The Legends Still Live On

Bogen Siebundzwanzig-komma-ein: Extras Neun und Zehn

Kapitel Sechs: Unter den Fingernägeln

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The hangars belonging to Pravda were idle, to put it succinctly. There was only a little bit of activity in them when dusk rolled around, and most of it was centralized around one particular Russian tank.

Katyusha was minding her own business sitting atop the sideways-turned turret of one of the many T-34-85s Pravda had at their disposal. The particular Russian tank happened to be the one she regularly commanded. She was reading out of a book she was gifted via Darjeeling. In true Darjeeling fashion, it was a book on sayings. The miniature Russian's face scrunched up adorably in confusion upon reading one saying in particular.

"'Drink the brewed dirt from underneath the fingernails…?'" she read aloud, not at all understanding the adage. "Well, this is the last time I accept a gift from Darjeeling…" she muttered to herself. Following that was what Katyusha did every time she didn't understand something: she turned and called on Nonna to explain it. "Nonna! What does this mean?!"

"No need to use your outside voice, Katyusha," Nonna reminded the diminutive Russian. Nonna was squatting on the back of the T-34 with Nudelmann, right behind the turret ring and not far from Katyusha, as each one of them held one of Sasha's legs. Sasha himself was hanging upside down into the front end of the open engine bay, hanging down ahead of the front of the massive 38.9-liter V-2 diesel-fueled V12 engine. He was doing the egregious task of changing out all of the pumps mounted on the oil sump, that being the water pump, the low-pressure fuel pump, and three oil pumps, two scavenging and one pressure. The egregious part of doing such a task laid with the fact that all of those pumps were on the bottom of the sump, which was at the bottom of the engine. It wasn't so bad, though, considering that much of the front of the engine, consisting of many accessory driveshafts for the oil pumps, water pump, and the fuel pumps, was taken apart, leaving just enough space for the blonde Russian engineer to reach the bottom of the sump. He had a flashlight shining around the area, held in between his lips, meaning that with a little observance, it was possible to see the light beam flick in various directions with every twitch of his lips.

Katyusha paid no mind to the struggle that Sasha was undergoing just to keep her T-34 up and running, and practically thrust her open book into Nonna's face. "Nonna, stop fretting over insignificant things and just tell me what this phrase means!" she practically commanded. The childish voice she had was enough to make anyone else laugh at her, though.

"I can't do that if the book is shoved all the way in my face," Nonna deadpanned at Katyusha's insistence.

"Up!" Sasha's voice echoed from the bottom of the engine bay, a bit distorted and slanted towards vowels in pronunciation thanks to the flashlight in between his lips. In answering, both Nudelmann and Nonna tightened their holds on each of the blonde Russian's legs and stood up, partially lifting Sasha back out of the engine bay enough to allow him to bring one of his hands out of the darkness of the engine bay. It was nearly completely covered in thick oily residue. "Someone hand me that damn ratchet with the 12 and short extension on it!" His hand made a grabbing motion as he said it.

Katyusha's impatience forced her to find the needed tool amidst the set lying atop the turret and chucking it down past Sasha's hand, into the engine bay itself. A solid bonk was heard, followed by a metallic clanging.

"Ow!" was Sasha's reaction as his hand fled into the engine bay to massage his head, which was just impacted by the ratchet with extension. Said tool then had clattered to the bottom floor of the engine bay. "Who did that?!"

Both Nonna and Nudelmann, while finding Katyusha's antics to be vastly immature, had to admit that they were impressed with the diminutive Russian's accuracy, particularly in how Katyusha managed to hit him on the head without even looking like she was trying.

"Shut up, Sasha, and just keep working!" Katyusha silenced the blonde Russian engineer. "I expect this thing to be up and at it by dawn!"

"Keep doing that and there won't be anyone left to do this for you anymore!" Sasha argued back, not at all intimidated by Katyusha, even though he was the one hanging upside down at the mercy of Nonna and Nudelmann. He knew his talents as a mechanic were very useful to Katyusha, and that they were as valuable as gold, considering Pravda had equipment that was prone to breaking down more often than the equipment of other nations' schools. "Down!"

At the cue, both Nudelmann and Nonna crouched back down into a squat, fully lowering Sasha back into the engine bay once again.

"So, Katyusha," Nudelmann spoke up nonchalantly, getting back onto the subject. "What was that saying you wanted to know about?"

Katyusha's gaze diverted over to the tall Russian fighter ace, forgetting all about her quarrel with Sasha after hearing him speak words that interested her. "Oh, yes!" she affirmed. The diminutive Russian then held up the open book so Nudelmann could see and pointed to a specific saying. "It's this one: 'Drink the brewed dirt from underneath the fingernails.'"

"Ah, I believe I heard Miho say that before," Nudelmann nodded in remembrance. At Katyusha's quirking eyebrow, he explained. "She knows Japanese."

The diminutive Russian blinked in surprise. "Wait, she does?" she asked, not entirely believing the young German girl knew a language as unique as Japanese.

"Yeah," Nudelmann nodded. "From what she was willing to divulge, she apparently has a Japanese lineage that was abruptly cut off early on during the war in China, with the last Nishizumi perishing during that time. Yet, after the war during the mid-50s, the name somehow resurfaced in Germany, of all places."

