Chapter 3-In France we are!

Time had passed by quickly for Mica and the others. Before long, it was time to pack their bags and take one long flight to France, where they would stay for a week before taking a flight to their next destination, Italy. From here on out, they had to use the historical armaments for their tanks, modified tanks were not allowed in the main tournament. Grand Peak had three Type 3 Chi-Nu, two Shinhoto Chi-Ha, two Type 3 Ho-Ni III and asingle Type 95 Heavy Tank all ready to go, and in a few weeks, two Type 5 Ke-Ho arrive to help out.

"Hey, wake up will you?" Mica shoke Naoki to no effect. "Come on, you're the only I trust to be awake..." Mica gave up and tilted his head back. He started to wonder how he got here in the first place. They won one of the preliminaries of course, but what about before then. He had been enrolled at Grand Peak a year earlier, loving tanks at the time. "Grand Peak..." He repeated the name in his head quite a bit.

The school has been established ten years earlier, his father had helped do so, which is why he even wanted to come here. It was one of the rare few to allow boys to attend in Sensha-Do. Even more, it allowed for foreign students to enroll and surprisingly, it attracted many though being practically unknown at the time.

Suddenly, the intercom roared to life with the pilot's voice. "Ehem, all passengers be noticed that we will be arriving in France shortly." The plane started it's descent down to the ground.

Slowly, Mica opened the cover to his window, blinding light poured in and woke up Naoki who yawned and smacked his lips. "Hey Mica, we almost there? My back is starting to hurt."

"We're descending, should be on the ground soon."

"Good, now would you excuse me..." Mica unbuckled his seatbelt and walked off to the bathroom. Leaving Mica to stare out off into the distance. France looked beautiful from the sky, it was also nighttime so an array of lights shined brightly in front of his eyes.

The plane touched down on the runway and taxied to its designated terminal. Just then, Naoki returned from the bathroom and just as they stopped. "Naoki, you shouldn't have been in the bathroom while landing."

"What are you? My mother?" He took his seat and waited for the pilot's message.

"Ehem, we have landed and are ready to start the departure process, please do not leave any luggage behind." The intercom cut off as Mica and Naoki started to get their luggage and exit the plane.

"Okay, so where's Tsuki and Rin?" Naoki sat on his case.

"Over here!" The two boys turned around to see Tsuki and Rin getting off the plane.

"Great!" Mica exclaimed, "Now, we're staying at this one place...they built it specifically to house all the schools." Mica searched his case for a map. "Ahah!" He then took out a giant map of Paris.

"Is that a map of France or Paris?" Rin asked.

"Funny, now um, where is it again." Mica searched all over the map.

"Err, oh there it is." Tsuki pointed at a giant block of grey that stood out.

"Not very, detailed is it?" Naoki, "Hey, where Alan?" He pointed out.

"Over here!" Alan come over with a box of pastries. "Sorry, I got really hungry."

"This isn't time for food, get your stuff and hurry up! We're only staying in Paris for a week before we depart for Italy." Mica folded the map and stuffed into his pocket.

"How do you do that?" Rin questioned.

"No time, let's go." Mica took his things and headed off towards security. It took about an hour before they got out of the airport, the other teams were on their own in means of transportation. The group of five hailed a taxi and were well on their way to their destination. When they got there, Ryan, Maya, Kenneth and their teams were waiting for them.

"About time, we were wondering when you were going to get here." Ryan waved at him.

"Oh look, it's Claude and Kurtis." Kenneth got up from a bench and stretched while two taxis parked next to the curb.

"Heh, now where's Arthur, and his team?" Mica looked around for them.

"They decided to go inside, wish Marylin and Shirley could have made it." Ryan explained.

"They get here after round three, I think, now come on, get inside." Mica started to search around the building with the others following suit. "Well, um, where do we go in the first place."

"I thought you knew what was going around here." Kenneth keyed in.

"When did I tell you that?"

"Yesterday, when we got on the plane, you said that you had it all handled when we got there."

"Nope, did not, I blame Naoki."

"Hey!" Naoki got annoyed but Mica quickly shuffled away looking for some sort of sign of what to do. He started to notice a pattern, every few hallways, there would be a sort of symbol. He didn't get it at first, but when he saw the emblem of Barret's school, an idea rang off in his head. "Okay, all we have to do is look for our school's emblem, simple, right?"

"But, what is our school's emblem again?" Ryan asked.

"Am I the only one that bothered to notice?"

"Yes." The others said in unison. Leaving Mica to stare at them.

