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Post by DocQuantum on Apr 18, 2018 5:25:16 GMT
Prologue: The Beast Within
by Immortalwildcat and Doc Quantum
"Aaannnd cut!"
The familiar cry echoed over the back lot of Verner Brothers Studios, and dozens of extras in medieval garb -- or a Hollywood version of such -- relaxed and started talking among themselves.
"You ready for the sacrifice scene, Dan?" asked the director, an attractive woman in her forties with a distinctive streak of white in her auburn hair. Next to her, a tall, muscular man garbed in a hairy bodysuit smiled beneath a horrific, wolf-like mask of oversized fangs and jagged teeth.
"Sure thing, Marla. Action starts, I leap down from the parapet, scoop up Sharon, and wait for the smoke pot to ignite."
"Hmm..." the director replied, frowning. "I might want to have you on wires to leap off with her, too, but... let's try the running-off-into-the-puff-o-smoke approach first."
Acknowledging her with a nod of his head, Dan Cassidy made his way through the milling throng of actors, extras, and crew to the wall of the fake castle. Just past the gate there was a door panel that opened onto a ladder. He climbed up and found his mark on the narrow catwalk that ran behind the castle's wall.
Gazing across the studio from his high vantage point, he saw an ever-present lurking figure dressed in a trenchcoat and fedora: the studio's Axis liaison, there to ensure there was no anti-Axis sentiment in the making of the film. Ha! Dan thought to himself. As if there ever would be, given that he was appointed by studio mogul and high-ranking American Nazi Party member Jurgen Verner himself. If looks could kill, Van Vonderschmidt would have been pierced by a thousand glaring cuts by now from cast and crew alike, but due to his loyalty he'd instead risen to his lofty position after being Verner's limo driver. Dan could only shake his head at that.
Below the catwalk, director Marla Bloom shouted instructions to the cast to get them into place. Leading actress Sharon Scott was led out to her place in front of a stack of wood, and foam-rubber manacles were fitted around her wrists and ankles. Dan heard the hiss of gas-jets just before they ignited and blew flames up and around the wood, making it appear to be burning for the cameras.
"Action!" cried Marla.
On cue, the extras started yelling and screaming whatever gibberish came to mind. Some of them waved pitchforks as they advanced toward the beautiful blonde actress, who made herself look completely terrified by the spectacle.
To either side of Dan pyrotechnics ignited, spewing flame and smoke around him. He rose up in the smoke, stretching his arms outward as he muttered the next lines of the script. He knew the lines would be changed and dubbed in later by an appropriate voice-over actor, but he loved the play of the words.
"Some there be that shadows kiss; Blood-bound are we to Nebiros!"
Nebiros? Dan thought, confused. Why in the world did I say that? He'd practiced the lines numerous times, and the second line was supposed to be: "Such have but a shadow's bliss." It was from Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.
Still puzzled, Dan almost forgot that he needed to keep watch for the signal from Marla. So when Marla finally did signal him, it took a few moments before it registered. When he realized what had happened, Dan hurriedly leaped to a small springboard on the catwalk, which propelled him high enough to leap over the wall and over the fire below. He landed on all fours at his mark right in front of Sharon.
Howling maniacally, he grabbed her around the waist with one clawed, hairy hand and pulled her up over his left shoulder. The foam manacles broke away easily. He turned, surveying the mob before him and sweeping his right hand menacingly as he growled at them. A shower of sparks came from a device hidden in the stack of wood, and smoke rose around it from smoke pots in the floor.
Marla Bloom watched the proceedings with a smile. As the smoke arose, she prepared to yell "Cut" once again, when one of the smoke pots exploded with a strange, loud noise of rushing wind. Marla watched in horror as both Dan and Sharon were thrown upward, Sharon forward into the crowd of extras, Dan backward into the gas-fueled flames of the bonfire.
"Cut the flames!" Marla screamed, even as she saw two of the technicians turning the valves to turn off the gas-lines. Still, a column of flame rose from Cassidy's prone body. It continued for several moments, completely consuming the furry werewolf costume in a fiery conflagration too hot for anyone to approach.
Nearby, Vonderschmidt remained standing where he is, content to watch from the sidelines as Dan's death seemed all but certain. From his perspective, Dan's death would be tolerable, even preferable given his lack of fealty to the Axis cause. Besides, he was a rival that needed to be dispatched eventually.
And then, mere moments after it had begun, the flames inexplicably disappeared, leaving behind only smoke. The set's emergency crew rushed forward, expecting to find a badly burned corpse. Van merely scowled beneath his fedora and exited the studio, disappointed that his rival still survived.
"Wow, what the hell just happened?" asked Dan, sitting up in the burned remnants of his costume. He stood, brushing off the tatters from his completely undamaged skin and his wavy reddish-brown hair. "What's the matter with you guys? You look like you've seen a ghost!"
***
Late that night, Dan Cassidy sat in his townhouse in the Hollywood hills, sipping on a bottle of beer. He still couldn't believe his luck. From all reports, he should have been burned to a crisp, but all that had happened was that a peculiar-looking mark had been branded on his left wrist. For all intents and purposes it looked like the image of a stylized devil.
The only thing he could figure was that the make-up and costume, which he had taken pains to ensure were fireproof because of the nature of the film they were shooting, had shielded him from the flames. But that still didn't explain how he'd been branded.
"Yeah, 'Nebiros,' looks like you saved Mrs. Cassidy's only boy from his own foolishness," he said, looking at the script for The Beast Within. He picked it up and looked through it, at some points seeing it as if for the first time. One scene in particular caught his eye, in which the hapless hero played by the scene-chewing Wayne Tarrant was confronted by the fire-breathing demon, who transformed him into a werewolf. "Fire-breathing demon? Yeah, right. Demons don't breathe fire, they conjure the hell-flames," he muttered. Then he shook himself. "Now where did that come from?" He made a note to ask Norm sometime soon to see if he knew anything about it.
