Post by redsycorax on Nov 4, 2019 4:27:59 GMT
On many alternate Earths, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan won the Second World War. Earth-110 is one such "Naziworld". On it, Nazi Germany was able to subvert the British Union of Fascists and enable Oswald Mosley's rise to power after a coup d'etat. As a consequence, isolationism gained the upper hand in the United States and Franklin Delano Roosevelt was defeated in the 1940 US election. The isolationist Republican President Burton K.Wheeler fell increasingly under the influence of entryists within the Republican Congressional caucus and ended funding to the Manhattan Project. As well as that, Nazi Germany secured enough U-235 to provide sufficient critical mass for nuclear weapons. In October 1944, Stalingrad and Moscow were subjected to nuclear attack, slaughtering an estimated
nine million people in all and decapitating the government and armed forces of the USSR. Imperial Japan stayed out of the Second World War in this timeline, and took advantage of the retrenchment of military expenditure during the fifties to gradually extend its Co-Prosperity Sphere across Eastern Asia until it could undertake open warfare against the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand in 1956. In 1958, Nazi Germany launched a series of nuclear attacks on Canada and the United States, destroying Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Earth-110 was devoid of metahumans until the early sixties. One day, Heinrich Arendt was flying an experimental supersonic jet fighter across the Atlantic when an unexplained electromagnetic anomaly penetrated his aircraft and Arendt's very molecular biology. As a consquence, Sturmwulke was born- a Nazi supersoldier with electromagnetic powers, metahuman strength, invulnerability, metaspeed and flight. Shortly after, the anomaly also engulfed a young female orphan, Isla Fuchs, who became Feuerfuchs, his companion in battle.
[Note: Given that the use of English was suppressed on Earth-110 from 1960 onward, the following story is translated from an original German source]
Blitzkrieg und Feuerfuchs became Earth-110's primary metahuman duo. On other worlds, they would have been considered "heroes," but the Duo of Destiny (Duo des Schecksals) were incompatible with such ideals. True, they had a Rogues Gallery (scherken galerie) , although it consisted primarily of political criminals such as Der Puritaner, a merciless religious fanatic of extraordinary intelligence; Adlerklaue (Eagleclaw), an airborne predator committed to the fall of the Nazi-occupied American Reichsprotekteraat; the metahuman Proletarier Stakhanov, a surviving Soviet metahuman who made it to the United States before it fell to Nazism, Furchsturmer ("Fearstriker"- created by a metahuman biochemical experiment) and Mordfreheit (Murder Liberty), an alien metahuman aligned with the resistance.
In the Sturmhohle (Stormcave) in Gotischestadt, Sturmwulke and Feuerfuchs, in their identities as retired Olympian athlete Heinrich Arendt and his secretary, Leisl Kant, sat monitoring the military Schwartzesnetz computer mediated communication network for signs of dissident activity. Abruptly, the Stormlight flashed and Fuhrer Goebbels image appeared on the private direct satellite channel:
"Heil Goebbels!" chorused the Duo Des Schecksals as their hands rose forward in the customary salute to the Reich's third fuhrer.
"Heil. Well, my couple of pratorianerwachen, I have a special task for you. You are no doubt aware of the new discoveries in Deutsche Antarktis?"
Sturmwolke nodded his head: "Only what we have heard, Mein Fuhrer. Which is that there is some kind of alien wunderwaffe (superweapon) down there."
"It is ein ausserirdische biologische gefahr (alien biohazard), mein freund."
Feuerfuchs swallowed: Akin to the ausserirdische superschurke Mordfreiheit, Fuhrer?"
"Nein, Fraulein Fuchs. While it is ein ausserirdische, like the accursed verstecktewelter Mordfreheit, it does not originate from her homeworld Versteckt. Indeed, we have reason to believe that this ausserirdische is billions of years older, and may have arrived on ancient Earth before life itself arose from the primordial oceans."
"Mein Fuhrer, can we harness such an unknowable entity?"
"We believe that the Higashiajia Kyoei-Ken (Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere) may have unearthed a similar entity far beneath the ice of Nihon nyankyokutiririko (Japanese Antarctica)."
