Now I absolutely have to include a scene with a sword fight on motorcycles a la Final Fantasy VII.
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Maybe Sophia is a poltergeist in this scenario, explains why Willhelmina's glasses kept getting knocked out every time they train.
Given how wacky and crazy everything is, I can see this happening down the line. World's already gone insane anyway, let's go full Metal Gear
Poltergeists do exist in regular Supernatural canon…but Sophie’s a force ghost, which definitely don’t exist there.
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Really good update. I particularly liked Wilhelmina and Sophie's interactions.
I never thought of this before since in the past the force ghost have been mainly advisors but this does make me think that since force ghost are in the mind of the decedents of the Hohenzollern's does that mean that they can affect the nervous system of their ancestors and is that why they can affect living people?
While I do see Karl as a possible puppet to the Committee I do not think that he originally wanted a fair and just society. I can see the good intentions turned evil character arc being more in line with Thierry Baudet and his movement that the committee hijacked.
That would break Rule 1 of force ghosts by explaining them too much. I much prefer a supernatural explanation (but I don't know anything other than that).
To be fair, this is from Wilhelmina's point of view. She's trying to rationalize what her uncle did but only with what she's seen him do. She doesn't have all of the pieces as she can only watch him do what he did from the outside. Arvis is merely the closest comparison she can make, not an exact one.
Well Elias is having Theodor make a mech suit to fight Wihelmina with while Josh has Diana's bike and Olga's guantlets, so imagine Wihelmina having to fight them both at some point. Wouldn't that be epic.
As always, Wihelmina gets some nice develop in this update through her interactions with Sophia and the flashback to her dynamic with her parents. It seems we'll be taking a break from Wilhelmina's arc in the next two updates to focus more on Izinchi and Gebhard judging by the titles, should be interesting learning more about them.
I quite that reflection of Wilhelm Karl here, what a complicated legacy he left behind. He may go down in history as one of the most brutal dictators in human history, but at least he wasn’t too bad as an uncle all things considered.
I do find it funny how Sophia has such a black and white view of Wilhelm Karl even through I figured she would be aware of his circumstances as a force ghost. I was under the impression that the force ghosts where omniscient, unless I'm forgetting something.
Yea sometimes it is good to leave things blank that way we can come up with our own conclusions.
Being the reader I sometimes forget that the characters themselves don't know everything like we do.
You do make a good point. I know that there is a Heaven and Hell in TTL but a part of me wondered if for the force ghost there is something like the Spirit World from ATLA in were they all reside when there not in the physical world?
Only problem is Wilhelmina doesn't know how to drive a motorcycle.
Sort of, yes. I really didn't flesh out the two of them that much before. Gebhard wasn't planned to be a major character, and my original plan didn't even have Izinchi in it (she was originally only supposed to be a one-off mention and that's it).
Then again, Hitler liked his dogs, but that doesn't excuse him from being the worst dictator ever.
They're not. The past lives in Avatar aren't omniscient, and I'm hewing closer to that interpretation than to the Star Wars force ghosts at this point.
Exactly what I'm trying to achieve with the force ghosts
That's a mistake we all make frequently. The audience almost always knows way more than the characters, but when the characters act based on their limited information, a lot of times we bash them for "being stupid" or "out of character."Being the reader I sometimes forget that the characters themselves don't know everything like we do.
Again, Rule 1 of force ghosts.
The Girl from Edinburgh
December 9
Heidi pawed at the snowy ground under her hooves, but Wilhelmina kept her stable. Next to her, Gebhard and Izinchi sat on their own horses. Gebhard at least had some cavalry training from his time at the Friedrich de Normandie Academy for Logistics and Resource Strategy, but Izinchi looked like she was going to fall off her horse at any moment, especially since there was a gun in her hands. They all were carrying guns for this lesson.
“Are you sure you’re fine, Izinchi? You don’t have to do this.”
“Nae, I can do this. I have to do this.”
“Alright, when you’re on horseback, you might come under attack and not have time to dismount,” Gulichi said, “So you’ll have to learn to shoot from horseback.”
“I’ve heard of swordfighting on horseback, yes, but how can you shoot a gun on horseback?” Gebhard said. “I can understand firing a pistol, but rifles like these?”
“Aye, if you let go of the reins, you’ll fall.”
“Not necessarily,” Gulichi said, “How else do you think Genghis Khan built his empire? ‘It’s easy to conquer the world from the back of a horse’.”
