It had been three weeks since the theft of the Janus mask and the false accusations had first surfaced. Jimmy the Fish had strongly recommended the team keep their heads down while he dealt with the lies being spread about them; especially by Graf Geothe and Beth Coffin. He’d arranged for them both to be served a court order to cease and desist, forcing them to either provide proof of their claims or shut up and retract their allegations. Unfortunately, their lies were already in the public domain.
After three weeks of leaving responding to all ‘shouts’ to London Watch, they were bored, bored, bored so when a call came in from Rätsel of the Bundesgarde they were more than happy to listen, or to be more precise Mary and Akira were. Mace had vanished a couple of days ago, something to do with her mysterious past and some person called de Bois.
The timing of Rätsel contacting them had to be connected with what had happened in Frankfurt overnight, where some type of riot in one of the city distracts had resulted in all of the streets surrounding the area being barricaded. Press had been kept away since the initial report though it was understood that the majority of the residents had fled the violence.
In perfect English Rätsel explained that it wasn’t as simple as that. This was the work of rogue Powereds. The German Government were taking a softly, softly approach to dealing with the situation and she explained why. A super villain had captured the German Chancellor, Reni Fischer during a secret personal visit to the district and was threatening to slaughter her and the remaining civilians who hadn’t fled unless the German Government kept away. Their leader called himself Kaos (with a K) and was from Czechia (Mary knew the country as the Czech Republic).
There wasn’t a lot of information about him. He’d first appeared about two years ago in Prague. He initially claimed to be an exiled extra-terrestrial called Zor-Ac but he soon stopped using that story and started referring to himself as Kaos as he gathered a motley crew of Powereds from all over Eastern Europe to his side. Within a few months, he controlled most of the criminal activity in the Country. The Czechian authorities seemed to have done nothing to stop his reign of terror; however, this was the first time he’d been active outside of their borders.
She flashed up a picture on their screen of an almost robotic figure, a bald humanoid with muscular silver skin. “He’s an Epsilon-level threat. As far as we know, he can fly, is immensely strong, can fire energy blasts from his hands and seems to be virtually invincible. He has already demonstrated that he is willing to carry out indiscriminate slaughter by killing several fleeing families including children as well as crucifying Polizei Officers from the local precinct around the barricade as a warning to his captives and their potential rescuers of what will happen if they cross him.
During the initial assault most but not all of the local population escaped before the barricades went up. Ah, the barriers were erected within minutes either telekinetically or using magnetism, so we know he has at least one other high level Meta in his group…”
She showed a video clip of Kaos warning the Polizei to keep away or else. He spoke in perfect German but Frankie translated for them in real-time. He had the Chancellor captive in the background, bruised, battered and obviously terrified. He was standing staring at the camera with a Polizei Officer’s head in his claw-like hand as he spoke despite his victim’s screams as he casually crushed his head into shards.
He spoke calmly throughout, “Contrary to Police reports, I don’t particularly enjoy frivolous killing. I find it wasteful. Your people are more useful to me alive than dead right now. Should that change, I will not hesitate to order their deaths including that of Fräu Reni Fischer. What is your preference?”
When he finished speaking, he dropped the now silent and very dead body to the ground and casually wiped his hands on a towel as he turned away to face the obviously terrified Chancellor before the camera stopped recording. He had just demonstrated that he was a psychopathic monster who would not hesitate to kill.
Frankie interrupted their thoughts to assure them that their Commdots could be programmed to include translating to and from German.
Rätsel continued to explain, her voice strained, “There has to be an ulterior motive behind his actions, but no one is sure what it is. Meanwhile the standoff continues. The Government, my Government, has decided they can’t allow any more people to be indiscriminately slaughtered and are preparing to attack. We, the Bundesgarde are sure this would lead to many deaths and want to attack Kaos and his Kult members as he calls his group of supporters directly. Keep them occupied while our Special Forces rescue the remaining civilians.