Getting up, he paced his living room for a few minutes, humming a tune that he hadn't been able to get out of his head since the accident that afternoon. Sitting back down on his couch, he suddenly grabbed a sheet of clean paper from a stack. Still humming, he drew a series of parallel lines across the page in groups of five. Then, with the bells still echoing in the room, he started to put his music down on paper.
In an attempt to break out of the mold of the typical Hollywood stuntman and special effects expert, Dan had been slowly working on his other interests, which included writing and music. Like nearly everyone else in Hollywood, Dan had written a screenplay of his own that he hoped to one day sell. But he also had an ear for music that he planned to turn to as a second career when he was too old for stunt work.
Most of the songs he'd written over the years had been film scores for action or sci-fi movies, but the tune that kept replaying in his mind now was very different. It was somber and morose, like a death-march announcing the arrival of a great evil on the land.
Dan snickered to himself, realizing the thought was a bit too on the nose. Hadn't a great evil already conquered this land?
Ever since the Axis invasion of California last summer, America's film industry had been split into two. The studios based in Hollywood had all been co-opted by the Axis into producing propaganda films intended to show America how better off Californians were under the Occupation. The East Coast studios, he had heard, had been commandeered by the U.S. government to produce propaganda films intended to boost the morale of the country and impress the dire need of every able-bodied man to join the armed forces.
But there would always be a need for movies that were just pure entertainment, such as Conqueror of the Barren Earth, I...Vampire, Princess of Gemworld, or Vanquisher: The Movie. And Verner Brothers Studios would keep on delivering such entertainment to keep the well-fed masses distracted, instead of fighting for their country.
As one of Hollywood's most sought-after stuntmen, Daniel Cassidy had a reputation for fearlessness. But when it came to the Occupation, he had never felt more helpless in his life. The irony of that contradiction had not escaped him. To save his career, as well as his life, he had said and done nothing during the invasion last year, but had instead passively stood by as his boss Jurgen Verner draped Nazi flags across the studio and had even made Verner Studios into a temporary headquarters for the Nazi Party.
Dan sighed. He knew he was a coward, and that fact had made him deeply unhappy. The realization that he was just one of many who'd had to compromise in order to survive in this new political reality still didn't help him feel good about it or himself. He wished he had the power to stop them, but what could one man do to stop a virtual tsunami?
As a church tower nearby chimed midnight, Dan suddenly yawned and found his eyes drooping against their will. Within seconds, he'd fallen asleep amidst several sheets of music on his couch, as thoughts passed through his mind of the day last summer that had changed everything.
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Post by johnreiter902 on May 23, 2018 14:37:27 GMT
SO were finally going to meet the Blue Devil of Earth-X? Very interesting. It looks like this one will be more actually demonic, as opposed to the Earth-1 Devil who is just hybridized with his suit.
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Post by DocQuantum on May 24, 2018 6:18:10 GMT
Thanks. Normally I don't like creating counterparts of existing characters, especially for Earth-X, Earth-S, or Earth-4. But there's a pretty good reason behind this story, which we'll see in the next chapter.
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Post by DocQuantum on Nov 5, 2018 2:22:04 GMT
Okay, I'm almost ready to post the next chapter. I had to sort out the Crisis timeline where Earth-X is concerned, which wasn't as easy as it might seem. I've actually written most of the rest of the story first, but I wanted to sort out the flashback before posting anything more. Sorry there was such a delay between posts.
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Post by DocQuantum on Nov 5, 2018 6:06:22 GMT
Chapter 1: Crisis in Hollywood
by Doc Quantum, partially adapted from Blue Devil #19, by Gary Cohn, Dan Mishkin, and Alan Kupperberg, with thanks and apologies to Martin Maenza
August, 1985:
It had been a crazy week for Dan Cassidy and the rest of the world. The first sign of trouble was when the sky all over the world began to shift to a persistent red shade, which lasted for several days at the end of July.
Although at first it seemed like little more than a strange anomaly for the weathermen to joke about on the nightly news, it soon became the focal point for a wave of sheer paranoia that swept the globe. Everyone went a little bit crazy for three days, and the hard-won political stability that so many had fought and died for dissolved nearly overnight. Brother was set against brother, father against son, and mother against daughter.
That paranoia seemed justified when something even more alarming happened. Blinding-white energy that the newscasters called antimatter began to appear in places all over the world, causing destruction everywhere the antimatter touched. It was the end of the world. Everyone was sure of it. We just needed to know who we could blame.
Things became even more bizarre when people, animals, and objects from the Earth's past and future began appearing in the present before they were savagely ripped back to their own place and time.
Dan himself witnessed a German Panzer tank driving down Hollywood Boulevard, which proved to be an eerie harbinger of things to come. He also met a group of swashbuckling pirates calling themselves the Hawks of the Seas, as well as a spaceman named Captain Rock Braddon of the Space Legion, who flew through the sky via jet-pack.
The fear and paranoia went away by the end of that day, and while the world seemed at peace for a brief moment, it felt like they were within the eye of the hurricane, and this was nothing but a respite.
During the chaos, the major studios had been closed down, like most businesses. But Dan Cassidy was never content to just sit around and wait. He wanted to work. That was why, on the afternoon of Friday, August 2nd, 1985, Dan broke into Verner Brothers Studios.
It wasn't a difficult feat for a veteran stuntman and special effects man, but it did take a while. The regular studio guard, Fred, had been replaced by a big, beefy bruiser who didn't know Dan Cassidy from Adam, and made it clear that he was ready to kill any unauthorized intruders.
Yet Dan had been watching, and despite being officially closed down temporarily during the present worldwide crisis, Verner Brothers Studios had been receiving a lot of visitors these past few days. It looked as if the studio lot had been taken over by military personnel, and Dan could only assume that the U.S. Army had commandeered the studio as a local base in which to direct emergency operations during this crisis.
Dan knew he should have left things well alone, but curiosity got the better of him, and he decided to break into the studio lot anyway. He had done several projects for Verner Brothers over the years, even more than for the other studios, and knew the ins and outs of the studio lot better than anyone. Thus, after making his way through an underground passageway that led to a lot past the security post, Dan entered the inner sanctum of Verner Brothers.