No evidence he actually said that, though.
Heidi now had a saddle, which helped Wilhelmina stay on her back. The saddle was very tall, with a rodeo frame and several decorated metal disks that stood out from the sides. The saddle was put together in such a way that the rider had much greater freedom of movement than with Roman designs. There were also some pouches and straps to put weapons and ammo.
“How about a demonstration?” Gulichi whipped his horse into a gallop. As soon as his horse bolted, he began loading his hunting rifle. While the horse remained at full gallop, he raised the rifle to his shoulder and fired, hitting a target on the other side of the meadow dead center. Then he appeared to fall off the saddle. His legs remained wrapped around the horse’s torso, and he was now even repositioning himself to aim at another target from under the horse while hanging almost upside down. A shot rang out, and a bullet hit the target dead center. He then reached out with his right hand and grabbed something off the ground. Finally, he got back onto the horse’s back and stopped in front of them.
“Two targets down…”. He held out his right hand, revealing five one Yavdian markka coins. “Five out of five coins.”
“Ach, away ye go!” Izinchi shook her head. “Musta been a trick!”
“It is a trick, called trick riding, but I assure you, picking up the five markka is no illusion. Our best riders, whether for sport or the cavalry, learn to shoot under any circumstances. This particular trick was first done by the hero Damdin Sükhbaatar centuries ago.”
“You make it look so easy,” Wilhelmina said.
“Oh no, this takes years of practice. Which you don’t have.”
“So…you’re going to teach us the basics?”
“Yeah, just shooting at full gallop,” Gulichi said.
“That’s already tough!” Izinchi said. “I…my stomach…”
Wilhelmina looked at her. “Didn’t you say you have to learn to do this?”
Izinchi scoffed. “Fine, whatever.”
Heidi lightly nudged Izinchi’s horse, which bolted off, carrying a still screaming Izinchi far into the distance.
“THIS’S OUTWITH MY REMIT!”
December 10
The sauna was very humid, which was to be expected. But Wilhelmina didn’t think it would have that much steam. Maybe she put too much water on the hot stones.
“Uh…is this too much?” she asked.
Izinchi shook her head. “Nae, I’m fine.”
“You look very sweaty.”
“I am droukit! That’s the whole point of this place!”
“Oh, I was thinking since…” Wilhelmina began.
“Since I bide in Edinburgh? Nae, even there we go to bath houses during the winter.”
“What’s Edinburgh like? Never been there.”
Mom’s only been to Caledonia a couple times. Dad secretly brought back a bagpipe one of the local clans gave him. Mom hated how much I blared that thing at half past nine in the evening. If it hadn’t broke, I probably would’ve gone on to play it in the school orchestra. Never mind that we didn’t have a bagpipe player in the orchestra. I should visit Edinburgh sometime.
“Oh, the days are dreich. Makes you wonder why my ancestors left a hot and humid place to settle there. Oh, that’s right, we got stuck there after you lot kicked the Triple Alliance out of Europe.”
Still doesn’t explain why they settled there to begin with, but whatever.
“They must have been strangers in a strange land.”
“Aye, they were. First few generations were tough. Forced off their land, almost lynched a few times, barred from most jobs and parts of society, language banned and religion suppressed, and by the Augustinian Code no less…yeah, we had it as bad as if not worse than the French and Arabs. Somehow, I still know Nahuatl and my ancestors’ traditions. Which aren’t doing me much good now as I’m stuck somewhere in the Ural Mountains, where I’m pretty sure no Eimerican has ever been before as almost everyone here thinks I’m some sort of demon for my language or my skin color. Record scratch. Aye, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I got into this bloody mess.”
“Actually, I kind of am, now.”
“My parents lived in the poorer neighborhoods. Had all the tropes. Corrupt cops, drugs, gangs, and so on. My da did his best to put food on the table for us. He worked a job at a local KL airbase, uh…I think it was called KL Edinburg?”
That name sounds familiar. I remember walking in on a bunch of Mom’s teatime chats with Angela Hansen in the 90s, and sometimes Angela would mention KL Edinburg. Like she was investigating it or something.
“The one named in the Sentinel files? Where they tested experimental aircraft?”
