Dein Weg ist Mein Weg

Chapter 35: The Arrangement

"Anzio's P40 flag tank is no longer operable. Ooarai Girls Academy wins the match and advances to the semifinals!"

Maho sighed to herself, and leaned back in her chair as she stretched her arms. She wasn't getting any wiser, and she couldn't gleam any more understanding from watching it over again.

Instead, she simply made yet another scratchy circle around the part of her notes that read "Hit P40 HOW?", and rewound the recording of the match once more.

The beginning she quickly scrubbed through, since she had both been there herself, and watched it through once already. There wasn't much of interest there anyways, only seeing the red and blue blocks representing Ooarai and Anzio's tanks spreading out across the field.

There had been a slight surprise in seeing some of Chiyomi's CV33s race across the battlefield to reach the two major crossroads, only to then back off again shortly before Erwin and Azusa's platoons reached their objectives. But switching to the aerial photography of the battle, and seeing the placement of painted tank decoys had made Maho curse ever since she first saw it.

She knew Chiyomi was clever. She knew she was good at utilizing what she had. And yet, she hadn't foreseen her using decoys. All Maho had been able to focus on was how her and Chiyomi would be facing one another again in the forest, and nothing else. She couldn't blame Azusa or Erwin for getting held up at the crossroads by such a tactic. She was the commander, she should have foreseen or at the very least suspected something like this, and made sure that her team was informed and could act accordingly. The blame was solely hers.

But then there were the other parts of the battle. The ones where she was most certainly not to blame. Turtle team disobeying Erwin's orders and charging right into the bulk of Anzio's forces. The cyclops somehow landing her one-in-a-billion shot, taking Hana's killshot on the P40 with it to a fiery grave and accomplishing nothing except for prolonging the match and endangering their victory. Azusa letting herself be lured into a trap even more obvious than the one the cyclops had enacted against St. Gloriana.

The first time she had seen it, and actually gotten to understand how the battle had flowed, she had been angry. She knew that Ooarai was still a team of beginners at heart, but there was no way to excuse or explain such failures, and it most certainly wouldn't fly in the semifinals.

She sighed to herself. The semifinals. Victory against Anzio had by no means been certain, and getting through the semis would be a monumental challenge even for a team with three times the equipment and training. And even if they could claim victory there, there was still the matter of the finals. She would have to lead Ooarai against Miho and Kuromorimine. To fight against everything she had worked for and protected all her life. And if she couldn't, if she wasn't good enough to defeat Miho, to lead Ooarai to victory...

It would mean the end. To everything.

MEXT would close down the school. She would be left without a school, and once again be subject to her mother's whims and will. It would be the end of her.

She would never see Chiyomi again.

She'd never get the chance to make things right with Koume.

She wouldn't get to spend time with her f-... crew... agai-

She shook her head a few times, stood up and walked a quick lap around the room. No, there was no point in worrying about that now. She had better things to worry about right now. She still needed to get them through the semis before there was even any point in properly worrying.

She tried to look through the match yet another time, to see if there was anything she had missed, but there was no point. She just found herself seething bitterly at the failures of her teammates, and she hated it.