That just leaves the Chancellor. We need a team to covertly rescue her from the local Bundespolizei station where we believe she is being held captive. Ah, my team and I will be needed to deal with Kaos and his supporters and keep them occupied. We are, how would you say, not exactly designed for stealth? That is where we would like you to help. You have a reputation for covert action and we need a team that could find the Chancellor and keep her safe, as several Powered criminals will no doubt be guarding her. Would you be willing to risk rescuing the Chancellor while we tried to keep Kaos and the rest of his Kult busy?”
Akira smiled, “I’m in, after all we’re the stealth commandos.” Then muttered under his breath so only Mary and Frankie could her, “Just don’t ask the former Mayor of Jerusalem for a reference.” He looked at Mary who nodded her agreement then he said out loud, “We’re in, just as long as there is a veggie bratwurst waiting for when we come back out..?”
Schematics of the Police Precinct were downloaded with a warning that they didn’t have any current intelligence on the Chancellors exact whereabouts. They couldn’t definitely guarantee that the Chancellor was still being held captive inside the station though it was the most secure location in the district, with the possible exception of the nearby OmniTech’s CrimePrev research facility, which had been tightly locked down since before the attack.
Akira immediately requested all-area access passes to the building waiting for them on their arrival as they immediately headed for the Crate. There wasn’t any time to try to track down Mace and anyway, they were the stealth experts on the team, weren’t they?
The Bundesgarde intended to attack Kaos directly in a few hours’ time, which meant they had to head for Frankfurt immediately. While Mary flew them toward Frankfurt’s Bahnhofsviertel District, Akira tried to mediate.
On arrival, they landed in a car park outside of the now walled-off Bahnhofsviertel District with each of the streets and roads surrounding the district blocked, piled high with cars, vans and street furniture to a height of three metres or more. Many of the barricades had a tall pole in the centre to which a Polizei Officer or another official had been crucified with their hands nailed above their heads. Thankfully, they had been dead before they had been hung on the poles but as the Polizei on this side of the walls had subsequently discovered, the bodies had been rigged with explosives so any attempt to take them down would result in several more deaths amongst the rescuers. It had taken all of the Government’s powers to try to keep the press away especially as Bahnhofsviertel was a major nexus for the city; whether people were coming by train, from the airport or somewhere else in Germany. You needed to walk through the Bahnhofsviertel in order to reach the Innenstadt, which was the “downtown” area of Frankfurt.
It was also Frankfurt’s infamous Red light district, particularly around Taunusstrasse which was a street filled with brothels and strip clubs. Aside from brothels, there were also lots of bars, kebab shops, and other seedy looking clubs. It was normally heaving with people 24/7.
For possibly the first time ever, the streets of Bahnhofsviertel were completely deserted, all traffic was being redirected round the district and all city trains had been shut down. The news crews were being kept away and ordered not to report on the rumours circulating about what had occurred.
While most of the citizens had fled during the initial attack, many of the prostitutes, shopkeepers and druggies had delayed leaving and were now trapped at the mercy of Kaos and his Kult. Thankfully, most of them were in hiding, hoping that their door wouldn’t be the next one to be kicked in by ‘his’ thugs and they get dragged outside to either be tortured or crucified.
The plan was simple, Banshee and Akira would have 30 minutes to try to get in, find the chancellor, and rescue her before the Bundesgarde would attack and try to create a diversion outside the Precinct and OmniTech’s CrimePrev Research Centre opposite. They couldn’t risk their transmissions being overheard so the signal that Kaos was being distracted would be that the city would cut all power to the District, a few minutes after they attacked to make sure Kaos was fully engaged.
This was the first time Banshee and Akira had actually met the Bundesgarde face-to-face and they were surprised at how young they all looked. The team consisted of an energy blaster known as Baryon who claimed, despite his appearance, that his nuclear powers were the result of his being irradiated in the womb by contaminants from the Chernobyl disaster.
Maglev, the magnetic powered, battle armoured hero was the oldest amongst them and, as a result, apparently the de facto field leader.