"This sounds like a new and frightening arms race, mein fuhrer." And it was true. Ever since the cessation of hostilities in the Third World War in 1958, the Third Reich and Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere had faced one another across their respective flashpoint borderlands- Sibirien, the Chile/Argentine border, the Indian/Burmese border and on the partitioned seventh continent. For that six decade span, the scope of the arms race between the two superpowers had varied from nuclear weapons (atom to hydrogen to neutron to cobalt bombs), to antimatter on the partitioned Moon and latterly, to... this, apparently. Could it even provide insurance against Mordfreheit? Feuerfuchs wondered at what prodigious strength that would require.
Some distance above, Mordfreheit brushed her hair back and looked down at the globe. It had looked so innocent when she had arrived here, decades ago. But that was when she was a child herself. She turned as Proletarier Stakhanovite walked wearily out of the hospital section:
"Stak? How's Furchsturmer?"
"Not good, I'm afraid. Feuerfuchs got him good when they fought last time, with those energy abilities of hers before he could use his empathic powers against her. He's recovering, but it'll be a while before he can operate in the field again."
"What do you think the Ratzis and HKK are up to, over in Antarctica?"
"There are rumours about an alien being buried down there." Mordfreheit never dared tell the others what her x-ray and telescopic vision really saw in the turmoil, miles beneath Antarctica's icy surface. Verstecktian mythology had told of it, the antithesis of bright Rao, Versteckt's crimson sun, believed to be a work of dark fantasy from her homeworld's primordial past- Quotilni the All Slayer, awaiting the universe in its furthermost future, consuming all matter in its maw. Was Quotilni what she saw down there? If so, was not only her adopted Erde but also the whole of this universe doomed?
As the transearth hypertrain shot through the subterranean reaches of their world, Sturmwolke had noticed something about his companion: "Isla? You seem pensive. What could go wrong? We are merely going to a scientific base so that we can inspect the remains of an alien lifeform beneath German Antarktis."
"It may not be that simple, Heinrich. There are myths and legends about an ancient entity that slumbers in that area of the world. At some point in the indeterminate future, it is said that it will arise to raven and slay all in its path."
"Children's horror myths. Popular cultural trash."
"But what if those myths had some basis in fact, Heinrich?"
"Come now, Isla. You and I are elite soldiers. We have fought our share of metahuman and alien threats. If this situation turns ugly, it will be nothing so uncanny that our abilities cannot surmount."
"You're right. I'm worried about nothing." So why do I suspect that neither of us will return from this encounter and that we will perish in mortal combat in the frozen entrails of subterranean German Antarctica?
High above, Mordfreheit faced Der Puritaner and Adlerklaue as they joined Proletarier and herself:
"Are we all ready?"
"I have the glaive here, sharpened to diamond point. We will avenge their unrighteousness this day, Lady Kara."
"This has perverted us, all of us. Your wife, when your starship was shot down when it entered Earth orbit, Karl. Your family, before they were mown by Sturmwolke and Feuerfuchs in that alleyway in Gotischestadt because they were providing medical supplies to the Maquis, Albert. The obscene medical experiment that activated Nataniel's empathic fearstriking powers. And poor Kal. Abducted and experimented upon, enabling the Ratzis to make unprecedented technological leaps and capture and subdue this world."
"It has been a privilege serving alongside you all these years, Kara. You do not deserve that libellous name with which the Nazis designate you- "Murderer of Liberty" indeed!"
Kara closed her eyes: "Nice try, Stak. The problem is, I still see the corpses and hear the screams from the Nazi guards and baseline soldiers whose lives I had to take."
"Rescuing the rest of us, and innocent third parties, over and over again. Because of you, Brainiak was able to relocate the lost city of Hierusalem far away from this world, where the last survivors of Judaism are safe at last from the Nazi monsters that slaughtered seventeen million of their culture. The Nazis will never find them thousands of light years away from this blighted world of ours."
"That doesn't change the fact that I've killed, over and over again."
"And that is what distinguishes us from the fascisti, Lady Kara. You act only out of last resort and you are noble and humane a person enough to repent of the evil that was done. Even if the Nazi servitors have shown no such mercy to their victims. In a less fallen world, you would not have to do this. Christ's mercy be upon you, child."
"It's this world. It taints and contaminates everything it touches. It's like decay or entropy or death."
And then they were gone. From the shadows, a white porcelain skinned figure stepped, in a black tanktop singlet, black jeans and boots, wearing a silver ankh around her neck. She gazed sorrowfully at the Scherken Galerie as they set out to their final encounter. She smoothed a tear from her eyes and awaited the moment that she would be needed, only a matter of hours from now, in the stygian wastes of subterranean Deutsch Antarktis. This world had only a little longer to live.
