Ayame was alone in the Tankery garage working on repairing a return roller, wondering about the exchange students. They were probably barely functioning after flying in the other day, seeing as they were all from distant time zones. As she ratcheted down the last bolt, she heard the side door open and unfamiliar voices come in. There were four of them, with wildly different accents. Was it the exchange students wanting to look around the place? Ayame's eyes widened in fear. What if they saw the tanks and thought the team was some kind of joke? What if they saw her working alone and thought only a poor captain would do repair work? Terrified, she clambered up the side of her tank and dropped herself into the TC's seat, leaving the hatch open so she could hear the visitors. She could tell they had started looking around.

"What the hell?"

That voice had a heavy accent. Scottish? They had to be looking at the CTMS-1TB1 that was parked at the far end of the line, closest to the door. Another voice, this one sounded American, but not like any American she'd heard.

"It looks like the Stuart's dropout cousin."

The girls laughed, and Ayame had to hold hers in. That was a fair assessment of the light tank, and it was probably the best description of the CTMS she'd ever heard. A voice she could tell was Russian said, "I bet you can get some wonderful flanking attacks with it though."

"Actually, the CTMS isn't as fast as you might think. It's speed kind of sucks for a light tank. In fact, everything kind of sucks. It failed its trials miserably and the reports are the funniest Army-related document you will ever read outside of Skippy's List."

"So it's a total reject tank then?"

"I mean, it's still got the 37mm from the other American lights."

She could hear them marvel over the Greyhound, and the Stuarts and the Locust.

"Now this is what you'd want for a flanking attack. I've seen someone kill a Panther with one once."

"Oohhh, look at that M8! I told you they'd have a TD! Looks like they've welded a Stuart roof to the top to make it match-legal."

Then the group milled around the M3 Lees that were right beside her, joking around and making fun of the vehicles in a way that wasn't mean-spirited but rather just happy to be around the American steel. Eventually, they turned to her own tank.

"Okay, I thought the CTMS was strange, but what is that."

"It looks like someone gave the Locust an enlargement pill and it had a wild night with a Sherman."

Ayame couldn't hold it back any longer and laughed extremely loud.

Oops.

Delilah jumped a solid foot into the air while Amy just kind of stared at the tank trying to form words.

"Um. What the hell?"

A girl rose out of the commander's hatch, smiling and laughing. In between laughs, she said, "What you're looking at is an M7E2 medium tank."

"And who is in the tank and why?" asked Yelena.

"I'm Ayame, the captain of the Dominion Tankery Team. I heard you come in and got kind of nervous about meeting you."

"Were you working on your tank?" Mia asked as she gestured toward the ratchet, still on the bogie.

"Yeah, I was worried you'd think it was strange for a captain to be doing maintenance."

Delilah frowned. "Strange? I do just as much maintenance as the rest of my team."

"I don't know… I'm just crazy nervous. I know Dominion isn't a crack team and we aren't as good or well-equipped as other schools. I figured you guys are crazy good and would think less of us."

"Absolutely not." Amy answered, and the rest nodded. "We're not tank gods or anything. I wouldn't even consider myself the best on my amateur team."

"I should know. I just get nervous. But thank you guys for showing up and I'm impressed you even made it out of bed today after your flights."

Yelena looked around her and asked, "Since we're here, would you mind telling us about the school and the team?"

"Sure!"

The group listened to Ayame explain each of the tanks and the history of the team. Several decades ago, Dominion had been much more active in Tankery and even had a rivalry with another school, Ooarai Girl's Academy. The rivalry had been the main motivator for the schools to practice the sport and had culminated in a tournament final between the two. Dominion won by a very slight margin, resulting in the team getting extremely complacent as well as losing their drive to compete. Their performance faltered and the team began to lose match after match for several years. The enemy was gone, and there was nothing really to fight for on the horizon. Dominion pulled out of the tournament and most of the other competitions, with the exception of Tankathlon. That explained the abundance of light tanks in the garage. A similar fate befell Ooarai, with their team shutting down altogether as the school needed money. Dominion was larger and had its other programs that still attracted students, but both schools more or less gave up on Tankery. Renewed interest for the sport had started at Dominion, and the team had slowly grown to what it was now, receiving a large and unexpected cash injection within the last month.

