break, you couldn't hit a barn door with a banana!" Helena shouted back.

So it kept going, on and on. "I'll be a gunner!", "I'll be the driver!", "I'll be a loader!". The second and third-year girls watched helplessly as the young ones continued to bicker about who should be what.

Janosik simply sighed. There is no way that I could ever make these girls into anything resembling a Ressha-do team. "I haven't finished my sentence…" Janosik said. However, her voice was no match for the six girls' excitement.

Miroslava's voice, however, was more of a match.

"HEY!" she barked.

The girls immediately went silent. Rightly so, because angry Miroslava was a whole different animal than cheery Miroslava.

"Well, I haven't exactly lost all of my drill sergeant demeanour now, have I? Anyways, girls, listen to Commander Masaryk. Please." Miroslava gestured for Janosik to begin speaking.

"As I was saying, I will decide who does what," Janosik said. "So, Dominika, you will be the stoker. Do you know what that is?"

Dominika frankly knew nothing about trains. "Um, no, I'm not familiar with that, sorry."

"A stoker shovels coal into a locomotive's boiler."

Dominika was shocked. She'd joined Ressha-do to be the driver or firing a cannon, not shovelling coal. She could barely hide her disappointment.

Janosik continued. "Marta, you'll be the driver. Cecilia, you will be the gunner for the front chase gun. And Milada, you'll be the loader for the front chase gun." So on and so forth. The rest of the girls were attached to the tank cars. Nikola, Anastasia, and Monika were assigned as gunners, and Zdenka, Helena, and Eva were assigned as loaders. The last tank car would be left behind until there were new team members.

That left one more student. Too few to man a 37mm cannon.

Humiliatingly, Ivana had been assigned as a machine-gunner in the front artillery car. In other schools, being a machine-gunner was usually relegated to the lowliest of the lows; first-years and delinquents, usually. Their only roles were helping with rangefinding, reconnaissance, and serving as substitutes for more important members of the crew if they got too exhausted to continue. Being the only machine-gunner in a vastly undermanned Ressha-do team was a special kind of embarrassment. Ivana knew what Janosik was trying to do. She simply sighed and took her position. Well, I might not be doing much, but at the end of the day, if we win, I will still be getting that share of the prize money.

The next hour was mostly spent on learning the basics. Well, except for Marta, who figured out every single component of the train in under five minutes. As for the others, the gunners learned how to use the rangefinder, aim, and fire their pieces. The loaders learned, well, how to load their guns. Real surprise there. Dominika, meanwhile, prepared for the train to run. Lighting the fire for the boiler, breaking coal into small pieces, and filling the air pipes that operated the brakes. Boring, but tiring work.

By the end of the hour, the girls at least knew the basics of how to operate the train. Janosik decided that it was time to start practising outside with manoeuvres, targets, and live rounds instead of just the blanks that they had been practising with.

"So, before we move out, we'll need to explain the rules of Ressha-do first, for those who don't know," Janosik began explaining the rules. "Pretty self-explanatorily, the objective of Ressha-do is to destroy every railcar that the opponent has while ensuring that at least one of our railcars survive. Our team will only have access to one side of the railway track, and our opponent will have access to the other side. One important thing you'll need to remember is that you cannot exit the train to conduct reconnaissance on foot."

Miroslava interrupted her, "Janosik, it might just be better to have them read the rulebook."

She was right, as a few girls were already starting to doze off from her immensely dull explanation.

"Alright, then. Be sure to familiarise yourselves with the rulebook soon," Janosik said.

"Anyways, let's get onto business!" Miroslava yelled. "Move out!"

The locomotive hissed and began chugging slowly. And then chugged a little faster. And a little faster. Within no time, it was heading out of the depot and on its way to the training field.

To say that Tatra's Ressha-do training ground was simple would be an understatement. Unlike other schools that had mockups of enemy trains for target practice, advanced systems for practicing driving, and even simulators, Tatra's training ground consisted of only a few targets laid across an otherwise empty field, along with some sections of straight and curved tracks.

Nevertheless, the team trained, and the team trained hard. Of course, they weren't good. The gunners couldn't hit anything past two hundred metres, the loaders loaded the ammunition a quarter of the speed of even the slowest Pravda loader, and while Dominika did possess the brute strength needed to shovel coal, she did it with so little care that she was very close to roasting her fingers several times by putting it too close to the fire. Throughout the first training session, the team never looked anywhere close to professional, but they did have the potential to improve and they were trying their hardest. Except for Ivana, who never really had the chance to try her hardest on anything, since she was operating a machine-gun that she knew perfectly well how to operate.