What he saw there astonished him. Huge red flags with the Nazi swastika had been draped over the 1930s-era street scene, and actors dressed as Nazi storm-troopers were marching down the street in procession. Dan looked around for the cameras but couldn't see any. With a shrug, he figured they were keeping them well-hidden for a panoramic shot.
So that was why the studio had been officially closed, but still remained in operation. Verner Brothers was making a historical picture about the Axis Occupation of America. Having dressed himself as a handyman, Dan blended in with the crowds and kept the brim of his hat over his eyes to keep anyone from recognizing him. He didn't want to jeopardize his job, after all.
Just as he was about to enter his workshop near Studio 3G, Dan heard a strange pinging sound in the air. With a frown, Dan listened as a crashing sound quickly followed, and he realized that something had crashed through the roof roughly around Jurgen Verner's office.
After a moment's hesitation, Dan muttered, "Ah, to hell with it." And he stormed off to see what was going on; he also thought he'd give Verner a piece of his mind while he was at it. Jurgen knew Dan had cut his teeth in war movies in the 1970s, so why didn't he hire him for this big production that had taken over the whole studio?
It was a simple matter to steal his way into Verner's offices, since the security outside was already keeping everyone except invited guests in. But when he got there, he was stunned at what he saw.
There, sitting in rubble on the floor of Jurgen Verner's office, was a blue-skinned giant of a man with white horns and a black and gold costume, along with a golden trident. Dan frowned as he recognized the design as something he had come up with himself for Marla Bloom's production company, and he nearly stormed into the office to demand an answer as to why his design had been stolen, until he overheard a strange conversation.
"Jock!" said the blue-skinned man who had obviously fallen through the roof. "What are you doing in that uniform!?"
Dan glanced over to see that indeed, Jurgen Verner was dressed in a brown military outfit, though he was puzzled as to why the blue guy called him Jock.
"Ach! Who are you, teufel?!" Verner said in a thick German accent. Like many Americans raised during the Nazi Occupation, especially those from Germanic backgrounds, Jurgen had been raised to speak German as his first language, and spoke English with an accent. "Und how did you breach der inner circle of der underground?!" he continued, touching a button on his desk. "Frau Schmidt -- send in V-2 und his Sturm und Drangsters!"
As Dan watched from his hiding place by the door, three familiar-looking figures arrived, flying through the open window of Verner's office. The first was a tall, muscular man with bleach-blond hair, the second was a beautiful blonde woman, and the third was a twelve-year-old boy with a mop of red hair and a freckled face. All three wore matching gray costumes with blue boots, a blue sash, and a blue cape, as well as silver gauntlets. Most shocking of all was the blue swastika emblazoned on the chest of each costume like an insignia. The costumes reminded Dan of a corrupted version of some old comic-book heroes he'd read about -- Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel, and Captain Marvel Junior, together were known as the Marvel Family. Dan's eyes opened wide as he realized who these figures were, and he found himself in a state of utter shock and bewilderment. It didn't make sense to him.
"Van! Sharon! Gopher!" said the blue man, echoing Dan's own thoughts. "Why are you all dressed like Nazis?!"
"Nazis?" said Verner. "We are loyal businessmen! We make the moving pictures -- innocent entertainment!"
While that was true, Dan realized that something strange was happening. This had already gone far beyond a mere blockbuster movie, if costumes and apparent super-powers were involved.
"I get it!" said the blue guy. "This is another alternate Earth -- the one where the Axis powers ruled until the seventies!"
Dan's mind was sent reeling as he recalled how the Nazi Occupation was ended, when a group of mystery-men with strange powers supposedly came from parallel universes to help the Freedom Fighters end the Occupation by winning freedom for the whole world. But everyone who had lived through that knew all about it, so why was this blue guy speaking about it as if it was news to him?
But just as those thoughts went through Dan's mind, the blue guy started to become transparent.
"Look! Der spy -- he's starting to fade away!" said Van Vonderschmidt in his own German accent, always one to state the obvious.
"Oog... suddenly I don't feel so good..." said the blue man, his voice becoming fainter as he became even more transparent, "...whole room's spinning..."
At that, the strange blue-skinned figure vanished into nothingness, leaving Verner and the others muttering to themselves about what just happened.
Dan Cassidy, already reeling from the weirdness of it all, lost his footing and knocked the door open, falling into the office upon the debris-strewn floor.
"Cassidy?!" said Verner and Van.
"Dan!" said Sharon and Gopher.
"Okay, you got me," said Dan, picking himself up off the floor. "I snuck in. Now, will someone tell me what the hell is going on? And who the hell was that guy dressed in a costume based on my Blue Devil idea? That is intellectual property theft!"
Dan looked at the four figures before him. Verner was frowning in disapproval at him, Vonderschmidt was scowling with utter hatred, Sharon wore a mixture of shock and embarrassment on her face, and Gopher just averted his eyes, unable to look at the stuntman he had long admired. Obviously, they had all been keeping secrets from him, though exactly what those secrets were was beyond Dan's ability to guess at that moment. The truth, even though it was right before him, was too insane to believe.
Before anyone could say another word, Verner's phone rang. Jurgen gave Dan a warning look not to make a sound as he pressed the button for the speakerphone.
"Ja?" answered Verner, speaking German.
"This is the Silver Ghost," replied the man on the other end, also speaking German; Dan spoke German as well as any other American his age. "Our enemies are captured. Do you want to participate in these actions?"
"No," replied Verner sulkily, "we do not believe that this activity will be successful."
There was a pause on the other end of the line as Verner waited for an answer. Finally, it came as an incredulous, "Are you sure?"
"Yes!" Verner replied impatiently as he rolled his eyes dramatically. "We will continue with our plans. You are cordially invited to serve us as before. Farewell!" At that, Jurgen Verner severed the connection and sighed.
Speaking in English, he said to the others, "Von Zell acts as if he's still der chief magistrate of America -- Hitler's little wonder boy. Well, if he tries to assert himself above his current station as a special agent, he'll soon find that he has few supporters left in der party. After all, he abandoned all rights to his old leadership role when he pursued a mere resistance leader to a parallel Earth before America had been completely conquered!"
