Idle Hands are the Devil's Playground (Worm)

[Praetor98]

There wasn't much to do for a young man in Brockton Bay outside of working hours. The city seemed to be the result of someone saying, "I'd like to sum up the decline of America in a single city, compressing every bit of misery and going-nowhereness into every street and block." As a result, apart from belonging to one gang or another, people didn't have much to do aside from get drunk. That sort of thing wasn't Mikey Bainbridge's style; he'd never been able to develop a taste for liquor anyway. All he had to do was read the few books he'd gotten from his cousin in Michigan.

He'd always loved history. It always seemed much better than the present. More interesting for one thing, yet with a strange certainty. In his favorite book, William Shirer's Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, for example, even though Hitler and his gang took over Germany and conquered Europe, you still knew that at the end of it, the Germans would get beaten and the good guys would win. For a given value of 'good' at any rate. Whereas today…

"White powa onetwothreefo!" Shouted the voice of a particularly obnoxious recorded white power band blaring out of the stereo of a bar owned by a local Neo-nazi gang. This gang also happened to be one of the largest in the city, which was ridiculous, since there weren't even that many Germans in New Hampshire. Then again, they weren't even technically Neo-Nazis, just generic white supremacists with a Nazi bent.

They might not have been such a problem were it not for the fact that they had actual supervillains, as in bad guys with superpowers.

"Why couldn't these guys have been around in World War 2? We'd be laughing at these guys or thanking God that they weren't alive today." Mikey said to himself, though not very loudly, he'd heard that one of the gang's heavy hitters, a guy named Stormtiger liked to keep tabs on the place. Perhaps it was because he'd read William Shirer too much, but he thought very little of these Empire Eighty Eight types, as they called themselves. He had no truck with the Empire, but he didn't even care to bet that one in ten members of the gang was a bonafide German American. But the momentary distraction went away as he closed his squeaky window, damping the noise.

Mikey swiftly returned to one inescapable fact: he was bored. He'd read all his books, and he didn't care enough about his homework to do it right that second. His mind circled around various topics, and looked at a particularly offensive example of the Empire skulk past his apartment building. The guy was supposed to be some sort of member of one of the inner circle's personal gangs, but he had no uniform, no strut in his step, probably no military background of any sort.

"I could be a better Nazi than these lunkheads." He muttered. Then he thought about it. Could he? Could he really? Certainly those guys wouldn't know enough to correct him. All they knew about were the swastikas, and Hitler, and all the stuff that most people knew and hated. Did they know about the organization of the Nazi Party? Did they know that Hitler had gotten the support of the richest bastards in Germany before he went for the gold? And what about the fact that most Nazis hated non-Germans? He suspected that would disqualify half the membership right away.

But he couldn't just saunter in and start talking about it. He was as German as pasta. Technically he was descended from English and Scots, so in the cockamamy world of the Nazi mind, that made him as good as German. He'd need to act like a proper German.

Unbidden, there emerged a perfect disguise in his mind. SS-Obergruppenfuehrer Maximillian von Altburg-Ehrenstein. Driven into exile with the fall of the Nazi regime, Altburg-Ehrenstein had drifted through Europe and the Americas, a man without a country, finding work where he could, sometimes as a mercenary, other times as an advisor to various secret polices, often on the orders of the former OSS, reformed into the CIA. Finally settling down in America, he was abandoned by his CIA handlers and their collared assassins in the Gehlen Organization, and betrayed to Mossad, who tracked him down to his home in Wisconsin with the intent to murder him.

Confronted by the team of killers, and the knowledge that those he had counted as allies had decided that he had outlived his usefulness, Altburg-Ehrenstein triggered into something worse than human. His skin turned purest white while his eyes blazed red with the fires of the cities his armies had burned, and his teeth lengthened into wicked fangs. Now he truly was the Bloody Prince, the old epithet his men had cheered him as in the war, and his foes had howled in terror.

It was just crazy enough to justify a nazi vampire disguise, and plausible enough that it would give those idiots a heart attack when he whipped off his coat, put on his general's cap and flashed his fangs and shot some German phrases at them.

So how would he turn his eyes red? Contact lenses, that was the first thing. He'd also have to get something suitably SS to wear under his trench coat. It would probably have to be something black, the field gray would be too much like the regular army to work. No one could mistake those black coats for anyone else.

Pulling out his iPhone, and blessing Steve Jobs to God for inventing it, he began blowing his money on the craziest scheme he'd ever thought up in his life. An authentic SS officer's uniform was easily, though not cheaply, obtained from a World War II memorabilia site, along with a peaked cap and a set of jackboots. A flowing cape completed the picture, but as he looked at the wait time, Mikey was disappointed.

It would be a long week before the stuff arrived.

 

[Praetor98]

One good thing about the wait was that it gave him something to build around besides school work. Every night that week, he had listened to the drinking and the drunken ranting of the posers who called themselves Nazis, wondering how he would do it. Would he kick down the doors and just announce his presence? No, he needed to do it gradually, allowing terror time to mature, and just when the skinheads had figured out who it was they were talking to, BANG. Off goes the old overcoat, and out comes Altburg-Ehrenstein. At least he still had that fedora and raincoat from when he'd dressed up as Humphrey Bogart for Halloween.

But finally the waiting was over, and he had a chance to put on the uniform, and the makeup he'd quietly purchased from a theater arts company that sold to capes on the sly. With the full getup, he certainly looked the part of an undead Nazi warlord. He'd thought about adding a monocle, but that would have been overdoing it. So he took off the cap, put on the old rain hat and coat, leaned into a stoop, bent his knees and shuffled out of his apartment.

It took him five minutes for him to get to the bar in his old man disguise. It would have taken him scarcely half that time to get there had he walked, but he was nothing if not devoted to his prank. He appeared to study the signs on the door, before going inside.

The patrons were the usual mix of common scum, desperados and scofflaws, and only microscopic examination could have told you which was which. There was a momentary break in the conversation as they took in the sight of the innocuous, and therefore out of place, sight of the old man in a heavy raincoat and hat. They watched him drag himself to the bar, and one of the patrons took pity on the old man, and went to help him into a chair.

"Oh, sank you." Said the old man in his weak, but surprisingly uncracked voice.

The bartender looked the old man up and down, before settling on calm hostility.

"What the fuck's an old guy like you doing here?" He grumbled, scrubbing a glass with a rag.

"Just passink by, I vwanted to try your apple schnapps. It's been so long since I had a glaz."

Some of the thugs nearby raised their eyebrows and glanced at each other suspiciously. There was an accent in the old man's speech, but they couldn't quite place it.

"Three dollars." The barkeep grunted.

The old man reached into his pocket and withdrew three creased and filthy notes. The barkeep doled out a glass, then two. Then three.

"It's been so long since I've had a glass of schnapps. I haven't had vone since ze var." the old man said, rosy cheeked and inebriated. "I've been all over de vurld you know, ze first time I left my country was in tirty-eight, to help incorporate ze Ostmark. Ve really enjoyed putting zat little Jesuit Schuschnigg in his place, I can tell you."

"The what?" One of the divers asked. He had a black and red jacket with a pair of stylized eights on the sleeves, indicating his membership with the Empire.

"You call it Austria in englisch, but oesterreich is too grand a name for that little state, so vwe didn't."

"Who's we?" Asked the man in the jacket.

"Oh my friends in ze Leibstandarte."

None of them had heard of any sort of thing called a Leibstandarte, except for one, who turned pale.

"Start making sense mister foreigner. The Empire doesn't like nosey types who don't talk plain English." Snarled one of the thugs, prowling over to glare at the old man.

"Oh? And vat is zis Empire?" Asked the old man, mildly.

"We're the people who make sure the slopes don't get too big for their boots. We look out for whites in Brockton."

"Which vones?" the old man asked. "Und vat are zese sings for heaven's sake?" He pointed at the stylized eights on the man's jacket.

"They're eights."

"I can see that. Why are you wearing them?"

"They're code for h h. Heil Hitler." The man with the jacket said.

"Und vy would you be saying Heil Hitler?" The old man's tone had suddenly grown as cold as ice, and the man with the jacket noticed the old man's mouth from under his rain hat had contorted in a scowl.

"Because… because we believe in Hitler's ideals."

"Zat doesn't mean zat you are National Socialists. You aren't members of ze party, you don't have a proper uniform, and have you even got a Zellenleiter?"

The foolish skinhead hesitated, wondering for a second what a Zellenleiter was. "But, we still follow what Hitler said. We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children. Right?" For some reason, the man in the jacket trailed off. Something about this man was giving him the shivers, and setting the rest of the patrons on edge.

"I don't recall the fuehrer ever saying somesing like zat." The man's voice had softened even further. If silk could speak, it would sound like that.

"The… the fuehrer?"

"Und I should know. I met him."

The man had turned to face him, resting an arm on the bar, and the jacketed man noticed something he hadn't previously. There was a silvery ring on the fourth finger of his hand, showing plainly a skull and crossbones. The hand it was fitted on had grabbed onto the bar with a grip like steel. He could see the skin showing pale, through the sheer force of the grip.

"Vat is your name boy?"

"It's Luke. Luke Nowak."

"Luke Nowak." Hissed the old man, "Und what would a Polish mischling like yourself be doing in the same neighborhood as a German? Let alone dare to wear the Hakenkreutz?"

"We-we we're all whites, right?" He was shuddering, trying not to believe the evidence of his own eyes. "It's the whites against everyone else... isn't it?" by the end, his voice was a croak.

Then the man's cane struck out, quick as a flash, and smashed the feeble overhead lightbulb, pitching the bar into darkness. There was a great deal of commotion among the skinheads, as they struggled to draw knives, clubs, and even guns to defend themselves. Then in the new glare of the outside lights, they saw what loomed before them.

The old man had stood, but he wasn't an old man any more. His height could not have been much under seven feet, his eyes burned like scarlet coals, and his mouth had sprouted an array of fangs and curved incisors.

But the worst bit was his clothing. He had thrown off his raincoat and stood like a statue, all in black, with a long mantle hanging from his shoulders, with a black and white uniform visible from within. The man threw his cape back with one arm, for them to see the scarlet armband, with a swastika emblazoned in the middle.

"You-you're a-!" Luke gabbled, falling on his backside and scrambling away.

"Vwhat fools are zese, so weary of life, zat zey dare take ze name nationalsozialistische, our name in vain?" The man murmured under his breath, only the parting of his lips to show the fangs within revealing the inner inferno.

He tilted back his officer's cap to glare at the skinheads who stood transfixed with horror.

"I am SS Obergruppenfuehrer Maximillian von Altburg-Ehrenstein, and if I should see you wretched untermensch in the colors of my Reich again, I shall tear you apart. Let your Kaiser know this. We have returned." And with that, he strode through the doors, with those who stood in his way hurrying out of it. He paused on the threshold and said over his shoulder, "I must say, I can't understand why you would fight against Lung. He is the scion of the Aryans of the East. Surely you would make common cause with him? But perhaps you are simply here to take up oxygen and distract the masses?"

When Mikey Bainbridge made it back to his apartment, he collapsed onto his bed, laughing hysterically. That was the most fun he'd had in a long time. If only someone hadn't been recording it and posted the video to PHO.

AN: What do you think the Empire's reaction to this is going to be? Also, if anyone wants to do a PHO interlude, feel free.

 

[Praetor98]

Max Anders was normally a good employer, but not today. He was also a loving father, trying in his way to understand his son Theodore, but alas, not today. And Max was a civil and affable leader of a white supremacist gang, but also not today, because today, he had been called out of bed at the crack of 7:00 by his secretary, who begged him to come to the office to meet with the 'senior management,' code for the top leadership of the Empire.

Now he sat at the big table, with a terrible case of bedhead that a vigorous wash and brush up had not been able to tame, looking at his top lieutenants, parahuman and baseline alike. Most of them looked as though they'd had their beauty rest interrupted, but Stormtiger in particular looked as though he hadn't been to sleep in years. His hands were trembling and his eyes appeared to have sunken into their sockets, while dark patches marked his lids.

"Why are we here?" grumbled Victor, rubbing his eyes and stifling a yawn.

"There was an SS General in my bar!" Stormtiger did not squeak as a rule, but he came close.

Alabaster looked over at him as though he'd grown a second head. But even that wouldn't have been as comparatively weird as this.

"A what?" he asked, not believing his own ears.

"An undead SS General walked into the Kehlstein House and shit talked my boys." Stormtiger's teeth had started to chatter. "He said we weren't even National Socialists."

"No way!" Alabaster was laughing now. "Who told you this shit? Bet they were drunk off their tits when they did."

"Take a look Alabastard." Stormtiger snarled, fishing his phone out of his pants pocket. "The video's already on YouTube and ParaHumansOnline."

He fiddled with the device for a moment, bringing up a page on PHO. They pointedly ignored the fact that his username was Sturmtigger, but soon they didn't need to, because they were engrossed in the video link that Stormtiger had found. The video started with a member of the E88 strutting up to what looked like an old man in a raincoat sitting at the bar. They exchanged some words, and the crew's attention was drawn to the fact that the old man spoke with a German accent, barely noticeable, but it was undeniably there.

"What did he say?" asked Crusader after the old man said something in German.

"He said he had friends in the Leibstandarte." Krieg muttered, looking very worried all of a sudden.

This lead Menja, who was not versed in history, to raise her hand and ask, "What does that mean?"

"It means he had friends in the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler division." said Krieg, who had started to drum his fingers on the table. "But that's ridiculous. He'd have to be more than a hundred years old by now. How's he even walking around?"

"Can we get on?" demanded Kaiser, who was looking at Stormtiger warily. His feline-themed enforcer was glaring at Nessa.

"Sorry Max." Menja said, all sugar.

Stormtiger slowly pressed the play icon on the app, restarting the video. Then they heard the first participant in the dialogue give his name as Luke Nowak. Krieg glared at Hookwolf, since in the final accounting, the man was his subordinate through Stormtiger.

"What?" Hookwolf asked, answering Krieg's glare with his own.

"You idiot!" he wheezed.

"What?" Hookwolf repeated.

"You had a Pole in your organization?" Krieg demanded, white-faced with fury.

"He was a good guy. Swung a bat better than most. He's a polack, so what? He's still white."

"The Third Reich enslaved the Poles!" snarled Krieg, looking near to murder. "They are an inferior breed, fit only to shine our shoes! And you had one of them in your gangs?!"

"Oh." Hookwolf said, "Well what happened to him anyway George?"

This was addressed to Stormtiger, who sighed, "He quit. Just got in his car and left the Bay. You'll see why."

And indeed they did. The old man swung his cane up and broke the lightbulb over his head, leaving him in an area of comparative darkness. The view shook as the man holding the phone was jostled in the gang's scramble to arm themselves. Then the camera swung back up to where the old man had been sitting, and Kaiser would have gasped, but for the restraint with which he exercised himself.

Something dreadful loomed up in the middle of the barroom. All they could see at first was a red glow reflecting off a pair of eyes set into a face as cold and haughty as a prince of Hell. The eyes even seemed to glare even brighter thanks to the anemic, bloodless coloration of the man's skin. His lips were curled in a cruel sneer, revealing a set of fangs that would have been more suited to a crocodile or tiger.

