HaM

The New Generation Chapter 9

by

Hello all!

Yes, I am still around. Life’s been fucky. I’m sure everyone can agree, but I’ve not given up on story writing, but I have had a lot of writer’s block and a lack of drive to sit down and put something on the computer. I still have tons of story ideas, but where I want to go with this story is going to need a lot of filler and development for a valuable impact on the stories I really want to tell. So to get things going I’ll be going back to how I wrote the first bunch of installments of HaM. The chapters are going to be shorter, but hopefully more consistent and paced better. I felt like the pacing had been too slow, and was going to take me forever, so I’ll try doing shorter chapters focusing on key points to the plots for the characters. With that said, here’s chapter 9.

Enjoy.

TNG Chapter 9

 

Veronica watched and noted carefully what she saw as her white blood cells devastated Adler’s blood. The process was much slower, almost lazy, as the two of them found that running the tests while the samples were chilled slowed the organisms down. In every year she’s run, Adler always beats the red cells, and always loses to the white cells. She can say with confidence that biologically Adler is weaker than her. What drives her curiosity now is that she has never seen Adler sick, he says he’s been sick twice in his life, but she’s been sick plenty around him and he never caught anything she had. Once her test was completed she reviewed her notes and and turned to Adler, who was behind her as usual.

“No changes, Addy,” she announced, “how’s your test?” Adler had a test between infected blood and his blood. They were trying to figure out why he was so resilient to illness.

“I’m winning, no shocker, but when i sampled blood it doesn’t test for the illness.” She was puzzled.

“So, maybe you eat it?” He was also puzzled.

“But where would it go? I should still test positive.” Veronica scratched her head.

“Maybe the virus falls off?”

“That’s not how viruses work, babe.” Adler scoffed.

“I’ll wait for the process to finish and then I’ll test all the blood, together.” She nodded, still affixed on her bizarre idea. As soon as he collected all the blood from the tray she smeared test paper on the tray. He rolled his eyes, and groaned when the blood tested negative. Veronica took her test paper and examined it, minute color changes were present to indicate the presence of a virus. She shivered in glee. Adler was visibly frustrated.

“This doesn’t make any sense. This is bullshit.”

“Well, maybe the virus just can’t cling to your makeup? Like, we know that it’s biologically different, and has different properties than normal organics, maybe the virus literally doesn’t have the ability to infect it.”

“That doesn’t make sense, your body defenses lose to the virus, but beat my composition. Why isn’t the virus doing the same?” She pondered for a minute, looking at a magnet on his glacis plate. An idea cane to her. She grabbed the magnet and tossed it onto his chest, where it stuck. She did this repeatedly, then she slapped it on her thigh, where it slid off. She looked at Adler with her eyebrows raised. 

“I don’t think it’s too far fetched to think of something like this happening.” Adler was still visibly angry. “Here, babe. Viruses are very, very good at what they do, be a pathogen and infect organisms. They aren’t very good at much else, they have evolved for a millennia to do this one thing flawlessly… and remember when you told me that element one one four had to literally be dug out of the ground? Well, the virus evolved without you, so now that the virus has come to find you, now it has no way of interacting and infecting you. In fact, some trait about your biology actually repels viruses from your body, you can’t even carry it like other organisms.” His anger began fading.

“So, like, like how some animals from the Galapagos islands can no longer breed with similar species?”

“Yes! Isolated evolution drove them apart!” They smiled and giggled together. Adler’s hands snaked across her body and tenderly glided over her long legs, her hands similarly glided over his armored glacis and just under his turret chin. He brought her close to him and held her like a baby against him, they nuzzled together like a puppy to it’s mother. “I love your body, baby.”

“And I love yours. There’s so much to learn from each other.”

“Even when we built every part of you, there’s still so much mystery and knowledge to learn.”

“I think it’s beautiful, centuries of study and we still don’t know everything.”

“And perhaps we never will.”