Quartz was a German-born Turkish youth, possibly no older that 18 or 19 and was extremely proud to be part of the Bundesgarde. He was a calm and composed young man, able to transform into a crystalline powerhouse.
Ostara was a practicing Wiccan who claimed her power to control light came from an ancient pagan spirit whose name she’s taken as her own. Akira immediately recognised a fellow mage.
Rätsel they already knew, though the extent of her psi abilities was a closely guarded secret. A simple opaque veil covered her face that they assumed she could see through otherwise her powers were greater than they had realised. They were joined by the East German crime-fighting duo of Der Schwarzer Bär (the Black Bear) and Der Röter Adler (Red Eagle) to boost their numbers.
They shook everyone’s hands, wished each other good luck and then both Banshee and Akira turned themselves invisible before Banshee reached out, grabbed Akira by the arm and they both became insubstantial. The plan was simple; in this form, they would fly over the barricade and head towards the underground police garage beneath the Station before accessing the lift into the station itself. They would have various sensors checking them, but hopefully in this form they would be able to pass through the surveillance devices undetected.
As they headed over the nearest barricade, they saw a near naked bald-headed, middle-aged man standing alone in the middle of the street, his entire body covered in tattoos. Then they saw the images on his body begin to move as inky tentacles extended out from the skin, quivered in the air as the images unfolded and expanded even as they started to tear themselves free.
Akira muttered in Banshee’s ear, “Perhaps he has an inkling..?” but before he could make any more quips the etched man lent his head to one side as though listening for something in the sky, but for what? Their movement through the air was silent, their need to breath was now their only sound and even that they stopped as they allowed themselves to drift above him hoping that the vibrations in the air caused by their passing would also stop. He tilted his head so his right ear was towards them or it would have if that ear wasn’t covered with some sort of hearing device.
Then all hell broke loose as a News Report helicopter elected to enter the airspace above them in search of a story. The noise of their rotors cancelled out any noise they might make as it flew in close to take pictures of the etched man below. A black, incorporeal shape began to heave itself free of the man’s chest but before it could break free, there were two blasts of brilliant white light, fired at the helicopter from a nearby side street. The blasts cut through the cabin and bisected the pilot. The helicopter came hurling down towards a nearby tenement building, its rotors shattering into nearby windows and peppering the street with fragments from the building.
They could both see people cowering behind the windows, illuminated now by the flames from the crashing helicopter as it slid down the side of the building before crashing into the street below, the rotors still whirling and shredding everything it came in contact with.
For a few seconds they considered trying to rescue anyone trapped but the helicopter had exploded killing everyone onboard and for the most part the building was still stable, it was just the windows and façade of the building that had been shredded as it fell to Earth.
With heavy hearts, they ignored the wreckage and the people inside the buildings and continued their flight towards the Precinct. With all the noise, there was no way the etched man could hear them now. Their main problem was not coughing as they flew through the smoke billowing from the crashed vehicle.
Thankfully, for the rest of the journey the streets were completely deserted. No one was risking putting on lights just in case it attracted human predators to pay a visit.
A short while later they found themselves floating outside the Precinct, the only building in the area that was illuminated. That surely indicated that the Kult had taken possession of the premises. Next to the main entrance was a ramp down into an underground carpark for Police vehicles. The gateway was sensored and Akira considered stepping away, substantialising and using one of the passkeys that the Bundesgarde had got for them then saw the area was under CCTV surveillance and decided to let Banshee phase the both of them through the gates and into the badly lit garage.
At the far end was the lift to the station above but between them and there was a young female with blue tinged hair. She was wearing a sleeveless t-shirt and standing in the middle of the parking garage between them and the lift. Like the etched man outside, she also had an earpiece covering one of her ears and she seemed to be twisting around so her ear was in their general direction. Damn!
As they watched, her bare arms began to morph into silvery blades and a wicked smile crossed her lips. Even if they were immune to her attacks, her cries would alert everyone else in the building to their presence. They had to deal with her and quickly. In response, Akira forced himself to form the necessary mental construct to call upon the mystical energies of the creature known in mystical circles as “the Starry Visitor” and “the Scarlet Summoner”; the mythical mage Sirrion.
