The Legends Still Live On
Bogen Neunzehn-komma-ein: Extras Fünf und Sechs
Kapitel Zweiundzwanzig: Vorschau - Katzen! Und Hexen?!
XXXXXXXXXX
"So, then I said, 'Well what's the worst that could happen?'" Anton busied himself with relaying another amusing tale of his. He and the rest of his closest of friends – that being Erich, Nathan, Herz, and David – were all on the way to their school for yet another day of education. The usual suspects of being constantly half-asleep each morning, Erich and David, were surprisingly not being dragged along as was the norm for the pair. They were not as sleepy as they normally were that morning. They even actually looked decently presentable in their school outfits, a rarity.
"Let me guess," Erich hazarded to guess what happened next. "Murphy socked you a good one."
"You're damn right!" Anton proudly confirmed with a smirk to match, despite everyone else snickering at him. "I swear, I'm Murphy's favorite client judging by how often he's present for me."
"Well you can book appointments with him for life if you really want it, because I'm not fond of his method of business," the blond-haired German ultra-ace in the group retorted. The entire group save for David was wearing humored grins at the ongoing sarcastic banter between Bubi and the blonde American.
Ever typical of him, David was instead wearing an impassive face and looking ahead of the pack. Though he soon had to blink and rub his eyes, for he caught sight of something that was honestly somewhat disturbing. "Uh, guys?" he tried with wide eyes. "Incoming."
"'Incoming,' what does that even-?" Nathan began to question, but he and all the others were stopped dead in their tracks, literally in the case of Erich. A sharp meow was all the warning given before a blur of light brown mixed with the white and green of an Ooarai uniform rushed the blond-haired ultra-ace and tackled him to the ground.
"Oof!" was all Erich could get out before he was getting licked all over his face with vigor. "Ah-hey! Hey, calm down!"
The other four stood there in a stunned silence for a bit before Anton voiced everyone's thoughts for them, "What the hell?"
They were in a state of shock because whatever it was that jumped Erich was quite feline in nature, though it was the size of a normal human and had a mixed anatomy of both a feline and a human, female to be specific, explaining why 'she' was bizarrely wearing an Ooarai girls' school uniform. That was also why she featured relatively short light brown hair with a pair of ears atop her head, particularly the ears of a lynx.
Erich finally got her to stop giving him the cat equivalents of kisses and backed her face up a bit so he could get a look at what jumped him so eagerly. Her face also held some typical feline features like whiskers and a cat-like mouth and nose, though the humanness of the face structure was kept intact. Her eyes, highly reflective and light brown in color, gave Erich a start as he recognized them, and therefore the identity of who just jumped him.
"… Miho?" he asked with an extremely puzzled look, clearly in disbelief that the lynx-like female on top of him was his closest companion.
Miho, who for some reason was now a hybrid between a lynx and a human female, meowed in approval and curled up atop Erich with her paw-like hands and feet, purring into his neck as she calmed from her burst of energy and reconnected with her companion. Her tail was curled up as well, though it was not particularly long or noticeable due to her being part lynx.
A few more meows and chirrups beckoned the attention of everyone there, and the shell-shocked boys that were left standing looked over to find more girls that were like Miho in general appearance.
"… Oh, you've gotta be kidding me…" Herz spoke out, finally swayed out of his normal air of order and calm at the sight before him and the subsequent realization that something was definitely up.
The new cat-female hybrids were only four in number, but they were recognizable enough now to deduce their identities: Saori, Hana, Yukari, and Mako. Saori was her usual self mixed with a cougar's features, Hana mostly resembled a leopard, and Yukari had the features of a serval. Mako, who got bored and gracefully curled up to sleep on the ground, held the features of a panther.
While the other four boys of the group just stood there with the three conscious cat-girls sauntering around them, Erich did not even have the luxury of standing as the lynx-like Miho stayed put curled up atop him. She was clearly in the mood to cuddle, and the blond-haired ultra-ace chose to let her have her way. He so did not want to find himself on the receiving end of those claws, or worse, the fang-like teeth that the light brunette girl now possessed.
The other four boys soon grew accustomed to the cat-girls to let down their guard just enough to not appear obviously discomforted. From that, they were able to take notice of a more sensual kind of purring from Miho as she grew a hungry look in her eyes, and not the kind of hungry that would require her fangs to tear apart prey.
