Mathew woke up and then he silently woke the rest of his crews up and motioned them to mount up and get ready to move out. Mathew took a stick from one of the dying fires and wrote out a note on the wall.
"Left for the field. Within the mile but out one hundred meters. Won't fire till last tank has been out of building for ten minutes. Then it is a weapons free zone."
Mathew nodded at the note and climbed into his own tank and started the engine followed by every other tank that belonged to the American crews. The loud bellow and rumble of the engines startled the girls awake but before they could comprehend what was going on the screech of tracks on gears and reeves of the engines had made its way out the large factory style doors. Soon the sounds had disappeared and died out and so did the track impressions as snow was still falling in heavy and large flakes. Outside in the blizzard the boys had once again spread out and have taken their skirmish formation.
"Tank crew Watcher stay at this location and watch for enemy movement. If you see anything DO. NOT. ENGAGE. Report back to me immediately and I mean immediately. Understood?Over." The radio operator on the Green Reaper named Xavier said after getting the order from Mathew.
"This is Watcher, we copy that order. We will try not to get knocked out early. We want to get a few hits in. Over." Mick, the radio operator and loader of the Watcher said over the radio after getting the message from the commander Kevin.
"Rodger. This is the Green Reaper to all units. Be advised this is going to be a snipe and run game we will not engage in a slug fest until we can win this without any doubts. Also the tank to get the flag tank will get the KV-1 the guys back home have been fixing up for us. Nickname, Bear. Over." The radio operator said as he relayed the message from the leader.
"Roger that Green Reaper. This is Old Faithful. I have some important news a new group of student just came in and are interested in being tankers. There are five in total in short they can replace most of your crews after one takes control over the Bear, then can also pilot it without problem. Over." The Chad, radio operator and Student body president said over the intercom.
"Roger that buddy let me be the one to show them to their tank after this battle. Over." Mathew said over the intercom instead of Xavier as he sometimes does.
"Every good! But let us focus on this battle first and by focus I mean win. Over." Chad said again.
"Hell ya!" The rest of the tank radio operators said.
"Look alive men I got movement out of the doors." Kevin said as he saw the girls' tanks fly out of the doors like a bat out of hell.
"Start the hunt boys!" Mathew shouted into the intercom.
"Hell yea!" Everyone else yelled and then they started moving around and out ever farther then before before shutting their engines down almost completely but they left their radios on.
After the Watcher announced the tanks were leaving they counted all enemy tanks running away from the building in a diamond formation with the flag tank in the center of the diamond keeping great pace. The flag tank was then opposing tiger tank and was by the looks of it smoking.
"You guys see the formation?" Xavier asked.
"Affirmative." Everyone's tank replied.
"Here are the orders. Open fire on them with everything you got and as fast as you can, the boss wants this wrapped up quick." Xavier said relaying the information as Mick the gun operator spun the turret to aim at the middle of the road 50 meters in front as Even the loader put a armor piercing fragmentation round in the breach.
"Rodger that sir." Everyone else answered and just after that the massive gun of the Tiger1 fired and knocked the opposing Tiger into a ditch with a destroyed track.
Soon shells were fired from both sides of the road knocking out two tanks and damaging three only two were left fully functional and those started to split up to both sides of the road and charging straight head on at Ol' Faithful and Viper both of which dropped their guns lower and were aiming at the tracks of both tanks. The tanks still in prime condition was a Chi-Nu and M3 Lee both of which still probably didn't know what they were running at. And that they didn't as two shots ripped right through them and knocked both tanks out. Not twenty seconds after the two charging tanks were knocked out and a minute after the first shot from the Green Reaper the adjustments to the Reaper's gun were made and new round loaded. This time the crosshairs were aimed right at where the engine was and a Armor Piercing Composite Rigid shell a round that was designed to punch through steel and break apart after in an effort to destroy whatever was behind it. Then the Tiger fired and the shell did its job and the flag tank was knocked out. The BT-7 had also took out the panzer 38(t) and the last tank the Hetzer was being aimed at by the Green Reaper and one shot from an APF (armor piercing fragmentation) silenced its engine. Now every Ooarrai tank had a small flag sticking out of the tank and was waving in the now clear sky.
