Disclaimer: Victorious and its characters are the property of Schneider's Bakery and Nickelodeon. This story is for entertainment purposes only and no money exchanged hands. No copyright infringement is intended. The original characters, situations, and story are the property of the author. No profit is intended or wanted for this story.
Note: A couple of very non-PC references so, if that will offend you, please do not read. And please do not complain.
Someone was hammering on the front door. Trina called from upstairs, "You get it!"
Cursing her sister under her breath, Tori Vega rose from the couch and opened to door to the scowling face of Jade West.
What did I do this time? Tori thought. Wait, I didn't do anything.
"Vega, you gonna let me in?"
Tori stepped back, "Sorry, I'm just so used to you simply barging in..."
"What did you say?" Jade growled.
"Something about how you barge in!" Tori replied, standing her ground. "Now, why?"
"I..." Jade paused, as if she was choking on something, "I…need...your help."
"Huh? I didn't hear you. Could you repeat that?" Tori teased.
"You heard me Vega!"
With a resigned sigh, Tori said, "Okay. So what do you need? Another play? Another chance with Beck? Someone else to do your eyebrows? Although, when you did listen to me about using a marker, it looked pretty good..."
With a groan, Jade muttered, "I should've known better than to Cat wax my eyebrows... Or then listen to you... I looked like Spock for a week!"
With a short laugh, Tori asked, "Seriously, Jade, what do you need?"
"I have a history report due Monday. And I have no idea what to write about."
"How 'bout something historic?"
"Thanks Vega, that's so helpful," Jade scoffed after settling on the sofa half near the kitchen. "You're way too profound for me!"
"Alright, couldn't resist. What history class?"
"I'm taking the World Wars and Interim Years course." Like a lot of high schools, the upper class history courses had been divided up into specific sections like Colonial America, the Revolution and the Civil Way, the Westward Expansion or the Cold War Era as well as the afore-mentioned World Wars and the Interim Years. The latter two included world history due to the scale of the events during those periods. Jade's course also included the empire building of the 19th century Europeans that indirectly led to the Great War.
"Well, that should give you lots of things to choose from."
"I want something unique from the myriad reports on Pearl Harbor, Cecil Rhodes, Sir Richard Francis Burton, the Rise of the Nazis, the Battle of the Somme, or the atomic attacks on Japan."
"Myriad? That word-of-the-day calendar Cat got you last Christmas is really paying off!"
Jade growled. Rolling her eyes, Tori innocently asked, "Did you bring your dog?"
If Jade's eyes could fire lasers, Tori knew she'd be a pile of ashes by this point. She relented, "Alright, I'm sorry. What do you need to write about?"
"One of the wars or the twenty years between... I thought that was pretty self-explanatory."
"Alright, alright. I meant what do you need to do? A broad topic paper or something more specific."
"Who's using big terms now, Vega?"
"Jade..."
"Okay. I can write about anything but I want to do something unique." Jade growled again, "Like I said."
"Okay, let me throw out some ideas..."
Grudgingly, Jade replied, "Alright…"
"Anzio."
"No. No invasions."
"The Beer Hall Puscht."
"No."
"America's Isolationist policies."
"God no."
"The Great Depression."
"Nope. Too big and too many others doing that."
"The Battle of the Bulge."
"No. A kid's grandfather escaped the Malmedy Massacre and he's writing about it from a survivor's perspective."
"I'd love to read that."
"Vega…" Jade growled.
"Okay, okay…back to the point. The October Revolution."
"Nah."
"Prohibition."
"Um...no. Too large. And not really as cool as The Untouchables – either the movie or the old TV series."
"The Weimar Republic."
"No." Jade mocked a yawn.
"The assassination of Archduke Ferdinand and his wife."
"No. Already have someone in class reading The Guns of August."
"Operation Overlord."
"No invasions, I said! Anyway, there are already two or three other papers on D-Day."
"Von Richtofen."
"No. Too Snoopy."
"Zeppelins."
"Hmm... No, don't think so. Anyway, one of the doofs in class is making a Zeppelin model."
"A model?"
"Yeah, the project can be anything from a paper to a model to… Well, one of the shop tech heads is making a samurai sword. He had to promise it wouldn't have an edge."
"Wow, I never had that chance. Do you want to do something like that? Maybe a diorama?"
"God no. I prefer writing anyway."
"Okay. How about Lord Haw-haw?"
