Excalibur Squadron OOC 2: The Song Remains the Same

[The balkens]

When we going to hop back into the IC?

When finals are over.

I thought they were, I just got finished with mine.

[Monfrox]

When finals are over.

I thought they were, I just got finished with mine.

I have one tomorrow morning and then another essay to write due the 15th.

[The balkens]

I thought they were, I just got finished with mine.

I have one tomorrow morning and then another essay to write due the 15th.

I had to write an essay about literature in the Victorian era. so many words....

[Monfrox]

I have one tomorrow morning and then another essay to write due the 15th.

I had to write an essay about literature in the Victorian era. so many words....

I'm gonna go grab something to eat before work.

[Goram]

When finals are over.

I thought they were, I just got finished with mine.

Why are you doing finals? I thought you'd been college already?

[The balkens]

I thought they were, I just got finished with mine.

Why are you doing finals? I thought you'd been college already?

well....GI bill and im in my 2nd year.

[Goram]

Why are you doing finals? I thought you'd been college already?

well....GI bill and im in my 2nd year.

Fair enough. Just figured you would have gone to college prior to joining up, especially as a pilot.

Having poked around though, I'm cursing my non-American nationality. Apparently you guys are paying $225,000 per fight pilot, due to massive shortages of them at recruitment level. Over here, it seems almost impossible to make it and thus the dream career gets further and further away haha

[The balkens]

well....GI bill and im in my 2nd year.

Fair enough. Just figured you would have gone to college prior to joining up, especially as a pilot.

Having poked around though, I'm cursing my non-American nationality. Apparently you guys are paying $225,000 per fight pilot, due to massive shortages of them at recruitment level. Over here, it seems almost impossible to make it and thus the dream career gets further and further away haha

yea, I hear the RAF has higher standards.

the problem with the 65th TAS that it was reactivated in 2005 and they needed pilots badly. its practically the reason why the Michigan ANG let me go.

[Goram]

Fair enough. Just figured you would have gone to college prior to joining up, especially as a pilot.

Having poked around though, I'm cursing my non-American nationality. Apparently you guys are paying $225,000 per fight pilot, due to massive shortages of them at recruitment level. Over here, it seems almost impossible to make it and thus the dream career gets further and further away haha

yea, I hear the RAF has higher standards.

the problem with the 65th TAS that it was reactivated in 2005 and they needed pilots badly. its practically the reason why the Michigan ANG let me go.

Thought you had to have a degree to get into the ANG as a pilot as well. Guess not.

It doesn't seem to be any more stringent than the USAF, the requirements look pretty similar. Unlike the USAF though, the RAF has a relatively large number of pilots and not enough aeroplanes for them to fly. Bit shit really. Technically, I could join the USAF but that would involve permanently living in the US and having a green card. Even then there's no guarantee of getting in, even if you do get in there's no guarantee of flying.

Looks as though it's the RAF for me. Either that or Commercial.

[The balkens]

yea, I hear the RAF has higher standards.

the problem with the 65th TAS that it was reactivated in 2005 and they needed pilots badly. its practically the reason why the Michigan ANG let me go.

Thought you had to have a degree to get into the ANG as a pilot as well. Guess not.

It doesn't seem to be any more stringent than the USAF, the requirements look pretty similar. Unlike the USAF though, the RAF has a relatively large number of pilots and not enough aeroplanes for them to fly. Bit shit really. Technically, I could join the USAF but that would involve permanently living in the US and having a green card. Even then there's no guarantee of getting in, even if you do get in there's no guarantee of flying.

Looks as though it's the RAF for me. Either that or Commercial.

my family (while I hate to say it) has connections.

[Kassaran]

Looks as though it's the RAF for me. Either that or Commercial.

Eeeew, commercial. Who needs all that money anyway. I mean, seriously, no use at all!

[Monfrox]

Looks as though it's the RAF for me. Either that or Commercial.

Eeeew, commercial. Who needs all that money anyway. I mean, seriously, no use at all!

Hey, some of my closest friends deice commercial aircraft.

[Grenartia]

Eeeew, commercial. Who needs all that money anyway. I mean, seriously, no use at all!

Hey, some of my closest friends deice commercial aircraft.

My uncle (who was a fireman on the USS John Hancock back when it almost got hit by a missile) almost got his civilian pilot's license a few years ago. He had to stop when my grandfather's medical bills started to pile up, though. If he would've gotten it, he said he would've given me a few lessons.

[Goram]

Looks as though it's the RAF for me. Either that or Commercial.

Eeeew, commercial. Who needs all that money anyway. I mean, seriously, no use at all!

Hey man, if they pay you to fly all around the world, what's not to love?