"And that's it boys this one is done count your kills and report back I know I killed the Hetzer and the other Tiger. What you boys get?" Mathew asked over the intercom taking the radio operator seat and switching with Xavier.
"I got the M3 Lee and the Panzer 4 Ausf.D" The Viper's radio operator Austin said over the intercom.
"My team got that Chi-Nu and Type 89 tank." Christian the radio operator for Ol' Faithful said.
"We brought down the Stug 3 Asuf.F and that Char 8- bis tank." The BT-7 operator Chad said. "Hey we still haven't been named yet captain." Chad said.
"Yea your right bud. I hear by dub you Guardian. How's that?" Mathew said realizing the newest tank was never named.
"That is great sir now what are we going to do about the tie we have here? I mean each one of us has two hits, I already know you won that KV-1 but who are we going to give that upgrade money to?" Chad asked as he didn't know what to do.
"How about this. We put a fraction of our money away for a new tank? I'm thinking a T-29 Heavy tank. What do you guys think? We only have one American tank." Mathew asked over the intercom.
"Whoo that is quite the slugger I'm in and I'm speaking for the whole viper team." Austin said.
"Yea I'm in we want to trade up anyway this thing takes a singe hit and we are done." Kevin said as he got his crew's vote.
"Yup we are in guys." Christian said as he got his crew's vote.
"Us too." Chad said.
"So it's settled now let's start helping the girls out of the broken down piles steel and get us back to town I need some hot coffee and a meal preferably at that pub they have the best food in town." Mathew said staring down to the sene of carnage and stoping as the rest of his crews tanks got there as well.
"Okay guys check in on them." Mathew said as he got out of his spot near the center of his tank and out the main hatch and walking out to the other Tiger and opening the hatch and releasing a plume of smoke.
"Hey you girls alright?" Mathew yelled into the hull.
"Yes we are okay. That was a great shot none of us saw you at all." A young looking burnet girl said as she lifted herself up and out of the tank and accidentally right in the face of Mathew.
"Oh sorry, didn't know you would be that close." Mathew said backing up.
"It's okay I don't mind, your actually quite handsome." She said dreamily before realizing what she said and ducking back down into the hull of the tank.
"Well thanks now come on we are starting a fire to keep us warm until the trucks get here and haul your tanks back to the ships. Once they do I'll be heading back to our ship for a good meal at one of the pubs. Besides I have to talk with the prez about our new tank and the new crew that will be with us come next match if you want to you girls can hop over we will be out here for another day." Mathew said before hopping back down and grabbing a shovel and digging out a large circle in the snow.
"Hey Matt what are you doing?" Jason asked pooping his head out of the T7 car.
"We will be starting another fire so grab an ax and tell the others I don't want to be cold long."
"Cool I'm really cold I can't wait till we have that fire going. I think the others would agree." Jason said taking his ax off of his tank before relaying the message to the others who grabbed their own tanks and hooped onto Ol'Faithful.
A couple minutes later they came back with a medium sized Birch tree. They soon got to chopping it up and started piling the bits of tree inside the circle. Mathew then pulled his flame thrower out of his tank and put it on before letting a long orange, red, and yellow tongue of flame shoot out igniting the pile of wood and warming everyone around it. The girls looked quite upset about their loss.
"Hey come on you can't win all the time." Mathew said turning the valve that released the gasoline off.
"I know that! But you boys wiped us out in less than twenty minutes! We didn't see any one of you till after you came to us." The leader Miho Nishzumi yelled across the fire.
"Yes, but that is our ambush formation. We made sure that it would be near impossible to get bearings on our tanks we even painted them. We almost never do that. If it makes you feel any better only six teams out of the fifty we played made it through that and I'm talking teams with nearly twenty tanks in them." Mathew said walking around to her.
"Your kidding." Miho said as she looked at him then at his tanks.
"Not kidding how do you think I got so many kills on my tank? Speaking of. HEY GUYS WE GOT OUR HUNDREDTH KILL!" Mathew yelled.
"Wooho!" Everyone in Mathew's team yelled.
"Hear that Leopon you are special." The student council president named Anzu said munching on some fried potato skins.
"Yea and we were one of the last to be knocked out." The same burnet that hit on Mathew said Judy as a few trucks pulled up one loaded with a few tanks of gas for the boys to fill up.
