Chapter 3

"Well," I said, putting my camping bag down, "new home."

We took in our surroundings.

The dorm was an 18 square meter room, with a few simple beds, a main desk, some cabinets and closets, a separate kitchen and a small balcony.

"I'd prefer my bedroom…" Lucas mumbled.

"Lucas, learn to be grateful of what we've got," I wiped a nearby shelf. Barely any dust. "The first day, and we've got a room. I'd be thankful."

"Let's unpack." Gabriel suggested. "Maybe see what God put in our bags for us."

We sat down and unzipped our marching backpacks, pulling out the contents. They were mostly the same: a few medical kits containing gauze bandages, cotton swabs, fracture dressing and iodine; some morphine syrettes in foam packing (we agreed to never use them lest necessary); a flare gun with 3 rounds; a sapper spade with an extendable handle, strapped to the pack exterior; a Bowie Knife (or a machete, in Hank's case; John didn't have one for some reason) in a sheath; a mess kit; a few rations; a stainless-steel match container (waterproof); a flammables pack including a box of wood alcohol and some hexamine tablets; maintenance kits for our weapons; a lightly decorated crucifix (who knows?); a wallet with lots of USD bills; and last of all, the other military equipment, like gas masks and wire cutters and similar stuff.

Beep! our Panzer Ace devices sounded again, assigning ranks.

"Wait." Hank said, puzzled, "haven't we done that?"

Louis, rank Assaulter, provisions: Sturmmann's Crate x1

John, rank Machine Gunner, provisions: Maschinengewehr Soldat's Crate x1

Gabriel, rank Paratrooper, provisions: Airborne Supplies Crate x1

Lucas, rank Sniper, provisions: Matthias Hetzenauer's Supplies x1

Hank, rank Pioneer, provisions: Wehrmacht Supplies Crate x1

And the five crates shimmered into existence around the main desk.

I approached mine, an otherwise ordinary (albeit large) wooden crate with "Sturmmann" written across. Opening it revealed an olive-green chest plate, an Flammenwerfer 42 flamethrower (I vowed to never use it against other teams), three Panzerfaust 250 rockets, and a bunch of attachments for the Luger. John's crate, as I predicted, was filled with equipment related to his MG-42, including a case for magazines, an antiair sight, tools to clean the gun with, and a bottle of grease. It also held a pair of safety gloves to wear when firing the Panzerschreck. The best of all is a lavishly decorated Third Reich Feuerwehr double-edged axe. Gabriel's crate was huge and full of wilderness combat gear, including 2 trekking poles, a pair of goggles, a bundle of gas masks, a wad of tightly folded oilcloths, some trip mines, TNT, and camouflaged body armor. Lucas's crate held a bipod, a silencer and a modified 10x scope for his Gew 43, a pair of binoculars, and 4 boxes of different types of ammunition (red-tipped ones are high-penetration rounds, blue-tipped ones are modified to not be distorted when entering water, grey-tipped ones are much longer and used against light armor, and yellow ones are tracers). There's also a crossbow with 8x scope, buttstock and a case of arrows (who knows why). Hank's chest was an explosives bay, with land mines and coils of barbed wire and an universal set of handheld tools.

I felt my phone vibrate and pulled it out.

New Tasks:

Steel for combat: assemble all the given parts

Renovations: Clean the tanks that the Oarai tankery team processes.

Side Task:

Doorkeepers: Create defensive posts at the gate of the Tankery Training Grounds with heavy weapons.

Everyone moaned at the last main task.

"Do we have to? Repairing German tanks are simply backbreaking." I complained.

"I promise to give you credits for what you do." God's voice suddenly spoke in my head, taking me by surprise, "which can in turn be used to exchange for things in the system shop. Now, get moving"

Upon that, my phone expanded into an iPad, and a set of instructions shimmered onto the screen. I wanted to complain, but then I thought about the whole thing, and realized God doesn't make us do things without a reason. If he wanted us to clean those tanks out, could he be hinting an attack? I didn't want to think about something like that happening.

"Oh, well," I sighed, extending the handle of my spade as I walked out, "time to feel what Pavel Korchagin experienced."

…

The sun was rising as Miho walked toward the training grounds. It was another bothered night, still filled with nightmares about what happened at the last National Finals. But this time, the eyes of her sister somehow suddenly flashed and turned into Louis's eyes, giving her a major shock and waking her.

As she neared the training area, still trying to shake away the disturbing dreams, she noticed something that both shocked and confused her: outside of the 2-meter tall iron fences, an actual antitank trench, approximately 3 meters deep and 2 meter wide, had been dug into the earth. The trench went in a zig-zag, ringing the entire area. Some parts of the trench remain unfinished, but it was still a bit surprising to look at.

It was the boys again, needless to say. And despite the fact that it wouldn't bother anyone, since all the streets end short of the compound, it was still weird-looking.

She walked toward the gates, only to get another big surprise.

Set up in two large, concrete defensive positions dug into the earth, facing the path that led into the city, were two Pak-43 88mm antitank guns mounted on wheels, in full combat state. Crates that doubtlessly held rounds sat beside the guns, piled up and covered by tarp.

Miho was getting dizzy with confusion by this point: did the boys do this? What even for? This isn't a military compound (though she remembered that she didn't tell them….). And where are those cannons from? It's not like they can be BOUGHT or anything –

"OH MY GOD!"

Miho turned to see Yukari running at full speed up to the heavy guns. "OMG, the Pak-43! These are the main guns of the Tiger and the Elefant tank destroyer! They were some of the most powerful AT guns the Third Reich had, only less powerful than the Pak 44 128 mm cannon- "

"Yukari." Miho reminded her, "we'll be late."