[The balkens]

Eeeew, commercial. Who needs all that money anyway. I mean, seriously, no use at all!

Hey man, if they pay you to fly all around the world, what's not to love?

just don't fly southwest airlines. crazy ass passengers.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

As to Thatcher, I'll just say this:
The only excuse that I can make for her is that the Labor Party was such an utter regressive fucking shambles in 1979 that her election made a kind of sense (for some purpose of comparison for Americans, imagine the troubles of the current Republican Party, only x5 or so).
Beyond that, I genuinely think that she did a lot more harm than good through the sheer brutality of the way that the privatization was carried out. Maybe it was worth doing - maybe - but the fact that it rendered hundreds of thousands of people totally unemployable with nothing but the dole to fall back on and with no real way to pull themselves back into the marketplace can't be seen as anything but a tragedy on a national scale - and one that could've been avoided had it not been carried out in such a way.
(Although the miners didn't do themselves much of a favor by being led by a unrepentant Stalinist, admittedly)

who would you two rather have?

*meanwhile in my head*
"OH! a British political discussion! I better get my brain popcorn!"

Cameron (current PM). However (I'm not massively into current politics mind) Labour announced something big the other week, I don't remember what it was, but I remember thinking it was a big win for them.

If I could pick one from recent (ish) history though?

Either Clement Attlee or Anthony Eden (purely because he was one suave bastard, he deserves a second chance and if you discount the Suez disaster, I'm not sure he was so bad).

Attlee was pretty good.
Eden was terrible, though - you can't just discount Suez, that was like the most defining moment of his administration - and besides, he was an amphetamine (benzedrine AND drinamyl) wreck most of the time he was in command.
I mean, I'm not going to pretend that a shitload of politicians back then were on that stuff, but Eden took it to another level.
He may have been a smooth talker, but so was Reagan.

As to modern Brit politicians, Cameron looks like the classic upper-class prig asshole, Miliband just looks cartoonishly ineffective and like he's about to burst into tears whenever he talks, and like you said, from this side of the Atlantic I have no idea who or what the hell the Lib Dems even appeal to at this point.

When finals are over.

I thought they were, I just got finished with mine.

They are now.

[Monfrox]

Tiger, I have a final tomorrow morning, and an essay due the 15th. This shit ain't over yet.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

Tiger, I have a final tomorrow morning, and an essay due the 15th. This shit ain't over yet.

You have a weird schedule.

[Monfrox]

Tiger, I have a final tomorrow morning, and an essay due the 15th. This shit ain't over yet.

You have a weird schedule.

No, just weird classes.

[The Two Jerseys]

Tiger, I have a final tomorrow morning, and an essay due the 15th. This shit ain't over yet.

You have a weird schedule.

Not really, my exams would always start the same day as the Army-Navy game. And for some reason I'd always have one at 8am that day...

[Morrdh]

One thing I'll say about Thatcher, even she was against Privatizing British Rail, the NHS and Royal Mail.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

No IC post, but you get this instead, which hooks into tomorrow's post. This is the one-shot I've spent a long, long time on that I mentioned, by the way.

I don't know what the fuck I'm even doing here.

January 7th, 1941
An Unnamed Airfield near Chateau de Miramont
1305 Hours

Still working at suppressing his anger at what a failure the last six weeks had been, Konrad surveyed the airfield from the passenger's seat of his Maybach DS 8 (only the finest would do for the SS' noncombat transport) at the head of the convoy as they approached. He grudgingly admitted that everything looked to be in fine order, but that was little consolation to him. The aircraft was undoubtedly in position and ready to go, he couldn't have missed it if he tried - the JU 89 was roughly the size of a house, very smooth and deadly-looking where its predecessor, the JU 52, looked rough and archaic with its corrugated frame. Its engines were already idling for a prompt exit, and the guard contingent were already in place at the foot of the entry door, the stairway extended.

The provision of the men to guard the prisoners would just be a formality in most cases, but it appeared that General von Sporrenburg hadn't brushed it aside this time. Four of the biggest, most muscle-bound SS troopers Konrad had ever seen stood at the stairs, waiting to escort the four pilots, only carrying pistols as armament. It made a kind of sense, as Konrad thought about it - if there was any trouble on the plane (a ridiculously improbably idea anyway), guns wouldn't be very helpful in such close quarters, and the Swords themselves wouldn't be armed - sheer physical force should be enough to subdue any troublemakers, especially ones in the shape that these were in.

In perfect formation, the car and trucks formed up and trundled to a halt in front of the massive transport. With typical elan, the SS troops debarked in squad order, hauling out the prisoners roughly and depositing them on the ground. They resembled trussed Christmas geese - hands and legs bound, complemented by burlap sacks tied over their heads. No chances were being taken, even after the considerable punishment they had suffered, and the heavy guard they were under. These were among the most dangerous men in the world in the eyes of the German command - and with good reason.

