The Legends Still Live On
Bogen Siebundzwanzig-komma-ein: Extras Neun und Zehn
Kapitel Elf: Erwartungsvoll Aussehen
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During another day aboard the HMS Ark Royal, four of St Gloriana's students walked down the hall chatting amongst each other. Normally, there were six of them, but two were missing, and the whereabouts of those two were the main topic of discussion.
"Have any of you seen Darjeeling and Assam today?" Orange Pekoe asked the three boys on either side of her. "I tried texting them, but they haven't replied back."
"Nope," Douglas immediately shook his head, denying any knowledge of Darjeeling or Assam, but mostly Darjeeling. Assam he could live with, but not Darjeeling.
"No, I haven't heard anything," Dennis responded afterwards, shaking his head as well. He spotted someone out of the corner of his eye, though, further down the hall. Taking a closer look, he recognized the figure approaching them. "Actually, I take that back. There's Assam right there."
Everyone else looked to where the Northern Irishman was pointing, and sure enough saw Assam walking towards them.
"Hello, Assa-" Orange Pekoe began to say hello upon the foursome of Brits closing the distance with the blonde Englishwoman, but she was cut off.
"Good day, Darjeeling," Arthur greeted resolutely, without a shred of doubt in his voice. The other three looked to him in confusion, seeing him bore his gaze into the Englishwoman opposite him with such a self-assured smirk on his face.
"Oh, you and your discernibility just had to ruin my fun," Darjeeling pretended to pout like she was offended, even though that wasn't the case. She was much different in her appearance, having her blonde hair tied up into the wild style synonymous with Assam, including the bow.
Everyone else besides Arthur all stared at Darjeeling utterly perplexed. Within their minds, each of them was wondering what on Earth possessed Darjeeling to cosplay as Assam.
Soon enough, after letting a brief silence pass by, Douglas uttered the one thought everyone had on their mind: "What. The. Fuck."
"I believe what he means is," Orange Pekoe was quick to interject, looking to minimize the amount of offense in Douglas' words. It was a job she often did. "Why are you all…" She swept her arm up and down gesturing to Darjeeling's appearance.
"Ah, that," Darjeeling grew a grin before answering Orange Pekoe's unspoken question. "I wanted a change of air. So," she then spread her arms out. "What do you think?"
"I think you have issues," Douglas piped up, earning him a harsh nudge from Dennis to silence him. While the Northern Irishman agreed wholly with his Scottish comrade, Dennis still had the common sense to remain polite, something that Douglas often lacked.
"Oh, believe me, I know," Darjeeling retorted with a smile anyways. "My issues make a Russian look sane by comparison."
"My God, what kind of game is she playing now…?" Orange Pekoe muttered to Arthur. "What, is she trying to actually act like Assam?"
"If that's the case, then she's already got the sense of humor down," the Spitfire ace muttered back. That made the smaller ginger's lips twitch in amusement, as that was indeed a horrible joke Darjeeling just told. It was a joke they would expect to be told by Assam.
"Good morrow, everyone!" another Englishwoman's voice was heard, Assam's this time. Everyone turned to find Assam walking towards them, but like Darjeeling, she had also altered her hairstyle. Her own blonde hair was styled into Darjeeling's signature French braid. "Have you heard this saying? 'With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.'"
"Oh, bravo, Assam!" Darjeeling clapped, impressed with Assam's imitation of her as well as her extremely timely presence. "Always quick on the uptake!"
"Wow, she definitely did her research on this," Arthur noted. While not quite as knowledgeable on them as Orange Pekoe or Darjeeling, his knowledge on quotes still enabled him to place the origin of the quote, which impressed him all the more with Assam in particular. She was able to replicate Darjeeling's distinctive trait of quoting famous quotes with seeming flawlessness.
"What is this even about…?" Orange Pekoe muttered, still not sure on why Darjeeling and Assam were trying to imitate each other in the first place.
At that point, both Darjeeling and Assam turned to face Orange Pekoe and strike her with a look that practically demanded she take part as well. It was kind of creepy in all honesty as they continued to bore into the ginger with their gazes.
Finally, Orange Pekoe sighed and started messing with her hair, taking it out of her usual twin braids put into twisted buns. "Fine, just give me a second…" she gave in to the peer pressure.
From the sidelines, having migrated out of the line of fire between the girls, Arthur, Douglas, and Dennis stood there to observe the attempts to replicate the actions of another flawlessly.
