I
Through Darkness
The bell starts ringing. I've already read halfway through the textbooks given to us by the start of the school year. I guess being too excited to study brought along my boredom in classes. Lot at the desk beside me is having it worse, she just went about snatching her backpack and bolting out the classroom. Might as well…
"Lot, if you're running off, go fucking buy the groceries!" I halt at the door to shriek in English at my sister's rapidly shrinking form in the hall… I don't think she heard me. Goddammit.
A sigh escapes my mouth as I walk back to my seat to get my own bag, before I finally walk out the room and down the same way my sister rushed off to. She's a handful; an adrenaline junkie to be exact.
Not that I mind much, no, it's just there are some times where Lot just throws all reason, discipline and sanity out the damn window. In the rarest of times, just for no fucking reason at all.
But hey, as her elder twin, it's my responsibility to keep her under control in our parents' stead while we are both alone here in Ooarai. Asides, Lot does keep me in check too. She says at times that I'm an "authoritarian bitch," and that's saying something because my sister is not one to sugarcoat her words and thoughts.
Hopefully she bought groceries by the time I get home…
I bought groceries for me and my older twin because one, I can't handle going a single day without at least a can of Coca-Cola by lunch, and two, Lee is gonna bark at me endlessly until I buy the groceries or say sorry. Saying sorry feels cheesy for me, I rather run the extra mile than force myself to spit those words out. Eugh.
… Wait, a second…
My feet stop moving just as I finish climbing up the first flight stairs of the apartment complex we live in.
… Oh fuck.
Oh, fuck, I think I forgot her favorite snack! It was supposedly my gift to sis because of that one time she helped me cram some homework a week ago!
I drop the plastic bags I'm holding and scrounge through them, fucking shit, that bag of Calbee salted must be here somewhere-! Oh my! Thank goodness they're here. Fuuuuuuck, am I really that forgetful already, or was that just a lapse of memory out of boredom? I don't know, I don't wanna know, I just wanna drop dead on the couch.
I pick up the groceries and continue down the hall towards the door of our apartment down the end. I sometimes wonder who Lee's friend is though…
When I slowly walk down the halls after dismissal, I always pass by the student council president heading the opposite way. Kadotani Anzu, perhaps the only one here in school I know well.
One out of four times I think, she's eating from a bag of dried sweet potato chips. So just by the third week of the school year, I started bringing American food our parents send us every month or so. Well, only a few snack bags to eat for lunch break, and then give the leftover snacks to her.
At first, Anzu politely declined my first few tries. I understand; most people won't trust food given to them by complete strangers. So imagine my pleasant surprise when she took the bag of Doritos I offered her at some point. Then before I even agreed to it, she essentially started a somewhat biweekly snack exchange after hours. Well, not that I minded much though.
After a while, Anzu and I started to just hang out every few weeks or so. First, just talking about life in general, then at some point I ran some errands for her when she was in a pinch with her own council duties. Once, the two of us actually went shopping too.
I consider her as my first friend here in Ooarai, though I'm not sure if she thinks the same of me. The thing is, beyond that laid-back yet confident front she puts up daily as the student council president, Anzu is unreadable. What I mean is that I can't get a good gist of what her hobbies and interests are and her real personality, even outside of school.
Today however, I notice that the president is in a hurry, to the point she's essentially jogging down the halls. She passes by me without paying heed to me. No wave of her hand. No nod to me. But I saw, that her mask of confidence is full of cracks of anxiety.
I look back to her as she hastily moves down the hall… Something's wrong…
"The Ministry of Education has decided that the Zuikaku will be deactivated by the end of the current school year."
… Nobody speaks for what seems to be a good whole minute.
"Shut down!?" I can tell Anzu is pissed off when she finishes processing the glasses man's words, though I wonder how she kept her voice mostly level.
"It takes money to maintain and run school ships. After taking a look at the costs again, we've decided to start consolidating. We will start by shutting down schools that fail to yield satisfactory results."
