Well, here we are. A new fic after I haven't touched my old ones since like, 2015ish. Oof, am I sorry. Life just likes to come up and either punch you in the dick, or give you writers block for a couple years.
Still, at least that's given me the time to start world building, and this new fic is taking – in part – in that new world: Terra Solis. A world of my own building, with some parts mixed around a bit. I originally was a part of region on Nationstates . Net – great website by the way, you should all check it out if you like geo, socio-economic, political worldbuilding/roleplay – where my homegrown nation of Yytuskia really got my brain juices flowing. And now, seven years after I first wrote about her, I'm putting the state to e-paper.
And while this and the next chapter are going to be basically introduction chapters to the locations and characters of the Grosser Krater Institut, I plan on both writing an actual full-length novel using this world, and this fic – which'll be going to the F/GO universe. So, buckle in for that shenanigan-filled ride.
The final word count before this Author's Note was 7714 words, including those page breaks, and I ultimately finished this chapter around 0117 AM on the 2nd of October. Hope you all enjoy, leave a follow and a comment if you want more, and I could always use constructive criticism.
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"What did you expect?" – Talking
'A war like no other?' – Thought
"Der Teufel selbst?" – Very bad Google Translate, or emphasis on speech
'Or just a bad dream?' – Written word
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Helmuth von Trotha awoke with two things: A splitting headache/hangover the likes he had never experienced in his twenty-three years alive on Terra, and a surprising feeling of someone else's flesh upon his own – which meant he was naked. Now, von Trotha was what one could call a womanizer, and a heavy drinker. That did not mean, however, that he was disrespectful to the fairer sex, quite the opposite, he was a polite young man. And while most in his position – one of relative power, and wealth – would've been using it to force girls either through money or whatnot, Lady von Trotha managed to install into Helmut a profound respect for women at a young age.
So, when he felt at least two women pressed up on either side of his naked torso, he was both alert and tense at the same time. One of the two problems that were plaguing him at this point in time was the fact that he couldn't remember anything that had happened last night past his thirteenth or fourteenth shot of schnapps, and he had two possibly angry coworkers on his hands. Except, in the case that these two beautiful ladies snuggled up to either side of him weren't related to work, then that was one less problem. The easiest explanation could have been that he had gone out clubbing last night, to one of Wintermünster's many nightclubs in the Rotlichtviertel – the red-light district in the city's East End – and had somehow managed to seduce two women while blackout drunk. And he would be right, he did manage to do that.
The women he seduced, on the other hand, well. That's where the problem comes in.
See, 21-year-old Helmuth von Trotha was the third child of a family of seven, the proverbial middle child. And the von Trotha family were a well-respected clan of the Wintermünster, donating to charities, publicly sitting on the city council, helping businesses in town in tough times, and helping keep troubled youths off the street and into better homes. Of course, there was the big secret that permeated around a family with such influence and power, which was no secret at all honestly. Rumors circulated that the von Trotha's vast wealth came through both legal and (mostly) illegal means – rumors that were true, mind you. The von Trotha family was involved in things ranging from illicit drugs, firearms smuggling, underground gambling and fighting rings, prostitution, and money laundering, to name a few. The ports of both nearby Kaiserburg and Wintermünster itself were owned and operated by the von Trotha family company, von Trotha Shipping, allowing easy access to the sea for shipping illicit goods in and out of the country.
But they weren't the end all, be all power in Wintermünster's underground, rather, a member of the 'Trifecta'. Two other crime families called Wintermünster home, besides the von Trotha's: the Leibovitz and the Dominicus families respectively. Both the Leibovitz and the Dominicus families held about the same amount of power in the Wintermünster area, alongside the von Trotha's, due in no part to the three families' standings with each other. For the past three decades, the Trifecta held an uneasy alliance with each other, keeping to their respective parts of Wintermünster and using these combined empires to further boost their financial gains. Lately, however, there has been growing tensions between both the Dominicus and the von Trotha families, which have been contained under the Leibovitz's steady hand.
See, the Leibovitz's, the oldest family in the area, had held the city's crime families under strict guidelines and rules after the Thirteen Years War ended in 1955. Back then, several dozen families had been trying to muscle into each other's districts, almost starting a bloody gang war that had threatened to envelop the city. The Leibovitz's, seeing this, called a referendum between the major and minor crime families in Wintermünster, where they effectively spilt the city and nearby Kaiserburg and Eichenwald between the fourteen crime groups. By the end of 2029, however, there remained only the von Trotha's, the Dominicus, and the Leibovitz families. And with the distrust and hate between the von Trotha's and the Dominicus families, that's where the problem came from for our young Helmuth.