And then the proceedings started to reveal a funereal march.
Sturmwolke: Ich habe viel getan
Gott weiß, ich habe es versucht
Um die Wahrheit zu finden
Ich habe sogar gelogen
Aber alles was ich weiß
Ist unten in Ich
Echo: ...bluntingen...
Feuerfuchs: Und Superhelden
Komm zum Fest
Das Fleisch schmecken
Noch nicht verstorben
Und alles was ich weiß
Ist immer noch das Biest
Ist immer noch das tier füttert
Sturmwolke blinked: "Was ist das? I felt as if I was under an enchantment. As if that Furchsturmer had made his mutated manipulation of our emotions once more. But you struck him down, Isla. I saw it happen. Your holy fire blanketed his limbs, reduced him to a charred cadaver."
"It was almost like an incantation, Heinrich. You're right. As if we were ciphers, mere placeholders in some inexorable prescripted passion play, winding down toward the inevitable."
"Turn and face us, you Ratzi filth!"
Sturmwolke and Feuerfuchs did so: "How did you Scherken scum get in here? Even with Mordfreheit's prodigious abilities and Stakhanovite's mutated metal flesh, you cannot have pierced this fastness... let alone known about it."
"Can't you work it out, Arendt? It's the monster, lurking behind that impenetrable alien metal barrier. It's been manipulating all this, from the time it triggered the electromagnetic storms that gave you and Fraulein Fuchs your energy based powers, accelerated this world's technological development and now it's finally awakening. It's all been leading to this- an apocalyptic ending. You're nothing more than cannon fodder to it, despite all your vaunted abilities and your delusions about service to your Reich and its leadership. Your Fuhrer Goebbels was the first to fall, when he visited this scientific installation last year. Since then, his personality and self have been extinct. He's been the puppet of that obscenity."
"You lie, alien witch!"
"Still delusional to the last, Sturmwolke. What about you, Feuerfuchs? Of the two of you, you always struck me as the more intelligent and questioning one."
"I will not bend or break. This will help us end your threat forever, insure world peace at long last. Then all the innocent soldiers that you have slaughtered will have died for something."
"If only you knew, fraulein." Proletarier Stakhanovite muttered.
"God forgive us all." Der Puritaner said, raising his glaive.
And with that, battle was joined. Denying what Mordfreheit said and intent on permanently neutralising what he perceived to be a murderous threat and political criminal that endangered the false peace and security of his hallowed Third Reich, Sturmwolke broke from his companion and threw himself at Mordfreheit, who threw off his clumsy attempt at restraint effortlessly. She rose in the air, grappling with him as he sought to best her, raising the intensity of his electromagnetic abilities beyond any capacity known on Earth. Had he not been under the influence of the alien beast beyond the shelter of the barrier, writhing below, he might have been able to question what had shaped this conflict. But then, perhaps not, for that would have required a capacity for moral self-scrutiny and restraint that was beyond the limits of Heinrich Arendt, even in his enhanced metahuman form.
"Fraulein Fuchs. You are better than that pompous Stormbringer trying to kill our comrade above us. Surely you can see..."
"If it is any consolation, Stakhanovite, I will be sorrowful at your passing. Even if I do not share your ideals, you have been worthy opponents."
"What's keeping you alongside him? I can see the pain and doubt within you."
"No. No, I am a loyal daughter of the Third Reich. I..."
"You were an orphan. Sturmwolke raised you and gave you love, is that it?"
"Terrorists murdered my parents!" All the pain from that long suppressed memory burst out and the resultant energies flung Stakhanovite back as Feuerfuchs' pulsations grew in intensity and power. Stakhanovite gave one last, blood-curdling scream and Der Puritaner cried out at the sight of his former comrade, raising his glaive above his head to strike home. But he never got the chance as Feuerfuchs wheeled around and blanketed his body with peak strength lightning. His eyes bulged and his ears smoked, before he staggered on his feet, and shambled forward for an instant, but only with the illusion of motion as he fought death. But then mortality triumphed and he fell unseeing and unfeeling to the ground, releasing his glaive as it spun away from him.
