HOME | DD

Description
Chapter 4 : Reveal thyself

"What do you make of it, Captain?"

The pipe trembled, and was removed from between the lips. "I don't know, Giorgio... they have quite a reputation, and their lineup is formidable, yet... I would've made a few thing differently!"

Sergeant Iannuzzi waited for his superior to go on, knowing already what he would say. He could afford that, after years of being his shadow.

"The T-34 in both variants is a formidable tank against any opposition, if properly used; but I would have thrown in some tank destroyers, perhaps some SU-85 or even SU-100, but I'm totally biased towards SPGs, you know that. Anyway, I wouldn't have taken with me the KV-2; either you take out the enemy by surprise, which is not very likely if you're not a true natural, or you get down in a whiff. A proverbial barnstack, that tank!"

Iannuzzi nodded. "I agree. But the Pravda girls, they seem to know what they're doing."

His captain puffed and shrugged. "Whatever; if Miho plays her hand right, there's no way they can lose!"

But when he next heard his trusted driver, it was in a completely different tone.

"Captain! Over there...!"

His head turned in the direction of Giorgio's arm, and at once his features went stone-like. "Cristo!" he muttered disbelievingly.

He was looking at Shiho Nishizumi. Miho's mother, and a longtime acquaintance of his.

For two or three seconds he sat still, then his features contorted in a smirk. "She can't help but see how her daughter's doing, even if she dishonoured the Black Forest Peak School!" Ansaldi spat out, his voice seething with sarcasm. Knowing what Miho had done in the previous Tournament, he could pretty much guess what could have been her mother's reactions.

The driver squirmed. "What about you, sir? She is going to assume..."

"I know what she's going to assume! But if she even opens her mouth, I'll blast away and reduce her to a nervous wreck!! She doesn't have any right to say anything to me!" In his phrases, for those who knew him well enough, there was venom enough to start sweating. Iannuzzi eyed him nervously, trying to decipher his set jaw and his fixed glare.

He couldn't help but pray that his commander's mind would hold on to the end.

/

"This doesn't look good!"

A glare from a couple of stern blue eyes shut him up. "Not a good situation, that is true. But it's not desperate, they can still do it if they have the guts to try it!" Iannuzzi understood : such a stern rebuke meant only that the Captain was quite tense himself. He was probably asking himself if his judgment had been correct, or if he had just taken the first blunder in his renowned career by betting on the wrong horse.

But he had to agree with him, an upset was still possible. Even if the Ooarai tanks were bottled up in the church, with the Pravda tanks cleverly spread out to cover all the escape routes, there were still some cards those girls could play. Not in a particularly original way, the Sergeant would have charged straight up against the strongest enemy concentration, the most unlikely spot, that happened to be right in front of the church, a little on the right. Then, outside of the small village, the smaller and swifter Ooarai tanks could have counterbalanced their lower firepower with their superior speed and maneuverability.

A shiver distracted him. He glanced at the sky, from which snow kept falling indifferently.

"It must be cold out there!"

"As long as they're not cold in the heart!" The officer shot back smirking.

/

"Panzer Vor!"

The Ooarai tanks' engines roared in unison as they went out of the church that was their shelter. And, after apparenlty charging straight into Pravda's trap, they all swerved right, towards the main enemy body.

The degree with which the Pravda girls had let themselves being taken by surprise was demonstrated by their frantic shooting, which yielded no result, as Miho punched a hole through their first line.

While the second line (which included Pravda's trump card, the IS-2) moved in, Ooarai turned left to get out of the village, except for the Panzer 38(t). That earned a
sharp nod by Ansaldi, at the other end of the camera; it was the tank with the lowest firepower, but also the smallest and the nimblest, so it was logical to use it to
try and confuse the enemy, and perhaps using its 37 mm to hit some weak spot on the hull.

And the President's tank managed to do just that, dispatching two T-34s before getting taken down. Still, it was more than it could be asked from such an outgunned
vehicle.

Meanwhile, the match was quickly becoming a race; especially after Miho's Panzer IV, together with the StuG III, cleverly disengaged and turned back to flush Pravda's
flag tank.

"Interesting!" was a comment uttered through teeth clenched around a pipe.

It wasn't that much different from a chess match too close for comfort. Both parties almost had the main objective in their crosshairs, and anything could have happened. A sudden breakdown, a false move, really anything, and victory would decide itself.

