Ch16 - Onwards Still

Three Allied Agents walked through the expansive corridors of the Munich Hauptbahnhof, revelling in their continued freedom, though the German commoners who surrounded them on all sides were most certainly not to know that. Exiting the place they made their way across the Arnulfstrasse, admiring briefly the stunning beauty of the Botanical Gardens that stood there, a place of beauty in the centre of the metropolis that was the capital of the Bayern region of Germany, laid out before them in the fading light of the evening.

They knew that they were not the only group of their like in Germany, let alone their region of Germany. The idea of not being alone, comforting as it was, was no relief against the axe hanging over their heads of the knowledge of the law that made them dead women walking.
Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano, Piper McLean and Bianca Di Angelo, now out of their disguises as people of high station, were free to do as they were best at doing.

Their mission was to make themselves a constant stream of information. Everything that may be of note was to be transmitted out of the country, via the Allied Agents stationed at their point of entry into Austria from Italy, Grover Underwood and his team still holding firm, and from what they had heard, having resisted enemy pressure on several occasions by now. This was not only a source of reassurance, but a guarantee that their comrades were able to proverbially hold the door open for more Allied Agents to be inserted into Germany as they themselves had been. The team on the Brenner Pass were now a source of information too, more and more spies feeding back to Allied Command stations posted in nations such as Italy and France, First Lieutenant Grover Underwood receiving the honour of mention in dispatches for his exemplary service in both holding the pass, his actions now acknowledgeable as a result of the Allied troops beginning to advance in the south of Austria. As much as the Allied higher-ups did not wish to draw attention to the length of time for which their soldiers had been posted in the North of Italy and hence the potential number of operatives working in Austria or even Germany as this particular group of three were, it was a major step towards rallying public support firmly around themselves once more.
A few minutes later, the group of three found themselves in the single most useful place from which to gain tactical information.
They were in a bar.
The curfew would be enforced soon, they knew, for RAF, USAF and USAAF bombers had already been targeting the German Capital city of Berlin, and then further raids had been carried out along the Ruhr Valley, crippling the German Industrial Heartland. The most famous of these, of course, had been Operation Chastise a year prior, or as many had already begun calling it, the Dambusters Raid, in which the fearless Lancaster Pilots of 617 Squadron RAF Bomber Command had crippled hydroelectric power in the region by destroying the Mohne, Edersee and Sorpe Dams.
Few knew better than the British spies in the area that Arthur 'Bomber' Harris was far from done with his planned destruction of the German homeland. Some even went so far as to think that the man in charge of RAF Bomber Command desired to end the war by way of his Avro Lancasters alone.
The destruction that promised to arrive that night would likely look that way.
The plight of the people of Munich, however, was inconsequential to the group; they had a rendezvous to make.

A total of twenty four minutes passed since they left that establishment, and the trio of Allied Agents were in a fight for their lives.
Their car lay at the side of the road, a burning wreck that lit up the street along which they were attempting to retreat. Thick, black smoke curled into the air as their only form of escape became their biggest hindrance, the bright orange flames casting long shadows in the fast-dimming light, illuminating their faces where without it they might have been able to hold off their foe with the advantage of being unseen.
The shooting continued, the small group of German luftschutze, Air Raid Wardens, having kept the trio pinned until such a time as they were able to call for backup.
Behind them, they heard the low growl of a motor vehicle engine, and they knew the game was up. Reinforcements had arrived, and they were closing with come pace.
That was, of course, until Reyna Avila Ramirez-Arellano came up with a solution.
She would question herself one day, and ask if this was truly the best outcome. She would possibly even hate herself, condemning all her actions since her move to the USA, even berate herself for thinking that she was so special, so different that the tiny little Catalan town in which she had grown up was not enough.
But that was for later.
Running a few steps to one side, she drew her knee up to her chest, lashing her foot out and forwards. The door of a civilian house fell from its hinge, a terrified pair of eyes meeting her gaze, the scream of a little child meeting her ears as she ushered her comrades into the house. Piper sent a questioning look her way, a hint of fear apparent in her eyes, though the American entered the house nevertheless, ducking her head as a round slammed into the masonry of the doorway, turning to watch as Reyna replied with a volley of her own, the stolen MP40 she wielded letting off three rounds before she hid herself away.

