Chapter 8: The Rogue

"You are everything a Kuromorimine student could dream of reaching. A strong sense of justice, infinitely determined, and exemplary personal conduct. A damn shame they sidelined you. Really shows how much they have fallen from their virtuous goal."

Hatsu Sagara never knew who her parents were. She was raised communally under the deck of the Graf Zeppelin as one of 'dwellers' of the school ship. Things weren't easy. Kids being cruel they drove home the fact that she was an orphan. They pushed her around, mocked her, called her unloved. It was until one day she beat her bullies senseless, three times over, that they stopped, at least publicly.

She wondered if her name Hatsu was somewhat prescient. It was given by an old bartender who lived down there and took care of the orphans in his free time. She was uncomfortable with it before because it was more of a boy's name, but after pummeling some bullies' teeth down their throats, it began to work in her favor. The name Hatsu was one feared. Boys who desperately need a reality check would be compared to her, and most often it would lead to them trying to fight her to prove themselves, either with fists or other nonsense like children's card game. Either way, she would stomp them. Boys will be boys.

Life under the deck was struggle. It was constantly dark, claustrophobic, damp, one would never see sunlight. No central authority. Not even the Nishizumi name held sway. Her reputation earned her no friends. All in all, it wasn't a great time in her life.

One day, someone from the upper decks came down. Hatsu forgot how they got themselves into that position in the first place, but they were surrounded by delinquents. She had to step in and save them.

Turns out they were students of Kuromorimine Girls Academy. They were appreciative, but it wasn't a fairy tale whisking her away to the dreamland right away. It was just a start. The next time they came down for business, Hatsu would greet them. One more time, she would be their guide and bodyguard. A few more times and they became friends.

Then finally, one day, a girl from the group told her.

"You don't have a school, do you? Would you like to come with us?"

That girl's name was Alena, and she would be the first and only good friend she made in her time with the academy.

The headmistress was aware of Hatsu after she helped those girls. It was part of her initiative to 'relocate and renovate' the dwellers in the lower deck. The campaign was rather controversial for those living there, but Hatsu dodged most of the heat by the good words put in by the girls she saved, smittening those talent scouts.

For the orphaned child who looked to the heavens but clawed at the dirt her whole life, the name Shiho Nishizumi was one of personal loyalty and reverence. The woman extended her hand to a slum-dwelling kid she had a reason to not care about, offering her a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to a better future. One former alumni even ended up working as a personal servant to Shiho herself. The possibilities were endless, Hatsu dreamed.

Since Hatsu did not have a home or an official guardian, she was under school supervision and lived in their dormitory. She was given a choice to keep the name Hatsu Sagara, but chose otherwise. The name Heidi, 'the noble one', was bestowed by Alena, in recognition of what she did. And the story of Heidi, the 'Marshal Forwards' was one of nobility earned and nobility lost.

Kuromorimine was not a school. It was a military bootcamp disguised as a school, only that non-troubled kids weren't scared into obedience. Students cited the code of conduct every week, while the school would be patrolled every day, in shifts, by the moral committee wearing the red armband catching violators and deducting so-called moral points. Outside the occasional immediate punishment they would receive depending on the violation, students would have a monthly tally up of moral points, and would receive punishment accordingly by the teachers. Kuromorimine sure love their punishment, maybe a bit more than they should.

For someone whose life had been non-stop lawlessness and violence, this was initially a welcome change. It brought some stability in her life, and some of the rules made sense. No physical fighting, no gambling, no running in hallways, no alcohol outside official events. She wasn't keen on those anyway. But the devil is always in the details. Running in hallways, but what counted as running or just walking fast? Gambling, but it only applied to most card games using the 52-card deck and not that students were betting with real money. No physical fighting, but there were virtually no safeguard against bullying. The bully could be taking all the victim's money, but one fight and both of them received suspensions.

Heidi might have despised the dwelling life, but there is one important lesson she learned during that time: A rule is only as worth following as the reasons behind them. And here at Kuromorimine, there were only two underlying reasons: strength and honor. Repeated verbatim to perversion. She really wondered if probed, would they understand what that truly means?

Inside the realm of Senshado, they understood in the simplest way possible: Victory. Victory at any cost, without relent, without mercy.

Heidi wasn't sure if she wanted to join, but participation was practically mandatory so the decision was made before she learned to like the sport. A natural she was, every skill and every detail she picked up easily like a small pebble. She could fit in pretty much any role, but the one sorely lacked by the team at the time was long-range gunnery, and so she was assigned a gunner in the Jagdtiger. Her commander in that tank was Alena.

