Chain 226: Über

Chain 226: Über

Location: Undisclosed Location (research bunker)
Age: 15
Identity: Soldier (Drop-In)
Drawbacks: [+900] A True Patriot, Child Soldier, Like On The Covers, To Make Sure Everyone Loses
Scenarios: Taking A Side (Great Britain), To Live With Flux

[800/1900]  Potential: Battleship
[200/1900]  Activation: Untapped
[Scenario]  Abomination
[400/1900]  Halo Architect
[Free]      Kindness
[700/1900]  Genius Strategist
[800/1900]  Test Kit
[1000/1900] Woden's Blood
[1300/1900] The Codex
[Free]      Fancy Uniform
[1600/1900] Cruiser: Demona, Galatea
[1900/1900] Strike Force: The Conspiracy

When Freya Bergen chose to leave Germany, and return to the United Kingdom, she was highly disappointed to find out that she had brought them precious little that they didn't already know. Many of the specifics were new, but they knew the broad strokes.

The problem with that, however, is that Germany had more than one team researching superhuman soldiers. Some merely resulted in duplicated work. Others came up with new uses. Infiltrators. Heavies, immune to anything short of a direct hit from a tank. Their opposite, specializing in the telekinetic distortion halo that could tear a mortal man to pieces. Destroyers and cruisers - and if the 'destroyer' outpaced the 'tank', then the 'cruiser' outpaced the 'destroyer' by an equal margin.

To quantify power more appropriately, a tank-man (or panzermensch if you were German) could take three doses of enhancement. A destroyer, six. A cruiser, twelve. And then... there were the battleships.

Moreover, the problem with having multiple research teams is that it provided more opportunities for leaks. Pieces of the Codex made it to the other players in the war, and they were hastily trying to decrypt it with limited success due to their limited excerpts.

What Freya - who preferred to use the name Stephanie - did when she fled Germany was nothing less than the single most helpful thing she could have done: she stole a great deal of the Catalyst along with a complete copy of the Codex, bringing it with her to London. And not only did she make sure to destroy most of the German supply of the catalyst that allowed the production of their Panzermensch, she was helped in her exfiltration by a pair of women; she'd been hustled to them for safety by what looked by all rights to be a child barely in his teens, one that spoke English as well as he spoke German.

One who helped himself to a bit of the Woden's Blood that she had in her possession, that she only realized a too late - moments after he'd disappeared when her back was turned.

The enhancement program of Britain found itself with, perhaps, a thousand more soldiers that took to the activation process early and burned through rapidly. Moreover, the two women who helped were already activated, but clearly not by the German process - perhaps not fully battleship potential, but close, and with a pure halo effect as opposed to the balanced activation that Britain was trying to give their rank-and-file. Indeed, both also had the ability to fly unaided - which in itself was a game-changer, and one that no one was able to puzzle out over the course of the war. They were among the first christened, named in the honor of Royal Navy ships - the blonde was named HMH Galatea, which had been sunk by a U-boat in 1941; the redhead, HMH Demon, a retired gunboat, more often called Demona as that was still close enough for those with such stipulations. There are historical indications that a British battleship-class was put into service around the same time, HMH Revenge, but no service records exist for that individual.

A great deal happened once they entered duty. The battle lines were much more unsteady in the months that followed, and though Germany's heavy hitters were virtually unopposed, their rank and file seldom stood up to the numbers that Britain was able to field. Those extra thousand Allied soldiers that seemingly appeared out of thin air were apparently pure Halo activations as well, and short of one of Germany's heavy hitters taking the field, they were able to at least keep things from spilling off of the continent. Generally.

There was an exception when Sieglinde made it to London, but she found both Galatea and Demona waiting for her, almost as though they'd known she was coming. It's said that the two of them struck her simultaneously with their fists, rather than engaging her any other way, and knocked her clear across the English channel - reports allege she landed somewhere in the vicinity of Brussels... after which they proceeded to eradicate a number of German tank-men that had been laying the groundwork for her return.

Of course, when one says "it's said", this is from reports that Britain released and a few sporadic civilian sightings on the ground. Sieglinde never returned from that mission.

