Sup guys. Just wanted to point out a few things first. As you may or may not have noticed if you red last chapter when it first came out, I have changed the Cromwell to a Comet, simply because the Cromwell's gun was pretty shit against armor. Had great HE performance, but we aren't facing any bunkers or static defense positions. We're facing tanks, and that means we need good AT guns. The 17 o pdr n the Comet met that requirement, so I changed it to a Comet. That's pretty much the only change to the story, so... On with it then!

We have a match!

The next day at training I introduced Uli to the class.

"How many tanks did you kill?" Somebody asked.

"What battles were you at?" asked another.

"Where were you born?" Kaia asked.

"What kind of tank did you drive?" asked Ethan

"How old are you?"somebody else asked.

"People, please. Let's not overwhelm Mr. Ferdinand." Catharine said.

"Please, fraulein. Call me Uli." Uli replied.

For the next few minutes Uli inspected the tanks we had crews for.

"They seem to be in working order." Uli said.

"Jackson, my boy. Which one is yours?" he asked.

"The Comet." I said.

"Ahh… Yes. A fine tank indeed. Not as quick as the rest of these tanks." He said.

"Well we'll just have to keep up then." I said.

"Ha-ha… My boy, you may be too optimistic." He said.

"So what do you think?" I said.

"I think we should start with a battle." He said.

"What?" Everyone asked.

"Experience is often times the best teacher of all." He said.

"But we've never even turned them on." Somebody said.

"Find a manual and it will tell you. I want to know what you can do as it is." He said.

Realizing that arguing the point would be a practice in futility, everyone piled into his or her tanks.

I got into the gunners station and instantly felt a weird chill run up my spine, but I assumed it was just excitement, or probably nervousness, so I just ignored it.

I didn't have a whole lot of time to study the controls or how the sight worked. So I just figured out how to move it and figured I would just use the age old method of "trial and error" to kill something. Apparently I wasn't the only one having problems.

"How do you drive this thing?" asked Austin.

"What does it look like?" asked Oliver.

"There are a lot of pedals and levers." He said.

"Well first you'll want to turn it on." I said.

After a bit of fumbling around we finally got the engine started, and the tank lurched backwards.

"Break! Break! Break!" I yelled. Austin managed to stop us at the right moment to stop us before taking out the back wall.

"Okay, forward. Slowly." Oliver said.

The tank proceeded out of the garage at a walking pace. Once we were clear of any infrastructure to crash into, we began to pick up speed and found a nice little clearing to hide in while the battle commenced.

"Okay. We will begin our first training battle. The rules are simple, get hit and you're out. Last tank standing wins." I want everybody to have a nice clean game. Panzer Vor!" Uli said over the radio.

"Here we go." I said.

"Austin, get us to that ridge over there. As quick as you can." Oliver said.

"I'm not sure I can control this thing at top speed." Austin said.

"Don't worry about it. It's a strait shot from here to the top of that ridge over there. That hill is overlooking the field of play. They'll all come striate through here. And we'll be waiting." Oliver said.

We shot off down the road and up a small hill overlooking a clearing where all the dirt roads converged. We waited patiently at the top of the ridge for the first tank to show up.

Soon enough, the tanks began to show up. First to show was the BT7 and then the two Chaffees showed up shortly after wards. Although I couldn't hear or see the crews of the tanks. I could only imagine the panic that was going on inside as the turrets slowly turned towards each other. A small chuckle escaped my mouth as I imagined the panic inside compared to the calmness on the outside.

I placed one of the Chaffees in my sights and waited for them to open fire first. Not only would it make it less likely for them to exchange effective return fire because they'd have to reload, save for the BT7, but it would add confusion as to where the shot came from.

The Chaffee finished rotating the turret and it took a shot at the BT7, which missed miserably. I pressed my foot against the firing pedal and the gun erupted with an ear shattering *BANG* spewing smoke and fire out the muzzle.

"Whoa!" I said.

"That was fucking awesome!" Chris yelled.

