Miscellaneous Leagues Galore!

by Etherboy

Had a bunch of weird genre League ideas that I wanted to compile in one episodic fanfic. Hope people can enjoy this trippy series that will involve everything from blaxploitation to Disney films. Once again I thank the awesome Draco Orwell of the Black Dossier series for all their inspirational work.

6. The German Expressionism League

Die Zwielichthelden – The Twilight Heroes (1909-1941)

Inception – One of the most longstanding Leagues in modern history, the Die Zwielichthelden, which is a rather terrible translation of 'The Twilight Heroes,' was the first known German equivalent of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Created by Kaiser Wilhelm II, the last emperor of Germany, in early 1909 as both a military counterpoint to the British's 'Murray Group' and a personal vanity project, this League was comprised almost entirely of criminals and proto-supervillains who only a few years before were scourges on the German public. When his advisers in the German government informed the Kaiser of this fact, he was noted to have seen it as an asset instead of a liability, believing that it would make his League the fiercest of them all. Given the longevity of the League and its long list of horrific accomplishments throughout the decades, the Kaiser was at least correct in that regard. Unique among many other Leagues, especially government-controlled ones, the Twilight Heroes had several different handlers and served three very different governments. In fact, for simplicity sake, this chapter will divide the Twilight Hero's history into three different eras; The Kaiser's Reign (1909-1918), the Weimar Years (1919-1933) and the Nazi Regime (1934-1941).

Members

Dr. Werner Mabuse – Possibly the greatest criminal mastermind of the early 20th century, and one of the first examples of the modern supervillain, this supergenius, master of disguise and telepath was infamous in the German criminal underworld for his near flawless schemes and ability to always escape justice, and if rumors are to be believed, death as well. While Mabuses's origins are shrouded in mystery, with theories calming that he is either the son or apprentice of 19th century hypnotist and villain Svengali or one of the first 'mutants' in the 20th century, it is known that unlike the other members of the Twilight Heroes, Mabuse voluntarily joined the League instead of being captured and gang-pressed into service, somehow knowing that the Kaiser was looking for recruits. For that reason the Kaiser made Mabuse the leader of the Twilight Heroes, believing that such boldness was exactly what his League needed.

Dr. Helmut Caligari – Another hypnotist and renowned criminal, Caligari was a former asylum director whose obsession with an 18th-century mystic, also coincidental named Caligari, drove him to madness. Using Cesare, an unfortunate young man brainwashed to serve Caligari's whims, as his assassin he murdered anyone who would slight him, even if it was only perceived as such. While Caligari and his slave were eventually imprisoned, the Kaiser heard of their exploits and demanded their release with the condition being that not only would the two serve his League, but that Caligari make more sleeping assassins like Cesare, as the Kaiser thought they would invaluable once "a war to end all wars began." Unlike Mabuse, Caligari's hypnotic abilities were not innate or supernatural, instead, he relied upon experimental hypnotherapy, perverted to serve his desires, and the old techniques of the first Caligari to control the minds of others.

Cesare – Caligari's somnambulist assassin, manservant, and slave. Unlike the rest of the League, Cesare was no villain and was simply a young man who was admitted to Caligari's asylum for treatment, only to be used by the mad doctor as a test subject for his nefarious hypnotism. It is not even clear if Cesare was his real name and not just what Caligari named him once he was under his control. What is known is that given his relative youth to the other men of the League, and Caligari's hypothesis making him unaware of his own pain and exhaustion, he was regularly used as the Twilight Heroes stealthy assassin whenever Maria's inhuman strength, but lack of subtlety, was more a detriment than a boon for a mission.