>"Hello, Sieglinde. Do not resist, I do not wish to harm you."
>"What do... oh my God--"
>"You will be coming with me. Your part in the war has ended. Beside, there is someone who has been asking after you."

The German war plan continued to go about as well as one might have expected. After all, from the very beginning, Germany's motives were to do something audacious and then keep everyone on the back foot; the fact that things continued past where they ought to have stopped in 1945 didn't mean things would magically go in the Germans' favor. They were pushed back from the east by the Soviet self-activated battleship before the Soviet army (and for that matter the Soviet nation) fell upon its sword from its own foolishness.

Britain never fell; it was a near thing, but the support of the Allies at a crucial time stopped that from happening. Perhaps if Churchill had been killed it would have been different.

After that point, the war became more of a harsh meat grinder than it had been. A bold plan was hatched by Germany to distract the allies at around the same time, claiming that Sieglinde and Siegmund were indeed active and storming through Europe. It even appeared to be true - until Demona and Galatea together carved their way through the impostors, with the help of the HMH Churchill, a nearly fully physically activated battleship. Once more, the Wunderwaffe had its usual effects. Weapons of terror they were... but not nearly as effective in true warfare, as was typical. Siegmund's subsequent defection in America helped nothing, either; the second part of Germany's plan was to strike at an undefended America, after somehow getting an entire fleet of U-boats across the ocean in what was a suicide mission. Though it is denied that Siegmund destroyed the entire fleet, few alternate theories are known to the public. All that is known is that there were strange lights in the harbor of Boston, before a large quantity of shattered and broken U-boats floated to the surface... or in the case of several, did not.

>"Hello, Siegmund. Siegfried."
>"Zero?!" "How in the hell--!"
>"Nah, I'm just a kid who got in over his head. The same age as you, Markus."
>"You will not be allowed to stop our glorious--!"
>"Mm, no. Avada kedavra."
>"WHAT--"
>"I don't have time for his crap. Now then. I know this is not your fight, Siegmund. Here, go to this place. They are willing to accept your surrender and are expecting you."
>"But- this is insane!"
>"Go relax on a beach and sip some umbrella drinks. I have work to do. You Krauts knew this was a suicide mission from the start, it just came sooner. And the sooner I'm done, the sooner I can start swimming back."

With Germany's attempted decapatory strike itself rendered moot, the United States troubled itself dealing with the Yamato attacking the west coast - their own Battleship-class enhanced soldier. He was subjected to the tender mercies of a new class of superhumans, the Zephyrs, who sliced him to pieces with diamond-edged knives. Alone and with no support, he was doomed.

Back in Europe, the war went about as one would expect. Germany's gambit did not profit them at all. Much of Europe had been razed to the ground. It is probably not a surprise then, considering the nature of the war, that many records are missing. The British invasion and decapitation of the Germany army, the unfortunate decimation of its forces and obliteration of anyone who remained that could wield enhanced powers.

>"Hello, Herr Goebbels."
>"You-- how did you get in undetected?"
>"Does that really matter right now?"
>"No... I suppose not."

It is said that HMH Galatea and HMH Demona were the ones who entered the Fuhrerbunker and found everyone there had committed suicide, either with cyanide pills or via more expedient methods. Regardless, the bunker was subsequently burned out via halo effect and eradicated. Only a handful of conspiracy theorists posit otherwise.

>"Hello, girls. I've been waiting for you."
>"Holy shit." "My God. You look..."
>"Like Lord Zedd writ large, without the benefit of a nice mask? Yeah."
>"Japan surrendered last week. Russia itself is in pieces. The war's over."
>"I know. It was supposed to be over two years ago, you know? This wasn't... god damn it, why did I think this was a good idea?!"
>"Shh. Shh, come here."
>"I want to go. No more of this. This isn't what I signed on for."
>"It's okay. We can go anywhere you want."
>"Fuck this place. I'm going to the moon. I'm going to make a moon base. Did you tell Churchill?"
>"That we were from the future? Yeah." "He didn't buy it, but he didn't have a choice but to believe otherwise."
>"Seriously. This... Britain's still standing, that's all I care about. We're out of here."