'Oh Alena', Heidi fondly remembered. She was a nice goofy girl. Her charisma was good, but she constantly fell into the pitfall Heidi liked to call 'getting behind the tank', that is letting events and situations dictate your actions. Or to simplify, she reacted more often than proacted. In a complex battlefield, getting surprised and pushed around was a no no. Thus Heidi often stepped in and did double duty, taking radio calls and issuing commands on her own. While this earned the crew some success in training matches, Kuromorimine's strict and rigid hierarchy didn't like a rogue gunner bossing people around. Before long, Alena was ridiculed for 'showing weakness', while Heidi was criticized for overstepping boundaries, but reluctantly they gave Heidi the commander spot and transferred Alena elsewhere.

For the Kuromorimine doctrine, the Jagdtiger served as the frontline tank destroyer, a brick in the unstoppable wall of steel and fire. Heidi considered it a waste. She wanted to scatter the tank destroyers into different squads, with more nimble tanks as escorts, to establish crossfire and creating overlapping fields of fire. One could see sparks of her brilliance whenever she was allowed to do whatever she wanted. She would always appear at the most opportune moment for a kill, and would not hesitate to get close and personal, even with a hulk like the Jagdtiger. Even Shiho herself could not deny that leaving Heidi to her own devices, she truly would be a bear out of cage. However, this rogue behavior, once again, flew against the Nishizumi doctrine, so it had to be slapped down.

"Hey Ricky..."

Fernanda came out of the corner as Ricky was about to enter.

"Hey…" He muttered.

The door opened and both entered quietly. The drear of yesterday's tears still lingered, the reserved Ricky didn't want to touch on it at first. But remembering his shoulders yesterday, Fernanda tapped him as he was looking over the tank.

"Thank you, Ricky, again..." A whisper in his ears for him to finally speak.

"Are you feeling better?" He didn't hesitate to ask.

"Not really, but I'll manage." She replied.

"In that case, I'll make tea for you."

"It's okay, I don't need tea."

"I'm sorry, that's not optional."

She broke out a chuckle, as he jogged to a counter in the other corner of the hangar with his mind already made up. There wasn't a kitchen in the area, but there was a kettle and several bagged teas he brought.

"Here you go." He handed her a cup when he was done.

"Thank you~" She gratefully took the cup, when she noticed the bagged tea tag. "Orange Pekoe bagged tea...oh boy, you're going to offend a lot of St. Gloriana students."

"I can imagine." Ricky giggled. "Call me cheap, but it's quick and the taste isn't so strong."

"You're betraying your heritage, Ricky. You know the rules." Fernanda jested.

"Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned it at all, should I?"

"To be honest? I wouldn't have thought you have British-blood just looking at you." She eyed his face.

He had short brown hair, a bit on the lighter end of the spectrum, his curly fringe swept up and over to the right. His eyes were dull blue. That was about the only indication, but for the rainbow of hair colors and eyes she had seen it didn't say much.

"What's your story, by the way?" She asked, ripping a pack of cookies, offering a few to Ricky. "About your heritage I mean."

"Me? It's nothing special. My grandfather came over as a high-skilled worker in the 1960s, married my grandmother and settled down." He storied, picking a cookie from the pack.

"What did he do?"

"He was a naval architect." He said, Fernanda's eyes widened. "I believe he worked on a ship name 'The Crane'."

"That's so awesome..." Fernanda exclaimed. "Wait, 'The Crane'? Did he work on school ships?"

"Yeah, he called them mobile cities, which is apt."

"Was it the Zuikaku he worked on? You know the Zuikaku right?"

Ricky's eyes glanced up. "I believe so. I've heard that name before." He scoured through the cluttered recollections of Senshado news in his head throughout the years. "The school is called Oroi, Oyoi, or Orai?"

"Ooarai." She corrected. "A small but old school. My little sister lives there...well, step-sister."

"Must be a quiet place to live I'd imagine." He remarked. "My parents weren't around for periods on end, so I would live with grandpa from time to time. I won't say that he got me into engineering, that's a whole different thing to it, but he definitely made it a lot more interesting."

He did hint at being family pressured. But at the same time, he was really good with engineering stuff, and didn't seem to despise it. The story is definitely more complicated than what she typically knew.

