The morning routine was simple. Get up, change into school clothes, have brekkie and feed the commander. Maybe check up on the tanks if she had enough time before class. Wallaby had felt good about her team, as she had recruited quite a few students expelled from St. Gloriana. Despite not knowing how they could be expelled from such a school, she was sure that they were the key to bringing Koala Forest to the forefront. Surely nothing could go wrong.
A deafening crash echoed throughout Wallaby's small apartment. Scanning the room, she saw no signs of damage before rushing to the window. There, she saw why St. Gloriana had expelled all of them. Five Matildas sat outside her window, upside down and on fire, as students scrambled about trying to put out the fires. Enraged, she opened her window and yelled out at the students below.
"Oi! Ya cunts! What the hell are you doing?!"
A silence followed, filling the air, until another voice returned the call.
"Go back to sleep cap'n! Nothing's going on out here!" a girl yelled out from below. Donning an iconic black ribbon, Wallaby instantly recognized the girl as Victoria, the rowdy and medically insane girl on her team. Now, a loud roaring sound emerged from the far end of the street which Wallaby's apartment was on, as a Stuart raced across at lightning speeds. Victoria, realising they were right outside their commander's apartment, desperately signalled the Stuart to stop, but she was ignored. Driving off an ad hoc ramp created from all the flipped Matildas, the Stuart flew a great distance, before landing square into a wooden house, its steel frame and hull tearing down the brittle wooden walls of the house. Rushing to the ruined house and tank, Victoria sighed with relief, as it had only crashed in her house and not someone else's. Wallaby, now knowing what was going on, rushed downstairs and put on her iconic Digger's hat, before rushing out of her door and towards the burning wreck of her beloved Matildas. She went over to the wrecked house, as Victoria pulled out the driver, a girl she had recognized as Tanami, the newly recruited driver of what was the wrecked Stuart. Thankfully, they had crashed into one of the girl's property and not other private property. Regaining her composure, she turned to Victoria, with an injured Tanami next to her. Taking a deep breath, she began to speak.
"What the hell was that?!" she yelled at the two students in front of her. "You've been here for what, three days, and you have already wrecked all of our Matildas and the M3A3? Did you forget about the exhibition match we have against St. Gloriana? Now because of you, we can't use our Matildas. My god, where is the rest of your team?"
As if her words were prophetic, two students turned the corner, one carrying canisters of gasoline which she identified as Gibson and the other carrying what appeared to be a Flammenwerfer 35 who she identified as Simpson. As soon as she made eye contact with the two of them, they immediately dropped what they were carrying and ran. Too busy to deal with the fleeing girls, she made a mental note to deal with them at a later date, before turning back to Victoria and Tanami. She sighed.
"Look, I know that you are both very talented members of the sensha-do team, but that doesn't excuse what you did here! That's it! Your whole team is on repair duty for the whole month! If I don't see the Matildas restored to working condition by the end of the month, all four of you are gonna be kicked out!" she yelled as the faces of the two girls she was reprimanding turned from smiles of glee to that of distraught.
She looked to the dropped flamethrower on the ground, and the canisters of gasoline carelessly strewn about, before heading back to her apartment and grabbing her bag. "Surely that girl didn't have a warrant for a bloody flamethrower. We've got to get better laws regarding those stuff,' she thought to herself, as she made her way towards the school. Checking her wristwatch, she panicked, as her classes would start in less than ten minutes. Picking up her pace, she began to panick, as thoughts rushed through her head. We're definitely not going to have our Matildas back into working order when we have the match against St. Gloriana. Hopefully our Sentinels and Grants will be able to do the job. This has been a terrible morning. First all our Matildas have been destroyed as well as our best Stuart, and I'm also running late. Hopefully that will be the end for today. Turning around the corner, she had arrived at the front of her school, Koala Forest High School, with only a minute to spare.
Quickly entering her classroom, she sat down next to Platypus, her friend from the Sensha-do team and her de facto vice commander. The first class passed quickly, as Wallaby slept through the entire history lesson, until she was woken up by the ringing of the bell indicating the end of her class. As she walked to her next class with Platypus, she was stopped when she heard the loudspeaker.
"Student Wallaby, please report to the tank store sheds immediately. Student Wallaby, please report to the tank store sheds immediately."
Wallaby quickly gave her books to Platypus, before rushing out of the building. As she left the building, she noticed barricades arranged around the gymnasium. Goddamn, if those idiots break another one of my tanks again, I will be sending them to bloody Perth to live. Turning around a corner, she gained sight of the tank store sheds, with all the tanks visible as the doors were open. No damage, no fires, no idiots ruining everything. But why was I called here? There, standing in front of the sheds was a man dressed in a tuxedo, with men in riot control gear and hazmat suits around him. The man gestured for her to come closer, and she complied.
The man introduced himself. "I am Akitake Ishiyama, Head of Security on this schoolship."
"I am Wallaby, captain of the sensha-do team. The tanks are all fine, so what seems to be the problem?" Wallaby replied, still curious about why the head of security would have any business being in a school.
"I'm afraid there is something wrong with your tanks," Ishiyama replied, as he turned around. Wallaby took a step back, as her eyes were overloaded from the sight of it. As she regained her composure, she found herself looking at a massive hole in the middle of the gymnasium wall.
Ishiyama began to speak again. "Something very wrong."