By the time the training session ended, Janosik felt a little more optimistic about the team. There's still a lot to learn, but maybe these girls do have some sort of chance against the other teams.

"Excellent work today, everyone! I'll see you tomorrow!" Miroslava called out.

And they were gone.

The girls improved dramatically over the few weeks. The gunners learned how to fire accurately up to about eight hundred metres. They would still be outclassed drastically by enemy gunners, who could reliably hit their target at over a kilometre, but eight hundred metres at least gave them a fighting chance. However, they still could not fire accurately on the move. The loaders also had much improvement, now loading rounds at about three-fourths the standard for other schools. Dominika and Marta were also improving, scoring high speeds reliably. However, Dominika's clumsiness was still a problem, and she had already endured a rather nasty burn to her right index finger. Ivana, however, was still cast off into the sidelines as a machine-gunner. But, nevertheless, while they may still be amateurs, in a few weeks, they did resemble an armoured train crew.

However, even just one day before the first match, Janosik was still worried. They might still not be ready.

"Alright, today's training is over!" Miroslava said. "Janosik here has a few announcements she'd like to make."

"Excellent work today, everyone," Janosik said. "As you should be well aware of now, our first match of the Twenty-Third Ressha-do National Championship is in four days."

"Who's our first opponent?" Cecilia asked.

"Our first opponent will be Bonple High School."

The reaction to the news was mixed. While Bonple was certainly not a large school, it was not one to gloss over either. Bonple may be a smaller school, but it did have a very established and professional Ressha-do team. They had been participating in the sport since its inception. They were known for using innovative tactics and technologies to outfight their enemies, even beating Pravda multiple times. As of the Twenty-Third Nationals, they had won three previous championships. Tatra, however, had won none.

"What will they be bringing?" Dominika asked.

Janosik continued, "We don't know yet. But, looking at what they brought to previous competitions, we know that they will bring at least three wz.28 Armoured Motor Wagons."

The girls who had seen previous Ressha-do championships knew exactly how dangerous the wz.28 was. It was well-protected and very well-armed with a fearsome 75mm gun. Its greatest strength, however, was its small size and mobility. Being only one self-sufficient armoured wagon, it was very hard to hit precisely, especially on the move and by inexperienced gunners. Most commanders knew perfectly well how the wz.28 could perform in ambushes and how it could outmanoeuvre the enemy. With six wz.28 wagons, they had handed Pravda several thumping defeats to win previous Ressha-do National Competitions. The last time they had won a Ressha-do Championship was seven years ago, but even now, they were still being held as one of the tournament's dark horses.

The girls, rightfully, were positively wetting themselves with nervousness and apprehension. Of course, even if they would face a middle school in the countryside they'd be nervous, so one could imagine what it would feel like when they were facing a very strong school.

"No matter, whoever we'll face, we'll beat. Right?" Dominika said tensely.

"That's the spirit!" Miroslava said. "Me and Svetlana will be there supporting you!"

"Anyways, Miroslava and I have drawn up a battle plan." Janosik pulled out a map of the battlefield. The map showed several routes converging in a central junction on a rather large hill, clearly the most strategically important area in the entire battlefield. "We will take this position on the hill first thing in the battle. Then, we will sit back and defend the area using our superior armour to our advantage." It was a very simple strategy, but Janosik did not believe that the girls could execute a plan any more complicated than that.

Janosik was wrong. Very wrong.

Ivana knew that the plan was nearly worthless. She knew that Tatra would need a far better plan to have any chance of beating Bonple. "With all due respect, Commander-"

Janosik shut her down immediately. "Know your place, Ivana."

Miroslava tried to raise her voice in objection, but even she was shut down by Janosik giving the mother of all hairy eyeballs.

"Anyways, get some rest, and I'll see you tomorrow. Dismissed!" Janosik yelled out.

Miroslava finally spoke up, "Wait! I've got an idea to cheer us all up. How about we all get some dinner together? Have some bonding time? What do you say?"

Dominika and Svetlana, of course, enthusiastically agreed, along with the second and first-year girls. Ivana was more hesitant, but then she remembered that she would scarcely have anything to eat if she didn't go, so she also agreed. Janosik, however, was the most hesitant.

"I'm not sure, really…"

"Oh, come on now, you big toddler," Miroslava pleaded. "We'll have fried cheese!"