Then the earlier illusion that his body was made up of sentient darkness was dispelled as more light played across his form. The darkness was in fact a nearly floor-length cape, such as was worn by German officers in the first half of the twentieth century. An silver eagle clutching what was all too clearly a swastika was visible on one shoulder, and the high collar showed the twin lightning bolts of the SS on one patch, and the unmistakable silver oak leaves and diamonds of an SS Obergruppenfuehrer.

There was a slight indraw of breath as the E88's leaders realized what they were looking at, and heard the man say, in a voice that had sunk a thousand octaves, "What fools are these, so weary of life, that they dare take the name Nationalsozialistische, our name, in vain?"

Then he whipped his cape back with one arm, showing the armband of the Nazi Party on his left side, strode out of the building, leaving two dozen frightened Neo-Nazis behind him. Probably ex-Neo-Nazis by now, Kaiser thought, glumly.

"Holy sh... schnikes." murmured Victor, slumping back in his seat, darting a nervous glance at Rune. He still didn't like to swear around her, feeling that she was too young to hear stuff like that, and didn't want her to learn any bad lessons from him. Kaiser would almost certainly have something to say if he did. Even Hookwolf confined his swearing to words like 'damn' and 'crap' around her, and for Hookwolf, that was pretty mild indeed, but it was wise not to push him further. He recalled someone once asking him if he could just say things like 'darn' or 'shoot' when Rune was around. Hookwolf hadn't even said anything, he'd just glared at the enforcer until the fella had gotten the message and ran for it. "So, there's an actual SS general in the bay?"

"This has to be a prank." Crusader said, not quite believing his own words.

"What's a Zellenleiter anyway?" Stormtiger asked, who was becoming a little unglued. "Why are we supposed to have one?"

Alabaster smiled innocently, "I dunno, a leiter of a zellen?" He hadn't gotten over Stormtiger's little jab from earlier.

"Hey, stop teasing him." snapped Hookwolf, patting his trembling subordinate on the back, who was now darting nervous glances at the shadows as if unholy retribution might come pouncing out art him any moment.

"And what about what he said about 'Aryans of the East?'" Victor asked, scratching his chin. "Lung's a Jap, right?"

"Yes, but Germany was allied with Japan during the war." Krieg muttered. "I thought it was just expediency. Did the Party believe the Japanese were a Master Race?"

Kaiser kept his silence, he was still thinking about the possible ramifications of the video.

Stormtiger had pulled himself together, and was scrolling back down the page.

"And the worst bit is how the world's taking the video!" he snarled. "Listen to this; from XxVoid_CowboyxX. 'Get rekt, phony Nazis.'"

"'Phony Nazis?!'" Krieg roared.

"HanukKing says, 'This kind of guy is what my great grandfather had to escape during WW2. Now you see why we aren't afraid of you Empire losers.'"

"'Losers?!'" snarled Hookwolf.

"And Bagrat said, 'If the Empire were half as dangerous as this guy probably is, and a tenth as organized, we'd probably all be speaking German. Either that or the Army would have invaded BB. Eat your heart out, Kaiser.'"

"Get me the Gesselschaft." Anders' voice was cold and harsh. He had trained himself to let his anger manifest as ice, rather than fire. You knew that when Max Anders lost his facade of warmth, was when he'd also lost his temper. "Find out what they know, and if this is one of their ploys."

Krieg was already dialing the number of one of the Corporation's proxies on his burner phone, and was swiftly in a heated conversation with a voice on the other side of the Atlantic.

"So, he thinks we're not National Socialists, does he?" Anders ground out to the room at large. "Very well then, let's see about proving him wrong. Krieg, when you're finished, I want you to open up the history books, get whatever you can on the Party's old organization. We're going to show Brockton Bay that we're a proper operation!"

While there were malicious grins and war whoops all round, Anders was primarily thinking about what he would do about this supposed revenant from the old days. This might actually be advantageous. Perhaps the old man had connections with a more secretive group of survivors? And if not, and if it turned out to be just a prank after all, then it wouldn't be too much of a problem to wipe out his alter ego, and let Altburg-Ehrenstein drift back into the aether. Once the meeting had broken up, he went up to his office, and slumped into his chair. And things had seemed so simple yesterday. He'd corner the gang scene in Brockton, build Medhall into a major international corporation, and it would have been easy street from there.

That was the problem with Hitler, he always had a plan beyond his own city. Now, his people expected him to have a plan just like their departed Fuehrer did. The fact that Stormtiger had a Pole in his gang was somewhat embarrassing, but the man in question had solved that problem by fleeing the city. Reluctantly, and hoping like hell that he could manage developments, Max Anders began to plan for the future.

 

[Praetor98]

In just a day, Brockton Bay had been turned upside down thanks to a single youth's boredom and the incapacity of a gang of criminals to take a joke. In places where the Empire held sway, the man in the street could see the average Empire 88 man looking on edge, and some who were braver than most were able to watch the local goons start applying paint stripper to their graffiti, and scrubbed the resultant mess off with rags. One might be excused for thinking that this was community service. In their place, up went scarlet posters, with Kaiser's name in large letters. These jobs were done in teams of four, three posting while the fourth kept a lookout. Then they'd vanish off to their next job. Kaiser had called in some former union members to teach some of his men how to perform flyposting jobs, and he'd implied that they'd better learn very quickly. Otherwise they'd be docked a week's salary, and this was, after all, only a part-time job of sorts.

Unfortunately that wasn't the only visible sign of the shockwaves that had rocked the city. When a skinhead is on edge, he develops something of a hair-trigger. He looks for provocation, and if there is none, he makes his own. And when the skinhead in question has superpowers, that's a whole lot of provocation! The Merchants, perhaps due to their apolitical nature, had taken one look at the situation and refused to get involved. The ABB by contrast, was more than happy to do their own provoking, especially since the E88's more aggressive members had taken it upon themselves to prove to the city that they were above reproach, either from an undead SS General, or from anyone who was alive. Lung in particular had been beside himself when he learned that the SS General had referred to him as the Aryan of the East. First with laughter when he first heard about it, which was heard across Brockton, and then with fury when he learned the General was serious, which was heard in the next county. After that, he'd had to go and have a lie-down on his favorite armchair (which many of his more irreverent, and even more suicidal, subordinates dubbed the Laz-E-Bastard) to avoid leveling the building he was in.

The next day, Lung decided that he was going to show the Empire just what he thought of being roped into their schemes, but when he was on the verge of marching into their territory, he met Hookwolf, who was looking extremely uncomfortable in a long-sleeved shirt and shoes.

Lung could practically feel the awkward grin on Hookwolf's face as he said, "Hey man." in as drawn out a fashion as he could manage.

The fury went out of Lung in an instant as he was faced with something that should have been impossible. Whether that was Hookwolf wearing a shirt or a Nazi trying to act friendly with him, he couldn't say.

Perhaps it was because of the paradox of Hookwolf wearing clothes and trying to act in a civilized fashion, or perhaps it was the fact that Lung still remembered being taught proper manners by his mother in some way, but he could think of nothing to do except say, "Hello." right back.

"How are you doing?" said Hookwolf, awkward grin still frozen in his voice.

"I am well, thank you." replied Lung, bowing slightly. "And how are you?"

"Um... I guess I'm doing okay." said Hookwolf in a pondering way. They stood, side by side on the street corner, avoiding looking at one another. "So... you catch the fights last night?"

XxX

At the end of the day, Kaiser had called in the top dogs of the empire for another conference.

"And you followed my orders to the letter?" Kaiser asked suspiciously. "You didn't antagonize the ABB in any way?"

"I'm still wearing this shirt, aren't I?" Hookwolf snapped back, defensively. Kaiser had ordered him to look more respectable, and he'd insisted that Brad wear a shirt and shoes when he walked around. Then he saw Kaiser was engrossed in something else and asked, "What are you doing anyway?"

"Taking a look at some of the ranks the old Party had." Kaiser said, leafing through the pages of the report that Krieg had compiled. "It's amazing the kind of organization they had, and the sheer scale of Hitler's ambition when he was just a rabble-rouser in Munich. There's districts, circles, local groups, and street cells and blocks in the cities."

"And you don't like it, do you Max?" Hookwolf asked, grinning. They were both unmasked, and Kaiser had disabled the security cameras for that room.

"Not particularly Brad." Kaiser admitted, his own smile slowly matching Hookwolf's. "Everything was so much simpler when it was just us."

Just us. Just the Empire running wild in the streets and kicking in whoever's heads poked up. The Gesellschaft was little more than background static. Brockton was going to be their fiefdom. Oh yes, Kaiser made use of the Gesellschaft's forces, means to an end and so forth.

"Welp, I'm happy so long as I'm still dropkicking heads." said Hookwolf, "How much do you wanna bet we're going to have to get respectable."

"Hitler and his friends were respectable after a fashion." chuckled Kaiser. "But listen to us. I tell you Brad, we're getting old."

"Not as much as that musty old bloodsucker. You still want us to find him?"

"And if you can't convince him... well I understand vampires have a rather terminal reaction to silver."

"And there's garlic." Krieg said, looking up from the charts that Kaiser had passed him. "I'm not sure there's any undead whatsoever who like garlic."

"'Don't blame 'em. Can't stand the stuff." said Hookwolf. If he had been undead, he'd have noticed that Stormtiger was giving him a sideways glance and slowly edging his chair away from him. As it was, he did notice the looks he was getting from the rest of the Empire's parahumans and added, "Well I don't. It ruins the taste of a meatlover's pizza. I've lost count of the number of times I had to write off the whole pie 'cause Stormtiger asked for the latest health food toppings."

"Right." said Krieg, looking back at Kaiser, "And there's also holy objects. Vampires hate the sight of a cross, if I remember correctly. And they also can't go out in daylight. And if we want to make a statement, we can bury him at a crossroads, and we cut his heart out, burn it, and hammer a stake through where his heart should have been."

"With garlic on it." said Stormtiger, who was anxious to get himself back in Kaiser's good graces.

"Well, if we were going to be thorough, I suppose we could put garlic on it."

"I don't think you should put garlic on a good steak." said Victor. "Just a little oil and seasoning." He was famous for his preparation skills at the Empire's cookouts.

"Red pepper's always nice." Othala said, smiling at Victor.

Even Kaiser had to laugh at that one.

XxX

The only person who wasn't laughing was Mikey Bainbridge. He'd never imagined that such a thing might happen simply because he was bored. After more than a week of Empire goons patrolling the streets in teams and squads, several of whom still looked uncomfortable in their new and un-hemmed uniforms, and their boots which kept giving them blisters, Mikey was starting to be as paranoid as the Empire. At any moment, he expected that the Empire would put two and two together, realize that it did not make five, and use some sort of facial recognition software to identify him, then haul him before Kaiser to be tortured in as gruesome a fashion as they could imagine.

He'd thought about buying a gun, but that would only draw attention to him, and what use would a gun be against someone like Hookwolf or Victor? Maybe Kaiser would be willing to go along with the lie? Probably not, he thought bitterly. It wasn't as if Hitler couldn't be pragmatic, was it too much to hope that his imitators could be the same? Besides, Hitler didn't like being lied to, and most assuredly criminals of any sort didn't like it either, even though they lied all the time themselves.

He'd tried to focus on his studies in the week after his prank had gone down, thinking that the only reason they hadn't moved on him was because they wanted to toy with him before they went in for the kill. Well, he'd thought, if they want to make me sweat, they'll not get it. If they wanna kill me, they can try. At least, that was what he thought when his old car pulled up at the curb next to his apartment block, he'd gotten up to his room on the third floor, unlocked the door, and saw a dark shape lying on his bead with its arms propped under its head.

"So who are you?" the shape said in a female voice. This ruled out one particularly unpleasant set of possibilities.

"Michael Bainbridge." he said, not frightened or excited, but in the steady monotonous tone of voice caused by absolute terror.

"Lisa Wilbourn's the name, and I don't think you could be an SS general." she replied.

What am I gonna say? wondered Mikey. Should I say, 'How did you get in here?' or 'Listen, I can explain everything.'

What he actually said was, "Okay Sherlock, clever of you to guess."

"Sherlock Holmes didn't guess. I don't either."

"So... you know what I did. What are you going to do? Turn me in to the Empire, get the bounty or something?"

"Can't. Kaiser doesn't have one on your head."

This drew Mikey up short. "He... he doesn't?"

Lisa started giggling. "Kaiser's the leader of a Neo-Nazi gang. How long do you think he'd be in charge if he put a price on the head of an actual Nazi? Have you even been listening to the word on the street?"

"Um... no, actually. I've been keeping my head down."

Lisa looked suspicious at first, but then her face melted into a combination of disgust and outrage. "Oh you didn't." she groaned.

"I was bored." Mikey admitted. It did sound pretty weak, now he had to tell someone.

"You dressed up like a Nazi vampire, walked into a bar full of skinheads, called 'em all a bunch of skinny posers... because you were bored?"

"Well, I didn't exactly call them 'posers,' but-"

She cut him off with a look that was the opposite of impressed. It wasn't even unimpressed, it was anti-impressed. It was a look that children have gotten from their mothers since time immemorial. It was a look designed to make someone feel small and shuffle their feet, no matter how powerful they are.

"And you don't have a plan either." It wasn't a question. She was daring him to say that he did, when he didn't.

"No. I just wanted to mess with some skinheads." he said, shamefaced. "I just thought I'd let it blow over."

"Oh that's not gonna fly." she said, grinning.

He knew what she meant, and he frowned, following her train of thought. If there were no more sightings of Altburg-Ehrenstein, no matter that there was no such person, the Empire would figure out that they'd been insulted by someone without friends, without powers, and most importantly, without an exit strategy. As such, when they did, he'd have the life expectancy of a jellyfish in a blast furnace.

"Your only chance would be to go to the Protectorate, and hope like hell that the Empire doesn't have a man on the inside." she continued.

"Well what else can I do?" he asked.

Lisa's grin became even grinnier.

"No, don't even think about it." he said warningly.

"Come on, its not like you've got anything better to do, and besides, I know you enjoyed it."

"Alright, I admit it was fun! But this isn't the same thing! Anyway, why are you so hot for me to get that costume back on and mess with them some more?"

"Because I think I can make this work to your advantage." Lisa's grin had become positively satanic.

Mikey felt as though he was being edged out over a very deep chasm with spikes at the bottom. On the other hand... it'd be fun to see those Kraut creeps squirm some more.

"So what are you getting out of this?" he asked, warily.

"I don't like those Nazis any more than you do." she replied. "But if you've proved one thing, it's that they're gullible if you present it right."

"And you could help me with my presentation?"

"I might know a few people."

Michael Bainbridge hesitated a moment, then said, "I'm going to regret this, aren't I?"

"Probably."

"But I'm also going to enjoy it."

"Oh maliciously."

Mikey had one last question. "Will there be money involved? I always need gas money."

"That's part of the plan."

