Hello there everyone! If you're reading this, then I'd assume that you've decided to check out my humble little story! For that, I'd like to say thank you:) Now, time for the important stuff.

I realise that the summary given for this story kind of stinks, so I'll type up a better one here, just so that everyone knows what they're actually getting into.

The year is 1890, and war with the eastern nations is on the horizon, lead by the Russian Federation and the Eastern Republic. No single European nation has a strong enough military force, and especially not a strong enough Air Force, to combat the growing threat, yet none of them can cooperate long enough to present an allied front. Amidst this chaos emerges a ragtag band of heroes brought together by the strangest of circumstances. Among them are English privateer Arthur Mackenzie-Kirkland, Spanish heartbreaker Antonio Carriedo, French playboy Francis Bonnefoy, Prussian warmonger Gilbert Beilschmidt, strong and steady Ludwig Beilschmidt, the Vargas sisters Romana and Feliciana, American sharpshooter and miniskirt connoisseur Amelia Jones, Romanian warlock Mircea Bălan, and the mysterious Celtic sorceress Iona Kirkland-Mackenzie. Will these individuals and their comrades be enough to save the day?


December 24th, 1885

The cemetery was empty, save for five small figures huddled together in an attempt to ward off the chilly December air, and the groundskeeper a short distance away. They stood around a white marble headstone, not moving, not speaking.

"Excuse me, children, but the gates are closing soon. You'd best scurry back home before the storm hits," the groundskeeper said, looking at the group with warm eyes. The tallest, a slight figure in a deep blue cloak with white piping and silver embroidery, turned to the man, face in shadow, but surrounded by an aura of gloom.

"Just five more minutes, then we'll be gone," it said with a strongly accented, but definitely feminine voice.

"Five minutes, no more, no less. Wouldn't want you five to be caught in the blizzard."

"Thank you, sir," the smallest figure said, a teenage boy with scraggly blond hair and emerald green eyes.

The groundskeeper left them, watching as each cloaked figure, four with hoods down, one with hood up, stepped forward and placed a hand on the headstone for a moment, mouths moving quietly, then step back once they'd said their share. Finally, the tallest figure took her turn, only to fall to her knees and bury her hidden face in a pair of pale, willowy hands, sobs racking her body. The other four immediately wrapped their arms around her until she stood up and turned her back on the grave.

"Ta gey muckle, sur. We'll leave now. Take care of Ali for us, alright?" the hooded figure said as they walked past the groundskeeper. The old man simply nodded and smiled at the group, his gaze following them as they left the cemetery and disappeared into the silent dark of the London streets, the only evidence of their existence being the five sets of footprints left in the snow.

He walked over to the headstone, which, in beautiful Celtic script, read:

Alistair James Kirkland-Mackenzie

30th November, 1867—15th December, 1885

Beloved Son, Student, Airman, and Brother

"En Ma Fin Est Mon Commencement"

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Alistair. May you rest in peace, my boy," he whispered as snow began to fall.


"Well, this is a lovely Christmas Eve, isn't it, Iona?" Arthur, the youngest of the five at fifteen, said with a sheepish laugh in his voice. Of all of them, he was the only true Englishman, and as such, was the only one of them to have developed an English accent.

"Wait, 'tis Christmas Eve? Oi tart it wus de twenty-third!" Sean, one of the sixteen-year old twins, exclaimed. He and his brother Colin, having been sent off to school in Ireland at the tender age of four, both spoke with the sing-songy accent of the Emerald Isle.

"T'be sure 'tis Christmas Eve, yer eejit! Why else wud Yona be lettin' us go near de ale?" Colin yelled just as loudly, slapping his twin upside the head.

"Behave, you two. Go back to playing your card game," seventeen-year old Dylan commanded in his soft, Welsh accent. He had only recently returned from school in Cardiff, where, like the twins, he had been every school term since he was four.

"Will all of you just calm down? I'm trying to make dinner here and I'd rather not slice myself with this knife because you four can't shut up!" Iona, the oldest and only female, yelled. If the frustrated tone of her voice hadn't already scared her brothers shitless, the roughness of her Scottish accent most certainly did. She had recently finished school up in Edinburgh the year previous, and now worked full time as a seamstress, not because of any lack of money, but simply because she needed something to do with herself while her brothers were off at their respective schools.

The boys saw the knife in her hand glint wickedly in the light of the stove fire, and they immediately went silent.

"Ta gey," she muttered, returning to the potatoes she'd been slicing.

"Hey, Arthur, have you opened that letter from the Royal Air Force Academy yet?" Dylan asked politely.

Everyone except Iona looked at Arthur expectantly, making the blond sink down in his chair nervously.

"Well, erm, eh, no, I haven't had the chance to since…" he let his sentence trail off, not wanting to open that can of worms on Christmas Eve of all nights.