Dr. Carl Rotwang – A brilliant roboticist, inventor, and architect whose still remembered somewhat fondly (unlike the rest of the Twilight Heroes) to this very day for his contributions to science. Rotwang was the creator of many technological feats of engineering, with the Maschinenmensch and the Berlin Metropolis simply being the most well-known. While by no means a heroic or even kind-hearted person, Rotwang was different from his compatriots, Mabuse and Caligari, in that he was not a longtime criminal when he was drafted into the Twilight Heroes. In fact, if rumor can be trusted, his recruitment was the result of Joh Fredersen, one of Germany's most wealthy industrialists and a longtime scientific rival of Rotwang who had 'stolen' the woman that he had loved, framing him for the theft of adamantium from Berlin's Technische Hochschule Charlottenburg, leading to his incarceration by German authorities and subsequent offer of joining the Twilight Heroes in return for his freedom.

The Maschinenmensch – One of, if not the first, android created by man, this gynoid was originally created by Rotwang to replace his lost love, Hel. However, his creation's coldness and artificial nature made the mad scientist reconsider the endeavor and deactivate the machine, sealing it in his private vaults. She likely would have stayed there forever if not for Rotwang's forced recruitment to the Twilight Heroes. Inhumanely strong and possessing an intellect that rivaled her maker, the Maschinenmensch would rise high while part of the League, even surpassing her master and all but becoming the leader of the Twilight Heroes during the later years of its existence as its other members either died or became old and infirm. The Maschinenmensch went under many numbers during its existence, with Ultima, Machina, Futura, Robotrix and lastly Maria, being the most commonly used.

Team Dynamics – Traitorous and duplicitous. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given who comprised the League, the Twilight Heroes did not consider each other teammates, let alone friends, and constantly used each other and the governments they ostensibly served to their own ends. At best they had a begrudging respect for each other's talents and nefarious reputation, but even then, ego clashes were common. Mabuse was quite aware of this and it used to his advantage as leader of the League. With his subtle manipulations, he added fuel to Caligari's and Rotwang's loathing of one another and made ensure to drive a wedge between Rotwang and his Maschinenmensch by treating the latter with more respect than her creator ever did, even going as far as complimenting her intelligence and 'womanness.' As previously mentioned, Caligari and Rotwang despised each other, with Caligari believing Rotwang to be utterly pathetic for still pining for a woman long dead and creating a monstrous simulation to replace her. In turn, Rotwang considered Caligari a dimwitted plagiarist whose only accomplishments were stealing the techniques of a better man and turning an adolescent into a murderer. Both feared and envied Mabuse for his reputation, but were too busy squabbling with each other to ever focus their enmity towards him, just as he had planned. The Maschinenmensch was said to have come to resent her master Rotwang over time as she came to believe that she was more than just his tool meant to serve his whims. Consequently, the android admired Mabuse and seemed to have pitied Cesare, being the only member of the Twilight Heroes to do so, as she always made sure that he received medical treatment after every extraneous mission, something that his master Caligari regularly forgot, or didn't bother to do. This chronicle can only guess that the machine's sympathy towards the young man was because of their shared positions as subservient beings. There were even scandalous rumors that during the few moments that Cesare was lucid and free from Caligari's control that he and the machine were in a sort of relationship, though given the anatomical impossibility of such a thing, this chronicle finds the truth of these rumors unlikely, to say the least. Given that Cesare was literally asleep during most of his time in the League his relationship with his 'teammates' was more or less non-existent unless the rumors between him and the Maschinenmensch are indeed true.

Adventures

The Kaiser's Reign (1909-1918)

- While there have been reports and rumors that have claimed that the first undertaking of the Twilight Heroes was an attempted sabotage of King George VI's coronation in 1910, they have proven to be difficult to substantiate with further evidence and as a result this chronicle will use the much more factually supported assignment against the French aviator Gil Dax as the group's 'true' first mission. While Dax was similar to many other adventure-scientists that were becoming increasingly more common in the era he managed to make himself distinct by successfully capturing several German spies in this native France and exposing them to the world at large, humiliating not only Germany but also the Kaiser himself. Infuriated that one Frenchman could singlehandedly destroy Germany's vital intelligence network in its biggest geopolitical rival, the Kaiser ordered his Twilight Heroes to assassinate Dax. Using Mabuse's connections across Europe's underworld and an experimental tracker made by Rotwang, the Heroes were able to locate Dax's hidden hanger in the Verdon Gorge of Southern France. Concerned that Dax had booby-trapped his headquarters, Mabuse, Caligari, and Rotwang sent their 'disposable' members to brave the hanger. The Maschinenmensch and Cesare managed to corner Dax in his own lab, with Cesare reportedly stabbing him from behind while Dax desperately tried to gun down the invincible Maschinenmensch. Dax's flying machine and other gadgets were taken by Rotwang for study, while his head was bronzed and given to the Kaiser himself. (1910)