"Ah-ahh, y-yes, captain Nishizumi."

…

"FINALLY, we're done." Lucas moaned as we sat down for breakfast next to a truck-mounted U.S M45 Quadmount.

We stayed up all night, working our backs off to finish all the repairing. God didn't go back on his word, and gave each of us 50000 credits for every tank we fixed. It turned out that the system shop sells much, much more than we thought there would be, for a fairly cheap price. After John got 2 Pak-43 positions at the door, I reminded him that the area could defend a land assault with the tanks, but they will need some antiair capabilities. I spent most of my credits buying some AA weapons, including German 20mm Flak 38 quadmounts, M45 quadmounts, 20mm Oerlikon cannons, 85mm Soviet M1939 antiair cannons, and German Flak 88 guns. The person who had the same idea as mine was Lucas, but he brought mostly antiair tanks. His favorite was the 40 Rheintocher and Feuerlilie antiair missiles he purchased. After we finished with the cleaning at 2 am, we started the work of towing these antiair weapons everywhere and building emplacements for them (we were careful enough not to let their positions get in the way of training). It was tiring, but when you finish one and look at your work, you can't help but grin with pride. Apart from the antiair weapons, we also bought a German jeep with a mounted MG-34, five motorcycles (also WWII German ones) for each of us, some RSO transport vehicles, a few 251 half-trucks and 234 Puma armored cars, 2 Solothurn S-18/100 antitank rifles, a field kitchen vehicle and a Fiat M-13-40 light tank.

Hank handed out our meals, which were rations he had been preparing since 4:00 am. They were simple: tins of salted potatoes & beef, a large piece of rye bread (NOT tasty), some tinned vegetables, a piece of German Scho-ka-kola, fruit preserves, and a bowl of bacon soup, if you exclude the block of butter and coffee, none of either I can figure out how to ingest.

I was sipping the last of my soup when I noticed someone approaching: it was Miho & Yukari, wearing stunned expressions as they took in the revamped surroundings. I poured the last bit of stew into my mouth, put the bowl away, and stood to attention, dusting my uniform off meanwhile.

"Kommandant Nishizumi?"

"Umm," Miho said, in a rather timid way, "can you explain what happened?"

"We thought that the area was too poorly defended from hostile air contact," I said, maintaining a stoic expression meanwhile, "and we found some old antiair weapons throughout the compound. We decided to put them to use."

Miho gaped, while Yukari was overjoyed, marveling at all the weapons. "Um, anyway," Miho said, regaining her posture, "you had better come to the garage. You haven't introduced yourselves yet."

It took a while for everyone to get here, and none of them weren't muttering in shock about all the things we've set up during the night. The History Buffs, in particular Erwin, were all busy discussing the effect these arms had in history, while the girls of Rabbit Team are looking at them like they were alien artifacts or something. Slowly, the whole team grouped up in front of Miho.

"So, um." She motioned at us, "can you at least tell us a little bit about your identities?"

Erwin piped up: "The boy in the paratrooper gear looked like one of the 1st Fallschrimjager Division sent to neutralize Eben-Emeal."

John, being the one with the most self-esteem and all, spoke first. "The name's John, loader of the Panzer VII Lowe. Machine gunner."

"Lucas, gunner of our tank. Sniper."

"Gabriel, tank driver. Paratrooper."

"Hank, radio operator. Pioneer."

I sighed, "And I'm Louis, tank commander and shock trooper."

We were swarmed by questions immediately.

"The Lucas boy is a sniper?" Yukari yelled in surprise, "does he hit accurately? Has he really shot people?"

"NO, I HAVEN'T!" Lucas yelled back, "And I don't plan to!"

"You're a pioneer?" Oryou asked Hank, "what do you construct?"

"Lots of things," Hank said, "I know how to build Czech hedgehogs, wire fences and field radar stations, and I technically know how to lay mines (I guess the booklets told him how), but I've never really built any of those. I do have first-hand experience with entrenchments though."

"Yeah, we saw the antitank trenches you dug all around the grounds…"

The conversation buzzed for a few minutes. I tried to slip away, but got dragged back by Duck Team. After that, they were about to commence repairing their tanks when they noticed how they all look brand new. A few moments later, everyone turned grateful eyes on us.

"Thanks." Someone muttered.

I just groaned. "Whoever left the StuG III in a pond should be sent to Auschwitz damn it! We had to spend half an hour scrubbing all the rust and pond filth off!"

"Yeah, and that's why we're thanking you."

… …

The morning trailed off. Since the tanks have been restored by us through the night, we had a free period this morning. We mostly spent it in our room, since we weren't very active after a sleepless night. I saved the day via purchasing a brand-new Apple laptop on the Panzer Ace shop, and we spent the time watching Lucas slaughtering other players with his Lowe on World of Tanks Blitz (yes, his account has a Lowe).

We cooked ourselves more rations for lunch, since we weren't anxious to spend our limited money. Miho wanted to buy us something, but we insisted that it was okay. Surprisingly, the Hippo Team stayed behind to watch us cook over the field kitchen. Erwin even tried some of the soup, being a WWII fanatic, which she said "wasn't so bad".

The noon drifted into the afternoon. We were sleeping in one of our half-trucks when the phone woke me up. It was a text from Miho, asking us to come to a coffee shop in central Oarai to have some tea while talking over a few things.

"Well," I thought, "at this point in the series, she'd be running into Erika and Maho. I'll get everyone up, and bring our arms. Let's see who'll be the one to scare the other."

And with that happy thought, I woke everyone up, told them my ideas, and jumped onto our motorcycles. In a cloud of dust, we rode off into the city, ready to face off the "White Wolf" of the Black Forest.