“The world is beautiful, just like you.” She smiled wide and twirled her index finger under his chin. Her eyes examined carefully how his chin molded and deformed the rigid cast turret face to bend like her skin, it was such an incredible sight for her. She knows how it happens, more concentration of 114 in that part of his body, but it’s still amazing. Adler combed over her body, feeling her glistening skin with his hands, her gentle heartbeat and blood pulsing through her veins, her rhythmic breathing, how exciting it was to him. He loved everything about her, from her dependence on coffee to her bad puns, from her crazy morning hair to her bad knees, and everything in between. “I’m so happy that we get along better than my parents.” She chuckled.

“Zinc and steel get along better than your parents. How did they even get together in the first place? I mean, Germany and Russia hated each other. ” Adler looked away and nodded slowly. He didn’t like bringing up that part of his past. He didn’t like talking about his parents much, either, especially their relationship.

“Just know that I love you for you, for how beautiful you are. You amaze me every day.” He took her hand and kissed it.

“I love you, too, you big metal softie! C’mere.” He picked her up and held her tight, she wrapped her arms around his turret neck as best she could. In this moment he thought back to being a kid, just wanting his parents to love each other like they loved him.

 

1956

 

Adler sulked into his room to hide from his parents and their ferocious fighting. All he wanted to do was spend the weekend at Geoff’s house but his parents disagreed on the decision. Just like every time they disagree they start fighting, which turns into undermining accusations and insults towards one another. He went over to his toy figures of superheroes and began playing with them, tears silently rolling down his turret cheeks. His little stories and scenarios his action figure storylines would play out were always filled with happy and loving parents, or stories where the parents come together after a life threatening situation. His favorite superhero character was an alien adopted by loving parents who treated him like he was their own son. Individually his parents loved him, whenever dad isn’t around mom likes to hold him, kiss him on his cupola, was kind and quiet around. When mom wasn’t around dad was hearty and caring, stern, of course, he held Adler to high standards of manners, but treated him very nicely and would teach him some cool tricks or talents, or told him a lot of jokes. The problem was when they were together, the atmosphere was always tense, mom was always angry and short tempered, dad was always on edge and anxious. Adler hated it. He envied the other kids and their parents.

The two of them loved Adler very much but they had very different opinions on how he should be raised, Devastator was a bit more free-willed with Adler, while Vitaliya was more controlling, a helicopter parent as it would later be called. Dev was confident in Adler’s own abilities to act on his own, make his own decisions. He saw Adler as a smart kid- saying that he gave Adler some brains from the gene pool- while Vitaliya swears that he’s going to get himself terribly hurt and make the wrong decisions. This is usually the gist of their points of view, Vitaliya says he’s not ready for something while Dev says he should try it.

Adler had never been fully told by his parents that their first encounter was less than ideal, he’d heard enough nods and references in their arguments to figure out that they had fought in combat and his father won the fight and then did bad things to his mother, which is how he ended up in the world. Adler swears that if they didn’t produce him like that, then his parents would probably be able to see ends meet and not let their differing opinions tear the family apart, but that’s the world Adler dreams of, not the world he lives in. So here he is now, playing with his action figures, silently weeping.

The shouting abruptly ended and a knock rang through Adler’s room from the sliding door. Before Adler could say anything it began to open, it was his father. He entered the room and closed the sliding door behind him, releasing a deep and drawn out sigh as he did so. He looked at Adler, he saw the tears in his eyes and the devoid look of sadness in his eyes. Even with an inflexible body Devastator could sense the body language was of anxiety, stress, and desperation. Slowly he inched over to Adler’s side, there’s not much room for them side by side and in a year or two Devastator doesn’t expect to fit into the room like this anymore. They’re snug against each other, with Dev’s gun hovering over his son, he sees the toys in Adler’s hands, he rests a hand on Adler’s engine deck and sighs again, quietly.

“Whatcha got there, son?” Adler swallows to clear his throat.

“My action figures.” There’s still a lump in his throat and he sounds pathetic. It pains Dev to see Adler like this.

“Well son, your mother won’t let you stay at Geoff’s house this weekend, I think we could ask his parents if he could stay over at our house instead, how’s that sound?”

“Okay, I guess.” Adler was still choked up and sniffling.