The two women cuddled up on either side of our hero – and that name in-of-itself is not technically what we should call him, but so be it – were the daughters of the current Dominicus' head, Angelina and Sophia. Now for a normal person, this would probably just land the person who was dating them in some hot water with the mob, but as stated before, Helmuth was a von Trotha. Having bedded the Dominicus twins now put him in the worst possible scenario. If word got out that the third-in-line heir to the von Trotha's had managed to seduce the daughters of the Dominicus head, there was a decent chance that stuff would fall apart for the Trifecta. He needed to leave, as soon as possible, before either girl woke up. Sadly, in his just awoken state, he did not recognize the room – or the house, or the women, for that matter – that he was currently snuggled in.
In military terms, he was a soldier far behind enemy lines.
In his dear friend Fredrich's terms: Son you done fucked up and need to get the fuck out of there, NOW.
Of course, with Helmuth lacking key information, he was in no capacity to act on the age-old tactic of GTFOing. Rather, he continued to relax in half-awakened bliss cuddled between the twins. He remained that way until a soft rapping came upon the door.
Eyes opened as a maid entered the room, and Helmuth's head arose from the pillows. Silver-blue eyes made direct contact with the maid's own hazelnut colours, fear meeting startled, before the maid slowly exited the room. Helmuth let a breath he hadn't know he was holding out in a sigh.
"You have about five to ten minutes, depending on daddy's responsiveness this early," came a sultry voice on his left.
20-year-old Sophia Dominicus had apparently awoken from her slumber by Helmuth's movements, and was casting a smoldering leer at him. Helmuth returned the leer with a look of confusion, before it quickly morphed to fear.
"Sophia Dominicus…?" He stuttered, paling at her nod. "Then that means that…"
"My daddy hates your daddy. And you're running out of time before he shows up~"
Even more blood drained from Helmuth's face, before he bolted from the bed, racing to where his foggy memories supplied where his clothes were the night before. He had managed to secure his pants on his legs properly, before an angry yell tore through the building. This only further increased Helmuth's speed, pulling his tee shirt quickly over his head and rushing for the window.
"Three stories up stud," Sophia commented, having moved to her vanity, "have fun running from daddy with a broken leg."
Cursing, Helmuth changed his direction, opting to try his luck outrunning the Elder Dominicus out of his own home. Shoving his way past a butler outside the twin's room – whom had been holding cleaning supplies (possibly for his corpse) – he charged towards the main stairwell. The third-floor connected to the second by two small staircases to the large main one connecting the first and second-floors, so by the time his feet hit the second-floor landing, his luck had run out. A door to the left side of the third-floor landing burst open, revealing the elderly 61-year-old Roma Vito Dominicus in his sleeping clothes, brandishing a double-barreled shotgun. And was he pissed.
"WHERE'S THE SONAVBITCH WHO SLEPT WITH MY DAUGHTERS?!"
Oh yeah, super pissed.
The old man's yell gave Helmuth pause, slowly forcing himself to turn to look at the irate family head with a look of fear. The man's face was a puce-purple-red blend, and the way he was gripping the Rothenberg twelve-gauge side-by-side made Helmuth worry. Worry turned to actual fear as the angry father turned his gaze past his daughters' room to Helmuth, narrowing on contact.
"You…" he hissed, grinding teeth together at the sight of our young hero. "Defiler, seducer! How dare you, you monkey-headed scum sucker! To do such a thing to my own flesh and blood! DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I AM!? I'LL KILL YOU FOR WHAT YOU'VE DONE HERE!"
Helmuth didn't hesitate, diving down the flight of stairs to the first floor as soon as Roma leveled the gun at him.
The blast – and subsequent buckshot scatter – mostly impacted where he had been standing less than a second ago. However, pain laced up and across his spine, as several pellets undoubtedly cut scores across his back, causing him to hiss in pain. He grunted in even more pain as he landed on the first floor, scrambling behind an ornate pillar as the next barrel's salvo impacted the marble pillar. He couldn't afford to pause here, as the clack of the shotgun being broken open echoed throughout the entrance hall. He darted for the front door, barreling past both the stunned mobster guards who entered to protect the family, and their Don's screams of rage at the fleeing Helmuth.
Fleeing as fast as he could, Helmuth broke across the front lawn of the Dominicus estate, ducking as zipping, whistling noises that could only be small arms fire whizzed past him. Glancing backwards, he saw Don Dominicus had exited the house, finally having loaded his weapon and had taken aim at Helmuth. Grimacing, von Trotha hit the dirt as both barrels of the Rothenberg erupted in fire, their deadly pellets whizzing harmlessly above.
And thankfully – for Helmuth – smashing the latch on the front gates of the estate, allowing Helmuth a free run to the street rather than having to climb the damned thing.
