World On Fire: Operation Deadfall

[Reverend Norv]

Matthew Beecher had asked for questions. The team had plenty. Once again, the Minuteman felt doubt slither up his spine. Yes, answer them. Answer them like you know what you're talking about. Answer them like you promised Elektra van Helsing that you'd bring her brother home alive. Just words.

Just words.

Matt's father had spent half his life with a relapsing case of malaria. Matt remembered him in Mong Yawng. His father would haul himself into the pulpit, shaking and sweating, and the moment he started to preach, his hands would turn firm and his voice strong. Not forever. But for just long enough.

Just words.

Matt straightened his back, and listened.

Alice acted like the child she so resembled. Matt felt manipulated by that, somehow. The tank commander called Matt and Willow her nice brother and sister, and pointed out that the team itself could serve to draw enemy fire if they decided that they could do without her help. Alice's tank, it seemed, was named Pooh. Matt had no idea to whom or to what that appellation might refer.

Ariel had a more constructive question. She asked about the team's fallback plan. Matt blinked. He hadn't considered the possibility of retreat. We never had to fall back in Warsaw.

Arrogance. Damned arrogance. Matt's throat was suddenly dry, dryer even than the cold desert night.

Cynthia Marshall spoke next, and she spoke from experience. She warned that in desert warfare, amid the smoke and sand, it would be hard for the team's armored vehicles to see what they were shooting at.

Matt nodded. That makes sense. And Cynthia would know: she had seen battle in this terrain before.

Best of all, Matt's training officers in New Mexico had taught him an answer to this question. "The maneuver element will mark priority targets with red smoke when we close with the enemy," the captain stated. "The Iron Weasel and - ah - Pooh will use the smoke to direct their fire and avoid hitting us." Matt smiled briefly at the New Zealander. "Good point, Cynthia."

Then it was Dmitry's turn. "With utmost respect," the Russian announced, "I believe I would be of much better use in supporting the tank. Long range support against enemy formations is what I'm most experienced at."

Matt blinked, struck by an abrupt realization: I have no idea what it is that Dmitry actually does. The esper had joined the SHADOCOM team in the lay chamber. Matt had never received his personnel file, and he had not had an opportunity to talk to Dmitry at the briefing. For all I know, he could call down manna from heaven.

Incomplete information kills, Matt's trainers had warned him. Now, in the field, Matt was rapidly beginning to find that counsel darkly hilarious.

"Okay." The Minuteman nodded to Dmitry. "Stay with the fire element. And stay in telepathic contact with Polina. The two of you will coordinate between the two teams. Don't let any of our own ordnance land on our heads."

Clark Harris spoke next. He was worried that it would be hard to communicate out on the dunes, and easy to become separated. He wanted to reduce that risk by splitting up the maneuver element into two-man or three-man fireteams.

Matt nodded thoughtfully. He took Clark's advice seriously. Out of all the team's members, none had more real combat experience. And Clark had always supported Matt, even when the two men had disagreed. He had earned the Minuteman's trust.

Still. Matt looked out at the desert. He thought of the constantly shifting dunes, the preindustrial darkness, the weakness of human night vision, the strobing confusion of gunfire and explosions. Matt bit the inside of his cheek.

Before he could answer, though, Katelyn Cheung strode forward and snapped at Matt as if he were a particularly stupid private. The Iron Weasel, she barked, was not suitable for direct engagement with the enemy. It was intended for indirect fire. Matt's plan risked blowing it to smithereens. The young woman's British-accented voice was fierce.

Matt watched her, blue eyes calm. Matt recognized injured pride well up in him, recognized that taking offense was unhelpful, let his aggravation settle like cooling magma into the pit of his stomach until it was gone.

Willow Barnes was not so temperate. She dropped her Thompson on top of Matt's map. The Jeep's hood rang like a gong in the desert night. The team's objective was to get to Siwa, Willow reminded the group. It was not to get bogged down in a firefight at El Alamein. SHADOCOM was conducting a raid, punching through the enemy line, trusting in speed to keep vulnerable assets like the Iron Weasel safe.

She's trying to help me, Matt realized. Being my anger, my id, so that I don't have to. Maybe it was even a good idea, the Minuteman thought. Or maybe it makes me look weak: like I need her help to get the team to respect my orders. Like I can't take command on my own.

Maybe that's true.

Doubt. Slithering.

Matt thought of his father in the pulpit, and his voice was steady when he spoke.

"Ariel. Good question. Our fallback plan is the same as the plan by which we'll break contact once we've broken through into the enemy's rear. The maneuver element will establish a new base of fire. They'll cover the fire element while that team breaks contact. In the meantime, Alice and the Churchill will temporarily anchor the fire element's previous position to screen that team's withdrawal. From there, we withdraw by fire and movement in the same two teams until everyone's at a safe distance. The Churchill reverses to keep pace with us as we go." Matt nodded firmly. "Understood?"

"Clark." Matt drew in a shallow breath. "I understand the idea behind splitting up the maneuver element into smaller teams. But we're not going to do it." Matt's blue gaze was penetrating, almost apologetic. "Dividing up like that encourages each fireteam to act more autonomously. In the dark, in undifferentiated terrain, when the shooting starts, there's too great a risk that one fireteam will get separated. When I spot a hole in the enemy's line, we need to be able to exploit it: all together, all at once. Because it won't last long. If we have to go back for two soldiers who got pinned down, we won't be able to get through the gap before it closes, and we'll still all be standing around when an enemy battalion shows up to plug it."

Matt shook his head. "No. When we launch our flanking maneuver, we keep as close as we safely can. You're right about the risk of getting separated, Clark, but that's exactly why we've got to do it this way."

"Now." Matt turned to Katelyn Cheung. "Lieutenant." There was only the slightest edge to the captain's enunciation of Cheung's rank. "I understand that the Iron Weasel is optimized for indirect fire. But that is not what we are doing here tonight. You can sit back eight hundred meters away and pound the enemy all you like. But when we spot an opening and exploit it, you are not going to be in position to catch up with us and make it through the line. Not in time. And when enemy reinforcements show up, and the gap closes, you will still be stuck on the Allied side of the engagement area while we are breaking away into the enemy's rear."

Matt gently handed Willow her Thompson, and began folding his map back up. "We can't stage a breakthrough if we're not in position to take advantage when we spot an opening. It's just that simple. So you will follow the tank up, use it to shield the Iron Weasel from direct fire, and break contact along with the rest of the fire element when we find our moment. If you don't like it, you can stay here with the Seventh Armored and spend the rest of your war laying down indirect fire for them." Matt's gaze was steady but unyielding. "It won't be desertion. I'm the commander in the field, and I'll second you to them right now if you'd like. It's up to you."

"Now," Matt repeated. He tucked the map back into his field jacket, under his leather-carapaced combat armor. "That's all we have time for. We need to be miles into the Qattara Depression before dawn, and we are burning moonlight." The Minuteman studied his team as he hefted his Heavy BAR, the scaled-up weapon's blued steel and walnut glinting in the moonlight. "Skirmish line. Keep your eyes open, signal if you make contact, go to ground when the shooting starts. Stick to the plan." Matt's blue eyes moved from face to face, and his voice was gentle. "I'll see you all on the other side."

Just words.

Matt turned his face to the desert, and walked slowly into the dark.

[Kassaran]

Anger

He could feel it radiating off of his back as they'd driven (flown?) and Jerome could only help but to keep himself calm and composed as the fight of a lifetime might as well have gone on. He'd known that the French woman he'd joined on the carpet was none too fond of their remaining passenger, but it wasn't that which was truly forcing him to fight to remain composed as they passed another town. There were settlements near small sources of water out here, and in them were people. He wanted to look at them, to say hello or to wave at them kindly as he'd done to the children of his family's sharecroppers when he'd taken rides in their horse and buggy with Harold back home. He wanted to laugh and enjoy the ride with the two others in the vehicle, to try and make himself all that more kinder in their eyes for he felt that this might just be a group he could enjoy the company of.

Anger

Why now though, why now of all times would the blade feel so upset, so distraught as to make Jerome force his calm and kind composure. It wasn't anything he'd ever felt before from the blade and had only heard about in stories from those whom had passed them down over the ages within his family. Less than a year of true attunement with this weapon and it was refusing to even divulge the reasoning it had to maintain such a caustic disposition on what would otherwise could have been a brilliant ride in the deserts of North Africa. None of his queries, none of this thoughts or questioning could force it to break from its severe temper now raging within the thin wrapping of cloth that retained it. It was a rage that unbridled might have rivaled his own father's temper, or perhaps the raging of Christ in the temple? He, couldn't quite place it, but the blade almmost felt indignant, if not completely furious at having been brought to this point in time.

Anger

He almost felt like yelling at it as the carpet ride had come to a brief halt at the height of the day somewhere in one of the strange cities of this land. It was almost as soon as everyone else had dismounted the carpet though, that he felt the blade's seething hatred subside. It was something he'd never felt so intensely wave off so quickly. He could almost recall having been close to the bonfires on his property of some of the sharecroppers, he'd often visited them and never had been told no. The perk of having been an only child he supposed, but the heat and intense joy he'd felt being close to the fires there, had remained present upon his face for most of the walk back to his childhood home on those nights. Here, he was certain he was only feeling the heat of the noon-day sun beating upon him. It had exhausted him for sure, and making his way off the carpet, he moved to a place where water apparently had been set up.

He didn't know how long he'd been there before the Frenchwoman- he still couldn't quite remember her name, and to be honest he wasn't even so sure he knew anyone else's names either- approached him. His mind raced with ideas that quickly were tempered by the soft digging of his blade into his back, which promptly relinquished him back to sensible thought. As unpredictable as Durendal could be, it was an invaluable asset to tempering his own will and perhaps that was something he could indeed work on, on his own. Listening as she laid out her case, her kindness rivaled the hospitality of those from his own family's friends in the American South. Perhaps this was just a French thing, such kind words and cordial hospitality, to the point that he almost entirely went along for the ride that was to be helping to set up a tent over the carpet. From the sounds of things, she'd help him, but as the hour dragged on, he quickly realized she perhaps had a similar constitution as the women of his own homeland. He smiled as he carried on finishing his work though, her overall lack of aid wasn't anything that bothered him too much and to be quite honest- as he strong-armed another support into place, this wasn't all that bad.

Three Hours Later

By the end of the ordeal that had been setting up the tent, he'd learned the ins and outs of everything one had to not do whilst setting up a tent in the heat of the day. He'd must have sweat a full pitcher of water and drunk three more by the time the tent was sufficiently staked down. This tent though had been solidly built by his own hands and he felt an immense wave of satisfaction in his work as he turned on his heel to declare victory over the contraption. He'd lost count of how many times the tent had collapsed, but the soft digging of Durendal into his back as he'd felt his temper become flared brought back into his mind the feeling that he could still press on. Control through sheer force of will, and so it was that he turned around to face the Frenchwoman he'd imagined had been cheering him on the entirety of his struggle- only to find she was already walking past him and into the tent.

Anger

Perhaps it was his eye twitching, or the pulsing of his forehead, or the intense heat that had engulfed him and Durendal both, but he almost felt the entirety of his will to fight for the day sap the strength from his limbs. Victorious in the battle, but having thoroughly lost his war for the day, he trudged drearily to a corner still draped in shade from the hot afternoon sun. Taking another swig from the canteen he'd procured, he'd realized his own shortage of equipment as he'd looked through his own pack. Food, his stomach growled for it and yet sleep overtook him within moments. His nose, ever alert, however, remained on steadfast guard and quickly set to work awakening the sleeping knight when it finally detected but the simplest hints of something savory entering the area. His ears, the next to arrive on scene, listened keenly for what was going on. Something of food was without doubt, but as the offers began to go out, Jerome's eyes flashed open and with startling suddenness his body was on the move. Pressing forth to receive a share of what food he could obtain, he managed to secure some meat that smelled particularly delicious and additional goods that were already going out along the line.

His tongue exploded in flavor and delicious warmth as his nose sang of the herbs and spices which no doubt had resulted in the catastrophic and yet joyous breakdown of his sense of taste. Tears streamed from the youth's eyes as perhaps the finest food he'd tasted since he'd left the States flooded his mouth with a masterpiece of culinary art. As soon as the sensation of overwhelming satisfaction had come, the words to begin breaking down the camp followed and knowing precisely the movements required for the action, he gave the French mage the appropriate amount of time to exit the tent before delivering the swift elbow to the base of the tent, precisely between the third and fourth supports.