“Aye, that’s the one. My da was a mechanic. Nothing high-level, just tuning up engines and stuff. Can’t say for sure because it’s still classified. Wasn’t leaked with the rest. The only thing I know for certain is in 1993, when I was 11, Da changed. He first developed a rash under his arm. My ma assumed it was something to do with our recent renovations. But then the rash only got worse. It spread and started looking like burns and blisters. He said it hurt all over, no matter what he did. Then his personality changed. He started losing his temper easily. He’d gaun his dinger ower anything, or nothing at all. Then he’d shake, like he was having a seizure.”
“Did he go see a doctor?”
“Aye, many times. Many came up with excuses to avoid seeing us. The few who did said there was nothing wrong.”
“Impossible. You said the rash covered his whole body.”
“Happens to all of us. Doctors don’t take our conditions seriously. They say we’re overreacting or abusing health services for whatever reason. All rubbish, I say.”
They literally saw a man who had seizures and a rash over his whole body and said…there was nothing wrong with him?! And then had the gall to say he was abusing the health service? How could this have happened?
“That…they do that?”
“Eight centuries of prejudice don’t disappear overnight. Da’s condition worsened, and there was nothing we could do. He died in 1993.”
I would have been only 11 at the time. About her age. I can’t imagine what would have happened if Mom died eight years earlier and was treated that badly.
“I’m…I’m so sorry.”
“His death was only the beginning. We lost our primary breadwinner. Medical expenses and funeral bills were piling up. My older brother took it upon himself to support us, but the only way to do that in our neighborhood was to join a gang. So he did that…and was killed in a shootout later that year, at the age of 14. Got riddled with over a dozen bullets. My ma couldn’t take the strain of losing both her husband and son within the span of a year. She took out multiple prescriptions for antidepressants. Too many. One day, when I came home from school…”
Izinchi stopped for a moment, overwhelmed. Wilhelmina could easily tell her tears apart from her sweat and the steam.
I…I can’t believe all this happened. How could it all have happened?
“They said she overdosed. Took too many pills at once. Never had a chance. It was 1994. I only had my sister left, and I was in crippling medical debt. Aye, I had inherited my parents’ debts. Why that’s a thing, I don’t know.”
Neither do I. I was fortunate enough to avoid all this, but was that a good thing? I always prided myself on learning the struggles of the people. Yet here I am, hearing a struggle that happened over 40 years ago for the first time. A struggle Izinchi was forced to go through and nobody helped her through.
“I…I don’t know what to say.”
“If there was anything my family would have wanted me to do, it was to live for them. So I did. Avoided the gangs and drugs. Took on several jobs to put me and my sis through high school and college while paying off my debts. Studied like Mictlan to get my degree. Then when I graduated, I tried helping my community out. Donated, worked at charities, anything I could to get kids like me into better lives. Even worked as a nutrition educator for a couple years. It was hard.”
…it’s still not over?
“How hard?”
“D’ye ken how far people are willing to go to avoid getting help from a Nahua woman? I’ve been pushed down stairs, had gum stuck in my hair, and was called a terrorist dozens of times. I even had the police called on me for bomb threats a few times. And that’s just from the kids.”
Kids?! Harassing a grown adult like that?! What the hell was going on over there? And why didn’t I know until know?
“Well, I dinnae give up. Even if they dinnae want my help, I gave it to them anyways. Because they were my neighbors. Da, before everything happened to him, told me just as Nanahuatzin sacrificed himself so that the sun could rise and humanity could live, so too must we sacrifice so all Romans—Nahua included—can move forward. Yer a lang time deid, he would say—ye’ll be dead forever, so make the most of your life by sacrificing for the benefit of all. We no longer need to sacrifice blood or life, like in the auld days, but we sacrifice other things—our time, money anything. All so the sun can keep rising long after we’re gone.”
Huh, that’s a new interpretation. Is that how the Mexica stopped human sacrifices? How did that work with their cosmology and how their gods came to create the world? Wasn’t a lot of bloodletting involved? Or was it just played up by the 13th century leaders? Pretty interesting.
“That’s…an interesting interpretation. Don’t think I’ve ever heard that one before.”
“Ye haven’t? It’s rather common among Nahua communities, at least those in Europe. One of the reasons we overwhelmingly supported PMS. Before…ye ken?”
Yeah, I…ken.
“So that charity work led you to PMS?”
“Aye. Started by campaigning for locals I believed would help my community. Then I realized…there were so many other communities like mine across the Reich. So I worked with larger and larger campaigns at the state and national level, hoping they’d help my place. A handful did, but not much. I realized if I truly wanted to help my neighborhood out…I had to run for office and do it myself. And that’s how I ended up in the Reichsrat…and then this random sauna in the middle of nowhere.”
