"—If a fresh start's what you need, Stuttgart's the place to be~!" The radio sang out, the piano exiting a glissando as it accompanied the advertisement.
Ever since the end of the Third World War and the abrupt halt of the fighting within the Schwarzwald Theater, that slogan and its accompanying jingle on the radio had been a mainstay in the airwaves of Rossartrist Germany.
Perpetuated by the German Democratic Republic in order to rebuild the broken and jagged rows of twisted steel and broken glass that constituted the current skyline of Stuttgart, courtesy of the American counteroffensive and its judicious use of artillery and indiscriminate bombings during the war, the city of Stuttgart had been the subject of many propaganda campaigns over the past three years.
And the Stuttgart jingle made by PECMAR was but one out of many. Made in order to bolster the government's campaign to repopulate the recently-purified sections of the Yellow Zone, the Stuttgart Jingle was made just a year ago, and had since taken much of whatever was on TV and on the internet by storm. It wasn't like anyone could just up and say they hated it. The advertisement was made with good reason.
After all, if you ask any native resident, they'd say that the city needed it far more than any canton in Germany. They still remembered the sight of rebel forces fighting on the streets and in the labyrinthian confines of high-rise buildings. The sight of main battle tanks firing shell after shell into the city streets. The fear of close air support dropping heavy ordnance on rebel positions, which were often found in civilian population centers. It was hell on earth, fighting in this urban jungle, but it wasn't the soldiers that suffered the most under such conditions. It was the civilians.
Their bodies? A common sight in the streets of Stuttgart during the German civil war. Gender, age, race, it didn't matter; war spared none of them nevertheless. Whether by the bombs that reduced them to mere chunks of meat and red mist or the high-caliber bullets that riddled them with holes and dismembered them limb from limb, the people of Stuttgart died brutally without so much as a footnote in the history books. Their accounts and the lives they had led, reduced to mere statistics often fudged by analysts and politicians in their pursuit of monetary gain.
Even until now, the scars of such carnage had yet to fade. Most of the buildings outside remained husks of their former selves; still bare skeletons of steel over piles of rubble instead of the grand skyscrapers of concrete and glass that they were so long ago. The vaunted thoroughfares of the city, the storied autobahns, still crippled in places and utterly pulverized in others. Not to mention the damages it had further incurred during the Third World War under the American advance and the subsequent Neo-Soviet counteroffensive.
Even if Stuttgart had gotten back on its feet, the city itself was still very much beholden to war. The pain and suffering it had brought to countless people had made an indelible mark upon its spirit. A mark whose trauma could only be alleviated through the infusion of immigrants and new residents to the purification efforts of the Stuttgart Yellow Zone.
Something as simple as an advertisement would do wonders for a broken city like Stuttgart. And even as a recent immigrant, the man who called himself Peter Waltz could see that the city could use a bit of new life breathed back into it.
"—Keep your dream alive. Choose Anima Solutions." The radio spoke out once again.
Sitting in the antique driver's seat of a pre-war delivery truck, a man in a navy blue jumpsuit gulped down a mouthful of tepid coffee from a steel-gray thermos, one arm stretched languidly as he gripped the steering wheel in boredom as the radio garbled advertisement after advertisement.
The driver's black hair was cut short, sides matted down in such a way that it accentuated the unruly mop that crowned his head, his locks ending in slight curls. With his blue eyes and his angular features, his youthful looks combined with the way he conducted himself had caused him no small amount of grief, especially in his line of work.
As a trucker in these parts, machismo wasn't just encouraged; it was necessary. With the amount of bandits, gangsters, and even ELIDs roaming the ruins below northern Stuttgart where the occupied areas of the Yellow Zone were mostly situated, supervisors looked for people who could endure whatever horrors post-WW3 Germany had to offer. People who were tough as nails, people who could keep on going come what may. Criteria that, as luck may have it, were fulfilled in full by the large number of European war veterans in the area.
Peter Waltz wasn't like them. He wasn't part of their family. He was a 29-year-old trucker from Berlin that kept to himself. Nothing more, nothing less.
He stared into the checkpoint beyond him.