"Well, den, open it!" Colin said, clapping his younger brother on the back. Iona continued with her slicing, almost as though she weren't listening.

Sean pulled something out of his trouser pocket, a white envelope with the Royal Air Force seal on it.

"That's my letter, you git!" Arthur yelled angrily.

"Oi foun' it lyin' on yisser bedside table. Shouldn't leave such valuable things raun wha someone can take dem," Sean taunted, waving the envelope in Arthur's face. The blond snatched it from his orange-headed brother and grabbed a letter opener from a nearby desk.

He read the letter quietly to himself, shielding it from the view of his siblings.

"Well, tell us what it says," Dylan smiled. Arthur cleared his throat.

"Dear Mr. Arthur George Mackenzie-Kirkland,

It is with greatest pleasure that we extend to you an invitation to begin matriculation at the Royal Air Force Academy immediately following the end of the holiday season, on the Tenth of January in the year of our Lord, Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-Five at precisely 05:00 in the morning. You will receive your uniform and all other necessary resources at this point. On behalf of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria, and the Royal Air Force, we welcome you into the ranks of the military of the British Empire.

Sincerely,

Air Chief Marshal David M. Whitecastle"

There was a moment of stunned silence, filled only by the sound of Iona's knife slicing carrots, before the three other boys began whooping and hollering, mussing their youngest brother's hair and congratulating him.

"I can't believe it! I'm going to be a Royal Airman! Iona, did you hear that? They accepted me! I'll have my own ship and crew and I'll be the hero of the British Empire and oh heavens, this is so exciting!" Arthur exclaimed, waving the letter in the air.

"T'be sure they accepted yer! Don't be ridiculous! Wi' a name loike Mackenzie-Kirklan', who wouldn't want yer?" Sean yelled, wanting to be heard over the others.

"Really, they'd 'av ter be complete dolts ter reject yer!" Colin added.

"This is the greatest Christmas ever, and it isn't even yet Christmas!" Arthur proclaimed.

"Knew they'd let you in. You're following in Dad and Alistair's footsteps, Artie. Ali would be proud, don't you think, Io? Isn't this great? We'll have another airman in the family," Dylan said without thinking.

Suddenly, Iona hissed sharply, and her knife clattered to the floor, followed by footsteps running quickly up the stairs and a door slamming at the other end of the house. Leading from her spot at the cutting board to the stairs and up to the top floor was a trail of blood.

The boys finished making the dinner preparations in silence after that, eating a hearty dinner of roast beef accompanied by vegetable stew and various alcohols. Once everyone had finished, the table was cleared, the kitchen cleaned, the lights turned off and the fires put out, and the four teenagers drifted off to bed in solemn pensiveness.


December 25th, 1885

Arthur was the first to come down the next morning, excited by the thought of presents on Christmas morning. The lower level was almost unchanged from the night before, save the mounds of presents underneath their Christmas tree. The blond haired young man set about starting a fire in the fireplace before running back upstairs to go and wake his siblings. He nearly suffocated Sean by sitting on top of him until the other woke up, and he earned a long string of Welsh curse words from Dylan when he shook the flaxen-haired youth within an inch of his life. With Colin, Arthur simply whispered that there would be bacon involved if he got his ass out of bed. A chill washed over Arthur as he walked past Alistair's room. Alistair…the thought of his oldest brother sobered the teen a little. This was their first Christmas without the rough and tumble Scot, the first of many incomplete Christmases to come. By this point, Arthur's hyperactivity had worn off enough that he had the sense to simply knock on Iona's door, remembering the one Christmas that he'd made the mistake of barging in on his older sister and having to face both her and Alistair's wrath; Iona because he'd broken her favourite ceramic cross in the process, and Alistair because the sound of his twin's high-pitched screaming in Scots Gaelic had woken the grumpy older redhead prematurely.

There was no response to Arthur's knock on the door, so he tried again. Still no answer.

"Iona? Are you in there? Come on, everybody's awake! It's time to open presents!" Arthur said. He pressed his ear to the door, but heard no movement inside. Finally, he tried the door handle and found it unlocked, a rare occurrence for an eighteen-year old woman with all-male siblings. Arthur warily opened the door and peered inside Iona's spacious corner room. The lights were on, the drawers open and empty, and the closet much the same. Even the bedclothes were missing. The only personal touch that remained was the picture on the bedside table, taken only a year ago when Iona and Alistair had graduated from secondary school and the Royal Air Force Academy respectively, back when they were all still a family, six siblings and two smiling parents. Sitting next to the picture, however, was a folded piece of paper. A sense of dread settled in Arthur's stomach. He had an idea of what the note said, and he was sure that neither he nor his other three siblings were going to like it.