- Learning that the French had created their own League in the form of 'Les Hommes Mystérieux,' otherwise known as the Mysterious Men, Mabuse and Caligari plotted to kill two birds with one stone by manipulating this group and the British's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen into a violent confrontation with each other. Brainwashing key British and French intelligence agents and creating false leads and evidence, they were able to convince the two countries that the other was planning on using their League to eliminate their counterpart across the Channel. While the exact details of this confrontation are explained in the Black Dossier, this chronicle will add that the Twilight Heroes creation of sleeper agents in the form of the British's Campion Bond and the French's Arthur Chantecoq would allow the group to stay one step ahead of the two nation's espionage forces and Leagues throughout the First World War. (1913)

- During the First World War, the Twilight Heroes were heavily involved with the German war effort having been tasked by the Kaiser to bring about a German victory by any means necessary and given an almost unlimited amount reasons to achieve that task. While they rarely operated on the frontlines, the League presence was felt throughout the war. Using information gained from their unwitting informants, and working with infamous German femme fatales Erna Flieder and Marie Janis, Mabuse and Caligari were able to give the German military intel on Allied troop movements and stratagems. Notably, Caligari's 'sleep commandos' were used for a time during the war but a near revolt by serviceman temporarily forced Caligari and the Kaiser to end the project, much to the mad doctor's chagrin. Rotwang for his part worked on weapons development and scientific research, creating all matter of fantastic robotic automatons while also improving German tank and armament designs. Cesare and the Maschinenmensch were made to assassinate numerous high-profile targets such as France's patriotic ace detective and spy-catcher Marc Jordan, Italian's aristocrat spy Cesare Stromboli, several members of Britain's top brain trust the Diogenes Club, and even its leader, current MI5 Director Mycroft Holmes. The biggest accomplishment of the Twilight Heroes during the war though was likely their orchestration of the death of Jean Robur and the destruction of his infamous airship 'The Albatross' during the Battle of the Somme. They accomplished this feat by capturing the Captain Mors, a longtime friend of Robur, and hypnotizing him to divulge the secrets of the Albatross. With that information it was a simple task of firing a rudimentary rocket designed by Rotwang at the airship's most vulnerable section, causing a cascade effect that brought the entire vessel down. While a great victory that essentially ended the Mysterious Men's involvement in the war, it was marred by Captain Mors escaping from the League's headquarters underneath Berlin, and subsequently swearing vengeance against the League for forcing him to betrayal his closest friend. (1914-1918)

The Weimar Years (1919-1933)