Mikey's response was to laugh and say, "Alright. I'll do it."

AN: Spot the reference thread!"

 

[Praetor98]

"No way." Grue said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I am not dressing up like a god damn Nazi because you think we can scam the Empire!"

Tattletale stood next to Mikey Bainbridge, looking uncomfortable and awkward in his SS uniform where he had been arrogant and self assured in the video.

"They've already been scammed, Brian. We're just helping the scammer." she said, "You don't even have to be visible, just use your power to add an extra bit of terror."

"Lisa, this is the stupidest idea I have ever heard." Grue persisted.

"Gotta admit, tattles, it's pretty far out there." Regent concurred.

Bitch was silent, focused on petting her dog Brutus.

"Have you taken a look at my skin color lately?!" Grue was shouting, "You think the Empire's going to take one look at a black guy wearing an SS uniform and think, 'Hm, nothing's wrong here!'"

"Well the Germans did have blacks serving in their army." said Mikey, helpfully.

"You're kidding." said Grue, "There's no way."

"No, no they did. They were members of the Free Arabian Legion." he confirmed, pulling out his phone and scrolling through wikipedia until he found the right page.

"I'm still not dressing up in one of those uniforms." Grue grumbled. "My family kicked Nazi ass in World War 2."

"Soooo, does that mean you're in?" Tattletale asked, grinning.

Grue shook his head. He shook it some more. Then he said, "No. Mnm. Mnm. No. No, no, no! Hell no! No!" He kept on in this vein before throwing his hands up in the air and said, "You'd better have a big score for us Lisa." He turned his gaze back to Mikey. "Just tell me why you're doing this?"

"Are you asking my motivations? Or a good motivation for why Altburg-Ehrenstein would reveal himself?" Mikey asked Grue.

"Sure, why not." was his invitation to continue, not really answering his question.

"He doesn't really have a plan." Mikey said, leaning back against the wall. "He's not trying to outrun the past out of a desperation to relive an old glory, because the Nazis fell as far as you could fall. They went from the rulers of Germany and the enslavers of Europe, to a handful of fugitives in a world that still thirsts for their blood. What he's really doing is raging against the dying of the light. Germany has fallen, his Fuehrer is dead, and he's surrounded by a gang of pretenders who don't even really understand what they're aping, and so desecrate even his empire's legacy. This isn't an act of desperation. With Nazi Germany gone, he's past that point. This is just the last gasp of a warrior who refuses to die with his duty undone. One final battle to send his empire's name into history with pride."

"Crazy." Lisa muttered under her breath.

"Hey, you wanted the reason someone like him would do this. You never said it had to be sane." Mikey's voice became that of Prince Altburg-Ehrenstein, low and filled with angry frustration. "Zey've already driven us to extinction. Isn't dat enough? Must zey piss on our ashes by having zese children turn the Hakenkreutz into a piece off gangland graffiti?"

Grue whistled, impressed despite himself. "This might just work."

XxX

In his office on the top floor of the Medhall building, Max Anders answered a phone that had a Wagnerian ringtone. That was the phone of Kaiser, and it was Kaiser who answered.

"Kaiser speaking. What? Oh, yes, yes, of course, Heil Hitler." he groaned. He'd been expecting this phone call.

"You've been lookink for me." said the voice on the other end.

"You happen to be a hard man to find."

"I had to be. Zere vere any number of people who vanted me dead after de war."

"And any number of people who still do?"

"Ze CIA has given me up for dead. And Mossad has more important things to do than pursue a grudge vith an old monster like me. I'm far too big a fry for them to bother."

"I assume you called for another reason beyond discussing the past?"

"Indeed. I will meet you at the marshalling yards at midnight."

Kaiser mentally translated this. "I'll be there. I'm looking forward to meeting the man who's got my men on pins and needles."

Keeping hold of the Empire had become an extremely difficult proposition in the week after the General's debut. That was what everyone had started calling him, even before the Protectorate had adopted the name as his official designation. Ridiculous when you thought about it, but Altburg-Ehrenstein was apparently too difficult to pronounce.

But the Empire was being forced to clean up its image, a very difficult proposition for a criminal gang in a city like Brockton, where crime was practically an industry. Hookwolf's gangs formed the core of the new combat units that Kaiser was trying to build up, but the process was slow going. They answered to Hookwolf and his lieutenants but hardly anyone other than Kaiser himself.

The rest of the membership were the sort of people who joined because they'd rather have security than be at the mercy of the ABB. They had no plan beyond that, and preferred the status quo, since it favored them for the nonce.

This would be a most useful history lesson.

XxX

The Mercedes-Benz whispered to a halt outside the gates of the disused classification yards near the docks. Hookwolf was first out, prowling as a true wolf would prowl. Krieg was next, and Kaiser was last, flanked by Fenja and Menja. Fireteams covered their approach with snipers and assault rifles. They strode towards a place where the shadows were darkest, where Altburg-Ehrenstein was likely to be.

"I've not been in zis city a week, und already I detest it." whispered a voice from the shadow of a ruined boxcar. Then the shadow grew eyes that burned in the dark.

Kaiser chuckled as he drew up in front of the beast. "You're not alone in that. I've been here thirty years, and how do you think I feel?"

The vampire scoffed, flashing its teeth in the moonlight. "You seem to have been contributink your share to ze general decrepitude."

"We do what we have to to survive." Kaiser deflected. "You should know that of all people."

"Yes I vould. I also know that our Fuehrer vas not content to eke out an existence in Munich, he wanted to become ze leader of Germany and ze ruler of Europe."

Kaiser decided it was time to take a different tack.

"You know, for all that we've been searching for you, I don't believe we've ever been properly introduced." he said. "I am Kaiser, leader of the Empire Eighty Eight."

"I am Maximillian, Prince von Altburg-Ehrenstein, and my rank is SS-Obergruppenfuehrer und General der Waffen SS. But you want more than that, don't you?

"Very well. I vas an exile of the German Army after the First Vurld Var vas over. I had serfed as a captain in zat war, and found my vay to Munich vith vat little money my family had left. Zere I saw Adolf Hitler speak and vas initiated into the National Socialist German Workers' Party. Ven the Schutzstaffel vas split off from ze brownshirts, I joined it; I'd always wished to join ze guards under Wilhelm II, and I saw a chance to serve as a guardian to a new ruler. I vas involved in the Gestapo and vat vould become ze Waffen SS, and vonce did a stint at Sachsenhausen.

"I served in the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler until the Anschluss, when I became a Sturmmbahnfuehrer in ze SS Der Fuehrer Regiment. I vas verever ze fighting vas thickest, in Poland, in France, and in Russia. The Slav swine even named me ze Bloody Prince. My men never ceased to cheer it at them ven I vas about. I presided over several of the slaughters of the Jews in Russia and even became a commander off an armored corps in the last years. Ven it ended, I found myself in ze hands of the Americans, who offered me a choice. They could send me to one of their prisoner of war camps, along vit a million other soldiers to starve, or I could work for zem, as so many of my comrades in ze Gestapo and SD chose to do as part of General Gehlen's Organization. Having nothing more to guide me, I accepted.

"They kept me from Mossad, seeing my value as an operative as more valuable than as a meaningless sacrifice for public opinion. I worked for various secret polices around Latin America, including Juan Peron's Secretariat of Intelligence. Finally, I vas old enough that I decided to retire. I settled down in Wisconsin, hoping to live out my last days among fellow Germans. But, my American handlers decided I was old enough to be of no further use as vell. Zey gave ze Israelis my location, who sent vat you call a 'hit squad' to murder me. I believe that was about 1985, I must haff been ninety years old by then.

"Let me ask you a question: Haff you ever felt you were truly alone? In that moment, ven they opened my door to kill me, I knew zat I was alone. My fellow Generals vere either dead, retired, or serving as stool pigeons to the Americans. My men had either been exterminated, or hiding away livink qviet lives of zeir own in what was left of the Fatherland. And my American 'protectors' had abandoned me."

"And you triggered." Kaiser said, in tones that were close to awe.

"Yes. I ceased to be human. I became zis, something utterly beyond Mankind. Perhaps it is appropriate zat I should be a vampire. After all, my brothers and I in the SS did truly drain nations of zeir lifeblood."

"Very interesting. But if you expect some grand life story from me, I'm afraid I won't do that for you. We have codes, just as you had, and we don't reveal our secret identities, either our own, or our enemies."

"A poor choice of action. Vone of my jobs was finding people's secret identities." The vampire's glimmering teeth formed an obscene grin, "Anne Frankly, I'm amazed that you aren't trying."

Even Kaiser cringed at that awful piece of humor. Grue was so furious he nearly dropped the illusion.

They continued on like this for some time until Kaiser decided to ask the question that had been hovering at the back of his mind since the advent of the Prince.

"Why did you abandon the movement?" he demanded.

"My Fuehrer's var is over. Zat var mattered, yours does not. I was happy to let my Reich fade into history, but when people like you began stealing their banner, I felt compelled to act."

"We've stolen nothing!" snarled Krieg. "The National Socialist banner is ours by the blood that flows through our veins!"

"And you are German?" The vampire asked, quirking an eyebrow.

"Yes." Krieg replied. "I have kept the old ways all my life."

"Is zat so? Then vhere is your order? Vhere are your uniforms? I've heard of how you've been trying to instill zome kind of discipline in your men now ze bailiffs have come around, but vhat were you doing in ze years before I came to zis wretched city? Battling vith a man who should have been your ally, and forgetting all the lessons that the Fuehrer learned. You aren't even a legitimate political movement, just a collection of gangsters, murderers and curs. And yes, Hitler made much use of such men. I fought alongside many of zem in ze street brawls of the 30s, but he knew better than to build a political movement with such men alone. He needed ze loyal support of the German people as a whole.

"Und zerein lies ze deepest flaw in the Empire and all zese other movements who claim to be 'vhite nationalists.' There is no such thing as vhite culture. In order to unify a group of people, they have to have a culture to unify them around. We Germans had vone, before the Americans and the Communists destroyed it. The Americans have a culture, but it is vone not based on race. If you are to take power, then you must embody the culture that you find yourselves in, and perhaps you know that the people would never embrace you, only suffer you as a passing storm, vhere they do not try to actively resist you."

The Empire's leadership had gone silent. In the face of Altburg-Ehrenstein's judgement, they found they had nothing to say.

"If I em to return, it must be for a new cause. German National Socialism has been defeated, and only a fool tries to fight ze last var." the General finished.

"And that is all you have to say?" demanded Krieg, "That you are better and wiser than those of us who still fight for it?"

"You do not fight for National Socialism, you fight for a distorted memory off it. For instance, vhy did the party decide to begin murdering ze Jews?"

Hookwolf rolled his eyes behind his mask at this pedantry. Kaiser kept his silence, waiting for Krieg start digging himself deeper.

"They did no such thing!" said Krieg. "That was Allied propaganda!"

The General's eyes narrowed. "Careful, mister. Don't argue against history vith a man who's been zhere. Now I shall tell you vhy ve did it."

The shadow receded, then it grew a head, then arms, then fully assumed the form of Maximillian von Altburg-Ehrenstein.

"In the first place, ze concentration camps vere to serve a dual purpose. They were to isolate the political enemies of the regime, and to provide a source of slave labor for when we went to war with ze Soviet Union and ze West. And ven the war began in earnest, we marched ze Jews into the camps to serve as hostages as well as work dem to death through forced labor. Ze Sicherheitsdeinst leaked ze facts of ze matter to the Allied leadership, and intimated that if they did not cease fighting us, ve would slaughter the Jewish people in their millions.

"But the Americans never told zeir people, and the Fuehrer kept his vord, both to ze Allies and zat vich he had written in Mein Kampf. Ve would have done this eventually, but the Allies forced our hand. In the end, ve killed just about every Jewish man, woman and child that we could get our hands on. Ve had meant to lay our hands on the rest, but ze var ended too qvickly for zat to happen. I myself participated in some of ze later roundups along vith my corps, and vonce I was even given the opportunity to pour the Zyklon B crystals down the chute at Auschwitz."

These words sent shockwaves rolling through the E88's members who were close enough to hear. They had been raised on a steady diet of holocaust denialism and the worship of Hitler. Now here they were being told that every wicked thing that they'd heard said of him was true. The Holocaust really had happened, and they were faced with a man who had been in charge of it. But the Prince was not yet done.

"And zen zere was the looting of the occupied countries." There was almost a hint of nostalgia in his voice. "Zose are good days for me. Days of pride and brozerhood, and the certainty that zere vas no way ve could lose ze var. Russia vould be ze greatest conqvest yet, ve would take zat land's people as our slaves, and reduce them to ze vinnowers of vood and ze drawers of vater for the favored German race. Ve meant to Germanize the nordic countries, und ze suitable among ze English, Velsh und Scots, and all ze rest would be our vassals, giving us whatever we needed in labor and raw materials."

Kaiser was extremely glad that he was wearing a helmet, since his jaw was hanging by its hinges. Altburg-Ehrenstein was airing the Nazi Party's dirty laundry in public, and causing more than a few to look worried and shuffle their feet.

"So what do you want?" Kaiser finally said, when he could trust himself to speak.

"I told you, I vant a new cause to fight for. And it seems that you can't give me zat. Not the way you are now." the vampire said, in a disappointed tone of voice as the shadows began to close in on him once more. "I am not a barbarian to kill over trivial nosingness. I'm a soldier, a varrior." Then he seemed to think of something. "And vat about this Gesellshaft?" he asked Krieg.

"I'm surprised you don't know about them." he said. "They are survivors, just as you are."

"I haff no truck with my former countrymen. If some survivors vish to spend zeir time nibbling at scraps, zen so be it. I'm no longer vone of zem. And I suspect zat zey are not what zey claim zey are. I suspect zat rather a lot of money goes zeir way from ze gullible, and zat if you were to look at zeir finances, you'd see zeir strings lead back to Langley, and zence to New York, and finally, all ze vay back to London."

Krieg rocked back as if slapped.

"Zat must hurt, knowing your own friends are but puppets." the shadow grinned as it vanished. "Bear zis in mind. If anysing more should disturb my brozers rest, it means ze end of your petty Reich."

The video was up in the next hour, and a dream began to grow in the mind of Michael Bainbridge.

 

[Praetor98]

The General had vanished after the meeting with Kaiser in the train yards, and the Empire couldn't find any trace of the mysterious SS officer. This left Kaiser with a considerable dilemma as he considered what to do next. Perhaps it was time to arrange a spectacle, something that would convince the old man to abandon his previous stance? But what would impress such a man? Then he had an idea. It would take some organizing, and it would be a bit difficult to make sure the men didn't push each other over accidentally.

XxX

Krieg was close to tearing his hair out as he shouted at the Empire soldiers who had just collapsed into a heap.

"Nein nein nein nein nein nein NEIN!" or perhaps it would be better to say he was screaming?

"How many times do I have to tell you?! You have to be three paces behind the man in front of you, otherwise you will only collapse."