The four SS giants moved up to carry them onto the plane. As his cohorts went about the process of loading the prisoners, carrying them by shoulders and legs onto the plane, one of the plane guards approached Konrad and saluted, the action looking as though it nearly ripped his uniform at the biceps from the muscles straining at the fabric.
"Sturmscharfuhrer Adalbert Eicke reporting for duty, Sturmbannfuhrer. We are ready to take custody of the prisoners until arrival at Templehof."
Konrad returned the salute, his eyes searching the man's face. "Do I know you, Sergeant? I feel we've met before."
"I believe you may remember me from the Polish campaign, sir. I served in your Jaegerkompanie - in B Platoon, as Leutnant Roth's adjutant at Wielun, Sieradz, Lodz, and Warsaw."

His pride shone through, to be sure, but his tone then shifted to one of embarrassment.
"Erm...I was transferred to one of the Totenkopf's regiments before the invasion of France. Not my choice, but I had little say in the matter."

Konrad didn't take it personally. "Ah, yes, that seems right. Well, Sergeant, good luck with these useless reprobates. See that they reach Berlin as undamaged as possible so they look good in the films they'll no doubt want to shoot. But don't hesitate to discipline them as you see fit - better they get a bit battered than they get away. Understood?"

The giant grinned mightily at the thought of inflicting a little pain on the Englishers. They didn't pick SS troopers to be cautious of the possibility to inflict pain - and indeed, Sturmscharfuhrer Eicke counted his abilities in that sphere as one of his prime specializations. In France, he'd gained considerable approbation from his squadmates for his ruthlessness and nervelessness under fire, veritably looking forward to fighting the enemy hand-to-hand, displaying a level of eagerness for it that was out of the norm even for the SS. Keeping a few scrawny and weak English pilots under control would be child's play compared to Arras.

"Clear as day, sir."

---

Some feet away, currently being dragged bodily towards the entry ramp, Captain/Squadron Leader Robert Page (dual ranks had their perks, but were somewhat cumbersome to work with), formerly of No. 319 (Excalibur) Squadron and currently Prisoner #106758, involuntary guest of the Waffen-SS, was still stuck in the mental fugue state that he'd been ensconced in almost since his captivity began. Subjected to the most diligent and effective forms of active and passive torture that the SS could devise for six weeks straight, including starvation, dehydration, sleep deprivation, psychological torment, and near-constant, decidedly non-psychiatric (nor medically sound) applications of electroshock treatment, coupled with a massively heavy combined dose of survivor's guilt, personal grief, and the general mental malaise that comes with the realization that, due entirely to your own poor life choices, death is quickly and unavoidably approaching in a very untimely manner, Page had long since given up any interest in the world around him as it was.

His natural instinct was to strike out blindly for revenge, tearing his captors apart limb from limb heedless of whatever pain or injury he sustained in the process if that was what it took, the rage and hatred burning beneath the surface no doubt helping to anesthetize the until they inevitably put him down - but even in the depths of his despair, he could see that would be futile on every level. After the first few days, his strength had faded. His weight had plunged, and he could see and feel how gaunt and thin he had become as a result of the harsh treatment he'd endured. His hands frequently shook, and when he was conscious of it, he was almost always in aching pain, the exact location of which seemed to roam at will throughout his body. On top of that, it wasn't as though the SS were taking even the slightest ghost of a chance with how they were guarding him - chains, leg irons, armed guards all the time. There was no opening at all for "escape" - or even fighting back.

Instead, he'd chosen to retreat back into his own mind, into the comfort of memories of better times, in order to preserve what was left of his sanity. It was a real relief to be able to escape like this, but occasionally, he'd be jostled out of his intense visions of Britain or Iraq or Spain or somewhere else and back into the bleakness of his current reality.

For a few seconds, as he was jostled and dumped onto the transport, his legs making painful contact with the metal flooring, he awoke from his memories of the winter of 1937 on the Spanish plain with his Partisan friends. For a second, he came back to reality. But it made little difference. As the roar of the engines started up, his moment of clarity vanished, as he disappeared back into the comforting darkness of his own mind.

Staring at his oncoming death didn't interest him very much. He faded away...

---

Somewhere Else
Time Unknown
Date Unknown

Then, the darkness gave way to light again.

With a start, he seemed to wake from a bad dream. His eyes were open and unobscured, his hands were free, and so were his legs. He felt no pain, or really, any discomfort of any sort. He was laying down on a surface, on his back, like he'd been sleeping. But how could that be...?