But then Feuerfuchs felt as if her head was splitting. She was reliving the dark day when the Partisans had slaughtered her parents and family. But...what was this? Why couldn't she see her parents faces? Why were their clothes so hazy? Why was everything out of focus? Why couldn't she see the insignia on the Partisan uniforms? Why...did it feel so unconvincing? Why...unless this was no more substantive than a hologram?
And then it hit her.
It hadn't been the Partisans who had butchered her parents, brother and sister. It had been the Reich. The Reich had taken her, brainwashed her and replicated the experiment that had empowered Sturmwolke. And Sturmwolke had known this, all this time- unquestioning tool of the despotism that he was. Suddenly, she knew what she had to do. Despite the thundering in her head as Quotilni saw that she had thrown off his control and sought to subdue her again, she fought with the abilities that the monstrosity unseen had gifted her with. In an instant of searing light and power, a blinding arc of light connected her and Sturmwolke. He screamed as he was silhouetted against the dome that occluded the ancient alien predator from sight. Then, like a prodigal, fallen angel, he started to spiral out of the firmament, toward the ground below. Forgetting the enmity that had once parted them, Mordfreheit swept downward and caught him, but then realised that it was useless, that he was already dead. Feuerfuchs had slumped, spent, as Mordfreheit alighted next to her:
"Thank you."
"Freheit...I am...sorry...sorry that I did not have the strength to see clearly... long before this."
"Duty and love bound you, Isla. I'm so sorry you had to do that."
"Everything I served was a lie."
"But in the end, you saw through that lie and freed this world."
"No...you will have to do that, Freheit. There is something unholy and pulsating and wholly evil beyond that shield, Kara. It has been allowed to pervert and manipulate this world for too long."
"I'll take care of it."
"It is from beyond our space and time, Kara. It may even be able to kill you."
"After everything it's done to this world, after the millions that it's slaughtered and terrorised over the decades, my sacrifice will be meaningful it finally liberates Erde from it once and for all. I'm ready to die, Isla. I'm not afraid of it." But Isla could no longer hear her. Placing the fallen warrior down gently, Kara Zor-El...Freheit, Liberty... clenched her fists as she let grief and rage fill her. Grief for all her fallen comrades, for this brave and valiant woman who had just made the final sacrifice, and for the countless millions whose death agonies and suffering had fed the obscenity beneath the dome. She arose in the air, rising to a point above the roiling creature as it shrieked his rage and fear. Then she began to speed downward.
In Berlin, Fuhrer Goebbels lay sightless on the floor of the Reichskanzellerie, his brain disintegrated and his life extinguished in the cosmic drama unfolding its final act thousands of miles away in the Antarctic. In Tokyo, the members of the War Cabinet were similarly sprawled in the palace chamber they occupied. And in concentration camps across the wounded and scarred planet, gates swung open for the first time in decades of wanton slaughter and carnage. And suddenly, across the world, there was a deafening scream of bewilderment, anxiety, fear, rage and unaccustomed impotence as Quotilni the All-Slayer was slain itself. But not at the fists of Kara Zor-El ...Freiheit, Liberty... and not by her sacrifice. For Quotilni had suddenly encountered its own nemesis, the emblem and icon of what it dreaded most in the multiverse... Qu'uamt'ai. Oblivion. Death. And then there was a deafening roar of wings.
And Freheit pierced the skin of the dome as if it were a mere soap bubble. Around her, Earth-110 awoke in sudden rage and fury as it found itself liberated from long decades of oppression, genocide and totalitarian mindlessness. As she heard the sounds of awakening freedom and liberty throwing off its chains, Kara Zor-El gazed around her, then decided to play her part in the escalating contest for liberty and justice as her adopted world sundered its chains. She accelerated away from the mausoleum, ready to play her part.
Feuerfuchs wondered why she looked so broken and tiny there on the ground. Then the blackhaired, whiteskinned woman appeared from the shadows: "Frau Mord. Death."
"Thank you, Isla. For a moment I was worried that I'd have to tend to the whole two billion surviving humans on this world. But you sacrificed yourself and enabled me to get to it before Kara Zor-El had to throw away her life amongst all those others.'
"Where's Heinrich? If he died too, shouldn't his soul be here?"
"Sturmwolke went before you, Isla. I'm afraid his destination won't be a convivial one. Unlike yours."
