Author's Note:
After a long hiatus from writing, I return with a short story, "Plunderers of the Forgotten Schoolship" … or should that be "Blunderers"...?
This story is set in the universe of "Girls und Panzer" and centres around the students of the Sensha-do team of Shamrock School for Girls. If you are unfamiliar with them, you may wish to read "Shamrock School for Girls - New Tactics" first s/13380103/1/Shamrock-School-for-Girls-New-Tactics
Plunderers of the Forgotten Schoolship
"So why have you asked us to come here, Shannon?" Annalee asked, as she sat in the room that served as the HQ for the Sensha-do Team of Shamrock School for Girls.
"We are here because we've volunteered to help out another club," Shannon explained, which didn't really explain anything.
"Volunteered? Eh?! I don't remember doing that!" Erne protested.
"Well I volunteered for you," Shannon said with an airy wave. "The club we have volunteered to help is the Explorers' Club. After all, inter-club cooperation is very important, and we in the Sensha-do club get plenty of help from the other clubs in the school."
"No we don't!" Erne replied.
"We get lots of help from the Dance Club!" Shannon countered.
"That is only because Finn, and three others of our members are also members of Dance Club!" Clare pointed out. "Where is Finn anyway?" she asked.
"Dancing?" suggested Laune, with wide-eyed sincerity.
Shannon ignored these comments and moved on.
"The Explorers' Club have asked if we could undertake this year's exploring expedition for them," Shannon said. "They would like us to look into one of the tunnels that lead down into the heart of the schoolship," she went on.
Shannon motioned for them to gather around a map of the school ship that was laid out on the table in front of her. She pointed to a spot in Glendalough Park; the unique valley situated about one-third of the way from the bow of the schoolship. The park was in fact a huge chunk of the schoolship which had been damaged and removed at some point long in its past. In its present configuration however, the large V-shaped dip had been sculpted, crafted, and remodelled, with plenty of earth and rock, to now resemble a natural valley, complete with sloping green sides, rivers, waterfalls and lakes. Two enormous bridges spanned it, and various minor roads and tracks lead down to the bottom, which was always damp and boggy.
"Now, apparently, there is a tunnel here that leads down to the lower regions of the schoolship," Shannon explained, pointing to a spot on the map. "That is where our expedition will be taking place. We will be taking the Mk D, of course, as transport to the entrance of the tunnel, but unfortunately it won't fit inside. We'll have to proceed on foot from there on. So…!" she continued, clapping her hands together. "Let's meet at the tank sheds, tomorrow morning, suitably dressed as explorers! Oh, and remember to bring a packed lunch!"
With that, Shannon rolled up her map and seemed to believe that the meeting was concluded. She was packing a few of her things away when Clare spoke up.
"Just why are we mounting this expedition anyway?" Clare asked.
"Oh yes!" Shannon cried, snapping her fingers. "The Explorers' Club told me that the object of this year's expedition…" she explained "...will be to see if we can find any trace at all of last year's expedition."
…
The next morning, Shannon was the first to arrive at the Sensha-do Club's sheds, as was usual. She was dressed in shorts and a khaki shirt, over which she had a battered but sturdy brown leather jacket. She had a wide-brimmed brown fedora on her head, and a satchel containing many useful things slung on a cross belt.
Clare was the next to arrive, jogging up to the sheds on her long legs. She was attired in sturdy boots, very short tan shorts and a cyan vest top, with her hair in a ponytail. She certainly looked ready to do some action-packed tomb-raiding, but her lack of anything substantial in the chest department brought an end to the similarity with the fictional source of inspiration for her ensemble.
The two sisters arrived together. Erne had opted for a more generic outfit of a sand-coloured bush jacket, worn with the collar wide open as was her habit, and a solar topee. Annalee, on the other hand, had gone for an altogether more cheerful wardrobe, with white trainers, yellow bobby socks, orange shorts and a pink t-shirt. She also carried a lilac backpack and looked every bit as cute, if not cuter, than the fictional Dora.
Last to arrive, although hot on the heels of the fiery-haired sisters, was Laune. She had really gone to town with her outfit, possibly using the fictional character Van Pelt as her inspiration. She was dressed in a smart dun-coloured tunic with an enormous cape draped over her shoulders - the same dun-colour on the outside but with a rich red lining. On her head she had a tall pith helmet, resplendent with a metal spike on the top.
"Excellent! I am glad to see we're all here and all looking the part!" Shannon said loudly, standing with her hands on her hips and surveying their expedition-oriented attire.
"Laune's not all here!" Erne muttered with a smirk to her sister, although whether she was referring to Laune's missing leg or her almost permanently vacant mental state was unclear. Either way, she received an elbow in her ribs from her little sister for the snide comment.
"Right - all aboard then!" Shannon continued, leading the way to the metal door that was set in the front of the Mk D. That door was particularly convenient to her, with her being one of the shortest members of the team, as it meant she did not have to climb on the tank to reach the hatches.
"Hey, Onee-chan?" Annalee said to her sister, slipping her rucksack off her back and reaching into it.
"What?" Erne replied.
"BLUH!" Annalee cried, brandishing a rubber snake at Erne.
"Gah!" Erne yelled, then scowled. "Very funny. Where did you get that from?!"