"Sounds too cartoony."
"Not to the bomber crews in England. He was an ex-patriate Brit who did propaganda broadcasts for the Nazis from Germany. My maternal grandfather was a member of a B-17 crew. His squadron was mentioned specifically on one of Lord Haw-haw's broadcast before a big raid over Essen. And again the night before they bombed Regensburg. That time Haw-haw mentioned his plane by name – the Seminole Maiden."
"Okay, sorry. But no."
"Tokyo Rose."
"Um..."
"Iva Toguri was forced to do propaganda broadcasts for the Japanese but a lot of people think she was really trying to help the Allies."
"Interesting. That's kinda the right way I wanna go. But no…"
"Schindler."
"Not copying Spielberg."
"Chiune Sugihara."
"What is that?"
"No, not what, who. He was a Japanese diplomat in Lithuania who wrote transport visas for over six thousand Jews, allowing them to escape the Holocaust. He ignored his government's tacit agreement to cooperate with the Nazis and the Italian Fascists."
"So he's like Schindler?"
"Yeah or Raoul Wallenberg."
"Who? I know the name but…"
"Raoul Wallenberg was a Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews from the Nazis working in his office in Budapest. He disappeared in 1945 when SMERSH detained him for espionage. It's rumored the KGB assassinated him in the Lubyanka."
"SMERSH? As in James Bond?"
With a sigh, Tor nodded, "Yeah, Fleming wrote about real groups like SMERSH and Spetznaz in the Bond novels."
"Is Spectre real?"
Sarcastically, Tori replied, "Yeah, like Hydra, Thrush or Kaos or…"
"No need to make fun of me, Vega."
"Sorry," Tori replied, actually feeling bad about that last comment. "Anyway, Wallenberg was undoubtedly killed by the Russians but he saved tens of thousands of Slavic Jews."
"He might be the one I should write about..."
"Maybe. It's your call. But Sugihara is far less well known and an uncelebrated hero of the war. Outside of Israel where he was declared a national hero, almost no one knows who he was."
"Vega, how come you know so much about the war? I had a great-grandfather who was at D-Day and later helped capture the Remagen Bridge over the Rhine. But still..."
"My mom's mother is Jewish. Her parents were two of the Jews Sugihara saved. Later, Grandma met Grandpa in Miami and…well, the rest is history."
"Clever, Vega." Jade looked at Tori with a thoughtful expression. "So you're really an Irish Hispanic Jew?"
"Actually, I was raised Roman Catholic. But. yep, essentially I'm a Mick-Spick-Kike!"
"VEGA! That's not cool!"
Tori was surprised at the politically correct reaction from Jade. Then she stated, "Jade, I can say that since I'm all of those. If I was black, like Andre, I could use the N word. If I was...I dunno...gay? I'd be a Mick-Spick-Kike-Dyke."
"That is so wrong, Vega..."
"But it's okay if Rex calls himself a puppet?"
"It is a puppet!"
"Alrighty then," Tori replied smugly.
Several years later, Jade reminded her fiancé of that conversation.
"So, now I guess you really are a Mick-Spick-Kike-Dyke."
"Very funny. But you can't say that!"
"Why not? I'm as gay as you are. Especially when it comes to you…"
"Are you Irish?"
"No. Austrian by way of England."
"Are you Hispanic?"
With a deep sigh, "No, I just said my family is from Austria. God Vega…"
"Are you Jewish?"
"No, Lutheran."
"So you can't use any of those epithets without being racist."
"Lutherans are a religious minority in Austria."
"Doesn't count."
"I'm a dyke."
Tori smiled widely, "Yes you are. You're my dyke."
"So I'm a Kraut-Lute-Dyke."
"Oh my God…" Tori moaned, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Lute's not even a term…"
Post-script: Chiune Sugihara, Raoul Wallenberg, Oskar Schindler, Iva Toguri, Lord Haw-haw and the major historical events are real.
The Seminole Maiden is, as far as I know, a fictional nickname for one of the thousands of bombers the USAAF flew over German and Japanese-held territory on raids during the war.
SMERSH and Spetznaz were real Soviet operations – SMERSH was a counter-espionage operation from 1942 to 1946. Spetznaz was the military intelligence unit under the Red Army's GRU, the military equivalent of the NKVD and later the KGB. Specter, Thrush, KAOS and Hydra are all fictional villainous agencies.