He pulled himself up to a sitting position, and as his fingers touched the ground, he nearly jumped with surprise when he felt something uncannily similar to grass in his hands. And when he looked down, indeed, he was sitting on dewy, green, fresh grass. The brightness of it shocked his eye and nearly made his eyes water with its color and vibrancy. It was so easy to forget how colorful things were when you...when you were...

...Where had he been? And for that matter, where was he now? And how had he gotten there?

There were no immediate answers, nor could he remember any after some effort. Memory eluded him, and as he thought back, he couldn't clearly remember much - it was like his memory was skirting the edges of a dark void that he could just barely glimpse. But somehow, this didn't seem such a bad thing. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, he knew he didn't really want or need to remember anything right now.

Page took stock of himself. He was wearing his old clothes, the ones he usually wore while on duty - his boots, flight pants, even his beloved old RAF leather flight jacket that had been one of his most prized possessions for years, now - it had been burned in a plane crash, battered in fights, perforated with shrapnel, had an extremely acidic Scotch spilled on it as an unintended mishap while on an ill-advised birthday dare, and suffered a dozen other of misfortune's slings and arrows besides, but it had always stayed with him, as reliable and trusty as ever. There was nothing atypical about this...but it felt very odd, like it had been a long while since he had been attired this way, the feeling exacerbated by a contrast with something else - his skin wasn't used to the feeling...again, for reasons that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

As he'd noticed earlier, he felt fine - actually, better than fine. He felt great. The feeling of the pleasantly cool air on his skin, and the crisp, springy grass on his bare feet (his feet were bare! How long had it been since he'd just walked around barefoot? Months? Years?), and of the wind in his hair (wait...but...wasn't my hair...? Oh, never mind. If his hair had somehow grown back just as shaggy as it had been, for whatever reason, he wasn't going to argue about it) was intensely pleasant.

Looking around, the surrounding landscape - or whatever it was - seemed equally as indistinct and hard to grasp as his clothes. Judging from his perspective, he was sitting at the top of a small grassy rise, in the center of a circle of about twenty feet of visibility in any direction. Beyond that twenty feet, an odd white mist covered the landscape - shifting and drifting, but never revealing what lay beyond. Looking to the sky above revealed nothing else either - it was just as milky-white and impenetrable as the land around him. The rise sloped down in one direction, and behind him, evidently continued flat for some distance into the fog.

Within this circle, at the top of the little rise, it seemed he was utterly alone.

Yet despite the barrenness and isolation of this odd locale, Page wasn't afraid, or even unduly bothered. He could hardly say why. The place seemed to radiate peace and calm the likes of which he hadn't felt in...who knew how long. It was so quiet - there were no engines roaring, no birds singing, no voices talking or yelling, no gunshots...nothing at all. Just the sounds of the wind churning the fog and mist, and the slight rustling of the grass. That was all. And for a few minutes, Page happily basked in the quiet and the calm. He was alone, free from...wherever he had been, with no demands on him, no responsibilities, no worries, nothing unpleasant to trouble him in any way. The place felt amazing, and yet not entirely of this Earth.

As time drew on - he had no idea how much, it may have been ten minutes, it may have been an hour - he could begin to feel the wind pick up. It blew his hair back from his forehead, and made him squint as his eyes watered from the cold. It seemed to be blowing entirely up from the slope of the hill, towards the precipice - towards the rest of the hilltop, behind him. Page, still sitting, turned himself around to get out of its path.

What he saw, revealed by the gusts parting the fog, made his jaw drop as he gaped with shock.

A formidable tower, rising out of the ground, was now visible emanating from the hilltop behind him. He hadn't even noticed it before, so thick was the fog, but now, it loomed over him, casting a huge shadow. It must have been at least 50 to 60 feet high, and it looked like something out of the very distant past. It was square in overall shape, slightly resembling a defensive spire of a castle's stone wall that had been cut out perfectly from its surroundings, plucked from the ground, and dropped randomly here by some capricious god. But despite the tower's militaristic shape, it resembled more the bell tower of an ancient church, like those you would see at the flanks of the facade of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. It was fairly narrow, no more than 12 feet across.

Slowly, almost without conscious thought, Page stood up began to approach the tower slowly. The archways were totally open, unblocked by any door. As he drew closer, it felt like the wind was pushing him onwards, further towards the monolith. Judging from the walls of the tower, it looked like there had been words or pictures carved into the outside at some point, but time had wore them away, leaving only illegibly shallow grooves and markings. But over the entryway, one carving still could be seen in stark relief, as sharp as if it had been cut yesterday:

Beatorum Domibus

---

And then he was inside.

