1950. 06. 15. 11am, Berlin, German Empire

It was a warm and bright day in Berlin as the city's inhabitants went about their daily business. It was almost noon in June and for all intents and purposes, Berlin was normal. At least that is what would have been normal if it wasn't for one thing: a strange shimmering light like a mirage started forming in the very center of the city at 11am. Within moments, everyone's eyes in the city centre were drawn towards this unusual sight. The mirage growing larger and into something solid and real with every passing second, soon it became an actual structure, an ancient-looking temple of some kind, with bright turqoise crystals built in between the columns and into the structure's roof, and a dark, almost pitch black interior surrounded by it's columns and roof. People stared at it in wonder. No one had ever seen such a thing before, and yet there it stood in the middle of the city in broad daylight, seemingly without warning. A small crowd slowly gathered around the area. Suddenly, a strange noise began coming from within the temple; a sound that seemed almost animalistic and inhuman. Everyone looked up and saw a huge winged creature emerging from inside the building. It was massive. With its long claws and sharp talons, it resembled a dragon, but its size was different. In fact, it looked more like an eagle. There was something unnatural about its appearance, however. Its beady red eyes seemed to stare straight through the crowd, as if they could see right through them. It's rider, a human in armor and bearing a lance, also seemed to take notice of the crowd as well. They circled above the Gate as more of them emerged, alongside other humans in similar armor on foot and on horses, bearing rectangular shields, swords, spears, bows and arrows. With them were other creatures, human-like but more animalistic in nature. They beared crude weaponry and had noticeably shoddier and more haphazard armor than their human counterparts. One of them even wielded a gigantic warhammer.

The stunned crowd were still staring at the new arrivals and trying to make sense of their appearance when one of the human soldiers sounded a horn, signalling for them to attack. At once, all hell broke loose. The crowd scattered instantly, running in all directions in a panic and screaming in terror. Most people fled as far as they could while others fought valiantly to defend themselves. Arrows rained down on the fleeing onlookers, and screams rose from the streets below. Many people fell or were trampled upon by fleeing citizens. As chaos erupted, the newcomers took advantage of the situation and began attacking indiscriminately. Soon, the air was filled with the sounds of clashing metal and screams of pain and death.

The human soldiers continued to slaughter anyone who tried to stop them and the dragons followed suit, using their talons and teeth to rend flesh from bone. Some were killed outright, but many survived only to be eaten alive by their assailants. As the battle raged on, ever more desperate requests from the Berlin Police Department to the local army garrison finally succeeded in getting troops to respond. The military forces, under command of Colonel Dietrich von Rundstedt, quickly responded as their tanks, mechanized and motorized infantry started converging on Berlin.

Luftwaffe Hb 179 jets were scrambled from Berlin Gatow airport by the Luftwaffe's General Staff and with orders to secure the airspace above Berlin. They flew at high altitude over the city, keeping low and staying out of reach of the invaders' 'flying cavalry' for the moment.
Among the pilots was a man named Kurt Heilbronn, who was assigned to the lead flight of Hb 179s. Although he was only twenty four years old and had only served in the Luftwaffe for six months, he was an accomplished pilot of the German military machine and was regarded highly by his superiors. He breathed deeply and looked forward to seeing how things played out. He spotted his first aerial target below him. An enormous flying beast, it swooped over the city and made direct course for the city center. He pulled back on the stick and swung around it. His squadron followed his example and did likewise. They passed overhead of the beast, and Heilbronn felt a surge of pride and adrenaline as he thought about the danger he was in. This is going to be interesting, he thought as he could see more of the wyvern riders circling above the city.

"All fighter wings, this is Panther Leader," Heilbronn spoke into the radio on the plane. "We have several targets approaching us from the southeast. We are going to go down to intercept." "Confirm Panther Leader. Copy!" Came the response from the rest of his unit. The jets approached the wyverns from above, dove towards them, and with practiced ease, shot down several of their number.

Heilbronn turned to face forward and focused on making sure that they didn't get too close to the ground. They had just narrowly missed colliding with another flock of wyverns. The squadron broke formation and a dogfight ensued where the superior speed of the German jets put the wyvern riders in great disadvantage. The enemy kept trying to catch a couple of the German planes, but their efforts ended in failure because their opponents easily evaded their attacks. Heilbronn picked out an enemy wyvern for himself and began chasing it, trying to get the beast in his jets' sights. He reached forward, gripped the stick, pulled the trigger and fired. The bullets found their mark and the wyvern roared loudly, falling out of the sky and slamming onto the pavement hard. After recovering slightly from the shock, the wyvern recovered enough to rise, only to fall down again from his wound.

"We got one! We've got one!" Heilbronn shouted excitedly into his radio. He turned to look at the rest of the squadron and watched with amazement as the fighters continued to fight off the remaining wyverns. After ten minutes of fighting, their last opponent had fallen, and Heilbronn could see that they'd won.