- With the war over and the Kaiser deposed from power, the Twilight Heroes almost faced dissolution, and even imprisonment, by the new Weimar Republic, which saw the League as a dangerous blot on Germany's already tarnished reputation. Fortunately for them, Mabuse was able to 'convince' President Friedrich Ebert of the League's utility, and even necessity, in the aftermath of the First World War and the rise of political extremism across Europe. With that, the League was allowed to continue to operate, though they were put on a tighter leash and were largely used to deal with domestic issues. For example, Rotwang and his creation were tasked with rebuilding Berlin by the government, which wanted the city's renewal to signify a new direction for Germany. Taking inspiration from the popular Art Deco movement and the American flying city of Columbia, Rotwang transformed Berlin into a hyper-technological Metropolis that to this day is remembered as one of the lost architectural wonders of the world. The rest of the League was tasked with dealing with Germany's crime rate, which was rising as demand for drugs and prostitutes rose in German's hedonistic Golden Twenties. With Mabuse leading the initiative, the Twilight Heroes eliminated several infamous key players in the 'Ringvereine,' or ring clubs, with the Berlin crime boss, Der Schränker, the gold mogul, Herr Seltrup, and Mabuse's rival mesmerist, Loke Klingsor, being only the most well-known targets. Unknown to the German government at the time, Mabuse didn't actually destroy these syndicates but merely wiped out their leadership and absorbed what remained into his own criminal empire. During this time the Twilight Heroes also frequently fought the vengeful Captain Mors, who on the 'suggestion' of Mabuse had been branded an anarchist and enemy of the state after the First World War. These sporadic duels, many of which took place in the skies of the Berlin Metropolis, lasted for almost a decade until inexplicitly ending in the late 1920s. At the time it was believed that the Mors had either died on some adventure or had finally decided to abandon the Earth entirely to explore the galaxy. It wouldn't be until years later the truth of his disappearance would be discovered. (1919-1930)

- In a rare situation where the Twilight Heroes were decidedly the heroes of the situation, the League fought a covenant of vampires that were prowling the streets of Berlin Metropolis. Led by the resurrected Count Orlok, an ancient vampire that had once terrorized the German city of Wisborg in the 19th century, these vampires seduced and murdered the high-class artists and libertines of the Metropolis by night and by day dwelled within the underground remains of 'Old Berlin.' Noticing that the exsanguinations fit old police reports of murders not just in Wisborg, but also the Carpathian Mountains, Sweden, and even Britain, the League realized that the killings had to be the work of vampires. Using Rotwang's perfected tracker they had Cesare serve as a bait for the vampires, who ironically enough hypnotized him before taking him to their secret lair. With the tracker and Rotwang's eidetic memory of his Metropolis' complex sewer system, the League was able to find Orlok and his fellow undead. Unwilling to endanger themselves, Mabuse, Caligari, and Rotwang had planned on simply detonating several explosives at key sections of the sewer to cause a collapse that would bury the vampires in the rubble. Cesare's assured death was seen as an acceptable loss for the sake of the mission. In one of her first instances of rebellion the Maschinenmensch refused to comply with these orders and instead proposed that she go alone into the vampire's den to rescue Cesare and any other survivors that weren't already killed or turned. It is said that while Rotwang was furious that his creation would dare oppose him, and Caligari was amused by Rotwang's humiliation, Mabuse believed that her plan had merit and allowed her to make her rescue attempt. In the end, the automaton succeeded in her mission, not only saving Cesare and several famous Berlin socialites but also killing Orlok and his vampires minions by literally ripping out their undead hearts from their chests one at a time as they failed to damage her chassis with their fangs and claws. (1922)

- Going to the Moon using a spacecraft of Rotwang's own design, the League attempted to recover the remains of the experimental German rocketship 'Friede,' and any possible survivors from the expedition team. Things went awry when they were attacked by Captain Mors and his science-pirate crewmates in their starship 'The Meteor.' Taken unaware, the Twilight Heroes barely managed to escape Mors' bombing of their landing site and only did so because of Cesare's chance finding of a nearby cavern. With their own ship destroyed in the bombing, the Twilight Heroes were forced to repair the Friede in secret while Mors and his crew prowled the craters of the moon looking for them. The task was made easy though by the League enslaving the native insectoid Selenites using Caligari and Mabuse's mind control, allowing the villains to speed up the repairs with their labor. By the time Mors finally found them, the ship was all but flight-worthy, with only a few hours needed to complete the repairs. Fortunately for the League, the brainwashed Selenites served as the perfect cannon-fodder to distract Mors while they made the last of the repairs and made their escape back to Earth on the Friede. While the Twilight Heroes briefing report stated that they were unable to find any survivors from the Friede, a diary entry by the famous Mina Murray on her own expedition to the Moon tells us that she was able to find the skeletal remains of two humans roughly near where the Friede was initially marooned. Both had bullet holes in their skulls. Given the nature of the League and the fact that the Friede was only able to carry five people maximum, we can only assume the Twilight Heroes prioritized their own survival. (1925)