Oddly, it wasn't any darker inside the tower than it was outside. Craning his neck up to the top of the edifice, Page was surprised to see there was no roof - the place was wide-open and exposed to the outside. There was no way to the "top" of the tower - it was entirely hollow, all the way up, the windows seemingly existing just to provide light to the bottom floor. Around him were entrances, carved into each of the four walls, identical to the one that he had passed through. It was bizarre - there was nothing more to the tower than this single, square room. The wind began to die down. Suddenly, he began to feel very dizzy and disoriented - as he looked through each of the portals, all of the views outside looked the same - it was impossible to get any perspective - his vision began to blur - he fell down onto his knees -

And then there was a hand on his shoulder.

Page whirled around to see who it was in such haste that he literally fell down on his rear in doing so. In sheer, adrenaline-fueled fright, he desperately tried to backpedal himself against the wall.

"You need not be afraid."

Trying to get a hold of himself, Page forced himself to look up at the unknown presence. With disbelieving eyes, he saw the man standing before him, and finally began to think that maybe his mind had gone for good.

The man was - and there was no other way to put it - clad in a sort of ancient-looking cuirass that looked directly out of some church's lurid stained-glass window illustrations of knights and warriors on Crusade, centuries ago. He stood, silhouetted in the dull white light, right in the entrance that Page had come in from. He was a tall man with dark, haunted eyes, wavy, long brown hair that went down to his shoulders, and sported a rough-looking goatee. He stood with a distinctively regal bearing, and held under the crook of his arm was a formidable mail helmet. The armor was painted flawlessly white that made Page's eyes hurt to look at it, and on it was emblazoned an unadorned but massive red cross, spanning from his neck to his waist, and from one shoulder to another on the horizontal plane. The man looked oddly ageless, and his facial features seemed to swim in and out of focus. Picking out distinct characteristics as to his visage beyond these points was like trying to pin down mercury with your fingers - always just slipping away, with his eyes the only solid point of reference.

"W-Where the bloody hell did you spring from?", Page croaked.
The stranger gestured towards the entryway from whence he'd come. "Over there."
"That wasn't really what I - oh, never mind. Where is 'there'? What even is this place?"

He shrugged nonchalantly. "This is where I dwell. It is a safe place, apart from the world, where one can rest and be at peace. I brought you here, so that we might talk."

Page pulled himself to his feet. The man's voice was very odd - it seemed normal upon first listen, but then it felt as though it was echoing inside his head somehow, the acoustics of the sound not quite making sense. It sounded almost like the man was speaking from very far away and yet very close, right in his ears.
"So that 'we' might talk? Who the hell even are you?"

The strange knight (if that's what he was) didn't respond beyond a beatific smile.
Then, it hit Page, and he veritably exploded with laughter. Nearly falling over with the force of it, he had to bend over, hands on knees, to keep from falling over.
"Why do you laugh?"
It took him a minute or two to recover from his sudden attack of crazed mirth.

"I'm laughing," Page responded with difficulty, wiping away an errant tear of mirth, "because I'm fairly sure I've just cracked entirely, and it's easier to laugh about it than it is to cry."

He kept going before his erstwhile companion could respond, still giggling, and gestured to the man's belt. "So - if you're him - you know who I'm talking about - where's your - "
His question was anticipated. I sent it away, long ago.
"Hah...Yeah, I...never understood that part of the story. Seemed a bit odd to me. Better to have it and not need it, I always thought, right?"
The specter (which seemed a fitting sobriquet - there was definitely something unnatural about the man) shrugged humorlessly. "It was immaterial. It was no longer needed. If it was ever required again, it would be found again. Such is its nature."
"Let's hope you're right, then."
"You need not hope, for already it comes to pass. I have seen it. But you and I are not here to speak of this. I shall walk, and you shall follow."

With no better option occurring to him, Page began to follow this strange specter out of the hollow tower and back onto the misty hilltop. Walking right into the fog, it appeared to part around them as they delved further into it, with no further landmarks visible.

On one level, Page was somewhere between mirthfully giddy, entirely confused, and utterly terrified. He felt like a marionette on a string - there was almost no conscious thought behind what he was saying or doing. It was as though he was operating solely on impulse, totally out of his own rational control.
It was so hard to think...to remember...like his head was full of the mist that blocked his vision here, in this Neverland - or this Purgatory - of a place.

Was this just a dream?
It felt more real than any dream he'd ever had...

"So I guess I'll indulge you, my mysterious friend. If you won't tell me where this place is, can you maybe be bothered to tell me why I'm here?"