Up above them, the two OSS Agents heard the very same sound ring out from the upper floor of the house, Bianca having doubtlessly found the window of the front room, the Italian using it as a place from which she could fire. Reyna nodded approvingly, silently pointing out the door of the front room for Piper to use as her own position. The Spaniard then motioned herself going up the stairs, mouthing the word escape as a way of explanation.
It was a very hopeful notion, but Reyna had noticed the attic windows on several of the houses as she had scanned the street, and so it was not so barbaric a thought that escape was possible from one of those. What it was, however, was so pathetically desperate that she found herself laughing in barely concealed hysteria. The pocket of her trench coat contained three spare magazines for the MP40, though she suspected that this would need to be shared among her companions.
Reaching the top of the attic ladder, she found, to some relief, that there was indeed a window; that too one which mercifully faced away from the street, overlooking the Bavarian house's modest back garden. A hammering on the front door told her that her time was short, and with a muttered curse, she sprinted back down the stairs, bringing Piper and Bianca with her to the window, grimacing slightly as the Italian used the butt of her rifle to smash the glass.
A fresh thud downstairs brought further bad news; the front door had been breached.

Think fast, idiot, Reyna thought to herself.
Fortunately, Piper did the thinking for her.
The smallest of clinks was made as the pin from the top of the fragmentation grenade hit the floor, a few dull thuds as it tumbled innocently down the stairs, a panicked shriek from Bianca behind her to move.
Reyna pulled the hatch that hid the attic up a moment before the bomb detonated, the ladder safely in the upper room of the house, unusable to those willing to reach them from below.
Her thoughts, however, were the exact polar opposite.
She could hear screams of pain from those affected by the bomb's explosion, and she wondered if all that were hurt were innocents.
The face of the little girl downstairs flashed across her vision, the terrified eyes of the lady, probably her mother, burned into the back of her vision.
Fucking shit
Unseeing eyes guided her to the smashed window, unfeeling hands dragging her out of the house.
The crisp air of the late evening drew her out of her trance.
A deep breath steeled her nerves.
"Ammunition?" She asked sharply, drawing the eyes of her comrades to herself, before they checked their pockets.
"Two mags, one loaded," Piper responded quickly, "Fifteen left in this one."
"One mag," Bianca replied, "This one's full."
Nodding, Reyna passed one of her own over to the Italian, patting her on the shoulder at the look of gratitude received in response.
"Let's move, yeah?"

The chase had, by some miraculous stroke of luck, gone their way, Piper realised, as she glanced over her shoulder. They had managed to reach the Milbertshofen-Am-Hart area of Munich, not far from their goal of Dachau.
It had been a shock to Piper when she had received the message detailing the change in destination. Ingeniously hidden it was, too. A gentleman in the station had handed her a note, clearly having fallen for her disguise of being a politician of some sort. Equally, it put the thought in her mind; how many Allied agents were truly operating in Germany at this point of time? It could so easily have been a person planted there by high command where they sat, deep under the streets of London, hundreds of miles away, in fact a little over a thousand.
Nuremberg was indeed along their route, however it was not in fact their true target, rather their extraction point. It made sense, she supposed, that they would not be officially told of where they were going; Zhang and Nightshade had already escaped capture once, most certainly by a narrow margin, considering how scared the train guards had seemed, and they themselves had only now begun their escape from what had, not even ten minutes ago, seemed like a tightening cordon around them.
They had heard precious little from Jackson and the Graces, though it was a given that that particular group would have little trouble worming their way from Munich to their rendezvous point in Karlsfeld. They might even have taken the direct bus from the station, Piper mused with some annoyance.
Such thoughts, however, were not worth thinking. The team had been chosen as a result of their increased likelihood of reaching their overall destination and accomplishing the task at hand.
Her musings, however, were cut short when a fresh burst of gunfire cut across the late evening's silence.
They had been found

Keeping her head down, Piper led the way herself, leaping from roof to roof with a grace that had been honed over years of training. Her rifle was of little use until a good position had been found, she rationalised, and so it was to remain away, not to be used. Instead, she drew her Walther P-38, cocking the weapon and making it ready to fire. A fresh round of bullets thudded into the tiles of the roof in front of them, shards of masonry flying in all directions and forcing the three Allied Agents to cover their faces, lest a stray piece of tile hit their eyes.
Reyna fired off a few rounds somewhere behind her, cursing in her native Spanish as she was forced to duck her head once more, this time taking cover behind the chimney stack of a house.
Glancing back once more, Piper swore violently, noticing exactly why there was a problem.
As though the swarm of enemy soldiers pinning them from the ground was not enough, an Abteilung, a section had circled around, sending a fire team onto the roofs to give chase.
All of a sudden, they were surrounded, and so, so far from freedom. Jumping from the roof upon which they were situated meant that they would leave themselves at the mercy of the group of five who had given chase on the roofs, and running meant potentially moving further into a trap.
Battle was their only choice.
Pulling the pin from another grenade, Piper hurled it towards the cluster of shooters on the road off to their left, the explosion of the incendiary bomb igniting the platoon's armoured vehicle and removing a significant part of their automatic capacity, the ability to use automatic weapons among Infantry reserved for SNCOs and Officers.