- Quelling a massive worker uprising that had quickly gone out of hand in the heart of Germany itself. Focused primarily in the Berlin Metropolis, the revolt began as a protest against the inhumane working conditions that the Metropolis' impoverished underground-dwelling labor class were forced to endure while its ruling class lived in endless hedonism and excess. For a while, the leaders of the Weimar Republic were willing to let the protest continue unmolested as its leader, Maria, was a pacifist whose sway over the movement prevented its more extremist elements from becoming violent. Unfortunately, this was not to last as the Metropolis' mayor, Joh Fredersen, lost patience with both the protest, as the worker's strike was cutting into his company's profits, and the government, which was unwilling to do anything about it. With no other recourse, Fredersen clandestinely sought the aid of former rival Rotwang and begrudgingly asked for his assistance on the matter. While at first indignant at the notion of assisting him, Fredersen's appeal to Rotwang's own self-interest in returning the city back to order did eventually convince him to help. He convinced Mabuse and Caligari of the benefit of having the mayor of the Metropolis in their debt. Realizing that their leader Maria was the only thing preventing the workers from becoming violent, and thus warranting the government to intervene and send the military to put them down, the trio used Cesare to kidnap Maria in the middle of the night and bring her to Rotwang's secret lab. With the aid of the insane surgeon Dr. Cornélius Kramm, another criminal rival of Mabuse who had been spared the fate of the others due to his useful talents, Rotwang was able to grant the Maschinenmensch a lifelike epidermis by literally skinning Maria's and applying it to the gynoid. While it is said that Frederson was understandably disgusted by what the villains had done, it is also known that after Rotwang told him of how he planned to use his disguised robot to corrupt the protesters from within his moral qualms were quickly allayed. With 'Maria' leading the protestors to a drunken spree of random violence across the city, the government was forced to act, sending the military to restore to the city. Things were going as planned until Frederson's own son, Freder, who had ironically enough grown sympathetic to the protestors after falling in love with Maria, was able to see that the Maria leading the protestors had to be false as the women he knew would never give into violence. Working with another major leader of the movement, Grot, Freder tried to expose the Maschinenmensch as fake and get the protestors to stop their spree before the military was able to wipe them all out. When one of Frederson's own spies discovered this, they quickly alerted the man him. Fearing for his son's safety despite his rebelliousness, Frederson attempted to personally convince his him to return to the safety of the Metropolis' upper tiers, only for him to refuse and continue to try and save the movement. It was around this time when the protester's violence was reaching a fever pitch that Rotwang finally stroke. Using primitive bugs he had installed in Fredersen's office, Rotwang had learned about Fredersen's attempt to save his son and waited until he was alone in the undercity to ambush and murder him himself. Unfortunately for the mad doctor, his victory would not last long as one of the protesters had seen the murder take place. Telling Freder of his father's death at the hands of Rotwang, the grief-ridden young man swore revenge, abandoning Grot to save the movement on his own and tracking Rotwang down to his isolated lab. There the two fought until both were killed when they both fell from the top of the lab. With Fredersen dead there was no hope of revealing the false Maria for what she was, resulting in the entire movement coming under her control once she personally eliminated Grot and the remaining pacifists. After that, it was simply a matter of deliberately luring the violent protesters to a trap where they would be cut down to a man by the German military. With the worker revolt finally, put down the Twilight Heroes were able to recover both Fredersen's and Rotwang's bodies. Mabuse was quick to lie to the League's handlers and claim that both were murdered by protestors. Besides a few admirers of his work, Rotwang was not mourned by anyone, especially not by his creation or the other members of the Twilight Heroes. Notably, the Maschinenmensch did not remove her skin sheath after it was no longer needed. In fact, she took on the name Maria and continued to masquerade as the women in public, making up a story on how 'she' she saw the error of her ways during the revolt and was now steadfastly loyal to the German government. With all of the other major worker leaders dead, there was no one able to reveal the truth. (1927)