Nighttime, somewhere else, in the middle of the desert

Anger

No sooner had he gotten back on the carpet with the others, he could feel the old feeling come back, but the blade seemed somewhat satiated in its anger. He didn't quite know what had happened to make such a change in the blade's emotional baseline, but it seemed it definitely did not appreciate the idea of flight. If anything, he came to the conclusion that the sensation of flight was entirely the cause behind Durendal's discomfort and he was beginning to take joy in believing this, no matter whether it was right or wrong. The blade, as restrained as it was, could only attempt to make it's presence on Jerome's back more uncomfortable, but failed in part due to the straps that Jerome had tightened before takeoff. As it would so appear, the boy had outwitted the blade on this front for once leaving it to stew in its own anger.

By the time they reached the location of their destination, the young man had mostly come entirely to, the anticipation of finally seeing where he'd be fighting having stirred up an almost primal desire to fight. Durendal, for once, seemed to be entirely in agreement, these were the feelings it had known from it's previous wielder and likewise it was the right emotions for its new wielder to have. As the carpet began it's descent to nearly dune-top level, they nearly overflew the convoy as it came to a halt, leaving them to drift only slightly past and whirl around on a near-dime. There was a complaint from Jerome's gut at the violence of the turn, but besides that, nothing else came his way in the form of a complaint. Landing was as simple as before and the carpet almost set itself down with the grace of a swan.

Jerome dismounted cautiously and made his way to where now everyone was gathering. His Enfield had never been used in battle as far as he knew and he felt a significant fear crawling through him as he listened to the plan. The fear was only alleviated by the warm pulsing of Durendal within it's wraps. It truly was a fool who did not fear death, and who did not fear the deaths of others. As the tank made it's appearance, the holding of shields along its sides only make the young man even more impressed, and no matter the decrying of it's use in battle, it certainly looked the part of a noble steed. Perhaps the only part that threw him was the young girl whom had dismounted from the noble war machine. He almost had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing, so great was his disbelief at a girl running a tank, but the better side of his sense caught up to him as he recognized the majority of his company.

Deciding to keep his own words to himself, he settled himself to listen to the questions and concerns of those present, and while the man in charge- a Captain if Jerome correctly recalled- seemed to know precisely what he was doing, there were some with doubts as the young man had caught on. Not that he cared, it seemed like just as many were willing to stand by the Captain, if he'd gotten them this far in the war, what good would it do now to begin doubting the leadership. Besides, wasn't it their job to do as he said, to make a reality whatever the orders given were? Jerome smiled with a lopsided grin at the idea, he would do his best to hold the line beside the iron horses that would be their escorts. Apparently in his team would be the Frenchwoman- Iridelle. He smiled proudly at having been reminded of the woman's name, perhaps he could use that in the future. Then there was a few names he couldn't really remember well, and the last was Abe. He'd known several Abe's over the course of his life, all named for the forefather of the Hebrews tribes in the bible. He'd never been particularly religious, his family seeming to have something against most Christian religions, but he'd read through the Bible a handful of times.

Walking over to the one he'd known to be called Abe, he extended his hand and intended to cordially introduce himself. Best to make friends that will watch your back, not that he'd had particularly thought about this aspect of it all, but Southern hospitality dictated that he at least attempt to make himself a new comrade and brother-in-arms before his first real fight.

"The name's Jerome, I understand that you are Mister Abraham, no? Like the forefather of the Hebrews if I remember from my studies correctly."

[Sonitusia]

Cpl. Konani Sanderson, WAACE (Cpl. Fumihiko Sekakuna, Force 24)

One would have expected that the Lieutenant would have either swallowed nervously from the steeled look in the bulky American's eyes, or at the very least be at a loss for words and simply nod without any more hostility. I certainly would have, and I could feel a large need for taking a leak right about now. However, Cheung was an officer from birth, someone I could see wearing the same rank as the man she saluted to in reply, however proceeding to complete her concerns.

"800 meters is an overstatement. Give us a distance of at least 100 meters behind the infantry group and I can assure you that the Weasel will not disappoint, Captain. Our engine upgrades can close the gap at that distance without a sweat," she responded, dropping her arm to the side and bowing formally. Now this? This was rare. She rarely respected her superiors during the time we'd been in Burma and China, but of course that was more due to unfair decisions without any respectable alternatives in store.

"I apologize for the unclear objection and do not represent my crew when I say this from the bottom of my own being: I simply do not wish for a repeated annihilation. We cannot fulfill the role of an infantry tank, but you will find we are second to none in mid-range support."

Her words stung me, a reminder that Mohamad and I weren't the first crew she had come into command of. She stepped back, still bowing for a few feet before raising her body straight once more. I couldn't help but noticed she shot a glare at Willow. Not hostile, but calculating, as if she slowly built up a feeling of distrusting her life in the hands of the woman. Perhaps it was on purpose that she had taken the pressure off of Beecher's shoulders, but the way she had belittled Cheung's concern disturbed me as well.

I could just be biased.

But I wanted to live longer to see the end of facism.

And so I wondered if following the Captain would even be a good idea. I wondered if him having people under his command who did not understand the capabilities of his other men and women would keep me alive, would allow me to dish out more destruction towards those who deserved it.

But Cheung followed him, perhaps only because we were on the same side. Perhaps only because she was ordered to fulfill her duties to the Commonwealth. Thoughts like this bottled inside me, that Cheung too wanted to end the war, to free her home, and the way she'd do so best was by following Beecher and his ragtag band of warriors into the darkness. I wanted to tell her that we could do the same by switching units to the regulars, when a touch was planted upon my shoulder. My worries vanished, replaced by calm.

"You can complain later when we've won the fight," caressing his palm against me. His whispers were rough but pleasant, as they always were. I nodded, opening my unknowingly clenched fists and sighing quietly.

"Will we?"

"You'd distrust a man that Cheung trusts?"

"..."

"It's just a raid, nothing we're not used to. You drive, she targets, I shoot. Throw in some earth magic if you want."

"...Right."

And so Beecher completed his briefing, turning towards the sea of sand and disappearing from sight. It was time for our final preparations, one last maintenance check, ammunition sorted in expected order, and sights calibrated for good measure. We sure as hell weren't used to desert warfare, where trees no longer shadowed our movement midday, where the enemy did not hide in wait in the swamps and mud.

But there was no mistaking that we'd bring in our own tropical heat.

[Malshan]

Markus Lenion
Mess Tent
FOB, Cairo, Egypt

Markus let out a loud, echoing belch as he scarfed down his evening meal, drawing glares from the surrounding soldiers and support personnel. A few, mildly curious, had sat at the same table as him but had soon moved away at the sight of his eating habits. Scraps of unidentified meat flew in each direction as the wolfman tore into the hunk of raw flesh, blood and juices coating his mouth and neck, dripping down his bare chest. He paused only once, partway through, to drain a half gallon of an unidentifiable liquid.

After finishing, he sat back from the table and sighed contentedly. At this point, he'd taken in sufficient calories to last him through the day and, knowing that action would likely occur in the coming hours or night, he was sure that more food would become available.

Standing, the old wolf swayed slightly before shaking off the apparently deleterious effects of his drink. Hauling his cargo sack up from the ground, Markus strode out of the tent, whistling a light tune that belied the demeanor of his meal.

Notably, the conversation in the mess tent lightened considerably following his departure, turning back to the usual topics of life on the base, exploits during recon missions, and loves left at home.

---

South of El Alamein

Markus sighed, stretching out in the back of a cargo truck as it bumped and rattled through the desert. He'd been given a briefing by a bored and decidedly disgusted looking aide after the wolfman had cornered him on the FOB. Basic details of the unit were given, if only to get rid of the foul-smelling codger.

The old wolf eventually tracked the group down, though he remained uncharacteristically quiet during the conversations and the Minuteman's briefing and battleplan. He noted the strategy, apparently a form of blitzkrieg involving the tank, and resolved to aid the tank when it eventually charged into battle. He'd provide some close infantry cover and prevent those eager enemy pups from getting in too close. It wouldn't be the first time a landship had been destroyed due to a lack of support.

Hefting the Boys Anti-Tank rifle and slinging it around his shoulders, Markus shook himself and shifted partway. His legs elongated with a mild cracking sound and his hair became denser. His ears sharpened and traveled back along his skull, coming to rest atop his head where he could listen for the subtle sounds of the desert. His eyes took on a decidedly predatory yellow sheen and his mouth elongated into a half-muzzle.

After several more seconds, Markus had finished the transformation. He had added several inches to his height and packed muscle onto his otherwise wiry frame, filling out the special clothing given to him previously.

Markus rolled his shoulders and rotated his neck, relishing the sharp cracks that sounded around the group before stalking off, following the supersoldier at a distance.

[Finland SSR]

Matt

Dmitry Dmitryevich Zhdanov

October 23nd, 1942

El Alamein

---

The American minuteman seemed stumped for a second after Dmitry offered to stay with the fire element and explained him expertise in dealing with enemy infantry formations - which should come as no surprise, perhaps, since the esper did not expect Matthew, or any other members of the squad besides Polina, to know what he is able to do. He never really got a chance to explain his esper specialization to any of his foreign peers, after all. Thankfully, however, Matt did not remain stumped for long and quickly made a choice, confirming Dmitry's choice to stay with the fire element and ordering him to maintain a telepathic link with Polina during the battle.

"Understood." the Soviet laconically replied, then closed his eyes and put a little mental focus on opening a link with his fellow esper. "You heard the American, Polina. If there's anything your squad needs to relay to the fire element, I'm all ears."

The rest of the planning went fairly swiftly - the team discussed possible contingency plans if they ever need to fall back or trouble's afoot, while Matt politely dismissed Clark's idea on splitting up the mobility element into smaller units. There wasn't much Dmitry could add to the debate, his role in the mission was already more or less set, so the Soviet simply folded his hands and listened to the discussion until it finally came to a close. Time to move out.

Dmitry's eyes focused on his right palm for a second, until it released a dim, faint glow. Immediately after, a psionic construct of a TT-33 pistol, practically indistinguishable from the real thing to an observer, assembled in his hand. The process itself took a few seconds - all the moving parts and different chemicals necessary were always the toughest part - and when it was finished, the esper clenched onto the grip and lowered the weapon.

It was, obviously, just a sidearm, even if a great one, but that's all Dmitry needed for now. He'll be able to build himself a Katyusha launcher when he's actually on the battlefield.

"Well then, all I can say is udachi, American." Dmitry replied to Matt's final statements to the skirmish line, following his sentence with a faint nod. The Minuteman and the people following him soon disappeared into the distance.

Time for us to move out too, I'd imagine.

[Monfrox]

"I'm taking the jeep. Someone get on the fifty, and be careful about firing that thing too much. This thing doesn't weight as much as you'd think."

Willow turned the keys and killed the lights. The plan would be to follow in and rush the frontline, trying to turn as many heads away from the others as she could while avoiding getting shot to hell. Reminding everyone about the raid seemed to have worked out, too. Even if the crew of the Iron Weasel was still leery about being a part of the assault, the choice was given: they would stay or they would go. You play by these rules or you play with someone else. Well, she'd show them how to take a jeep across the sand. Wouldn't be the first time she ripped up the terrain in one, and definitely not the last if she had her way. She put the windshield down and put her goggles back where they needed to be.

"This is gonna be fun." She smiled.

[Agritum]

The march to Deir El Munassib was unexpectedly long, and faint rays of the dawning sun could be seen etching their way out the nighttime sky, peering from the dunes at the east. It was probably early morning in Palestine, by that point. Abraham almost asked Naomi if his assessment was correct, but refrained. He was trying to detach his mind from the mental burden of what was coming. SHADOCOM had fought already, as a clandestine combat operation force. But in an all out war? The squad was largely still unproven. As Ariel's bike gracefully glided down the final slopes before Qarat El Himeimat, a flat rock formation hiding an Italian firebase occupied on shelling the main body of the 7th armored, Abraham tried to get the bad thoughts of out of his mind.

Damaged vehicles and ambulances hurried away from the battle zone, many of them French. The Foreign Legion had taken an early beating in their ill-fated attempt to break the firebase and maneuver around the smaller Munassib depression. They had encountered a much stronger force than expected. Supernatural elements, some terrified survivors added, much to Iridelle's chagrin, before resuming their withdrawal from the battle lines. The sounds of battle got stronger and stronger, as the rock started to profile itself before the SHADOCOM convoy, emerging from the dunes, bathed in the artificial light of spotlights and the constant shelling of large artillery pieces held on its top. Loudspeakers loudly broadcasted what was, unmistakably, an operatic piece. Heim frowned grimly, glancing at the scene from the passenger seat of Willow's Jeep.