A burst of fire to her left indicated that Reyna had resumed her fight, focussing on the clustered soldiers on the street, now panicking at the loss of their troop transport.
Bianca, however, seemed to have taken a rather different choice.
The Italian had charged, closing the distance in a matter of seconds with her MP40 spitting hellfire. Two Germans tumbled from the roof, dead, the other three scrambling for cover.
At a shout from Reyna, Bianca pulled back, preventing the fatal error of isolating herself against superior hostile numbers with Piper covering her hasty withdrawal.
Another grenade, this time another Fragmentation device, was passed to her, and she accepted without hesitation, pulling the pin and sending it into an area of suspected concentrated hostile forces.
The screams from the street below proved her right.
Those still remaining on the roof adjacent pulled back, recognising their defeat, another falling to a well-placed round from the barrel of Piper's own weapon. The trio turned tail and fled, freedom once again a possibility.
That, however, was not to be.
Not for all of them in any case.

Reyna, for the first time in the best part of a few hours, took a breath and relaxed.
In fact, she was so relaxed that she entirely missed the firing of a weapon.
She missed Bianca falling backwards.
She opened her eyes to Bianca falling off the roof.
Eyes wide in shock, Piper sprinted back to them, eyes shining with unshed tears, born out of raw emotion. Shock, horror, fear.
Another resounding bang rent the air as the shooter fired again, this time striking a roofing tile mere inches in front of Reyna's face, shards of broken masonry flying in all directions, breaking skin wherever it struck her.
She could hear the agonised screams of the Italian below, no doubt the result of a multitude of injuries. They were, however, unable to treat her. Not yet.
The first rule of combat first aid, after all, was to prevent becoming a casualty yourself.
They needed to win the firefight first.
The first step, she told her spinning mind, was to locate the shooter.
Where the fuck was the shooter?

She knew, having spoken to Zoya EL-Faouly, that a sniper with a brain could hit a coin from a distance of two hundred yards. That meant that, somewhere in this jungle of concrete and brick, there could be any number of shooters, firing from any direction.
A bullet striking her arm confirmed just that, the blinding pain causing her to cry out in terror, her entire arm suddenly numb as her brain struggled to comprehend the sensory overload of being wounded as she was.
Somewhere to her right, she heard Piper firing rapidly, demanding her magazines so that she could continue the fight.
She acquiesced, barely comprehending her partner's expression of thanks.
The two women had worked together for some time now, having met in the buildup to Operation Anvil, on the South Coast of France. They were friends, and had dealt with each other's injuries and problems to an acceptable extent by now, she liked to think, that they were friends.
Such thoughts were barely enough to keep herself content that she was safe.
It was not, however, enough to blank out Di Angelo's pitiful sounds of pain down below her.
As though he were something out of a vision, a figure clambered onto the roof next to them.
As a matter of fact, Reyna thought, it might well have been a vision, something out of a dream, created as a result of her pain.
That was until he pulled out a weapon - a pistol, though its model and make were indiscernible from here - and shot, almost dismissively, sideways and down.
A scream, and then silence.
Bianca?

"Good riddance," the figure - quite clearly male - intoned, his voice somehow smooth as honey, with a hidden malice which struck a nerve in Reyna's mind, triggering something somewhere in the depths of her psyche.
She had heard this voice before.
"You…" she began, head still whirring in a mess of pain and indecision.
"Yes, Reyna," he replied, "Me."
Reyna fired.
Nothing happened.
That was to say, the weapon discharged, a bullet struck her foe, but nothing happened.
Piper did the same, a full magazine being emptied into the man's torso. It broke all the rules of their training, all semblance of sensibility, and yet they did it. Bullets thudded into his body, and yet nothing. No blood, not even a grimace of pain was returned, no semblance of relief for the two OSS Agents.
Not caring for the consequences, Piper turned to Reyna, eyes wide in fear, and pulled her last resort.
The man laughed.
"Ah, yes," he spoke, that horrifically calm voice still as sickly sweet, so seductively convincing that Reyna wanted to let it all go, use every bullet at her disposal on…
On someone.
Who did she want to kill?
There were, of course, two options.
Piper held a grenade.
Her adversary was unarmed.
Reyna held a submachine gun.
Oh, it would be so beautifully easy, would it not?
For a moment, her hands loosened, the muzzle of the weapon resting oh, so precariously under her chin, the end of it still slightly warm, the metal coated in a fine layer of carbon, the result of relentless use.
She felt her body relax, somehow willing her to end it right there, at that very instant.
It would be so, so easy.
Just push down ever so slightly.