"You know, taking the biological uniqueness of them into account, I'm honestly quite curious as to how these kinds of creatures function," Anton chose to comment, sounding genuinely curious. Then he ruined it with his next comment. "Bubi, considering that your little pet-slash-girlfriend is seemingly in the mood for fornicating, how about you delve into it and see what's different about it now?"
The other three guys with Anton groaned in annoyance at the comment. David went a step farther and smacked him upside the head.
"Ow!" the blonde American grappled with the back of his head to stem the pain. "It was a genuine curiosity!" With the exception of Miho, all of the feline-girl hybrids, including the just-awakened Mako, started growling threateningly at him. He raised his hands in surrender when he got the message. "Okay, okay, I'll shut up."
While not necessarily offended by it, Miho still overheard the shrewd comment, and to demonstrate that she was still able to understand human speech perfectly despite not being capable of it herself, her face flushed red in embarrassment as she curled up into her insinuated mate's chest. Erich noticed and instinctively petted her head, which released a contented purr from the lynx-girl. 'Well at least her personality hasn't changed,' the blond-haired ultra-ace silently praised the powers that be with the carry-over of personality, thankful for some sense of familiarity with Miho's present lynx-girl form.
XXXXXXXXXX
Meanwhile in the student council office, things were not in Ordnung, to say the least.
"Kruzifix!" both Pfirsich and Zitrus cried foul with their archaic-sounding Bavarian curse and sprinted out of the area. They decided that they could not bear to stand in the presence of something so foreign to them and made to book it out of the room.
A few meows and chirrups broke the following silence in the office, courtesy of a relatively short girl that held a great resemblance to a caracal. The amused smirk that crossed the feline-human face was one that only Anzu was capable of. The caracal-girl finished off her series of meowing, oddly sounding like a statement, by munching on a dried sweet potato, leaving no doubt that was Anzu.
Aprikose, who was sitting on a chair behind the desk in the office with the caracal-like Anzu curled up against him, nodded in response to her series of meowing, apparently in conversation with her despite her present inability of human speech.
"I agree," the Bavarian with a penchant for loafing responded with an amused grin. "Their response was funny."
A growl came from beside the desk, one that was meant to be threatening to Aprikose, but he just waved it off nonchalantly as if it didn't matter. A very dangerous move, considering he had performed the gesture to Momo, the one person that should not be intentionally aggravated. Add to that her new state of being – that new state being a hybrid between her old self and a Bengal tiger – and Aprikose was effectively playing with fire.
XXXXXXXXXX
By one of the staircases within the school proper, the only sound discernible was meowing multiplied many times over. Such noises were relatively eager-sounding if their constant repetition said anything.
"Okay, okay, you can play with the ball," Matthias held his hands up placatedly, one of which had a football in it that he gently tossed to the source of noise making. A real football, and not a glorified rugby ball as the Americans like to think is a real football.
Those that were the target of being subdued peacefully were none other than Ooarai's favorite six-strong group of freshmen girls. And like many of the school's other girls, they also underwent the changes in biological makeup to become feline-human hybrids. Azusa and Saki mostly resembled pumas, Karina and Aya bore the looks of cheetahs, and Ayumi and Yuuki both took the genes of Siberian tigers. And all of them were practically unchanged in their personalities, what with still being utter chatterboxes even if they no longer had any working voice boxes.
"… I am so getting the others back for leaving me to deal with this alone," Matthias muttered to himself as he watched the feline-girl crossovers play with his football, rolling it towards each other with the occasional batting of it. The Wildcat pilot was the only one of his Fußball-playing ilk to remain there, as the others had scrammed with haste as soon as they saw the Siberian tiger-girl hybrids of Ayumi and Yuuki.
XXXXXXXXXX
All across the globe, it seemed no one was spared from the strange phenomenon that occurred seemingly only to girls. Such was the case aboard the HMS Ark Royal with Saint Gloriana.
The three usual girls that took up the turret positions in the Churchill Mk VII were no exceptions to the feline-girl hybridization, though that did not stop Darjeeling, who took after a lion in her case, from drinking tea like she would everyday with Orange Pekoe, now a Geoffroy's cat-girl, and Assam, now an ocelot-girl.
Darjeeling let out a series of meows like if she was actually talking, and knowing her, it was most likely about some saying she once heard. Orange Pekoe let out a single meow, as if identifying the original source of the supposed 'quote' of Darjeeling's on instinct.