"You missed your calling as a drill instructor." Kaiser called down to Fliescher, watching with Purity from the nearby grandstand set down by Fenja and Menja. Ordinarily, one would say set up, but with a pair of giants, one doesn't have to worry about previous assembly.

"What about that marching band?" Purity asked, as a diversion from the transformation of the Empire's enforcers into soldiers. "I bet they weren't too happy to get that call."

"Oh ho, they weren't." Kaiser was grinning as he stared down at the men drilling for the big parade. This was going to be an all hands on deck situation. "But what can they do when I'm not even asking them to commit a crime? All I wanted was for them to play some songs at one of our get-togethers."

"You know something Max?"

"As a matter of fact, I do know something. Lots of things." Kaiser asked, grinning slyly.

Kayden couldn't help a smile of her own as she said, "I wonder why that old maniac came back."

Kaiser's grin left to be replaced at its station by an expression of pensiveness. "I suspect it had something to do with my father. He was something of a black sheep of the family."

"I never did learn all that much about your family." Purity said as Krieg gave up on drilling them in company formations and split them up by squad.

"The Anders family is a pretty old one. We've been around since the 17th century, I think. My direct ancestor was a banker in Nuremberg I think." That was all Kaiser would say on the matter, and Purity knew better than to push him on the subject.

"I expect the Mayor is going to be fit to be tied when he sees us walking down the street to his office."

XxX



Mayor Roy Christner was indeed fit to be tied when he saw the circus marching down Lord Street towards the Mayor's Offices from his balcony. It was night, and the torches cast a nightmarish flickering glow along the street. The music was just barely audible over the sound of marching feet, with that infamous rock crushing sound caused by the impact of hundreds of jackboots striking the pavement in unison. There were hundreds of men in brown uniforms, with several blocks of black and white mixed in. He also noticed a fifty-six piece band was also playing some kind of military march right in front of his office.

Wait a minute, he thought, Those kids look familiar. Then he realized who they were, and he became positively apoplectic.

"Marcia!" he roared, running back into his office, "What the hell is the Winslow school band doing playing music for the Empire?!"

"Don't know, sir." his secretary quavered.

Then Kaiser arrived.

"How very kind of you to loan us your balcony." he said, grinning behind his helmet "Oh, I hope you don't mind, we did a bit of redecorating for the night."

The mayor made an animal, a mammalian animal noise, in his throat as he ran back to the balcony, and his face went more scarlet than the flags that hung from the roof.

The whole building was bedecked with Swastika flags, and there was one of those Nazi eagles fixed to the balustrade!

"Kaiser!" he choked out as he watched the hundreds of brownshirted Empire members march past, their arms stretched out in the Nazi salute.

"Relax Mister Mayor, its just for the night." Krieg said, wearing a German Army uniform.

As the marchers filed past, to the mixed cheers and hisses of the watching crowds, Mayor Christner glared at the Empire's leadership, bowing and saluting on the balcony, and he said, quietly, "I will get you all for this."

XxX

Armsmaster glowered at the torchlight parade, and wondered, Why did that old prick have to pick now of all times to come back? And where had he been all this time?

 

[Praetor98]

"Kaiser." rumbled Lung in greeting as the two fiends sat down at their table.

"Lung. I've been hoping to arrange this meeting for some time."

"By which you mean since last Sunday?" chuckled the enormous Japanese-Chinese man.

"Not to put too fine a point on it, yes. My people are getting restless. I've set the most aggressive into a kind of bootcamp to curb the worst of their excesses, but that won't last. They want action, and they want to do something."

"Well there's the Merchants. They can always be counted on to make good targets." Lung suggested.

"That would be appropriate, but I'm afraid it will have to wait. The men have to be doing something that will keep them occupied." Kaiser said, "And that something has to be a something that isn't offensive enough to call down the whole Protectorate on us."

The two of them sat, then Lung snapped his fingers. "Kaiser, I have an idea."

He told him. Kaiser told him to elaborate. Lung told him some more.

When he was finished, Kaiser said, "You are a cunning, dangerous person."

Lung didn't bother to smile, since Kaiser couldn't see it, but he said, "I try to be."

Kaiser picked up his phone, and dialed the number of the Dockworkers Union.

XxX

The Brockton Bay affiliate office of the International Longshoremen's Association was a sleepy building at the best of times. It had a staff of just three people, one of these was Daniel Hebert, the local representative with the city government, a slow job these days. He was therefore quite unprepared for the telephone to ring, but he remembered his training, and picked up the phone. One of the other staffers, a guy named Sal Lovett, had just lit up a cigarette, and happened to catch the conversation in Hebert's office.

"Brockton ILA, Hebert speaking." he said. "I'm sorry, who is this? ...What do you want? ...Yes I know times are hard damn it! ...A business proposition, is it? I'll spare you the trouble, our answer is- ...You want to do what? All of them?" he heard Hebert laughing, "Oh, I doubt you could do that very much, Kaiser. No I really think this is... You did? This is all nice and legal? I see... Thank you very much."

Lovett heard the phone go on the receiver, and then Hebert walked out of his office, looking stunned and almost like he wanted to laugh.

"What was that about, boss?" Lovett asked.

"Sal, I think I just got the weirdest call in my life. Kaiser just called, he says he's doing something about the graveyard. Something about dragging out the old ships for scrap." said Hebert, rubbing his forehead.

Lovett barked out a gunshot laugh, "No way." he said. "Why would he do it?"

"He said that he was going to build a steel mill in the city, and he wanted to get it up and running as soon as possible."

"Why the hell would the Empire want to do anything for the regular folks?"

"Beats me, must be some kind of attack of conscience."

"Thought they got those surgically removed."

Lovett took a moment to think.

"Well why'd he call us?"

"That's the thing. He wants to call the dockworkers in to help clear out the ships. He said we knew our way around ships, and we'd be useful guides for his own crews."

They stood like that, staring at each other. Then, Lovett said, "Well, work is work. The guys'll be happy to get the ships out of the graveyard at any rate. Even if they are working with legit Nazis. What I'd like to know is how the hell he cleared it with the Mayor's office."

And just like that, the spell broke. Lovett and Hebert were soon laughing. "How much do you wanna bet that was even Kaiser?"

XxX

"I see you've been busy, Kaiser." said General von Altburg-Ehrenstein over the phone.

"Indeed. The MedHall corporation is going to launch a major reclamation project in the Lord's Port. The Empire's going to be contributing members to the effort, as are the ABB."

"And zhereby cultivate an important contact in the business world." the General said, approvingly. "Clever. Very clever."

"Thank you, your excellency. We've been doing our utmost to learn from the late Fuehrer's mistakes. We will also be organizing a campaign to contest the mayoral elections next year. Our platform is going to play to the people's sympathies, I think."

"Good, good. I will be in contact with you at a later date, Kaiser."

"One last question. We still don't have a tinker. What would you do in our position?"

"Seeing as beggars can't be choosers, I'd suggest you enter an arrangement vith whoever has vone. Or, if you are confident in your chances and they are uncooperative, simply defeat them and make the tinker work for you."

"There's only one organization that fits those criteria, and I'm none too keen on touching anything the Merchants have got their hands on."

"In that case, you could simply bulldoze ze Merchants and force them all into rehabilitation clinics, and ask zeir tinker to vork for you as a civilian."

Kaiser shook his head, though this was wasted, since the SS General couldn't see him.

"I think I shall have to hire outside help. But Fenja and Menja should at least be able to lift some of those ships by themselves."

"Very vell, Kaiser. I vill contact you later to discuss a new plan, one vich vill remove you from ze stigma of National Socialism forever."

XxX

"Wallis, this is the biggest clusterfuck I have ever seen." groaned Emily Piggot, burying her face in her hands. "Neo-Nazis was bad enough. Now a real life SS General's showed up and they're taking their marching orders from him?"

"Its not as bad as that Director." said Colin Wallis, AKA Armsmaster, the leader of the protectorate's Brockton Bay division. "The Empire's been getting unstable lately, and they're hemorrhaging members thanks to the General's latest revelations. Plenty of them are quitting after Ehrenstein's last spiel to Kaiser."

"Oh it's not, is it?" Piggot asked, sarcastically. "My phone's been ringing off the hook this last week, everyone in America and Europe wants to know just who the hell this Altburg-Ehrenstein is, and what he's doing in this city."

As if on cue, her cellphone started ringing. "Yes?" She snapped. "I know sir... I know they've been breathing down your necks, but I can't-... We're doing what we can, but he hasn't committed any crimes that we can convict him on, aside from giving a bunch of Empire members a crisis of conscience... I know they're furious, but there's nothing we can do yet!"

She hung up the phone and glared up at Armsmaster. "That was the State Department in Washington." Piggot ground out, "They've been calling me every hour about Israel's reaction. They want us to get Altburg-Ehrenstein up in front of a court. But we still can't find the damn lunatic!"

Her phone rang again. "What now?"

Armsmaster's suit picked up the voice on the other end saying through a scrambler, "Director Piggot, I have a solution for the current problem facing the city. I wish to meet you at noon tomorrow, to discuss the situation as regards Altburg-Ehrenstein."

"Who is this?" Piggot barked.

"I cannot give my name over the phone, as I do not know who might be listening. But I promise, I have a way to solve all our problems at a stroke."

 

[Praetor98]

Lisa and her friends were worried, Mikey could see that much. Come to that, he was worried himself.

"I never expected this." He repeated for what felt like the thousandth time. "I shouldn't have done this."

"Tell me about it." muttered Lisa, "I never thought we'd get in this situation."

"Well," Alec said, sitting up from his perch in the warehouse they had taken to using as a meeting ground, "One thing's obvious; the longer this goes on, the surer you can be that people figure out Altburg-Ehrenstein doesn't exist."

"Lisa, I told you this was going to backfire on us." Brian muttered. "Its time we go to the Protectorate and cut our loses. They can at least get us out of the city."

"But the Empire will still be after us." interrupted Mikey, glumly. "I just wish there was some way we could get 'em to quit and go into another line of work..." he trailed off, thinking about what he'd just said, and started to grin. A grin very much like Lisa's grins. Then he started to laugh. There was a manic edge to it, and there were tears in his eyes, but it was undeniably laughter.

"What's going on in your head now?" moaned Brian.

"I got a god damn plan!" Mikey shouted, jumping up and kicking his heels. "I figured out the perfect out for all of us!"

"You're sure? I don't wanna be dicking around pranking the people who could kill us again."

"No, I promise you, I'm putting that shit behind me!" said Bainbridge, still hysterical with excitement, but trying to calm himself down. "I've got a plan that'll knock your socks off. Here's what I'll do." He told them what his plan was.

When he was finished, Bainbridge's collaborators were as stunned as he was when he thought up this mad scheme.

Lisa was the first to respond, and her laughter bounced off the walls of the warehouse. Brian was stone faced, Alec was chuckling in a grim and cynical fashion, and Rachel, whom he didn't know very well, sat with wide eyes trying to process what she'd just heard.

"This is officially crazier than anything else I've ever heard." Lisa said, wiping tears from her eyes. Then, when she saw he was serious, her grin vanished and was replaced with a scowl, "You seriously think this can work? We should just cut you loose right here."

"Believe me, I know it sounds crazy, but I can't think of anything else. It just makes so much sense when you think it through. I mean, Kaiser could care less about Nazism, you could see that, right?"

"He was nervous about you revealing the information, he wasn't experiencing any crisis of faith, I'll give you that." Lisa allowed. "But what about the others? Armsmaster, Lung?"

"Lung's ambitious. I don't mean he's got ambitions to be a better man. I've lived in this town for most of my life. I've heard the stories about him. He fancies himself a warrior just like Altburg-Ehrenstein's supposed to be, and he's willing to sustain himself by whatever he thinks is most useful. Right now that's drugs and prostitution. But if I can convince him..."

"That still leaves Armsmaster. Why do you want him in particular?" Grue asked.

Mikey stroked his chin with one hand, and ruminated on that question. "Armsmaster... In a way, I guess I'm a little like him. I've seen him once or twice. You don't get that kind of intensity without being driven. He wants to be a household name around the world, so I'll give him what we both want."

Lisa considered this. She raised an eyebrow.

She was about to speak when Rachel took her chance from her.

"You want to set up the biggest brawl this city's ever seen, just so you can pretend to die in it?"

"That's my thought process, yes." Mikey responded, baldly. He knew better than to try and sugarcoat things for Bitch.

"Will you stop Hookwolf's dogfighting rings?" she demanded.

"Yes. I will." he said, as truthful as he had been.

"Alright. I'll help you." she said.

The rest of Lisa's friends looked at her as if she'd spoken madness.

"You'll help him?" Regent asked. "Why do you believe he won't screw us over the first chance he gets, offering us up to save his own life?"

"We're dead as accessories if the Empire catches us, and we're headed for juvie or worse if the Protectorate gets us first. It's a chance I'm willing to take." said Bitch.

When she put it like that, the rest of Lisa's friends realized that it was no choice at all.

"I'm in." said Grue. "If you can get us out of this, I'd prefer making honest money."

"Me too. Being a petty crook wasn't my style anyway." agreed Regent, twirling his scepter with one hand.

"Well," Tattletale said, seeing the tide was turning against her, "I can think of worse people to be working with."

"Then I'll need your help to set up the phone scrambler." declared Bainbridge. "No use in spoiling the surprise just yet."

XxX

Two cars and a motorcycle drove into an alleyway. If you think that sounds like the setup to a stupid joke, in a way, you'd be right. The first vehicle was Armsmaster's tinkertech motorcycle, a gas turbine-powered machine that screamed to a halt at the very front of the pack. The second was a distinctive Benz that belonged to Kaiser. The third... it wouldn't do to call the third car nondescript. In fact it was very easy to descript. It looked like a car that had been shipped to the junkyard and had forgotten to stop driving. This car belonged to Lung, who unfolded himself out of the driver's seat.

"Well, do any of you plan to tell me what I'm doing here?" Lung said, striding up to the hero and villain. He easily overshadowed both of them in height, and most definitely in bulk.

"The protectorate received an anonymous tip from someone who claimed to know something about the General." said Armsmaster, curtly. He had no illusions about being able to fight either Kaiser or Lung, and even less if they chose to fight him together. "The director sent me to investigate."

"Altburg-Ehrenstein called me to say that he wished to discuss a new plan." was all that Kaiser would say.

"And he told me that he wished to help in brokering an alliance between the Empire and myself." Lung growled.

Before any of them could say any more, the door on the other end of the courtyard they had parked in front of opened with a whine of rusted hinges. None of them raised their weapons, each was quite confident in his abilities.

"You're here." said a young and feminine voice.

The speaker was a teenage girl, with blonde hair and, as far as could be seen under her mask, piercing green eyes.

"Who are you, young lady?" asked Armsmaster, with the same to-the-point method of speaking that turned his voice into a rattling staccato.

"Call me Tattletale. Now if you'd step this way?" she said.

Lung murmured, "This stinks of a trap." to Kaiser as they walked towards the door.

"It's not likely that the phone calls were faked. I don't know of any tinkers in this city who have built voice synthesizers that can actually mimic human speech, and as for regular technology? You can forget it." the Empire's leader replied, equally quiet.