"Gesù! Look at that thing!!" Ansaldi almost yelled excitedly, so excitedly that his companion looked towards the screen one second late, to take a good look at his face. The StuG III had suddenly come to a stop, turning backwards as it did so and being covered by snow as it ground to a halt. Now it made the perfect trap, when the enemy would return around there.
"We didn't do that many matches in the snow, but I wish we could have done that!" approved the Italian tanker, and Giorgio couldn't help but agree wholeheartedly for once; in this business, any level of concealment was never enough.

The question was, could it take out the flag T-34 before that horribly precise IS-2 could take out the Type 89B? It had already picked off the covering tanks, and its aim was very good, considering the speed of the tank and the visibility.

Ansaldi's jaw crashed down on the pipe's mouthpiece.

Two shots echoed in different part of the battlefield. Two shells found their mark.

And...

After a painstaking wait, the flag T-34 signalled his defeat with the usual white flag, while the old Japanese tank had miraculously survived (but not quite unscathed) the fury of the Stalin tank.

Ansaldi was perhaps the very first person to jump up and begin clapping. And all the while, relief and satisfaction poured out of his face.

"All right! That was spectacular!" he declared to his driver, crushing his left shoulder with his hand.

/

All Ooarai's girls were so accostumed to his presence that, if Ansaldi hadn't showed up, they would have felt disappointed.

But there he was, giving them a thumbs up with a warm smile.

Smile that fled when a certain voice reached him.

"Captain Ansaldi!" Shiho thundered, with enough ice in her voice to make an iceberg shiver.

"Lady Nishizumi!" Vittorio answered with cold politeness, bowing slightly.

She eyed him ferociously. "Is it true, that you have the intention of challenging my... youngest daughter to a Sensha-Do match?"

The barely finished match was already forgotten, as all eyes went to the couple of Panzerkraft heroes.

Ansaldi said slowly and clearly : "Before this match, I was uncertain. After having seen it, I have no doubt : as soon as the Finals will have taken place, I will issue my challenge to your daughter. If I will fight her, it will be her own decision!"

Miho couldn't have told what gave her the sharpest pang; her mother's attitude (and noteworthy hesitation before the word 'daughter'), or Ansaldi's announcement.

"I cannot allow that!" Shiho stated sternly.

The Italian didn't flinch, his hand clutching the pipe. "If I do remember correctly, your daughter is no longer part of the Kuromorimine Girls High School; therefore, you no longer have the power to decide which matches she must fight and which matches she mustn't."

Shiho's fists were so tight that her knuckles were whiter than the snow. She barely uttered : "But you still answer to the rules of honesty! And you cannot issue a challenge to my daughter, to avenge your defeat at the hands of my sister..."

She stopped dead in her tracks, and with reason. Ansaldi's eyes had blazed up, like light blue flames. He slowly took out the pipe from his mouth, and, with a tone that betrayed an intense irritation bordering on rage, he answered : "You are wrong, Lady Nishizumi, if you believe my intention here is to avenge my defeat years ago. There is nothing to avenge; I was defeated, and nothing will change that. I won't say it didn't have repercussions, because it would be lying," At this point, a murmur echoed around, "but if you really believe me to be such a man, then I'm afraid you really know me quite poorly!"

With that, he turned on his heels, and started going down the bleachers. Then, as if rethinking it, he stopped, turned to face Shiho and told her : "I am going to challenge your daughter, whether you like it or not. So, please, don't disturb me anymore; I have enough issue to contend with already!"

And, followed by his worried driver, he walked away. But those who weren't surprised enough to dull their senses were able to see how he brought a hand to his forehead, wincing.

Then, after some silence...

Mako suddenly said : “This is beginning to look like a soap opera!”

/

Judging by the way he slammed the door, every single member of the Raggruppamento Ariete understood at once which way the wind was blowing. The captain was overly pissed.

But not pissed enough to miss their peculiar glances, and their nervous attitude. Without talking, furrowing his brow, he looked at Damiano, his right-hand man.

“Captain. There are some visitors.” he said in a tone that spelled trouble.

And four big troubles were produced by the shadows of the uncertain lights. Four frames and four faces that were all too familiar for him.

"Perfect" Ansaldi mumbled to himself, annoyance really starting to get the better of him.

He had knocked over a conceited woman who couldn't stop him from doing what he wanted.

But now there were four Panzer Aces who looked like they might want to do just that (and the problem was that they could).

His pipe forgotten in his hand, he eyed each one of them. They all looked determined, but not too much hostile; he might pull it off.

Taking a big breath to calm his squirming heart, the living legend began : "Let's talk!"

