Author's note: Remember when you were sitting in the theatre that time? Comfy in your seat, with a soda and a bag of paprika chips (or whatever you like)and the commercials were finally over. You sat back, relaxed, and then it started. As soon as you heard the opening music, you simply knew that this was going to be great. This was going to be awesome. The feeling started in your stomach, but spread very fast all over your body, and you couldn't help but grin. You never even got to your chips, because you were simply hypnotized by what was happening on the screen. Remember that? Well, I sure do. It's when you just know the film you just saw, you're going to enjoy the rest of your life. Such films are rare to come by these days. But Tarantino, the glourious basterd, did it again, and God, he did it amazingly.

Up next: the Apocalypse! Run while you still can!... No, the Basterds are just going to bust Stiglitz out of jail in this .

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Chapter 5: Feuer Frei!

He had been caught.

Idiot, he scolded himself. You had them all, and then you just had to let yourself fall into their hands.

He had no regrets, though. The men he killed, and the reason he was in prison right now, had deserved what he had done to them. He had been sickened by them. Their arrogance, their sleek talk, their smiles that had lost any joy a long time ago. The way they walked around, as if the world belonged to them, and as if they were the best persons to own the world. But most off all, he was sickened by how uncaring they were in their cruelty. As if everyone they didn't find 'superior' enough deserved to suffer so much at their hands.

He had seen it. He had heard the screams of a thousand innocent people, while they had been brutally beaten, had seen their family get killed, or when they still had been in their house when the fire destroyed it. He had seen their blood spilled, had seen them been loaded into trains as if they were nothing but beasts, ready for the slaughter. He had also seen them, as they stood and watched and occasionally shouted commands. They had been smiling, laughing with a pleasure that only a true evil mind could muster.

It had made him sick to the very core of his being.

How could the things they did make the world a better place? How could all those people have deserved to be treated like that? He had been wondering about this since the beginning, since his first day in the army, when he had been part of a raid in the ghetto of Berlin.

Years later, he had finally found an answer. Or rather, he had known all along, he had just been too much of a coward to acknowledge the truth. Nobody deserved to endure such cruelty, or to be starved and killed in one of those death camps. Nobody except the people in charge, the sick and twisted minds that only cared for power and money.

His mind wandered, thinking back to the night he had gone on his little killing rampage. He could see the faces of the men he had murdered, the fear in their eyes, and their begging to let them live, just before he pulled the trigger. He remembered the satisfaction pulling that trigger had given him. He remembered how he had waited by the bedside of one of them for the man to wake up, only to have a pillow roughly pressed to his face, cutting of his air, until his body finally stopped moving. He had enjoyed the sight of the wide eyes and the blue mouth that hung open in a soundless scream. He remembered how he had slit the throat of the last one, and the pleasant warmth of the blood that had streamed over his fingers.

Now, he was facing death himself, and he knew it. But it didn't matter much to him. He was glad he'd take the souls of thirteen wicked men with him. He only wished they'd get it over with. Instead, they were prolonging his execution, and were going to send him back to Berlin first. He wasn't very patient by nature, and the waiting only managed to irritate him.

Being made an example of, what a joke, he thought.

He felt at peace nonetheless. It was just too bad he hadn't had a chance to kill more of them.

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The Basterds were gathered in their temporary camp, having gotten back from another attack on a German patrol about two hours ago. As usual, they had taken their artillery, and any other interesting things the soldiers had carried with them. They had left no survivors this time. Lt. Raine started to believe that letting the occasional guy live wasn't the best habit. If someone would actually go as far as interrogating all of the survivors, they'd end up knowing a bit too much about him and his men. Not that it would put them in any danger of getting captured, but the less the Germans knew, the better. And the best Nazis were still the dead Nazis.

Raine was leaning against a tree, watching the others go about their business, thinking about nothing in particular. Omar, Utivich, Zimmerman and Kagan had started a card game, Wicki was reading a German newspaper he had found when they had checked the bodies after their attack, Hirschberg and Sakowitz shared a cigarette (the Basterds were gradually growing short of supplies again) and Donny was swinging his bat at invisible heads a bit further away. He did this a lot lately, since he hadn't had any real heads for some time now. Raine had told him to save it for any big fish they caught, and they hadn't had a chance of capturing any more important German officers since Müller. Their enemies had become extremely cautious ever since.

Raine absent mindedly watched Wicki read his paper for a while. It had been his idea to check newspapers whenever they got their hands on one. Chances were small any news with any significance for them would be in a paper, but it was still interesting to know what occupied the general German public.