Tattletale led them through a ruined hallway, from the walls of which, the plaster had already peeled, and the floorboards were a quarter of the way to rotting through.

"Your call was vague." observed Armsmaster, more out of curiosity than annoyance.

"It had to be vague." Tattletale responded. "My friend doesn't want this to get out just yet."

Armsmaster frowned behind his mask, and triggered a standby signal to the PRT force Piggot had insisted on as backup. Kaiser and Lung had also ordered their most trusted subordinates to malinger at a block's distance from their meeting ground. Finally, they reached a door that looked to be halfway rotted through, instead of the quarter way as seemed to be the case with the rest of the building. Tattletale opened the door.

There was a table, with three chairs set around it, and at its head, shrouded by his onyx cloak, sat Maximillian von Altburg-Ehrenstein. There was no mistaking that uniform, or that face.

"Altburg-Ehrenstein. It was you after all." Armsmaster said, gripping his halberd, ready to order the Wards and PRT to strike.

The General chuckled, in a way that made Kaiser raise an eyebrow. Something was off.

"Not exactly." The General said, "I have called you all here to offer up a proposition."

"What kind of proposition?" asked Lung, snarling deep in his throat.

"And to tell you," the General continued, taking off his cap and setting it on the table. "That I have a surprise for you." Suddenly his guttural German accept departed completely, and there was only the vaguely whining cadence of a New Hampshire native.

At first, Kaiser thought the General was peeling off the skin of his face, but as he got a closer look, he felt the blood in his veins transform into liquid fire.

Armsmaster was the first to understand. His HUD identified the compounds that composed... makeup?

"Oh God." he muttered, sitting back in his chair. "There never was an Altburg-Ehrenstein." His tone of voice carried more vindication than shock.

"And there never will be." said the man who was finishing with peeling off the makeup, and was now carefully removing the contact lenses. "You and your friends must have done enough digging to come to that conclusion in a very short time if I had not told you. He was an invention of my own mind. And why I have called you together is to do with the proposal that I described to Kaiser."

"You have two minutes to explain yourself." Kaiser whispered, fiercer than anyone had ever heard him.

"This was hardly a masterful manipulation, but I'm still proud of it. I relied on Armsmaster's ambition to be a great hero, as well as his hunger to prove himself in the eyes of the people. I relied on Lung's desire to be more than a bloodthirsty criminal, eking out a living in a wretched city, and winning the adulation he desires. And as for you, Kaiser; I relied upon your ambition to be someone more than your father's son."

"For what purpose?" Lung demanded.

"To give Brockton Bay peace. And to give brotherhood to those without it." The young man said. Or at least, he looked like a young man. "And I have called you here to tell you how we can achieve it."

"You've sent the city into a panic, driven several nations into a frenzy, and now you tell us that you've got a plan to save Brockton? I don't believe you whatsoever." Armsmaster snapped, starting to reach for his halberd.

"Belief is not necessary. You don't need to believe in something to know it exists." refuted the boy. "And you will not arrest me, because for all your ambition, you are a practical soul, Armsmaster. You know the Empire alone outnumbers you in Parahumans, that you've been forced to press the Wards into service simply to make up the difference. Lung could slaughter you all singlehanded, if he so chose, and Coil has his own agenda, whatever that may be.

"My plan is this. Altburg-Ehrenstein makes one final appearance. He will lead a combined Empire-ABB assault force on the Protectorate, and you will engage him in single combat, and you will kill him."

That caught Armsmaster completely by surprise. Lung gave one of his gunshot laughs, but Kaiser was less sanguine.

"I'll spare him the trouble and cut you down right here and now." he said, manifesting a dozen blades, each ready to skewer the man. Armsmaster grabbed his weapon, this time not to arrest the boy, but to protect him from the enraged Nazi.

"And why would you do that?" the boy asked, a picture of calm.

"You have embarrassed us in front of the world, you idiot." Kaiser rasped, keeping one eye on Armsmaster.

"And no one else knows."

The blades halted, then they retracted.

"That is true. Only the three of us know." Kaiser said, as though he were speaking to a child. "And do you think Armsmaster or Lung will keep their silence on this?"

"Of course they will. They will benefit from my proposal." replied the boy.

"I would hardly benefit from you dying in front of the world." said Lung, "Entertaining though it would be."

"Oh wouldn't you?" the boy asked, with a grin that was all teeth and narrowed eyes. "With Altburg-Ehrenstein's death, the Empire and the ABB will disintegrate, so far as the public can see. With the final, conclusive proof that their philosophy has failed with the last living example of the Nazi Party going down in flames, the Empire's membership will be able to turn over a new leaf, so to speak. Those people will be able to join a new organization. A legitimate organization without the stain of the Empire and National Socialism upon them. The ABB would be able to do so as well, as part of Kaiser's new political movement that embraces all under its aegis."

Kaiser scoffed, "And if I kill you now? Or I let Armsmaster drag you in front of a court and watch you be humiliated before the city?"

"Then things continue as they have been, and you will all be eventually destroyed. Kaiser, have you considered what happens even if you win? Do you know who will be coming for you if you do destroy the other gangs and take over the city?"

Kaiser went silent. No doubt he was considering just what the youth meant.

"You can see it, can't you? The Army will step in, along with the DHS. They will not be hindered by any judicial thinking, and they won't care about justice, their mission will be only to destroy and exterminate, nothing more. They will kill and torture every member of the Empire they can find. The government, and your backers, tolerate you while you are a destabilizing force, they even support you to an extent, but the moment you get ambitions above your station, they will crush you without mercy. And you're deluding yourself if you think you can resist them."

"We have more than enough Capes to hold Brockton Bay." Kaiser said, testing how much the boy knew.

"And you think they don't have enough Capes to storm it? Your men and women are gangbangers. Gangbangers with superpowers, yes, but gangbangers nevertheless. The US government has an army with a budget that's big enough to bribe every person in your organization with a million dollars and still have plenty left over. They have some of the most talented tinkers in the world working for them. And more than that, they have a whole budget that their spooks don't admit to thanks to their drug operations in Central and South America. This is all common knowledge, if something of a dirty secret.

"But if you let the Empire vanish according to my plan, then you and Lung will be able to become legitimate figures, avoid the danger posed by open rebellion, and secure more power than you ever could have gained if you remained common criminals."

"You seem to forgetting someone." Armsmaster cut in, coldly. "Kaiser and Lung are each responsible, by themselves, for more crimes than you can shake a stick at. Add their subordinates and you've got a rap sheet that's enough to throw them all in jail for the rest of their lives. And there's nothing to stop me from arresting Kaiser and Lung right here and now."

"Armsmaster, you're too practical a soul to do that. And besides, I've accounted for you as well. You want to be a hero? I can think of nothing so heroic as defeating a Nazi Vampire trying to take over a city. The public's gonna love you! I wouldn't be surprised if there was a medal or something in it for you as well. And besides, you know as well as I do that the Protectorate is barely able to go toe-to-toe with the Empire. The other syndicates won't just stand by if you go to war with them. The Protectorate needs this."

Armsmaster was silent, thinking over what to do next. Emily Piggot had heard all this, and damn that boy, but he was right. They were barely managing as it was, even press-ganging vigilantes like Shadow Stalker into the Wards had only brought them to a rough parity with the Empire. If the Empire made an alliance with any of the other gangs, no matter how temporary it was, then all bets were off. The best they could hope for was a Pyrrhic victory at best, outright destruction at worst, and far more likely, a grinding stalemate that reduced both sides to a shadow of their former strength, with someone else, probably coil, sweeping in to destroy them both when they were weak enough.

The only way to win in such a situation would be to call in reinforcements from across the Protectorate's other stations across the Eastern Seaboard, thereby weakening the other hero teams, and giving the criminal groups in those cities new breathing room.

"I'll admit, that little bastard's thought this through." She murmured to Armsmaster, who made a noise that was vaguely agreeable.

What was awful for Armsmaster was the fact that he could detect no lies in the young's man's voice. He was either so consummate a liar that Armsmaster's helmet-mounted polygraph could not detect his deceptions, a fact that he was not willing to rely on, or he was absolutely sincere in his offer, which was perhaps even worse. And yet... and yet...

And yet to refuse him, to continue on their path of endless, aimless skirmishing with the rival gangs, would that not be failing the people they had sworn to protect?

"What about you?" he asked. "What are you getting out of this?"

The young man's cold grin softened into a philosophic and introspective expression.

"I suppose you could say that donning the guise of Altburg-Ehrenstein woke something up in me. I decided that I wanted to stop reading about history, and start making it. I want to do something that will surprise the world." he said, echoing the words of John Adams. "Something grand, wild. To cut a flash, to strike amazement, to catch the attention of everyone. Will it be some quick action, or a slow, silent, imperceptible move? Shall I creep, or shall I fly?"

"Very well." Lung said. "You've got my support. It ought to be fun to watch, at any rate."

Kaiser took another moment to weigh his options. He did want to be someone more than simply the son of Allfather, a ruthless killer even by the standards of the Empire. But he took over the gang because he had meant to build himself into a power, more than Richard Anders. And yet, here he was, working with the same organizations, pursuing the same goals, and hunting the same people as his father had.

"I'm with you." he finally said, grudgingly. "But I reserve the right to take your head if this falls through."

All three of them looked at Armsmaster.

"This decision is not mine to make." he said, deliberately.

"Director Piggot's then." the youth said with genuine respect, "Well, what does the grand lady have to say?"

Piggot said nothing, which said it all.

"Very good, Director. You've made the right choice." and there was no hiding the genuine relief in the youth's tone. "You might have just saved this city."

Armsmaster stood from his chair. "I'd best be getting along." he said. "I can't say its been pleasant meeting either of you."

"A shame, you're one of my heroes." the youth said.

"What's your name anyway?" Armsmaster asked, when he reached the door.

"You can call me Michael Bainbridge." the youth said. "I'm a local boy."

AN: And we come into the final stretch of the first arc. I didn't even imagine it would turn out like this, it just popped into my head.

 

[Praetor98]

It would not be amiss to mention the fact that there was one meeting before the events that lead up to the coming denouement. This meeting took place before the fateful summit between Kaiser, Lung, Armsmaster and Altburg-Ehrenstein, before even the meeting between Michael Bainbridge and Lisa's gang. It was a meeting that took place in a house on Washington Street in the suburbs west of Downtown. The house belonged to Dennis and Sarah Bainbridge, the parents of the aforesaid Michael. Michael's desperate plan hadn't yet come into his mind, and he was not so arrogant as to be blinded to the fact that he was in it too deep. So he turned to the one person in the world whom he trusted more than anyone else. More than all his friends that he'd made over the years. That person was his father, Dennis Cameron Bainbridge.

He'd quietly slipped out of his flat in the inner city, gotten in his car, and made the twenty minute drive through the rush hour traffic to get to the semi-patrician neighborhood containing the Washington Street house of his family. He parked his ancient Benz station wagon in the drive and hurried to the vestibule, so as not to be seen. He knocked on the door and was answered by the kindly, scholarly face of his father.

"M-bear!" his father said, throwing his arms around him with the old nickname he'd given Michael when he'd been just a toddler. "What brings you here?"

"Can I come in, dad?" Bainbridge asked, in a too-casual tone of voice.

His father nodded, noticing the fear in his son's eyes. When they were inside and ensconced in the master bedroom, Michael finally let down the walls and showed just how frightened he was to his father.

"I'm in big trouble dad!" he said, careful not to shout.

"What is it, something at Arcadia?"

Michael barked a mirthless laugh. "I should be so lucky. It's the Empire Eighty Eight."

Dennis Bainbridge's voice became accusing, "How are you mixed up with them? You know better than to be involved with any of those groups!" His father detested the Nazis in all their incarnations.

Despite his fear, Michael still became defensive. "I'm not! They think I am!"

"They think you are? Why?"

Mikey looked even more unhappy. "I was bored! I thought I could mess with 'em by dressing up like a real Nazi and I did."

Dennis was thunderstruck. "Then... all that shit about there being a real life SS General in the Bay... that was you dressing up to scam the Empire?!"

"Yeah." Mikey confirmed, terrified. "And I don't know what I'm going to do to get out of this."

He sat down on the bed and buried his head in his head. "What am I going to do, dad?"

Dennis Bainbridge had been very quiet, deep in thought.

"Michael," he finally said, sitting down beside his son, "You're right. You are in big trouble. This is why we left California in the first place."

"What? Left California?" Mikey was caught completely out of left field. "I thought we left 'cause of the recession."

"That's why your Mom and I had to leave." Mr. Bainbridge was very deliberate when he said that, as if trying to chose his words correctly. "But it's not the only reason that I wanted you out of that town."

Before living in Brockton, which had been Michael Bainbridge's home for ten years, they lived in the little town of Golden Fields, a Nordic colony in Southern California. Michael had always been uncomfortable there, having very little in the way of friends aside from the teenaged children of an Irish couple. The 2001 banking crash had forced his family to leave the town, and they had gone to Brockton Bay so as to acquire a larger base for his mother's medical practice.

Mikey had never understood his father's reserve around the townsfolk who had always seemed pleasant enough. One thing he'd vaguely noticed, and it tingled at the back of his mind ever since they'd come to live in Brockton, was there were very few non-Northern Europeans in that town. Once he'd asked his father about it, and he's given him some evasive remarks about the Danes being more clannish than other communities.

Perhaps the most definitive memory he'd had on the subject was once when his father had taken him along to the town's high school to see a car show the school was hosting. He'd taken a look at the picture book the school auto club had put together to show their progress on their car, a Camero, if he recalled, and something changed in his attitude. He'd thanked the teacher of the auto club and moved on, but after that, he'd seemed kind of offish and on his guard, and when they'd gotten back in their car, he'd refused to say what had gotten him in a bad mood.

Now he asked his father why, among other things, he'd left the car show in such a bad temper.

"I saw something in the book that day that scared me. I already knew that whole area from LA to Frisco was shady as hell, but I'd never suspected that we were in the center of it."

"The center of what?"

"That area of California isn't just conservative. It's where the some of the Old Families of America get together for their powwows."

"No way, Golden Fields?" Mikey asked, incredulous.

"Oh yeah. Dick Nixon grew up near there. And that one family's got a ranch up there, I can't remember their names, and it's not because they're film actors and rock stars, it's 'cause they're relatives of the Mansfields, and they're one of the oldest most powerful families in New York. In fact, that place is something of a dumping ground for the black sheep of the big families. Schizophrenics, sociopaths, their families buy them ranches out there and keep them out of sight and out of mind. Your mom was only accepted because they're always eager for medical service. The families never suffered me, but they took something of a liking to you.

Mikey remembered all those smiling faces at those parties they went to.

"Really, the Rourkes?" he asked.

"Mr. Rourke's wife was the daughter of one of the richest families in Las Angeles, and he had family all over America and Ireland."

"But that doesn't explain why you got antsy at the car show."

"How much do you remember that book?"

"Well, what about it?" Michael asked. "It was a picture book of the auto club."

