Megumi knew they had a day or two to fix the standing army of Saunders. Kuromorimine's slap had hit them hard and with their forces in disarray, Megumi had decided to pause any fighting until the situation could be fixed. Megumi had sent Lola and Alexandra to the armory to see how many modern rifles they had in stock. The factories were churning out new ones, but Megumi knew this wasn't going to be fast enough to the level they needed. She was worried about the damage that was going to be done to her allies, so she wanted the school to start purchasing rifles and ammunition. She waited around patiently for Alexandra and Lola to come back. They had to rebuild everything from scratch. A knock was heard as Megumi walked over to the door and opened it. Alexandra and Lola were standing outside.
"What's the rifle situation? Many students had volunteered to fight for us, but do we have anything to give them?" Megumi asked her friends if they had any rifles to give to these students. Lola began to scratch the back of her head as she knew the situation wasn't pretty, but she knew she needed to say it. Alexandra began to speak on her behalf.
"Megumi, I'm going to declare that Rifles are more precious than Gold!" Alexandra told Megumi that rifles could be worth more than pure gold. She cleared her voice and continued to explain. "We have about ten thousand volunteers, all of the students who attend this school other than us total and less than ten percent of them have rifles. To make matters worse, only half of those ten percent have rifles actually work. We need to arm everyone quickly. Even the Gregor students whose numbers are growing we need to arm too. We talked to Nelly and after training her, the Gregor legions are ready to be formed."
"I knew the situation was bad, but it was not this bad." Megumi responded to what Alexandra had stated earlier. Now came the question, how to arm everyone with fresh weapons and be able to start turning the table against Kuromorimine and its allies.
"I know it is, we need to fix this fast." Alexandra told Megumi. Lola ignored them and decided to make an announcement.
"Students of Saunders, our morale is bad, but we need to keep going as I am going to announce that Saunders will purchase any type of rifle as long as sufficient amounts of ammunition could be purchased along with the rifles." Lola told the group that they were desperate.
"What about the Arisaka's Chi-Ha-Tan had agreed to sell?" Alexandra asked Megumi, she remembered the fact that Alexandra had purchased a bunch of rifles about a few days ago and they were now waiting for them to arrive.
"They might come today. A few hundred to arm a few thousand isn't going to be enough. I'm going to put in a second much larger order for them so we can arm more students." Megumi explained that the rifles were going to come but with the size of the student army, they needed to arm as many students as possible before they could get back out there to fight.
"Okay, place the bigger order with Tsutsuji. We need as many as possible." Alexandra told Megumi to begin ordering as many rifles as possible. They were also looking for donors who were willing to lend Saunders their surplus. The phone began to ring as someone was trying to call them. Megumi and Alexandra looked at each other while the phone was ringing. Lola wanted to say something, but she didn't want to interrupt them. Finally, Megumi decided to take her phone out before flipping it open. She decided to place it to her ear.
"Hello?" Megumi asked. There was a pause for a moment and for that, she remained tense before Milica's voice was able to contact her.
"This is Milica from the Serbian Gang and I have Sofia with me as we have some very bad news." Milica began. Megumi nodded but why was Sofia with her and why were there long pauses. Megumi needed to figure out what was going on.
"What's the bad news?" Megumi asked Milica what this news was.
"Well… the reason Sofia is with me is the fact that Yogurt Academy has declared war on us and has joined Kuromorimine and her allies." Milica began. "Sofia tried to keep the school neutral but Srebarna ousted her and decided to take a stance with the Central Powers, she also declared Sofia a spy for us."
"Yeah, things are going bad for you guys, do you need to be evacuated to Corfu?" Megumi asked Milica if she needed to get out of there.
"Riccioli has got us covered and we should be good. We just have to keep Sofia with us as that's the big goal." Milica told Megumi that she had planned ahead and was being evacuated.
"Okay, as long as you're okay on getting you and your allied gangs out of there is something I will be grateful for." Megumi sighed in the hope that Milicia knew what her plan was going to be.
"I have to get going now, I hope I can speak to you later." Milica knew she needed to cut the conversation short, so she decided to hang up.