The last columns of retreating Frenchmen left, as the sound of gunfire died down. The rock had been completely excavated and converted into a bunker, as evidenced by the multiple shooting holes carved on its face. A vast trench of parachutists aimed guns and MG emplacements protected the outer rim. The moment Pooh and the rest of the Churchill column emerged, the vast defensive forces of the firebase redirected fire to the tanks. The magical armor reflected most hits, a Panzerschreck dudding instantly on contact with the head tank, tossed aside like a rotten fruit.

It was chaos from that moment on. Controlled chaos. As the tanks withstood the attack, Heim disembarked from the Jeep, Garand in hand, and darted amongst the tank lines with the rest of the firing element, sharing space with the round-helmed Tommies of the 44th Infantry Division as they took position behind the tanks and in the outcropping environment, exchanges volleys of noisy fire with the Italian trenches, flares whizzing up in the air and bathing everything in an eerie white light. Polina rushed by the black haired woman's side, eyes fixated to the optics of her Mosin Nagant, her mind working the action with each shot. Bullets whizzed in the air and embedded themselves in the sand, leaving small clouds of dust in their wake.

Abraham managed to dive out the sidecar and cover behind its armored body as Ariel drew her magical sword and got out of battle. The explosions before had been enough, but getting under an hail of bullets was even worse. Most importantly, their main source of artificial light, Iridelle, had suddenly disappeared from the sky, her carpet having whizzed to who knows where. Abe would have complained to Beecher if he had been capable of reaching his vehicle under the machine gun fire laid by the fascists. He hated this place. He hated the war. He hated being in it.

The music stopped, abruptly, as if someone had violently tossed the vynil away from the grammophone connected to the rock's loudspeaker system. The point of the instrument cacophonically scratched against an empty plate, before being stopped. Even the Italians, away, dug in the trenches, covered their ears and slammed their helmets closer to their heads.

"Oh Cielo!~, looks like our concert is having special guests tonight!" the voice of a young, southern-european sounding woman resounded, spotlights pointing to an auburn haired, short-sleeved blackshirt volunteer standing in the lead of two equally feminine figures, grinning debauchedly from the top of Qarat El Himeimat. "My name is Caterina de' Medici, Catherine for your frog-eating folks. The republican scum and their semitic lapdogs refused to listen to their beloved queen's opera, and got dealt with accordingly. I am sure you intellectual, educated commandos will be much more appreciating of my and Tre Stelle's music. Caesarina, Bianca...." she motioned towards the two girls standing by the side, a pale redhead with an hawkish face, and a curly-haired brunette, both of them smiling in kind. "...ensure our guests do not leave during the debut night of Tre Stelle, it would be such a shame!"

The two young women jumped from the rock, one gliding unnaturally in the air, the other rolling on impact with the sand, before disappearing both in the darkness. The desert fell oddly silent, again, as the two sides pointed guns at each other.

Heim scanned the horizon with her rifle. Calculations ran through her mind, her red eyes flicking for any detail.

"I have a bad feeling about this."

LA DONNA E' MOBILE, QUAL PIU MALVENTOOOOOOOOO

The loudspeakers started up loudly, split seconds before the artillery pieces and mortars on top of the rock, enveloped in a purple aura, started shelling the Allied attack force in the immediate vicinity of the firebase to the tune of violins and a tenor singing. Levitating above them on a black room, Caterina smiled cruelly. "We'll start with a lento tempo, you uncouthed yanks, perfidious brits! Girls, chop them up!"

A blast from an arty shell hit a British transport square in the middle, taking out a squad of soldiers. The Italians in the trench resumed fire, pinning the strike force on the ground as the rest of the artillery went off. Gliding like a waltzing dancer amongst the fighters, Caesarina extended stiletto-like claws from her hands and stormed through another column of British tommies, the men being quickly sliced an diced into fountains of blood and tored apart by a wave of dark-armored Roman soldiers smashing through them.

Abraham could only barely make out what was happening on Heim's side of the battlefield, before a bloodcurdling howl reached his ears. A large, bestial she wolf led a charge of her black-furred, bike-sized brethren down the eastern side of the rock, tackling down soldiers, biting their throats out and mauling their guts. The screams of the soldiery mixed with the splurting blood, the loud bang of guns and explosions, and the opera music blowing over it all.

Caterina smiled, closing her eyes and extending her arm out, palm open, fingers tight, pointing upwards.

"SALUTO AL DUCE!"

[Cylarn]

I guess this is the new war.

Clark glanced upon the passing cadavers of dead and dying men, while the squad proceeded forward, to the rumbling man-made thunder and the bright flashes beset in the morning horizon. His legs ached from their long march to the battlefield. He noticed that some of the Legionnaires were coming back on stretchers, sans their legs. He looked forward, brushing past the dismemberment. Iridelle questioned the surviving Legionnaires, who claimed that the firebase was firmly in the hands of the Italians. The other kicker - they had supernatural forces at work. Clark briefly thought of the rended flesh and exposed tendons that he had passed by, the stumps all mangled yet devoid of major burns. His eyes flickered to the fading night sky.

Three Stars, Clark thought. This was it; their first honest-to-God battle, against enemy supernatural elements on the battlefield. The rumbling grew closer, along with the flashes. Clark could make out the profiles of British Paras and average Tommies running about ahead of him.A horrible sound made its way into Clark's ears, and he brought his left hand up to his left ear, covering it as a slightly nauseous feeling of dread simultaneously found its way home. Psychological warfare.

When the Churchills took their positions, the fire erupted. Artillery and machine guns began to tear apart the dark desert before their fortification. Immediately, Clark hit the deck, bullets whizzing and cracking the air around him. Midbrain at work, Clark pulled himself across the rock in a low-crawl. Clark caught eyes on a collection of large, blood-flecked rocks near his position, along with the body of a khaki-clad British soldier, his body laid atop the Bren gun he set up on a smaller rock. Swiftly, Clark made his way to that position.

The Tommy had half of his face blown off, but Clark could only afford a cursory glance, and nothing more. He shoved the lifeless soldier from the weapon and relieved him of his remaining magazines, placing them beside of the rock atop which the Bren sat. Clark took hold of the weapon, pulling back the charging handle and looking through the iron sights of his weapon.

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM, BOOM-BOOM-BOOM

Taking eyes at the speeding lights coming from the Italian stone fort, Clark laid down a significant bead of fire for three seconds, before recharging his weapon with a fresh magazine. The burst fire kept up, until the desert fell silent. The spotlights took aim on a trip of Italian women, attractive by Clark's standards. He found their candor to be quite unattractive; Clark Harris never was one for long entrances. From the moment they began speaking, Clark knew where things were turning.

"HEY, I REALLY CAN'T UNDERSTAND YOU OVER YOUR FUNNY FUCKIN' ACCENT! CAN WE JUST GODDAMN DUKE NOW?"

Clark doubted that they had heard him, because the leading Star had continued with her spiel about the opera. He trained his Bren up in the sky, towards Caterina and her entourage, when suddenly, the artillery and the opera started up once more. Firing two bursts in their direction, Clark turned his attention back to the battlefield. Amid the spotlights and the flares and the flashes of artillery, he could make out columns of what appeared to be Roman soldiers, backed by flanking werewolves. Clark zeroed in on the columns, and began to lay down fire upon them.

The situation at their position was tenuous at best. Large werewolves were dicing apart the British soldiers, in a sick display accompanied by opera. It revolted Clark, as he turned to see the sight behind him. FUCK! The rear is compromised!

He reached down and drew out his pistol. Pressing down on the release, the magazine dropped into his left palm. Clark could see the glint of his rounds, silver in the sporadic lights. He shoved the magazine back into the weapon, and the pistol back into the holster. Clark could only hope that he had remembered to stagger the rounds in his M1 with silver bullets. His eyes narrowed on Caeserina as she effortlessly tore through their position. It had to stop. His quarry was a vampire; Clark wanted to see what enough silver could do to a vampire.

Clark broke away from his position, Bren in hand, trying to move as low as possible towards the action. A squad of the Romans had made it into their lines.

"THEY'RE IN OUR LINES! LET THE ARMOR HANDLE THE BASE!"

His words were cut short by an explosion nearby that robbed him of his hearing, but he continued in Caesarina's wake, following his prey. From the hip and on two straight legs, Clark expended the final bursts of his Bren towards the Romans while moving, and tossed the weapon to the ground. The M1 came into play now, and whether or not Clark - or anyone - could hear him amid the chaos, he yelled again.

"BEECHER, THIS BITCH!"

With that, Clark quickly brought the light weapon to bear, as he threw himself into a kneeling position. His eyes glanced down the irons, nerves begging him to immediately fire. With a quick sight picture, he fired three rounds less than twelve meters from Caesarina's rear, aiming towards her back. Again, he hoped that his rounds were staggered; if not, he had mere seconds to draw pis pistol and finish the job.

[Finland SSR]

Everyone

Dmitry Dmitryevich Zhdanov

October 23rd, 1942

El Alamein

---

Dmitry trailed after the column of tanks and operatives from the rear, his eyes shifting from the front line in the distance to the skies above the battlefield, where the first rays of breaking dawn could finally be seen. The visibility was good. The fact that, according to the Minuteman, they needed to be in the Qattara Depression by dawn was not. And they hadn't even made any contact with the enemy yet - so, even more time will need to be burned before they can reach the goal of their expedition. Dmitry did not offer even a glance to the French Legionnaires retreating upon their arrival - they were mangled, they were wounded, shaken, they spoke of supernatural forces. A tragedy, but it was the cost of modern war, and there was not a place on the globe where this cost did not have to be paid.

The best option was to try to get this out of your system. Fear for your life should always be secondary to knowledge that even if you do pay the ultimate price, it is for something greater. For Dmitry, it was the survival of the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, the well-being of millions of his compatriots back home, besieged by an overwhelming, genocidal force. Perhaps this motive was different for each one of his comrades in SHADOCOM, but the reason why it was necessary was all the same.

One thing which truly was new, however, was the loud traveling sounds of opera music coming from the rock which the Axis forces turned into a makeshift fort. Opera music? Either a very... odd attempt to bolster the morale of the Italian troops, or possibly a hint at something ominous. They did speak of supernatural forces, after all. Regardless, it didn't distract Dmitry from his mission. As soon as the column of Churchill tanks endured the initial barrage, he leapt to the sandy ground and reached out with his hands to the ground. The tanks attracted too much attention to be safe self-propelled artillery carriers, and the jeeps probably weren't made with a Katyusha on their back in mind - so, instead, Dmitry carefully constructed a psionic construct of a towed sledge, then started building a rocket launcher atop of it. The brief lull in the skirmish gave him enough time to raise the launcher to a position aimed towards the rock, load it with a few BM-13s, and open fire.

A single Katyusha would probably be laughable as far as battlefield effect is concerned - Soviet artillery officers, knowing its inaccuracy, employed it in saturation bombardment, after all. And, indeed, the chance to hit anything with a single launcher was practically null. However, it was in Dima's hands - and ever since witnessing this marble of proletarian engineering in 1940, he had been working constantly, employing all the knowledge from his rocketry studies, to maximize the weapon's potential. And the results were obvious - the rockets, after each of their iconic whizzing sounds, flew in a wide arc and then straight towards the Italian trenches.

At least until the music came to an abrupt halt and the real force behind the Italian lines finally stepped out. Three women, illuminated by spotlights as if this were a theatre play, the leader of them introducing them as Tre Stelle and announcing the beginning of their opera in the most flamboyant fashion, before two of them vanished in the dusk.

That's not good. Dmitry did not even need Heim's revelations. With a simple click on the railing, he dissipated his Katyusha and sledge psionic constructs. Locking himself down to the artillery piece will leave him vulnerable once the inevitable attack breaks out - so, instead, he clenched more tighly to the TT-33 pistol attached to his belt and started stepping towards one of the Churchill tanks as cover. And, indeed, his suspicions were made completely clear. Italian artillery and entrenched soldiers opened fire yet again. One of the women reappeared, thrashing through the rank and file of the British like a tornado of claws and blood. Roaring werewolves emerged from the rocky hill and charged down towards their position, joined by lines upon lines of black-dressed soldiers resembling Roman legionnaires. If the battle was chaos before, then you couldn't even find words to describe it now.

