Chapter 8

The remainder of the interview after the interviewer asked Miho was pretty unremarkable, mainly consisting of the interviewer making remarks and asking basic questions to everyone else. Suddenly, Courtney pointed out a pair of pod-like devices that were surrounded by a series of rings. "Hey McNeil, I challenge you to a dogfight, whoever shots the other down more wins." She challenged, confidently smirking.

"Alright I'll accept your challenge, but afterwards you and I are gonna compete in an activity of my choosing afterwards, does that sound fair?" Miho accepted before issuing a challenge of her own.

Courtney grinned, "sure, this is gonna be fun."

The two of them quickly settled down into their own pod. As the system started up, they were both asked if they wanted to do the take off sequence manually or automatically, Courtney, the confident flier chose manual while Miho chose auto. When the simulation shows both of them in the sky, Miho immediately went up towards the clouds while checking her radar, hoping to use the clouds as cover to avoid being spotted. After she passed through the clouds, she soon heard a warning that indicated a missile lock on her craft. As she tried to move to avoid being hit, her radar showed that Courtney had pulled in behind her. As she tried to turn to evade, she suddenly violently spun around and a screen told her that one of her wings had come off; realizing that Courtney had anticipated her move and maneuvered into a position to shoot off her wing with her guns. After a minute or two of spinning, the screen turned black and returned back what it was in the beginning. Quickly picking up Courtney on her radar, Miho quickly swooped in and locked on to fire a missile. While Courtney dodged, but Miho predicted the direction she'd go and fired another missile that finished her off. Afterwards, not wanting what happened before to happen again; she moved her aircraft closer to the ground. She got another missile warning and was able to dodge, with the missile hitting the ground. After picking up Courtney on her radar, she turned in the opposite direction to avoid her guns. While trying to avoid gunfire, she decided to try one of the maneuvers she saw in a movie. After pulling her nose up she cut the throttle, hoping to get Courtney to pass her and swoop in behind her. But she didn't fully understand the maneuvers and she ended up rolling her plane upside down before crashing; she knew Courtney was laughing hysterically right now.

The rest of the simulation carried on in a similar way, Courtney being the actual pilot would always find a way to shoot Miho down, while Miho would stay close to the ground and just avoid Courtney's attacks. However, Miho was surprisingly able to use the ground terrain to her advantage and was able to score some kills of her own, she even was somehow able to get Courtney to crash her plane while chasing her through a mountain range, though she crashed a few seconds before while trying to fly through a tight gap to escape. When the simulation ended, the tally was 11 kills for Courtney, 6 for Miho with Miho crashing twice and Courtney crashing once. As Miho exited the pod she got really dizzy from all the turning and spinning. Before anyone could approach her, she could feel something rising in her stomach, she then ran into a nearby bathroom and vomited pretty hard. When she left, her friends quickly rushed to her side.

"Are you doing ok Miporin?" Saori asked.

"I guess your lunch is gone now?" Annelien asked, teasingly.

"Yeah, you could say that," Miho answered, still a little dizzy and holding her stomach.

After finding a place to sit down, Courtney walked up to her. "Whoa, I gotta say I wasn't expecting this."

"Sorry," Miho said, "unlike you, I'm not used to stuff like this."

Courtney laughed, "no I wasn't talking about the pods, I already figured that before. I'm talking about the scoreboard, you actually weren't that bad." She praised. "You know, if you weren't in charge of the driving school, I'd be more than happy to have you become a pilot, you may even be as skilled as me."

"You're just trying to tease or flatter me aren't you?" Miho retorted.

"Maybe both," Courtney responded with a retort of her own.

After Miho recovered from her dizziness, they all decided to head over to a bunch of arcade-like machines a bit away from the flight simulators.

"A tank simulator, I certainly saw this coming," Courtney remarked.

"This would be a 3v3 battle, would that be ok," Miho said.

"I'm ok with that," Courtney accepted, "I kinda curious to see how this plays out, even though I know I'm gonna be defeated."

Turning to her friends, "Annelien and Yukari, would you two mind helping me out?" Miho asks, both of them nodding their heads with excitement.

"Sier, Ellie, how about joining and helping me out here," Courtney asked from her group.

"Sure thing," Sier says with Ellie nodding her head.

The six girls took their seats, put on the helmets, and placed their hands and feet on the controls and pedals prospectively. Much like the flight simulator pods the helmets projected a virtual realty in order to for better immersion. After each team found each other and selected a radio frequency to communicate with the other team eavesdropping, Miho layed out the strategy they'd do, "Let's stick to the trees and hilly areas, avoid plains and similar featureless areas. Knowing them, they're probably stick together so let's split up and try to hunt and surround them."