"So you're saying we won't have a school anymore?" Ponytail girl of the student council isn't as loud as the president, but it's clear she's just as distressed by the fact. "We won't allow this!" Monocle girl protests more fervently than her councilmates.
"Even though you may feel that way, the Ministry will need you to start wrapping things up within this school year."
"Then you mean next year…" The girl that if I remember correctly is the vice president mutters, her meek voice still cutting through the tense silence.
"Correct." The Ministry representative confirms, still stoic despite dropping what was essentially a make-or-break bombshell out of nowhere.
"This choice is too sudden!" PR officer, I think, spoke up again. Seems she's the loudest and most authoritarian of the council.
"Ooarai has been mostly losing students as of late, and it currently has no attractive programs. In the past, this school had quite the active Senshado team, but…"
Wait, this school ship used to have a brawling team for tankery!? As in, the sport where tanks are given carbon fiber spall liners, that tankery!?
"Well then, we take up Senshado." Anzu instantly jumps into the idea with that signature confidence of hers, though I can't help but feel that deep inside she might as well be bullshitting her way through this. "What!?" Much to the council's surprise, though.
"You wouldn't shut down the winning school, now would you?" The president looks back at the glasses representative, in her voice a subtle edge of venom in it.
I slowly and soundlessly walk away from the student council's office door I quietly opened earlier. I'm not daring to listen any further, that'll risk me getting exposed to all of them. So as soon as I reach the nearest stairs of this floor of the school, I bolt down the flights.
For shits and giggles, me and Lot started searching for tanks every weekend after we settled down in our apartment. Of course, when nobody was looking, either me or her sneaked into the staff rooms of the school to dig up transcripts of any traces of tanks on the Zuikaku.
We never thought we'd find a record of a StuG III buried in the auditor record storage in our second week, let alone find it buried under a pond in our fourth weekend. We thought it was wild and so out of place at first, but now this made much more sense after the fact that Ooarai used to have a tankery team.
Our parents thought that this school, despite having no tankery team, was still worth a try because it has this novelty of being on a school ship. They said it was a sort of a test run on how to live independently and have school on one, before we went to a school that actually has a tankery team.
Me and my sister's hobby, looks like it's now a job to be done.
Well then, tonight will be one of the rare time I'll be giving my adrenaline gobfuck of a younger sister coffee, of all things.
It's do or die anyways; we have work to do.
… Damn…
Lee sure is way too late tonight, huh? Wonder what happened to sis to get held up this long. I bet she's had dinner already outside, though I could be wrong. Just as I finish that train of thought, I start to hear muffled running, echoing down the halls outside of the apartment.
BAM BAM BAM!
Three loud bangs on the front door sends me reflexively running to it. When I open it, older sister is standing outside. She was sweaty and out of breath, which is not characteristic of her as far as I know. In fact, that's what I'm supposed to be looking for her if Lee went missing…
That's beyond the point. Older sis didn't even bother to say hello, she just trudges right in without a word! What the hell happened to her when she was gone!? "I already, ate at the 7-Eleven, down the street." She heaves her words out through her huffs for air.
"Lee, what is wrong with you!? This isn't like you at all, sis!" I can't, I can't hold my concern anymore. There is something so wrong, so wrong with her right now! "Spit it the fuck out!"
Lee only freezes with her clambering across the kitchen to stare right into my soul. I stared back, and almost all I see in my sister's wide brown eyes is panic. Desperation, even.
I just notice now that she has a plastic bag. From it, sis haphazardly chucks on the counter a large, empty noodle cup, two empty tins of Mountain Dew, and… Two cans of cold coffee.
What. She grabs the coffee and forces one for each of my hands. Wait wait wait wait, I thought she always bans me from this kinda shit!?
"I'll explain everything while we get to it, we don't have much time." Lee's voice shakes in what I can assume is fear as she goes to the laundry room. Fear was never an emotion older sis was closely acquainted with, so why now?
"... Fine. You owe me one." I grit my words out as she walks out with the, the metal detector? I can feel my eyes widen; why tonight!? As if reading my mind, my sister just stops in the middle of the living room to give me a tired stare and purse her lips at me. "Drink your coffee, we got work to do."