I pressed my eye back on the scope to confirm I hit the target and saw the burning wreck of the knocked out Chaffee.

"Reload!" I yelled to Chris.

He quickly opened the breach, ejecting the spent cartridge and slammed a fresh round into the chamber.

By this time the other two tanks had forgotten about each other and had turned their attention to us. All two fired their cannons at us. The shells fell just short with loud explosions that kicked up dirt and shook the tank.

"Hurry up! Fire back!" Oliver yelled.

"I know, I know!" I said and fired another shot, this time just barely missing the Chaffee I was aiming at. The next thing I saw was the M-36 and the Jumbo burst out of the trees and began to fire wildly. The Jumbo managed to take out the last Chaffee with its cannon while the BT7 retreated back into the woods.

"Fuck this. Austin reverse. Get us out of here!" I said firing another shot that also missed.

"Fuck! Which one's reverse?" he said, beginning to panic.

"Oliver! What are your orders?" I said. There was no response. He had frozen up.

"Oliver!" I yelled, snapping him out of it, "You have three choices, you can sit here and wait for us to get hit. You can get up and make a decision. Or you can take Austin's place as the driver." I said very bluntly.

"I'll drive." He said. I couldn't fault him on his choice. This was not a test of who was tougher. This was a very stressful situation, and any normal person would have acted the exact same way, if not even worse.

"Alright, Austin! Get in the radio operators seat." I said standing up and popping open the commander's hatch.

"Who's going to shoot?" He asked.

"Let's not worry about that right now. Oliver, get us out of here first, then we'll figure out who's shooting." I said.

Oliver gunned the engine down the hill. We quickly sped past the other tanks and down another dirt road. The three tanks quickly gave chase.

We just managed to take a sharp turn while the other three tanks sped past at full speed.

"STOP!" I said as I saw a human figure walking down the road we were on, and the tank ground to a halt three meters away.

"Elliot?" I said, surprised by my friend Elliot Ackerman's appearance.

"Hey, what are you guys doing?" he asked, also surprised.

"Tankery practice. You?" I asked.

"I was drawing the landscape over at lookout point." He said.

"Jackson! We might want to speed things up!" Oliver said.

A moment later a shell whistled past my head and exploded taking out the base of a tree that fell down blocking the road.

"Get in!" I said. The hatch of the Comet was so small that I had to get out in order for Elliot to get in.

"Go! Go! Go!" I said, still clinging to the back of the turret as Elliot climbed in and sat himself in the empty gunners seat as the Comet lurched forward at top speed.

"Roads blocked!" Oliver yelled.

"Then go off road!" I yelled back getting back into the tank.

"Hang on!" he said as he slowed the tank down then made the sharp turn and gunned the engine once more.

"Why does he get to use the gun?" Austin asked.

"Now's not a good time! If you want to do something, get your eye on that periscope and help Oliver drive!" I said.

"Elliot, while you're here, why don't you figure out how to operate that turret?" I said.

"Way ahead of you!" He said. He always had a skill of figuring out how machines work just by looking at them. The gun controls were no different.

"Need the manual?" I asked.

"No. I got this." He said, rotating the turret 180 degrees and getting ready to fire.

Kaia McTavish stood out of the rain covers on the Tetrarch that sufficed as a crew hatch. She stood next to her friend, and the tank's commander, Naia West.

"I don't believe we haven't seen anything the entire time." Naia said.

"Yeah. This is pretty boring." Kaia said. Her blonde hair gently swaying in the wind.

"How are you holding up, Alex?" Naia asked her friend.

"Pretty good. I could use a break soon." Alex replied.

"Alright. We'll take ten minutes." Naia said.

"What if we see another tank?" Kaia asked.

"Then we'll just get back in and shoot at it. Besides, we haven't seen anything the entire time, I don't think we'll see anything in the next ten minutes." Naia said.

No sooner had she said that, and Alex shut off the engine did the Comet burst out of the trees like an angry monster. The engine roaring, the tracks and the falling trees kicking up dust. Kaia and Naia both ducked back into the tank, covering their ears as the tank fired its QF 17-pounder gun, kicking up even more dust.