"Did you notice the pattern they used for a background?" his father asked, gravely.

In truth, he hadn't really paid attention to the background, he was too busy looking at the pictures of the grease-coated high schoolers and being almost sick with envy at their glorious lifestyle. But he did remember there was some kind of geometric background used for the book. It was all black and white, with lines and angles being the common theme, but he vaguely remembered that the lines ran together into some kind of...

"No." he said, meeting his father's eyes. "Those weren't swastikas!"

"Yep. We lived like water bugs in that town. Rode the surface tension. It was a good place, if you didn't dive down into it."

"So... that school was-" Michael couldn't finish the sentence.

"I'll only say this. If you wanted to be a Neo-Nazi, you'd probably fly right under the radar there. Maybe even find a club. That whole area between LA and Frisco was crawling with the type of guys who were happy to see Mexicans as nothing but pickers and the Indians are locked up in their reservations. That's how So-Cal's been ever since the USA took over."

"Wait, lemme get my head around this, you're saying we were in the hotbed of Nazidom in America? How do you know that?"

"I was a real estate appraiser Michael, I had to work with some big movers and shakers in the business, and they had their share of nasty secrets. They also don't much like mixing with what they consider the commoners. Sunny Fields wasn't just conservative, it was damn near impenetrable if you didn't go to their schools and make the right friends as a kid. That's why I wanted to get you out of there. We thought Brockton would be safe enough since it was obvious who you had to watch out for."

Michael's face was stricken with guilt and misery. "And now I've gone and mixed it up with them anyway."

Dennis Bainbridge put his arms around his son, as strongly as he could.

"M-bear, listen to me, I'm not mad at you, I'm not disappointed with you, I just want you to be safe. When your mother gets home, we'll talk this over, decide what to do and find a way to get you out of this."

Michael was silent for a moment or two, then he said, "Thanks dad." in a voice choking with emotion.

He and his father sat like that for some time, his father holding him in his arms. But finally they separated, and his dad's face was focused and concerned.

"Now we've gotta be careful. That skinhead gang you've been messing with is evil, plain and simple."

"I know that." Michael said, chastising himself for ever thinking up the scheme in the first place. What ever had possessed him?

"Michael, you've gotta remember your common sense. Look at the situation like that. If you do, you'll realize this gang has much money than makes sense."

"How do you mean? They're the biggest crime syndicate in the city, of course they've got money to burn."

"Yeah, but enough money to get all their guys uniforms and buy each one an assault rifle? They gotta have someone with a lot of money and enough clout to not be linked to them in public."

"Wait, you think they're the pet thugs of some rich Nazi?" Michael's voice was somewhat incredulous.

"You don't get that kind of money without connections." his dad said, evenly. "But I doubt their backer's actually in charge. People like that never step into the spotlight even by proxy.

"So what, are these guys like the real Nazis before World War 2? You reckon they got funding from the big dogs?"

"No. I don't think they're supposed to do what they did. But everyone knows they're plugged in to the criminal network, and I bet their big bosses are somewhere in Europe. Whoever it is runs the Empire, they had to have a lot of money when they started the operation."

"Well what am I going to do?" Mikey asked.

"We're going to figure a way out of this. You'll do what you think is best, but your mom and I are here for you, no matter what happens. No matter who comes after you, I'll never stop being your dad. When your mom gets home, we'll call a lawyer and make sure you're in the clear."

 

[Praetor98]

Whispers slithered through the alleys and byways of Brockton Bay, whispers of an unholy alliance. An alliance between two forces which had hated and killed each other for years, yet which circumstances had suddenly pulled together. The PRT had only this to go on, and nothing else which could have warned them when one of their convoys was mysteriously halted in the forests outside of the city.

In truth, there was no mystery as to why the convoy was halted in the least. The convoy consisted of ten military trucks, carrying in new personnel to the city along with their gear. Those men were well trained, and versed in anti-ParaHuman combat tactics, they had Capes providing overwatch. They were dead before they knew what hit them.

The lead truck, a huge ten-wheel army vehicle, rumbled by a hobo camp, the same as any of a hundred others. The vagrant sitting on the edge of the camp was one Walter Wagner, a member of the Empire.

Wagner leaned away from the convoy and murmured, "They're on their way." into his radio.

"We're ready to rumble." came the reply.

Stormtiger felt his hands curling into vicious talons in preparation for the ambush. He had been given gloves for close combat with metal claws where his fingernails should have been. He could smell the blood-tang of Hookwolf, his captain, and the synthetic musk of Rune's hair products. But they were all sharp and razor keen. They were situated at differing points of Parker Street, but they were all knew what was about to happen, what they were about to do.

The convoy was making good time, and would be arriving in less than a minute.

"Remember, Wittmann tactics." Hookwolf growled into his mic, "Box 'em in."

"Roger that Actual." reported in the various callsigns.

Hookwolf almost found himself sighing. He was a warrior, a berserker, not some bloodless officer. But, he was also a leader. He would do his duty, no matter how much he yearned to shed blood with his men.

"Almost time Overlord." Hookwolf reported in turn. "We're ready to go."

"Copy that." said Kaiser's radioman. "Good hunting Chosen."

Right at that moment the convoy hove in sight, and Hookwolf's company sprang into action.

XxX

Stormtiger still remembered that night when they had gathered to hear the Bloody Prince speak.

Night and Fog had been summoned back from Boston, and Purity had been lured back by Kaiser on the promise that the Empire would be reforming after this last assault. They had stood around the table ordinarily used for board meetings, but which had the secret secondary purpose of serving as a meeting ground for the Empire's leaders. They were all there, Meadows, Fleischer, Van Allen, Mrs. Anders, and Stadler, along with all their supporters, nearly a hundred in all. This number was augmented by the presence of the Azn Bad Boyz, who included Lung and his number two, Oni Lee. Stormtiger was Hookwolf's champion among the Chosen, and had a seat at the table by virtue of that position. And since he was closest to the door, he was one of the first to see the big doors open to reveal the person who was, so far as the Empire was concerned, the man of the hour.

Unnoticed by him, Kaiser must have pressed a button on his laptop, and started the music.

Die Fahne hoch! Die Reihen fest geschlossen!
SA marschiert mit ruhig festem Schritt.
Kam'raden, die Rotfront und Reaktion erschossen,
Marschier'n im Geist in unser'n Reihen mit.

The assembly stood, facing the revenant of the Third Reich, their arms raised in the old salute, and declaimed for the first and last time, the ancient greeting of that wicked crew.

"Heil Hitler!" they bellowed, with Night and Fog the loudest. Except for the ABB of course, they just clapped.

There he was. Dressed all in black and white, a ceremonial dagger and a Luger at his belt, with an officer's sword on his left, and the famous skull and crossbones on his cap. He greeted them with all the confidence and poise that was expected of one of Himmler's princes.

"Sank you, Sank you very much." the man said, returning the salute and performing a dignified bow. Then he advanced toward Kaiser, cape billowing out behind him, as the two clasped hands.

"I am glad that you have come." said Kaiser.

"I em glad to be here." Altburg-Ehrenstein replied. Then he took in the combined membership of the Empire and the ABB. "You know, zis is ze first time I've ever met any of you face to face. But let us see if I'm qvite up to snuff."

Every fighter, whether they are a tribal warrior or a professional soldier feels some measure of honor at being named personally by their commander. The Bloody Prince greeted Krieg first, conversing fluently in German with the surprised and delighted Helmuth Fliescher, who went by James while he was in America. He then moved on to Hookwolf, recounting several of his deeds as a pit fighter and afterwards when he had joined the Empire. He greeted Purity last, kissing her hand in the manner of the gentleman of the nineteenth century into which his persona had been born. Then, he regarded her with a calculating and supercilious stare.

Kayden Anders felt the judgement of those crimson eyes, though she knew they were no more than colored contact lenses. So why was she feeling so small?

"Your maiden name, madam, what vas it?" he asked, in a deceptively mild tone, which he deliberately modeled on that which the SS physicians made when making their selections for the gas chambers.

"It's Russel." replied Purity, somewhat taken aback by his line of questioning.

"Russel..." murmured Altburg-Ehrenstein, as if searching it for anything out of place.

"Is there something the matter, General?" Krieg asked.

The Prince said nothing, circling round Purity and looking down his nose, noting her every feature.

"Zat name comes from ze Normans, I do believe. Yet there is very little zat is Nordic about you." he said, staring at her face. "Your skull ist too narrow to be considered properly Germanic. I vould assume levantine or mongoloid intermixing." Then he walked back to Kaiser, "Had zis been ze age of ze Third Reich, you might haff been under suspicion of intermixture vith an inferior breed."

Kaiser said nothing, not bothering to contradict him or agree.

"For instance, how about you?" Bainbridge asked one of the middle rankers present, "Vat is your name?"

"Miller."

"An Anglicization or is zat your family name's natural spelling?"

"The second one."

"Too bad. Had you actually tried to join the Party, ve would have laffed in your face and then beaten you to a pulp. In the National Socialist mind, ze common English people are only vone step removed from the brute, and they would have treated the people of London as such. Only ze aristocracy would have been left alone and allowed to become Germans. The only Aryans ve knew were Germanic peoples. Anyone else was either an auxiliary or a slave, or outright exterminated."

This brought silence to the gathering, aside from Lung's thunderous chuckling.

"Honeztly ist it too much to hope zat you've even had a Wiener schnitzel?"

Miller's only reply was to quirk an eyebrow and say, "Gesundheit?"

Bainbridge noticed Krieg burying his face in his hands in the background. Looks like you can't make proper Nazis out of Americans, Mikey thought. You had to get them when they've just gotten off the boat.

"But I'm getting off track, aren't I?" he continued on to each of the Empire's capes. Stormtiger and Cricket he greeted with handshakes and a few words of introduction. The Crusader was more uncomfortable meeting Altburg-Ehrenstein, in character or out, especially when he was forced to concede the fact that he didn't have so much as a drop of German blood. Alabaster was actually intrigued, since he was a pure born German American. Victor and Othala were next, and the ex-Californian Bainbridge was mildly intrigued at their relation to the Herren Clan.

"No," he said with a smile, "Your family belonged to ze Herrenklub?"

"The what?" asked Rune, who was a member of the clan as well.

"You know, ze Herrenklub, ze most exclusive gentleman's club in Germany? You had to have an ancient lineage to even be invited to join." When he saw that confusion was his piece, he sighed and muttered, "Never mind."

Night and Fog actually greeted him with the old Hitler Salute and a chorus of "Heil Hitler!" They'd at least be useful, but they gave him the creeps. Oh well, what could be programmed could be deprogrammed. He also shook hands with several of Kaiser's unpowered officers, and then moved onto the ABB. Lung nodded, while Oni Lee bowed. Oni Lee; a deliberately pan-Asian name, Michael Bainbridge thought. A Japanese theme but with a Chinese or Korean name. Interesting.

There was only one left.

"Kaiser, you still haven't formally introduced yourself to me. You know my name, I don't know yours." he said.

"In a way, it would be right. You won't be calling me Kaiser much longer." said the leader of the Empire, who grinned behind his helmet. "My name is Max Anders."

The ABB reacted most visibly, Lung throwing back his head in a booming laugh, while others gasped in shock or fury.

Bainbridge did not. He was thinking.

"Anders... zat name rinks a bell." he said, narrowing his eyes as he considered Kaiser. Then he remembered where he'd heard the name, but the answer only raised more questions. What in God's name was a member of the House of Anders doing running an operation like this? Assuming he was indeed from the Anders family. Now was not the time to bring up such things, however. He would, he decided, discuss it with Anders alone, and turned back to the gathered officers and ParaHumans.

"Ve're a sorry and ragged host, aren't we?" low chuckles sounded through the chamber. "But Hitler und Stalin started vith less, it must be said."

There was a ragged cheer from some of the Empire's men. They knew what was coming, what they were about to do.

"I know you're proud of your brotherhoods. Your banners have earned many glories and suffered many tribulations. Yet our performance is going to win us a greater victory than has ever been contemplated."

Stormy applause greeted this short address.

"Zis is going to be the first battle of our new Axis," he leaned in on the table, and just when they were getting interested, said, "So let's make it a night to remember!"

This time, the cheering was outright deafening. There was no doubt about it, they were definitely psyching themselves up.

XxX

Snow Raven was in the lead vehicle, while the Fantastic Fox, an illusionist with a fox theme, rode shotgun.

"Keep your head on a swivel, Rae." Fox murmured, "We got mondo hostiles in this area and we've gotta get Northeast shored up before things go nuts."

"Don't start laying your cards out just yet Danno," Raven said, watching the corners. "We're in an MRAP, if the Empire's set any IEDs, we'll be safe."

A dull roar shook the vehicle as it neared a bend in the road.

"What was that?" Fox asked, withdrawing his collapsing cane from a coat pocket.

"That was no IED." Snow Raven said, slamming on the brakes, just as a rocket slammed into the engine compartment. The cab was armored, but the vehicle was a write-off. But they had a lot more to worry about than vehicular damage.



They had just enough time to get out of the truck when the shapes started bleeding out of the shadows, with a distinctive silhouette in the lead.

"Hookwolf!" Snow Raven shouted, a dozen ice feathers crystalizing out of the air. Then he recognized the others and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. "The Empire's here!"

"Die Protectors!" Hookwolf's voice emerged from within a monstrous iron wolf as it made a leap that would have put a raptor to shame over the outrider and into the convoy's midst.

There are things about battle that movies cannot teach you, and one of these things is the sheer noise. No one ever saw battle, that's true. But they always heard it. The fighting was personal, oh yes. The bazooka crews fired volley after volley, not to destroy the vehicles, but to wipe out the soldiers. Rune hovered over the battle on a fallen tree, hurling trunks as long as cars down on the soldiers and pulping their bodies as they whirled through the air.

Snow Raven's power was over ice, and he could bear himself aloft through a gust of wind. He never got the chance.

He was in the midst of hurling a set of icy missiles when he was seized in the monster's bladed jaws, run through with a hundred spears. Hookwolf shook him once, just like a dog with a toy, and he was tossed in pieces into the foliage. The Fox was bisected by a blow from Stormtiger's aerokinesis, spilling a feast of wretched guts onto the ground. There were others, their eardrums bursting and their minds reeling as Cricket screamed a melody of death, carving them apart with great sweeps of her scythe.

The ambush took less than two minutes to accomplish, yet for the attackers, it felt like hours. Hours in which they had been locked in mortal struggle with people they hardly even knew. Hookwolf and his oldest comrades alone were unshaken. They were more than used to murder.

"This was too easy Stormtiger." Hookwolf said, the blades shrinking down into his flesh.

"A lot easier than what's coming boss." his champion said, dragging a body out of the path of one of the wheels of the second truck. "Hitting the PRT."

"Well, it's still nice to give them a little surprise when we get there. I bet you we'll get all the way to the HQ before they figure out what's up."

"No..." gurgled Snow Raven, reaching up with his one remaining arm to throw an ice feather at Hookwolf.