… Work…? What's the metal detector for our tank hunting mischief got to do with all this…?
"A city's worth of citizens, displaced from their homes, their jobs. All because Ooarai has no goddamn tankery team, no notable teams in other sports for that matter. This disaster is enough to further aggravate Japan's growing urban overpopulation, and can cover an entire mountain or four in the central prefectures."
Like a hot knife through cold butter, Lee's hushed voice is clear in the silence of the records room only broken by our rummaging through boxes of documents. "... Lot, you understand these consequences if Ooarai closes, right?"
"So that's why you're pulling out all the stops tonight, huh?" I can only blabber out as I furiously flip through the files of the second to the last shelf we hadn't checked yet. Shiiit, the caffeine just hit me like a wall just now. The StuG isn't the only goddamn tank this school has, right? Right!?
Lee and I finally checked through the last shelf we left untouched, and we got nothing concerning tanks of the former Ooarai senshado team. We didn't bother cleanly sorting the documents back to their exact places, we had no time, and then us sisters sacked the student council office next. What was concerning was that we found not one, but three relevant documents, in a cardboard box marked as junk.
Seriously, who the fuck decided to scatter all these files!? Jesus fucking God, those shitheads from the old team could've at least have their accounting sorted neatly in a single room, or better, a single box never to be taken out of a room it's placed in.
Back to the papers at hand, the first one says that nearly fifteen years ago, Ooarai sold a M6 Heavy. That's, such a loss, really; even though production of those were limited, they were beasts to behold if given time and effort to be improved!
Second document, the school sold three tanks in a single deal! Twelve years ago, a M10 with an installed roof kit, a Crusader Mark III, and a Chi-Nu.
"Shit, that's an entire recon squad gone from our roster to search for." Lee exhales sharply as she set aside the first two papers and takes on the last one, which happens to be our most crucial find so far tonight.
I see my sister's eyes widen, and so I take a look, and I can't help myself too! A full list of the remnants of Ooarai's tanks dated nearly six years ago. "Panzer IV D, Panzer 38(t), Type 89B…" Lee regains her bearings and starts reading the contents out to nobody in particular.
Oh hey! "The StuG we found is also in this, it's a F model." I remark and she acknowledges with a nod as we both quietly scanned the rest of the list. A M3 Lee? That's… A shit tank when fighting other tanks. A Char B1 bis. A Chi-Nu? Oh, so they used to have two of those mediums, huh?
"Wait, what!? A VK 45.01(P)?" My sis nearly shouts in disbelief, though it's a good thing she catches her words. "That's a heavyweight we have right here; if we get it as early as tonight, our team can get a formidable trump card from the get-go."
"A Mark IV, of all things nobody wanted to buy from the school." I point out as soon as I notice the designation. Lee gives me an incredulous glare for a split second before she looks back down to confirm it.
Sure enough, she notices and lets out a haggard sigh. "Sure, we have all these tanks listed, but most of them are either from the '40 or earlier, just prototypes, or had limited production. This is also six years ago, who knows if these are still on the Zuikaku or if they're actually not on here anymore, so where exactly do we evenn start looking for them…?"
"A dead end, huh?" Both of us seat ourselves on one of the office's couches. My eyes are limping dead and turning my vision black, but my entire body feels like manhandling a bear of all things!
Lot beside me belts out a loud sigh of frustration. She accurately described our situation right now; both of us were willing to help the school's survival, but with nearly no tools and materials to begin with. We already searched the likely areas where we can find documentation of Ooarai's old tanks and their whereabouts; the former is a success, but pointless without the latter…
If only…
… What if there was something in the papers themselves…?
"Hey Lot, give me the papers." My younger twin hands them over to me with a bored groan, and I check over them again as she pulls out a notebook and pen from the metal detector's bag to note the tanks we will find later tonight.
At second glance, nothing seems to pop out to me aside from some text cut off by the bottom of the paper for the M6 sales transcript. On my third scan, I read this first, and the more I read, the more I get excited!