Climbing to his feet and resuming his escape as small-caliber bullets cracked into the ground around him, Helmuth then got his second stroke of luck that morning. A familiar car screeched to a halt outside of the now open gate, the passenger-side door hissing open as it swung upwards. Michael Julius Reinecker, one of Helmuth's long-time friends, grinned at him, steadily revving the engine as he dove into the passenger's seat, hissing once more in pain from his grazed back.
"Go, damnit! Go!" he yelled, pulling his legs into the Bayer-Fritsch sports car, reaching for the gullwing door's pull handle.
As soon as the first syllable left his mouth, Michael lifted his foot off the clutch, the car lurching forward as the two peeled away from the estate, bullets clanging of the stainless-steel body panels. The car tore off into the morning dawn of the Wintermünster hills, the driver and passenger grinning.
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"Mother fucker…" Helmuth hissed as Michael dabbed rubbing alcohol on the buckshot cuts that were laced across his back.
"No offence," Michael returned with a chuckle, earning another hiss from Helmuth as he dabbed more rubbing alcohol on his friend's wounds. "But as hot as your mum is at her age, you know I'm more into guys Helmuth."
"Mm."
The two were sitting in one of the unused garages at the von Trotha estate, Michael tending to Helmuth's wounds after their impromptu escape from the Dominicus estate.
"You still didn't explain how you knew I'd be there, by the way," Helmuth stated.
"Oh, that's simple," Michael replied with yet another chuckle, "I drove the three of you back there after you got shitfaced and started hitting on them!"
Helmuth threw an incredulous look towards Michael.
"I'm sorry, what? You drove us – Ok, you know what?" He muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "Start from the beginning. We got to the Submariner, we started ordering drinks, and then…?"
"And then you kept drinking," Michael supplied, putting the rubbing alcohol in favour of a roll of gauze, which he steadily began to wrap around Helmuth's torso. "In fact, it's funny. You managed to down about two whole bottles of schnapps, three of vodka, and at least a fifth of a whiskey before the bartender cut you off. You then proceeded to get down on the dance floor, dancing your ass off. It was rather funny from my perspective, honestly."
"Ha ha ha, yeah, I bet it was, me making a fool of myself." Helmuth sarcastically responded. "And then what?"
"Well, after you spent twenty minutes on the floor, a couple girls started grinding up on you, and I got bored and started looking for somebody to flirt with myself."
Helmuth gave Michael a deadpan stare, prompting Michael to shrug.
"What? there were good looking guys there, some of which were looking for a good time too don't'cha know?~"
"Get on with it."
"Right, so I lost you for a bit, but after about a half hour or so, you came up to me with these two girls hanging off your arms, the dumbest fucking look on your face. You came up to me with them, and just waggled your eyebrows and slurred out what I think was 'twins Mikey, twins!'. So of course, how could I not help a bro out, right?"
Helmuth sighed, shaking his head. "And then, you drove us to the Dominicus estate, which should've raised a few dozen red flags, and yet you allowed me to go into the dragon's den. Drunk off my ass, mind you. After which, I had possibly glorious sex with two of the hottest twins in the immediate vicinity. All of which I cannot remember." Helmuth finished, shaking his head in sadness.
Michael only scratched his chin. "To be fair, I did warn you of the possible outcome, you going in there, but you brushed me off."
This earned a groan from Helmuth, who slowly began to pull his tee shirt back over his head. "The next time I say something stupid like that Mike, bloody slap me across the face, twins or not."
Michael grinned stupidly, throwing up a mock salute at his long-time friend. "Jawohl mein Leutnant!"
It was a long-running joke between Helmuth's groups of friends that he could've been a leutnant – a Lieutenant – in the armed forces after he managed to impress several higher-ups during his tenure during his compulsory military service in his late teens. He declined, however, and went into the tertiary education system – college, in other words – for social economics. That still didn't mean that his friends wouldn't tease him constantly for it however.
Running a hand through his hair, Helmuth let loose another groan as he rolled his shoulders, dull pain lancing up his back as he did so.
"So now what Helmuth?" Michael asked quietly, putting the first aid box back into the trunk of his car. "What're your plans?"
Helmuth looked over in confusion. "What'd'ya mean Mike?"
Michael shrugged, "Well, you've just painted a large target on your back, even if the old man didn't recognize you. You're going to draw attention to yourself, even without doing so. Because now each and every single Dominicus family mobby will looking for you to gain favour with the old man. That's not even counting what'll happen once YOUR old man finds out Helmuth."
Helmuth, who had at this point had gotten up from his seated position, froze in fear. He slowly turned his head towards Michael, fear sparked within his eyes. In truth, Helmuth had completely forgotten about his own father in all the excitement of fleeing for his life. If his father, Adolf von Trotha, found out then –
A cough came from the door, signalling the arrival of said father, glancing at the two men with an amused – but slightly annoyed – look on his face.