"Dee gave it to me," Annalee answered, referring to the practical joker of the team. "I think I'm going to call him Reginald," she said, putting the rubber snack back into her backpack.
Once they were all inside the Mk D, Clare was elected to drive, and the squat, slab-sided tank chugged and clanked its way out of the sheds and onto the road heading toward Glendalough Park. They left the main road and joined one of the smaller roads that wound down the valley's sides, with Shannon, Clare and Erne doing some sort of three-way navigation-by-committee with the map, while Annalee and Laune took the opportunity to enjoy the views with their heads poking out of the hatches.
They turned off the road about two-thirds of the way to the valley floor, onto a dirt track. By luck or design, this track led them to the gaping maw of a tunnel, which looked rather like an old Wild West mineshaft, although closer inspection would have revealed that the walls, floor and ceiling were made of steel.
"Here we are!" Shannon thundered. "The way into the very bowels of the schoolship! Within lies the unknown; the mysterious; the…"
"Stop being dramatic!" Clare chastised. "It's just the underground classrooms, storerooms and stuff.
"Well… yes," Shannon conceded. "But it's still an adventure! We will need a volunteer to guard the Mk D and watch over this end of the tunnel. Laune - that's you!"
"OK Shannon!" Laune said with a smile, nodding vigorously.
"The rest of you - follow me! Into the depths!" Shannon bellowed, and marched into the dimly lit tunnel with the others in tow.
Laune waved at them as they departed, then she spread her cape on the ground like a blanket and sat down on it. She decided to make a daisy chain and set about looking for suitable flora.
…
47 minutes later:
"Just keep running!" Shannon shouted, as she, Clare, Erne and Annalee pelted along the dark passage.
"You don't need … to tell us!" Erne yelled, sprinting along the passage ahead of Shannon. "Why did it have to be engineering students?!"
A few hundred yards behind the running quartet of Shamrock girls, and hot in pursuit, was a howling horde of engineering students; their faces painted with stripes of oil, grease or Swarfega, and all shrieking and yelling war cries or equations. They were brandishing an array of dangerous-looking weapons, such as set-square tomahawks and viciously sharp steel rulers. A few of the mob occasionally paused their running to shoot darts from blowpipes made from copper tubing.
"They wouldn't … be after us … if you hadn't … stolen that thing from them!" Clare panted as she ran, referring to the heavy stainless steel object that Shannon was holding, before ducking to avoid a thrown bolas made of electrical flex.
"Do you know what this is?!" Shannon protested in her thunderous voice. "This is a piston from a Sunbeam Amazon 6-cylinder engine! From a Vickers Mk D!"
"They were worshipping it as a god!" Clare pointed out.
"It belongs in a museum!" Shannon yelled, indignantly. "Just keep running!"
…
Back on the surface, Laune was still sitting on the grass in front of the Mk D, contemplating how she might continue making her daisy chain when she had already picked the only three daisies in the immediate vicinity. She was disturbed from continuing with her philosophical musings by a disturbance from the tunnel that Shannon, Clare, Erne and Annalee had disappeared into earlier.
"Laune! Start the engine!" seemed to be echoing up the tunnel in a voice that sounded remarkably like Shannon's.
Laune got to her feet and peered into the gloomy shaft. Suddenly she was able to make out the puffing, sweating, bedraggled figures of her fellow students as they raced towards her.
"Start! The! Engine!" the speeding, fedora-wearing figure that was Shannon bellowed.
Laune took a moment to consider what she should do with her barely started daisy chain, but finally threw it away with a tut of annoyance and opened the metal door in the front of the Mk D. Laune quickly clambered inside. She often thought that she would like to be a tank driver, but had been persuaded to try her hand at gunnery instead. She looked at the driving seat and what appeared to be an utterly bewildering array of controls, buttons, levers, knobs, and other things that did things that she couldn't imagine what they might be.
At that moment, the four intrepid explorers came haring out of the entrance of the tunnel, making straight for the Mk D. They piled through the metal door in a tight mass, spilling into the inside of the tank.
"Get out of the way, you clot!" Erne said to Laune, moving the apricot-haired girl away from the driving seat and leaping into it herself. She quickly had the engine started and the tank was already clanking away in reverse by the time that Annalee slammed the tank's front door and secured it shut.
It was not a moment too soon, because the horde of enraged engineering students had burst out of the tunnel and were hurling missiles at the Mk D. Darts from their copper blowpipes, crude javelins made of dowel, and even the odd soldering iron rattled and pinged off the armour of the mighty Vickers Mk D as it started to withdraw.
Luckily for the Shamrock crew however, respite was at hand. In their rage, the engineering students had run full pelt out of the tunnel, but they now found themselves in bright sunlight, which they naturally shunned. They howled and groaned as some went weak at the knees from this sudden exposure. They attempted to cover their faces and eyes with their arms as they staggered back into the gloom and sanctuary of the tunnel, cursing the Sensha-do students in their native language of AutoCAD.
"Well, that was a bit of a to do!" Shannon commented, as the four heroes recently returned from the underworld recovered their breath.
Still holding her precious Sunbeam Amazon engine piston, she casually looked around the interior of the Mk D, until her eyes widened with horror as they alighted on Annalee's fake serpent.
""Gah! There's a snake in the tank!"