The Tigers of Chi-Ha-Tan ReRise Volume 3: The Tigresses Trial

Chi-Ha-Tan Vs Oaria Alliance Part 3

With the battle between Oarai and Chi-Ha-Tan Academy heating up, the cold bite of this overcast day still hung in the air. One such young girl feeling the bite of the cold was laying on her stomach watching the road some 700 meters away from her hiding position, while peeking through a gap in the bushes in front of her with binoculars.

This young girl was a Chi-Ha-Tan tank commander whose name was Miya, first-year tank commander of the newly acquired Type 5 Na-To. She was of average height, with long black hair, that was tie into a double French braid. That went along well with her blue eyes and her lightly tan skin.

The light tan was a product of her former life in track and field during junior high, she had the makings of being a national level sprinter at the time, during life on the mainland at her junior high school in Chiba Prefecture. Nothing in her life she wanted more than to make nationals, while possibly competing for her nation in the Olympics, which she knew would make her family enormously proud of her.

Yet fate can be a cruel mistress, when during practice going about her usual practice time run in the 100m sprint, she suffer a freak accident with a torn meniscus in her knee, ending her final junior high year of track, and her chance at joining one of Japans premier high school academies for track and field since she was out for the final year of junior high. With this dream crush, it also crush any hope in her mind of being at the Olympics representing her nation.

She fell into a deep depression, feeling she had let down her team and her family, no matter how hard they try to convince her that wasn't the case. Locking herself up in her room, she wanted to forget everything existed. Forgetting school, her friends, and her dreams. Her family desperately try to break her out of this with therapy sessions, but none of it work, leaving them in a state of sadness to see their daughter so down and seemingly no way for them to fix this.

That all change one day, when Miya left her home on a chilly autumn day to go get something to drink at a convenience store just down the street from her house. Her surgically repair knee began to act up with the cold and Miya fell before she got to the convenience store.

Laying on the hard cold pavement, feeling frustrated at her powerless self now, Miya began to cry about all that had been lost to her. Yet her sadness was soon replaced with warmth when she felt a soothing hand on her shoulder, and turned to take in the sight of then first-year Kinuyo Nishi, smiling at her. The Chi-Ha-Tan student was in town at the time, as the Akagi had made port for supplies.

Miya was then helped up by Nishi and the two went to get drinks together. Nishi was so warm and inviting, her graceful personality opened Miya up, which was a welcome change for this girl who shut herself off from the world. Because of this opening up, Miya told Nishi about her injury and how she had given up track. About how she locked herself up, ignored her friends and family, and practically was only barely hanging onto to school because her grades were near perfect before her injury.

Though this meeting with Nishi seem to be fate, as said girl invited Miya to join the Chi-Ha-Tan tankery team. Miya was skeptical of how safe that kind of sport was, which went double for her with a surgically repaired knee, knowing shells would be shaking the tank all the time.

Yet Nishi explain the finer details of its safety while also explaining of the chance to be a tank commander, since Miya had been a captain of her junior high club and needed someone with leadership skills would be a great help to their team.

Whether it was because of how earnest Nishi was or the still-burning desire to compete again in some form or fashion, Miya took the offer by Nishi. Miya went back to school, to bring her grades up, and apologize to her friends and family, while shocking them, after she told them she was joining the Chi-Ha-Tan tankery team. She had thought they might try to talk her out of it, yet they just cheer her on, glad to see her competing once more.