Adolf von Trotha was not a physically imposing man; standing at roughly 5'4", he was shorter than both his son and Michael, but standing on the steps to the garage gave him an extra few inches to be able to stare at his third son in the eyes.
"I'm glad I caught the two of you here," came his murmur, barely reaching the duo's ears, "Glad to have done so before your dearest mother did. She's been worried sick. As have I. But, when I hear that someone had managed to piss off Dominicus to such a degree that he's put out a thousand dollar hit on the head of poor, sorry son of a bitch who slept with his daughters, well, I worry just a bit sicker."
"Father, I –"
"Cut the bullshit for now Helmuth, I'm talking." Adolf cut his son off, walking over to where Michael's sportscar and the two boys were standing.
"Herr von Trotha please allow me to explain–" Michael tried to start, only to squeak as the head of the von Trotha family leveled his glare at the poor man.
"Same goes for you Michael. I love you like another son, but right now I need to lay down the hammer. Get your ass home, your parents are wondering where you are, and they're worried to death." Adolf supplied, turning his gaze back to Helmuth.
"I – yessir."
Defeated, Michael cast a look at Helmuth, shrugging as if to say 'sorry man, you're on your own now' before climbing into his car and leaving the garage for home.
Adolf sighed, making his way over to the workbench where Helmuth was now putting away the medical supplies that had been used. Stopping just a few feet away from his son, Adolf watched as Helmuth pulled his shirt back on over his head, before turning towards his father. It was time to get down to business.
"Good," Adolf muttered, staring his son down with anger, "Now. What in the goddamned fuck was going through your head son? You know what the Dominicus family is like, they're a bunch of no-good, bigoted, rotten sheepskins that don't care nothing about the people in this city. For the entirety of the time they've lived in this town, they've been trying to undermine it from both the city and the Families. Hell, they've worked with the fascists, and they're still working with them back in their damned homeland! You know they're enemy number one on the streets, so why, oh why did you decide that the best thing to do was piss off the most volatile man in the city by sleeping with his daughters?!"
Helmuth only looked away, gathering up his things that had been strew about the garage when he first arrived with Michael. The young man then slowly deposited himself on the hood of his own car in the garage, looking at his father under half-lidded eyes. The silence grew within the room for a pregnant moment, before the elder von Trotha broke it.
"I don't know what to do with you Helmuth," Adolf began slowly, calming down slightly as he watched his son hissing with pain as he bent to grab his wallet off the floor, "you've shown no interest in the family, nor the business. You've gone to college, yes, but now you're just back home doing nothing. You aren't even interested in military service. Every night you go out, get yourself shitfaced drunk, and come back home only to do it all over again the next night. You're worrying your mother to death, and your brothers and sisters. So please, tell me. What am I supposed to do with you?"
"Let me be." Replied Helmuth, glaring at his father as he crossed his arms. "That's what I asked you after the funeral, and yet you still hound me after the fact. I asked you to let me be, let me figure out what my life will be through my choices, but no. You had to continue to judge me, judge what I wanted to do, pushed me to learn about the family, the profession," he hissed.
"Was it any surprise to you that when my world ended, that I wouldn't be the same starry-eyed kid? Huh? That I would want nothing to do with this your profession? That I would try and cope with my issues? And your response was to try and push harder, to use her as a stepping off point to sharpen my anger into a dagger to stab into the sides of your enemies. So of course, I would stray father from your ideal father, for it is not mine."
Adolf grimaced in response. Truthfully, in his attempt to bring his son out of his depression, he might have laid it on a bit thick and possibly even had alienated his third son even more so than before.
"You know I didn't want that for you Helmuth," came Adolf's reply, "I pushed you towards the family business in hopes you'd connect with your brothers. I didn't mean for it to push you away, you should know that. I meant it as a way to bond with your older brothers and myself. Your time at home was meant to foster relations with your sisters as well, and I am thankful that that went through without any issues."
Helmuth scoffed. "As if I'd have any issues with my sisters. It was those two dickheads that were causing me issues. I didn't want to work for the family, and yet you pushed me for that anyways. I didn't want my hands coated in blood for your money, and yet…"
"I know that now, and I'm sorry Helmuth. I didn't want you to take over like Nicholas is going to, as a bruiser. I wanted you somewhere I could trust you to do well in, like the finances of the business." Adolf supplied, sighing to himself and shaking his head. "I wanted security for you in the future, that's all, both financial and safety-wise. And now you've – unwittingly – made yourself public enemy number one in the eyes of the Dominicus family. Your mother and I wanted nothing more than to protect you, and in that I have failed. I have little choices now."