Vonderschmidt chuckled, but Sharon and Gopher remained mute.
"Well, well, well," said Verner. "Daniel Cassidy. Whatever shall we do with you now? You have seen too much, mein herr."
"Let me kill him," growled Vonderschmidt.
"No!" cried Sharon.
"I'll make it quick -- and... mostly painless," Vonderschmidt added.
"Listen, I don't know what kind of shenanigans you guys are up to in those costumes, but I only came here to work," said Dan. "I'm your best F/X man, Jurgen, so why was I cut out of your newest picture?"
"What are you--?" Verner began in confusion, until realization dawned. "Ah, yes, of course. Our newest picture." The fat man's eyes narrowed as he said, "Well, it's going to be our biggest one yet, mein herr. You might say we will take the world by storm."
Dan didn't like the way Verner chuckled at those words.
"V-2? Take him away," said Jurgen Verner. "And make sure he's locked up somewhere he can't get out before zero hour."
Before he could utter a word of complaint, Dan Cassidy found himself in a Van's steel grip. Whatever had been done to Vonderschmidt, or V-2 as he was now known, his strength, speed, and ability to fly was anything but an illusion, as Dan was taken out the window and flown over the studio toward another building, where he was imprisoned in a steel-reinforced pantry.
Thus Dan found himself a prisoner at Verner Brothers, and the truth of the matter only came to him slowly over the next few days. Dan later learned that, on the day he broke into the studio lot, the world had been invaded by a horde of super-villains from the same parallel universes that the Justice League and Justice Society had come from back in 1973. Only these other-dimensional invaders had come only to plunder and steal, making themselves the rulers of the world in record time by turning the Earth into a huge greenhouse. A few super-villains with strange powers and abilities had blackmailed the world with their mastery over all plant-life, and every major city in the world was buried under overgrown greenery that obeyed their every command.
Even the semiretired Freedom Fighters had been captured and paraded around as prisoners. The phone call from the man calling himself the Silver Ghost had taken place just after the defeat of that legendary team of heroes who had fought the Axis for decades until the Nazi Occupation was finally ended. (*)
[(*) Editor's note: For the other half of this conversation, see DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Villain War, Chapter 6: Earth-X Marks the Spot.]
The very next day, on Saturday, super-heroes from the same parallel universes arrived and defeated the super-villains. These super-heroes were later identified as the same Justice Society of America who had helped liberate Earth-X in 1973, along with two other teams known as Infinity, Inc. and the Outsiders. (*)
[(*) Editor's note: See DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Villain War, Chapter 10: Greenhouse Effect and DC Universe: Crisis on Infinite Earths: The Villain War, Chapter 12: Setting Captives Free.]
Strangely, Sharon Scott and Edward "Gopher" Bloom, along with Van Vonderschmidt, had earlier been made into superhuman agents through some unknown process around the time the red skies and the paranoia epidemic had swept through the entire world. The truth about their gray and blue costumes emblazoned with the swastika symbol would come only later on.
After a strange Monday that Dan and the rest of the world completely forgot, the Axis invasion of the world began on Tuesday, August 6. (*) The crisis that had already afflicted the world, followed by the super-villain invasion, so a weakened world was easy prey to an even greater threat: an Axis invasion assisted by other-worldly technology that blitzed nearly the whole world at once. California was now Axis territory, controlled ostensibly by the Imperial Japanese along with German so-called advisors who assisted in the invasion.
[(*) Editor's note: Earth-X ceased to exist for one full day, as the Earths were merged into one, as seen in "Aftershock," Crisis on Infinite Earths #11 (February, 1986) and "Final Crisis," Crisis on Infinite Earths #12 (March, 1986).]
Dan was released from his imprisonment some days after the state of California had become Axis territory, and he was allowed to go back to work as normal under the new regime, knowing that nothing he could say or do now would make any difference at all. He supposed that he was more useful to Verner alive than dead, now that Verner was enjoying his new position in this regime.
In the months since then, Dan realized that Verner had obviously known of the impending invasion, which was the real reason he had closed off his studio to the public and most employees during the week prior to that day of infamy. Jurgen Verner wasn't merely an opportunist as he'd first thought, but his boss was not only an active Nazi leader, but the Minister of Propaganda under this new Axis government. And his creation V-2 was a useful tool of propaganda as the Nazi "hero" of an Occupied California.
Much to Dan's chagrin, his sometime-girlfriend Sharon Scott and Marla's young nephew, Edward "Gopher" Bloom, had been cast in the roles of V-2's sidekicks, Sturm and Drang. Dan consoled himself with the thought that Jurgen Verner must have subjected them to some kind of mind-control in the same process that had given them super-powers; after all, his friends couldn't really be traitorous Nazis, could they?
Dan felt bad for twelve-year-old Gopher Bloom, especially, since he knew the Bloom family were non-practicing Jews who had changed their surname from Bloomberg to Bloom when they'd emigrated to America back in the 1920s, and like many Jews in Hollywood they had kept their ethnic background a secret ever since the Germans first invaded America in 1963. Marla had told Dan about her family background in the strictest confidence some years back, but he was sure young Gopher knew nothing about his heritage, and Verner must have been indoctrinating the boy for at least a year or two by now without their knowledge.
Worst of all, Dan's heart was broken by the fact that Sharon Scott seemed to be a dyed-in-the-wool Nazi. She had been the sweetest, kindest woman he'd ever known, but now he realized that he'd barely ever known her at all. She'd managed to keep her political leanings completely secret from him, after all. They had been so close until that fateful day in August, or so he thought, but the revelation that she had been collaborating with the Axis Occupation had been a real punch to the gut.
And he still had no idea who that Blue Devil guy was, especially since Verner claimed he knew nothing about Dan's old plans to build such an outfit, and those plans were still locked up where they always were. Even more strange was that Sharon later told him she could have sworn that she heard Dan's voice when the blue guy spoke, though Dan didn't agree. There were just some things, Dan Cassidy realized, he might never get an answer about until the day he'd die and meet his final reward.