"You know what?" Arthur eventually piped up. "We should do something like that." He nodded to the girls, who were still trying to perfectly replicate the behaviors of whoever they chose to impersonate.
"Oh, God help us," Douglas spread his arms and looked upwards, sarcastically begging the powers that be for this nonsense to stop.
"No, no, seriously, I think this could be interesting," Arthur insisted, turning to the other two boys with him. He thought for a brief moment until he waved a hand dismissively at Dennis. "Well, except for Dennis. He'd have to dye his hair before he could impersonate anyone."
Dennis rolled his eyes at the slight to his short, naturally red hair. It wasn't like he was even interested in acting in the first place, so the idea of impersonation didn't stir his curiosity like it did the others.
"But the real question is…" Arthur continued on, lifting a finger to his chin in thought. "Who would us two be best to act as?"
Silence reigned for several seconds as Douglas and Arthur both thought of possibilities. The quiet was soon interrupted by the Englishman. "I know!" he said, snapping his fingers in a similar gesture of enlightenment. "You could do our favorite Russian engineer, Sasha."
"Oh, no, no way in hell," the Scotsman denied with arms crossing in front of him in a blunt 'nope' gesture. "I may have enough mechanical knowledge to maintain a Spitfire, and we may share the same hair and eye colors, but Sasha's mechanical knowledge is just something else. Plus, I can't pull off a Russian accent for the life of me."
"Ah, yes, you bring up good points…" Arthur noted, returning to thinking of possibilities.
"Actually," Douglas spoke up again with a finger raised. "Perhaps you could try to impersonate the Meister Erich. I mean, you've already got much of the physical aspects down." He waved at Arthur's head to emphasize. "Blonde hair, blue eyes…"
"Well, that's not happening for similar reasons as to why you won't do Sasha," Arthur responded. "For one, you can forget about me trying to talk like a German. That's not something I think is even possible for me to do." He then raised two fingers. "And two, he's far too bipolar for me to accurately portray. He's got way too many extreme traits of his, and not all of them play nice with each other. Like his fierce focus in combat compared to his utter bum-like everyday behavior, or his mischievous side versus his incredible self-righteousness." The Englishman shook his head. "No, just no bloody way am I going to be able to impersonate him accurately."
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Somewhere else on the seven seas, aboard the Zuikaku, Erich-Dietrich Hartmann sneezed.
"Achoo!" the blonde sneezed once, violently. He then furrowed his brow in confusion as to why he felt something was off in the universe.
Walking beside him, Miho giggled a bit. "I think someone's talking about you again," she guessed. That was her usual guess as to why Erich would sneeze at any given time, given he had a sizable following. When she was younger, she was a bit put off by how well-liked he was because of a slight yet irrepressible jealousy of how easily the blonde could make friends compared to her, who historically had great difficulty with the same task. But that was no longer the case after she eventually learned to accept every part of the ultra-ace, including that large following.
"Yeah, well I hope it's only nice things," Erich retorted. His lips then curled into a grin. "And even then, only platonic things. For their own safety, because I know exactly what you would do if you found anyone admiring me in the way you do."
Miho blushed at the blonde's implication and looked away with a meek smile. Okay, so maybe she wasn't necessarily jealous of him anymore, but she was most certainly still possessive of the ultra-ace. That had never changed in all ten years they had known each other, and most likely never will. He would always be hers, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.
She was broken out of her thoughts by her phone ringing. She had a rhythmic digital ringtone, similar to modern J-pop but less intense, play for a bit until she dug it out of her bag and answered it. "Hello?" she answered.
Her accompanying ultra-ace rolled his eyes nonchalantly. "I swear, you have the most boring ringtone ever!" the blonde loudly proclaimed, loud enough that it could even be heard over the other end of the light brunette's phone.
That sent Miho into another fit of giggles, knowing this to be typical Erich behavior: being so blunt with his opinions on such silly topics that it made her laugh nearly every time at the absurdity. "Okay Saori, we'll be there soon," she managed to reply before hanging up and continuing to laugh heartily. Why the light brunette found his boisterous claim so funny was because the blonde still couldn't comprehend why she didn't want to have an influx of heavy metal alerting her of a call. It was just hilarious to her, seeing that face full of child-like wonder as she tried to explain that she wasn't terribly fond of being woken up in the middle of the night from his own phone blasting its Sabaton ringtones at each call, and that she would truly go mad if her own phone did the same.
Moments like that were why Miho loved being around Erich: there was just never a boring minute with him.
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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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