“Quite a story. Very different from my own.”
“Ye dinnae say. I was born on October 4, 1982, so I’m about three months younger than ye. But our paths could not have been more different. To be honest, I resented ye at first.”
Well, this is the first I’m hearing about it. Though I’m not surprised.
“Why? Because I was a princess?”
“Ye happened to be born the daughter of Elisabeth Alexandra, and as a result, ye got every opportunity and luxury in life. I didn’t want any of that for myself, but my da and ma and brother got screwed over and died due to things completely outside their control, and I had to work my butt off to avoid me and my sister meeting their fate. I thought it was unfair and ran counter to our meritocratic values. But after getting t’ken ye…I think yer a good lassie.”
Not the weirdest compliment I’ve gotten.
“Really?”
“Yer not some snobby noble looking down on the rest of us. Yer certainly not like yer uncle, who considers us disposable peasants. Ye actually do care about us. You don’t want to consider yourself any different from us—you want to be just like us. It may have taken ye a while to get here, both personally and literally, but ye’ve done so much for the cause, for all of us, even if it doesn’t seem to benefit ye at first.”
“Still got a long way to go,” Wilhelmina said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Izinchi said, “We’ll have your back. Because we know you‘ll have our back too. We’re all Jock Tamson’s bairns, and y’ken it.”
I’m going to assume this Tamson guy is a good person. If he exists.
Izinchi lightly hit herself with a still leafy branch of vihta, or Finnish silver birch. “Ah, yeah, that hit the spot. The villagers were right, that definitely helps with mosquito bites. And with the muscle soreness from Gulichi’s lessons.”
“Definitely forgot we have these branches.”
“Yer not sore?”
“Not that much. More in my sword arm.”
“Oh, that. How are the lesssons going?”
“Fine.”
“Who are ye getting lessons from anyways?”
“Uh…I’m self-taught. Just recalling the lessons my dad gave me as a kid.”
“…Impressive. Ye can recall stuff from over 40 years ago.”
“You can’t?”
“Well, I dinnae have much to recall, and what little there is…I’d prefer not to recall it.”
“Sorry.”
They sat there for a moment, not knowing what else to say.
“This is the moment in donghua shows and CRPGs where pervy guys sneak in to see us and we beat them up, isn’t it?”
“I’d be very concerned since we have two 56-year-old women and one six-year-old girl. I swear, I’ll gie ‘em laldie!”
Izinchi held up her vihta branch like a sword. “Behold, the legendary claymore Enonon!”
It actually kinds of look like Enonon. With all that perspiration on it, if you hold it up to the light in a certain way, it’ll look like it’s glowing. But technically a claymore is another kind of sword. As Dad would have pointed out.
Wilhelmina played along. “The dragon of darkness trembles in fear!”
“That was my line!” Ilyana finally spoke up. She had been there the whole time, listening quietly.
Everyone laughed.
“It was nice talking to ye,” Izinchi said, “I never had any opportunity to talk about this before, with everything going on. So, uh, thanks for the chance.”
“No problem.”
“And, um, sorry for how I treated ye at first. I jumped to conclusions.”
“No worries. I understand where you’re coming from now. We’ve grown since then.”
“That we have.”
“Feeling a bit thirsty now. Want to get some airag after this?”
“Aye, I’m a bit drouthy myself.”
“I want airag!” Ilyana said.
“Maybe when you’re older, Ilyana,” Wilhelmina said.
They laughed again.
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Izinchi’s birthday, work as a nutrition educator, and the bullying she suffered for her heritage come from Ilhan Omar’s life, though the rest of her backstory is original.
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By the way, regarding the easter egg from a few updates ago, since we're moving forward with the story, I might as well give the answer. It can be found here.
Damn, Izinchi had a hard life, it's definitely a contrast to Wilhellmina's, and the product of the legacies of one's ancestor and a foreign invader respectively. All in all a very interesting chapter.
More sympathy for the common people, more happy times to balance things. I worry for when it will end.
The Sunset Invasion may be long over, but its consequences still echo forward over the many subsequent centuries. It’ll take a lot for the two nations and their people to heal, even when they both want peace.