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Post by DocQuantum on Nov 5, 2018 8:25:28 GMT
Chapter 2: Monsters
It was much later when Dan Cassidy awoke to the sounds of shouts and laughter in the distance. Running to his kitchen window, he peered through the blinds to see that, down the street, a family was being harassed by Japanese soldiers who were obviously drunk. In these days of the Occupation, it had unfortunately become an all-too-common occurrence for Axis soldiers to prey upon the subjugated population. It had even become such a problem that even the Occupational government had begun taking steps to curb its own troops' violence.
Without turning on any of his lights, and thus drawing attention to himself, Dan sneaked to his closet and pulled out a pair of binoculars to better view the scene. An involuntary gasp escaped from his lips as he realized he knew the family who were being harassed. It was the local grocer, Pete Kang, his wife Anna, and their three boys. Pete was from democratic North Korea, while his wife hailed from Oklahoma. As an interracial family, they basically walked around with targets on their backs, given the official German racial policies forbidding such unions.
As he watched through his binoculars, Dan could see that four soldiers were inside the Kangs' house, tearing it up as they searched for something subversive, anything that could justify their actions, really. If they didn't find anything, they'd likely plant something to frame the family, thus giving them reason for the atrocities they would probably commit.
Three other soldiers were outside guarding the family, who'd been forced to their knees with their hands over their heads. Even the young boys were being forcibly detained in this manner.
Dan watched nervously as one of the three soldiers knelt down to pat one of the boys on the head, fearing violence. He breathed a sigh of relief as that soldier stood up again and started to pace as before.
Then he swore under his breath as he saw that Pete, God bless him, started to argue with the soldier. "Just shut up, Pete," he muttered fearfully, knowing what a fool's errand it was to try to reason with them. "Just shut up, already. Shut up, shut up, shut up," he whispered.
Dan's heart leaped then as he saw Pete stand up to continue arguing, for he knew what was going to happen next. Sure enough, just as he'd predicted, the soldier stopped pacing, then pulled out his handgun and shot his friend point-blank in the head.
Amidst the screaming of Anna Kang and her three boys, Dan felt nothing but shock. And then he felt nothing at all, as the world around him went dark.
***
Imperial Japanese soldier Toshiro Hashimoto did his best to stand at attention, but his face had already flushed with red, and not just because of the bottle of saké he'd consumed at the bar. He'd never seen a civilian get shot up close before, and certainly not one so undeserving of such a fate. He felt so uncomfortable that he wished he could drink another bottle right now, and drown out the screams of the dead man's poor wife.
He tensed just then as he heard the sound of rustling coming toward him, like a bear running on all fours. The other soldiers heard the sound, too, and one of them pointed a flashlight toward it.
Toshiro only caught the barest glimpse of someone or something large, with gray, Rhino-like skin, a wide face, and a short mop of red hair over a long, elongated head heading toward him at high speed before he was knocked off his feet, his cap fallen over his eyes. As the screaming intensified, Toshiro threw off his cap to see a hulking figure brutally beating the soldier who'd shot the man, punching his face again and again until it was nothing but red pulp.
A low, guttural voice emanated from the figure as it said something like, "Now that's an eye for an eye for ya."
The other soldier, who had already started running down the street, was quickly pursued and overtaken by this gray beast of a man, who with one backhanded swing launched the soldier up into the darkened Hollywood hills.
Then the beast turned and headed back, and Toshiro was sure that he would be next. Instead, it leaped like an animal through a window into the house and summarily went after each of the four soldiers within, attacking them one by one. Gunshots rang out, but nothing was stopping this hellish creature.
When the sounds of violence finally stopped, the house erupted into flame in four places, where each of the Japanese soldiers had fallen. Several moments later, the beast leaped back out through the already broken window, sheathed in smoke and ashes.
It stood there a moment, slowly breathing in the smoke as Toshiro and the civilians looked on. And then it turned its head as it saw Toshiro.
The young Japanese soldier's arms went limp as he tumbled to the grassy lawn, paralyzed, and waited for certain death.
The huge figure walked up to Toshiro and sniffed the air, which was pungent with brimstone, but did nothing except stand over him. After several moments of feeling as if his heart was going to pound right out of his chest, Toshiro witnessed a miracle.
The beast left him be, and ran off into the hills.
His limbs still weakened by shock, Toshiro stood up and slowly turned toward the grieving wife and her three sons, and said in English with a cracking voice, "S-sorry. I'm sorry." At that, he threw off his outer uniform and walked away, knowing that for some reason he had been spared the righteous vengeance owed to him. And he would spend the rest of his life trying to figure out why.
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Post by DocQuantum on Nov 5, 2018 8:27:40 GMT
The next morning, Dan Cassidy awoke with a start, his bed sheets soaked with sweat and his heart beating profusely. And that was not all. The memories were fading now, but as he sat on the side of his bed and tried to remember his nightmare, all he could recall was a vague, disturbing feeling that something terrible had occurred.
But that was just the first strange feeling that Dan experienced that day. As he walked through the neighborhood, he learned what had happened to the Kangs. It was bad enough when he suddenly remembered that he'd seen Pete Kang shot before his eyes by those soldiers, but then he began to hear stories of a monster attacking soldiers and killing most of them, while sparing others. Luckily, as far as he knew, it hadn't hurt anyone except those in the Occupational forces.
The news, however, said nothing at all of such a rampaging monster on the loose. Instead, as it always did, the news was full of assurances that the Occupation was improving the lives of every Californian.
As if to counter such monstrous rumors, V-2, Sturm, and Drang were also being given a higher profile in the news, especially since a much-hyped animated series would be released by Verner Brothers later this month. As super-heroes they were a complete sham, but they served a useful propaganda purpose for the Axis, especially to indoctrinate children. Outside of the obviously staged rescues and stunts for photo ops, Dan wasn't aware that the trio had ever done anything actually heroic, however, and he wasn't holding his breath.
***
"So what do you make of this monster?"
Dan Cassidy was sitting on an old wooden chair in the attic above a bookstore, next to his old friend Norm Paxton, a card table between them with two cups of steaming-hot tea atop it. They were surrounded by shelves upon shelves of old books, and although they could see the street outside the shop, they were invisible to onlookers. That came in handy if the store was ever raided by troops looking for members of the California Underground.