Once he had the mental constructs in place to call forth the Somnambulant Spell of Sirrion, he made ready to turn visible and physical. He dug his elbow into Banshee’s phased ribs and muttered, “Drop me!” As soon as Banshee let go he dashed in as close as he dared and dropped his invisibility even as he poured all of his mystical energy into the summoning. A second later, a thin, pinkish mist rose up from the ground and pouring forth from Akira’s hands. The mist curled over her and left her stunned. Her metal-like blades began to reform into her normal limbs though she fought against falling into a deep sleep.
Flying close to the ceiling, Banshee remained unaffected by the rising mist for the moment but she did know she was also susceptible to Akira’s spell. Regardless they had to deal with this living weapon before she alerted her colleagues elsewhere in the station to their presence.
Banshee stopped breathing as she flew in close and substantialised herself (but still remained invisible) before unleashing a corrupting touch on the stunned girl. It worked, the girl immediately collapsed to the ground, her limbs quivered as they stabilised as normal arms even as she drifted into a state of unconscious.
Akira immediately started to reabsorb the remaining spell back into himself before reaching down and pocketing her hearing device. Both their unconscious captive and he were very visible despite the twilight lighting and he hoped that no one was monitoring the CCTV cameras fitted throughout the garage. Oh well, too late to worry about it now.
He grabbed the girl, dragged her almost weightless body over to the nearest Police cruiser and dumped her it the boot before breaking a bit of metal in the lock to ensure it wouldn’t be easily opened. Then he hurried over to the lift, activated it using one of the passkeys and they both headed up to the ground level. Thankfully it was a quiet lift – no noise as the doors opened or lift muzak as it travelled between floors.
Now if the garage CCTV cameras were being monitored then they could expect company to be waiting for them when the lift doors opened. Akira turned invisible so they both were unseen and waited as the doors opened on a well-lit but thankfully empty corridor. To one side was a server room and on the other, the holding cells, the most likely location to imprison Fräu Fischer.
From the schematics, they knew there were four prison cells secured behind individual forcewalls. There was also a guard post round the corner and if there were any prisoners in the cells that was likely to be in use. Banshee turned herself insubstantial once more while remaining invisible and was about to try to enter the cells when Akira motioned her back.
It was possible the energy barrier on the cells might interact with Banshee’s insubstantial state but they had another way to scope out the area without being seen. Akira sat down on ground and with a muttered “look after my body” he allowed his astral form to float out of his oh-so-human fleshy cage and drift through the door into the cellblock beyond.
Another female sat behind the desk carving a pentagram symbol into her forearm to match a bleeding carving she’d already made in the other forearm. Thankfully, she wasn’t wearing an hearing amplifier. As she carved the sigil into her own arm he shuddered. He recognised blood magic when he saw it.
Beyond her, three of the cells were lit and he could clearly see that they were holding the surviving Polizei officers two to each cell and most were injured in some way, but the fourth cell was in darkness and he would have to get closer to see if Chancellor Fischer was inside.
Nope, this cell contained the bodies of a number of dead officers just piled in on top of each other. Then suddenly, from somewhere close by, there was a sudden and unexpected electro-magnetic flare of power that threatened to dissipate his astral form. He quickly allowed his silver cord to reel him back into his unprotected and unconscious body (well, unprotected if you didn’t count being protected by an invisible Banshee) and he instantly ‘woke up’.
A disembodied female voice whispered, “Any luck?” Akira struggled to stand then rendered his own form invisible as he whispered where he assumed Banshee was, “Nope, she’s probably having a drink of schnapps in the cafeteria.”
As they made their way down the corridor, they could hear energy blasts and the sounds of shouting coming from outside. Their 30 minutes was up and The Bundesgarde and their allies had begun their assault. They only had a few minutes at most before the power was cut.