Delilah looked down the line of armored fighting vehicles, still slightly confused.

"You're an American team, yeah? I've noticed you haven't got any Shermans. Any reason why? Too boring and basic?"

"Well, a Sherman is expensive, one of the most expensive American tanks you can buy other than a Pershing. Any team that wants to have an American theme needs them, just look at Saunders. They have dozens of the things, and they're incredibly rich. A Sherman isn't as much as a Tiger or IS-2, but they're such an adaptable and universal tank that any team with not much of a doctrine can purchase a few and use them however they like. With our budget, we bought the Lees, the M7, and a Stuart. For that money, we could've bought two Shermans, maybe three in really bad condition."

"Wow… I guess that also shows how little the other tanks are worth in comparison?"

"Yeah. Why get the smaller tanks if you have the money, right?"

"So you try to find substitutes, like your M7."

"Exactly. It's got the same gun but with worse everything else. I've been trying to get what we could.

Mia stood up from where she was sitting on top of the Lee's 75mm casemate.

"Not to be rude, but will we have a tank of our own, or do you want to put us in other crews?"

Ayame grinned. "Well, we do have a certain tank for you guys. We got it as a prize from the school after we won our last skirmish."

The group followed her across the garage and through a side door that lead into a smaller garage bay. Their tank stood there, with a familiar hull and three-part lower glacis. Delilah stopped where she was, amazed.

"Ayame, that's the best tank on your team… and you're giving it to us?"

"Of course. The best tankers need the best tank!"

"Won't the other students feel like they've been overridden?"

"No. They all seem to think that it's a slow lumbering beast that's too big for what it is."

"And yet they drive Lees around daily."

Yelena was still confused as to what it was. The lower hull and tracks looked like a Sherman, but the upper hull was different, and the turret and gun were both smaller, with no cupola. There was a turret for the bow machine gun, and the hull positions were reversed.

"What is this? It looks like a Sherman variant."

"You're close. It's called an M4A5 Ram II, but it's really built off the chassis of an M3. The Canadians figured they'd need to make tanks, and this was it. They took a Lee, removed the silly gun layout, moved the driver to the British side, and put in a turret with a 6-pounder gun."

"So they made the Lee not suck?"

"Exactly."

"But if it's a Canadian tank, why does your American team have it?"

"It is a variant of an American tank, since everything underneath is just an M3. That and the school leadership who made the purchase aren't exactly knowledgeable on tanks. If Saunders gets to use a Firefly, we can use a Ram."

Mia was visibly excited.

"A 6-pounder can be a better gun than what the rest of the team has. It's got double the muzzle velocity of a 75mm with the right ammunition. Should punch through most of what we see."

"Well, you're free to take the tank out any time and get used to it before school starts on Monday. If you wouldn't mind, maybe show the team that this isn't as terrible as they think it is."

Though they were all from different parts of the world, the new crew were all tankers. They didn't need much encouragement to get into their new vehicle.

"We need to decide who does what. Any suggestions? What do we do at home?" Amy said. She was already crawling into the driver's position. "I'm a driver, so I'll take that."

Delilah nodded to Yelena and said, "Aren't you a commander? Why don't you take that?"

"I am, but I'm decent at everything. I kind of enjoy loading if you don't mind. And it looks like Mia is already messing with the elevation and traverse, so I guess that means you're up."

The Ram rolled out of the Tankery garage; the radial engine roaring. Amy smoothly pulled up to the firing line at the range, and Mia sent a shell downrange. Each crew member grinned when they heard the 6-pounder fire.

"That gun sounds sick!"

Woo, two in one week! I wrote a little extra lately, so I decided there's no point in keeping too large of a backlog. I would like to mention that this story now has 250 views, which is more people than I expected to read my mildly coherent rambling, and that this story is now over 5k words - that's longer than any essay I've written. Also, the following occasionally runs through my head when I write about the Ram:

[Regular Car Reviews voice]

"My tank is best tank because it's a premium in War Thunder"