Description
Chapter 4 : Reveal thyself

"What do you make of it, Captain?"

The pipe trembled, and was removed from between the lips. "I don't know, Giorgio... they have quite a reputation, and their lineup is formidable, yet... I would've made a few thing differently!"

Sergeant Iannuzzi waited for his superior to go on, knowing already what he would say. He could afford that, after years of being his shadow.

"The T-34 in both variants is a formidable tank against any opposition, if properly used; but I would have thrown in some tank destroyers, perhaps some SU-85 or even SU-100, but I'm totally biased towards SPGs, you know that. Anyway, I wouldn't have taken with me the KV-2; either you take out the enemy by surprise, which is not very likely if you're not a true natural, or you get down in a whiff. A proverbial barnstack, that tank!"

Iannuzzi nodded. "I agree. But the Pravda girls, they seem to know what they're doing."

His captain puffed and shrugged. "Whatever; if Miho plays her hand right, there's no way they can lose!"

But when he next heard his trusted driver, it was in a completely different tone.

"Captain! Over there...!"

His head turned in the direction of Giorgio's arm, and at once his features went stone-like. "Cristo!" he muttered disbelievingly.

He was looking at Shiho Nishizumi. Miho's mother, and a longtime acquaintance of his.

For two or three seconds he sat still, then his features contorted in a smirk. "She can't help but see how her daughter's doing, even if she dishonoured the Black Forest Peak School!" Ansaldi spat out, his voice seething with sarcasm. Knowing what Miho had done in the previous Tournament, he could pretty much guess what could have been her mother's reactions.

The driver squirmed. "What about you, sir? She is going to assume..."

"I know what she's going to assume! But if she even opens her mouth, I'll blast away and reduce her to a nervous wreck!! She doesn't have any right to say anything to me!" In his phrases, for those who knew him well enough, there was venom enough to start sweating. Iannuzzi eyed him nervously, trying to decipher his set jaw and his fixed glare.

He couldn't help but pray that his commander's mind would hold on to the end.

/

"This doesn't look good!"

A glare from a couple of stern blue eyes shut him up. "Not a good situation, that is true. But it's not desperate, they can still do it if they have the guts to try it!" Iannuzzi understood : such a stern rebuke meant only that the Captain was quite tense himself. He was probably asking himself if his judgment had been correct, or if he had just taken the first blunder in his renowned career by betting on the wrong horse.

But he had to agree with him, an upset was still possible. Even if the Ooarai tanks were bottled up in the church, with the Pravda tanks cleverly spread out to cover all the escape routes, there were still some cards those girls could play. Not in a particularly original way, the Sergeant would have charged straight up against the strongest enemy concentration, the most unlikely spot, that happened to be right in front of the church, a little on the right. Then, outside of the small village, the smaller and swifter Ooarai tanks could have counterbalanced their lower firepower with their superior speed and maneuverability.

A shiver distracted him. He glanced at the sky, from which snow kept falling indifferently.

"It must be cold out there!"

"As long as they're not cold in the heart!" The officer shot back smirking.

/

"Panzer Vor!"

The Ooarai tanks' engines roared in unison as they went out of the church that was their shelter. And, after apparenlty charging straight into Pravda's trap, they all swerved right, towards the main enemy body.

The degree with which the Pravda girls had let themselves being taken by surprise was demonstrated by their frantic shooting, which yielded no result, as Miho punched a hole through their first line.

While the second line (which included Pravda's trump card, the IS-2) moved in, Ooarai turned left to get out of the village, except for the Panzer 38(t). That earned a
sharp nod by Ansaldi, at the other end of the camera; it was the tank with the lowest firepower, but also the smallest and the nimblest, so it was logical to use it to
try and confuse the enemy, and perhaps using its 37 mm to hit some weak spot on the hull.

And the President's tank managed to do just that, dispatching two T-34s before getting taken down. Still, it was more than it could be asked from such an outgunned
vehicle.

Meanwhile, the match was quickly becoming a race; especially after Miho's Panzer IV, together with the StuG III, cleverly disengaged and turned back to flush Pravda's
flag tank.

"Interesting!" was a comment uttered through teeth clenched around a pipe.

It wasn't that much different from a chess match too close for comfort. Both parties almost had the main objective in their crosshairs, and anything could have happened. A sudden breakdown, a false move, really anything, and victory would decide itself.