"The Destroying Demon?" asked Norm, chuckling. He wore a pair of antique spectacles over a single working eye and a black eye-patch. "What makes you think it's anything more than superstitious nonsense from a handful of drunken soldiers?"
"Well, it was in my neighborhood, for one," retorted Dan. "And it killed all those soldiers who shot the Kangs."
"Not all of them, apparently," Norm said, shrugging. "Anyway, how do you know they were killed by a monster? Near as I can tell, they died because of the fire."
"Since when are you such a skeptic?" Dan said in a challenging tone. "Aren't you an expert in the occult? You're the one who's always called me a weirdness magnet."
"Because you are!" said Norm. "You always have been! And anyway, it doesn't pay to be a gullible fool in my line of work. You have any idea how many con artists try to pass themselves off as occult experts and write books on the subject? I have to be skeptical to weed that stuff out. You know I pride myself on selling only the real deal, and none of that trendy New Age crapola. Shirley MacLaine might know how to act, but she knows zilch about the spirit world. Having only one eye, I might have trouble with depth perception, but she's basically the blind leading the blind, you know?"
"Well, anyway, I actually came to talk about something else," said Dan, realizing he needed to steer Norm away from one of his rants before he really got off the ground. "You know that weird accident I had, that burned my costume but left me without a scratch?"
"Yeah, I heard all about it," said Norm, taking a sip. Talking about Verner Brothers was always a sore spot with him, since he had been blacklisted years ago by Jurgen Verner himself, who ensured that he would never work in Hollywood again.
Norm Paxton had been a film buff all his life and was an amateur filmmaker specializing in horror movies full of obscure occult lore long before he actually worked in the industry back in the early 1970s. But because he was black and outspoken about civil rights he'd never gotten very far in that field. The Nazi hold over all the world still influenced how people thought about race to this day, even in California before the current Occupation. Finally, he quit the industry altogether and bought an old occult bookstore, The Third Eye.
"Well, it didn't exactly leave me without a mark," Dan added, and pulled up his left shirtsleeve to display a devil-like mark on his wrist.
Norm whistled as he peered closely at it. "Nice work. You design this yourself?"
"What did I just say?" Dan replied hotly. "You think I’m joking?! The fire branded me that way.”
“Hey, settle down there, pal,” Norm said placatingly. “We’re all friends here.”
“And that's not the only thing,” Dan continued before Norm could say a word against it. “I also uttered a strange word or name just before the accident: Nebiros."
Norm's eyebrows lifted in surprise. "Well, well. Now that is interesting, especially if you're really not pulling my leg about the devil mark."
Dan opened his mouth defensively, but stopped himself before he said something he might regret. Instead he held up one hand and said, "Hey, you know me, Norm -- I cannot tell a lie. God's honest truth."
"Aren't you a lapsed Catholic, Danny-boy?" asked Norm with one raised eyebrow.
"Emphasis on the lapsed," replied Dan. "Hard not to be after my dad died in a senseless accident when I was just a kid. Left me and my sick ma completely destitute until an inheritance from my uncle came through, which paid for the hospital bills at least, with a little left over for the burial costs when she died a few years ago."
"Ah, sorry about that," said Norm. "You must've been no older than Gopher at the time."
"I was only twelve. That's why I kinda took the kid under my wing, showed him the ropes in special effects work. He's smart. He could really go far in the biz... or... at least he could've, before."
"Before V-2 and his Sturm und Drangsters, you mean," said Norm. "Yeah, that took me by surprise, too. I still can't believe what you told me about Sharon, though. She's always been such a sweetheart to me."
Dan Cassidy stood up. "Well, I gotta go. See ya."
"Bye, Dan," Norm replied, watching his friend as he walked down the steps to the back door. He kept watching, and saw as Dan punched the brick wall with one fist, only to reel back in pain as he shook it off. Dan had always had a temper for as long as he'd known him, but Norm had never realized before how much anger Dan was holding back on a daily basis. If he didn't find some outlet for that anger, he was going to explode.
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Post by johnreiter902 on Nov 6, 2018 13:14:04 GMT
This is very interesting. I wonder why Dan's powers are emerging now, if his encounter with the demon happened just as long ago as Blue Devil's? I'm guessing that V-2, Sturm and Drang have marvel-equivalent powers, but I can't imagine how the Nazis achieved that.
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Post by DocQuantum on Nov 6, 2018 16:04:10 GMT
Thanks for the comment! I wouldn’t make too many assumptions about what has already happened in the Earth-X Cassidy’s life. Family secrets will be revealed in time. While there are some parallels to Blue Devil, this can be read on its own.
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Post by DocQuantum on Dec 2, 2018 12:16:33 GMT
Verner Brothers Studios:
"Over the last three days," explained Colonel Kobayashi, "the creature has attacked our soldiers wherever they have congregated in groups of three or more. The creature has proven to be utterly ruthless and without remorse, killing at will those soldiers it chooses to target. Strangely enough, it has spared other soldiers -- all inexperienced, new recruits -- by merely swatting them away as if not worth the time. Because of this, we believe the creature to be of supernatural origin. Our soldiers have begun referring to it as an Oni, a demon of great destructive power -- a Destroying Demon."
"Superstitious nonsense!" laughed Jurgen Verner, sitting behind his desk at Verner Brothers Studios. "Your men vere drunk, vere they not?"
"Yes, but that was just in the first instance," replied Kobayashi. "The other--"
"And you expect us to believe these reports of a hulking brute? A Destroying Demon?" demanded Verner. "Pure poppycock!"
The Japanese commander had arrived at the headquarters of California's Nazi Party to appeal for help against an enemy whose power was beyond that of the typical California Resistance fighters they were used to suppressing. But the German advisors sent by the Reichstag to provide assistance to the Imperial Japanese occupying forces weren't interested in hearing anything about these rumors, and had put off this meeting with Colonel Kobayashi for days.