The Nazi Regime (1934-1941)

- While it has never been decisively proven that the Twilight Heroes had a hand in Adenoid Hynkel rise to power in Germany during the political chaos that was raging in the country in the early 30s, it is known without a doubt that they wholeheartedly embraced the genocidal despot. Or at the very least appeared to for the sake of furthering their own private ambitions. With the democratic Weimar Republic gone and replaced with a Nazi state, the Twilight Heroes were given the operational freedom they had doing the Kaiser's Reign and then some. With their restrictions on espionage removed, Mabuse and Caligari once again used their talents to undermine foreign governments. Most of these schemes were directed against Tomania and Meccania, countries that were already on the brink of turning fascist. With strategic assassinations of moderate figures and the brainwashing of those found to be too valuable to be killed, these nations entered the growing Nazi political orbit, with Tomania flat out becoming semi-integrated into Germany, making Hynkel dictator of both nations. Within Germany itself, much of the same occurred. Hynkel's political enemies found themselves strangled in their sleep or suddenly compliant to the mad man's ethos. Even the once revered artists, celebrities, and intellectuals of Germany's Golden Twenties found themselves condemned as degenerates and murdered. Notably, it was during this horrific time that the leadership of the Twilight Heroes officially changed. With Mabuse getting on in years and seemingly not being able to be as directly active in League missions as once before, the mesmerist voluntarily gave up leadership of the League and nominated Maria for the position. While Caligari said to have been infuriated over the deliberate snub, Maria quickly adapted to the role and used the new position to her advantage. With the resources of the Twilight Heroes and the public goodwill associated with her stolen identity, the gynoid essentially took over the Berlin Metropolis and served as its unofficial military administrator and municipal taskmaster, increasing its overall productivity and ensuring that it would be able to provide the Nazi war machine a seemingly endless amount of armaments. (1934-1939)

- As mentioned earlier in this chronicle, Captain Mors had seemingly disappeared from the world after he clashed with the Twilight Heroes on the Moon. We know now that this was a ruse. After his humiliation on the Moon, Mors had decided that he needed more than just his pirate crew to finally destroy the Twilights Heroes and avenge Robur. Thus, the air-pirate spent more than a decade looking for people of extraordinary talent to fill out his own League, having seen how effective the Mysterious Men were before Robur's death. The individuals he recruited were; The Holmes inspired German detective Nick Knatterton, the superhuman Mohawk adventuress Atalanta, the Fakir trained mystic Ralf Clifford, and lastly a mysterious globe-trotting investigator only known as Detective Nobody. All of whom had run afoul of the Twilight Heroes at one point or another. While this League began as nothing more than a means to satisfy his need for vengeance, as time went on Mors realized that it could, and should, have a larger purpose. By the time he had finally completed it in 1936, Germany was already under the thrall of the Third Reich and the Twilight Heroes. Believing that a true German League of Heroes could potentially save his homeland, and perhaps the world from despotism, Mors convinced his new colleagues of a plan to not only destroy the Twilight Heroes but to also remove the Nazis from power. Mors' plan was to lure the villains and several regiments of the military with an older version of the Meteor which would be piloted by a skeleton crew and parked atop the skies of Munich, seemingly threatening the city with bombardment. The hope was that while the Twilight Heroes and much of the military was dealing with the ruse, the Berlin Metropolis, and thus Hynkel and the top members of the Nazi party, would be vulnerable to a surgical attack on the Reichstag. With their assassination Mors believed it would cause a massive chain reaction that would destroy the larger Nazi regime and leave the Twilight Heroes without support, thus leaving them vulnerable. Regrettably, we will never know whether this plan would have worked as it turned out that Mabuse, suspicious of the idea that the normally ethical Mors would ever threaten to destroy a city filled with civilians, was able to convince Maria and Hynkel of his concerns and get them to only send a token force to Munich while the Twilight Heroes stayed in the Metropolis prepared for anything. When the Meteor 2.0 finally revealed itself over the Metropolis it started an aerial battle the likes of which would not be seen until the Second World War. Undaunted by the Twilight Heroes seeing past his plan, Mors and his League invaded the Reichstag while his crew did their best to occupy the attention of the Nazis. There, they battled Maria and Cesare as they tried to defend their Führer, while Caligari and Mabuse watched the confrontation from a telescreen in a hidden bunker in the Reichstag, waiting to see who would ultimately be victorious in the struggle. Unfortunately, despite their best efforts, Mors and his League were overwhelmed by Nazi stormtroopers and sleep commandos who had finished taking down the Meteor 2.0. Still, the heroes are said to have fought bravely to the last, with Knatterton almost reaching Hynkel's safe room before being strangled from behind by Cesare. Detective Nobody and Clifford, whose hypnotism proved useless against sleep commandos, were mowed down by Nazi gunfire, while even the seemingly invulnerable Atalanta was beaten to death by Maria. With Mors cornered, alone and lamenting losing cherished friends once again, he opted to make a suicidal attack using a specialized grenade that would have likely destroyed much of the Reichstag if not for Cesare acting quickly and tackling the air-pirate out a window before the explosion could go off. Afterward, Mors' entire family and even distant relatives were rounded up and condemned as traitors to Germany, regardless of whether they even knew anything of the air-pirate's plan. Most of them would die in concentration camps. On a slightly more positive note, Maria was said to have demanded a funeral for the Cesare despite sneers from Caligari. She would be the only one to attend it. (1937)