"Anyway, can we have a recap of yesterday, before we got interrupted by the headmistress?" The topic soon swapped back to what they were there for.

"Alright." Fernanda had a big gulp of the tea, washing away the previous topic as she remembered. "I only had a cursory look at the armor. I will definitely check it more thoroughly today, but from the brief glance I had of it, it does seem to show signs of heat damage. It's not visible from here, but the colors of the metal changed slightly if you look closer, just like with the Centurion after the engine fire."

"I can get you the damaged Centurion armor if you want, assuming it hasn't been disposed yet." Ricky said.

"It likely already has been." Fernanda stroke her cheek. "I signed it off two weeks ago. But I remember how it looks. The Centurion's more severe, because it suffered a fuel-fed fire for close to twenty minutes, which meant the temperature can get up to 600 Celcius, so the armor's very damaged. This Churchill's though, didn't go through all of that, but the heat damage is there."

"You said the weather that day wasn't hot, right?" Ricky asked.

"It was pretty cold, so definitely not a contributing factor." She glanced to the Churchill. "I wonder if sustained combat, like repeated shell impact could heat the armor up enough."

"That's a possibility." Ricky mulled this over, walked to the whiteboard, grabbed a red marker, wrote a big and dramatic 'SUSTAINED SHELL IMPACT' on the board, then circled it. "How badly was the Churchill beat up in that match up until the seconds from disaster?"

"Yes. Pretty badly, as it was the last tank alive." Fernanda crossed her arms. "But to how much it was beat up at that specific spot, I do not know. The camera wasn't on the tank all the time."

"We could check the PDR data for that, I believe." Ricky said.

"If I have the time, I will." Fernanda said. "I also overheard yesterday you're going to try to get maintenance records from St. Gloriana."

"Correct. I will send them an email today."

"Alright. I wouldn't expect anything, but hopefully they'll accept."

"Actually." Ricky raised a finger. "Is there any former St. Gloriana students in the team? I'd imagine most of you come from the same time period."

A simple question, but with sadness, Fernanda shook her head.

"No one?" His mood took a nosedive.

"Not a single one." She doubled down, like a stab in the heart. "The trauma was too deep. Many retired, never to take up Senshado again. St. Gloriana withdrew from the following year's tournament because of personnel shortage."

Many recounts of the event just boiled it down to an unfortunate fatality to a hull breach, but the unspoken casualty of that day was the countless future it destroyed behind the scenes. Senshado, as a sport, like the unfortunate Churchill, also suffered a hull breach.

"I know what you're thinking. There's no Kuromorimine alumni here either, so there's no one who's directly involved with that match you can find here." Fernanda said.

Ricky shook his head in disappointment, but then he remembered. There were no Kuromorimine alumni in Turtle Bay, except…

"There's Heidi." He said.

"Oh right." Fernanda knocked her temple. She forgot sometimes that Heidi's from Kuromorimine. But she was a very different case than others. "I don't know if she wants to talk about it at all."

"Yeah, but the worst she can say is no, right? It shouldn't hurt to just ask."

"No no, it's not just a simple question." Fernanda said. "She seems stoic, but it's hard to tell what she's actually feeling underneath..."

"...because unlike everybody else, she killed Masala."

Heidi's defiance of orders and hierarchy gave her an unsavory reputation, even if the orders were clearly in the wrong. And they were mostly in the wrongs - that was the reason she lasted that long with that attitude. A lot of what she chose otherwise than the official party line included: declaring a ceasefire zone for the opponent's team when she noticed a girl injured when she was scouting outside her tank, defending and asking for clemency for a student's honest mistake when they forgot to place a tripping hazard sign, or beating up a bully and then reporting them to school authorities instead of simply reporting them.

They wouldn't promote her, but they couldn't expel her, so the logical step was to just ignore her. She had her place as tank commander, she would play her part in the team, but she would have no real impact. She could defy orders all she wanted, but nothing would change because of her. And if she stepped out of line, she knew what she was getting into.

As the rift between Heidi and the Kuromorimine leadership grew, the orphan found herself back at the same place she had been years prior, she just wore a cleaner uniform today than yesterday.

"Good game."

As she sat in the athlete lounge, her black coffee awaited cooling, a voice called from behind. A black-haired girl, clad in the elegant red St. Gloriana uniform. She recognized her face. She was their captain, Masala, though like Heidi, she was quite new to this Senshado stuff. They just knocked their school out of the tournament an hour ago.