"Surely we must act before the creature cripples our effectiveness in Los Angeles," protested Kobayashi. "Can you not send the Manhunter, or perhaps even your own Magnificent Trio to battle the creature? (*) We hardly have the resources to track down and capture the creature, let alone destroy it." The colonel nodded in the direction of V-2, alias Van Vonderschmidt, who stood protectively over Verner's desk, his arms crossed.
[(*) Editor's note: This story takes place before the events of SS Ubermenschen: World at War.]
"Nein," replied Verner with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Ve haff no more time for this nonsense. Please, Colonel, do let yourself out. And don't bother us any further with reports of demons, or fairies, or geists spooking your troops. Perhaps instead you may vish to inspect your troops a bit more closely. Look for red faces, a sure sign of a bit too much booze in your people, ja?"
Jurgen Verner laughed, and the rest of the German advisors erupted into laughter as Colonel Kobayashi exited the office.
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Post by DocQuantum on Dec 2, 2018 12:26:10 GMT
Chapter 3: Innocent Blood
The Los Alamitos Army Airfield in Orange County had been occupied by Nazi German forces since the beginning of the war, housing the majority of the German troops in Los Angeles as well as most of the military vehicles and planes employed by the German Military Assistance Advisory Group in Southern California.
It was also a frequent bombing target for the U.S. Military, so the starry sky above was kept under careful watch for any signs of enemy planes. It was a quiet night, and the only persistent sound was the dull chirping of crickets in the distance.
Oskar Schwarzkopf wore a headphone over one ear as he listened to his favorite musical group, Heinzwerk. Before the war, before the young soldier's clandestine recruitment into the Underground German Army that rose up in the wake of the Crisis to take back the world for the Fourth Reich, Oskar had been a roadie for the pioneering electronic music band from Düsseldorf. Although his own musical ambitions had been thwarted by a lack of talent, Oskar had been useful for procuring both drugs and girls for the band, as well as getting rid of anyone who had overstayed their welcome. He knew where all the bodies were buried; hell, he had buried most of them himself.
But that was a long time ago, another lifetime for Oskar. His dreams of personal glory as one of Hitler's storm troopers had been dashed when he realized that his own role as a lowly guard who spent every night staring at the sky was only a small part of a much larger, grander scheme that had nothing to do with him. Was it any wonder that he preferred to lose himself in the synth-pop music of his youth? It wasn't as if this base was in any danger of imminent attack, after all. The Imperial Japanese and their German advisors had kept the Americans at bay for the better part of a year now, without losing any ground.
As far as Oskar was concerned, Californians were far too self-absorbed to put up much of a fight, and the California Resistance was little more than an ineffective joke. The only true threat lay in outside attack, but the Americans were still too demoralized by recent events to be a real challenge. It was only a matter of time before the German Army invaded the East Coast, and a pincer action between the East and West Coasts could retake America for the Fourth Reich.
Oskar's eyes began to droop as he imagined his own fingers playing over the synthesizer, creating beautiful electronic sounds for the adoring masses. Within moments he fell into a drowsy sleep.
It wasn't until the ground rippled beneath him, knocking off his headphones, that Oskar Schwarzkopf awoke to find himself in the middle of a war zone. Explosions rocked the airfield, sending planes and tanks hurtling away. All around the blood-streaked bodies of his fellow soldiers lay sprawled and broken on the pavement, painting the airfield red.
"Vhat happened?!" Oskar cried, rubbing his disbelieving eyes as he searched for the source of the chaos. It didn't take long for him to find it, when his eyes fell upon a massive figure silhouetted by fire, who used tank turrets like baseball bats to destroy everything and everyone around him.
Numbed by sheer terror, Oskar barely managed to pull out his Luger, which he began firing at the creature. It only took another moment for him to regret this action, when the bullets found their mark but did nothing but draw the creature's attention toward him. Before he knew it, a grinning, man-like gray beast with a shock of red hair atop an elongated head ran on all fours toward him like a gorilla.
Every drop of moisture in Oskar's bladder vacated itself as the creature, mere inches away, breathed hot steam into his face. And before Oskar was reduced to nothing more than another broken body littering the blood-stained airfield, he couldn't help but notice that the creature had two rows of teeth in its gaping mouth, and six fingers on each giant hand.
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Post by DocQuantum on Dec 2, 2018 12:26:54 GMT
Verner Brothers Studios:
"Ve must stop the Destroying Demon at all costs!" cried Jurgen Verner, shaking his fist.
Colonel Kobayashi stood at attention and controlled himself, though he sorely wished he could roll his eyes and sigh deeply.
"Ja, ja, ve all agree that this must be done, but how?" asked a high-ranking German officer in full uniform who wore a monocle and held a cigarette holder in one hand; he spoke in a bored tone denoting his upper-crust origins. "This demon comes out of nowhere, destroys everything in sight, then slinks back into the darkness before anyone can see vhere it has gone. How can we find such a creature, let alone stop it?"
"I know a way to find it," said Van Vonderschmidt, alias V-2, standing erect with his arms behind his back as he scanned the room.
"Vell?" asked the officer contemptuously. "Vhat is your brilliant plan for tracking down the Destroying Demon?"
"Simple," said V-2. "Ve put pins on a giant map at every place the creature has struck so far. Eventually, ve vill find a pattern allowing us to guess the location of its next attack. And as for stopping it, leave that to me and my Sturm und Drangsters."
"Nein, nein, nein," said Verner. "I vill not haff my Magnificent Trio harmed by this Destroying Demon. You are too valuable to our cause to be risked in such a vay."
"I haff thought of that as vell," replied V-2 with a smirk. "Vas it not beauty that killed the beast?"
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Post by johnreiter902 on Dec 2, 2018 12:27:24 GMT
It sounds like a job for . . . The Divine Wind!
If you want something done right, send in your own metahumans.
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Post by DocQuantum on Dec 2, 2018 12:27:58 GMT
Sharon Scott had already completed all her voice recording for the initial season of V-2 and His Sturm und Drangsters so that she'd be free to film The Beast Within. But she was still busy making publicity appearances in costume as Sturm, the Axis-Amerikan Girl, second member of the team known to the public as the Magnificent Trio.