Here, the elder von Trotha paused, sagging in his stance and seeming to age a couple more years. In truth, Helmuth knew that his father loved all five of his children equally, and wanted nothing more than the best for all of them, but between the family business, his wife, his children, and all the political Bullenmist he had to put up with on a daily basis, sometimes things fell through the cracks. And if that happened to be Helmuth and his life rather than his younger sisters, or the business itself, then Helmuth supposed that some faults could be forgiven. At the moment however, he was still nursing off that hangover – and wound – from earlier in the day, so forgiveness wouldn't exactly come to his old man at just this exact second.
And then his father perked up, as if he suddenly remembered something, and started patting himself down as he looked back up at his son.
"You know son, I'm lucky I have this to give to you, what with all the issues that are going to be popping up here now." Adolf finished with a wiry grin, reaching into his pants pocket.
Helmuth furrowed his brows at this, as he had been expecting the argument to continue for much longer than this. His eyes then narrowed as his father withdrew a letter-envelope, handing it off to him.
The letter-envelope was nothing special, a plain old vanilla-coloured bill with a Bundesstadt stamp in the top left corner. The only other markings on the damned thing was a type-cast sender stating that the sender had been from one of the two semi-autonomous in the country: Grosser Krater Institut.
Adolf merely smiled a devilish smile at his son – like he was the cat that had caught the canary. "I got a job offer from an old friend of mine, a secretary position at the most prestigious research facility this country has, and I figured you need to get out of town for a bit, eh?"
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Science was a logistical, logical, and methodical type of work. It was based on the fundamentals of the universe, the laws and orders that prevailed existence itself. None of that really mattered to Unterwachoffizier Kristopher Karson, a former soldat of the army, now employed as nothing more than a glorified security guard. Little more than stand at post, watch for irregularities, switch when shift ends, and take care of himself before repeating it all the next day. He was barely doing anything but going through the paces.
'Maybe I should get a new hobby', the almost seven-foot tall man mused to himself.
At almost seven feet – he was actually somewhere between six feet and a half, and six feet and three quarters – Karson easily topped out at the tallest guard in the entirety of GKI's Schutztruppen. He could even boast that he was the tallest guy in a fifty-kilometer radius as no-one in the residential area surrounding the crater research facility could reach his height. That is, if he were a boasting man.
Compared to other guards in the Schutztruppen, the younger and/or green ones, Karson was some sort of relic. Having served the Heer – Yytuskia's army – during the Talion-Yytuskian Conflict a year and a half ago, Karson was one of a dozen guards on the base that had seen military combat. This put the 32-year-old into what the Greens at the base called "die alte Rasse" – "the Old Breed". Former soldaten who had seen combat, were wounded in some way because of it, and were offered jobs at GKI after being discharged by the Heer.
Not only that Karson was an alte Rasse, he also was the most imposing out of the guards and was usually put on entrance duty to the residential zone; which is where he was today. Imposing not due to his height – although that helped greatly – but imposing due to his figure. The wounds he received in the previous war had literally scarred him across his entire body, head to toes.
Respiratory issues, burnt and scarred flesh tissue, a few missing fingers, and no hair to speak of, yes Karson was an imposing figure. He was terrifying to some, and regarded as "hard-to-look-at" by others. So, he hid himself, not only from people's eyes through his uniform, but also from their social rules by choosing not to engage himself with others that much. The less he had to rasp his damaged voice to people, the better.
Currently, Kristopher was doing nothing more than his regular shtick, watching traffic in and out of the top-secret research facility's residential area – which in-of-itself was basically a small city. Ask for papers and passports, check them with the database, and either let them through or detain them – that one rarely happened.
'By the Echtkaiser, I'd give anything for something new to pop up for once,' came the sardonic thought from the bored guard.
You know the phrase "ask and ye shall receive"? Never let that occur, ever. The universe has a weird way of dropping shit on you – usually from high above in the command chain.
This time though, it was the arrival of yet another vehicle trying to enter the residential suburbs of Grosser Krater's outer ring. Surprisingly, the fancy-looking sportscar was followed by a moving truck, something that wasn't very common to see at the facility/city. The car itself was an import, an expensive sports car that Karson assumed possibly came from either the Latin Empire or Urea.
Motioning for the car to roll forward, Karson lazily cast an eye towards the heat sensor system, noting down that only two people occupied it. The car itself, apparently, was a Urean Icarus 410, its license plate linking it to a family of seven in the Wintermünster-Eindhoven area. Interesting to note down, but nothing really serious.
Finally nodding to the driver and waving for him to lower the window, Karson waited until it was halfway down and asked "Papers, bitte schon."
"Here you are, Herr offizier," the driver responded, handing Karson both his own and his passenger's passports and documentation.