“Does Geoff have action figures, too?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. He has toy trains instead.” Dev chuckled.

“Trains? Like, like choo-choo trains?”

“Yeah.” Dev laughed to himself.

“Well I think he should come here, and I think you should show him how cool your action figures are, then he’ll play with action figures instead.” Adler smiled a little, so did Dev. “So, what are your action figures doing, son? Are they, are they fighting?”

“Not right now, no.” Adler explained his characters and their stories, it really pulled at Dev’s heartpistons, he patted Adler on the deck, running his fingers through some of the filter grates as his son explained it all. Dev, too, wished he was living in those storylines. When Adler finished Dev got really serious with him for a life lesson.

“Son, Adler, now, there are many good things in the world, and many bad things, too. People do many good things, and many bad things, too. You must be careful, though, you must think about your actions because people don’t remember you for good things, if the bad thing you did was really bad. People will remember you for the bad thing you did.  For me, well, I, my peers, the tanks my age, they don’t see me, most of them at least, they don’t see me as a good guy, they see me as a bad guy, and I’m very ashamed of it. I’m very ashamed. You, you’re young, young and full of good,” he gestured towards the action figures, “good things await you in life, but you have to be a good person. See, I’ve done a lot of great things in my day, I’ve also done some terrible things, but all it takes is one thing, one really bad thing, and that’s what everyone knows you for, forever. You can build a, a million bridges! You can build a million bridges but if you burn one, just one bridge, you’re called a bridge burner.”

Adler sat still, processing what his father said to him. He sniffled again and wiped his faceplate. He muttered a thank you to his father, who sat quietly next to him, adoring his son. Dev tells Adler to ask Geoff at school the next day to see if he could stay the weekend at Adler’s house, Adler agreed. Dev milked every moment he could with his son, refusing to leave his side unless absolutely necessary, Adler was the only joy he had in his life. Eventually he felt his welcome had worn, and Adler should get some sleep for school tomorrow, so he wished him a goodnight, told Adler he loved him, and pried himself away from him so he could move about his own room. Once he left the room Vitaliya swept in to give Adler her goodnight kisses and wishes. Dev made himself cozy in the main space, while Vitaliya strolled by and entered the master “bedroom,” she sat at the door for a moment looking at Dev, figured he wasn’t coming into the room, and shut the door behind her.

The next day Adler asked Geoff if he could stay at Adler’s instead, and the next day Geoff said his parents said no. Adler was devastated. He was greatly upset when he came home, and in his emotional fury he blamed it on his mom and dad fighting all the time. He blamed his loneliness on them fighting all the time and that nobody wanted to be around them because they fought so much. Vitaliya was awestruck, never had Adler said something so hurtful to her. Dev agreed with Adler, he told Adler to play outside for a bit. Adler agreed and stormed away. Dev shut the door behind him and confronted Vitaliya, instantly declaring that Adler is right. On this rare occasion she agreed.

Dev sensed some vulnerability here so he used it to his advantage, he pretty much turned her arm into the small of her back and forced her to come to grips with Adler’s growing maturity. He argued that she always had others around her, and that he, himself, did as well. They “grew up” around others, but her desire to control him was stripping him of friends. In her emotional instability she began blaming herself, and Dev rode that wave until she agreed Adler should stay with Geoff for the weekend. Dev was now awestruck, he just got Vitaliya to agree with him, no yelling, no shouting, no threats or insults, just a conversation. Admittedly a one sided conversation, but still a conversation. He inched closer to her, and in good faith he outstretched his arms for an embrace, and she did the same. Suddenly they found themselves holding each other closely, she wept into his side where he brought her, and he squeezed her tightly against himself. It brought him to tears, too. They savored this moment, this rare moment together. They whispered sweet nothings to each other, and made their own plans for the weekend. They decided to try something new, something fresh, something to hopefully bring them closer together forever.