There was the sound of several people running towards the front door and they hoped, prayed, that meant less opposition awaiting them inside the station. Time had run out, they had to find the Chancellor and get her away before they remembered their hostage.
Banshee resubstantuated herself, grabbed where she assumed Akira was standing and rendered them both insubstantial again before passing through the wall into the evidence locker-room and from there through into the Holding Cell on the other side of the wall. By flowing through the walls, she avoided any contact with the force field at the entrance. Inside, the room was empty but there was a handbag lying under one of the benches, hopefully this meant that the Chancellor had been there at some point. Akira pulled away and grabbed at the handbag turning it and him invisible once more, as she tried to view its past.
It took a few seconds to focus then – the handbag’s owner was a middle-aged woman, it took him a few seconds to recognise her as the Chancellor, here in the Bahnhofsviertel District because of a guilty secret, something to do with a young woman, an abandoned daughter or..?
The thought that the young woman had hopefully got away before the barriers had been erected while she’d been outside trying to get away herself flashed unbidden; only for the hope to evaporate as she had to watch her bodyguards being disintegrated by a smiling, almost jovial maniac who walked across and tore her car into two before pulling her from the wreckage.
Then finally overwhelming emotion, primarily fear though she tried not to show it, as she entered the station’s Polizeihauptkommissar’s office and saw Kaos again. She knew she was being used as a pawn but didn’t know why.
Before he could say anything to Banshee though, he saw that the etched man they had seen outside was now inside the precinct and in fact stood the other side of the force barrier looking in. There was a loud bang nearby and he walked over to the nearest security door. They used the distraction to phase through the wall into the forensics lab next door.
As they exited into the corridor, there were just too many places in the station the Chancellor could be kept in and going by the sound of fighting outside they didn’t have a lot of time before someone remembered their hostage. Then they saw the Etched Man walk passed and stop. He was still wearing his hearing amplifier and must have heard their breathing as he stopped by the briefing room corridor and gestured in their general direction even as the inky impressions on his skin began to tear themselves free of his flesh. Damn it, Akira turned visible and unleashed a double-handed mystical blast into his chest. The blast evaporated his shadowy minions and hit him in the chest knocking him back and half demolishing an internal wall. He lay there unconscious but the two of them had other things on their mind, primarily the noise caused by the collapsing wall.
Akira tried to magic up a spell to find the Chancellor but he was mystically exhausted after the summoning the assistance of Sirrion earlier. Instead, Banshee changed back into the oh-so-vulnerable Mary and began to summon the assistance of her Celtic ancestors. As Mary she grabbed some knitting needles that someone had left on a desk and called forth the spell she knew as the revelation of the “Collslat” using the needles to divine for the presence of the Chancellor.
Akira watched the needles quiver then start to cross over each other as Mary turned to face back along the corridor towards the middle interrogation room in a suite of three. Akira smiled, at last. He muttered at her, “All well and good, but when is my bloody scarf going to be finished?”
Mary immediately allowed the spirit of the Sidhe to flow through her as she again changed back into Banshee and turned insubstantial but still visible. She left Akira as she flowed through the wall into the middle room where she confronted a very frightened, middle-aged woman sitting sobbing away on one of the interrogation chairs. She turned substantial and in German assured the woman that she was there to rescue her.
Banshee then reached over and as gently as she could, held her by the arm as she turned them both insubstantial and walked her through the wall and back into the corridor before letting her go and allowing her to return to her normal state. She let out a loud sob and collapsed to her knees.
Then they saw the woman guard from the cells with the self-inflicted carvings on her arms come round the corner and with a cry in what the assumed was Czech she somehow manifested a glowing staff out of thin air and rushed straight at Akira. Her entire body was glowing as though protected by a personal force field.
Without thinking about it, Akira erected his own shield as the staff came hurling down towards his head. To Akira’s surprise, it shattered through his shielding and struck him hard on the shoulder. The attack left him staggered but he was just glad that his shield had managed to bleed off most of the force. Despite that, it still ended up inflicting major damage, possibly shattering his collarbone going by the amount of pain he was in. Could he survive a second blow? He tried to blank out the pain as he prepared for a second attack.