GKI's security was tight – tighter than a virgin, some of the older guards would joke – and required people coming and going to present documentation to even get through and out the residential area. All ingoing and outgoing information on the internet, and mail – for those who still used it – was severely watched and tracked, while all the citizens within the area were tracked via electronic footprints, and another reason that never was released to the public. For people incoming to the residential zone, they needed to present both passports, health cards, driver's license, and/or social identification number. For those leaving to go shopping, or some other reason, citizens need to present their passports and social identification numbers. This was all done to tightly secure the semi-autonomous region's security and secrets.
Nevertheless, Karson – who had been asking for papers and such all day – merely put the information in front of him into the system, waited a bit for it to be processed, noting down everything, and then paused. This was…
"Excuse me, sir," Karson began, looking from the computer screen in his little hut back to the gentleman in the vehicle, "The system's saying that you're moving into the residential zone? Is that correct?"
The man nodded, before pausing.
"Actually, it's my son," he stated, jerking a thumb to the passenger before continuing, "he's who's moving into the area. He's just accepted a job here, and since we live in Wintermünster, we figured that he'd have a better time moving in rather than taking the train to the closest city, before using the bus every day."
"Hm," Karson hummed, turning back to the computer screen, "das ist gutt, I suppose. All the documentation is there, so I have no qualms with sending you on your way. However, I should say this, you need to head to the registration offices just a block down the way. This is to get your son registered into the facility's system, so there are no issues further down the line, aber natrulich."
"Vielen Dank, Herr offizier," the man stated, "I should add that the gentlemen in the truck behind us are with us, so if you could just point them in the direction in which they need to go when they're done, that'd be great too. Thanks for the help, and you have yourself a good day, eh?"
Karson responded in return to the good tidings, and waved the driver along, getting everything ready for the next vehicle to come to the residential zone, burdened with the furniture of the previous entries.
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The architecture of Grosser Krater's residential zone was something designed out of the pulp magazines printed way before Helmuth's time. Atompunk, he thought it was called. The buildings were about futuristic as one could get in these modern times; green roofs covered in dirt for communicable crop growing, solar plates for green energy, and a majority of the buildings passed were mostly community buildings like apartments and bunkhouses. It was the idea of stuff as many families together in one place, let them be able to supply themselves for the most part, and make them eco-friendly/self-sustainable housing. Hell, Helmuth swore he even saw some empty plots of land where families and people were tending to livestock!
"This is quite the place, isn't it?" His father asked him as they slowly moved through the 'burbs, having finished getting Helmuth set up into the identification system the closed-city seemed to have.
"All self-sustainable by the looks of it, yeah," Helmuth replied, waving back to a friendly woman out with her dog. "Makes you think if this whole setup is the way of the future, or the bigwigs here just think it'll be an experiment. How people lived back in the old days and if it could work in today's world with the technology we have."
Adolf scoffed. "We have the technology," he spat, turning left onto another avenue. "it's whether or not those damned politicians will get off their collective asses and do anything with it is the problem."
Helmuth nodded at that. "True," he conceded, before adding, "but the Federation is first in the world when it comes to implementing this sort of tech dad. Well, us and our allies. Both Ormata and Helvana are slowly working on introducing some of the stuff we've had for a decade or so, like those desalination plants in the inner provinces. Even some other countries, like Urea or the Latin Empire are introducing large-scale power projects like what we've got here."
His father laughed at, smacking his hand against the steering wheel of the car. "Those back-water fucks wouldn't know technology if it slapped its dick across their face!" He chortled, adding something about the most secular states of the world, their stances on 'technocracy', and something about their collective mothers that should rather be left unsaid.
"Still," he added after finishing that tirade, "I got to give them credit, they managed to force their physicists in labour camps into designing the first atomic weapon, way back in '53. Only after they started in fucking 19-fucking-39! We got ours in under a year and a half, and it was a hydrogen one!"
"Alright dad," Helmuth placated, patting his old man on the shoulder to calm him, "Hey, isn't that the place? 104 Heisenberg Strasse, right?"
And indeed, it was, the seven-story apartment complex at the end of a cul-de-sac, standing slightly taller than the two complexes on either side of it. It was, surprisingly, slightly less atompunkish than the other buildings on the block, and looked like it was a mix of both atompunk and the mid-1950s 'hoher Architekturstil'. It was a rather nice blend of styles, actually. Not too bad on the eyes.
And of course, parked out front was the rent-a-van and movers that were hired to help Helmuth move to this community, far, far away from Wintermünster. In fact, it looked like…
"Are those dicks done already…?" Adolf murmured, staring at the three movers who were standing around the back of the open truck. "Or are they just waiting around for us, doing jack-all?"
"I think they might be done," Helmuth said. By all means, it looked like they were done, considering how they were standing around with coffees, chatting with who might be the apartment owner. "I mean, look. They don't have any dolly's out, nor are they moving anything around in the truck."
His father just responded with a low growl, the kind Helmuth knew meant Hell for someone if things weren't all okay. And quite frankly, Helmuth was happy it wasn't pointed at him this time.