"Do I deserve any better? Der Puritaner, Proletarier Stakhanovite, all those others I've killed since I first became Sturmwolke's partner in crime and genocide."
"You freed this world, Isla. You deserve a chance at redemption."
"What happens now, Frau Mord?"
"Isla? Take my hand, honey..." And once again, there was the sound of wings, but this time, gentler and kinder ones. Then the chamber was empty and silent.
THE END
nine million people in all and decapitating the government and armed forces of the USSR. Imperial Japan stayed out of the Second World War in this timeline, and took advantage of the retrenchment of military expenditure during the fifties to gradually extend its Co-Prosperity Sphere across Eastern Asia until it could undertake open warfare against the Philippines, Australia and New Zealand in 1956. In 1958, Nazi Germany launched a series of nuclear attacks on Canada and the United States, destroying Washington, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Earth-110 was devoid of metahumans until the early sixties. One day, Heinrich Arendt was flying an experimental supersonic jet fighter across the Atlantic when an unexplained electromagnetic anomaly penetrated his aircraft and Arendt's very molecular biology. As a consquence, Sturmwulke was born- a Nazi supersoldier with electromagnetic powers, metahuman strength, invulnerability, metaspeed and flight. Shortly after, the anomaly also engulfed a young female orphan, Isla Fuchs, who became Feuerfuchs, his companion in battle.
[Note: Given that the use of English was suppressed on Earth-110 from 1960 onward, the following story is translated from an original German source]
Blitzkrieg und Feuerfuchs became Earth-110's primary metahuman duo. On other worlds, they would have been considered "heroes," but the Duo of Destiny (Duo des Schecksals) were incompatible with such ideals. True, they had a Rogues Gallery (scherken galerie) , although it consisted primarily of political criminals such as Der Puritaner, a merciless religious fanatic of extraordinary intelligence; Adlerklaue (Eagleclaw), an airborne predator committed to the fall of the Nazi-occupied American Reichsprotekteraat; the metahuman Proletarier Stakhanov, a surviving Soviet metahuman who made it to the United States before it fell to Nazism, Furchsturmer ("Fearstriker"- created by a metahuman biochemical experiment) and Mordfreheit (Murder Liberty), an alien metahuman aligned with the resistance.
In the Sturmhohle (Stormcave) in Gotischestadt, Sturmwulke and Feuerfuchs, in their identities as retired Olympian athlete Heinrich Arendt and his secretary, Leisl Kant, sat monitoring the military Schwartzesnetz computer mediated communication network for signs of dissident activity. Abruptly, the Stormlight flashed and Fuhrer Goebbels image appeared on the private direct satellite channel:
"Heil Goebbels!" chorused the Duo Des Schecksals as their hands rose forward in the customary salute to the Reich's third fuhrer.
"Heil. Well, my couple of pratorianerwachen, I have a special task for you. You are no doubt aware of the new discoveries in Deutsche Antarktis?"
Sturmwolke nodded his head: "Only what we have heard, Mein Fuhrer. Which is that there is some kind of alien wunderwaffe (superweapon) down there."
"It is ein ausserirdische biologische gefahr (alien biohazard), mein freund."
Feuerfuchs swallowed: Akin to the ausserirdische superschurke Mordfreiheit, Fuhrer?"
"Nein, Fraulein Fuchs. While it is ein ausserirdische, like the accursed verstecktewelter Mordfreheit, it does not originate from her homeworld Versteckt. Indeed, we have reason to believe that this ausserirdische is billions of years older, and may have arrived on ancient Earth before life itself arose from the primordial oceans."
"Mein Fuhrer, can we harness such an unknowable entity?"
"We believe that the Higashiajia Kyoei-Ken (Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere) may have unearthed a similar entity far beneath the ice of Nihon nyankyokutiririko (Japanese Antarctica)."
"This sounds like a new and frightening arms race, mein fuhrer." And it was true. Ever since the cessation of hostilities in the Third World War in 1958, the Third Reich and Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere had faced one another across their respective flashpoint borderlands- Sibirien, the Chile/Argentine border, the Indian/Burmese border and on the partitioned seventh continent. For that six decade span, the scope of the arms race between the two superpowers had varied from nuclear weapons (atom to hydrogen to neutron to cobalt bombs), to antimatter on the partitioned Moon and latterly, to... this, apparently. Could it even provide insurance against Mordfreheit? Feuerfuchs wondered at what prodigious strength that would require.
