Youjo Senki: Falling is like Flying

VIII

The night was cold, not as cold as it could be, but cold none the less. Sitting around a campfire, the troops of the 203rd entertained each other with stories of the old war and of their time interwar.

They were in a clearing near the town of Reims, in the thickly wooded area of the Ardennes. The 203rd currently occupied a hill not far from Leopold Division, overlooking them in fact, as to act as an early response unit.

Whilst the men and women of the 203 spoke and conversed, Tanya and Viktoriya were absent, as noted by the ever diligent Weiss, who continued with his silent order to keep those people under his command under control. He knew the Führer was unhappy with female soldiers to begin with, he didn't want to give him a reason to shelve the whole battalion and his two direct superiors, even if Serebyakov was lower ranking, he had no doubt as to who's side Tanya would take.

Tanya dry retched agin, a muffled, pitiful cry of pain escaping her lips. Her body could still not handle any meaningful magic without protesting violently. The loving grip of Viktoriya held her close and kept her sane in the face of all that could undermine that. They were sitting, or in Tanya's case, on all fours, on the edge of the hill, looking down a steep face on the hill, back towards Germania.

Eventually, her body relented, the retching stopping as Tanya finally, mercifully, began to regain sanity. With a further 5 minutes elapsing, Tanya finally moved back to her command tent, the only one tent pitched. Examining the map that lay on the table, she began to plot the moves of her forces, or rather, potential moves. All the orders she had were to support Generalletunant Guderian in his encirclement of the Francios and United Kingdom forces somewhere between the low countries and part of the Channel coast.

Tanya honestly had little clue as to where she was going, however she did know that they encountered very little resistance in their first day of fighting. She speculated some sort of infantry counter offensive the following day, given the Francios general disorder at the current time. They had advanced effectively outside of the Ardennes region in one day, it was truely ludicrous to Tanya that a nation going to war could be so unprepared for war.

She considered her options for a few minutes. Those minutes dragged on to an hour, where she finally relented, deciding enough was enough and dismissing the troops for sleep.

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The day after was one of interesting scenarios. They encountered the stiff resistance of one farmer with a pitchfork who yelled about them driving over his wheat, which the diplomatic Guderian apologised for, and pulled his entire division off the farmers land. Tanya grumbling all the while that she rode on the Tiger II's engine deck, the ride bumpy and unpleasant.

The tanks of Leopold division continued to push further around, towards the coast, for the next few days, occasionally encountering some resistance. Tanya vividly remembered one occurrence.

It was a little after midday, around a week before now. Tanya had just finished strategy talk with Guderian and they had a slight conflict of personalities with each other. This had changed for the next few days with one event. As she rode on the back of the leading Tiger, a roar echoed through the countryside, a spray of sparks showered her as the anti tank gun shell failed to penetrate. Dozens more shots slammed into the tank, sparks spraying like a roman candle.

Tanya took a deep breath, calming her frayed nerves as the Tiger seemingly didn't respond, only beginning to back up. She placed her rifle against the roof of the turret, aiming at one of the anti tank guns proper, rifle glowing, before a low powered explosive shot hit the gun, a pillar of flames burning skywards as the ordinance cooked off.

She shifted her fire to the right, onto the second gun, disabling it too with one shot. The third gun started firing shells high, trying to chase her off. The rate of incoming shells had dropped, this allowing her to shoot around the side of the turret and remove that gun.

She noticed that the rate of fire had dropped to 1/3rd of what it used to be, then noted the white flag over a very well concealed gun position, almost laughing at it, so stereotypically French.

This relaxed state almost killed her as a shell whizzed right by her head, only deflected by a hastily made shield, sending her reeling and falling off the tank, onto the side of the two remaining at gun crews.

The shots stopped briefly, Tanya struggling to her feet, so dazed by the shell was she that standing was a great issue. Staggering upright, she stared down the barrel of the AT gun , watching a blinding flash of white fill her vision before...

Nothing. Opening her eyes, she stared at the bulk of the Königstiger between her and the gun, the powerful 88mm roaring and destroying the AT gun. With a pillar of flame shooting high into the sky, another white flag was raised over the remaining gun and the remaining gun crew fled the area.

Looking up, she spotted Guderian sitting in his tanks cupola, she nodded her thanks, giving him a quick "Thank you" and earning a curt reply.

"Don't mention it Colonel. We've got a long fight ahead of us this week and I'll need every gun I can get."