The specter stopped, and stared unblinkingly at Page. His eyes seemed to cut right through him.
"You are here so that I might speak. I know who you are, Captain Robert John Page, and I know of the quest you and your order of men-at-arms have undertaken for the Crown, fighting under the sign of Caliburnus."
"Is...that so?"
"Yes."

If anything, the specter's eyes became even more intense, his gaze becoming almost compelling, impossible to turn away from, rooting Page to the spot.

"You seek to defend Albion and her people from foreign invaders - the same invaders as those I fought, all those centuries ago. Many thousands, even millions, may fight alongside you, but your quest is yours and your men-at-arms' alone. I know what you have done. You have never fought for God and Christ Jesus, but neither have you fought for evil and depravity. Instead, you fight for peace on Earth, for the freedom of all men, and for the safety of your homes and families. For these worthy causes, you have fought valiantly. Many of your companions have fallen bravely in worthy battle, their honor unsullied."

The next words hit Page like hammer blows.

"And several of them have fallen, as I did in my time, and as you nearly did, from of the dread crime of betrayal."

Betrayal...
The word echoed in Page's head, an echo constantly echoing itself, mocking him, taunting him, growing louder and louder, rising in pitch and volume until the word was screamed in his mind, like it was clawing its way out of his skull -

In a single gut-wrenching flash, he remembered why he was there, and all that had happened to him. His memory restored itself all at once, flitting in front of his transfixed, helpless mind's eye. The visceral shock of it sent him reeling back to his knees onto the grass, the terror of that night on that forsaken, nameless hill somewhere in Spain returning to him in all its awful power. The explosions from the tank and artillery shells rattled his body anew, the smell of the gunpowder burned his nose, the bullets from the Schmeissers whipped and cracked around him, the terror of knowing that Excalibur was surrounded and alone, everything falling to pieces around them, revived itself in his chest, felt it was eating him alive like a cancer -

And the single horrible shot in the darkness brought irresistible tears to his eyes as he stared back up at the specter.

"...Betrayal?"

The word burned in his mouth with the same power that the specter's gaze now held, no longer seeming to be speaking to Page, but through him, ignoring his words.

"Yes. Even now, thanks to the work of the traitor in your ranks, the Enemy, the Tyrant, grows ever stronger. This danger is why you have been summoned here.

"You may think you have seen the worst of his designs, weathered the hardest hour of his assault on Albion. I warn you now that it is not so - not by a long measure. His evil has not yet begun to be unleashed and his darkness not yet begun to be truly revealed, though its advent can now be seen if your eyes only look for it in the right places, like the beginnings of a plague - festering out of sight. He preys on the forgiveness, the kindness, and the peaceful inclinations of better, virtuous men - and indeed, depends on it for his successes. He has come cloaked in the guise of the savior, and seeks dark powers no man was meant to hold. He is the enemy of all men, everywhere. His power is not waning, only rising - and Albion shall be far from his final victory, should it fall. He wishes not to redress old grievances and then end the world war in peace, as he claims - no, he doesn't even seek to conquer the world, as much of the world now believes. He lusts for more than that.

"He seeks to break the world by its spine - to cripple it, destroy it, and then rebuild it in his own demonic image by the light of torches at night, and by the sound of his marching legions, singing hymns and chants praising him as a demigod...the people of all lands kept under the unyielding, choking heel of the riding boot...the terrible shadowed symbol of the hooked cross above all, the unmistakable sign of his twisted will. This unholy dominion will not be satisfied - cannot be satisfied - until all on Earth bend the knee and offer their blood to it.

"There will be nothing good in him or his followers strong enough to arrest the rise of this nightmare. The evil and the brutal amongst his nation and those whom he enslaves or tempts to his will shall be rewarded and venerated beyond belief...and the good and kind will either be put to the sword, or will be so convinced of their own helplessness in the face of his power that they will sacrifice their honor and their humanity, and act in service of his goals as loyally as any true believer. Great cities, thousands of years old, will shrivel and burn with their multitudes inhabitants from the face of the land, falling away like the wax of a lit candle, leaving naught but ashes and choking dust...the innocent shall suffer in the hundreds of millions, and entire nations will be wiped from Earth as though they had never lived, their last moments ones of pain and fear...and the freedom and dignity of men shall be forgotten as the world enters an unending era of horror, depravity, and despair, unequaled in history."