Some distance above, Mordfreheit brushed her hair back and looked down at the globe. It had looked so innocent when she had arrived here, decades ago. But that was when she was a child herself. She turned as Proletarier Stakhanovite walked wearily out of the hospital section:
"Stak? How's Furchsturmer?"
"Not good, I'm afraid. Feuerfuchs got him good when they fought last time, with those energy abilities of hers before he could use his empathic powers against her. He's recovering, but it'll be a while before he can operate in the field again."
"What do you think the Ratzis and HKK are up to, over in Antarctica?"
"There are rumours about an alien being buried down there." Mordfreheit never dared tell the others what her x-ray and telescopic vision really saw in the turmoil, miles beneath Antarctica's icy surface. Verstecktian mythology had told of it, the antithesis of bright Rao, Versteckt's crimson sun, believed to be a work of dark fantasy from her homeworld's primordial past- Quotilni the All Slayer, awaiting the universe in its furthermost future, consuming all matter in its maw. Was Quotilni what she saw down there? If so, was not only her adopted Erde but also the whole of this universe doomed?
As the transearth hypertrain shot through the subterranean reaches of their world, Sturmwolke had noticed something about his companion: "Isla? You seem pensive. What could go wrong? We are merely going to a scientific base so that we can inspect the remains of an alien lifeform beneath German Antarktis."
"It may not be that simple, Heinrich. There are myths and legends about an ancient entity that slumbers in that area of the world. At some point in the indeterminate future, it is said that it will arise to raven and slay all in its path."
"Children's horror myths. Popular cultural trash."
"But what if those myths had some basis in fact, Heinrich?"
"Come now, Isla. You and I are elite soldiers. We have fought our share of metahuman and alien threats. If this situation turns ugly, it will be nothing so uncanny that our abilities cannot surmount."
"You're right. I'm worried about nothing." So why do I suspect that neither of us will return from this encounter and that we will perish in mortal combat in the frozen entrails of subterranean German Antarctica?
High above, Mordfreheit faced Der Puritaner and Adlerklaue as they joined Proletarier and herself:
"Are we all ready?"
"I have the glaive here, sharpened to diamond point. We will avenge their unrighteousness this day, Lady Kara."
"This has perverted us, all of us. Your wife, when your starship was shot down when it entered Earth orbit, Karl. Your family, before they were mown by Sturmwolke and Feuerfuchs in that alleyway in Gotischestadt because they were providing medical supplies to the Maquis, Albert. The obscene medical experiment that activated Nataniel's empathic fearstriking powers. And poor Kal. Abducted and experimented upon, enabling the Ratzis to make unprecedented technological leaps and capture and subdue this world."
"It has been a privilege serving alongside you all these years, Kara. You do not deserve that libellous name with which the Nazis designate you- "Murderer of Liberty" indeed!"
Kara closed her eyes: "Nice try, Stak. The problem is, I still see the corpses and hear the screams from the Nazi guards and baseline soldiers whose lives I had to take."
"Rescuing the rest of us, and innocent third parties, over and over again. Because of you, Brainiak was able to relocate the lost city of Hierusalem far away from this world, where the last survivors of Judaism are safe at last from the Nazi monsters that slaughtered seventeen million of their culture. The Nazis will never find them thousands of light years away from this blighted world of ours."
"That doesn't change the fact that I've killed, over and over again."
"And that is what distinguishes us from the fascisti, Lady Kara. You act only out of last resort and you are noble and humane a person enough to repent of the evil that was done. Even if the Nazi servitors have shown no such mercy to their victims. In a less fallen world, you would not have to do this. Christ's mercy be upon you, child."
"It's this world. It taints and contaminates everything it touches. It's like decay or entropy or death."
And then they were gone. From the shadows, a white porcelain skinned figure stepped, in a black tanktop singlet, black jeans and boots, wearing a silver ankh around her neck. She gazed sorrowfully at the Scherken Galerie as they set out to their final encounter. She smoothed a tear from her eyes and awaited the moment that she would be needed, only a matter of hours from now, in the stygian wastes of subterranean Deutsch Antarktis. This world had only a little longer to live.
And then the proceedings started to reveal a funereal march.