The interaction between Wilhelmina and Izinchi was very interesting and you do feel for Izinchi and what she went through. I also love the more non-violent take on the sacrifice part of the Mexica religion.
Ohhh. So Jenny visited the Yavdi village that Wilhelmina and her group are in now?
The reinterpretation would probably also incorporate some more Christian and European pagan influences, but maybe I’ll flesh that out later. It was very interesting working out how the Mexica religion evolved in a completely different land over 800 years.
My idea was she lost the turnip sack and it ended up here sometime in the next 400 years.
The Boy from Hallstatt
December 11
Gebhard sat on a bench overlooking the lake. The sun was setting, and from where he was sitting, it appeared to be going down into the lake, throwing all sorts of orange, yellow, and purple hues onto the rippling waves. Off to the left, the sacred island Takomaan Saari sat quietly.
Reminds me a lot of home. We lived on Lake Hallstatt in Austria. It was one of Dad’s dreams to own a lakeside house in the Alps after he left the service. Once he and Mom saved up enough money, they got a cottage on the lake. Edmund and I grew up there. In the ‘70s, the pollution wasn’t as bad there. The air was pure and fresh, reinvigorating us at the end of our day. The water was so clear and blue—you could see pretty deep, like with this lake. We ate fish very often, though it was always Dad and Edmund fishing, not me. I was more of a barbecue guy. Edmund doesn’t understand that. Then again, he doesn’t understand a lot of things.
Gebhard picked up a rock and skipped it across the lake surface. It bounced maybe four times before finally falling in.
We had a bunch of canoes too. Dad was in the Imperial Marines and always took pride in the fact that his own dad served on the SMS Oberdonau and claimed to have stormed the beaches at Gibraltar. He taught us as much as he knew about the water. Wouldn’t look good if an Imperial Marine’s own sons didn’t know how to swim. In the evenings, after we had kayaked the entire length of the lake and marked every single nook and cranny as a potential landing site or ambush spot, we sat on the beach and ate grilled fish, watching the sun go down.
But those days were long gone. Just like the sun was setting now, those days were numbered.
Where did it all go so wrong? Was it after we went to middle school? Edmund always protected the two of us from the bullies who called us hillbilly salt miners. Said he always had to look out for his little brother. It was his duty to protect me. To get his hands dirty so I didn’t have to. I remember the times he would come back late at night with bloody fists. The weeks he spent in detention and I was left alone. He told me, “Stay strong, Gebhard, for the both of us. Nobody’s going to break you down.” I tried taking those words to heart. But…I failed. I lasted only a few days before I broke down. They called me “crybaby Gebby” for months afterward. Edmund didn’t take it well when he got out. “Look what you’ve done, Gebhard. You can’t even stand up for yourself, not without me. And now that you’ve done this, you’re making me look bad too!” Edmund, you looked at it the wrong way.
But what if it wasn’t the school? What if it was the other big thing in his life?
The war definitely changed everything. Those early weeks were nightmarish. Reports from the east were confusing. The news didn’t know what was real and what was hysteria. Even Dad claimed to have seen a Soviet bomber over our house. I never knew if he was telling the truth or not, not even after making general. Could go either way. It’s not impossible. Austria became a warzone after the fall of Vienna.
Edmund and I signed up as soon as possible. Dad wanted both of us to try the Friedrich de Normandie Academy and get a commission, but when it came time to call in a favor with General Princip, he only finished one letter of recommendation before a missile fell on his place in Illyria. We spent days arguing over who should use the letter. But with the admissions deadline fast approaching—not to mention the Soviets as well—it fell to Dad to make a quick decision.
Gebhard sighed and looked down.
Me. He chose me. Edmund had no choice but to enlist and fight on the front lines, then try to leverage his service into a spot at the academy after he finished a tour, hopefully before the dust settled. Meanwhile, the most service I saw in that war was that one time I shadowed a general during the final push into Pärnu. Edmund, though?
“I’m sorry, Edmund. If I had known what would happen to us in that war…maybe I should’ve given you the letter.”
Edmund was at Chernobyl when it was nuked. He wasn’t supposed to be there. His unit had been suffering engine trouble while in transit. They were on the outskirts awaiting a mechanic when the nuke fell. He was lucky to escape with minor injuries and no radiation sickness, but most of his unit wasn’t so fortunate. After the war, we met up at my graduation. Under normal circumstances, this would be great, but these weren’t normal circumstances.