The tank which Dmitry stood behind was thankfully out of the way of the woman's rampage or the Italian legion assault, which gave the esper some time to think and assess the situation. A Katyusha is useless here, the enemy forces are too close to have any rocket barrage be safe. So he had to go for an alternative approach. Dmitry stretched out his palm and started building a psionic construct above it, taking the shape of a floating BM-13 rocket, identical to a real one except in origin.

The leader of the Tre Stelle was screaming with a bloodcurdling roar, declaring her utmost loyalty to the Duce. No need to calculate the trajectory - that's going to be the beacon.

"Blyat, shut up, you Italian whore..." the esper muttered under his breath, snapping his fingers and lighting the fuse of the rocket, allowing it to shoot out with a powerful white trail.

[Remnants of Exilvania]

Many would perceive the march to battle as long. Many others as far too short. The perception of intelligent beings was such a fickle thing, so easily changed and influenced by their emotional states. The excitable ones would dread the long march while the cowards dreaded the short march. Dietrich...he didn't know under which category he fell anymore. He had raking his mind, trying to gauge just how much longer a march would take. All that really mattered was when the march ended. Did this mean he had no fear? Or that he just didn't look forward to the battle? No, that was not it. He did fear. Any living being feared something or someone. It was rooted in their brains or something like that...Dietrich wasn't entirely sure anymore how Hallervorden had tried to explain it to him when they had lat met, him having apparently barged into a medical discussion between the man and Rindfleisch in...actually, he decided to not follow that train of thought any further.

Qarat El Himeimat was their destination tonight, though tonight was probably the wrong time. He could already see faint sun rays dancing across the night sky from the far far east. Regardless how much Beecher and the rest preached about breaking through quickly and speeding away into the Quattara Depression, there was no way they'd get through the Italians, both normal and possibly paranormal, before the sun was well up. He knew that the Italians had anything but a good reputation on the battlefield and by god, he had always joined in in making some fun about them since joking around raised troop morale...but he knew very well that holding out for a few hours was well within the Italians' capabilities.

As they were approaching their battlefield, he mentally checked the box "possibly paranormal". The Foreign Legion of the French had taken a heavy beating, considering the damages he could observe and the ambulances driving away to save the lives of their passengers. Survivors were thoroughly demoralized and blubbering about paranormal. Not to mention that, as they closed in on the rock, the sounds of battle started to become louder and there was one particular collection of sounds in the cacophony that absolutely didn't belong. An opera was being played, blasted over the dunes without a care in the world, most likely throughthe use of loudspeakers. Without a doubt the work of the Tre Stelle. He knew no other formation in the Axis that was as pompous and would waste valuable ressources and time on something as moronic as loudspeakers to play opera music across the battlefield. The Italians had called him an uncivilized farmer because of that, putting up their usual snobbish demeanor that came both due to their inhuman powers and their high stature among their society.

There was an old saying that went somewhere along the lines of power corrupts. It was something he considered to be all too true. Where else would these arrogant and condescending pricks always come from? He remembered his many run ins with the supernatural right now. Pricks, the entire lot of them. Especcially thinking of that dumb french cow in their unit made that clear. His few contacts with Tre Stelle made that clear. But he had to admit, it wasn't something that applied only to the supernatural pricks. The human pricks, like those Remington girls were off the same wood as those others. "Your heads aren't even worth half my sister combined." Oh, he remembered that sentence. Aristocracy was the same everywhere, wasn't it? He remembered having had similar clashes with officer back in the Great War. They too had this condescending air around them at all times for which most men would wish to strangle them if it wouldn't net them a court martial. Alas, that was what court martials were there for. Besides, Dietrich was under no illusion that he too had become arrogant and condescending as he rose through the ranks and years. Power corrupts, regardless if you've had it for centuries, since birth or had to acquire it the hard way.

Thinking about barely related things truly was a good way to pass time, he noticed, as when he looked up the next time, they were already practically at the battlefield. Alright then it was time to move according to plan Stretched out line, 100 meters in front of these newfangled Churchill tanks. He looked behind him to confirm that they were still there and indeed, they just came into sight over the last dune...and of course all hell broke loose then, making Dietrich immensely happy that the plan had included them walking a good bit before the tank and diving for cover once the fire was opened as it very much was in this case. Dietrich took the opportunity and dropped facefirst into the sand. Perhaps not quite the most perfect execution of such a maneuver but alas, he was old and hadn't had to do it himself for decades now.

Now, while lying in the sand and happily twiddling his thumbs, hoping his large frame was low enough to not make too much of a target for the Italians, he decided to look back to see wether the little girl's tank was doing its job. Looking at it for a minute or two, he could definitely confirm that it very much was drawing the fire of the Italians. And, surprise, surprise, as designed it was absorbing it quite well. He watched high velocity anti tank shells just pinging off the tank. Judging by the sound and firing arcs, he'd have to guess that it was 75mm. As far as he aware, the only capable 75mm the Italians fielded at all was the Modell 37 one. Which meant that they were indeed fighting quite a crack troop here. Now he just had to wait for the tank to roll past them and then they'd line up behind it and hope that most of the indirectly firing artillery was taken out till then...now what exactly were those girls doing among the tanks though? He recognised the raven haired girl with the red eyes. He also recognised the Soviet Esper girl. What the hell were they doing among the tanks and engaging the enemy troops? Weren't they supposed to be staying back and trying to circle around with Beecher? He also saw Harris, that damned bastard, getting himself an MG and opening fire.

At this point Dietrich was puzzled and rightfully so. This was...different from serving with Wehrmacht. There the troops would fulfill their orders without more than a formal complaint really and the ones who'd go against the plan were usually the ones in the upper echelons, thinking their individual glory, or their kills or the time in which the objective was fulfilled was more important than a carefully formulated plan. Apparently it was exactly the other way around with the Allies. The higher ups would make plans and the individual soldiers would simply ignore them. For a moment Dietrich honestly pitied Beecher. It was already hard enough take care of your unit when they were following orders. That poor giant had it so much worse.

Dietrich had to avert his eyes from that spectacle and look at the sand in front of him for a moment before closing his eyes and working the bridge of his nose with one of his hands while muttering:

"Well, we're definitely off to a good start..."

Looking around to see what the rest of the actual fire element were doing, Dietrich could make out the small frame of Antoniya, huddled together in the sand...in embryonic position. Alright, suppose ground warfare was not something for the flyboys...or girls. The rest was hard to see or make out, considering that bullets and artillery shells kicked up dust clouds literally everywhere, making it so much harder to properly identify your fellow comrades. Dietrich had to wonder just how much ammunition the Italians had already expended like that just on the not-so-French Legion. Supply lines must've been pretty good for the past few weeks if they could lay down this much fire. And the volume of fire spoke tons about the amount of guns being present. Dietrich guessed that they were most likely getting hit by only a part of the Italians' weapons, the rest probably being jammed with their operators furiously trying to fix them.

And then the music stopped. Dietrich sighed, knowing what this meant and what was about to follow, and thus stuck his fingers into his ears in preparation. He could so not hear their annoying voices anymore. Which brought him back to powerful and arrogant pricks and why he hated them so much. Keeping his ears shut, he was luckily spared most of the sound of her voice, it only reaching his ears a bit dampened. Oh, of course she had to magnify her voice magically. She loved listening to her own words and showering others with them. Didn't change the fact that most of it was meaningless garbage and was turned into repugnant garbage by the tone of her voice...alas, sometimes there are hidden gems among the garbage. Such as in this case, that being Caterina specifically adressing them as "intellectual, educated commandos". He threw some glances to the sides and then the back, wondering if there was a snitch among their group, wether Axis reconnaissance had just gotten that much better down here over the last year or if they actually stuck out that much from the regulars. The latter was the most likely case but he'd keep this in mind and stay cautious just in case there really was a snitch.

And then there were of course her compagnions. Tre Stelle just wasn't quite complete if not fulfilling atleast the "Tre" in their name. Wether they'd ever be "Stelle" was debatable but alas, he would never dare to assume what Italians liked and disliked so maybe they actually were their "Stelle". They were there for but a relatively short moment before jumping off their damned rock...or flying in one's case...and vanished in darkness. That was the time for Dietrich to start muttering curses about the damn searchlights under his breath. If it weren't for them, nobody would've lost track of the girls. Afterall, the sun was rising so there was no true darkness anymore. But something like the damn lights were good at drawing attention as well as making anything outside of them seem darker than it actually was.

And then all hell broke loose yet again, the artillery shelling beginning once again, though this time with quite the eerie accuracy. Of course, Dietrich knew that that was going to come but alas, he also knew that in the drawn out line the fire element was in, they didn't pose a threat or a worthy enough target of Caterina's attention. They were food for the paratroopers and her...female compatriots. Speaking of which, he caught sight of them yet again...and let out a sigh of relief. Apparently they had the immense luck of being food only for the paratroops, not for the Tre Stelle. The Tre Stelle were all further back, slicing and dicing, tackling and mauling the British who were standing there like morons instead of having dived for cover like the fire element had been instructed to be and like every intelligent being would do when there were bullets whizzing past and a lack of cover. Dietrich watched Werewolves feast on British Soldiers, ripping out their guts and entrails, he watched the Legionnaires going ham on even more poor sods. It was a sickening display and it had been when he had watched the same thing from the same perspective but behind the lines of Italian soldiers. God, how he hated these creatures, how he hated the ease with which they cut through the skin, flesh and bone of hard working and honest humans. His trigger finger really was itching to just turn around on his back and spray a bit into the british lines. Friendly fire be damned, he could explain away with old reflexes going off at the sight of their helmets. Wouldn't be that huge of a deal if he killed some of the weaker friendly elements to deliver a hit to the stronger enemy elements. The will and the results achieved with it were all that counted. The lives sacrificed on the way were disposable so long as those other two factors were right.

But...he didn't. He couldn't. He just couldn't bring himself to do it. Am I getting soft? , he wondered. But then he realised from the sweat trickling down his forehead that no, it was actually, genuine fear for his own life. There were things he was still looking forward to. Things he was working towards. There were things that he had to stay alife for. With a grunt he turned around again and ignored the slaughter behind him, instead focusing on the Italian paratroopers in front of him. The 75 round twin drum mag was on his MG-13 which he quickly set up. Then he took aim, his greyish-greenish eyes searching for the muzzle flashes of the Italians' guns, indicating where the trenches and their popped out heads were. Once he had that, he went to work, giving off suppressive fire in two or three round bursts.

TATTATTAT TATTAT TATTAT TATTATTAT TATTATTAT TATTATTAT TATTAT TATTATTAT TATTAT TATTAT TATTAT TATTATTATTAT TATTAT TATTATTAT

Someone was shouting, saluting the damned Duce somewhere up above. Dietrich let go off the Italian trench for a minute to look who in god's name was in the skies this time. He had every reason to check since he had been reassured that there would be no Axis air support. It was the only reason why he hadn't just turned onto his back out of reflex and fired some bursts up there. Maybe it had been some allied element that liked ridiculing the Italians. But no, it actually was Caterina, standing there, smiling, closed eyes and making her cheap italian salute. Alright, that face she made definitely was the last drop. With a voice grown hoarse from age and the shouting of orders, he roared up into the night sky:

"ATLEAST DO IT CORRECTLY AND HAIL YOUR TRUE OVERLORD YOU DAMNED ITALIAN RUNT! WE BOTH KNOW HE'S KOWTOWING TO RASTENBURG LIKE A GOOD LAPDOG!"

[Riysa]

For someone who was feeling exhausted of war, Haitham found himself feeling relaxed and happy, if not almost yearning to get into the fight. Well, it wasn't too surprising - the war was comfortably familiar to him, really the only thing that had stayed constant over the past few years of his life. The only difference was that he'd be fighting on the opposite side now, with the Allies.

That led to perhaps the other reason behind why he felt that way. Yes, he was fighting against his former side...but it was going to be the Italian fascists, not the German Luftwaffe that he'd served under. Unlike the Germans, he had no love lost for the Italians; the legend of Omar al-Mukhtar being well known across the Arab world and a rallying point for nationalists ever since his martyrdom at their hands. Just thinking about fighting them heated up his blood. No, if anything, he was relishing the chance to kill some of the Mussolinites today.

The Jeep ride onwards was still relatively quiet - aside from Willow's quips and her wild (though, admittedly fun) driving - everyone preoccupied keeping a look out for the enemy. Haitham slipped out a plain tan keffiyeh that he had brought in Iskandariya from under his uniform, and fastened it on his head with a likewise simple black agal. He hoped Iridelle would see it - it'd drive that Franci sharnouta even more crazy.