But the British cat-girls were not alone. They were also in the vicinity of Arthur, Dennis, and Douglas. Both the Northern Irish boy and the Scottish boy were holding blank faces as they took in everything, while the Englishman Arthur had his typical relaxed grin in place, as if the situation did not faze him. Of course, all three had their own tea as well. They wouldn't be British if they didn't drink tea so often.
"So tell me," Douglas began to speak amongst the boys, addressing only them. "What are we to do about whatever this is?"
"Well," Arthur began as he brought down his teacup to its saucer, still with the same relaxed grin. "I believe you are all aware of the saying, 'Curiosity killed the cat.'"
Dennis shot an inquisitive look toward Arthur, even though he fully understood the quote's meaning. Or rather, he understood the meaning the English Spitfire pilot had just given it. "I don't think Ben Jonson had that meaning in mind with those words," he opined. He was more curious about how Arthur was able to maintain such a calm and comfortable expression while effectively suggesting to cut down the cat-girls among them.
"Well, let's just hope there isn't enough satisfaction to bring them back," Douglas chose to agree with Arthur's thinking, finally allowing a small smirk to cross his face. "I need my pike."
XXXXXXXXXX
Simultaneously aboard the Graf Zeppelin, Schwarzwaldspitze was bringing about their own method for resolving the biological abnormality. They too were affected by it, though their method for containing it was… unconventional, to leave things simply.
Maho gave a foreboding growl of warning as she and Erika, who simultaneously growled and snarled much more aggressively, backed up slowly from multiple jets of flames that were not quite long enough to reach the two. Maho and Erika were among those that were changed into cat-girls. Maho had become a cross between her usual self and a panther, and Erika took up the features of a white tiger.
The flames ceased momentarily as the wielders of the flames chose to observe their targets. Alfred-Joachim Hartmann had a stone-cold face, betraying no emotion, though Hans Jochen looked more like a curious child. The ever-so-popular face that was bestowed on poster after poster was not expecting to become part of an extremely threatening riot control force when he went to head to the gym that morning.
"Gottverdammt, I'm going to burn down the biology club next time one of their creations gets out of control like this," Alfred spoke up to nobody in particular, though his volume of voice still rung loud enough for everybody nearby to hear. "Considering that we still have to take care of that zombie problem they created, I think that I'm being lenient." He then unleashed another stream of pure fire from his Flammenwerfer 35, and the others equipped with Flammenwerfer followed suit.
XXXXXXXXXX
Aboard the Kiev, the case of cat-girl mutations was plenty prevalent, not least of which because two of Pravda's most well-known girls were among the affected. That did not, however, suit the agenda of one particular Engineer that day.
"Suka blyad', ne priblizhaysya ko mne!" Sasha reacted in a berserker manner, frightened enough to devolve into Russian and frantically running away from the new but questionably improved versions of Katyusha and Nonna.
The tiny tank commander was sitting atop the shoulders of the tall elegant sharpshooter as if nothing out of the ordinary happened, but that was simply not true upon just looking at their appearances. Katyusha now held a great resemblance to a Siberian lynx, and Nonna became mixed together with a snow leopard.
Nudelmann was among the two feline-girls, but he was obviously not one of them biologically speaking. Unlike Sasha, however, he was actually fond of the two Russian girls' new forms.
"Aw, you're such a cute kotenok," the tall Russian ace uncharacteristically fawned over Katyusha, to which the Siberian lynx-girl shied away from his gaze yet still gave a cute mewl of gratitude. Nonna interjected with a calm yet weighted series of meows, to which Nudelmann gave an eye-roll to. "Oh, please, Nonna. You're too tall to be considered cute."
Any further 'conversation' was brought to a halt when a bear's roar was heard, making the three Russians freeze up in terror.
"Vot der'mo," Nudemann muttered a curse. He then snapped his gaze to the two wide-eyed feline-girls. "Run!"
The two feline-girls wasted no time in obeying as Nonna took off into a sprint, Katyusha hanging on for dear life. Nudelmann followed as well, because there was no way in hell that he was taking on a bear, even if he was Russian.
"Faster, Volodya!" Sasha barked as he rode against the rushing wind. "We must not let ourselves be taken over by those monsters!" Sasha was riding atop the bear like its master, which, for the record, he was, hence why the bear was named. That was Sasha's pet bear, because Russia.