"... SU-100." I start reading aloud and my sister whips her head to look at me. On cue, I point on the cut off text at the bottom of the page before I put it right up to my face to make it clearer.
"... SU-100 trainer, put into storage June 15, 2003… At Warehouse 5A, Sector MID, Level 7." Finally, a goddamn breakthrough!
"Sis, that's way down into Johannesburg territory if I remember from some rumors I heard, where the school delinquents are rallied up." Lot speaks up with exasperation, and I look at her in confusion. Johannesburg? As in, like the crime city in Africa!?
"And yeah, that city. From what I heard when I asked about Zuikaku's underground, the PR manager of the student council apparently keeps delinquents from getting kicked outta the school with some sort of credit scheme to keep their grades in line."
"Shiiiiit." I can only curse as I glare up to the ceiling. "So not only do we have to find tanks to save this school, we have to swim our way through literal gangster territory to get to our only great find tonight."
I consider my options as I stand up to fix the mess of papers we scattered across the student council office floor, putting the documents and boxes back somewhat where they belong.
"So what now?" My sister asks as she looks up to me when I finish cleaning up. "Pack up our shit, we have a hood to push through." I sternly order, and she grunts in acknowledgement as she packs up our notes back into our metal detector bag.
I take the pack and fish out our flashlight as Lot turns off all the lights in the office, making way for the dim moonlight. After I pocket the torch, I sling the bag on my shoulder.
Soundlessly as we can, me and my sis scrambled out the open window where we entered by a tall ladder we "borrowed" from a local car repair shop. Good thing the damn thing was tall enough to reach up to the third floor. Only problem is that it's nauseating for both of us when we look down, so we climb down with iron grips as we stare dead straight up at the dimly lit starry sky.
It's nine and a half in the evening as us sisters dashed down the streets of Zuikaku, staying out of any lights pouring out of the windows of the houses we pass by. We detoured for a good half hour earlier because we returned the ladder we used for infiltrating the school late at night, but now we're back on track.
Us two occasionally pass by infographic posters that show where we are currently, and help point us to the nearest access lifts and public stairways.
I spot the covered stairs with a large and blinding neon sign above it labeled "MID P-A." According to what we saw from the posters, the access lift "MID H-A" is just a block down the street. My hand grabs Lot's wrist and yanks her with me as I bolt for the stairs.
"So this flat topmost surface is Level 1, I reckon we'll probably be going down thirty or more flights of stairs." I mutter beneath the clambering of our feet echoing down the abysmally tall staircase.
"This is gonna be quite a challenge compared to my daily runs from house to school and back!" My sister, instead of seeing this situation as quite a detriment, sees this as a challenge. Man, optimism with adrenaline does wonders to a person.
"Fucking shut it!" I chastise her in a hushed shout. "We don't need anyone knowing of our presence at this time of the night, not now!"
Quite the sweat I worked out with that jog down, it's tiring but I enjoyed it! I look back over to the entrance of the staircase and… Older sis Lee on the other hand is huffing hard like a mule as she slumps down to sit on the last steps down to our destination floor.
"Fuck, give me a moment." She raises her hand as she wheezes every few inhales she took in, so of course I wait for her.
"Now that I think about it, probs should've brought our thermoses along for this." I think out loud, to which my sister replies with a spit on the floor before she stands up with an unsteady gait.
"Lot, why don't you carry this shit while you run down the stairs." Lee's posture straightens somewhat after she unslings the duffle bag holding our metal detector, and then she trudges to me and hands it over. Oof, kinda forgot how hefty our metal detector is; no wonder poor sis is so winded right now.
"Alright, first things first; how the fuck are we gonna make it through this?" She cusses in exasperation through her subsiding wheezes, to which I look over to where she was glaring at.
Barbed wire.
Barbed wire everywhere.
Us two were at least twenty meters or so from what seems to be the shabby, crudely-constructed entrance gate leading to the actual slums of Johannesburg. And fifteen meters of that is covered all over in rows and rows of barbed wire.
I palm myself on my face. Oh my fucking god, this night just got worse.