"Any interesting news?" Raine asked. Wicki looked up from the article he was reading.

"Not really. Some singer dumped her most recent boyfriend, and Goebbels is going to make e new film he's going to call 'Nation's Pride', about that Fredrich Zoller…"

Raine rolled his eyes.

"Shit, they're still going on about that guy?"

"If he'd been on our side, you'd probably say he did a terrific job."

Raine blinked.

"True." He replied at length. "Any word about us yet?"

"No, the media still manages to ignore our existence."

"Bet they're forced to ignore us. It wouldn't do the Third Reich's reputation much good."

Wicki nodded.

"And still, any German patrol we attack appears to know who we are." he said.

"Huh. Yeah. I keep forgettin' you understand every word they're saying."

Wicki went back to his paper again. Yes, he was the groups translator, which he didn't mind at all, but the fact that the man responsible for the deaths of millions of people was from the same country he was from, wasn't a very pleasant thought to bear in mind.

It was then his eye fell on an article that looked to be more interesting than any he'd read so far.

"Listen to this, lieutenant." He said after reading the article. Raine moved over to him and looked into the paper. He was joined by Donny, who had given up swinging his bat at imaginary things.

"This is pretty big. This guy," Wicki pointed at a picture of a man with a stern face. "His name is Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz and he killed 13 high ranking Gestapo officers in France. They caught him in the end, but he's not been executed yet. They're going to send him back to Berlin first, to be made an example of."

"He sure looks like he could kill someone." Donny commented.

"Does it say where they're keeping him?" Raine asked.

"No, but it does say where they arrested him. It's not very far from where we are." Wicki answered, sensing where Raine was getting at.

"Okay then." Raine said. He called the others over, and explained to them about the article.

"So men, what say we add us another member to our team?"

They all started to grin enthusiastically.

"Are you sure about this, lieutenant?" Donny asked after the short meeting.

"Yep. Why?" Raine asked, genuinely interested. He always liked to know what his sergeant thought about his plans. Two minds working together were always better than one mind to plan it all out. Donny could act stupid, but he had a lot going on in his head.

"It's just that I'm not sure about this Stiglitz guy. He's still German. What if he suddenly decides to turn against us?" he said.

Raine considered this. There was a chance, but Donny had forgotten about one thing.

"Listen, Donny, this guy single handedly killed 13 Gestapo officers. I'm pretty sure he hates 'em as much as we do. And if he don't want to go with us when we bust him out, we won't make him. Then it's his problem. Okay?"

"Okay." Donny nodded. He figured it would be best to first see what Stiglitz was like. If it was necessary, he'd keep an eye out.

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(the next evening)

The German prison was located in a small town in the north-west of France. It was a relatively old but well taken care of building, mainly used to lock up military criminals like Hugo Stiglitz. The Basterds had snuck into the town undetected, and now hid in the shadows of the empty houses across the street.

It was a clear, ice cold night, without a moon, so it was almost completely dark aside from the tiny stars in the sky and the distant streetlights and the lights that shone from the prison. The guards at the gate breathed misty clouds into the air. At some point, one of them walked over to his companion, and they smoked a cigarette together. They were completely unaware of the men that concealed themselves pretty much in front of their noses. Despite the biting cold, the Basterds managed to keep perfectly still. Waiting. It was closing in on midnight when one of them finally moved.

Wilhelm Wicki, being the German speaking one, had been the guy for this job: distracting the guards long enough for Omar and Kagan to sneak up behind them to take them out. First, he moved quietly until he was a good distance away from the others, and then walked on the street, coming seemingly from the opposite direction from where he had been hiding. When he walked up to the building, the two men at the gate immediately turned in alarm, raising their rifles at him.

"Who goes there?" the left one called in German.

Wicki raised his hands a little; his role was that of the innocent person on a late night walk.

"Excuse me, gentlemen. I don't mean any harm." he said.

The guard who had spoken first, seemed to relax a little, probably because Wicki's accent was perfect. The other one, though, still aimed his gun, eyeing Wicki suspiciously.

"Why are you out on the street so late?" he barked.

"I'm sorry. I was just on my way home…"

"I'll need to see some identification." the guard said, and began walking up to Wicki. At that moment, Wicki saw two figures approach behind the two guards. They simultaneously grabbed both men by their throats. Light flickered shortly on two knife blades. The guards never even had the chance to put up a struggle. Their blood stained the ground. Omar and Kagan dragged the bodies aside, while the others came out of hiding. Utivich took the rope he had been carrying over his shoulder off, unwind it and started to swing the end with the hook in his right hand, aiming carefully at the wall. Soon, he had the rope secure on the wall, and started climbing. He hoped there weren't much soldiers on the courtyard.