Reyna's mind, however, was weak.
It was that weakness that granted her life.
To her right, she heard Piper breathe out in relief.

"Oh, my dear," the man crooned, and if Reyna was not so blinded, so angry, she might just have believed that it was real.
"Stop," she heard Piper say, an authority in her voice that Reyna had rarely heard, rarely experienced. "You're one of them, are you not?"
"Them, my dear Ms. McLean?" The man asked, his sickly saccharine voice almost mocking as he turned towards the American, "I thought, that after all that you have done, after all my obstacles that you have avoided, you might be slightly more, shall we say, accepting, when you see me in person?"
"Of course, my dear sir," Piper responded, her own voice now the same honeyed, disgusting tone as the hulking man with whom she was now locked in conversation, "I would gladly speak to the murderer of not one but two of my friends. Would you like some tea to go with your bullshit?"
"Now, now, my dear," he chuckled, "The Lord of Time has no need for such obstinacy among those he deems to be worthy."
Gone was the sweetness, all hints of civility formerly present in his tone now seemingly a faint memory.

"Submit, Piper McLean, or die."
"Selene will walk free!" Piper shouted, eyes burning with fury, face contorted in a fearsome snarl that hid the beauty that all present knew was concealed underneath. "Annabeth fucking Schafer will spit on the face of your evil pathetic little Nazi guards, and then you ask me to fucking submit!"
The man turned away, formerly expressionless face now bearing an expression that Reyna would never have expected. Not from an enemy, and most certainly not from the variety of foe who could walk away from thirty bullets into the torso.
The man wore an expression of pity.
"Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, Piper McLean, you have been warned," he intoned, that infuriating voice now little more than a growl. "Atlas himself has warned you. Death beckons."
Reyna felt a shiver run down her spine.

A few miles away, at the rendezvous point, four Agents stood together, scanning their surroundings, hoping and praying that they had not lost more of their own to this cause. Two was more than enough, the losses of Valdez and Zhang already too much of a burden for any of them to deal with. Already, they were Heracles, entering the garden of twilight, though each of them knew that it was not Atlas bearing the weight of the sky, no. Rather, it was their friend, their comrade Annabeth, and the object of their rescue mission, the British spymaster Codename Selene.
Each of them knew that they, like some of their comrades already, might have to pay the ultimate price, and to prevent that Perseus Jackson was willing to bear the weight of the world, damn the consequences.

The group of four left the rendezvous point at 2300hrs local time, heads hung in barely concealed pain at the loss of three more of their comrades, unnecessary casualties of a war declared by tyrants and fought by fools.
Two OSS Agents arrived at that spot at 0132hrs, wounded and worn out from the day's exertions, physically and emotionally drained.
They would be found that morning by the most unlikely of people, and spirited out of a city which had quickly become hell to them.
Their stories, however, would continue someday.
A family somewhere in Northwest Munich would wake up that morning to a dead body in their back garden.

A/N
Shorter than normal, yes, but I didn't want to write much beyond what you see. For those of you who haven't realised yet, I'm very loosely following TTC in the way the plot of this story goes, and as I hinted at, next chapter is the Garden of the Hesperides, maybe in a rather less conventional way than you might expect.
There will be a sequel to this, though it's not really going to be that closely linked. It's going to have loose links, but it's not going to feature many of the characters from this story, just reference them every so often. It's not going to turn up immediately, either; those of you on CombatTombat's discord server will know that I plan on putting out a Titans Won AU next, i.e. after this is finished. It's not one of my previously planned projects, honestly it feels like everything I write is practice for what I'm calling 'the big ones' in my head; those are the sequel to this, for mainly personal reasons, and the first fic I began planning - those two are the ones I really don't want to fuck up, so they're still a while off.
Those of you that follow In the Light of a Waning Moon, I lied?
For context, I wished the readers there a Happy New Year's, saying that I didn't expect to be able to update before tomorrow.
That's definitely the case now, so I hope you've had a good Christmas, Happy New Year and all that jazz.
Until next time then,
Sol
(I don't own PJO)