"Better?" Koume asked Peter a few minutes later.
"Hm? Y-Yeah, I feel better now." Peter stood up, still not wearing a shirt. He seemed much better though. "I guess I'll ask Faber to guide you back home then, hold on a second." Peter opened the door, before looking down both ways of the hallway. "[Faber? You there?]" Peter turned back into the room, a tired look on his face. "Of course, he's gone." he sighed.
"Eh? He left?" then Koume realized why he left. Damn it, I knew I should've asked about him..."W-well he said you would escort me out if he was gone, so..."
After a few seconds of thinking, Peter just sighed in defeat. "Aright. Do you have a blindfold or something?" Koume pulled out the white cloth Faber had used earlier, holding it out so Peter could tie it. Taking it, he gently tied it around her head, before he took her hand and began to guide her out of the steel halls. "Hey, Koume?"
"Yeah?"
"You don't mind if I carry you a bit, right? We have to go up this one ladder and down another."
"Yeah, I don't mind at all." All of a sudden, Koume felt herself being picked up, but not at all in the way she expected. Instead of a piggy back ride, Peter picked her up princess carry style.
"W-wait what am I doing? I can't-argh!" Peter quickly placed Koume back down, before getting her to grab onto his shoulders and just hold on. Remember, this all happened while she was blindfolded. They went back up the ladder, then walked flat for a few moments, before they began to go down a rather tall metal ladder, just like before when Faber was bringing Koume in. "Alright, here we go." Koume lowered herself off of Peter, touching the solid, grassy earth. Koume subconsciously reached out her hand again, and Peter's callused hand to hers. As he pulled her along, Koume decided to glance at a tiny little peek. So raising her left hand to push up the blindfold ever so slightly, Koume saw an extremely tall, steel gray shape.
A turret? Koume thought before she suddenly felt her cheeks being pinched. "Ow! What-"
"Koume." Peter said firmly. "No peeking, alright? Faber's orders."
"A-Ah, right. Sorry..." After being guided along by Peter for several more minutes, the two finally stopped.
"Alright, Koume. You can take the blindfold off now." When Koume took off the blindfold, she found herself back in the clearing as before, with the Stahlrattes tanks. Interestingly, Peter seemed to be contemplating something nervously. "Mmmm...Do you wanna..." Peter kept trailing off trying to state his question.
"Yes?" Koume grinned.
"D-Do you wanna go in my Panther or something?" he said, tittering.
At first, Koume raised her eyebrows. Why is he so embarrassed? It's just a tank-Oh, wait...If we do go inside, it'll just be the two of us. "Well, I won't say no to getting to see the inside of a tank." saying this, Peter gestured for her to come over to his Panther, which appeared to be in the middle of being painted a forest camouflage.
"Y-yeah, we probably should've gotten all the paint jobs done a long time ago." he grinned nervously. And cutely. Peter took Koume's hand and pulled her up, before opening the commander's hatch and going in. Koume went into the Panther through the loader's hatch. What was inside the turret was rather normal. The gun and everything looked the same, the optics, it all looked normal. However, taking a closer look, there were some interesting additions. "Right, so do you want me to tell you the things that are different in the turret or do you wanna look at it yourself?"
"I think I'll let you explain things, Peter."
"Alright, so..." Peter first pointed to the gunner sights. "The optics are different, so when you look through it, you can see to the left and right much more clearly." Climbing over the gun breech, Koume peered into the optics. They had the same reticles, but the black borders were removed, effectively allowing the gunner full vision to the left and right sides. "Apparently, Otto did this so my gunner wouldn't have to over rely on the commander, me, to point out targets."
"How come?" Koume raised an eyebrow. Peter was literally right behind her, considering they were in the turret together. The gun sight was not made of one, but two separate scopes, meaning one could use the gun ambidextrously, with both eyes open or only one eye open, both left and right.
"Well...Otto said it was inevitable I would get hit by a bullet, or a shell, or god knows what and my crew had to deal with firing and driving by themselves. Only happened once, and that was when a 183mm shell caused me to hit the hatch, which I had fully closed." Koume raised an amused eyebrow. "Ah, um, I meant to say that a 183mm HE shell blew up next to the tank, then I smashed my head into the hatch from the blast, yeah."
"Ouch. What else is in here?"
"Well," Peter pointed over to the loader's area. "If you look there, around, the ammo racks are different." Looking around, the racks were indeed different. Instead of being in their usual positions, there were a number of shells now stored directly in the sides of the turret. "We added them so my loader wouldn't have to bend down to grab shells, he could just grab them straight from here and put them in. Useful, but it's more cramped on the loader's side. I think Otto also shortened the recoil guard, making it more compact. The only problem is, sometimes I get worried the compacted version will fail and the gun will hit the turret ring."
"Well, you've been using this Panther for a few years, right? With the modifications too?"
"Yeah, I guess you're right, Koume. What else is there...Ah, right, the turret hydraulics. Otto decided to jam some extra hydraulics into the turret ring, and it runs on its own power, so we don't have to rev up the engine to turn it. The fact that the traverse is so much faster is great, but..."