There was only one guard standing at the gate on the inside. Utivich jumped off the wall, landing softly like a cat. The man at the gate had been dozing off, but jumped as soon as he saw Utivich. He opened his mouth, but got shot before he could make a sound. Utivich hurried to open the wooden gate to let the others in. His shot had probably alarmed the soldiers inside, and he couldn't handle them alone.

As soon as the Basterds were inside, all hell broke loose.

The sound of firing machine guns echoed through the long hallways of the prison. They all loved target shooting, and Nazis were easy victims. The guards fell one by one, mowed down by a spray of bullets, while the Basterds, glad they finally got to the action, stormed through the building.

"The place is ours!" Donny yelled, a wide grin plastered on his face.

Wicki and Raine had found a surviving guard, and now pinned him against the wall, guns pointed at his face.

"Where is Hugo Stiglitz?" Wicki asked the man in German.

"T… Th… That way," he pointed a shaky finger. "Down the stairs, in the basement. The last cell on the left. You can't miss it…"

"Thanks." Wicki grinned and patted the guard on the shoulder. He told Lt. Raine where to find their potential new team mate.

"This way, men!" Raine shouted. They all ran behind him. Sakowitz, who came last, shot the guard in the head as he passed by.

The guard had said 'basement', but as soon as the Basterds had passed the heavy wooden door and the old cracked stairs, they didn't expect to arrive in the damp, echoing space that was the underground of the prison.

"Cozy." Utivich remarked dryly.

A guard appeared from around a corner. His face registered complete surprise when he noticed the men at the bottom of the stairs. They immediately shot him. Then, they charged forward. The soldiers they ran into never stood a chance. The spray of bullets spat out by the machine guns of the Basterds sent their bodies flying, to crash onto the sandy ground. One of the guards standing at the last cell on the left, merely had a chance to aim his gun before he was hit by several bullets. The others were taken out quickly. The echoes of gunshots slowly died out. Lt. Raine and his men all pretty much arrived at the same time at the prison cell. It was occupied by one man. He stared at the floor and was casually smoking a cigarette, as if it happened everyday that nine foreign men with machine guns came by.

"Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz?" Raine asked, although he was pretty sure this was the guy they were looking for. The man looked up, expression blank, and nodded.

"Lt. Aldo Raine. These are the Basterds, ever heard of us?"

Stiglitz nodded again.

"We just wanted to say we're a big fan of your work. When it comes to killing Nazis…"

It was then that one of the bodies on the floor moved and moaned loudly, sounding in great pain. The guard was instantly shot in the head.

"… I think you show great talent." Raine continued as if he'd never been interrupted. "And I pride myself on having an eye for that kind of talent. But your status as a Nazi killer is still amateur. We all come here to see if you wanna go pro."

Stiglitz eyed all of the Basterds for a moment. Then he nodded once more. Raine grinned. He motioned for Hirschberg, the lock picking expert of the group, who took out an ordinary hairpin. He really was good at what he did, because he had Stiglitz out of his cell and his handcuffs within 5 minutes.

"Pretty good trick, huh?" Hirschberg grinned. Stiglitz didn't smile back, but there was a hint of gratitude in his eyes.

"Okay, let's go." Lt. Raine said.

The Basterds + Stiglitz got out of the basement problem free. Then, as they were about to enter the hallway that lead to the exit, they heard voices. Raine briefly poked his head around the corner, to see that there were three German officers, two looking at the other one that bend over to check one of the dead bodies on the floor. Raine pulled back, looked over his shoulder and motioned for Stiglitz to come over to him. He took Donny's machine gun and handed it to Stiglitz.

"Three of them around the corner. Time to prove your worth, buddy." Raine whispered. Stiglitz didn't say a word as he accepted the gun, but there appeared something in his eyes, something deep and dark, that Raine would later describe as 'killer instinct'.

He stepped around the corner and started shooting, his face without any hint of emotion as he watched the bodies fall, except for his eyes, that burned with a pure, raw hatred, beautiful and terrifying.

Hugo Stiglitz was on the loose again.

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OMG I love writing Stiglitz. He's so fascinating! Hope I did a good job. Yes, speedy updates. As long as I don't have a writer's block all of a sudden, they'll probably keep coming at this rate. Review, or I'll send the flying monkeys. They know where you live…

Till next time!