"I'll admit, you fuckers take some killing." the berserker turned on one heel and lashed out with a single arm, tipped with the blade of a longsword. It severed the wounded hero's head from his shoulders, and it bounced away into the green. "But not too much."

 

[Praetor98]

The hijacked convoy had been stopped for barely five minutes, and was back on the road in barely one. The bodies were buried in the woods, and they'd resumed the course that the Boston men had been fixed upon. When they passed out of the forest belt and arrived at the city limits of Brockton Bay, Hookwolf called in their position, and Kaiser's radioman called out a last pre-battle check-in.

"Fenrir's Chosen, rocks up."

"Dragon Devils, all sections ready."

"War Born, my battalion is in position."

"Valkyrie Squadron is spooled up and we're ready to go."

"Commence Operation Achse."

Of course, Kid Win didn't know any of this. To him, it was just another day, another dollar on the job for the Protectorate keeping the small area where the PRT held sway safe. He was on the job with Vista, since the kid was getting antsy, and they'd just about completed their final circuit of the morning.

"Kid, why did you build that hoverboard?" asked Missy.

They were side by side, he with his hoverboard under one arm like a surfer, and she in her green and white armor, walking down the footpath next to the bombed-out beach.

"You remember that one game, Sonic Riders?"

"Nope."

"Eh, its that one game where Sonic and his buddies ride rocket-powered skateboards. I played once before I triggered. It just... stuck with me, that thought of how awesome it would be to fly and do tricks like that. When I got my powers, I kept on it. Now I can fly."

So few words to tell so much. The endless nights trying to focus enough to work out the design, and then to find the right materials to build it.

"Wanna have a ride back to the ranch on it?" he asked, brightening up.

Vista tried to be mature, so as not to be constantly treated as the baby of the team, but even she couldn't help a quiet squeal of joy at the thought of flying.

"Then lets rock!" he said, throwing his board into the air where it hovered just high enough to step onto.



"I always say, if you're gonna ride, ride in style!" he said, swinging her up in front of him.

And off they went, rocketing down Martin Street towards the junction with Lord. Kid Win was something of a dark horse among the people who cared about the Wards. Shadow Stalker was a good magnet for the 90s nostalgia crew, no one could say Clockblocker's name without laughing, Aegis was cool in an old-fashioned sort of way, but there was something about Kid Win's good old college try attitude that made him one of the more popular figures among the BB protectorate.

His coms buzzed in his headset.

"You got Kid." he said into his mic.

"Aegis here, we got a convoy coming in from Boston. They'll need an escort and you're the closest. Make sure nothing goes nuts." said the voice from the monitor. The team captain had monitor duty that day.

"Roger that Aegis, on our way." Kid had to shout over the rush of air as he swung the board towards the outskirts.

There was nothing like what Vista experienced that day as the city blurred under their feet. Nothing like the feeling of flying without an airplane.

"I wonder if this is how Glory feels like?" Vista wondered out loud.

"Probably." replied Kid Win as his goggles zoomed in on the convoy that had just arrived in the compact part of the town. "Hey Missy,"

"Yeah Chris?" Vista didn't like the sound of Kid Win's voice as he brought the board up sharply.

"I think we have a problem." he said, as his visor lenses zoomed in on the lead truck. Those were definitely scuff marks on the hood, and those weren't Snow Raven and Fantastic Fox in the drivers seats.

The convoy's been hijacked. Those four words were the next that Kid Win was going to say. He never got the chance.

A hatch on the roof of the lead truck opened, and someone, he couldn't tell who, fired an anti-tank rifle at him. The shell whizzed past his ear by an inch, and he spun the board around and hit the thrust.

"Not the convoy." Missy said, for once not resenting Kid having his hands on her shoulders to keep her on the board.

"Oh its the convoy alright." Kid said, shooting over his shoulder. "But they got themselves hijacked!"

"I saw it." Aegis said over the headset. "The wards are pulling together at the intersection of Lord and Broadway."

And just like that, the world went crazy.

XxX

In hardly ten minutes, the whole city of Brockton Bay had erupted in chaos. No one had ever experienced anything like the organized mayhem that started in two neighborhoods and began closing in on the PRT's headquarters near to the boardwalk and the Mayor's Office.

But in the basement of a particular apartment block in the neighborhood of The Towers, the chaos was of a different nature.

"And you're sure this thing can withstand anything?" Mikey said, as Fenja helped him strap the bulletproof vest onto his bare chest.

"Yes, it can." Kaiser said, sliding his helmet on. "I tested it myself."

For some reason, Michael Bainbridge thought, That's not very reassuring.

"Are you prepared for this?" asked Kaiser, gazing at him through his t-visor.

"I don't think anyone can be prepared to fight Armsmaster." he said, buttoning up his shirt.

"Nevertheless, I have a feeling he will give the city a good show."

Bainbridge regarded Kaiser... Max Anders with a calculating stare.

"Yes?" Anders finally demanded after the staring had gone on for some time.

"I'd like to ask you a question." Mikey said as he finished buttoning up his coat. "What's a member of the House of Anders doing running some penny-ante Neo-Nazi crew?"

Anders glanced at Fenja and Menja for a split second and said, "Leave us."

When they had gone, Kaiser took off his helmet. His eyes were blue, that was the first thing that stuck with Mikey, deep blue.

"For someone who isn't a century-old undead aristocrat, you certainly know more than ordinary people would try to find out about the German nobility."

"But you're not nobility, strictly speaking are you. Your descended from the American branch of the family, aren't you? The ones with the actual titles are still in Germany, right?"

Anders nodded in the affirmative. "Yes, my family got their start as middle-class burghers in Nuremberg, and just before the Revolution, Baron Joseph von Anders sent his son Franz to New York to open a branch of the family bank in America."

"You reaped handsome dividends by that decision, did you not." Mikey said, grinning in the manner of a fellow conspirator. "But we're getting off topic: how did you come to be in charge of these maniacs?"

"You can thank my father for that." said Anders. "He was Richard Wagner Anders, more famously known as Allfather."

He suspected that would be enough to set Bainbridge on the right path and he was correct.

Mikey chuckled evilly, "Richard Anders was the black sheep of the family wasn't he? Real psycho from what I heard. So, they were going to ship him out to Cali or someplace but the fact that he triggered made him too hot to handle."

"Precisely. And given the fact that they couldn't just kill him, the family decided to let him rove abroad as a criminal, since he would never submit to the authority of the army, and there wasn't even a Protectorate at the time."

"So they cut ties with him, more or less?" Mikey asked, taking the opportunity to peer into the world of the super rich that he'd only been peripherally aware of in California.

"Do you think families get rich by disowning every member who does something wrong? I'm still an Anders, though the rest of the family probably doesn't care to sit too closely to me at big dinners."

"And your wife is socially unrecognized. I can see why you'd be none-too-keen to talk about that sort of thing."

Anders was silent once again, refusing to talk about Kayden. He didn't care about her as such, but one thing that his father had hammered into him was that family sticks together, no matter what.

"And what about you?" he asked, turning the tables on the youth. "What's your background like?"

"I'm one of Europe's mongrels. I've got everything from Irish and Scotch to Czech and English in my blood." he raised an eyebrow, looking for some bristle on Anders' part. "If you were sincere about being a modern National Socialist, you'd hate me for just that."

"Hitler hated the Czechs." Anders observed, academically. "Along with Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and all the other Slavs. Crusader picked up some of that, but his dislike of Poles is too American to be properly German."

"I doubt he even has a great-grandfather from that country." Mikey said, scoffing. "I wasn't joking when I said you were lucky I wasn't a real SS man. If I really was part of some long-surviving Nazi holdout, and we had Capes under our control, the streets of Brockton would probably be stained red long since."

"You know, the Gesellschaft is just such a holdout." Anders said, mildly.

Mikey gave him a sideways glance. "Come on Max, surely you suspect it too. Surely you've done your own digging. In all likelihood, the Gesellschaft is nothing but a front for the CIA or BND or another intelligence group. My money's on the CIA. They were the ones who set up General Gehlen and his gang of cutthroats after all. It'd be just like them to keep some crooks on hand as a money pump for their off-the-books operations. Where did Krieg go to meet with the Gesellschaft anyway?"

"London." Anders said, feeling a pit starting to grow in his stomach. "Every two years, he'd go to meet with them in London."

Michael Bainbridge stood rooted to the spot, "Oh my God." he finally said, shaking his head in astonishment. "I was so hoping I was wrong."

Anders would have asked more, but Fenja and Menja took that moment to enter the room again. "It's time." Fenja said, gripping her sword. "The city's in chaos, and Armsmaster's almost landed."

"Good. Then the final players in the drama can take the stage." Anders said, putting his helmet back on. Then, turning to Mikey, he said, "I hope you can give a good final performance."

"If there's two things in this world that I pride myself on," said Mikey, laughing, "It's my acting skills and my singing."

 

[Praetor98]

How easy it is to destroy, Michael Bainbridge thought as he watched the city going up in flames around him, and how hard it will be to create something new afterwards. Their men comprised a ravening horde, marching by company down the streets. It was part advance, part parade as they tramped with banners held high and rifles clutched in their fists. They had begun their march from the Kehlstein House, where the whole thing had started in a piece of symbolic theater. Thousands of them now marched in their old hodgepodge of black and red clothes, or the red and green of the ABB. This was to be the last demonstration of the Empire and the ABB, but it would also serve to gel them together.

Bainbridge was front and center in his persona of Altburg-Ehrenstein, leading the column as it began to drift apart into company-sized assault forces heading for their individual objectives. Not long now, not long at all.

They had one hurdle to cross, one hurdle before things could go forward and the city could slide into 'chaos.' The BBPD had to be overcome for the dam to break. And they had set up a barricade a half-mile from the Mayor's offices on Lord Street. A hundred officers had bundled into their riot gear and rushed to the scene.

It must be said beforehand that these men were well-trained, with many of them having served abroad as part of police exchange programs. Unfortunately, the situation they were deployed in was practically the opposite of what they'd been trained for. They had been trained as an auxiliary military force, ensuring the populace of their district remained quiescent, which was completely unlike the situation they had been ordered into.

Their training had been designed around breaking up mostly peaceful assemblies, and cowing people who weren't interested in fighting back in the first place. The force advancing on their position was not only hostile, it was well armed.

So they stood there, unsure of what to do, watching Kaiser's private army marching toward them. Then the ranks parted to reveal Altburg-Ehrenstein, who made his way out to the no man's land between the two forces.

"Run avay Orpo." he boomed, "Zis ist not a fight you'll vwin."

Several dozen Empire men had already raced forward and leveled their rifles at the police. These men, by contrast, were raised in the gutter-warfare of Brockton where anything went, and wherever it went, you could bet that it would be painful.

They could see the police starting to waver as a shivering motion passed through the entire phalanx.

"Just stay out of our vay, Blue Police. Ve have no interest in your lives, nor in zat fool Christner. So I say again, go back to your headqvarters and you may carry ze tale of our mercy vith you back to your homes."

When that failed to have a visible effect, the Prince's lip curled in a haughty sneer.

"Safeties." he said, and fifty AKs clicked in unison.

If the men that faced the Empire had been like the police of twenty years ago, they might have acted differently. They might have crashed their shields against the ground, shouting some sort of defiance against the men who brought death and violence into their city. If their motto had still been 'To Protect and Serve,' they would have dared them to try and force their way through. Instead, they turned their backs and ran.

No-one had expected this, least of all Bainbridge, but he saw how the men's hands tightened on their rifles, and their mouths contorted into snarls of fury at the prospect that bloodshed would be denied them. They were going to shoot, he knew it, and if he wanted them to follow his orders, he'd have to tell them before they took matters into their own hands. And he'd spent too much time in the city to have much sympathy for the police.

"Open fire!" he shouted, and the men were eager to obey. Don't think about it, he thought, as he watched men start to fall. He folded one arm under his cape to hide the fact that it had begun to tremble.

As it turned out, when push came to shove, there were a few who were willing to protect their fellow officers' lives, emplacing themselves and their riot shields as barriers between their colleagues and the Empire. But this was too little and too late for it to matter in any meaningful way. The paramilitary soldiers charged forward, forgetting all discipline and firing their rifles from the hip.

"Forward, to the protectorate! Kill everyone you find within!" Altburg-Ehrenstein roared, and the reality of the situation finally dawned on Bainbridge. He'd caused this. He had caused the deaths of more than a dozen men, and hundreds more were certain to die as the battle unfolded. That revelation might have been bourn were it not for the bullets whizzing past his ears. In that moment, for a few brief hours in his life, Michael Bainbridge ceased to exist. In his place stood Maximillian von Altburg-Ehrenstein, at last alive as Bainbridge had pretended he was.


XxX

"Director," the synthetic voice said, out of Director Piggot's comms, "A cursory evaluation of Axis capabilities indicates a distinct tactical deficiency."

"In other words, Dragon?" she groaned. Piggot remembered that movie. Gavin had loved it at first and cried when Optimus Prime bit the dust.

"We're outnumbered!" Assault shouted as he tossed a car towards a black-clad squad of Empire soldiers.

There were no words for the chaos that was rampaging its way across the city. The Axis was everywhere!

There were firefights in the docks and in downtown as scattered knots of policemen and the various mercenary forces clashed with soldiers of the Empire and the ABB.

Yet despite all the noise and combat, the damage would be found to be small. Mysteriously small when you came to think about it. When you thought about all the gas stations, oil stores and gun caches that could have been hit by rockets, tinker-tech rifles, or even stray hand grenades purely by chance, they'd really managed to frighten everyone without harming the city. Not that many people thought about this in the weeks after the battle, while the heroes were getting medals and commendations, and Armsmaster was doing his best impression of a statue as he was named as an honorary Righteous Among the Nations.

At the moment of course, no one could tell, and no one was taking any chances. Hundreds of people were fighting and undoubtedly dying as the day wore on. But as the sun began to set, a new force entered the fray. A small boat had put off from the Rig in the middle of the Bay, carrying Armsmaster and the senior members of the Northeast Protectorate, kept on the rig until this moment, getting their gear together and organizing the counterattack.

XxX

Kid Win found himself on the roofs, firing pistols, laser rifles and even the alternator cannon that he'd been developing on the sly. Around every corner were men in the black and red of the Empire, clutching assault rifles and shooting with every intent to kill. He put his collapsible combat blade through the mouth of a charging soldier, and he scorched another into blackened ruin. He killed a reaver of the ABB, pumping three shots into his exposed chest and then grinding down his bayonet into the man's ruined throat.

Something slammed into Chris's shoulder with the kinetic power of a sledgehammer. It spun him round, throwing him off balance. Through the haze that had filtered through his visor, he could barely make out what looked like a whole squad of Axis gangsters. One of them carried a heavy-bore grenade launcher, which Chris now realized had been the weapon that knocked him down, though not strong enough to penetrate his armor, as it had not been a direct hit, which would have surely killed him.

The gangsters bore down on him, eager for the kill, but as they passed through the shadow of a projecting stair enclosure, they collapsed in rapid succession, before even one could scream or cry out.