Sturmwolke: Ich habe viel getan
Gott weiß, ich habe es versucht
Um die Wahrheit zu finden
Ich habe sogar gelogen
Aber alles was ich weiß
Ist unten in Ich
Echo: ...bluntingen...
Feuerfuchs: Und Superhelden
Komm zum Fest
Das Fleisch schmecken
Noch nicht verstorben
Und alles was ich weiß
Ist immer noch das Biest
Ist immer noch das tier füttert
Sturmwolke blinked: "Was ist das? I felt as if I was under an enchantment. As if that Furchsturmer had made his mutated manipulation of our emotions once more. But you struck him down, Isla. I saw it happen. Your holy fire blanketed his limbs, reduced him to a charred cadaver."
"It was almost like an incantation, Heinrich. You're right. As if we were ciphers, mere placeholders in some inexorable prescripted passion play, winding down toward the inevitable."
"Turn and face us, you Ratzi filth!"
Sturmwolke and Feuerfuchs did so: "How did you Scherken scum get in here? Even with Mordfreheit's prodigious abilities and Stakhanovite's mutated metal flesh, you cannot have pierced this fastness... let alone known about it."
"Can't you work it out, Arendt? It's the monster, lurking behind that impenetrable alien metal barrier. It's been manipulating all this, from the time it triggered the electromagnetic storms that gave you and Fraulein Fuchs your energy based powers, accelerated this world's technological development and now it's finally awakening. It's all been leading to this- an apocalyptic ending. You're nothing more than cannon fodder to it, despite all your vaunted abilities and your delusions about service to your Reich and its leadership. Your Fuhrer Goebbels was the first to fall, when he visited this scientific installation last year. Since then, his personality and self have been extinct. He's been the puppet of that obscenity."
"You lie, alien witch!"
"Still delusional to the last, Sturmwolke. What about you, Feuerfuchs? Of the two of you, you always struck me as the more intelligent and questioning one."
"I will not bend or break. This will help us end your threat forever, insure world peace at long last. Then all the innocent soldiers that you have slaughtered will have died for something."
"If only you knew, fraulein." Proletarier Stakhanovite muttered.
"God forgive us all." Der Puritaner said, raising his glaive.
And with that, battle was joined. Denying what Mordfreheit said and intent on permanently neutralising what he perceived to be a murderous threat and political criminal that endangered the false peace and security of his hallowed Third Reich, Sturmwolke broke from his companion and threw himself at Mordfreheit, who threw off his clumsy attempt at restraint effortlessly. She rose in the air, grappling with him as he sought to best her, raising the intensity of his electromagnetic abilities beyond any capacity known on Earth. Had he not been under the influence of the alien beast beyond the shelter of the barrier, writhing below, he might have been able to question what had shaped this conflict. But then, perhaps not, for that would have required a capacity for moral self-scrutiny and restraint that was beyond the limits of Heinrich Arendt, even in his enhanced metahuman form.
"Fraulein Fuchs. You are better than that pompous Stormbringer trying to kill our comrade above us. Surely you can see..."
"If it is any consolation, Stakhanovite, I will be sorrowful at your passing. Even if I do not share your ideals, you have been worthy opponents."
"What's keeping you alongside him? I can see the pain and doubt within you."
"No. No, I am a loyal daughter of the Third Reich. I..."
"You were an orphan. Sturmwolke raised you and gave you love, is that it?"
"Terrorists murdered my parents!" All the pain from that long suppressed memory burst out and the resultant energies flung Stakhanovite back as Feuerfuchs' pulsations grew in intensity and power. Stakhanovite gave one last, blood-curdling scream and Der Puritaner cried out at the sight of his former comrade, raising his glaive above his head to strike home. But he never got the chance as Feuerfuchs wheeled around and blanketed his body with peak strength lightning. His eyes bulged and his ears smoked, before he staggered on his feet, and shambled forward for an instant, but only with the illusion of motion as he fought death. But then mortality triumphed and he fell unseeing and unfeeling to the ground, releasing his glaive as it spun away from him.
But then Feuerfuchs felt as if her head was splitting. She was reliving the dark day when the Partisans had slaughtered her parents and family. But...what was this? Why couldn't she see her parents faces? Why were their clothes so hazy? Why was everything out of focus? Why couldn't she see the insignia on the Partisan uniforms? Why...did it feel so unconvincing? Why...unless this was no more substantive than a hologram?
And then it hit her.