"Three lorries, 2000 meters, directly forward." He said, peering through a pair of binoculars, leaning over the M2 machine gun. It was quickly clear that they were friendlies - or at least, Allied, considering they were French - but they were getting closer and closer to the battle, so he kept spotting on the back of the Jeep, looking for signs of trouble.

And oh how so soon afterwards, they had found it.

"Italian infantry, trench, 11!" He spotted them first, but in this open desert, it didn't take long for them to notice back. That's when the fighting begun; guns blazed from both sides, anti-tank rockets flew against the Allied armor, and burning lead whizzed past. Heim, perhaps quite wisely, rolled out of the Jeep as soon as the cacophony of war started. Haitham however stayed with the machinegun, his SMG not being too useful at these ranges yet. His reflexes kicked into high gear...along with that sense of comfort that he'd been feeling. It was like he was coming home, sort of.

"Idrib risas, khalli risasak sayeh" - Fire your bullets, may they be accurate! He prayed to himself, sending a short, controlled burst downwards to get rid of the panzerfaust-er.
"Wa ma ramaita ith ramaita..." - And you did not throw, but rather, it was God who threw.
"Sadid rami..." - Oh God, make my shots find their target....

More prayers of accuracy, more short, controlled bursts to kill and scare off the Italians from firing back, especially at him. The machinegun was an important piece of firepower, and more importantly, he didn't feel like dying today. More, more, find a target, keep firing! his brain told him, as he settled into that simple, instinctive loop, zeroing in intently on any movement made by the Italian fascists.

But then, it all just...stopped? This wasn't something that ever happened in war, and the sudden change in atmosphere compelled him to stop too. Nothing good could come of this change.

"Agreed." He said, almost to himself, in response to Heim.

"Artillery!" That's when any sense of order finally left the battlefield. The lines collided together and clashed, Italian supernatural elements charging forward while the regular infantry provided fire support. Chaos reigned as some even broke through, as if in the blink of an eye. Actually though, it felt familiar in a strange way, the chaos and mixing of supernatural powers and good old firepower. Aha! And like old times, his role to play in this fight was pretty clear.

There was no time to waste, he had to react immediately - so he did a trick he'd done many times before. Quickly, he brought out a 1-liter canteen from his belt, filled with holy water he'd prepared while in Alexandria. Unscrewing the cap, with a swift motion of his right hand, he splashed half of the canteen over the ammunition belt and box feeding the gun, then just as quickly secured it back. Anointed with incantations to purify the souls, to disrupt the magic and the minds of its users, and to mess up their sight, it should do the trick. He believed it, at least, and that was the most important part of ruqaya shar'iya.

Damn! He couldn't get a clear shot on that witch named Caesarina, not without endangering friendlies. Sorry to the soldiers down there, but they'd have to deal with her themselves. Just in case, he deftly felt for his sidearm and his khanjar dagger - yup, right where they should be.

"Someone help me with these damned beasts!" He shouted. Smoothly, efficiently, he brought the M2 to bear on the black wolves tearing down on their position. No need for bursts now, they were all nicely, neatly lined up for him to shoot at. He depressed the trigger, and let the machinegun sing.

"Wa alqi ma fi yaminik talqaf ma sana'u..." - And cast what is in your right hand, it will swallow up what they have made.... He chanted at the top of his lungs, trying to disrupt the wolves and the magic flying about.

He heard the voice of the witch named Catherine. Without even thinking, he brought the machinegun to bear on its direction, and fired a burst at her.

"...Innama sanau kaidu sahir...wa la yuflihu sahhiru haithu ata!" - "This is created from the plots of a sorcerer, and the sorcerer will never be successful no matter what rank obtained!" He finished the chant, trying to at least strike her with it if the bullets couldn't.

Just as quickly, he brought it back onto the mass of oncoming enemies, opening it up again.

He felt elated by the sound, by the recoil, by the raw power of the M2; it reminded him of the "Doshka" heavy machine guns that the Soviets used for shooting down aircraft. It was a good gun. As he kept firing, thoughts popped into his mind: Iridelle, his humiliation in front of Fleming, the Italians and British and French and all the other colonizers, the Germans and their Vril, a beautiful girl in a fancy uniform named Heidi; every thing he despised or was angered by, every hard decision he took, every crisis of feelings and morals he had, all of those emotions, he poured it completely into the bullets and incantations flung at the enemy. It was cathartic, like he could feel all the stress and pain leave his body with every shot - blissful, delicious relief in the midst of the battle.

And like that, Haitham kept shooting.

[Kassaran]

Rounds cracked by, the battlefield coming alive, men and blood and gore raged in the seas of chaos that surrounded the young man with the rifle in hand and sword on his back. He grimaced, his stomach, his gut, his very essence having been churned up in each and every gruesome picture that had hung in his mind since he'd gotten his first tastes of the battlefield, still a long ways off from the fighting a half hour before. Frenchmen, crying out and bleeding upon the sand, had not only made Jerome greatly disturbed, but had brought forth a series of new emotions he could not account for. Heathen magics, powerful magics at that, coursed through the air and had stirred up a great bloodlust in the blade that rested in its sheath upon his back. Durendal was not simply disgusted, it was angry. The very resonance of the hilt, the pommel, the handguards, shook and chilled Jerome on a level that was wholly separate from the carnage of modern combat, and so it woke him from his stupor.

They kill, we kill.

It was a simple temptation of a thought, it drug throughout his every sinew and muscle and bone, and in the end it brought about a great shuddering in his mind that resembled the slowing of a freight train upon its tracks. Control, self-control above all, was what he needed here and so he went into the motions to use what he had on hand, to not tap into the power that was the bloodlust upon the back of his body. Raising the Enfield to his shoulder, he fired off the first round in its magazine and felt the shock of the report ring in his ears as the round flew across the battlefield and towards the enemy lines. He hadn't ever really been much of a sport hunter, and his aim wasn't for anyone in particular, for who was he to try and take such a measure of hate? The girls whom had made play at being some sort of evil villains from a double feature, were now indeed cutting through the ranks of soldiers present and while he had tried before to muster the willingness to kill one of them as they had spoken, he still could not now find a reason to strike a young woman.

The bolt worked, a round chambered, and he fired another shot towards one of the flashes of light opposite him in the battlefield. He didn't know if it had struck home, and couldn't have cared, there was a fear and a panic which was taking hold inside of him as he felt his body begin to shake again, only for the warmth of the blade pressed upon his back to suddenly wash through him. His nerves steeled themselves, and he focused again on the same flashing of light, and fired once more. The flashing paused for a brief second and Jerome's breath caught in his throat and some deep place in the back of his mind played out the story of the life that he had just taken had been. And then the machine gun opened fire again and this time a wave of relief and frustration. They didn't die, of course they didn't, but friends in the trenches before him were and that flashing light meant more were dying and so he worked the bolt again and fired a third time, only to watch the flashing yellow light wink back on again after a few moments.

It was almost his fourth round he'd have fired when he realized he had fallen behind the tanks and quickly moved up, listening to the deafening roar of their engines fill the air, punctuating the sound of rumbling treads with the ringing of armor deflecting incoming fire. His mind protested the cacophony, but he offered no other respite, there wasn't any to give as he struggled to run to catch up and find a new target. The cracking and popping of bullets in the air made him duck and dive and stumble in the sand, his breath taken from him as he struggled to keep up and keep ahold of his rifle. The weight of Durendal pressed down upon him every time he fell and it seemed as though the blade was throwing him off center as he attempted to make way through the battlefield. The armor was pressing forward ever more and soon he'd be left behind if he didn't keep up.

[Monfrox]

The ride there had been rather quiet. Willow was thankful they packed extra jerry cans for gas in the long travels, but the Arab man on her gun seemed rather quiet and distant. Her attempts at conversation and jokes seemed a bit wasted, but she did make sure he knew what he was doing. Last thing she wanted was for the jeep to go vertical. She wondered if the others were clear on what to do. Hopefully Haitham realized what he signed up for, being her gunner. If not, he was going to get a rude awakening. The drive in was mostly uneventful in the grand scheme, but she couldn't hear much over the engines of the tanks. Thankfully, she was told to head up and scout out a little before their arrival.

Willow brought the jeep up and noticed right away that the French Legionnaires were on their way out. The hell?

"What, are you guys leaving?!"

She only earned a few cold stares from those who still had their wits about them.

"Christ, man. We just got here..."

She sat down and threw the jeep into gear to head out once everyone had regrouped. There was shelling and screaming as the British 7th Armored was getting bracketed with artillery. She briefly wondered if the Italians were as tough Germans but she soon got her answer and...wait...was that music? She looked up when the record was replaced by a woman making an announcement. Oh great, so *these* were the Italians. Yeah...she still preferred using her gun to do most of her talking, as most Americans do. Clark and Dietrich made some curt remarks; good on Fritz for that. She heard the woman call them commandos and for some reason she didn't like that at all.

Willow dropped down into the seat and watched Heim dive out the side. Great, now it was just her and a gunner.

"Alright, gunner!" She rapped on Haitham's thigh with her fist to get his attention as he had been opening up with the M2. "We got a few boxes and a lot of Eye-ties! Short bursts! Don't overheat the barrel or flip us over! And for God's sake, hold onto something cause here we fucking go!"

The plan was, as she had remembered, was cutting a flank and making an opening. In the jeep, that was the biggest gamble. A highly armed vehicle who's gas tank was directly under her ass at any given moment, and for a split second she doubted her ability to go through with this. Especially given the lack of flanking room. But, just like she said, this was a raid. She needed to use speed to get in fast and start opening up a path. So she revved the engine and it took off. The Tre Stelle? Nah, not her priority. Poor British bastards were getting cut to ribbons by them but if she didn't do her part, her team wouldn't make it. And killing them was not part of the objective at the moment. She put the pedal down and headed for the clearest avenue to jump the trenches.

"Man...this is gonna suck."

[Reverend Norv]

They moved out.

It was slow going. Sand sucked greedily at Matt's boots. The vehicles inched forward: headlights off to prevent discovery, tires half-swallowed by the desert. Ahead, the flash of artillery strobed against the sky, and the sound of the guns was a constant low timpani. Matt thought of the monsoon thunder rolling down the mountains above Mong Yawng.

There were men coming back the other way. French, mostly. Trucks loaded with the wounded. Clark looked a moment too long at one legless man, then looked away. Matt's senses were superhuman. He could smell scorched meat; he could hear the labored burble of lungs filling up with blood. There was no hiding from that, not for him.

Iridelle questioned some of the survivors in French. Matt's French was mannered and impractical, the classical French he had learned from tattered copies of Moliere in the jungle. He still understood the answer to Iridelle's questions. There were monsters up ahead.

Matt thought of Warsaw: a crumpled, doll-like body in the murk of the sewer; echoes of laughter. Monsters up ahead. When are there not?

The light of distant guns played across Matt's face. He felt fear: an animal thing, coiled tight beneath his diaphragm. It did not signify. He was ready. He was almost, almost sure of it.

The sand and the shelling had slowed them down. The night was passing away. In the deep grey predawn, Matt’s enhanced vision could distinguish a shadowy shape: a steep-sided mesa, rising from the desert. It made Matt think of New Mexico: death, rebirth. Bare rock. Beauty that did not age. Spotlights bathed it, and distance muzzle flash flickered around its crest. Crowned with flame. Bizarrely, music rolled out over the desert: Italian opera. Matt thought of his years at Harvard, of professors in white tie and tails in line for the train down to New York and the Metropolitan Opera. A universe away now.

Matt looked over his shoulder at the line of Churchill tanks. He looked up at the mesa, at the spotlights. He glanced at the lightening horizon.

There is no way we are getting past there without being seen. On the map, this place was marked as a natural formation. It was not. It was a firebase. My whole plan just unraveled.

Matt let out his breath, softly, carefully, between gritted teeth. The team fanned out into a skirmish line and moved toward the rock.

Haitham and his binoculars caught up to Matt’s enhanced eyes. “Italian infantry!” he shouted. “Trench, eleven!”

Matt turned and looked over his shoulder. Behind him, the tank called Pooh rolled over the crest of a dune and into view. Another tank rumbled along behind it. British infantry swarmed forward around them. Unmissable, from the vantage point of the Italian guns high atop the mesa. Obvious, and exposed.