As these words were uttered, cutting directly to Page's core, the images they conjured appeared in stark, hallucinogenic detail in his mind. It was so real, he could almost smell the smoke and hear the screams of the millions as he helplessly watched. He'd had nightmares before about this sort of thing - hell, when the war started, they were almost a nightly occurrence - but they'd never been this clear before, or this intense, cutting through his mind's defenses and . It was like the awful future being described wasn't only real, it had already happened - something preordained, experienced, felt, and moved on from, an accomplished fact. Images flashed unbidden before him...Dover destroyed in the inferno...Paul's bloody body, still in his West Kents uniform, lying forgotten and abandoned in the burning dust of a foreign, unfamiliar land...Swastika banners hanging from Buckingham Palace, Parliament...his childhood home reduced to splinters and rubble, the smoke rising to join a massive dark cloud formed by all the other burning homes that used to be a city...and a dark shadow, racing out from the heart of Europe to envelop the light of the entire world.

And when he saw the bodies of his comrades, his pilots, his friends, lying dead and strewn across the ground, , Alix's body in the foreground of his mental gaze, or trapped, burning alive in the cockpits of destroyed planes hurtling towards the ground, he couldn't take it anymore.

His whole body seized up and began to shake like it had been hit by another one of Konrad's electrical shocks, every muscle tensed to the limit, his eyes watering from emotion and the strain. If he could have broke down and cried from the sheer emotional force of what he was hearing and seeing, he would've. But the sudden paralysis overtaking his body had stripped away that particular ability. This wasn't like any dream or nightmare he'd ever had before - it had all the power and impact of a religious vision.

The voice returned.

"But it need not be so.

"All that you see has not yet come to pass, and his will can be foiled-"

"But how?" Page forced out as a tortured scream with such strain that it stripped the back of his throat, his frustration and anger of the last six weeks surging to a peak faster than he could explain. "And even if we can win, why are you even talking to me? I m not too stupid to know when I'm a dead man walking - they're going to take us to Berlin and kill us all, they told me as much. Fucking hell, I don't know what the fuck you are, but you're useless! You show up now to tell me bullshit I already know and how there's hope in the end, right as I'm about to be put in front of the firing squad? Thanks for fucking nothing! If you've got something actually useful to say instead of babbling to hear your own fucking voice, you want Alix or Churchill or pretty much anybody else but me. But I don't know why I'm even fucking bothering to say this, you're not even real, you're a fucking delusion-"

"Even in the darkness, there is hope," the specter implacably continued, "and even when your fate appears to be written, salvation is never out of hand. Even now, your men-at-arms refuse to let you be struck down as a captive of the Tyrant, and prepare to risk their lives to rescue you and your fellow prisoners - whether they will be successful is not for me to say. But if they are, and Death is cheated of you this day, there are things you must know and remember.

You must first remember that there are those amongst your allies - those you know, those whom you are close to, even those whom you place your life in the hands of - who are not to be trusted. They would subvert you and your cause for their own unknowable purposes. You must be eternally vigilant, and careful with those whom you allow close to you. Their actions may not have brought an end to your quest yet, but they will certainly keep trying, and the extent of their dedication to ending you and your order will be matched only by the depths of depravity to which they will sink to do so. Expect no quarter, for they shall give none.

"You must also know the importance your Order of Caliburnus holds to the war that rages across the world. Millions may fight and die, and the war shall be won according to the broad sweep of these armies and battles, but the actions of your order shall shape the course these battles take. You may number only a few, but your role and skill shall give you the force and power of thousands where it matters. Your hands have been taught to war better than most anyone in the world, your fingers trained to fly with the grace and skill of the eagles. Through the power you wield and the freedom you are given, you can bring fire from the skies to make the mountains smoke; confuse and confound the plans of your enemies, and destroy them with burning fire and cold steel like none other. Other forces may wield more men, or contain a greater capacity for destruction, but your Order is blessed with the ability to be where you are needed, and strike how you are needed, to affect change all out of proportion to your numbers.

"Yours is a responsibility alone - unique in its importance. It is a heavy burden to bear, but nobody else can bear it. Your actions, successes, and failures shall determine whether Albion, her allies, and the free world shall survive. As time passes, you shall for yourself be able to see the truth of this.

"And finally, in realizing the truth of these two things, you must be mindful of yourself. In times of war and strife such as these, the nature of man frequently turns cruel, callous, and merciless. Your enemies, especially those clad in black, not only allow themselves to succumb to this heartlessness, but actively prize it and twist it to suit their own sick morality. To them, the greatest evil is symptomatic of the greatest virtue.

"You must not let yourself become like them. I can feel the anger and hatred burning inside you from the abuse you have suffered, and from the deaths of those whom you care about - it is an inferno under the surface, the dark recesses of your mind screaming for vengeance. You would not be human if you didn't feel this way, but you cannot let the hardship and strain you've been placed under poison who you are. If this were to happen - if you were to fall to the same darkness that corrupts the soldiers of the Tyrant - it would be a terrible thing, even if you were to lead your Order to triumph over the enemies of Albion. You would become a creature of evil no different from those you fight. Fighting for pride and glory, as you set out to do when you were so much younger, can only bring you so far. It will leave you susceptible to this horrid transformation if you do not find something better - something more truthful, something more genuine - worth fighting for. Only through finding such a truth can you be pulled out of the mire and set upon solid ground.