The two pulled up behind the van, his father putting the car in park before the father-son duo exited the vehicle – Helmuth taking an extra moment to grab his personal bag from the rear seats. The slamming of car doors seemed to awaken the movers who all set their coffees down and looked towards both Adolf and Helmuth, the youngest of the trio waving at the younger von Trotha, whom waved back.
"Are you all done here?" Adolf asked when he was within speaking distance of the movers, adopting what the von Trotha clan referred to as Adolf's 'Work Voice'.
"Yessir!" Came the stout reply from the burliest of the movers, "All of the boxes have been moved into the building, and are left for your son to unpack. All that's left is the appliances, but apparently, the room was already furnished with those."
"Good to hear then," Adolf replied, handing the man three separate 100CUD bills, "Here's your tip, for the three of you. You guys have a safe drive, a good day, and thanks."
The men thanked him, and left within short notice, before Adolf and Helmuth turned towards the apartment owner.
The man was young – he looked like he was in his late thirties – and had close cut, brunet hair that was slicked back with hair grease. Two tiny, coal-scuttle eyes filled with mirth that a mere smile couldn't contain sat between a crooked nose, under which a bushy mustache sat. The man was wearing a simple pair of jeans and a white tee shirt, and both articles of clothes were lightly dusted with dirt. A smile – which grew as he seemed to realize who the two in front of him were – held several crooked teeth topped off the look.
The man stuck his hand out, shaking first Adolf's, then Helmuth's hand as he introduced himself.
"Pleased to meet the both of you," he stated with a Helvanic drawl, "the name's Yerzov Andrei Germanovich. Most people just call me Andy or Andrei, whichever you prefer."
"Pleased to meet you, Herr Germanovich," Adolf started, before Andrei cut him off.
"Ah, none of that Herr bullshit bud, I'm a rather informal dude. Just Andrei is fine, or Germanovich, please." He explained.
Helmuth chuckled at the look of confusion his father was giving off. All his life he was used to acting in a proper, polite manner with other people as a high-ranking mafioso, and here was some thirty-something politely telling him to stick it.
Taking the initiative, Helmuth shook Germanovich's hand again. "Sorry, my father's just used to dealing with stuck-up brown-nosers. He doesn't know how to act normally. I'm Helmuth von Trotha, pleased to meet you Andrei."
"It's no worries, Helmuth. I'm used to it!" Germanovich stated with a booming laugh. "I see that you're covering you arm pretty good there, I'm assuming you've already got your SIN then? That's probably why your movers got here before the both of you!"
It was true. Helmuth had tried to favour his dominant hand – his right one – when shaking Germanovich's hand, but the wince when the Helvanic squeezed apparently let the cat out. It came as a shock to both father and son that when applying for entry into the security system in the closed-city, your social identification number – SIN – was literally tattooed onto the back of your forearm at the registration office. Officially it was for easy access to one's SIN to make 100% sure you were who you said you were, but it was also used by GKI as a security identification system for accessing where one needed to go.
In Helmuth's words, it was one part amazing, another part sheer sadism. Whomever thought that up had to be one.
"Well, what am I doing keeping you two here, eh?" Germanovich jokingly stated, now walking to the apartment. "Follow along, I'll show you guys where Helmuth will be staying."
The two followed the man, quietly entering the main lobby of the building. The lobby in-of-itself wasn't much to shake a fist at. With an art deco style, a small area off to one side where a small coffee machine and a couple plush chairs sat, and one bored looking teenage girl sitting at a reception desk next to a pair of elevators. In fact, if one wasn't squinting, the lobby of the place looked like a mini-hotel lobby. All it was missing was a bellhop and a small breakfast area.
"This place looks like a hotel," Adolf commented sarcastically with a whistle, putting Helmuth's look on the room into words.
"Thanks," Germanovich replied without a hitch, not really paying attention to the sarcasm; or he chose not to. "My Pop was the one who owned this place before me, and well, his original plan was for it to be a hotel. However, when GKI implemented all those security laws, Pops just decided he could rent and have it look like a hotel instead."
"I'll admit it feels rather homey," Helmuth admitted as the trio stepped into one of the elevators, "Like you're actually on a business trip rather than being in a new home."
"Aha, I tried for that too," Germanovich supplied unabashedly, "I felt that if someone who had just moved here felt a sorta' friendliness in the building, they'd stay longer. Ya dig it? I've been running this place for three decades after Pops up and quit, and I've only had a couple people move out because they didn't like it."
Helmuth nodded, "And that's what happened with my room?"
"Uh, no, actually," Germanovich replied with a grimace. "I don't know what happened to the previous tenant. All that happened was that I got one of the bigwigs from the actual crater pop in, hand me the rest of the dude's rent for the month, and say he wasn't going to be coming back. 'Up and disappeared', I believe what the egghead said."
