Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, State of Washington, USA

A B-17G bomber taxied out to runway 19L. It was headed to Paine Field to take part in a historic flight event – generations of Boeing aircraft would be on display and do flight demonstrations to celebrate the roll-out of Boeing's newest jet airliner. The plane was called "Eleven Fifty-Nine" and was owned by the prestigious Shepard Foundation.

All four engines were throttled to full power, spinning the propellers into a deafening roar as the old plane reached takeoff speed. The pilot told the first officer to pull up the gear but did so himself anyway. The first officer had almost no experience flying a B-17 but had flown small airliners for years. On the other hand, the pilot had thousands of hours at the controls of the eighty-year-old bomber. He was one of the most experienced B-17 pilots left in the world and the first officer had no reason to question him.

In the back of the plane, the loadmaster was seated with several passengers. They'd paid for a flight on board the historic plane and were marveling at the flying piece of history they were on.

Back up front, the pilot monitored his instruments as the ground fell away below him. He felt as if the plane wasn't climbing at full speed, but that wasn't unusual for a warbird like this. Just as he went to check the airspeed, he felt the plane bank to the right. Instinctively, he applied left rudder and left aileron to keep the bomber steady.

"Woah." The first officer said, aware that something was wrong, but not exactly what.

The pilot sighed. "Ah, looks like… hm, looks like we got an engine out. Seems like it's number four to me, what do you think?"

"Uh… yeah… I guess."

"Alright. Let's head back."

Normally, the pilot flying should allow the pilot monitoring to make the radio calls, but the pilot did not. Instead, he toggled his microphone. "Fortress Eleven Fifty-Nine, we need to return to the airport."

"Alright, what runway would you like to land on?" The air traffic controller asked.

The pilot looked to his first officer. "Should we try for 34R?"

"Yeah, that works."

"Okay, we'd like to go for 34R if we can."

"Fifty-Nine, do you need to come back to the airport immediately? We have traffic coming in."

"We have an engine out."

If the pilot had been clearer with ATC about what he wanted to do, he would have declared an emergency immediately and stated his problems and intentions. Alternatively, he could have allowed the first officer to make the calls, perhaps he would have done so correctly. He did neither.

As the plane turned back to the airport, it became much harder to handle. It felt as though there was much less power than there should be – even with an engine out, a B-17 could still reasonably fly. Deep inside the engines, there were problems. Big problems. The kinds of problems that should make an aircraft stay on the ground.

Eleven Fifty-Nine had previously undergone an overhaul a few months prior, when all four engines were checked and worked on. Then, the plane had been in Florida for a time, sitting in the humid, salty air. Corrosion and fouling were an issue for the plane, causing damage inside the engines where it was not visible. This may have been caught during the overhaul, but it could have been from sitting in the harsh environment. Perhaps this should have been checked before it left. It had not.

In a rush to get the money-making flight into the air, repairs had been carried out hastily. On the failed number four engine, the electrical wiring leads for the magnetos were held in place with a single strand of safety wire – a quick fix for a critical part of the plane. The pilot might have caught this in his preflight inspection, but he had not, and neither had the first officer.

In addition to this, the rush had caused other issues. It wasn't just engine four with magneto issues; both three and four had significantly decreased magneto performance. Magnetos are parts of an engine that provide power and are essential for an engine to run properly. They are similar to an alternator in a car engine, albeit with different internal mechanics. Before every flight, pilots must do what is called a "runup" test. This involves throttling all engines to full power to make sure that each one is functioning properly. During this, the magnetos are checked to ensure that they are functioning and providing enough power. Eiko had done this when starting up the Ram, allowing Amy to check for an RPM drop. If the pilots had done this procedure, they certainly would have detected the problem and corrected it. They did not.

Eleven Fifty-Nine clawed for altitude. Her neglected engines pulled as hard as they could, her wings rocked back and forth as her pilots fought to save her and her passengers.

The most experienced B-17 pilot was at the controls, and the plane was lined up with the runway. Surely, if anyone could land this unruly beast, it would be this man. He would be the one to save the day.

When landing a plane as complex as a B-17 Flying Fortress, pilots must share the workload between each other to ensure no one is too focused on anything. This applies to any aircraft and is known as Crew Resource Management, or CRM. Many crashes have been caused by poor CRM, and countless lives would be cut short. In 1977, two fully-loaded Boeing 747s collided at Tenerife, killing 583 people. It would be the crash to cement CRM in the heads of aviators the world over, as the toxic relationship of the entire flight crew simply following the captain's overconfidence allowed a massive jet to take off when there was another one landing. Just such a toxic situation was occurring in the cockpit of Eleven Fifty-Nine. Her pilots were no longer a team. One was deferring to the other, following orders, with no knowledge of the situation - a glorified passenger with a fancy name. All hope now rested on one man.