- Just like in the First World War, the Twilight Heroes made their malign presence known throughout the first few years of the Second World War. While not as active as they were decades ago, the remaining Twilight Heroes assisted the Nazi war machine in a myriad of ways. Working with Heinz Goldfoot and Wilhelm Strasse, both protégés of Rotwang, Maria was able to design more advanced automatons and mechs for the military. Many of these machines would clash with Ally superheroes like Tom Strong and Diana Prince on the frontlines. Caligari throughout the war was absorbed into perfecting his sleep commandos, believing that they would be the key to securing a Nazi victory. With the assistance of the infamous 'She-Wolf of the SS,' he used test subjects (many of them POWs) from her concentration camps and subjected them to horrific mental and physical trauma to brainwash them into perfect soldiers for the Third Reich. Many of the techniques used here would be later appropriated by the British Ingsoc government and the KGB's 'Manchurian Project.' Mabuse, on the other hand, is said to have gone through the motions, doing little more than using his still powerful spy network to inform his superiors about Ally secret projects like the American 'Super-Soldier" program. Beyond that, Mabuse was preoccupied with secret projects that he kept hidden from his colleagues. It would only be after the group's termination that it would be discovered that Mabuse felt the Nazis were doomed to fail and that he had been planning for his eventual disappearance from Germany. As already mentioned, while the Twilight Heroes spent much of the war not on the frontlines and working on their own projects, they did work together for the famous attack on the French air-pirate Armand Robur's 'The Terror,' using the same design flaw that its predecessor possessed to seemingly bring the vessel down. This act and the greater scheme behind it would eventually lead towards the Twilight Hero's end. (1939-1941)

Dissolution – The events of the Battle of the Berlin Metropolis are already described in Hildy Johnson's famous biography on the life of Janni Dakkar and thus this chronicle will direct you to go read it to learn about the Twilight's Heroes demise.

Final Fates – Besides Mabuse, all the other Twilight Heroes would not live past the group's final dissolution. Mabuse would eventually join the Nemo Family where he would surprisingly become a trusted and loyal adviser and confidant to the Pirate Queen. Unfortunately, old age would eventually claim his mind and the once great mastermind would die a raving madman in 1960. The Mabuse family to this day still serves the Nemo Family, ironically enough doing so beside the surviving Mors.

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Author's Notes – Sorry this took so long to get out. I was distracted by other projects and school. Anyways, it's reviewer's choice again! This time let me know if you want me to do a children's fantasy League or a comedic one with B-movie characters.