Friedrich de Normandie Academy for Logistics and Resource Strategy reception hall, Constantinople - 1986
“GEBHARD!”
The room fell quiet, and the other graduates and their families nervously moved away. Edmund Remmele—a large man with a rugged hunter’s face and fierce eyes—stormed towards Gebhard. The two men’s uniforms showed the paths each had taken over the last two years. Gebhard wore a spotless white Kaiserliche Heer dress uniform. His hair was neatly trimmed, and his face was clean. Edmund wore dark fatigues, the same he had worn all over Europe during the war. There were still splotches of mud on the pants, some bloodstains on the shirt sleeves, and quite a few cuts and tears. His hair was longer and a little frayed at the end. His face looked far older than his age.
“Edmund?” Gebhard said.
Edmund immediately grabbed Gebhard’s collar and lifted him off the floor. “You stole my spot!”
“Look, I’m sorry about that, but it was Dad’s decision—”
“You could’ve not accepted it! You could’ve turned it down!”
“Edmund, you’re making a fuss.”
“Don’t ‘Edmund’ me, Gebhard! You’re the reason I’m here! While you rode out the war in luxury and safety in the grand old Kaiserin of Cities, I was getting my hands dirty shooting the damn equalists! I was saving your hide yet again from those godless monsters!”
“You made your choice, and I made mine. You chose to go off to war. You could’ve just waited or tried finding someone else who could write you a letter.”
“What, wait out the war?!” Edmund facepalmed. “God, Gebhard, you might dress up in a fancy uniform and pass all these officers’ tests, but you’re still as dumb as rocks! You don’t know the realities on the battlefield. People were dying out there, my men and innocents too. The longer we waited, the more land Varennikov takes. The longer we wait, more people are forced to work as his slaves. People are suffering all over Europe, and I can’t just stand by. Unlike you. You think everyone’s as fortunate as you, but you don’t realize, for every second you waste reading those stupid books about Wolfgang Ludendorff and other dead guys, more people die because of it. Like how Dad died last year.”
“Edmund, now’s not the time. Can we please just discuss this outside, so people aren’t—”
“Don’t change the subject, little brother! Don’t try to get out of this! This has always been you, Gebhard. You’ve always hidden behind me, made me do the dirty work for you. Whether it was at school or in war. You had me fight the bullies for you back then, and now you make me go off and fight the equalists for you while you live the high life in Constantinople. Bet you’ve never even shot someone before. Taken a life. Watched someone’s final moments. Watched your comrades die. Then get revenge on their killers. Those equalists took everything from us, and you are too cowardly to confront them directly. You have to go through me! Well, guess what! I’m the hero here, not you!”
“So what do you want from me, then?” Gebhard asked.
Edmund’s eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, what do I want?”
“Surely, if you’re here, you want something out of me, right? I can arrange it. I can talk to the superintendent or something, maybe get you a spot—”
Edmund slapped him.
“You really haven’t changed one bit in two years. You’re still Crybaby Gebby, deep down. Always relying on other people to push you ahead, then discarding them when they’re no longer helpful. You think you can do the same for others? For me, of all people?! No, this is a free country. We are a meritocracy, and I’m going to prove to the world what a true Remmele man can do. I’m going to rise on my own merits. And then, when we next meet, I’ll have taken back what’s rightfully mine.”
Gebhard took a deep breath.
“Fine. We’ll agree to that, then.”
“What are you getting at, Gebhard?”
“If you want to take back what’s yours, then by all means, strive for it. I’ll be waiting for you at the end.”
“Are you mocking me?!”
“No. I’m just explaining what I’m going to do. You and Dad got me here, and it’s only natural that I thank you for that. Despite our many differences, you did help me. I can’t deny that. But now it’s time I go the rest of the way on my own. I’m going to show you I can do this myself. I don’t need to hide anymore. Least of all from you. Because nobody’s going to break me down.”
Edmund glared at him. Then he released Gebhard and stormed out of the room.
Takomaan - 2038
Gebhard looked down and realized his fists were clenched tightly.
“Edmund…what the hell have you done now?”