"Feather the engine." The pilot said to the first officer.

Feathering an engine means to change the angle of the propeller to minimize drag caused by a failed engine. It is part of the engine out checklist. However, feathering the wrong engine will result in significantly reduced thrust, essentially killing another engine in a time when thrust is most needed.

The first officer had no time to react before the pilot reached for the engine feathering controls himself. In his overworked state of mind, he accidentally began to feather engine number three. As he realized his mistake, the pilot immediately switched to feathering number four – leaving number three with a partially feathered propeller.

With half its normal thrust, Eleven Fifty-Nine began to drop. Her pilot pulled back on his yoke, keeping her nose up and dropping airspeed faster than the bombs she'd carried years ago. Even though the airframe of Eleven Fifty-Nine was airworthy, her guts were not. She was losing power, losing altitude, losing life. She was dying.

As the air traffic controller watched the old plane sink toward the runway, he canceled clearances and directed emergency traffic around the airport, handing go-around flights off to his peers, and handing fire trucks to the ramp and apron controllers. He saw the plane just barely make it over the airport fence, its nose high and the wings rocking back and forth. It clipped an antenna for the Instrument Landing System. The tires of the plane hit the very end of the asphalt, far short of the threshold of the runway proper. Even though the plane was on the ground, its danger was not over yet. Because the approach was so unstable, the plane still had momentum. Clipping the ILS antenna hadn't done it any favors. The big bomber banked hard left, then hard over to the right. The right wingtip slammed into the ground and the plane veered to the right. It left the runway, hurtled across the grass just short of taxiway Sierra, and slid across the ramp toward a hangar.

Inside the plane, the loadmaster was knocked off his seat and he fell on top of the belly ball turret. He felt the force of the wing hitting the runway and was then lurched sideways against the turret support struts. Before he could react, he felt a mighty crash and his head whipped backwards. A passenger flew past him and was thrown into the bulkhead behind the turret. Her seatbelt had been torn out of its mountings, neither the belt nor the retaining bolts holding firm. She didn't have time to vocalize pain, instead she was knocked out by the force of the impact. The loadmaster passed out.

Inside the Alaska Airlines hangar, maintenance technician Rob Lock set down his tool bag and looked up at the Bombardier Q400 he'd just finished a task on. He stared at the plane, thinking about the events the previous year. A year ago yesterday, a fellow Alaska Airlines mechanic had stolen a Q400 from this hangar and taken off with it. After an hour of joyriding, he'd flown to a remote area and said that "This would be his last transmission."

The plane had crashed at full throttle in a thirty-eight-degree dive.

His friend had committed suicide by airplane.

Rob could have been on that shift with him but took the day off to take a personal fishing trip in Puget Sound. He could've been in the hangar; he probably would've stopped it…

It was something he thought about every day. That mechanic could have had a full career, instead Rob had wanted to go fishing. The guy was dead, and a plane was totaled when maybe he could've stopped it. All Rob wanted was to turn that clock back. To save a life. All he wanted to know was how to save a life. No, two lives. Two would make it a net positive.

A roaring and a crash filled the air in the otherwise quiet hangar. Rob fell to his feet and looked toward the far wall. There was a gaping, flaming hole. He ran across the hangar and out the wide doors. Outside, a flaming fuselage greeted him. Several years ago, Rob had been a firefighter in Portland. His old mind kicked in.

He ran to the waist window of the plane and looked past the dummy .50 caliber machine gun. There were multiple people in there. Rob crawled in and immediately stumbled over a frantic passenger. His seat belt was of the old military style and difficult for a normal person to undo, let alone one who'd just been severely injured in a plane crash. Rob unsuccessfully tired to open the latch before seeing a massive rip on one end. Without thinking, he tore at the belt. The rip finally pulled free and he carried the passenger to the window.

"Out!" He said, pointing to the hangar he'd just left.

Rob turned his attention to an older man in an olive drab flight suit leaning against a support strut.

"Hey! Hey! You there?"

The man groaned in pain, mildly conscious. Rob dragged him to the window and turned back. There were too many people in here… Some already looked dead… His vision focused on a female passenger. Her head was bleeding and her arm looked broken. Normally, he wouldn't consider moving people like this for fear of spinal damage, but he could feel the heat of flames. He dragged the young woman to the window.

An airport fire truck rolled to a stop outside as Rob tried to get the old man out the window. A firefighter ran over and helped Rob pull the man out. The firefighter paused and looked at the front of the wrecked plane.