XXXXXXXXXX
Though not quite as affected, Anzio still noticed the difference among the girls. Thankfully the Aquila had enough resources to provide the remaining students the power to keep the feline-girls that were aboard calm and content.
"That's it, Anchovy," Franco nodded in approval with a smile on his face when he saw Anchovy, who now resembled an oncilla, calmly eating and savoring the pasta she was served. She actually ate at a table, though she still chose to eat with her mouth mostly due to the paws, a very odd mixture of human and cat behavior. "You're such a good gatta. If you eat that all up, then I'll get you that mouse toy you like so much."
Anzio quickly came to the conclusion that giving the cat-girls food was worth a try if it had a chance of reeling them in. Such a tactic worked wonderfully thanks to the abundance of highly skilled chefs aboard the Aquila. If their damn spanking delicious food wasn't the solution, then they were damned to hell for all eternity.
XXXXXXXXXX
Back aboard the Zuikaku, even though Ooarai High School was plagued with cat-girls, a practice fight amongst the Panzers was still able to go on nevertheless. That was why all of Ooarai's Panzers were scouring the practice grounds at the moment, and why all of the feline-girl hybrids on the team wore their appropriate combat uniforms
But the battle soon changed due to Miho's instincts telling her that something was up, and it wasn't about anything to do with her new form. She grew the strange feeling that they were not the only ones out there in the forest. It was a feeling she could actually sense, and it felt to her like one that was very dense with energy, though her mind interpreted that to mean hostile.
The lynx-girl sent out a series of meows and chirrups to her crew, sounding just like the commander she is regardless of her inability to speak. With the commands, the Panzer IV H aimed its 7,5 cm KwK 40 L/48 cannon into the abundance of trees, and Hana fired the shot with impeccable accuracy as the Sprenggranate 34 high-explosive shell threaded its way between the trees and to its target about 300 meters away.
But despite that accuracy, the shell found itself eaten up by a blue circular shield of pure energy that featured a number of runes around its rim and within. Thanks to the shield being made of pure energy, it was quite transparent, and behind it was a girl holding her hand out as if it held up the shield. The force of the blast violently pushed her back. The jerk of being knocked back made her lose focus as she grunted from the impact, and the shield dropped. Another girl reached out and grabbed her, pulling her behind a tree to buy them both a brief reprieve.
The girl that deployed the shield had relatively short hair styled into a bob, or a Bubischnitt to be exact. Though the hair was overall blonde, two of the lowest-hanging locks that hung down ahead of her ears had tips that were black. She also had blue eyes that were full of life. Her body suggested she was a teenager, and it was fully developed with all the curves one would expect of a girl that age, though nothing to instantly make tents in boys' pants. She also, for some reason, had a tail, specifically a black tail from a Dachshund. Overall, she had a rather fun-loving demeanor.
Her outfit consisted of a white skirt and a white shirt covered by a black Luftwaffe jacket rounded out with black combat boots. The jacket was purposely left open due to personal preference, and a glinting silver knife with the blade down and hilt up was also stitched into the jacket, occupying a large portion of the backside.
"Scheiß!" she so blatantly cursed at the situation presented before both girls and completely forgoing being lady-like, even in the least bit. They were being harassed by machine gun fire thanks to the Panzer IV's coaxial MG 34.
"This reminds me of Kursk more than I would like," the other girl noted about the scenario as she quickly scanned the environment with sharp and calculating brown eyes. This girl looked almost identical to the other, the only major differences in physical appearance being hair and eye color. She had her hair styled the same way, but unlike the blonde, her hair was black, and the black tips on the blonde's pair of locks were instead cream in color for the brunette. She was also somewhat taller than the blonde, but her body held the same proportions to its curves. She had the same Dachshund tail as the blonde, but hers was cream in color. This brunette had a much more serious air around her than the blonde did. Both appeared distinctly German, and it could be easily inferred that they were related somehow just judging by their appearances.
The brunette had a much different outfit. It consisted of a dark red skirt and a shirt of the same color covered by a black jacket. This jacket had red accents and a small Iron Cross on each side of the collar, and on one shoulder was a shoulder patch that depicted the German black, red, and gold tricolor. It held significant similarities to a Luftwaffe trench coat, the only major difference being its much shorter length that was more comparable to a normal jacket. Though, like the blonde, the brunette also liked to leave her jacket open.
"Isabel, this really isn't the time to reminisce on the past!" the blonde asserted as she glanced at the enemy Panzer IV from behind the tree she shared with the brunette as cover. "Plus, I don't know how you could possibly recall fond memories of that time!"