"See ya." Megumi told Milica. Alexandra looked at Megumi as she was curious to find out what the conversation was about.
"What was Milica talking to you about?" Alexandra asked. Lola didn't bother saying a word, still looking on with interest.
"Yogurt Academy has joined the Central Powers, they have declared war on the Serbian Gang. I bet Manami and Gisela along with Srebarna are overrunning her." Megumi explained to Alexandra. Alexandra nodded while figuring out what they were going to do next.
"Let's hope Milica knows what she is doing." Alexandra sighed. The door opened as Alice came into the room as Kay was walking beside her.
"Well, it is a good thing I was able to track you down." Baby Lee began. She hadn't seen the Saunders students in a while. "I heard you guys were having a bit of a rifle shortage and I was wondering if my school could step in and try to fill the shortage in?"
"Oh, I guess you've brought a friend over. Are you here to help fix our supply woes?" Alexandra asked Alice if she was going to see if she could fix what they had done wrong. Alice decided to take a moment to think about it before she pulled out her lever action rifle. She opened up a case containing a rifle inside.
"I would like to see the rifle you're making, and we'll see how this will compare with my school's M1903 Springfield." Baby Lee told Alexandra if she had a full-size rifle that she could see and she could get some pictures and borrow the design for it to be produced back at her school.
"Sure thing." Megumi told Alice. She went off to the storeroom and pulled out a finished 3 Line M1891 rifle that had come fresh off of the factory production line. Lola heard her phone buzz and left the scene without saying a word. Alice placed the rifle beside Megumi's rifle, and she took some comparisons while inspecting the rifle.
"Your rifle is seven inches longer than ours. Do you intend on having tall students for your heavy cumbersome rifle?" Baby Lee asked while she was inspecting the rifle.
"Yeah, some of us are tall plus the rifle doesn't have much kick, we have forty-inch carbines, but this is made mostly for the cavalry, artillery and machine gun teams. The dragoons we have are a couple inches shorter and some of the students say they prefer them over the long rifles especially for the so-called trench work." Megumi explained that some of their students really liked their rifles, and they had a couple variations of them.
"The rifle is very crude, so I decided to purchase the Springfield." Kay told Alice as she picked up the Springfield Rifle.
"Hey, put that down Kay." Baby Lee commanded Kay to put the rifle down. Megumi and Alexandra looked at each other for the moment as Kay placed the rifle down. Alexandra opened the lever action rifle up as this rifle hadn't been changed.
"A neat lever action you got there." Alexandra began. She opened it up using the lever before closing it. "How many do you have in stock?" Alexandra asked. Alice began to think about the number she had of these lever action rifles laying around. She then began to speak:
"About four thousand, why?" Baby Lee asked. She was curious. "These are Winchester Model 1895's. We got the confirmation of lever actions and we decided to make the most modern one of the bunch. It feeds five rounds from a box type magazine though the annoying part is that you have to load the rounds one at a time which is something I don't enjoy doing." Baby Lee described the rifles as this was big, four thousand rifles laying around in storage not being used.
"Sweet, I'll take as many rifles as you can supply." Alexandra told Alice that she wanted every single rifle. "Also modify them so they can feed stripper clips instead of loading one round at a time.
"Okay that's perfect.' Baby Lee told Alexandra. She began to write down what her friends needed which meant feeding them with as many rifles as possible. She then drew out a eight-inch bayonet for the rifle, they were much like the other bayonets, made from hard plastic. Alexandra continued to study the rifle, wondering what other changes she could make to it to make it seem to function better. She decided to take a look at the bayonet a bit, she was not satisfied with the size of it.
"Bayonet, not happy, I want something a little more aggressive." Alexandra told Alice. Alice looked at the eight-inch bayonet and began to think, should she bump the size of it to make it longer so the Saunders students could begin poking into stuff from farther away?
"I'll double the size of it if you want." Baby Lee knew she needed to give into Alexandra's demands for a larger bayonet for the rifles.
"Sure, also add a partial handguard to cover the bottom of the rifle barrel up to the front, updated rear sights and guides for us to use stripper clips." Alexandra told Alice what else she wanted.