"That was some good shooting you guys," he said in a calm tone. "Keep your eyes peeled for any more trouble though. If any of those bastards come back I want them dead!" "Copy Panther Leader, we'll do that!" came the reply from his wingmen.

"Good job Panther Leader. Maintain combat air patrol above Berlin, we don't want more of those things flying around unchecked. Command out." "Roger that, Command. Panther Leader out." Replied Heilbronn. The jets quickly got back into formation and continued to patrol the skies as ordered.

Meanwhile, on the ground, the invaders pushed their way through the crowds of terrified civilians, leaving behind bodies, blood and shattered glass. They pushed beyond the Brandenburg Gate and towards the Imperial Palace where many of the fleeing civilians had taken shelter. Off-duty Sergeant in the German Army, Ernst Gebhard was the one who led the civilians and rallied the police to the Palace where they could hole up with the Palace's Guard Corps garrison until reinforcements had arrived. The invaders attempted to enter through the front gates but, as they had planned, the guards stationed at the main entrance, along with the city police, swiftly erected a makeshift barricade and managed to stop them from entering the palace, and eventually they had to retreat. "They're persistent I'll give them that..." muttered Gebhard as he reloaded his pistol. "But they can't really hurt us. The Guard will hold them off." He smiled confidently at a nearby police officer. "Sir, look!" called the policeman pointing beyond the front gate. Gebhard looked over and saw more of the attackers closing in with a battering ram and catapults in tow.
"You've got to be kidding me..." whispered Gebhard. "I guess these assholes aren't finished either!" he added as the attackers began charging towards the front gate of the palace. The Guards and the police fired their rifles and pistols at the advancing attackers, but it wasn't doing any good; they simply ignored the gunfire even as a number of them fell dead or wounded. The attackers were able to push on in the cover of their battering ram and the catapult launched a flaming projectile that landed in the courtyard behind them.
"Shit! That's not good!" shouted Gebhard to no one in particular. He suddenly heard the familiar noise of a tank's engine roar through the air, followed by another. "Hold on a little longer! Our reinforcements are approaching! Keep firing!" yelled Gebhard as he aimed at the advancing group of attackers with his gun. Out of the corner of his eyes, he could see the familiar form of an E-75 Jaguar tank rolling onto the square in front of the palace from a street on the left side of the square, it's machine gun blazing, sending bursts of fire into the assailants who were now standing and gaping at the incoming tank. A moment later, the tank's turret swiveled to point directly at the battering ram and opened fire, blowing it apart and killing scores of attackers immediately.

Gebhard noticed the enemy's catapult meeting the same fate as the battering ram had moments earlier, courtesy of another E-75 rolling onto the square from the right side, and blasting the attacker with a stream of machine gun fire. The tanks were followed by Kätzchen infantry fighting vehicles which added their own machine gun fire to the fray. The attackers fell like wheat before the scythe as the tanks tore them apart. The German IFVs disgorged their troops and the surviving attackers scattered, running from the scene.

"That's right! Run! Run you bastards!" Gebhard screamed as he unloaded the last remaining rounds from his pistol into the mass of the fleeing enemies. He sighed deeply once the adrenaline rush from the battle had worn off and he could feel the fatigue set in. He rested his hands on the barricade and watched as the German troops pursued the invaders and pushed them beyond the Brandenburg Gate. All over Berlin similar events played out as the primitive invaders were no match for the trained, professional troops the German army possessed. Within a short time, most of the attackers were routed from Berlin and fled through the Gate, but not before taking several hundred German citizens as slaves.

Several hours earlier, Hamburg, German Empire

Corporal Karl Schmidt had been posted to Hamburg as part of the German military's post-war reorganisation. Hamburg became the headquarters of the German navy, the Kaiserliche Marine, and it's Marine-Sturmtruppenkorps which he was a member of. He was a tall, broad shouldered man with brown hair and piercing blue eyes who carried himself with a commanding manner and wore his black hair cut short. He was a man of few words, so when he received a message that a strange gate-like structure had materialised seemingly out of thin air just outside of Hamburg's port, he knew that something extraordinary must have occurred. Klaxons began blaring at his base as the marines were quickly boarding trucks which took them to Hamburg's coastal fortifications. These series of bunkers were built during the Second Weltkrieg and were part of the "North Wall" as soldiers dubbed the series of bunkers and other fortifications along Germany's northern coast. The North Wall was planned to be decommissioned following the end of the Weltkreig, though some parts of it still stood, including the ones in Hamburg.