Suddenly the Jumbo and the M-36 both burst out of the trees in the same fashion, firing their cannons. The Comet swung its front around in time to deflect a shot from the Jumbo then began reversing as fast as possible. The Jumbo and the M-36 quickly gave chase.

"Kaia! Shoot!" Naia said, having to shout to overcome the shakiness in her voice.

Kaia rotated the turret a few degrees and fired the QF 2-pounder cannon. The 40 mm round planted itself into the tracks of the M-36 Jackson, immobilizing it.

The three girls exchanged a few surprised looks as the area around them began to settle back into silence. Their hands were shaking, and their breath came in quick, short gasps. Then the trio started to break out into hysterical laughter for a minute.

"Did we get them?" asked Kaia. As if to answer her question, the M-36's turret began to rotate in their direction.

"Uhh…fuck. Run!" Naia yelled, and the tiny tank reversed as fast as its engine could carry it before jerking to the right and off the path, into the trees as a 90 mm round slammed into the ground where they had once been.

The tank came to a stop on the road above, and the three girls broke back into a fit of laughter, unsure if it was to cover up the fear, or if something was, in, fact funny.

"Should we go after them?" Alex asked.

"Follow this road, I guess. I don't want to go back down that way if that tank is still down there." Naia said.

Alex aligned the tank with the road and the group was back on their way to hunting more tanks.

That was pretty intense. We just burst out onto a road in front of the Tetrarch, and probably making the crew practically shit them selves. There was too much going on to get a good shot off. But the Tetrarch did manage a shot on the M-36 and took out its track. That bought us some time. We easily outran the Jumbo shortly afterwards.

"Now what?" Chris asked.

"We take out that Jumbo." I said.

"How do we do that?" Austin asked.

"We can out run him. So we'll set up and wait for him to show himself." I said without much thought.

"What about the BT7? They're still out there and we have no idea where they are." Oliver said.

"We could always charge back in the other direction and take him out that way." I said sarcastically.

"I don't think that's a good idea." Oliver said.

"Then we find a place to hunker down and wait. Or 'till someone comes up with a better idea." I said. No one had a better idea so we found a patch of trees to hide behind and waited.

Five minutes passed before the M-36 rolled around the corner of the road. Without even stopping he fired a shot that I'm not even sure he aimed. The shot flew strait past us and took out the BT7 as it charged out of the bushes.

"Fire!" I said. Elliot hit the trigger pedal, and the gun roared and spat fire and metal.

The shot planted itself directly into the right cheek of the turret and knocked the M-36 out.

"Advance!" I said.

"Rolling!" Oliver replied. The tank rolled forward out of the bush and we continued down the road pas the knocked out M-36.

We proceeded into a small clearing, flanked by trees on our left and a hill to our right. I knew that staying out in the open was suicide, I told Oliver to advance at full speed.

"Keep your head on the swivel Austin. There's one tank left and it's a big field." I said, seeing how he was the only other person with a view outside of the tank, besides myself and Oliver who was driving.

"I'm on it." Austin replied.

I took a moment to look down at my map and the sound of an engine and a set of tracks that were not our own.

"Elliot! Behind us on the hill!" I yelled as I looked behind us to see the Tetrarch coming over the hill.

Elliot spun the turret around as fast as he could, but the Tetrarch had already driven down the hill at full speed and was coming up behind us. Fast.

"Six o'clock!" I yelled into the intercom. But it was too late.

The small tank shot past us, pumping a shot into the rear of our tank, where the armor was thinnest. The shot knocked us out instantly, although, it did little more then make the tank shake slightly with a loud *PING*.

The Tetrarch, on the other hand, shot past us and plowed into a tree with its right track.

"Holy shit!" I said. I instantly jumped off the tank and sprinted over to the crashed light tank and pried open the hatch...

Hey guys, me again. Hope you liked this chapter. Please R&R and feel free to F&F. Remember only constructive comments, no put downs. Have a happy new year guys. And as always, Semper Fi carry on.