Helmuth and his father shared a glance at this.
"Still, most accidents that occur here aren't really that bad," their pseudo-guide continued, "most folks just get a few days off or so. The worst I've seen have got to be either what happened to one of the scientists, or that one guard… From what I heard, and mind you, this is all scuttlebutt and rumors, the whitecoat got a fateful of disintegration ray, and had his consciousness ripped from his body or sumthin'. And the other guy was worse."
"How so?" Adolf interjected as they stopped at floor seven and exited.
"I was getting to him," Germanovich stated, scratching his head. "From what I heard, this guy was a survivor of the last war, the one between us and Talion. He was at the place where they nuked too, caught the full blast. Came down with radiation sickness, was bleeding like, everywhere. So, the doctors pull him from the front and ship him here to examine him and several others who had been caught in the blast. The other guys, they got out alright, but this poor guy was here for weeks. Being poked and prodded for weeks on end, watching him melt from the inside out and whatnot."
"And then one day, one of the shrinks get this bright idea: this guy's dying, why not stuff him in another body? And all the other doctors think this is fucking great, and so they literally take the guy's brain out of his skull, and shove it into one of those synthetics and go: 'Job done!', and send the poor fuck back to the front lines. Dunno if he died or not there, but I kinda hope he did. Being stuck in a body not your own musta' been terrifying."
"But that's all rumors, right?" Helmuth asked as they finally got to his room.
"Mm, yeah," came Germanovich's lazy reply. "Anyways, here we are, Room Seven-Eight-Four."
Opening the door, Andrei ushered the two inside, showcasing the surprisingly spacious room with all the flair of a retailer selling an actual home.
Upon entering, one would have the small walk-in kitchen off to their left, while a broom closet – or a closet for jackets and shoes – would be off to their right. Inside said kitchen was a counter along the wall, and a small counter/island connecting the kitchen to the living space. Like the movers outside had stated, the kitchen was furnished with a full-sized fridge and freezer, an oven-top stove, and a dishwasher. Several of Helmuth's boxes that read 'Kitchen supplies' sat upon both the counters.
Further down the hallway and connected to the kitchen's island was a living space. A loveseat-style couch took up much of the left wall, while a bookcase covered the remainder to the balcony. Across from the couch was a 15" television, as well as several boxes of books and other trinkets to be put away. On the right-hand side of the hallway were two doors, one leading to an empty room filled with boxes and a table, and the other – closer to the balcony – was the bedroom. Inside was Helmuth's queen-sized bed, as well as his dresser and another door, this one leading to the bathroom. All-in-all, it was a rather nice setup for an apartment, Helmuth had to admit. And the way Germanovich showed them around was just that tad bit over-the-top.
"And there you have it," said Helvanic ended with a flourish, "the entirety of your new home! Now, just two more things before I get out of your hair Helmuth! First, if you ever need to, you're allowed to use your balcony to grow any homegrown crops like tomatoes and the like. It's actually a bylaw of the area that I'm legally required to tell you." He admitted.
"Second! Here's my cell number in case you actually need anything from me!" He continued, handing a workcard with his information on it. "Other than that, rent's usually due on the first Friday of every month, and the laundry room can be found in Room Seven-Oh-One when you need it."
"Thank you very much Andrei," Helmuth replied, pocketing the card. "I feel like this might be a good place for me, so thanks."
"Absolutely no issues my man!" Germanovich shot back with a laugh, shaking both his and his father's hand. "Got to go for now, but don't be a stranger eh?"
"What an odd man," Adolf admitted when the apartment owner had finally left the room, sitting down on the couch. "Still, are you happy son? You've got a new place, which I'll be covering the first month for you, and a new job."
Helmuth smiled, "Yeah, thanks dad. I think I might get a good start here."
"That's what I'm for," the elder von Trotha replied, getting up. "Now, I'm sorry to leave you like this, unpacked and everything, but I promised your mother I'd be back home for dinner, and we both know how she is about that."
Both men shuddered at that thought.
"Now, I wish you the best son. Remember to email your mother and I bimonthly – that's twice a month, not every two – and be safe, ok?"
"I will dad," Helmuth promised, giving his father a last hug. "Tell everyone I said hi, and that they're welcome to visit whenever."
"I will. Wir sehen uns um Kind."
"See ya."
Now alone with himself and his thoughts, Helmuth turned to the balcony. Quietly stepping outside, he leaned over the railing and stared at the massive crater a kilometer and a half away; his new place of work. Freedom at last. Now to make it last.
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Ende Szene
*Edited at 0216 AM of October 2nd, missed a thing.
*Edited #2 at 1010 AM on October 2nd, apparently FF doesn't like my page breaks.