Adler came back in after a while, his tears had dried and he had accepted his fate when his mother told him he could stay with Geoff for the weekend. Adler instantly exploded with energy, leaping off the ground in excitement. Dev scolded him, telling him he’s going to shatter the floor like that, but Adler was too excited to care. Vitaliya told him his room had better be clean before he can go or it will never happen again, with uncontrollable energy he flew into his room and began the chore. Vitaliya smiled, Dev also smiled, seeing the joy in Adler’s eyes sparked a feeling they had never had before, they glanced at each other and locked each other’s eyes. “It was that easy.” Dev said to her.

“I guess so.”

Present Day

Adler held Veronica tightly, she had fallen asleep on his glacis plate while watching a movie. Most of his childhood memories were painful, but some of them are good. He’s grateful that they did get better over the decades, Veronica wouldn’t believe how bad they used to be, but they would never mesh like Alder wanted, like Adler felt with Veronica. Maybe one day his parents will finally put the past away and learn to love each other for real, no façade, no forced love, genuine happiness. It will probably never come, but Adler dreams for that day. Sometimes he thinks back to when his mother said they were trying for another kid and wonders if that ever could fix their relationship. He was doubtful, and so far the attempts have been fruitless, but he hoped that one day it would happen. Then his fantasies he dreamt up wouldn’t be fantasies anymore, and his superhero world would be realized. He quietly teared up at the thought and held Veronica tighter.

 

Fin TNG Chapter 9

The New Generation Chapter 8

by

Wow I am a piece of shit. Over a month between this chapter and the last, I have been writing but I can’t seem to focus on one project long enough. Oh well. What’s done is done, excuses, excuses. Anyways, here we go, Chapter 8! Yes, the featured image is of a Tiger 1, Chandler’s tank is a King Tiger like Marion.

Enjoy.

TNG Chapter 8

 

Chandler toted his model Bismarck outside and past Marion’s lively and vibrant garden to the “man”-made pond they had. At first it was a dug-out for the kids, but Marion liked how close it was to the garden and the family sealed it to hold water with clay. Now full of lilies and other vegetation, it didn’t make for a good scene to represent the ocean as Chandler had hoped for, instead as he floated his model warship in it he thought of Bismarck steaming through murky Floridian swamps, helping Rudolph find an old friend. He watched his poorly painted boat rock side to side as he let go of it and sat back. It bobbed around as the water settled from the disturbance. Chandler was glad it floated upright, his last model would roll to the side every time he tried floating it. Bismarck floated super high in the water, though, unlike the real ship. It annoyed Chandler but it was an easy fix for him, just fill it with a ziplock bag of sand and it’ll be just fine.

Once the water settled still he reached out to the little boat and grabbed the narrow stern, reeling it in like a spring-loaded car, and pushed it hard, but controlled, to sail across the pond to the other side. He watched little waves roll around and water break way for his ship. The way water and ships interacted fascinated Chandler, he was fixated on the lower hull the whole time. He ran to the other side and waited for the momentum to carry the model to him, so he could send it back to the other side. He did this all day. Marion came outside to tend to her garden and enjoyed watching him play with the boat in the pond. She looked up to the sky, it was a nice and sunny day, but true to Floridian tradition, dark clouds were gathering and could strike at any moment. She frowned, looking at Chandler who’s boat had gotten stuck on a lily in the middle of the pong, and to the tank in the yard. Hansel said he wanted to work on that when he got home, she knew how excited her boys were to fix the tank, so she decided to go back on one of her early rules.

“Chandler!” She cried to get his attention. She looked to him and saw he was about to jump into the pond for his boat. She instantly switched gears. “Uh-uh! No! Do not jump in that pond!”

“But my model-!”

“No! Do not jump in that water!” She put her stuff down on her deck and started towards the pond. “I’ll get it.” Her long reach wasn’t enough to snatch it so she grabbed a cleaning rod off her hull rack and ever so carefully she nudged the boat to the shore where Chandler fetched it. He came back to her and she took the model from him. “Hey, go set the tank into neutral.”

“I think it already is.”

“Okay, we’re moving it inside.” Chandler was surprised. Marion went behind the other tank and grabbed its stern end with her large hands and arms. She tried pushing it without her engine, being so used to moving the little lightweight cars. “Oh! Silly me.” Her engine roared to life and she tried again, no luck. “Chandler set it into neutral!”