"Hard fought." Heidi replied.

"I am told you are the Jagdtiger commander." The girl said. "If you don't mind, may I ask you a couple things?"

"What?"

"How did you manage to get a shot in like that? I was under the impression that a Jagdtiger wouldn't be able to sneak up on us so easily on such a flat map."

Kuromorimine was busy fighting in urban combat with the St. Gloriana's nimble squads of tanks when the main column arrived. However, they were ambushed by Heidi's Jagdtiger, who had a different plan and sneaked off to a suburban area overlooking their entry path. They weren't taken out on the spot, but their heavy tanks dwindled from the solo attack. It was fair to say that Heidi won that game for Kuromorimine, even though the others finished off the flag tank.

"I was there for a long time already." The answer was a bit of a shock to Masala. "When your Crusaders and Cromwells hit our formation and baited us into the town, I noticed the main column wasn't there, thus must be coming."

"You also guessed correctly where we were coming from. I changed route after we were spotted by your scouts."

"That's an educated guess. I figured you would change approach, but going to the other side would have been too slow. Thus there's only following the same way the scouts come in."

"Wow. You really hit the nail on my head there." Masala covered her lips. "What do you think I can do differently?"

Heidi raised an eyebrow. This girl was rather brazen asking for feedback from an opponent. Any Kuromorimine girl would probably have denied in fear of brushing with traitorous labels.

"Hmmm." Heidi instead entertained the idea. "My thought is that your main column also needs scouting. You approached the town with the assumption that we are occupied. Correct me if I'm wrong."

"Yeahh, I was completely duped into thinking that." She admitted.

"You're not wrong...I just had different ideas." Heidi said. "But all it takes is one person who says 'wait a minute', correct?"

"Right." Masala nodded.

In a sense, this was also why Heidi wanted to do this. She wanted someone to beat her school, so it could be a wake up call for them to get rid of that archaic Nishizumi style, or at the very least change it to something more flexible. Masala was close to figuring out that the Nishizumi style only worked well in open field battles and not in urban combat where their legendary formation could not be formed. If Heidi hadn't intervened, things might have turned out differently.

Besides, winning while hiding your tricks isn't fun. A fair field victory is much more satisfying.

"By the way, what's your name?" Masala asked.

"Heidi." She replied.

"I'm Masala." Masala beamed radiance. "I'll tell you what, I really like you! We will have a tea-party the day after tomorrow at St. Gloriana. Feel free to join us!"

'That came out of nowhere', Heidi muttered inwardly. When her thoughts finally came around to consider the girl's offer, Masala was still there, her confident smile patient and friendly, drawing Heidi more and more in. She later pondered if this was intentional, but the next thing she knew, she saw the shocked and uneasy faces of the St. Gloriana's students, as a muscular girl in dark uniform sat quietly, sipping a cup of Darjeeling amidst the blue flowers. It was also the first time she met Fernanda, Masala's friend. Admittedly, she was unbearable then. Not that she changed that much now, but Heidi's experience with could be described as a lot more enjoyable.

She woke up with her face buried in paper and the smell of ink. Bubbles had filled the computer screen in front of her, each perpetually bouncing off one another in mesmerizing chaos. Still clutched in her right hand was her ball-point pen. The coffee cup next to her had gone lukewarm. Heidi gently nicked the ball on her trackball mouse, the bubbles instantly vanished and the time display in the corner was updated. 10:23 AM. She dozed off for around half an hour.

"It's rare that I see you sleeping on the job." Aurelie rested her arm and cheeks on top of the cubicle divider, looking down on Heidi.

"Yeah…" Groaned Heidi, downing the rest of the coffee. "You didn't wake me up?"

"I would have, but I thought you deserve a bit of rest. You've been working really hard." Aurelie replied.

"You made me miss inspection." She grumbled, was pulling the drawer for a checklist when Aurelie handed a clipboard to her.

"I already did it for you."

Heidi read through the list, all tasks were completed dutifully, no issues she could find and complain about.

"Thank you." Heidi stated.

"All for my juniors." The white-haired girl winked. "Was it schoolwork?"

"Yeah, it's been busy." Heidi said. "Something's also been on my mind."

"Oh? Do tell." Aurelie lifted her head off her arms.

"Just the old days."

"Must be rough, huh?"

Heidi sank into her chair, her hand fidgeted with her pen.

"I wouldn't say so. It's rougher coming back to reality land."