"Okay that's good. I bet you like the long service rifle." Baby Lee added while jotting down what Alexandra's requests were going to be.
"Also, are you willing to make our service rifle for us?" Alexandra asked Alice if her school was willing to make their 3 Line model 1891 rifles. Alice knew the rifle was cumbersome and heavy, but the round didn't kick hard, and the heavy weight of the rifle made the pellet easy to control.
"I'll do it. How many rifles do you want in the contract?" Baby Lee asked them how many they were going to need. Alexandra began to think the armory was producing new rifles rapidly, but they knew they needed a reserve of rifles because they had quickly run out of them during the past few weeks.
"About ten thousand rifles." Alexandra told Alice that she needed that many rifles. "If we make orders for another few thousand, I'll let you know."
"Much appreciated." Baby Lee told Alexandra. Kay walked over as she wanted to make a few requests of her own. Alice looked at her while figuring out what she wanted.
"I want the Springfield and possibly two hundred and fifty more with bayonets that come standard with the rifle. I find these rifles a bit easier to handle over the long rifles Alexandra has made us fight with." Kay told Alice that she wanted another couple hundred Springfields in the arsenal. Alexandra was confused, what was Kay going to need a couple hundred of those rifles for anyway? Alexandra was just happy that they were getting a whole slew of new rifles for them to fight with. They didn't know who they wanted to give them to.
"Are you planning on using all of them for yourself?" Alexandra asked Kay what she needed all of those rifles for. Kay began to think about what she was going to do with them.
"My own group is fighting." Kay told Alexandra that she is willing to form her own group and giving them all the rifles for. She picked up the Springfield that Alice had decided to lend her as she then gave her some money as if she was making the purchase herself. "I would also like ten thousand rounds of ammunition to go along with that." Kay told Alice that she wanted some ammo to use. If Kay's words were correct, that would be forty rounds per student of her legion roughly. Maybe a bit more for her extra rifle which would count to 251 rifles.
"Okay I can have those all made within a couple days and shipped over. We're not in the war but we're busy supplying the other schools with war material to defeat Kuromorimine and its allies." Baby Lee told them that Stars and Stripes Middle School wasn't involved in the war, but they were secretly providing the other schools with rifles and supplies for the war.
"Good, hopefully you can join the war." Kay told Alice that she wanted her school involved as they could use a powerful ally to drive Kuromorimine back.
"Sorry but no, we're still in the middle of rifle contracts and we can't cut back production by joining the war." Baby Lee stated that she wasn't going to join the water when there were still contracts for them to do.
"Okay if you say so." Kay sighed. No use in getting themselves another ally now. Lola appeared along with Konstantina, Konstantina's blue-eyed gaze scanned the room while Nelly, their friend from Gregor, ruffled her hair up.
"So, any news about the Chi-Ha-Tan delivery?' Alexandra asked Lola.
"The rifles are here and so is the ammunition. I ran into Konstantina and Nelly and upon talking to them, I figured out that we should begin to bring up the fact that Nelly wants to help us win the war." Lola began to give the news to Alexandra.
"That's good but how many students will this battalion of Gregor students be?" Alexandra asked. Nelly began to count up how many students she had with her that were just chilling in Saunders.
"A couple hundred so far. The number of students of these so-called Gregor legions are growing, A friend of mine said she has one established in Anzio." Nelly explained to Alexandra that they were growing in numbers.
"So, we're going to have to give you more rifles then?" Alexandra asked if this was going to be the case.
"We'll use the Arisaka rifles that were purchased as a means of making your supply situation a little easier." Nelly stated that they were going to use the rifles that were purchased from Chi-Ha-Tan to help out and not use as much Saunders equipment to make their ally's supply situation easier to manage or that's what she thought on paper.
"Okay then, we'll give you your legion." Alexandra explained to Nelly. She was definitely trying to start up something new and give Saunders a boost in terms of its overall power output. Megumi knew that Alexandra was going to be doing something nice regarding the students.
"Thank you so much." Nelly told Alexandra.