"How does that work?" Katyusha asked with her head tilted to the side. This was information she had never heard before: knowing that Miho, and by association Maho, had a past Japanese lineage was perhaps the last thing she would have ever expected to hear with the way both of them spoke.

"She wasn't willing to say much on that part, but I would guess the NKVD had a hand in it," Nonna guessed.

"The NKVD?" Katyusha wondered. She knew of Stalin's secret police well enough, but this aspect of it was new to her. Nonna was about to explain when Sasha's voice echoed from down below again.

"Up!" Sasha requested. On cue, Nudelmann and Nonna tightened their grip on the blonde Russian and stood up again, lifting the engineer partly out of the darkness again. Sasha's blackened hand emerged from darkness, stretched open awaiting another item to be handed to him. "Fuel pump."

Seeing that the other two Russians had their hands full – literally, as they each held Sasha up by his legs – Katyusha grabbed the vane-type low-pressure fuel pump off the turret and handed it to the upside-down blonde Russian ace.

"Down," Sasha commanded after he took the fuel pump. Again, Nudelmann and Nonna squatted down, lowering the mechanic back down into the engine bay again to let him do his thing.

"So, Nonna, you were saying?" Katyusha prompted as she took a seat on the hull, legs dangling down into the engine bay.

"Hm?" the IS-2 gunner raised an eyebrow before realization dawned. "Oh, right. The NKVD had operated within China during the early part of the Second Sino-Japanese War, clandestinely offering support to the Chinese communists. It wouldn't surprise me if they hid away any information on any captured Japanese soldiers and simply threw them in a gulag to rot. To the rest of the world, those who were captured were considered as good as dead with that lack of information."

"Uh-huh…" the miniature Russian nodded slowly in understanding, filling in the deliberately open-ended response herself. "That surviving Nishizumi must've been one hell of a bad-ass to be able to survive that long in a gulag…" she muttered to herself, impressed. Katyusha then shook her head. "But, wait a minute. What does Mihosha having Japanese ancestry have to do with that saying?"

"It has to do with how that saying is Japanese in origin," Nudelmann supplied.

"Da," Nonna nodded in agreement. "It's a metaphor for following in someone's footsteps." Katyusha raised an eyebrow in confusion, and Nonna further explained. "You see, drinking the dirt underneath the fingernails of an extraordinary person was considered to be like…" The IS-2 gunner tried to think of how to accurately phrase it. "Like acquiring their essence, if that makes sense. To receive the same traits as that extraordinary person had. So you could end up just like them." The tall black-haired Russian grew a thoughtful expression. "If I remember right, I believe Miho used that saying to refer to how she had grown to be able to make friends just as easily as Erich. Something to do with her eventually overcoming a strong case of shyness thanks to him, particularly in her association with him."

"Hmm…" the diminutive Russian hummed in thought. 'So if I drink the dirt underneath the fingernails of someone tall, then maybe I can grow tall, too…' was her line of thought.

"Up!" Sasha's voice echoed from the deep, dark engine bay of the T-34-85. Nonna and Nudelmann again rechecked their grip on the blonde Russian's legs before standing up again to pull him out partway once more. "Water pump," he requested next, with his heavily-oiled hand coming up to await the requested item.

Sasha was not an excessively tall person, but compared to Katyusha, he was quite tall. Well, okay, everyone was tall in comparison to the diminutive Russian girl, but she figured that the idea of acquiring an extraordinary person's essence would still apply even if tallness wasn't their definitive trait. Her line of thought was that his tallness would also migrate along with his other talents. So when she saw one of his hands appear, Katyusha saw her opportunity and leaned forth, taking one of Sasha's fingers into her mouth and started to lightly suck on it.

"Ooh-ho-ho-hoo…" the blonde Russian ace moaned in a mixture of surprise and pleasure at the sensation of soft, warm lips lightly sucking on one of his fingers. It was very unexpected, but it felt good, too. He couldn't see what the source of such gentleness and warmth enclosed around one of his fingers was since his head was still hanging down pretty deep in the engine bay.

Nonna was quite the opposite, her face laced with shock and a barely noticeable amount of disgust, at how unsanitary Katyusha was being as well as the obvious pleasure being vocalized by the blonde Russian ace. With the benefit of hindsight, she thought it would've been a better idea to just remain quiet. Now, because of what was happening, she couldn't get the image of her best friend pleasuring one of her other friends out of her head.

Nudelmann wasn't surprised that Katyusha had actually tried out what the saying said for herself, but he was surprised at how she chose to do such a thing with Sasha's fingernails. He had kind of figured that she would pick his own fingernails to try that with, seeing as her desire to be taller was no secret, and how one of Nudelmann's defining traits was his height. Plus, he secretly wanted that kind of pleasure, too.

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"Oooh-ho-ho-hoo…" was what Nina and Alina heard when they entered the hangar, for the purpose of locating their superiors. Hearing the moaning voice of Sasha was something they did not expect, but being where they were at the big doors, they couldn't see what was causing him to make such noises.

"Huh, it sounds like Komandir Sotni Sasha's in a good mood tonight…" Nina observed.

"Da," Alina nodded in agreement, though she was a bit confused, too. "I guess something good happened…?"

The two underclassmen were pure-minded, so they wouldn't have made the connection that more dirty minds would have made upon hearing such delectable noises. Such was youthful innocence.

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Part of Projekt Jägermeistern.

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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.

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