"Copy," Annelien said, "I'll take the left side." She turned her tank, splitting off from Miho and Yukari.

"Guess I got the right side then," Yukari mentioned, turning in the opposite direction as Annelien.

Miho continued forward, carefully manuevering through the trees and maintaining a zig-zag like pattern in her movements. After a little bit, she approached a small clearing in the forest, as of right now it was clear but she still watched it closely while staying on the move in the forest. "Yukari, Annelien, I'm looking over a small clearing inside the forest, no sign of the enemy, anything on your end?" She asked.

"I've spotted a mountain pass to the right of me but no activity yet," Yukari reported back.

"I'm looking at a vast grass plane right now, no sign of enemies either." Annelien also reported.

As Miho turned her turret to check the forest, suddenly two explosions erupted, one in front and the other behind her tank. "What the," Miho exclaimed before looking back at the clearing, she just missed the smoke coming from the other side no doubt indicating that was where the shots came from. Three gun barrels soon poked out from the foliage, followed shortly by the rest of the tanks; they were in what looked like a three member V formation. "Just made contact with the enemy, they've already opened fire on me and are heading towards me now!" Miho hurriedly said while putting her tank in reverse and firing at one of the enemy tanks. The shot however bounced off the front of the tank, with all of them firing again at where Miho was at before she started to move.

"Copy, on my way ETA 5 minutes," Annelien said.

"Echo that, will arrive in 6," Yukari followed up.

Knowing that the others would arrive soon, Miho focused on staying alive and maintaining constant observation of the enemy. As she continued to back up using the trees for cover, she noticed that the enemy tanks were just sitting there only moving their guns, meaning that Miho could have an opportunity to attack their thinner side armor. She had expected the pilots they were competing against to not grasp the concept of armor protection and angling but were they really just to act like sitting ducks. Just then they fired once more at her, one shot went over her tank, another one hit a tree close to her front and third hit another tree behind her. Her tank suddenly stopped and she couldn't continue backing up, realizing that the tree behind her was blocking her path; meaning that she could only go forwards at the moment. An opportunity presented itself to her, the enemy still hadn't angled their tanks to have their frontal armor facing Miho, in fact she had a good view of their side, with the tank on the right side of the leader having its view obstructed by said tank. Turning her tank to the right to angle her armor better, Muho lined up another shot, targeting the lead tank this time. She fired, the shot seemed to penetrate the side armor near the back of the tank. Soon after getting hit, the lead tank and the tank on its left fired back, both shots bouncing off Miho's tank. Confused, especially since there was smoke coming from presumably an open vent on the top, Miho could only guess that while she had damaged the engine and immobilized the enemy tank it was still an active enemy. Before she could celebrate, both the lead tank and the tank to its left returned fire, while one of the shots bounced off her front, the second hit her side, while it didn't penetrate, she heard a clunking sound and knew that her track had been shot out. "You two better hurry up," Miho almost yelled, "my track is destroyed and now I'm immobilized."

As if on cue a shell blazed from somewhere in the forest and struck the leftward enemy tank, fire and smoke soon emerged from the gap between the turret and the hull before the whole vehicle exploded. "Score," Annelien declared her tank soon poking out in the same direction.

"Hey don't leave me out guys," Yukari whined before shooting and knocking out the only remaining undamaged enemy tank.

Before the enemy could process what just happened, Miho immediately aimed and fired at the immobile enemy tank. Her shot once more hit home and this time the tank caught fire, shortly afterwards the turret blew off the hull from the force of the explosion.

As the simulation ended, the three victors raised their hands in triumph. The three losers just sighed in acceptance. "Yeah, we kinda knew that was gonna happen." Courtney said.

"Wow that was so cool," the journalism girl commented. "But why was this match such a one-sided one while the one before wasn't, did McNeil already have flying experience while miss Viteri didn't have any tank experience?"

"No," Miho bluntly explained. "Think about it like this, tanks can only move along the x-axis and aircraft can move on both the x and y axis, right?" Muho asked to which the girl nodded, "so then it would make sense that those operating them would be used to such parameters, so when I was thrust into a air combat situation I'd would suddenly have my movement parameters expanded while Courtney would be thrust into a situation with more restrictive parameters. A simpler way to put this would be if I were to suddenly grow an extra pair of arms while Courtney would suddenly go from using two pairs of arms to only being able to use one pair. So I'd have an easier time adapting than her." She further elaborated.

"I guess that would make sense," the interviewer replied, still visibly confused. "Well that's all the time we have, thank you both so much for letting us have this interview and for the spectacular display of your skills." She thanked them before they both hurried off.