"But?"
"The hydraulics...they really don't like getting hit. Whenever they do get hit, it takes forever to repair them all." Peter slapped his pants. "Right, I think that's everything for the turret, what else..." Koume smiled. Normally, Peter was a very nervous boy, especially when they first met. Now he was acting more confident and strongly, so instead of a nervous 16 year old, there was a confident one. Koume decided to begin climbing over to the other side of the tank, putting a hand on Peter's chest by accident(which caused him to blush instantly)to help get over. Then the hatch opened.
"[Peter, you in-]" Konrad looked down at his fellow Panther commander and the girl right next to him. Then he grinned naughtily. "[I see, I see. Well, I'll leave you two alone, tschüss!]" he then proceeded to flip backwards, landed on the ground, and walked away whistling. Koume blushed, because she knew what Konrad had said despite it being in German. Peter blushed because it looked as if they were in an incriminating pose.
Peter jumped up with absolute haste, sticking his blushing self out of the cupola and yelling, "[It's not what you think, pervert!]" but Konrad was long gone, having run off like he was being chased by Faber for trying to get touchy with a girl. "Argh!" Peter went back into the Panther, this time making sure to keep the hatch closed tightly. "Right, where was I?"
"You...said that was everything in the turret?"
"Ah, right." Peter lowered himself into the driver and radio operator's area. Putting himself in the driver's seat, Koume followed, sitting in the hull gunner and radio-operator seat. "Right, so...if it wasn't obvious during our battles together, things like the transmission are fixed, so they don't break down anymore."
"Really?" Koume wondered.
"[Ja.] Last time we had to fix the transmission, that was because a shell went through the lower glacis and hit it. Unless you count those Panzerfahren battles we've been fighting, then that's more because of maintenance. There's also a second reverse gear on here." Koume looked over, and indeed there was an additional reverse gear on the gear box. "I think the transmission is a derivative of the one used on the Ferdinand Tank Destroyers, if I recall, so on second gear we can go as fast reverse as we can go forwards."
Koume raised a confused eyebrow, pointing at the first gear from over the radio. "Then, why didn't Mr. Bastler just change the first gear to do that instead?"
"I dunno. He just put a whole new gear instead of just modifying the pre-existing gear. I guess it's if we want to reverse at the speed of a snail or something, hahah." Koume ended up sharing a brief laugh with Peter. "Other than that, I think that's everything. Well, except for the hull and coaxial machine guns. We replaced the MG-34s with MG-42s, which are also modified so changing the barrel isn't a nightmare. Unless you count the fact that Faber has a watercooled MG-42, but that one's more bulky, so we just fire the machine guns in short bursts, or let the barrel cool down. But...it doesn't really matter, does it? Because we fight tanks, not infantry."
"Yeah, I guess you're right about that." Koume checked her phone for the time, and saw a text from Maho and Erika. "Uh oh."
"What?"
"Erika and Maho are saying I've been gone for almost three hours and I forgot to tell them if I was going somewhere. And now they're already looking for me."
"Yikes, should we get going?" Peter cracked a nervous grin, remembering his first meeting with Erika and Maho. He gestured towards the loader and commander's hatch.
"Yes, let's get going then." Koume began to climb up and out of the Panther from the radio operator's side, the Panther's owner following behind her. Then, Peter suddenly tripped on something, causing him to fall right onto Koume's back.
"A-ahh, sorry..." Peter began to get up, but then he felt something soft and squishy. What the? Then he squeezed it.
"Mm!" Koume moaned cutely. "P-Peter, your touching my-" Koume blushed hard.
"Wait, what?" Peter looked over Koume's shoulder, and saw that his hands were quite firmly grabbing her ample breasts. "AHH!" Peter's hands and himself flew off of her like she was made of hot iron, but this was stopped by Peter hitting his head against the inner hull of his Panther. "OW!"
"You really think Koume's in there commander?"
Maho shrugged, but her answer was as sure as a German sniper taking aim. "Koume's been hanging out with Peter for the past few days, and they seem pretty close now. If I had to guess, she went into the forest to look for him..." Maho's stoic expression was briefly crossed by one a protective older sibling or mother would get when they find out their daughter/sibling has a boyfriend. "Anyways, let's get going Erika. Who knows what could happen..." Walking forwards for about three minutes, they came into a clearing, just as a familiar pair did as well. It was Peter and Koume, and Maho and Erika stared for a moment.
Then, Erika spoke up in a very impatient voice. "Where were you!? You left and we were planning to come over and visit, then we find that you're gone with no note or anything!" Erika was really sounding like an older sibling or a mother.
"Koume."
"Y-Yes commander?"
Maho looked at Peter and Koume's intertwined hands, then at Peter, who still wasn't wearing an undershirt. "What were you doing with him?"
Koume and Peter started for a moment. Then they looked at each other. Then they both blushed and immediately broke out into a storm of stuttering what had actually happened, and not what a dirty-minded person would think of.