"Get her out now!"

They both dragged the woman out the window and to the pavement, EMTs whisked her away.

Rob felt burning behind him. He turned to see flames inside the fuselage. In an attempt to get out of the window, he slipped and dropped down.

"Argggh…"

Heat. Nothing but heat and flames and smoke. Rob's vision was clouded, his left leg was searing. He felt the firefighter grab his shoulders and haul him out. As he was dragged away from the burning B-17, he watched flames engulf the right wing and forward fuselage.

Just two… enough for a net positive…

I got three…

Eighteen months later – USS Nassau LHA-4, Dominion Tankery garage

Amy had never been late to Tankery practice before. Yet here she was, running across the parking lot toward the garage. Under her arm was the reason, a binder of important information. She'd printed out the pages hastily after class and had run all the way from the library.

Once Amy was inside the garage, she slowed down to a mild sprint toward the Ram, almost running over poor Eiko as she dumped her bag and everything except her binder next to the tank.

"HiEikobyeEiko!"

Amy bolted off toward Ayame's office while Eiko watched in confusion.

"The hell?" She said as Mia shrugged.

Inside Ayame's office, Amy slapped down the binder, interrupting Ayame and Delilah. The latter stared at the binder while the former stared at Amy.

"Do you need something?"

"You're not gonna believe this." Amy said, out of breath.

Delilah finally turned her attention to Amy. "What? You found an infinite supply of money for a bunch of new tanks?"

Amy grinned.

"Well, let me start at the beginning. You guys remember the Shepard Foundation B-17 crash last year?"

Ayame shook her head no.

"Yeah, wasn't that Eleven Fifty-Nine?" Delilah said. "Crash on landing at SeaTac right?"

"Exactly. Yesterday, the NTSB released their final report. It wasn't looking good for Shepard with the preliminary one last year, but now everything we thought we knew is confirmed."

"And?"

Amy opened the binder and pulled out the first page. She began to read. "Let's see… they found massive corrosion inside all four engines, the magnetos on number 3 and 4 were failed, every spark plug in each engine was found to have some kind of fault, many were completely fouled, there was evidence of detonation in all four engines, the crew performed no runup test prior to the flight, the pilots failed to maintain proper CRM, and the fact that this sort of thing isn't new."

"Wow…"

"So in English that means… what?" Ayame asked.

"It means Shepard Foundation is banned from revenue flights on their planes for a while. And that means they need to get money somehow. Which brings me to the next part."

Amy flipped a page over. "You know the massive Shepard Foundation Tankery Museum in Washington?"

Even Ayame knew what it was, anyone who was remotely interested in Tankery knew of the National Tankery Museum that was run by the Shepard Foundation.

"This is a list of the inventory."

"A… list? Why?"

"Just like Bovington, Shepard has a much bigger collection of vehicles that aren't on display. They're selling most of it to make up for the lost money."

Ayame and Delilah began to realize what Amy was trying to tell them.

"And because they need the money so badly, they're selling everything at really low prices."

Ayame's eyes widened. "This means…"

"… we just found a way to get a bunch of tanks for dirt-cheap."

"I know for a fact they've got a ton of American vehicles. If we don't walk away with at least one Sherman, I'd be really surprised." Delilah said with a smile.

Ayame fumbled for her phone and placed a call. "Miss President? Hi, it's Ayame. How much do we have allowed to the Tankery team? And how fast can we get to Washington?"

Amy let Delilah and Ayame talk between themselves as she left the office. She wandered over to the Ram and told the rest of her crew what she'd just told the others. They spent a while discussing what tanks would be best for the team, each girl blurting out thoughts as they came to mind.

"I think we should get as many Shermans as possible, preferably ones with a 76mm."

"Maybe, but they cost more and 75 is good enough for most everything. If we just get a 76 and put it on the T49, we can have them bring the big gun wherever we need it."

"Imagine if we got a Pershing. Damn thing would kick all of the ass."

"What about a Sherman with the 105mm? That'd be pretty sick looking."

"Definitely an M36 Jackson. I know for a fact that it's Naomi's favorite tank. It could be enough for her to transfer here."

"Yeah, like that's gonna happen. You just want to see the bigass gun."

"Eiko want big boom."

"A ton of M22 Locusts. Just… swarm the enemy."

"They don't have enough, nor would that work with team size limits."

"I reject your reality and substitute my own!"

A knocking sound interrupted the daydreaming. At first, Amy thought it was Delilah, but when she sat up, she saw a strange girl. She was looking up at the crew laying around on top of the tank while knocking on the hull.

"Are one of you girls Eiko?"

Eiko slid down off the front slope and looked up at the newcomer.