"I never even said I had fond memories of that time, Erika!" Isabel-Justina Hartmann, the black-haired girl, sharply retorted. She then opened her eyes a bit wider as they flashed, and she started seeing the situation from an outside point of view, though the events she watched had not happened yet. Said events included a shot from the Panzer IV's KwK 40 cannon, but Isabel mentally filed away exact circumstances surrounding the shell's point of impact, and she came back to the present and into her own perspective with another flash of her eyes. All of that happened as fast as light traveled, meaning she missed nothing during her brief stint of foreseeing the future.
"Move!" the black-haired girl cried out in desperation.
Erika-Dietlinde Hartmann did not fail her. The blonde almost instantly generated a whirlwind of air and used it to flash across the forest floor with Isabel, leaving a noticeable wake in their path from the intense winds. They moved in the nick of time as another Sprenggranate impacted the tree they had just abandoned and obliterated it.
"I only brought up Kursk because I learned what I should do after learning what not to do back then!" Isabel carried on the previous conversation as she and Erika broke into a sprint across the ground, constantly breaking left and right in an effort to obscure the Panzer IV's line of sight and hopefully escape.
"If we survive this, then you think we'll keep these powers we have now?" Erika nonchalantly asked, even though she had to periodically bring up a shield to deflect machine gun fire away from her.
"If we do, then let us hope Manfred and Michael don't freak out about it," Isabel distantly replied, also drawing up her own shield every now and again to deflect incoming fire. "Because this'll be utter hell to explain to them."
XXXXXXXXXX
In one particular room within the British campus of Selection University, Dziubek Skalski was sitting back in a large and comfortable leather recliner behind a great wooden desk. He also had the one and only Alice Shimada curled up against him on the chair, though she was noticeably different from before. She had also become one of the feline-girl mutations, though she was very tame by comparison. She had mixed with a domestic cat, and the accompanying cat-like features matched Alice's natural white hair color.
Alice purred contently as Dziubek absently petted her with a satisfied grin on his face. It looked very odd and perhaps frightening to certain people considering the Polish fighter ace now pulled off the Bond villain look almost flawlessly.
"Słodki kotek," Dziubek murmured affectionately, absolutely undeterred by such a sudden change, nor deterred by the worldwide situation with millions of cat-girl mutations. He cared not, for as long as he had his cute kitty Alśka, then he simply gave no fucks to anything else.
XXXXXXXXXX
Sasha: And now, Pravda's breathlessly exciting battle against Schwarzwaldspitze at Kursk, some random town in the middle of fucking nowhere-!
Nudelmann: -Is not starting. My Yakovlev wishes to continue overheating and blowing seals, so I need you to fix it, Mister Engineer.
Chuck: Hold it! Hold the fucking phone! I thought this number was supposed to be our feature?!
Franco: Hey, shut it! Look around at what's been published thus far! It's so clear that Anzio should be the feature that it should've blinded you with its clarity! But why aren't we the feature?!
Chuck & Franco: What the fuck is this shit, Bubi?!
Erich: Whoa, chill out. I'm not the one to complain to…
Erika-D. H.: Though I must say, I really like the idea with the swimsuits. Hey, maybe we can set up a swimsuit photoshoot! I mean, I'm all ready to go with mine now! Speaking of which, how do I look?
Erich: Like a witch.
Erika-D. H.: Oh, so you think you're funny? Please… Not even I found that funny.
Erich: ... You do realize that you insulted the both of us in one fell swoop, right?
Erika-D. H.: I'm fully aware of that. Not like I care, though.
Arthur: Well, the party might've already kicked off here, judging by the number of people in swimwear, but please everyone, I do implore that you all look forward to 'Third Battle of El Alamein: The Fight Between Saint Gloriana and Schwarzwaldspitze!'
Dennis: Hey, you shut the bloody hell up, mate! There's no way any of us are willing to relive getting stomped into the ground by those bloody Germans!
Part of Projekt Jägermeistern.
XXXXXXXXXX
The author doesn't claim to own "Girls und Panzer" or any other references made. "Girls und Panzer" belongs to Actas. Any references made belong to their respective owners.
Feel free to ask any questions if you have them. Please note, however, that questions asked without being signed in will not be answered. The author would prefer to address questions outside of the story, and leaving questions while signed in provides that ability.