That was the last time we met. I made general a few years later. He didn’t show. I couldn’t call him or anything, and this was before the Internet took off. So it was like he fell off the face of the planet. But in a way, it was liberating. Without him, I could figure out who I was on my own terms, instead of defining myself in relation to him. How I wish that could have been the end of it. But it wasn’t. I first heard of a general by his name in around 2008. Fortunately, due to anti-nepotism regulations, I could use those to stay away from him. Now that I think about it…that counts as hiding, right? Hiding from him, instead of behind him? Why did I become so scared of him? It only got worse from there. After Bloody Tuesday, he enthusiastically sided with the committee early on. They assigned him to Lower Saxony to deal with Bremerhaven. We’re all lucky he didn’t just charge in guns blazing. He gave a few interviews with Bysandros before the censors got ridiculous. The things he said about me then…was that really Edmund? Did he buy into the committee’s lies so wholeheartedly…just because I was on the other side?
He suddenly remembered the battle of the bunker. How his forces were quickly overwhelmed by the combined assault and the bunker fell. How he hid in a closet while Elias personally executed his men and then took Kresge away. Kresge…
I…I failed you, Kresge. I should’ve gone down taking shots at Elias. That way, at least I would have tried to kill him, and you might have been spared whatever you’re going through right now. But I didn’t. I ran like a coward and hid in a closet. I left you behind as a distraction for Elias. May not have been thinking that, but that’s what it boils down to. I hid again. I’m still Crybaby Gebby. Always have been. Maybe I’m still hiding today. Hiding in a random Yavdian village instead of taking the fight to the enemy. Hiding here while my entire country suffers under the committee. Just like during the last war. Maybe Edmund had a point…
NO! He did not have a point!
What do you mean?
You are NOT a crybaby! You did what you thought was right.
What I did left people to suffer so I could save my own skin. I was being selfish.
So what? Everyone’s selfish. Edmund’s selfish. That’s why he showed up at the graduation to specifically rag on you. To satisfy his own ego. Face it. To be selfish is to be human.
So what, we should just become cynical and selfish all the time?
No, no, no! I’m saying is you’re using Edmund’s criticisms as an excuse to actually not do anything.
And why would I do that?
Because if you really are Crybaby Gebby, you can’t help but run and hide at the first sign of trouble, right? Shikata ga nai, as they say in Ryukyu. So you can’t be bothered to do actual work.
Nonsense! I’ve done work! I put Mexico back together! Me and Boris and Huicton!
And where are they now? Huicton’s dead, but Boris is still fighting in Vilnius. Fighting the good fight up close and personal. Unlike a certain someone.
I’m only here because of the government in exile.
And why are you part of the government in exile? Oh right, because you defected to Russia very early on and avoided all of the chaos that was soon to engulf the Reich.
I did what I had to do.
You could’ve confronted Edmund right then and there. Marched your troops into Berlin and depose the committee. You have the reputation and the manpower. You could have done it.
Then it would just be another coup and another military dictatorship taking over, and we wouldn’t have gotten anywhere.
So you would’ve rather let the Reich fall as a result of the previous coup?
I…no, that’s not true.
But that’s what you’re saying. Face it, you ran to save yourself. Crybaby Gebby hid in a Yavdian village while the Reich became a dystopia that makes Orwell look like Eugen Roddenberry, then starts a global war that kills 800 million on the first day alone, and then captures Kresge and slaughters the princess’ family right in front of her. Yet you still hide.
No, I will not hide! Shut up!
…Go on.
I’m sick of all this. Being called a crybaby. People thinking I can’t do anything on my own. Edmund putting me down as helpless and dependent. The idea that I ran away when my Kaiserin and my country needed me. No. No more. You aren’t going to break me, and neither will anyone else!
Good…good!
I’m done hiding! The princess stopped hiding a long time ago, so why shouldn’t I? We need leadership now more than ever. If this government in exile is to survive the next few weeks, we need to act. I need to act. And when I find Edmund again…I’m going to prove every single one of his conceptions about me wrong. I’ll show him what a true Remmele man is like.
I’m looking forward to that.
The sun dipped below the horizon and the sky gradually darkened. Gebhard got up and began heading back to the village. There was much he had to do.
- 2
Sometimes you have to reflect. Now let's see what Gebhard does with that resolve.
Gebhard hasn’t had any time to rest in a while. Now he can finally see why he’s here, where he came from, and what he has to do to take down his brother. Because he knows he’ll have to run into him again eventually.
Wait so does that mean that mean that Edmund is still alive and will appear in a future update or is he just a one off character and will only be mentioned again when it is found out he died to a loyalist attack?
I mentioned Edmund once during the Bremerhaven protest arc and then nothing after that, so it's leaning towards him still being alive.