"Anything for a friend." Megumi replied. There was a knock on the door as someone wanted to get inside. Megumi walked over before she opened the door to reveal Alexei was standing outside. He walked in, he looked like he dressed like a simple soldier despite his father leading the school. "What brings you all the way over here?" Megumi asked the tsarevich.
"My father Nicholas has decided to try to help you guys out when the great retreat occurred yesterday, he's sending us over to help raise morale for the student armies plus we're mobilizing as well." Alexei explained what was going on with his side of the school.
"Nice so this means we're going to be helping each other out?" Megumi asked Alexei if joint operations were going to be possible.
"That is something we should think about. Alice looked at the person who walked in and she decided to think a temporary alliance between the three schools was going to be possible.
"We'll lend our hands to the war; I've called some mechanics to begin repairing your armored cars and get more for you with much more powerful armaments." Baby Lee began. "I'm also going to be helping out and along with the tsarevich, we're going to be observing you and we'll see what kind of tactics you're using and what we should work on."
"That's good. We're rebuilding and equipping the entire school army. I think it's time we begin talking about tactics assuming we're going to be still standing after this." Alexandra now thought if they were going to get more of everything as a means of better performance, now they needed to talk about training up the new volunteers as a way of bolstering their numbers.
"And we're also shipping more food over as we saw that your school is starving and with the price of grain skyrocketing, we're going to flood Saunders with our grain as we have nowhere to put it. This should alleviate the situation somewhat, but it isn't a permanent solution." Baby Lee also announced that Saunders was going to get grain for the time being until the war was over.
"Will this end the protests and increase the size of the rations?" Kay asked.
"We don't know for sure, but we believe the ration size for bread will grow a bit." Baby Lee told them. Kay was definitely going to be keeping her Springfield for sure. "Anyway, I have to get going, I'll be shipping the weapons, munitions and supplies to you over the course of the next few days." Baby Lee announced that she was leaving. After packing her belongings up. She left the room, Konstantina, Lola and Nelly left moments afterward as they were going to disperse. Kay left after them with her new rifle. She didn't know how she was going to be practicing using the rifle. Megumi's phone began to buzz again. She decided to pick it up to figure out who it was.
"Hello?" Megumi asked. It was Milica again.
"This is Milica, and we got some more news about the situation." Milica began. "We heard that the Montenegrin gang has collapsed and joined us in the retreat. We retreated through the mountains of Albania. Albania is neutral but has some ties to the Dual Alliance. So the Dual Alliance enters Albania in a "Friendly" invasion to chase us down." Milica described the situation regarding what happened and why the situation had remained mostly disastrous.
"So did you all get away?" Megumi asked Milica about what happened.
"Yeah, Riccioli has helped us escape with Sofia and all of us did manage to get away. Now we're taking refuge on Corfu. Far away from our home." Milica told Megumi where she, her gang and her friends were currently at. Megumi nodded.
"We'll get you home someday, just try keeping your hopes up Milica." Megumi promised her that they needed to wait and possibly keep fighting if they managed to get stuff that would allow them to keep fighting onward.
"We will, thanks for your help." Milica told Megumi. Milica sighed before she looked on the shores of the island she and her gang were stuck on.
Without my homeland, I lived on Corfu,
But I proudly cheered, "Long live Serbia!"
But I proudly cheered, "Long live Serbia!"
[A/N]: A short down time chapter that has occurred and Saunders is beginning to sort out its supply problems, Nicholas and his family have arrived as Alexei agreed to be an observer for the time being. There is also a lot happening as well: Yogurt Academy has joined the Central Powers with Kuromorimine, The Dual Alliance and Kebab High School. They have declared war on the Serbian Gang and that gang has completely collapsed along with the Montenegrin Gang and they have retreated. With the Serbs gone, the other schools are now planning a major strike on the other schools while Saunders recovers. However even though you can knock Saunders down, they're not out as of yet. Next few chapters will be them practicing as they prepare for something big.
Also, thanks for 3k views. I am surprised to see this story still going somewhere where I least expect it to go and keep up the view counts as this story is still far from over.