In spite of her generally serious and stoic demeanour, Janosik had the diet of a child. Fried cheese was her favourite food in the world. She'd been to Slovakia when she was very little, just about six years old, when she tried fried cheese for the first time. And it would be an understatement to say that once she tried it, she completely fell in love with it. For the rest of the trip, she ate very little besides fried cheese, and since then, she had tried all sorts of fried cheese restaurants and fried cheese recipes. In fact, one of the reasons that she enrolled in Tatra was because of her love for fried cheese. So once fried cheese was brought into the equation, in spite of her mood, denial was simply not an option.

Janosik chuckled, "Alright, alright, I'll go."

Fortunately, this time, both Svetlana and Miroslava had driven to the depot, so they didn't have to worry about walking (or running, in the case of the four second-year girls) the distance back to the town. The drive wasn't comfortable, since they still had to cram thirteen in a space that's designed for only ten, but it did beat walking. A few minutes later, they arrived at the restaurant, took their seats, and ordered the food. Janosik, of course, had the fried cheese, while Miroslava had potato dumplings, and Svetlana had sauerkraut soup.

The next few minutes were some of the greatest fun Janosik, and indeed, Ivana as well, had. They simply were finally allowed to be themselves, and didn't have to focus on Ressha-do, or training, or the competition, just for a few minutes. They could finally gossip and talk about boys and movies. Even Marta and Ivana, who had avoided interacting with the team, opened up a little bit.

Of course, once the food arrived, there was no more conversation. Janosik was laser-focused on the mouthwatering piece of fried cheese in front of her, and she dug in without a care in the world for anything else. It was almost as if she was in a fried cheese trance. By the time she finished, most of the others had only taken one bite or two.

Janosik ordered another serving of fried cheese.

And another one.

And another one.

One final one for good measure.

Maybe just one more?

Alright, one more. End of story.

Of course, when has anybody ever been truthful about "one more"? Janosik ordered three more, totalling up to ten servings of fried cheese.

By the time everyone was finished eating, they felt much more confident about the next day.

Except Svetlana. The food was meant to be a distraction from the fact that if they lost tomorrow, it would all be over. The distraction did not work. She was unusually quiet throughout dinner, very different from her usual mood.

"You alright, Svetlana?" Miroslava asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine, thank you. Just butterflies in my stomach, that's all."

That was not all.

"Don't you worry, they'll be fine. It's rather late, so let's call it a day, eh?" Miroslava said. "Get some rest, and I'll see you tomorrow!"

Janosik, along with the rest of the girls, left the restaurant, headed for home. By the time she was home, she was exhausted. A belly full of cheese doesn't exactly give one the best ability to walk home, but once she got home, she changed her clothes, brushed her teeth, and slept.

Here's the thing with stuffing one's face with four thousand calories worth of lactose, milk fats, breading, and cooking oil fat, as any person who has gone to a fair and ate a certain food that consists of milk fat fried in vegetable or animal fat knows, is that usually, the next morning, one would not feel the greatest, to put it mildly. While Janosik was indeed an exceptionally resilient and mature girl, unfortunately, even she could not overcome science. Because Janosik Masaryk was about to have a full-blown lavatory disaster, on the morning of Tatra Girls' Academy's first match of the Twenty-Third National Ressha-do Championship.

A/N: We meet again! Thank you for stopping by, once again! A much longer chapter than last time, but you could probably expect a little shorter for future chapters.

So, a lot of ground to cover in this chapter. We saw Ivana's rather tragic backstory, the crew repairing the Hurban, the first training sessions, announcing the first opponent, and then a brief bonding moment in the end. Also, revealing one of Janosik's more childlike side; her love of fried cheese, more on that in just a minute.

We also saw a character from the prologue return, Miroslava, who's now the coach of Tatra's Ressha-do team. Her personality has changed quite a bit from the little we saw in Chapter One; she's now a lot more cheerful and joyful than the drill-sergeant sort of figure we saw in the first chapter.

So onto the fried cheese; Fried cheese, or vyprážaný syr in Slovak, is, well, pretty self explanatorily, cheese that is fried. Apparently a very popular street food in both Czechia and Slovakia, it's very commonly served in school canteens and the like in both countries. I thought her love of fried cheese would be sort of a symbol of her other side; on one side she's this gruff figure, but dig deeper and you'll find a girl who enjoys simple pleasures, like fried cheese. Plus, who doesn't like cheese?

Further note; additional information about trains, tactics, rules, et cetera, as well as sources I used and further reading, will be available in the appendix, which will be published after Chapter Eleven.

Another note; it's pretty likely the next few chapters will come much faster than this one did; Chapter Three is already more than halfway done.

Anyways, as always, any criticism (or reviews in general, really) would be welcomed and appreciated. Other than that, I shall see you whenever I see you next! Goodbye, and thanks for stopping by!