Behind her, a man in a blue bodysuit and visored helmet appeared from the direction of the Polizeihauptkommissar’s office and he unleashed ball lightning from his hands straight at Akira.
Akira muttered, “I’m getting out of here and you should do the same with the Chancellor” and immediately vanished as he teleported down to the garage instinctively. That left Banshee who again grabbed Fräu Fischer, turned them both insubstantial and pulled her back through the wall into the interrogation room and beyond as they ran through the far wall into the corridor beyond.
Back in the other corridor, the ball lightning fragmented and lit up the whole hallway. Even a room and a half away, Banshee could feel the energy discharge and knew that if the full force of the blast had it hit her it would have resubstantiated her at the very least.
Behind them, they could hear the crash as the blast also blew the door off the interrogation room.
They ran through the walls, through the front desk and out into the street where the fight continued between the Bundesgarde, Kaos and several members of the Kult. There were seemingly deaths and injuries on both sides. Banshee turned invisible and set off towards the barrier with his passenger as fast as she could fly.
Down in the garage an exhausted Akira paused for a second or three to try to recover even as the power finally went off across the district. Something had delayed the power cut until now, several minutes after the Bundesgarde’s assault had started. As soon as he’d recovered a bit he again teleported, this time to beyond the barrier.
Outside as the power was cut, a smiling Kaos rose into the air, ignoring the attacks and suddenly smashed through the wall and into the CrimePrev building opposite. A few seconds later, a massive vault door flew back out the huge hole in the wall he’d made to crash into the street next to the unmoving body of Baryon. Standing nearby was Der Schwarzer Bär who’d lost his arm in the fighting, thankfully the blast had cauterised the wound that Kaos had inflicted.
Then Banshee saw Kaos head back out of the building clutching a small sealed security box to his chest and vanish. The bastard could teleport? He could teleport. That hadn’t been in the briefing notes! He just left his minions behind to escape for themselves even as the assault helicopters filled with Special Forces flew in and they began to rappel down to the ground to arrest the surviving Kult before they fled in panic.
Afterwards they discovered that the blue haired female they had locked in the boot of the patrol car had been arrested – apparently, she went by the name Arzenál back in Czechia. The Etched Man had escaped, as had the lightning-wielding Meta they subsequently identified as the Electrocutioner. The female inside the station though surprised them by surrendering without a fight. There was nothing normal about her behaviour as they noticed that the pentagrams she’d carved on her arms had already healed leaving only scarring behind as a testament. The authorities believed she might be the psychiatric patient known in her own country as “Krvavá Marie” or Bloody Mary.
They were thanked by Chancellor Fischer for their rescue before she rushed into the convoy of survivors to try and hug a 18 or 19 year old girl in an overly-sexualised dress as the soldiers escorted the first of the survivors out of the danger zone. Was that her secret? A lover or… her daughter possibly?
Rätsel approached them and with tears in her eyes thanked them before breaking down completely. Quartz confided in German that their teammate Baryon was dead and both Maglev and Ostara were seriously injured as was Der Schwarzer Bär. The Polizei seemed to think that the total death toll of the invasion was about 60 with most of the Precinct killed when the Kult had first attacked except for the few officers being held in the cells.
They did manage to get the CrimePrev manager and several of the staff to check out what Kaos had stolen but they claimed nothing was missing though Banshee knew that wasn’t true. They also saw that Kaos had left a small token behind in the vault, a token with a maze-like image carved round a stylised ‘L’ that they recognised as Labyrinth’s logo.
Kaos had escaped uninjured and apparently Czechian authorities wasn’t interested in trying to look for or risk arresting him if he had returned and they later discovered that most of his Kult had also escaped, fleeing Germany.
They had succeeded in their mission so why didn’t it feel more like a victory?
Bundesgarde are a team from Atlas of Earth-Prime: Central Europe
created by Daniel Eymard
Superhero Adventures, UK Style 