Rain fell gently upon the windshield of his vehicle, its gentle pitter-patter cut short by the metronomic swishing of the wipers. Horns honked intermittently, loudspeakers barking commands as figures in blue stood and inspected the cars hoping to make their way into the Yellow Zone beyond the checkpoint, guards standing on guard dutifully from behind barricades of steel and rows of barbed wire.
"Next person please. Roll down your windows and keep your hands on the steering wheel."
The officer holding the loudspeaker gestured at Peter, urging the next car to move forward with her hand. Releasing the handbrake, the man allowed his truck to inch forward before coming to a stop right in front of the border officer, a smirk on his face.
Unlike all the others working the day shift, she wore none of the chest rigs and the rifles the rest of her peers sported; instead wearing a gray overcoat over a plain white shirt and a black tie. The slim trousers she wore showed off her slender figure, cropped to show off the chunky lace-up boots that kept her feet protected from the brutal terrain of the ruined city.
Even as she stood there with an impassive look on her face, she remained picturesque; almost like a nymph, or a fairy from some distant land. A princess from some fairy tale, with blonde hair that shone even in the rain, glowing and lustrous even if they were tied in a tight bun.
She seemed petite, fragile even, especially with her bulky overcoat and the transparent umbrella she propped on her shoulders. But with the Bundespolizei badge fastened securely on her tactical belt, the set of handcuffs beside it, and a Glock 19 fastened securely in a polymer holster, he knew full well she was anything but.
"Working hard or hardly working?" Peter asked, a grin on his face as he rested his shoulder on the window of his light truck.
As soon as she saw his face, she grimaced.
"Spare me the stupid lines, Waltz. It's been a long day." The woman sighed, holding her head as she did so.
"Come on, don't be going shy on me now, fraulein. It's not like we don't know each other."
"It was one date. And you're never getting a second."
"Give me ten more minutes and I'll be getting more than a third." Peter winked.
Detective Helmina Koch recoiled as she glared at Peter Waltz with disgust.
But, it didn't take long for her to smile in exasperation.
Helmina was the first person he ever met in this city. Him, a vagrant with nothing to his name. Her, a rookie detective fresh out of the Academy, transferred to Stuttgart after a case went horribly wrong. Suffice to say they shouldn't have crossed paths with each other. They were completely different people with differing sets of values. But after a series of twists and turns, she was the one that gave him the job he had now.
He couldn't thank her enough.
"Let's get this over with. Got anything you need to declare?" Helmina asked, glancing over at the officers checking his light truck as they gave her a thumbs up.
Peter had to give it to them. In true German fashion, they worked fast. It was almost soothing, how it all operated like clockwork.
One border officer would talk to the driver while two inspected every nook and cranny of the vehicle with scanners. If anything unexpected happened, the three security officers on standby would quickly surround the vehicle, all armed with high-powered rifles while personnel from the ruined buildings would immediately secure the area.
Efficient and pragmatic. Reminded him of home.
"Nah. Everything should be on that manifest." Peter said, his eyes wandering from the detective to the notice plastered onto the cracked cement of the guardhouse behind her.
A wanted poster. Peter's eyes narrowed at what he saw.
This wasn't from the police. A young woman with hair the color of deep magenta? Reported armed and dangerous? A thousand euros for any information leading to her capture? The police could barely afford Doll contracts in these parts, much less a thousand euros for information. It smelled fishy. And if it smelled fishy, there's probably fish.
"…hey. Hey. Waltz, you're good to go." Helmina rapped against the windshield of his truck, staring quizzically into the trucker.
"Oh. Yeah. You going with Fred later? It's a Friday. I know the chief's punishing you with checkpoint duty, but I just wanna make sure." Snapped out of his stupor, Peter asked the detective, flicking the selector switch back to drive and disengaging the handbrake.
Helmina nodded.
"Yeah. My shift's almost done anyway. I'll see you boys there."
"Cool. Don't wear too many layers though. Show some skin for a change, you grandma." Peter grinned.
"I don't have a habit of leading idiots like you on. Also, you know I can arrest you for sexual harassment, right?" Helmina quickly retorted.
"Well, that's my cue to go!" Cackling as he did so, Peter drove off, forcibly shoving the image of that poster into the deepest recesses of his mind.
It didn't matter. Whoever wanted to find that girl? It wasn't his business. It wasn't his duty. He had no noble cause.
After all, Peter Waltz was a trucker. Nothing more, nothing less.