"You know, Mrs. Shimada values you. She might do something about your situation if you ask." Aurelie said.

"It's not that." Heidi shook her heads.

"Oh…" The captain realized. "In that case, do you need a lending ear?"

"I'm not too bothered, thank you again." Heidi stood up. "In fact, I know what I need to do. If you don't mind watching over the office for me for a bit."

"Very happy to." Aurelie watched her friend leave. She could only hope Heidi wasn't doubling down on it too hard. She had a tendency to drown herself in work to escape facing stress, and then promptly burn herself out.

The Safety Team's office was a block away from the operations building, where three teams were based out of. The Security Team on the ground floor, and the Campus Operation and Computer Systems team on the second. This was the first time she came here since they renovated the place. The security team looked nothing different, they were just as neat and no-nonsense as she would have expected – all at their workstations, eyes locked on their monitors. The second floor, however, was a completely different story.

The first thing that greeted Heidi after passing through the hallway door was a glass exhibit, three items displayed inside the transparent glass box. One was a hard disk drive platter, bent fourty-five degrees. Heidi was pretty sure that disk was ruined, if not for the fact that it was exposed to air, with fingerprints on it, meaning someone took it out with their bare hands, and that it was literally bent out of shape, it would be the description saying 'Disposal of HDD platter not up to standard'.

The second item was also a hard disk platter, this one broken in four, with sizeable cut and bent marks. Someone must have used a plier on that poor thing. The description also read 'Disposal of HDD platter not up to standard'.

The third item was some sort of silver-colored powder. Very shiny and light-reflective, Heidi would have thought it was something else if not for the description saying 'Disposal of HDD platter up to standard'. What she could reasonably infer was that these IT girls were so thorough with their work that breaking or bending an HDD platter wasn't enough and instead preferred to grind it to dust. Now she really wondered if they had a million-yen platter shredder somewhere on campus just for this.

The bookshelf next to Heidi contained a couple books on the bottom shelf, and a singular book with a shoddily-made title of 'Sysadmin's Bible'. Not as holy as the actual Bible, but a lot more useful. The forewords of the book literally said 'Google is your friend'. Sounded about right.

Heidi put the book back to the shelf, then walked past the various knick-knacks the girls had on display, from old floppy disks to satirical quotes. She wasn't here for them, but when she past by their cubicles, she heard a few bottom-of-the-heart angry screams.

"THE PRINTER DRIVER IS MISSING AGAIN!"

"EVERY SINGLE FUCKING WINDOWS UPDATE!"

Stomps echoed the hall. It sounded like an unenviably stressful job. And Heidi thought working in safety was bad with all the idiots walking around.

Compared to the anarchy that was the Computer Systems team, the Campus Operations team looked relatively plain.

"Who is it?" A voice asked after Heidi knocked on the door.

"It's Heidi, Safety Team."

A few seconds later, a red-haired girl opened the door.

"Heidi! I don't see you around here often. I assume you're not here for a chat, are you?" She greeted.

"No, Takara. I'm here for an access request." Heidi replied.

"Then you need to create a ticket first. I know it's annoying to navigate the ticket tracking website, but we'd like the systems to-."

"I can't..." Heidi said. "This must not be recorded."

Takara stopped in surprise. She didn't hear it wrong, did she? Normally clients would ask her to create the ticket for them, not deliberately not do it. And it was coming from Heidi, the stickler to the rules, out of all people.

"I want access to that hangar." Heidi crossed his arms. "And I'm willing to spend as long as it takes to convince you."

Yes, everything about the Computer Systems team is real to some degree. Don't worry, I actually love that line of work, and not stressed at all thus far (or at least by the work content). I like interacting with people and all. That exhibit thing though is not at my office where I once interned at, so I never got to see it myself, but my boss did say it's on display in an IT Office somewhere. The sentiment is pretty real in high security environment though.

Apologies for the long exposition this chapter. With the amount of Kuromorimine lore both readily available and what I have in mind, I can probably write a whole prequel about Heidi and it won't be enough. This is the most I could condense to set the stage for next chapter. It still feels a little bit jarring about her social punishment going with being promoted tank commander. I wrote that part yesterday while tired af. I figured the promotion happened early in her school years before her disillusionment.

The juicy stuff with Shiho happens next chapter. I'll take my time with it because I'm determined to break the writer's block with my other fic first before getting to this one. Once again, thank you for reading, and I'll see you all next chapter!