Chapter 2 History Lesson
Disclaimer: It all belongs to Marvel, except for my original characters, of course. But if Marvel wants to use them, they can. Feel free to post this, or any other Glaivester fic, anywhere, but please notify me so I can brag about it.
[A/N I rewrite some of the World War II Marvel continuity here].
Logan looked rather anxious when he walked into the kitchen at breakfast. "The Red Skull... the Red Skull. Oh, Hell."
"What is it, Logan?" asked Kitty.
"Half-Pint, it's the worst news since Sinister released Apocalypse. Johann Schmidt has escaped from SHIELD. Fury called to tell me."
"So?"
"Have you ever heard the rumors of a secret Nazi mastermind groomed to be Hitler's protege?"
"Sure, on the internet. And I, like, heard that the US government kept him on ice, to help us in, like, defeating the Communists. But I never paid it any mind. Just another stupid rumor, like Hitler still being alive and talking with, like, aliens about who to endorse for president."
"Sorry, Half-Pint, but the tabloids got this one right."
"And this Johann Schmidt is the guy?"
"The Red Skull."
"Okay, but it's not so bad, is it? He's a political mastermind, but it's not like he's a mutant or Spider-Man or something? I mean, how much can he actually do?"
"Plenty. He could create a spy network in a matter of two weeks that would make Al Qaeda look like the welcome wagon. He's a tactical and strategic genius, and he managed to absorb a great deal of technological knowledge from another Nazi, Baron Zemo. As far as I know, Baron Zemo's son is at large [A/N the son is also referred to as Baron Zemo, as it is a hereditary title], a Neo-Nazi with even greater knowledge than the Red Skull's. No doubt the Skull's first order of business will be to find him and to begin forming a terrorist organization.
Kitty looked nervously at Logan. "But they don't have any money, do they?"
"The Skull hid away a lot of money in a Swiss Bank Account. Plus he probably has other sources. He always managed to get a little private time whenever we let him out."
"But why not try him and hang him? Like, he totally deserved it!"
"Because he had knowledge we needed. That we wanted to get before the Soviets did."
"But he was a Nazi!"
"And Stalin was a mass-murdering lunatic, but that didn't stop us from allying with him when Hitler posed the bigger threat. After Germany fell, Nazism became irrelevant. It was deemed more important to deal with current problems than to seek redress for past ones."
"Still..."
"If it makes you feel any better, the Red Skull was instrumental in coordinating a covert assassination of Stalin. There is a possibility that Stalin would have started his own Holocaust against the Jews as well as starting a third world war if he had survived."
"Hmm..."
"In any case, what's done is done. We can't undo Nazism, World War II, or Communism and the Cold War. In the here and now, he's out, and we need to stop him."
"Is that really his face?" Kitty had been typing on her laptop and had gone to an internet website specializing in World War II conspiracy theories.
Logan looked at the image on the screen. "Yep, Half-Pint, that's what he looks like. At first it was a mask, but he used some special chemicals to alter his face permanently."
"So are we supposed to deal with it."
"Not per se, but Fury thinks the Skull has mutant allies. He wondered if we could help S.H.I.E.L.D. on the Q.T."
"The Skull has mutant allies? Why would mutants help a Nazi?"
"Because the Nazis never had it in for mutants. At least, the few who knew about them didn't. They thought that they could become the ubermenschen warriors that would spread the Third Reich across Europe. Of course, only Aryan mutants need apply. From what I have heard, European Jews tend to display the greatest percentage of mutants of any known ethnic group in the world, which greatly angered Hitler, that the most hated group would be the most blessed with mutation, so they did actively seek out certain mutants to destroy them. It is a good thing that so many X-genes were latent back then, and that modern DNA testing was unknown, or else there would be very few Jewish mutants alive today.
"In any case, the existence of mutants has not, apparently, destroyed old prejudices or made them irrelevant. There are Nazi mutants, mutants in the Ku Klux Klan, as well as humans with absolutely no prejudice against mutants who hate blacks or Jews or whatnot. Actually, in some ways, this is a good thing."
"That people are still prejudiced is good?"
"No, I meant that it is good that that one prejudice does not necessarily translate into another; that plenty of mutant-haters are anti-racist and that plenty of racists are not mutant-haters."
"Why?"
"Because it keeps the groups separate. I happen to know that one of the founders of the Friends of Humanity is Jewish, so there is no way that they would work with the Red Skull. Also, there is a rumor that the Red Skull had genetic alterations done to his... his male glands, so that he would produce sperm with active copies of the X-gene in it. He made certain that any kids he had would be mutants. The FOH have heard the rumor, and so even if not for the antisemitism thing, there is no way that they could accept him.
"Also the head of the only dangerous rogue state left in Europe, the only state that could possibly shelter a man like the Red Skull, is a Gypsy [A/N another Marvel character is referred to here, can you guess which one, A/N in case anyone didn't know, Hitler tried to wipe out the Gypsies], so there is absolutely no chance that his country would help the Red Skull. In fact, I have heard that he has ordered his intelligence agents to find the guy and off him."
"Wow."
"I have more bad news. I talked to Beast about the Skull right after I had found out about his escape. Have you read this in the papers today?"
Kitty looked at the article. "Yeah, like, it's so cool! This new genetic analyzer can search your DNA for specific markers to tell you where your ancestors came from."
"Yes, Half-Pint. It can distinguish genetic markers that indicate the nationality of your ancestors, so it can tell that you are, say, between 50% and 60% German, or between 75% and 90% Spanish, or that you have ancestry from a particular ethnic group in Africa. In short, it can tell you your racial background. Apparently it could be useful for people who want to know something of their family history, so I can sympathize with people wanting something like this."
"So? How is this bad?"
"Just this morning, the chief scientist who had created it was kidnapped. Moreover, what the machine does is related to one of the Skull's long-term projects."
"Which is?"
Logan recalled the conversation with Beast. "The creation of race-specific bio-weapons. If he can create a weapon that only kills people with a certain genetic marker that is unique to a certain ethnic group, he could single-handedly cause the worst genocide the world has ever seen. Or, he could use the information to create Sentinels that could distinguish people of races he wanted to eliminate. He has the plans for the Sentinels - he stole them from Trask."
"Can you really create a disease that wipes out one race?"
"Yes and no. If he can make the disease only strike people with certain markers, it will definitely be ethnically selective. But what we think of as 'race' is really the result of reproductive isolation of populations. With the exception of a few tribes in the Indonesian islands, no ethnic group is reproductively isolated enough so that we can completely distinguish it from outsiders. In other words, there is no distinct line where one group ends and another begins, so lots of people who have one ancestor from the targeted group back two hundred years ago would be affected even though they are not considered to be part of the targeted group themselves, and alternately, someone in the targeted group who has an ancestor outside the targeted group might lack the appropriate marker and not be affected. But in general, such a weapon would definitely be selective in who it killed."
"And I would probably be a target."
"Well, yes, Kitty. You're Jewish, so you'd be his primary target."
"Great."
"Oh wait, there's one more piece of bad news."
"What?" Kitty croaked.
"Back in the eighties they unfroze the Skull to work on missile defense systems. He apparently slept with a young SHIELD agent known as Amalthea Raven."
"Doesn't ring a bell."
"Also known by the alias Raven Darkholme."
"He had an affair with Mystique?"
"More like a one-night stand. Oh, and it gets worse. He got her pregnant."
"Oh my... you mean he's..."
"Yes, Kitty, the Red Skull is Kurt's father."