This was a mistake. The realization was suddenly there, full-formed and complete, a leaden weight of certainty in the pit of Matt’s stomach. We just walked into a trap. I made a mistake.

The first shell landed ten meters behind Matt, and the blast wave knocked him off his feet and face-first into the sand. He rolled over, spat out grit, tried to get up, felt machine-gun fire hiss-snap by overhead, felt the air cut into pieces around him. He fell back onto the ground. Behind him, the tanks began to fire back, and the concussive boom of their guns washed over him in waves: flapping his uniform, blowing the fine hairs on his arms. Matt’s huge fingers scraped at the sand, trying to pull the earth up around him like some burrowing animal. He turned his head to the left, and saw Clark Harris lying on the ground next to a Tommy with no face left, firing his Bren back at the Italians. Matt turned his head to the right and he saw Polina shooting back with her scoped rifle, and he saw Dmitry somehow conjuring some sort of massive rocket launcher out of thin air. So that’s what he does, the Minuteman thought numbly. A bullet drilled into the sand in front of him, and Matt watched the plume of sand spray three feet high. He felt himself whimper, and the sound of death and thunder swallowed the sound so that not even he could hear it.

They made us too well, Matt thought. He could hear the crack of each rifle’s discharge, and the hiss of each fragment of shrapnel. He could see each grain of sand flying, sparkling, in the twilight where gunfire raked the dunes; he could smell the rancid stomach acid from where a Tommy sat and leaked his guts into the dust. It’s too much. Matt tried to remember that taking this firebase was not his mission, but the banshee shriek of the shells chased the thought out of his mind. He tried to think of a way to break contact, to flank, to use the tanks to screen his team’s movement. But twenty feet to his right, he could hear a man’s blood drip-drip-dripping into the desert, and the beating of his heart slow, and slow, and stop, and in that silence Matt’s thoughts flailed and sank and were lost.

Silence. The shooting had stopped. The afterechoes of some awful mechanical howl still rang in Matt’s ears. He raised his head.

“O, cielo,” cried an accented voice. “Looks like our concert is having special guests tonight!” Matt raised his gaze further. Three young women in black shirts stood on top of the mesa, lit by floodlights. The one in the middle declared that she was Caterina de’ Medici. Somehow, the possibility that she might be telling the truth did not inspire in Matt at all the same awe that he had felt back in London.

Caterina knew that SHADOCOM was there. She talked about republican scum. She talked about semitic lapdogs. She talked about killing, and called it music. Matt looked at the slack face of the dead man twenty feet to his right, and thought about the sound of that man’s heart beating slower and slower and slower. Music.

The Minuteman felt his left foot get underneath him. Then his right. Then he was standing upright. And the strength moved in him, moved like molten metal, and he knew: I am done hiding.

Caterina had finished her speech. Her henchwomen leaped into the shadows and vanished. The loudspeakers came to life again and howled a new aria. Dmitry threw a rocket at Caterina; Dietrich jeered at her. Willow drove her jeep straight for the enemy trenches, with Haitham still blazing away on the vehicle’s machine gun. The air was full of shrapnel and bullets, and Matt could hear the desert night hiss and snap as the atmosphere was sliced and diced, and heat washed over his face as a shell struck a British truck and it went up in flames, and the brightness almost washed out his vision so that he had to squint into the shadows. There were things moving in those shadows: a woman with claws for hands, a great wolf, legions of beasts and of armored men. There were no battle lines now. He could smell the monsters in the midst of the Allied troops: animal sweat, cold dead flesh, metal and blood.

Matt looked down at his legs. He saw his legs start walking. He didn’t know what spirit possessed them to do such a thing. He gave himself over to it anyway.

Clark Harris was shooting at Caesarina. “Beecher!” he shouted over the din. “This bitch!” Matt watched himself raise his Heavy BAR – a modified version of the autorifle chambered for .375 H&H Magnum, a round usually reserved for elephant hunting. An artillery shell detonated a few dozen feet away, and he felt his feet move to brace against the blast wave, and he didn’t fall. He saw the BAR’s sights line up, as if of their own accord, over Caeserina’s whirling form.

But then he squeezed the trigger. The autorifle roared, and Caesarina spun away into the dark – dead or wounded or unharmed, Matt couldn’t tell. She was lost in the maelstrom. And suddenly Matt felt the smooth metal of the trigger under his finger, felt blood running from a deep cut on his cheek he hadn’t even noticed, heard the noise trying to crowd out every trace of thought. He was back within himself, and his heart was thundering in his ears, and there was no spirit moving in him, and yet he kept moving anyway, because he somehow knew that if he stopped, if he let himself think or doubt or pause, he would be back on his belly in the sand and the noise would be all he could hear.

So he didn’t stop.

Matt marched briskly through the hail of bullets toward the tanks: not running, not ducking, just walking as if he were late for a meeting. Shrapnel sliced the skin of his forearm and glanced off the ultrahard bone underneath; pain washed over him, accepted, ignored. Blood dripped into the sand behind him, and smeared against Pooh’s armor when Matt banged on the front of the tank.

“Move forward!” the Minuteman shouted, and his voice, unnaturally deep and resonant, rolled like a vast kettle drum over the battlefield. “Armor moves forward! Reestablish our front line and target their heavy guns!” Matt’s long training in New Mexico churned in the back of his brain and regurgitated a phrase. “Counter-battery fire! Move forward and engage!”

A bullet ricocheted off Pooh and slammed into Matt’s shoulder. The Minuteman staggered, but stayed on his feet. The leather carapace of his armor had torn open, and the layers of titanium and newly-invented ballistic nylon underneath gleamed black and silver where they had deflected the round. He turned and saw the Iron Weasel near Dmitry, and strode quickly over to the armored vehicle. A figure in Roman armor, separated from his fellows, stumbled out of the melee; Matt raised his BAR and shot the figure in the chest, and the elephant round blew a hole the size of a dinner plate out of the soldier’s back. “Dmitry!” Matt shouted as he approached the Russian. “Lieutenant Cheung! Suppressing fire on those infantry trenches. The armor will take out their artillery; I need you to keep those machine guns quiet. Understood?”

There wasn’t time to wait for a response. Just at the edge of his enhanced hearing, Matt discerned the howl of an incoming shell; he stepped behind the Iron Weasel and pulled Dmitry with him, and felt the tank shake as its armor held off the antipersonnel shrapnel that peppered its front. And then the Minuteman was off and walking again, faster this time, wading into the heart of the melee in which the British troops had found themselves, head swiveling back and forth in search of his team.

“Ariel! Abe!” Matt pulled the young vampire hunter out from behind his motorcycle. I promised his sister he’d come back, Matt thought distantly, but he knew that at this moment, that memory would destroy him, and so it fell away and he let it. “Clark!” The Minuteman raised his BAR, and fired a long burst: cover fire so that Clark could break contact and move to join Ariel and Abe. Shadowy men in Roman armor came apart under the barrage as if they were made of wet cardboard. “Haegler!” Matt saw the German defector glance over his shoulder, and knew that he had been heard; he focused his thoughts and called out with his mind to Polina, and a calm presence at the edge of his consciousness told him that she had understood.

“We cannot stay here!” Matt shouted. “Polina, shoot out those spotlights. They show the enemy every move we make. Then you five use the dark. Stay low, stay quiet. Link up with Willow and Haitham and get inside that rock. Find their artillery magazine." Matt's blue gaze was direct, intense. "And tell Willow to blow the whole place sky-high.”

No sooner had he finished speaking than Matt heard men screaming in terror from his left, somewhere beyond the flaming wreckage of a British truck and the oily smoke that wreathed it. He nodded firmly to the team he had assembled. “Go. We’ll keep their attention focused here.” Keep moving. Don’t stop. Don’t think. Just keep moving. Squinting through the smoke and the fire of the wreckage, Matt could see a giant she-wolf ripping out a British soldier’s intestines: the man’s guts pooled in the sand, soaking up the dust. The Tommy's friends were looking around for somewhere, anywhere, to run or to hide.

Most Minutemen had learned to fight from the program’s instructors in New Mexico. It was there that Matt had learned marksmanship and explosives and tactics. But fighting – that he had learned a long time before, in Mong Yawng, from an old Chinese man called Master Yui. That training had given a young Matthew Beecher the discipline to regain his strength after almost dying from malaria. Lessons rooted that deep never really left.

Just keep moving.

Matt took three steps forward. He planted his left foot on the bonnet of the burned-out truck, and pushed himself into the air. The strength coursed through him now, clean and joyful, and for a moment he was flying, nine feet up, and he plunged through the flames and out the other side. The Tommies looked up at the giant figure soaring out of the fire, and Matt saw one man’s mouth fall open. Bianca Sforza looked up too – and then Matt’s right boot heel collided with her chest with enough force to crush steel, and Matt heard at least one rib snap, and the werewolf’s hind claws left the ground and she went flying in her own turn, at least a dozen feet back into the dark, striking the desert hard enough to send a cloud of sand flying into the night sky.

Matt felt his feet firm under him. He reached down, and helped one of the Tommies upright. “On your feet, corporal,” the Minuteman said. “I’ll be needing your help about now.” Matt reached behind his back, and pulled his bayonet from its sheath: a full-sized gladius of hand-forged tungsten steel, its razor-sharp edge glinting with a layer of silver. It locked onto the lug of Matt’s BAR with a firm click. “Come on!” Matt called to the other British soldiers. “Fix bayonets!” He shifted his stance: holding the BAR tight against his side with the bayonet extended like a spear, toward the great wolf whom he had knocked sprawling. “Stand together,” Matt told the Tommies, “and we’ll get through this. Come on!”

[Cylarn]

Clark felt the heavy vibrations of a large-caliber weapon behind him, as they whisked through the air in the direction of Caesarina. There was no time for Clark to assess the damage amid the shifting, flickering lights, as an armor-clad warrior swiftly advanced at Clark's left, shield forward with a gladius held low. The oddity of Clark's mind allowed for him to catch the threat in his peripherals, and he immediately turned his body - and weapon to meet the threat. His mind was reading the information before him, acting upon his decisions at a split-second. He sighted his target and fired two low shots. One round entered the leg of the legionnary, who momentarily collapsed to one knee, before forcing himself to his feet.

By this time however, Clark was on his feet, rifle still at the ready. The legionnary had moved his shield.

CRACK-CRACK-CRACK-PING

In an instinctive movement, Clark's left hand reached down to his belt and retrieved a fresh clip for his rifle. He opened the action and shoved the clip inside, letting the handle go to charge the weapon. Beecher moved into the fray, calling orders to the armor. Clark stayed with him, turning on the move to engage the legionnaries and werewolves alike with his fire. He crouched next to Pooh, and took aim towards an advancing group of legionnaries as they advanced upon a disorganized squad of Tommies.

CRACK-CRACK, Clark shifted to the next target. CRACK-CRACK

"KEEP YOUR COHESION! OPEN FIRE!"

Two of the legionnaries fell to the ground, and the remaining three were soon dispatched by a fusillade of close-range rifle fire. The tank beside of him roared out a road, reverberating with static and numbness in his ears, his eyes filling with dust. He shifted away from the tank and knelt down, taking aim at an approaching column of legionnaries.

CRACK-CRACK, CRACK-CRACK-PING

"CLARK!"

Clark turned his attention to Beecher, who appeared to be providing covering fire with his BAR. He also noticed that Beecher was attempting to group up some of them. Not waiting for clarification, Clark bolted from cover, moving with haste towards Abe and Ariel.

"MOVING!' he called out.

He slid down into a crouch near Beecher and the others. Haegler soon joined them. Matt gave his orders: keep moving, regroup with Willow, and destroy the Italian firebase. Clark could see the flashes of the M2 up in the distance as it blazed between their position and the impromptu no-man's-land. Clark loaded in a fresh magazine, and turned to the others.

"Okay, we move in a line march at a four-yard spread!" Clark shouted at the small group. "Do not blaze your own trails! We don't know what else is out there on the ground! I'll take point; count to five, and then move your asses behind me! If I explode, keep moving to Willow!"

Clark looked towards the tracers, and suddenly broke away from their position, moving low and as quickly as his bent knees could propel him, without absolutely wiping out his stamina, after Willow's path of destruction.

[Wolfenium]

There was something about the theatrics that rubbed Ariel the wrong way. Was it the overt insults and grandiose boasts? The extreme bloodletting around her? Ariel was a woman who prided the power and strength of Empire. These, however, were folks eager to usurp that, and wholly unworthy and even incapable to do so. As Caterina let loose the animals, so did she.