Once the trucks came to halt, the marines rushed to their hastily assigned posts. Schmidt took his MG-48 machine gun and headed for the nearest bunker, knowing that he would be the first in line should anything happen. When he finally reached the bunker, he was greeted by the sight of Hamburg's harbor. In the distance he could see the "Gate" which had appeared, and a fleet of galleys hundreds, if not thousands in number, not unlike the ones he'd seen in history books about ancient Rome and Greece, poured out of the Gate. He could see the galleys launching flaming bolts from their ballistas at any ships in the harbor unfortunate enough to not get away in time and balls of fire were launched from the larger ships carrying catapults at the city itself.

German PT boats were scrambled and attempted to harass the tide using their superior speed and maneuverability and while their torpedoes and 20mm guns had a devastating effect on the enemy galleys, they were too few in number to do much to halt their advance. To make matters worse, a dozen more, even larger and wider ships appeared out of the Gate alongside their smaller escorts. Schmidt could just about see cages being opened on the large ships and out flew a pair of wyverns each from the ships; they were their versions of aircraft carriers, Schmidt realised. The wyverns dove for the PT boats as they tried to break away, but Schmidt saw that some were too late as a wyvern pounced on one of the PT boats, crushing most of the crew under it's talons while the wyvern's rider impaled one of them with his lance and another one was snatched by the wyvern itself before they took back to the skies. The remaining wyverns, satisfied that the enemy ships were chased away from their fleet, turned their attention to the city.

Schmidt couldn't believe what he was seeing, but his orders were clear. It would take at least two hours for Kaiserliche Marine reinforcements to arrive from Wilhelmshaven and they had to hold out until then. As the wyverns approached the coastal fortifications and the city itself, the anti-air batteries opened fire on them, tearing down their wings and causing them to crash into buildings, the sea and occasionally, the ground. But, this didn't deter them, and as the galleys closed in, a few more wyvern riders emerged from the Gate. At this point air raid sirens began blaring accross Hamburg and Luftwaffe jets were scrambled from Uetersen Air Force Base and Fuhlsbüttel Airport.

As the German jets clashed in a dogfight with the wyverns, several of the enemy ships approached the shore to land their troops. Schmidt and his fellow soldiers were ordered to fire on the enemy once they were knee-deep in the water and couldn't run. He watched as the first wave of enemy ships approached the shore in front of him and the enemy soldiers carrying shields and swords jumped into the water and started advancing towards the coastal fortifications. Schmidt gripped his machine gun tightly, his knuckles turning white from the pressure of gripping the trigger so tight, and waited for the attack to commence. The order was given and all at once, the German machine guns, mortars and field guns opened up on the advancing enemy. Screams rang out across the beach as the enemy soldiers were slaughtered. Some made it safely to the foot of the beach before being cut down. Schmidt fired his machine gun continuously, he was fed ammunition by a soldier he didn't know. He only stopped firing to reload or to let his machine gun cool down. While reloading, several enemy soliders tried to rush his position, only to be cut down by fire from adjacent positions. As Schmidt waited for his weapon to cool down, he fired a rifle instead.

For two hours, the fighting went on. The Luftwaffe quickly gained air superiority and their jets began attacking the enemy fleet with unguided rockets and gunfire, they were soon joined by naval bombers launched from the approaching Nordseeflotte's carriers, a sign that the battle was coming to an end. Schmidt could see out of the corner of his eye the approaching forms of German destroyers and light cruisers closing in on the scene. They quickly got in range and began firing salvos at the enemy fleet. Shells, torpedoes, and bullets from the ships' AA guns rained down on the enemy fleet of galleys, turning them into little more than driftwood. The attackers panicked and several ships broke for the Gate they came from, but their slow speed meant that many of them weren't able to reach safety in time. Their crews were either killed or taken prisoner by the Germans. Schmidt breathed a sigh of relief as he watched the enemy fleet being torn apart. He lowered his machine gun and pulled out a cigarette which he lit with shaky fingers. Many of his comrades cheered as the fight ended but he ignored them. He had done what he was told to do; he had fought bravely for the Empire and the people of Hamburg, he thought. He was tired, however, and wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep.

The battle of Hamburg ended almost as soon as it began.

Excerpt from Chancellor Hans Vogel's radio speech during the attacks in Berlin and Hamburg

"This is Hans Vogel, Chancellor of the German Empire speaking. Today at noon, the cities of Berlin and Hamburg came under attack by troops of unknown affiliation, with the obvious goal of killing, looting and the overthrowing of the lawful, democratic government of Germany. Our troops are fighting. The government and the Kaiser are in their places. This is my message to the German people and to the world."

Author's notes: So here we go, kicking off our crazy story with the opening of the Gates in Germany. I used a website called Dreamily -basically an AI helps you write a story- to help me write this chapter and feedbacks would be appreciated if I should continue using it. See you later when the Saderans will see if they can best the Germans in open field battle on the other side of the Gate!