"It is more than a matter entirely unto you either. You are a leader of men, and leaders imprint themselves on their followers in ways neither the former or the latter can anticipate or predict. If you fall to the darkness within yourself, you shall not be the last to do so. If you can't master yourself, you cannot expect your comrades to do the same, either. If you won't do it for your own sake, do it for them. These are the things you must remember, in their broad shape."


There was a pause after this statement. Page, his mind reeling, could begin to feel the paralyzing electricity leaving his muscles, and he slowly pulled himself to his feet. His mind was awhirl with questions - dozens, hundreds of them - and they all scrambled to be the first one to be asked as his senses returned to him.
But all that emerged was some confused, raspy stuttering.
"I...I-"

The specter pre-empted him. As it spoke, Page noticed out of the corners of his eyes that the misty world surrounding them was beginning to, for lack of a better phrase, tear itself apart. It looked like the air itself was ripping at the seams, the gray swathes of fog coming apart and splitting into ragged patches of black. A dull roar rose in his ears.

"I know this message is vast in its meaning, and when you return, it is sadly likely that you shall remember precious little of it. It is an unfortunate toll, but it cannot be avoided. Already, your departure is near. You may have many questions, and unfortunately, there is no time in which they can be answered. Nor, surely, would I be capable of answering many of them - your time is foreign to me, but for the broadest strokes of meaning.

"Our time ends here. Remember to seek the truth of nobility in yourself and in the world around you, that it may guide you in your quest."

"How?!" Page hollered back over the rising roar, the wind whipping at his clothes, the whole world seemingly dissolving around him, the roar in his ears resolving into the drone of engines.

The specter smiled one last time, and as Page vanished from this Neverland and awoke to gunfire on the deck of the transport as a desperate, veritably insane rescue attempt long in the making reached its apex on his behalf and that of his captured friends, the last words of the vision of the distant past uttered echoed in his ears:

...If you listen very hard,
The truth will come to you at last.
When all are one, and one is all
To be a rock, and not to roll...

He opened his eyes-

[The balkens]

Tigga, that was the best One shot ive ever read. was the guy king Arthur? since the whole...Avalon thing.

[United Kingdom of Poland]

As to Thatcher, I'll just say this:
The only excuse that I can make for her is that the Labor Party was such an utter regressive fucking shambles in 1979 that her election made a kind of sense (for some purpose of comparison for Americans, imagine the troubles of the current Republican Party, only x5 or so).
Beyond that, I genuinely think that she did a lot more harm than good through the sheer brutality of the way that the privatization was carried out. Maybe it was worth doing - maybe - but the fact that it rendered hundreds of thousands of people totally unemployable with nothing but the dole to fall back on and with no real way to pull themselves back into the marketplace can't be seen as anything but a tragedy on a national scale - and one that could've been avoided had it not been carried out in such a way.
(Although the miners didn't do themselves much of a favor by being led by a unrepentant Stalinist, admittedly)

Cameron (current PM). However (I'm not massively into current politics mind) Labour announced something big the other week, I don't remember what it was, but I remember thinking it was a big win for them.

If I could pick one from recent (ish) history though?

Either Clement Attlee or Anthony Eden (purely because he was one suave bastard, he deserves a second chance and if you discount the Suez disaster, I'm not sure he was so bad).

Attlee was pretty good.
Eden was terrible, though - you can't just discount Suez, that was like the most defining moment of his administration - and besides, he was an amphetamine (benzedrine AND drinamyl) wreck most of the time he was in command.
I mean, I'm not going to pretend that a shitload of politicians back then were on that stuff, but Eden took it to another level.
He may have been a smooth talker, but so was Reagan.

As to modern Brit politicians, Cameron looks like the classic upper-class prig asshole, Miliband just looks cartoonishly ineffective and like he's about to burst into tears whenever he talks, and like you said, from this side of the Atlantic I have no idea who or what the hell the Lib Dems even appeal to at this point.

I thought they were, I just got finished with mine.

They are now.

her foreign policy was good.

[The Tiger Kingdom]

Tigga, that was the best One shot ive ever read. was the guy king Arthur? since the whole...Avalon thing.

Thanks!
And in response to your question: man, Page's subconscious mind is difficult to unpack at the best of times. Hell if I know.
I will drop one hint that the location of that little interlude is meant to be a real place that does exist on Earth, though. Kind of.

IC post in a few hours.