"Just, come on, we have to find our rooms." The group walked aimlessly around for awhile. They passed students of other schools, like Kuromorimine or Oarai. Eventually they were able to find their rooms in a brightly lit hallway in one corner of the building. "This was nice placement." Mica sarcastically added.

"So, one room for each team?" Naoki pondered about this.

"Seems to be that way, okay I'm turning for the...um...day." Marylin dragged her team with her towards their room.

"Righto, me and Clause will be going now." The Kurtis and Clause's headed to their rooms.

"Let's go guys, I'm tired of walking I just want to lay down or something." Rin banged her head on Tsuki's back. All while Kenneth's team entered their room.

"H-hey, Mica, let's go before she actually breaks my back." Tsuki elbowed him.

"Sure, let's go." He opened the door to his team's room and Rin leaped onto a queen sized bed. "Nice place, better than I expected." The room was very well furnished, five beds, one TV and a few chairs. "Okay, you guys do what you want, I'm going to watch Marilyn's match again some school named Saunders."

"Saunders? Aren't they from Japan too?" Tsuki set her things out.

"Uh, yeah, American themed, strange coincidence that two American themed schools have the first match." He turned on the TV and flipped to the channel the match was being broadcasted on. Immediately, he saw a T29 from Browning High slugging its way through the French countryside. "Strange, doesn't Browning have a T30?"

"Yeah they do,but I heard the league were very strict on them, they had to go to a T29 instead." Alan said from the bathroom, trying to brush his teeth.

"Huh, okay, same thing probably happened to Cosette and Aleksei." Mica sat down into a chair and eagerly watched the match. It was a Flag Battle, Browning's flag tank was a M24 Chaffee while Saunders was a M4A3. The two teams were at a standoff, it was more of a peekaboo fight until some of Saunders shermans emerged from behind some houses and charged straight ahead.

Sensing that this was a declaration for a duel, some of Browning's shermans did the same. Using this as a decoy, two of Browning's M36B2s moved in a flanking position, only to meet fierce resistance and being knocked out. The duel had also ended in a stalemate, leaving a mass of white flags out in the middle.

"Huh, seems to be interesting there." Tsuki sat down with him. Rin was snoring away while Alan and Naoki had gone out to some bakeries.

"Yeah, no, it's a peekaboo match really, not fun to watch."

"Eh, you know, not all of them are winners." By now, both sides were down to their last tanks, however, Browning's T29 rushed out into the middle, bouncing off shots from the other side. One Wolverine from Browning, which had a covered turret, took this as a chance to snipe out some targets. It managed to knock out a Firefly and another Sherman before a shot slammed into the corner of the house it was hiding behind and it retreated.

The T29 had reached Saunders side and slowly turned its turret to blast away at another Sherman. However, their flag tank was missing, it had sneaked past the Wolverine's sight and the T29's assault. It was spotted however, but by the M24 Chaffee and it was facing the opposite direction. Of course, the M4A3 knocked it out and the match was over, Saunders had won due to a sneaky attack.

"That was anti-climatic." Mica sighed and layed his head back.

"Like I said, not all of them can't be winners." Tsuki stood up and walked away.

"I wanted something better for a first match really."

"Our tanks arrive tomorrow, right?"

"Yeah, I thought you knew, since I've been reminding you guys a lot.

"I wonder when those two will get back" As if in responce, Naoki and Alan came barging in toting boxes of pastries.

"We got croissants!" Alan sat down the boxes on the table and proceeded to open one and took a crepe."We also have crepes, whatever they are."

"Crepes are thin pancakes rolled up and filled with stuff." Naoki took out a croissant and bit a piece off. However, no one noticed Rin slowly creeping up on them.

She tapped Mica's shoulder and whispered, "Boo." into his ear. It genuinely scared him but he answered back.

"Well, you're awake."

"I scared you, didn't I, anyways, I've been awake for a few minutes, decided to get out of bed when I heard the word pastries."

"Well, we have seven boxes of random pastries." Alan had taken another crepe and eaten it. "Do crepes count as pastries?"

"Don't know, don't care, it's food and I'm hungry." Mica eyed a croissant in one of the boxes.

"There's a reason we bought them, so dig in." Naoki welcomed the others to eat. The five enjoyed their food with glee and eat to their heart's intent. Tomorrow, their tanks arrive and the morning after, their battle to decide who gets to go Italy and who goes home.

Notes: I hope you guys enjoyed this chapter, sorry it took so very long. If you want to know, the next chapter is already being worked on, so I hope to release it sometime next week or so. I don't have anything more to say, so, until next time.