"UWEEEGGGHHH," screamed an Italian vampire in renaissance armour, cleaved through the torso by the silent Briton, as her sword seared through his cold flesh. Searing red hot like an iron, her blade lacked the usual distinct flames that usually doused her sword. Eyeing the surrounding fiends, her usual cheery look had been swapped with a grim, even crazed glare. But it was not that of a screaming berserker. It was eerily tranquil, and chilling to the bone.

"Acknowledged," was all she said, jetting straight at a startled legionnaire as she cleaved her weapon into his skull. For now, she appeared lucid enough to stick to Matt's orders, sticking close to Abe and the others. But there was no 'poppy' from her; none of the usual sweet nothing, for an unworthy people had dared to claim Rome's lineage by blood, and that was a travesty she now aimed to correct.

---

Huddled further back as she tried to patch up the wounded, Anna looked visibly stressed, even nervous. But the haunting fear that plagued her in Warsaw had ebbed considerably, and the thought that she was getting used to the carnage deeply worried her. For now, her barriers were able hold off the Tre Stelle's goons, though it was also difficult to maintain them under fire. A couple of bottles of potions to hurl at any interloper able to break through, all she hope for was for her friends to hold off the hordes.

"Don't wear yourself out," she advised Anna, as she manned a Bren gun nest protecting the patients, "you're still dehydrated."

"Shut up," snapped the stubborn girl, firing at the distant enemies in the dark, "I can handle it!"

"Milena, you're in no position to fight," Anna said again, "you're barely standing-"

"I said I'm fine," she yelled in anger, her pale face and worn eyes betraying her strained state. As a crazed legionnaire forced itself through the barrier, the medic barely had time to warn her. But Milena was ahead, freezing the startled enemy on the spot. There was an immense anger building in her, but unlike Ariel, it was not over the Tre Stelle. Clenching her fist as the legionnaire started writhing and clutching his head on the floor, Anna could almost see the dents forming on his head, as if a giant invisible hand was tightening on it like a vice. She barely had time to register the end, the deafening noise of war squelching the sickening results as the figure collapsed back into the shadows motionless. Panting heavily, Milena appeared exhausted, even close to collapse. The ramifications of her obstinate attitude toward Polina was beginning to show.

"Antoniya, get her on a sickbed," Anna implored the girl, "she needs help."

Milena was in no condition to fight, and her inexperience with her telekinesis was only putting undue strain.

[Fascist Republic Of Bermuda]

Whatever Cynthia Marshall had expected to see when she enlisted in the New Zealand Army, all the way back in 1939, it was not this.

The Kiwi had seen a lot of crazy shit in her time in the Army, from an armored train to that vampire who didn’t seem to grasp the fact that they were in the middle of the Sahara desert to that one time she ran into a werecamel (admittedly, that last one might have been a mirage). All that rather paled in comparison to a legion of evidently Roman soldiers led by opera-obsessed Italian noblewomen werewolves smashing through the British lines.

She dove to prone as the shells thudded into the ground a few dozen meters away. The artillery seemed to focused on the tanks, that was good… but those damned Italians playing dress up just tore through the Tommies on the front. That needed to be remedied.

Cynthia quickly opened the bipod on her Lewis and set it down. Cursing at herself to speed up all the way, she grabbed one of her three 47-round drums and slid it into place on top of the gun. She grabbed the grip, chambered a round, and opened fire at the legionnaires who had the courtesy to stand completely upright for the benefit of machine gunners everywhere. They may have armor, of course, but in her mind Cynthia had a far greater power on her side: silver-tipped .303 British.

A jeep screamed past a few meters away, machine guns blazing, as it charged… right at the Italian lines. Now, the LRDG had done some pretty ridiculous things with jeeps, but a direct charge at a trench line was something approaching suicidal. But the American- Clark?- seemed to think charging was a good idea as well, with a gaggle of SHADCOM commandos and Tommies in tow. Those mad bastards in the jeep would probably indeed make an admirable distraction. Cynthia hadn't heard any orders, though- admittedly, she'd been busy firing off her machine gun to pay an ear to the indistinct yelling near the Churchill. In lieu of having any idea what was going on, Cynthia decided to keep where she was, firing off bursts from the Lewis gun to keep enemy fire off of the advancing squad.

[Rupudska]

So.

That was certainly a thing that had happened and that she had seen it, thought Carmen. O, how the mighty had fallen - if this was what the Italian nobility now called 'stelle', then the concept of noblesse oblige was well and truly dead in the Mediterranean. Obnoxious, arrogant, pompous, and virulently authoritarian and hating of the Other - if she didn't know any better she'd thought she was listening to one of the brain-damaged propagandists used by the Francoists.

As Matt gave his orders to those in hearing range to hear him over the roar of the Italians' attempt at modern warfare, Carmen had a similar idea to what he suggested Polina should do. The lights were trouble if they wanted to break through, and if the Tre Stelle saw a unit trying to penetrate the battle line - or worse, recognized any of them as SHADOCOM - they'd be in a world of shit.

The barrel of her Springfield shifted where she lay, near the back of the line, and the flash-hidden scope zeroed in on one of the spotlights. With a crack of her gun, the bullet went through the bulb and part of the coil, rendering the entire spotlight wholly irreparable. At least by the standards of field combat.

Carmen suppressed a smirk as she got up and moved forward, keeping by some degree to the shadows as she searched for a new position to destroy another spotlight from. A Son of Romulus crossed her path and was promptly and brutally dispatched as the South American vampire swung her leg into his groin, then her other into his kidney, and a free arm into his sternum with enough force to shatter it. She didn't even bother to hold back the urge to drink from him, only holding back enough to not linger.

As she expected, the blood of a pagan, non-virgin lupine man was foul. But it was better than nothing.

---

Esther too was in the back, but she was even farther back than Carmen was. Golemancy was not exactly the sort of thing that was easily done properly under siege, and Esther didn't want to be anywhere near the front line until her golems were ready.

On the other hand, she didn't want to take her sweet time making one golem that could easily be dispatched with a lucky shot, no matter how lucky that shot would be, until she got to where they were really meant to fight. To do so would require a dreadful waste of what usable water she had brought - she had one canteen marked for her own consumption, and three of equal size for making golems, and she didn't even want to use one to its totality.

She pulled out a folded paper and placed it on a hard piece of earth, pulled the glove from her right hand, and pressed the paper into the ground. With a small crunch, her terrakinetic magic carved the circle printed on the paper into the ground. Esther did this four more times, producing five circles with six-pointed stars, each about the breadth of her shoulders. She checked them for any errors, found none, and pocketed the paper before unscrewing the cap on one of the bottles. It didn't take much water to make golemancy circles this simplistic (by her standards) to work, and the circles greedily sucked up what water she offered.

A brief incantation in Hebrew for concentration as she held both her now-ungloved hands out in front of her and towards the circles, and five octopus-like golems rose from the earth, each with a body the size of a large gramophone, and arms roughly as long as Esther's.

A second incantation, also in Hebrew, and the emet appeared on each, each time on a different part of the 'body' of the golem. For centuries it had been assumed that it had to be inscribed on the forehead, but sometime in the 18th century it had been discovered that as long as it was near where the 'brain' of whatever organic life it was based on was, it would work fine.

She swept her hand out, and the circles vanished. The five golems 'looked' around for a second or two before turning to their master, who was already loading her rifle.

"We need to clear a path through these dagos. Grab any guns from dead bodies you can see that you can use, and either follow me," she said as she pulled out a handful of photographs, "or find Matt, Heim, or Willow. Do whatever they order you to if you do. Don't bother killing every brownshirt in sight, we just need to get through. Now go!"

And they went.

[Agritum]

The ambush was quite unexpected in itself, but SHADOCOM's response to it quickly blew up the Axis expectations. The Folgore moved out of their trenches as soon as it became clear that Bianca's wolfpack was being mauled by the massed heavy arms and cannon fire, the she-wolf scurrying away the moment a giant man came down crashing on her. The Legio Sanguinia wasn't faring much better, cut down by a blonde woman with a sword, blown up by silver-tipped machine gun fire, made to boil by an Arabic man splurting water around.

"You bunch of cowards, make your Duce proud!" Catherina yelled from up above, just as Caesarina got hit by multiple silver rounds and quickly started boiling in ethereal flames, screeching, turning into a swarm of common European bats who flew off into the moonlight, still on fire. "You stupid Spaniard! You doomed us worse than the whore Lucretia!" the now enraged witch screamed. As the werewolves and undead legionnaires retreated, the Folgore forces founds themselves alone, locked in a firefight with the Tommies and their armored support. Noticeably, the now mundane attack felt even harder on the Allied troops.

Heim continued to make calculations, trying to see an exit through the ensuing standstill. None. No solutions appeared. None that she knew of, at least. She had to continue solving differential equations and integers in her mind, keep table of all the datasets presented by the battlefields and making statistical analyses, finding the median...the future. And she had to do this while firing off Garand shots at an all-volunteer unit of a professional military. Polina had resumed searching for human targets, after shooting a roundabout bullet which efficiently tore through the spotlights. Heim nodded. Polina smiled.

'Everything I can do I will do for you and the squad, comrade Captain!"

Catherina saw Dima's psychic rocket whizz by, and had a split second to correct the course of the broom, seconds before the rocket exploded and sent her flying backwards, narrowly avoiding the machine gun fire Dieter had unloaded upon her. Her once cheeky grin had since formed into a a furious glare. "Foolish bastards! Useless cowards! I will destroy you all with my Gran Finale!"

The artillery pieces enveloped by her magical aura levitated together in a circle, massing their firepower. They shot together, a massive column of fire headed right towards Pooh and the other tanks of Kingforce. Right towards Heim and Poli. The red-eyed glanced above. She calculated. No chance of escaping. Visions of the outcome of the war flashed again before her eyes. Polina felt it too, seeing Heim kneel, dumbstruck. Her esper eyes darted up above again in a split second. She couldn't. But she could at least try, to deviate the shells. She focused on the largest ones.

"Quelle tristesse"

A burst of light erupted from up above, cutting through the shells, making them explode in mid-air. "Witchcraft is even more naive and hopeless than I thought. One wonders why Good God even let you thrive in his Creation."

Iridelle floated down on her carpet, standing with arms crossed before a speechless Catherina. The Italian witch sweated coldly, her expression locked in silent horror. The French maga opened her mouth again, an ancient tongue ringing through it. "kêm-nâ mazdâ mavaitê pâyûm dadå hyat mâ dregvå dîdareshatâ aênanghê anyêm thwahmât âthrascâ mananghascâ ýayå shyaothanâish ashem thraoshtâ ahurâ tãm môi dãstvãm daênayâi frâvaocâ!"

The magnifying glass attached to the carpet glowed bright as the morning sun, releasing another lay of iridescent right, tearing apart the dark veil of the night, cutting clean through the ammassed barrels of the artillery pieces which promptly slid off the metal frames, neutered. Catherina shook her head, cursed, turned around and sprinted away beyond enemy lines. Beyond the horizon. "Umph." Iridelle muttered, glancing down at her allies. Heim shook her head. The unseen variable at work.

---

To Folgore's credit, no one in the unit effectively retreated, most of them feigning a maneuver behind dunes to launch counterattacks at the marching Tommies, even when they had since neutralized the firebase. Most of them died while still embracing their Carcanos, some surrendered uttering profanities, crying at the death of their companions, cursing the names of the Tre Stelle. Abraham did not rejoice in the pain of the soldiers, as vicious as they had been in battle a few minutes before. It was just too grating to hear. Enough to push him to unfix his Babylon Pin. He didn't want to understand what the now prisoner Italians were yelling.

"Who do you take orders from?!" Heim yelled in perfect, Milanese-sounding Italian, kicking a para Tenente across the face after having bound him like an human salami. The man groaned, his face bloodied and caked in sand and sweat. "I told you, you crazy bitch! It was those fucking whores, they left us the moment their lackeys started getting hammered, you saw that!"

Polina sighed. "He's saying the truth, Miss Heim".

Heim looked down, grimacing. "So we have no lead on who told the Tre Stelle we were coming, great. The Axis will be on our heels now. This makes the whole desert voyage sound even worse."

Heim felt a tap on her leg. She instinctively moved it a way and looked at the source, discovering a squirming octopus-like creature made out of clay. "Ah, thank you, Hezekiah. What's this?"

Heim grabbed a folded map, opening it to reveal a map of Axis operations in Qattara. It even detailed trails deemed dangerous by the fascist forces due to the presence of local Tuareg tribes.