After making a quick stop at a pet store, Dan arrived at a new mall as Sharon Scott and Gopher Bloom, garbed as Sturm and Drang, respectively, cut the ceremonial ribbon to mark its opening. She was still as beautiful as she'd ever been, which made it all the more painful to see her used for Axis propaganda causes. It was even more heartbreaking for Dan to see the same happen to Gopher. It wasn't all that long ago that Gopher looked up to Dan and even emulated him, but ever since Jock Verner had recruited the boy into his propaganda campaign, Gopher had been poisoned against him. As much as he wanted Sharon to see the truth, Dan hoped he could break through to the boy even more so before he could fully adopt a racist and destructive philosophy. Liberation was coming for Occupied California, he believed, and people would remember those who collaborated with the enemy. If there was some way he could save his friends now from the eventual vengeance of the mob, he would.
Watching for the crowd to die down after the ceremony, Dan finally waved up at Gopher Bloom, who nodded at the security guards to let him through, though not until they took a look in the small kennel that Dan was carrying. Dan followed Gopher into a break room and waited as the boy visited the bathroom for a couple of minutes before coming back.
Finally, Dan Cassidy was able to give Gopher his gift, which turned out to be two small, playful puppies with floppy ears, big eyes, and soft brown fur. Unfortunately, the boy was less than receptive and didn't display any excitement at all. As Dan tried to engage in small talk, Gopher politely answered Dan's questions matter-of-factly, but didn't ask any of his own. Soon Sharon also came over after excusing herself from her fans.
Sharon Scott was beautiful by any definition of the word. She was at least as gorgeous as any other actress in Hollywood, living or dead, and had won numerous beauty pageants in her youth. Her golden blonde hair was a perfect crown framing her flawless face, marred only by the swastika-emblazoned costume she wore.
"Danny!" she said, walking toward them. "Gopher, you should've told me earlier that Dan was here!" She gave Dan a warm hug and said, "Nice to see you!"
"Why?" asked Gopher. "Don't you see him at the studio nearly every day?"
"That's not the point, silly," she said. "Aren't you excited to see Dan, too?"
"I guess," said Gopher, and held up one of the small animals. "Dan got me a couple of puppies."
"Is that so?" she said with a smile.
"Yep," Gopher replied as he handed one of them to her. "I've sure been getting a lot of free stuff lately, mostly from my adoring fans."
"Aw, how cute!" Sharon said, wrapping her hands around one of the puppies, who simply looked up adoringly into her big, beautiful eyes. "So what are these little itty-bitty-witty puppies' names, anyway, Dan?"
"It's really up to Gopher," said Dan, still holding the other puppy, "but I thought George and Lenny might fit."
"Okay, I guess I'll have to put them with all my other pets when I get home," said Gopher.
"Other pets?" asked Dan.
"Yeah, I had to buy a kennel to hold all of 'em," Gopher replied, and started walking away, leaving the puppies behind.
"Really? That's pretty cool," said Dan, but the boy was already gone.
"Don't worry, Dan," Sharon said under her breath, still holding George. "You're still Gopher's hero; he just doesn't know it yet."
Dan frowned in confusion. "What do you mean?"
"You know -- he's just a kid, and kids can be fickle sometimes," replied Sharon. "But I think he'll come around sooner or later. He still talks about you sometimes before catching himself. I figure he'll forgive and forget when the time is right."
"You think so?" Dan asked.
"Well, that really depends on you, big guy," said Sharon with a sweet smile. "I'm sure you could hurry things along with both of us if you took up Jock's offer and joined the party. It's a sure path to success. It's not like the Fourth Reich is going away anytime soon, you know. We're the wave of the future, Danny boy, so hop on in."
Dan suddenly felt sick to his stomach as he listened to these words from the girl he loved, and spoken in such a cutesy voice. All he could think of saying was, "Thanks for the help, Sharon. See you back at the studio."
"No problem," she said cheerfully, and gave him a peck on the cheek. In another moment, she was off to shake hands with her adoring public.
Dan could only sigh and wish the world hadn't become so twisted.
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Post by DocQuantum on Dec 2, 2018 12:28:50 GMT
As the days passed, Dan tried to throw himself back into his work and forget about everything else, much like he always had. But this time something was different. He found that he couldn't simply ignore the problems facing himself or his fellow Californians any longer. They began to gnaw at him, and as they did he became more and more obsessed with the idea that he needed to do something to fix things, if only he had the power.
Over the ensuing nights, Dan began dreaming about the monster that had attacked whole squadrons of enemy soldiers at a time, and had destroyed military facilities all around the Los Angeles area. At first he had taken them to be nothing more than dreams in the form of a wish fulfillment, but rumors and reports of some kind of monster referred to as a Destroying Demon began to circulate. And some of those incidents closely matched the dreams he'd had of the monster destroying key Occupational facilities.
Such reports weren't taken seriously by the media or the general public, despite the very real damage, because no one had managed to take even one photograph of the supposed monster.
But because the monster had begun appearing so frequently, certain patterns had begun to be noticed in its actions. For one, the monster seemed to have a highly attuned sense of poetic justice, as each of his victims were repaid for their crimes measure for measure. Enemy soldiers who had killed people were themselves killed, while those who hadn't killed anyone were usually left with a brutal beating and hospitalized, but remained alive. Still others, mostly raw recruits without any battle experience, merely walked away with barely a scratch.
The Destroying Demon, as the people had begun to call him, was by all accounts a brute who loved to destroy and kill, but was nevertheless still restrained by some kind of unwritten code of honor that forced him to battle only those who committed acts of evil. There were many instances of collateral damage affecting innocent victims as well, but this seemed to have more to do with the monster's carelessness than any intention to harm those who hadn't done anything to harm others.
Despite reports that the monster held no love for humanity at all, the Destroying Demon had begun to capture the public's imagination. Could this be the liberator that freedom-loving Californians had been yearning for? That was the question asked on both sides, and was the reason the Axis was doing all they could to find and destroy the monster before it could destroy them.
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