"Gesù! Look at that thing!!" Ansaldi almost yelled excitedly, so excitedly that his companion looked towards the screen one second late, to take a good look at his face. The StuG III had suddenly come to a stop, turning backwards as it did so and being covered by snow as it ground to a halt. Now it made the perfect trap, when the enemy would return around there.
"We didn't do that many matches in the snow, but I wish we could have done that!" approved the Italian tanker, and Giorgio couldn't help but agree wholeheartedly for once; in this business, any level of concealment was never enough.

The question was, could it take out the flag T-34 before that horribly precise IS-2 could take out the Type 89B? It had already picked off the covering tanks, and its aim was very good, considering the speed of the tank and the visibility.

Ansaldi's jaw crashed down on the pipe's mouthpiece.

Two shots echoed in different part of the battlefield. Two shells found their mark.

And...

After a painstaking wait, the flag T-34 signalled his defeat with the usual white flag, while the old Japanese tank had miraculously survived (but not quite unscathed) the fury of the Stalin tank.

Ansaldi was perhaps the very first person to jump up and begin clapping. And all the while, relief and satisfaction poured out of his face.

"All right! That was spectacular!" he declared to his driver, crushing his left shoulder with his hand.

/

All Ooarai's girls were so accostumed to his presence that, if Ansaldi hadn't showed up, they would have felt disappointed.

But there he was, giving them a thumbs up with a warm smile.

Smile that fled when a certain voice reached him.

"Captain Ansaldi!" Shiho thundered, with enough ice in her voice to make an iceberg shiver.

"Lady Nishizumi!" Vittorio answered with cold politeness, bowing slightly.

She eyed him ferociously. "Is it true, that you have the intention of challenging my... youngest daughter to a Sensha-Do match?"

The barely finished match was already forgotten, as all eyes went to the couple of Panzerkraft heroes.

Ansaldi said slowly and clearly : "Before this match, I was uncertain. After having seen it, I have no doubt : as soon as the Finals will have taken place, I will issue my challenge to your daughter. If I will fight her, it will be her own decision!"

Miho couldn't have told what gave her the sharpest pang; her mother's attitude (and noteworthy hesitation before the word 'daughter'), or Ansaldi's announcement.

"I cannot allow that!" Shiho stated sternly.

The Italian didn't flinch, his hand clutching the pipe. "If I do remember correctly, your daughter is no longer part of the Kuromorimine Girls High School; therefore, you no longer have the power to decide which matches she must fight and which matches she mustn't."

Shiho's fists were so tight that her knuckles were whiter than the snow. She barely uttered : "But you still answer to the rules of honesty! And you cannot issue a challenge to my daughter, to avenge your defeat at the hands of my sister..."

She stopped dead in her tracks, and with reason. Ansaldi's eyes had blazed up, like light blue flames. He slowly took out the pipe from his mouth, and, with a tone that betrayed an intense irritation bordering on rage, he answered : "You are wrong, Lady Nishizumi, if you believe my intention here is to avenge my defeat years ago. There is nothing to avenge; I was defeated, and nothing will change that. I won't say it didn't have repercussions, because it would be lying," At this point, a murmur echoed around, "but if you really believe me to be such a man, then I'm afraid you really know me quite poorly!"

With that, he turned on his heels, and started going down the bleachers. Then, as if rethinking it, he stopped, turned to face Shiho and told her : "I am going to challenge your daughter, whether you like it or not. So, please, don't disturb me anymore; I have enough issue to contend with already!"

And, followed by his worried driver, he walked away. But those who weren't surprised enough to dull their senses were able to see how he brought a hand to his forehead, wincing.

Then, after some silence...

Mako suddenly said : “This is beginning to look like a soap opera!”

/

Judging by the way he slammed the door, every single member of the Raggruppamento Ariete understood at once which way the wind was blowing. The captain was overly pissed.

But not pissed enough to miss their peculiar glances, and their nervous attitude. Without talking, furrowing his brow, he looked at Damiano, his right-hand man.

“Captain. There are some visitors.” he said in a tone that spelled trouble.

And four big troubles were produced by the shadows of the uncertain lights. Four frames and four faces that were all too familiar for him.

"Perfect" Ansaldi mumbled to himself, annoyance really starting to get the better of him.

He had knocked over a conceited woman who couldn't stop him from doing what he wanted.

But now there were four Panzer Aces who looked like they might want to do just that (and the problem was that they could).

His pipe forgotten in his hand, he eyed each one of them. They all looked determined, but not too much hostile; he might pull it off.

Taking a big breath to calm his squirming heart, the living legend began : "Let's talk!"