Stalker was the reason. Her form bled out of the shadow, a bloody ka-bar clutched in one hand. He had never been so glad to see anyone in his life.

"Get up Chris. We gotta rendezvous back at headquarters. The PRT's getting ready for a counter offensive!" she shouted over the ringing in his ears.

She didn't help him up. But she did keep watch while he got himself together, which was enough for Chris. Her crossbow had been lost in the earliest fighting, and she had taken an M16 off the corpse of one of the ABB gangers she had killed. For Sophia, this day was proving to be a revelation. She was surrounded by death, and a fair amount of it had been dealt by her personally.

"Come on!" she shouted at Chris, who was busy getting his hoverboard back in working order.

He gunned the engines, and took off towards HQ while Sophia faded into the shadows. By the time they arrived, the main body of the Axis had broken through their barricades. Altburg-Ehrenstein was first through the breech, his face a mask of fury as he strode inexorably forward. Gone was any pretense at civilization, his voice nearly broken by the throaty, wrathful roars that tore out of his mouth.



The sound of jets heralded the turning of the tide. Armsmaster's party had made their way from the rig, fighting off the helicopters sent to block them. And he arrived with all the grace of the gods of style. He leapt off his motorcycle, and laid down the squad that was closest with scything blows from his halberd. The fighting seemed to slow, and then stop, as he shouted, "Enough!"

The Bloody Prince rotated on his heel as though mounted on a turntable.

"You." he growled.

"So, you decided to strike. I never doubted that you would." said Colin, the PRT congregating behind him. "Why have you come here?"

"The Empire promised me a worthwhile death. I have walked this base earth long enough. It is time for me to finally rest."

The ancient German raised his blade in a coldly formal salute, and charged.

Kaiser watched in astonishment. The pair of them, both Armsmaster and the Bloody Prince, were beyond a blur, into something liquid and unreal. They parried, blocked, disengaged and riposted with a savage focused grace. Was this all part of the show? Or was there something deeper at work? He'd done some background checks on the boy, who had never displayed a great aptitude for fencing. But no, this wasn't mere skill. The way Bainbridge fought held the answer.

Something had snapped in his mind, and he fought with fury and passion instead of rationality and calculation. Some kind of psychotic break must have occurred as the battle raged through the day, and Michael Bainbridge had been subsumed by the personality of the General. Armsmaster was the better fighter, of that there was no doubt, beating his opponent's guard several times, for Bainbridge fought with almost no guard at all. It was as if he fought as the old monster would have fought when he chose to make his last stand. He attacked without thought for himself, to steal life as it had been stolen.

It ended, suddenly, like a jolt. Armsmaster's heavier weapon snapped Altburg-Ehrenstein's elegant rapier and drove in where his heart should have been.

So passed Maximillian, Prince von Altburg-Ehrenstein. Until a week ago, he didn't exist. Yet in the brief time he walked the earth, he had transformed the situation in Brockton Bay to a degree that no one would have thought possible.



And Maximillian, as he looked up into the heavens for the final time, the Bloody Prince knew that he had been deceived not just today, but for many, many years. That it was never for National Socialism to conquer Europe. That they had never been the Lords of the Earth. They had been only a tool.

The whole history of that movement—all their victories, all their atrocities, all their dogma, all their principles and their sacrifices, everything they had done, everyone they had killed, everything they had been, all of Hitler's dreams and grand vision for the Thousand Year Reich and the world they would dominate—had been only a pathetic sham, because all of them, all of him, add up only to this.

He has existed only for this.

This.

To clear the wake of forces so much greater and terrible.

It was the first time Michael Bainbridge had taken part in such an event, but not, he knows, the first time in history.

Then the blade in his chest withdraws like a sewing needle.

And all of the Bloody Prince becomes nothing at all.

 

[Praetor98]

Armsmaster's blow had not been a gentle one. It had driven the air from Bainbridge's lungs and he had fainted when he hit the ground. So he had no idea where he was when he awoke a day later.

He gasped when consciousness returned, sucking oxygen into abused lungs, and blinking through the haze in his eyes.

"He is awake." said a voice that seemed both nearby and far away.

"Where am I?" Bainbridge managed to ask.

"The fearless leader returns." said a sardonic feminine voice which he had become familiar with.

"Lisa?" he was able to force out.

"Yes indeed." Lisa said, leaping onto the hospital bed.

"Have I already said 'where am I?'"

"Yup."

"Did I get an answer?"

It was another person who answered. His voice was deeper, confident and ruthless. "You're in the Anders' suite in the Hotel Continental. That should give you some idea of the importance your collaborators place on your life."

Another man had evidently joined them, and Bainbridge managed to open his eyes. The rest of Lisa's circle were all in the small nook that served as a hospital room. Lisa's friends were all either his age or younger. This one was not. He was even taller than Brian Laborn, and thin to the point of near emaciation. Apart from that, Mikey could deduce very little since his face and form was completely concealed by a black bodysuit. It didn't even have eyeholes.

Whoever he was, the whole crew was submissive, even Rachel, who was ordinarily only willing to consent, and even that was reluctant. With this man, he shoulders were hunched and she avoided the blank spot of the man's mask where his eyes should have been.

"So who are you supposed to be?"

The man chuckled and reached for a chair.

"Oh no you don't. Capes don't give out their names to anyone. You should know that by now."

Mikey strained to sit up and said, "Aaargh."

The new arrival held up a hand. "Don't strain yourself. Armsmaster wasn't trying to kill you, but he managed to hit your sternum quite badly. As for my identity, you can call me Coil."

Now that he had given his name, Bainbridge did know the man.

"You're not the sort to get involved over someone like me."

"Technically speaking, I was involved from the moment you met Tattletale." said Coil. Noting Bainbridge's puzzlement, he continued, "You wondered how Lisa knew to check your apartment? She heard about your handiwork in the Kehlstein House and deduced fairly quickly that there was no such person as Max von Altburg-Ehrenstein, and since I've had her doing odd jobs for me this past month or so, she felt it wise to check with me about just who you were."

"How did you do it?" Mikey asked, interested despite himself. "Some kind of facial recognition software? Were there cameras in there I missed?"

"No actually." Coil said, with a self-satisfied tone of voice, "I simply checked any transactions for an SS uniform and cape that had been made out of the city. Just tell me, why did you use your own debit card, instead of getting a new one under another name?"

Ignoring the implication that Coil could either hack into a major bank himself or had people working for him who could, Mikey answered, "I was beneath suspicion. They would never have looked for me in a building scarcely a block from the scene of the crime."

"And so they didn't. All I had to do was send Lisa to your address, she asked some leading questions, and I had my confirmation."

"So why didn't you do anything?"

"Why would I?" Coil asked, rather like a schoolmaster.

Bainbridge had to think about this. "You saw me as being more useful as a wildcard than under your direct control."

"Let's face it, you managed to do more to this city in one night with no plan of your own aside from some small entertainment than I did in five years."

"So you decided to pursue a policy of benevolent neglect? Then why did Lisa and her friends get involved?"

This question was actually fielded by Lisa herself. "That part was all me." she said, giggling self consciously and rubbing her arm. "I thought it would be fun."

"And you can bet that we're never going to letcha live it down." grumbled Brian, but with a smile on his face. "And technically we're called the Undersiders."

"I suppose I have just the one more question for you Lisa. How did you know there was no such person as Altburg-Ehrenstein?"

Lisa grinned her Cheshire cat's grin and said, "I looked up the name and found the short story on the internet. You were well-read enough to pick a fairly obscure Lovecraft story, but wouldn't you know, the power of the internet."

Coil now picked up the theme. "But you took pains to make it convincing. More than one or two noblemen threw their lot with the Nazis and even rose to high office in the Brownshirts and the SS. And by and large, they escaped the noose or the jail cell after the war. Nothing in the Bloody Prince's history was implausible, simply fictional in his case.

"So what are you going to do, now that your intrigues have run their course? Altburg-Ehrenstein is dead, and both the Empire and the ABB are 'dissolved.'"

Bainbridge lay back in his bed and put a hand to his chin.

"Lisa was undoubtedly eavesdropping when I talked to Armsmaster, Lung and Kaiser. Which means you know everything I said to them. But that's not what you want to know, is it?"

Coil nodded, and made a noise that was vaguely approving. "Perceptive. Yes, I want to know whether you're willing to continue now you know how the game is played. You know who Kaiser is connected with, and who the Gesselschaft likely is. You also know by now that these people have spilled enough blood to fill an ocean. Are you sure you want to face people like them?"

"I disliked what they did objectively, and I hate it all the more now I've had to be involved. I'm that rarest of men, Mister Coil; I'd actually like to do some good."

"Plenty of people would like to do some good." Coil rebutted, "But you've just seen the reason why so few actually make the attempt. The Anders family isn't the only rich financial dynasty out there, there are others who are even wealthier and more ruthless. If you would set yourself in opposition to them, I'd like to know why."

For the first time, Michael found himself scowling. "I said I hated what I did yesterday. There's gotta be at least a thousand people who are dead or got hurt thanks to me. But the Krupp von Bohlens and the Schroeders? What happened to them aside from a slap on the wrist? Every last one of them should have been shot or gotten the rope for what they did. And that's not even getting into their collaborators abroad. Did they turn themselves in? Were they haunted by the people they killed to the day they died? Or was it just another day at the office?"

Coil and the rest were silent for a long while, before the masked man said, very carefully, "I think you know the answer to that question already."

"Then you also know the answer to your own. They carry on their games of shadows as if the world hasn't changed. It's time someone gave them a wakeup call."

Coil laughed, harshly, like the bark of a dog. "And you think you're going to do it? All by yourself?"

"Was George Washington alone?" he asked, rhetorically.

Coil looked as though he were going to argue further, but he didn't. Instead he sat back in his chair, and nodded his head.

"Very well, then you know who you will have to court?"

"These oligarchs have always been a divided and cutthroat gang." Bainbridge said, and that was enough for both of them.

There was a fresh pounding at the door. The unmistakable growl of Brad Meadows snarled, "You'd better be finished in there Coil! The boss wants a word."

"It seems your time is in considerable demand." Coil said, the smile in his voice even more obvious. Then to the terminally bad-tempered Hookwolf, he said, "Come in."

The door was opened by a flunky, and Meadows stalked in followed by Anders.

"Being invited into my own apartment," the erstwhile Neo-Nazi boss said sarcastically, "What a fun week this has been."

"If its any consolation, I'd have never ordered that uniform if I had it to do over." Bainbridge said, and pushed himself up on his elbows to shake the hand of the man whose alter ego had struck terror across the Bay. "Well, we did it."

"Your plan worked as advertised. I'll give you that much. There's practically dancing in the streets." Anders said, taking a chair immediately vacated by Alec. "I must admit, it was wearying to play the villain for so long."

Bainbridge had to resist the urge to laugh, which was no easy feat. "Who says you don't have a sense of humor, Kaiser?"

Max Anders had the grace to look somewhat sheepish, "I suppose I always was more of an Anders than a National Socialist."

"Are the two so removed?" Bainbridge made to get out of the bed, before another shock of pain in his chest reminded him of the essential bad judgement of this decision. "You said there was dancing in the streets?" he asked so as to distract from his current state of disrepair.

"Oh yes." Anders chuckled. "The way people are acting, you might imagine the Endbringers had just been killed."

He grabbed a remote and turned on a 32' television mounted in an alcove.

"-wild celebration in Brockton-"

"-Uber and Leet might be pardoned thanks-"

"-Armsmaster being considered for-"

And on and on it went. News crews were already on the scene, showing a city more happy than any other time Bainbridge could remember. New Englanders in general and the people of Vermont and New Hampshire in particular were dour to the point of stoicism. And the people of Brockton Bay were the sort who learned cynicism as a survival instinct.

Except that right now, the populace was doing their best to recreate the V-Day celebrations. Couples kissed and cheered, and there was talk of a victory parade and medals for the brave heroes who had defeated the last gasp of Nazism. But the germ of celebration was not wholly contagious. Nestled in among the general euphoria were declarations from police spokespersons that the responsible parties would be found and imprisoned. That the BPD had been made a joke of was obvious, but then they had always been somewhat of a joke, even among their friends.

But they couldn't abide their poor showing being plastered all over the internet. When Bainbridge thought about it, it was only natural. They never resented a slap in the face when it came from above, and never forgave it when it came from below.

Alec looked at some of the policemen being interviewed. The police chief was a particular conundrum for him. He seemed at once embarrassed and angry.

"What's with Chief Cromwell?" he asked, since Anders had chosen to linger on that station. "Somebody steal his donuts?"

Bainbridge said, "In a way, we did." Then he looked to Coil, "You want to explain, or should I? You're their boss."

"I think I'll take this one. Bainbridge's alliance caught the networks napping. It's all they can do to report on it, and wait for things to die down before they try to spin the situation. And in the meantime, have you noticed PHO? They're on fire right now about what the forums are calling the Lord Street Races."

"You mean the coppers who skedaddled a few blocks from the Kehlstein House?" asked Grue, who was there as Bainbridge's bodyguard and smokescreen.

"Yes indeed. This little scheme embarrassed them badly, and people can see it. I wouldn't be surprised if some of the companies start pulling the videos. Unfortunately for them, the damage is done, and people are beginning to wonder about just how dangerous the police really are."

"So they're gonna a little hot under the collar for a while." Alec said, hunched forwards and rubbing his chin, "That should make 'em popular with the locals."

"You have no idea." They couldn't see the grin, but they could hear it in Coil's voice.

Bainbridge shivered, "Couldn't you tone down the slimy?"

"Please, who hasn't dreamed of being a Bond villain every once in a while?" Coil asked.

"So what now?" Meadows grunted. "You said I'd still be cracking heads, I'm waiting for the part where I come in."

Bainbridge felt solid enough to begin standing. "The political party has to be incorporated first, but you'll be in high demand, especially for the next step in the plan."

Meadows quirked an eyebrow. "I'm listening."

"If we're going to come to political power, we will have to follow the route of the old People's Party in the 1890s. We need to find ways to make common cause with, and eventually absorb the other political organizations out of power. We need to approach them all, no matter who they are. As for the fringe forces of both right and left, their willingness to fight would be useful, but their ideologies put them at cross-purposes, and this is where you come into play, Mister Meadows. And never forget, we're going to be elected legally, and hew to the spirit of the people. If we want power in America, we must embody it.

"Starting with that project that Mister Anders set up a few days ago. The graveyard still hasn't been cleared out, and the dockworkers don't have the manpower to do it themselves. It'll be good PR for us at any rate."

Bainbridge trailed off as he looked at Coil. "You wouldn't be here unless you had some plan of your own. What's your pitch?"

"Kaiser is a decent manipulator. But neither he nor Meadows are truly skilled in the shadow warfare that I've become a master at. You're going to need someone who is. Furthermore, you will see that my power is most pertinent to the success of a political movement."

Bainbridge thought about this, it was all happening too fast. Finally, he said, "If you do work with us, I can't have anyone know that you do."

Coil nodded, "How did he say it in that movie? I did not say this, I am not here."

"Have a wonderful day."