"Mhh, a place where not even the Axis dates to set foot...could this work as a relatively safe route for us, Captain? We're not your usual logistic team, afterall."

Naomi shook her head. "I am skeptical. Regardless of how skilled you are, those tribes know the desert pretty well. We can't risk drawing ambushes. Especially if they got some embedded collaborationists. You never know, around Muslims."

There was a very acid tinge to her words.

[Malshan]

I'm back...whooooo....! I'll try to be a bit more timely with these posts now that this old flame is active again. In the meantime, here's what the absentee berzerker was up to while y'all were having a blast.

Markus had awoken slowly to the sound of gunfire and screaming men, the effects of the viscous, homebrewed alcohol affecting him worse than it usually did. Must be gettin' old... he thought silently. When the group began mobilizing, the old wolf disembarked from the truck he'd been sheltering in and stretched, yawning loudly. The retreating French soldiers looked over momentarily at the noisy mountain of a man before losing interest and continuing with their flight from the front line.

Markus stared upward, drinking in the moonlight for a minute or two while the screaming increased in volume behind him and beyond the line of trucks, tanks, and artillery vehicles. Eventually, he grabbed his rifle and strutted toward the fighting, pausing only to take a drink from a flask different from his usual, one which lit his eyes with green and gold light.

He had noted the monotony of rushing soldiers from either side and had used his rifle more than he had in the past, his targets seeming to evaporate in a spray of burnt bone and blood while he only engaged in hand-to-hand sparingly. His bloodlust had been significantly dampened on the ride over and, for some reason, he didn't seem as eager to engage in the battle; not a single droplet of human blood or meat found its way past his lips during the battle.

When it ended, to him seemingly as quickly as it had started, Markus stopped firing and took stock; a silver bullet had lodged itself in his thigh, the flesh blackening to char and smoking as the holy metal ate through his flesh. No wonder he'd been feeling so dull - the holy metal had that sort of effect on the flesh of a maneater. He sat in the sand, pulled out a knife, and set to work carving the blackened flesh and muscle out of his leg, not bothering to worry about the blood loss or missing portions of his anatomy. Markus sliced through muscle, tendons, and ligaments, essentially reducing his leg from an appendage to a simple club in his stupefied state.

But he wasn't worried; there was plenty of meat lying around that he could use. And plenty of discarded rifles to scavenge and make a splint out of.

[Cylarn]

Clark ran and ran across the rock and sand, rifle in one hand as he dashed through the darkness. Tracers struck through the black sky, accompanied by loud cracks that Clark could only hear best described as "numbness." There was no sense of better judgement in his mind at the moment, no "voice of reason" telling him that advancing on a dug-in Italian position was a very bad idea. By this point in his life, Clark knew that such "rational" thoughts could only serve to get him killed, when the picture was all too clear. Assaults were to be considered suicidal by many, not least the men who carried them out.

A stream of tracers struck just before Clark, hitting the sand and knocking up dust. DOWN He instinctively dove for the ground, anticipating many more tracers. They had been made.

"INCOMING ROUNDS! GET DOWN! KEEP MOVING!"

It was blind fire at best, rounds streaking above the heads of the assault team. The ground shook with errant explosions, although nothing that was directly threatening the crawling soldiers. Two hands on his weapon, Clark trudged across the uncomfortable terrain, taking note of the incoming tracers. He now noticed more tracers flying from behind; friendly rounds. Clark came to a stop. There was supporting fire coming in on the trenches, putting down the hurt upon the defending Folgore. It was time to draw in and engage.

"Halt," he called back to the team. "Prepare to spread out and fucking charge that position. Fire and advance, simple as that. Watch your fire zones, don't hit each other. Don't stop moving forward. Call your grenades."

From a large pouch on his belt, Clark drew a flare gun and used his thumb to release the breach of the weapon. He loaded in a single star shell, and pointed the weapon high above his head, bringing it into an angle as best to approximate its descent over the Italian position. No longer, would the assault team be shooting into the dark. Clark gave a squeeze to the trigger, stopping only when he noticed a ray of light strike through the Italian position, ending the deafening roar of their guns.

"ON YOUR FEET AND MOVE!" Clark yelled as he threw the flare gun to the side, bringing his rifle back into a ready stance, gripped in both hands. His heart was pounding, his eyes were watching the silhouettes of surprised men ahead. Clark bolted forward, screaming out a horrid whooping sound as he moved forward. Whomping sounds passed by him, as he crashed onto the ground, taking aim through the iron sights of his rifle.

"FIRING!" he yelled, before taking a quick moment to line up his sights with his first target.

BOOM-BOOM

With little time to notice the unfortunate Folgore trooper falling to the ground, Clark turned to his next target, yet another Folgore trooper, this one operating a Breda 30.

BOOM-BOOM...BOOM-BOOM

Amind a clash of sparks, Clark spotted his target slumping down into the trench.

"MOVING!"

Clark quickly forced himself up to his feet and dashed forward, struggling to pull a fragmentation grenade free from his harness with his right hand. He wrapped his index finger around the pin, tightening his grip before coming into a crouch. He took notice of the general fall-back of Italian troops from the forward trenches.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!"

---

As quickly as it had begun, the engagement was over. Clark hated the noxious smell of burning flesh, the very smell that - among others - was aromating through his nose. His stomach queased uncomfortably with a twang of nausea, as if he was being stabbed in the stomach. Around him were the smoking reminders of the battlefield; smoldering pillboxes, piles of equipment, and plenty of charred corpses. There was no escape from it. He felt he barely had enough strength to lift his cigarette to his mouth, body leaning back against a remarkably intact Fiat 666 as he watched Heim abuse a bloodied soldier in his native tongue. Clark could understand much of it; he never considered himself to truly know Italian, but his mastery of Spanish - and proximity to the Italian language during his time in Spain - helped him to gather the core concepts of what was being discussed.

Like the rest of the team, Clark was concerned about the possibility that there was a mole within SHADOWCOM, or at least, the Allied elements that knew of their operations. Heim - Sarah - appeared to be done with her captive, when her attention turned to the strange octopus. He pushed his body from the truck, and felt a brief uneasiness in his body as he stood on his own two feet. There goes the adrenaline. He slung his weapon across his right shoulder, cigarette in his left hand. A map was in play now, Heim asking Matt if he wished to take the unit onto routes that Axis forces refrained from venturing down. The tan British woman doubted this. Clark felt there was a personal reason behind the venom in her voice. He looked over towards Sayyah, and then back at Naomi and Heim.

"We'll have to move with a lot more caution down those routes, 'specially with vehicles," Clark said, before taking a brief puff of his cigarette. "I'd highly anticipate that these tribes shot the wheels right from underneath the Axis, and they can do it again."

"The bikes will be imperative here, for scouting out the roads ahead We'll need be be partly as mobile as these tribals."

[Monfrox]

"God fuckin'- sunuva- shhhhhhit! Hrrgh! Mother-!"

In her reckless charge, things had not gone exactly as planned. Willow now found herself squeezed under the chassis of the MB, trying to feel out where she needed repairs. She knew that the jeep had taken a few hits, but she couldn't see it in this darkness. It also didn't help that the thing was just running at full speed a minute ago so everything was stupid hot. After so many times where she tried touching with some cloth, she found a leak. Well, she wasn't sure what was leaking but she quickly patched it as best she could before pulling herself out from underneath. She popped the hood and stared into the inky blackness of the engine compartment.

"...fuck..."

And began the process, carefully, all over again. She knew that the headlights could be rotated in, but running down the 6 volt battery was not something she was up for doing in the middle of the desert. Willow wiped a few beads of sweat from her neck and forehead, and smeared grease where her hand touched. Her helmet lay on the seat with the goggles on top of it.

"Is it too much to ask for a mission where I don't have to deal with sand? Fucking shit..." She murmured as she tussled her hair and listened to all the tiny sand particulates rain down onto the bumper.

[Fascist Republic Of Bermuda]

The Italians were even more of a pushover than usual. Cynthia would be the first to chalk it up to the fact that it was a full combined arms push with SHADCOM support instead of a bunch of lads in some trucks, but even with Tre Stelle the Italians somehow managed to stumble at the first sight of actual resistance. It was almost impressive.

Cynthia doubted this incredibly luck would hold over the entire mission, but it was a good start at least.

The Kiwi got to her feet and unloaded her Lewis gun. Good Lord, it was heavier than she remembered. A twitch in her healed leg reminded her that it was probably because she'd been out of it for a while. Maybe she'd get one of those Bren guns. Yes, that would work better, probably. Closed magazine meant less dust in the action, meant more reliable function... on and on. She’d get a lighter LMG later. For now she’d haul around the Lewis, or maybe grab an SMLE from a truck. One of the two.

People were gathering around a map and throwing around their suggestions. Well, might as well add her voice to the pile.

She sauntered up to the growing crowd and took in everybody else’s points. “Looks safe enough," She started, glancing around, "If Jerry or the wogs had collaborators in the tribes, they would be using those routes,” a pointed glare at Naomi, “The Yank’s got the right idea. Keep mobile, get through it quickly. With luck, we’ll be through before they even know we were there.”

[Wolfenium]

Ariel could only grimace as Naomi mentioned the Tauregs. Such was their enthusiasm for the Zionist movement that they would fight any who opposed the creation of the Jewish homeland. For the moment, it was convenient for them to join the Allied side, for no other reason than for the millions of Jews being culled like cattle in the occupied Europe. But such altruism was, if anything, incidental to their main objective.

"We'll take the routes," she said, "we're certainly not going to line up for the Axis to take potshots at us. Like Cynthia said, if the Tauregs were Axis collaborators, they wouldn't have been avoided like a scourge. Doesn't make them allies, but they're certainly not enemies until further notice. If you have any complaints, feel free to shove it up your arse until the battle's over. We're wasting moonlight."

[Agritum]

The Touareg Route, as Heim had nicknamed it, proved to be much safer from enemy contact that anyone expected. Probably because a freak sandstorm hitting the convoy out of nowhere in an otherwise clear desert day with no strong winds to foretell it didn't really count as an Axis attack. Fleming had briefed the team about environment hazards in the middle east, some serious, like the extreme weather conditions, some a bit more out in the open, like ambushes by what the Britons called "Genies". The British reports on these entities mostly dated back to the Mahdi war in Sudan, and given how opium had basically been the anti-pain medication du jour for the British soldiers of that time, combined with a wealth of hookah hash, everyone had quickly discounted them as a quirky effect of desert fever and Dervish psychological warfare.

Storm goggles set on her eyes as the sandstorm rocked her Jeep, Heim scanned the horizon, feeling yet another hidden variant out strike at the team, something she had not calculated yet. Another misstep that could have become deadly to them. Heim bit her lips, gazing at the columns of dust advancing towards them. Some of them columns, other whirling desert devils, big enough to resemble the tornadoes which plagued the Americas.

The sandstorm came crashing down on the convoy, breaking down communications. Ariel and Abe narrowly avoided crashing their bike, stopping hastily behind a small dune and taking cover under it. The sturdy Renault vans of the Long Range Desert Group came to another halt, as Polina, Dima and the other occupants braced tightly in the vehicles, waiting for the sandy onslaught to pass. The sound of the wind imposed itself on the plain for a full minute or two, before something noisier began ringing out.

Footsteps. En masse. Clinging of armor. Swinging ammo belts. Creaky wood of...muskets? Wheels of cannon carts being dragged by unseen hands across the expanse. The sand started to clear, just enough to give Heim a better glimpse of the scene.

Clad in the musky, corroded armors of eras bygone, Egyptian and Hellenistic alike, carrying the Mameluk turbans or the campaign tricorns of Napoleon's army, even the red coats and pith helmets of unluck tommies from almost a century before. An army of un-people, if that they could be called: beings of thick fog, glowing green, violet, red, azure fogs, taking humanoid shape to don the equipment of those who they had preyed on ever since that desert had existed. The unnatural sandstorm and the dust devils were the hallmark of the arrival of the forgotten tribes of the desert:

The Djinni.

"Matthew, I didn't see this coming." Heim's voice almost broke. Naomi's eyes widened, unbelievingly, at the ghoulish spectacle of the ghostly army, advancing on their position like vultures on a carrion. "Is this some sort of curse? A berber curse!?" the Palestinian yelled, as the crew of the LRDG remained cold-blooded at the unfolding ambush. A leading djinn raised a rusty scimitar and screeched, signaling the column of spirits to rush the convoy en masse.