It hadn't been the Partisans who had butchered her parents, brother and sister. It had been the Reich. The Reich had taken her, brainwashed her and replicated the experiment that had empowered Sturmwolke. And Sturmwolke had known this, all this time- unquestioning tool of the despotism that he was. Suddenly, she knew what she had to do. Despite the thundering in her head as Quotilni saw that she had thrown off his control and sought to subdue her again, she fought with the abilities that the monstrosity unseen had gifted her with. In an instant of searing light and power, a blinding arc of light connected her and Sturmwolke. He screamed as he was silhouetted against the dome that occluded the ancient alien predator from sight. Then, like a prodigal, fallen angel, he started to spiral out of the firmament, toward the ground below. Forgetting the enmity that had once parted them, Mordfreheit swept downward and caught him, but then realised that it was useless, that he was already dead. Feuerfuchs had slumped, spent, as Mordfreheit alighted next to her:
"Thank you."
"Freheit...I am...sorry...sorry that I did not have the strength to see clearly... long before this."
"Duty and love bound you, Isla. I'm so sorry you had to do that."
"Everything I served was a lie."
"But in the end, you saw through that lie and freed this world."
"No...you will have to do that, Freheit. There is something unholy and pulsating and wholly evil beyond that shield, Kara. It has been allowed to pervert and manipulate this world for too long."
"I'll take care of it."
"It is from beyond our space and time, Kara. It may even be able to kill you."
"After everything it's done to this world, after the millions that it's slaughtered and terrorised over the decades, my sacrifice will be meaningful it finally liberates Erde from it once and for all. I'm ready to die, Isla. I'm not afraid of it." But Isla could no longer hear her. Placing the fallen warrior down gently, Kara Zor-El...Freheit, Liberty... clenched her fists as she let grief and rage fill her. Grief for all her fallen comrades, for this brave and valiant woman who had just made the final sacrifice, and for the countless millions whose death agonies and suffering had fed the obscenity beneath the dome. She arose in the air, rising to a point above the roiling creature as it shrieked his rage and fear. Then she began to speed downward.
In Berlin, Fuhrer Goebbels lay sightless on the floor of the Reichskanzellerie, his brain disintegrated and his life extinguished in the cosmic drama unfolding its final act thousands of miles away in the Antarctic. In Tokyo, the members of the War Cabinet were similarly sprawled in the palace chamber they occupied. And in concentration camps across the wounded and scarred planet, gates swung open for the first time in decades of wanton slaughter and carnage. And suddenly, across the world, there was a deafening scream of bewilderment, anxiety, fear, rage and unaccustomed impotence as Quotilni the All-Slayer was slain itself. But not at the fists of Kara Zor-El ...Freiheit, Liberty... and not by her sacrifice. For Quotilni had suddenly encountered its own nemesis, the emblem and icon of what it dreaded most in the multiverse... Qu'uamt'ai. Oblivion. Death. And then there was a deafening roar of wings.
And Freheit pierced the skin of the dome as if it were a mere soap bubble. Around her, Earth-110 awoke in sudden rage and fury as it found itself liberated from long decades of oppression, genocide and totalitarian mindlessness. As she heard the sounds of awakening freedom and liberty throwing off its chains, Kara Zor-El gazed around her, then decided to play her part in the escalating contest for liberty and justice as her adopted world sundered its chains. She accelerated away from the mausoleum, ready to play her part.
Feuerfuchs wondered why she looked so broken and tiny there on the ground. Then the blackhaired, whiteskinned woman appeared from the shadows: "Frau Mord. Death."
"Thank you, Isla. For a moment I was worried that I'd have to tend to the whole two billion surviving humans on this world. But you sacrificed yourself and enabled me to get to it before Kara Zor-El had to throw away her life amongst all those others.'
"Where's Heinrich? If he died too, shouldn't his soul be here?"
"Sturmwolke went before you, Isla. I'm afraid his destination won't be a convivial one. Unlike yours."
"Do I deserve any better? Der Puritaner, Proletarier Stakhanovite, all those others I've killed since I first became Sturmwolke's partner in crime and genocide."
"You freed this world, Isla. You deserve a chance at redemption."
"What happens now, Frau Mord?"
"Isla? Take my hand, honey..." And once again, there was the sound of wings, but this time, gentler and kinder ones. Then the chamber was empty and silent.
THE END