"Hey we saw what happened. We watched a few of their earlier matches, they used that play every tenth match. Only you were an exception, this is a fifth match." One of the towers said as she hopped out of the truck.
"It says in "The Art of War" by Sun Zu that and I quote. To defeat an enemy you must avoid what is strong and attack what is weak. So by nature we did the only logical choice and that is hit you before you know where we are. Plus we studied each one of your tanks since we knew we ad a match. We knew exactly where to hit you and what to hit you with." Chad said clapping a hand over Mathew's shoulder before walking over and talking to the student council president about something important.
"You are much more strategized than you act on the field. I thought you were making everything up as it came along." Nino said with a laugh.
"Nope it is a set strategy." So is a second skirmish formation that we use it is another snipe and run game only we use one of our own as bait on one side and the others hit the back of the opponents' vehicle." Mathew said scratching the back of his head.
"Hey Matt I hope you made them your friends because our schools are merging and so are our teams." Chad said as he walked.
"What!" Matt exclaimed his jaw falling slack.
"Ya the word came down from our mayor that a huge ship is being made and our cities are coming together as a metropolis. Also our schools are merging to be co Ed. Now we have a huge carrier and it comes with a gift to us, us as in tankers."
"Hold on bud we have to share this with our opposites. He um Anzu and Miho can you come over here for a minute. We have some news for you." Mathew said calling the other president and the alpha commander over.
"Yes what do you need to talk to us about." Anzu asked her voice not carrying a hint of aggression.
"Listen I'm not sure if you know this but our ships are being scrapped and we are getting one huge ship for the both of our cities, as for school it's going to be a co Ed thing and as a welcome gift we got a maus tank, how would you like the tank we are going to get us two new heavy tanks and a new crew." Mathew said with a smile, making her smile wide and let out a squeal in joy.
"I would love it, but why give it to us." Miho asked joyously.
"Because I've seen your tanks and I know you would need an upgrade to your arsenal. We get our upgrades as soon as we can get one. We get new tracks and upgraded guns, armor, engines, the aiming drives are upgraded and so are the laying drives, and better instruments for our mechanics. Our machines are top of the line at this point. Hell even the firing mechanism of each of our tanks are the same model of howitzer only different sizes we customized our tanks to our liking. We made them easy to fix but hard to put down each one of them has a personality and style that hasn't been seen on that tank." Mathew said.
"So we are are giving it to you because we think it fits your style. An unstoppable war machine that needs entire army to attack it to even stand a chance. We will gladly help you get it running faster or whatever it needs we will help work it. If you need more operators in it we will provide them. Whatever you need in this sport we will help provide it, we are your teammates after all. " Chad added to his friend's statement.
"Thank you boys now let us get out of this cold. Hey can you show me around your own city." Miho asked.
"Sure we could. The way this whole ship trading thing is going to happen is that we are heading to the same working port. And all our people are going to board the gigantic ship and head to assigned houses which are copies of our own on our smaller ships. The boarding is going to last 4 days. One half of each ship per day." Mathew began as he got into the driver seat of a transport truck followed by Miho getting in the front and the rest of the girls in the back the other boys were to follow the convoy of tow trucks and the transportation truck.
"Ah so the whole city will be a mash of our cities." Miho asked as Mathew started to drive.
"Almost ,the city itself is formatted like the city of Pittsburgh and Tokyo overlapped is what I heard so I'm going to have to take a good long drive trying to figure the place out." Mathew said as he continued driving.
"Why you don't know your way around both cities?" Miho asked looking at him then back to front and seeing their two already large ships.
"No I know Pittsburgh that's a city that I visited quite often. But Tokyo, I haven't even stepped foot there so I wouldn't know where to go. Hopefully they wrote out all the signs in both Japanese and in English. That will help me out and probably everyone else on our ships. Speaking of the size of our ships is already quite big the ship we are to get is bound to be humbling." Mathew said stopping at the port before getting out and heading to a nearby jeep followed by Miho who got into the keep after him.
"Ya now you said something about a pub you can take us to." Anzu said hopping in the back along with Chad.
"Ya it has the best comfort food. Not necessary the healthiest but still the best." Mathew said starting the jeep and driving onto the car ramp near the front of their ship which takes you all the way up to the top of he ship.