Dammit, why did I come down here? Now I look really short.

"That's me."

"About that blue Subaru outside. Is that yours?"

"It is! She's my pride and joy! Absolutely great car isn't it?"

The girl smiled. "Yes, it is. I see you're quite proud of it. I have to ask, are you as proud of your driving?"

"I mean, I'm not the best around, I'm just okay. Y'know, meh."

The girl frowned and crossed her arms. "What I saw the other night was not 'meh'."

"What? The other night I was just driving. Just having fun, I wasn't doing anything special."

"Don't give me that. You passed me, and you know it!"

"I didn't pass anyone, seriously. I was just relaxing in my car."

"What, you're pretending you didn't notice me? That is so bullshit."

"I swear, there was no one around. I have no clue what you're talking about."

The girl leaned in close. Eiko backed up as far as she could against the Ram's bow.

"I promise you; you're thinking of someone else. Please, I don't want any trouble!"

"You're promising me that you're so good, you passed a gray R33 Skyline in a corner at full speed without realizing it? You are the only person I've seen with a rally blue STI around here. Stop messing with me. I'm not angry because you passed me, I'm angry because you're screwing around."

Oh. That's who she is.

Eiko smiled a bit. "Okay, okay, you got me. What you saw was my car, but it wasn't me driving it."

"Then who?"

"Me."

The girl looked up to Amy, who was standing on top of the Ram's turret.

"I was the one driving that night. And yes, I did pass your gray R33 Skyline at full speed in a corner. It was pretty fun, too."

"And you are?"

"Amy Miller. Driver, M4A5 Ram II."

"In that case, I'm Sayuki."

"Well then, Sayuki. Didn't mean to make it so personal, I just wanted to have a little fun with Eiko's car."

Sayuki shrugged. "I don't take it personally. I found it pretty great, really."

"Pretty great?" Amy had a sly grin on her face. "Wanna do it again?"

"That's what I came here to ask. Here's my number. See you out there whenever you feel like it."

With that, Sayuki left the garage. An engine revved outside. A gray car flashed across the parking lot and out to the street.

It was then Amy became aware of the small crowd that had formed around the Ram. One of the other tank drivers stared in awe at Amy. "Did she just…"

"Yeah, Sayuki just challenged her to a race." A mechanic said. "This race, whenever it happens, is going to be absolutely epic."

"Epic? Why epic?" Eiko asked, completely confused.

"Eiko… you don't know? Who Sayuki is? Who Amy is?"

"What? No?" Eiko was even further down the path of confusion. She had never heard of Sayuki before, granted, she hardly participated in the racing scene on board Nassau. But Amy?

"Sayuki is one of the best racers on the ship. Her and her group of friends totally own the streets."

"Yeah, okay, so what? Amy is probably the best driver on the ship."

"Exactly. This is like Kuromorimine and Pravda. Do you seriously not know who Amy is?"

Eiko shook her head. "No, I have no idea. She's just Amy, not some big personality."

Akari pushed past the mechanic. "Eiko, you have to be bullshitting me. You've been in a tank with her for a month now!"

"Amy, what the hell are they talking about? What do you do?"

Amy looked Eiko dead in the eye. "I drive. And I win."

AN: Twenty chapters! I've mentioned before how I originally thought I'd be almost done with the story by now, but here we are at 20 chapters and nearly 45k words yet I'm barely halfway through the plot (the next match is what I consider to be about halfway). This one was a very different experience to write, with it almost being two mini-chapters. The opening was supposed to be much shorter, but ended up being twice what I thought it would.

On that subject, I want to make something clear: Shepard Foundation and the crash of Eleven Fifty-Nine is heavily based on the crash of Nine-O-Nine owned by the Collings Foundation. Most if not all of the issues and events present did happen in reality (like the failed mags and fouled spark plugs) or had some basis for me to work from (while the Q400 crash happened and a technician did have some part in the Nine-O-Nine rescue, Rob himself is fictional). However, this is NOT meant to be a complete and authentic re-creation of the accident, nor is it meant to sway opinion on the crash or the Collings Foundation's actions. All I know is what everyone else knows based on the preliminary report, and while I personally have an opinion on what happened, we can't know everything until NTSB does its thing.

Alright, enough with the serious stuff. Thank you to everyone who's read this far! Feel free to let me know your thoughts on the story either here in the reviews or on Reddit. Finally, I'd like to give a shoutout to /u/TSOW_ as he is now joining the "team" (there's three of us now, can I call it that?) to help edit and is being a massive help in getting ideas and information for the next match. I can't wait to post the next few chapters, especially with Amy's race coming up. See you all then!