“It is!” He cried as he jumped onto the tank roof. “I just checked.”

Marion tried again, Chandler said that the brakes were off, too. Only at full throttle did it slowly budge, and after Marion had dug herself a little hole and taken a mud bath did she give up in frustration and tell Chandler that they were going to drive it in. They started it and drove it inside, just as it started to rain. Marion closed the hanger door and told Chandler to clean up the puddles and the mud on the ground. She broke off her tracks and left them by the door. She sat in the mainspace trying to decide whether or not to clean herself off inside or wait to do it outside on the concrete. Once Chandler had cleaned the mess he was rewarded with his model given back to him. “The first thing I want you to two to fix that drive train!” Marion commanded out of fury.

“To do that Mister Hansel said we have to take the turret off first.” Marion shuddered, she loathes the thought of that.

“Chandler, you can call him your father.” She said to immediately change the subject.

“I know,” Chandler said, he looked down at the model in his hands out of shame, “I’m not used to it, yet.”

“Well, you won’t get used to it unless you start.” She extended her arms out and looked at all the mud on her, her dissatisfaction was apparent.

“You don’t like being dirty… mom?” Marion scoffed and smiled.

“I personally don’t mind it too much. It’s your father who really cares. He’s very protective of us.” Chandler looked as she began running hands down her boxy metal arms to wipe filth away. “Do you like being dirty?” She invited to keep chatting, he doesn’t converse as much as she would like him to. “Boys your age should love playing in filth.”

“Sometimes, well, a little bit. If I’m too dirty I don’t feel good, but I like being dirty, I think it is a more real,” he struggled to find the right word.

“Personality?” She filled him in. He nodded.

“Yeah.”

“You certainly like playing in the dirt. What with all the little trenches you dig for your toy soldiers, always coming back in with black hands and fingernails.” He giggled, she always got on him for dirty hands at dinner.

“Mom, why didn’t you let me get my model from the pond? Is it because you think I’ll sink?” Marion slowed her cleaning down as she tried to think if she should tell him the truth or not. “I know Jasmine and mister-dad can’t swim anymore, but I can. I like swimming, too.” She shifted on her suspension and sighed.

“Yes, yes that’s part of it.” She admitted. “I didn’t know you could swim, Hansel can’t swim, he doesn’t know how, and we found out Jasmine is too heavy and weak to swim. I was scared you’d sink. Chandler, I really do see you as my son, so does Hansel.” He felt ashamed again. He apologized, she beckoned him over and sat him on her deck, taking the model to the side again. “You’re a smart kid, Chandler, with nobody telling you, you figured out that Hansel wasn’t always the way he is now. You’re observant enough to see the small differences-I’ve seen you studying their veins, they aren’t really human. They are! But, not completely. And, I did that to Hansel, we wanted to get old together, at the same rate, so I changed him into what he is now. It’s a terrible event to go through, I vowed to never do it again -but, when we adopted you, we knew that eventually we’d have to have this talk…” she cut right to the chase, she was unable to ease into it from there. “Eventually we have to tell you that you’re going to die well before us, unless I change you. That’s what I’m getting at, Chandler, I don’t want to have to bury you, so I forget you’re not like Jasmine. When you got older, we were going to ask if you’d want to be changed, too.” He was quiet, as usual, looking at his dirty kneecaps. “We love you, Chandler, we don’t want to see you for before us, sons bury fathers.”

“-In times of peace,” he added, “in times of war, father’s bury sons.” Marion wasn’t ready for that, she was shocked. “I know how it goes.” He looked teary eyed, thinking of death. Marion hugged him and slid him closer to her faceplate.

“It’s okay baby, I didn’t mean to upset you.” She ran a hand through his short hair, Hansel had recently cut it. “I miss your long hair, Chandler.” He shrugged. “So,” she asked, “do you like things a little dirty, or sparkling clean?” He shrugged again.

“I dunno. Dirty, I guess.” ‘That’s my boy!’ She thought to herself. She sent him off to play, fetched the buildable gantry for heavy lifting, and built it herself in Hannah’s room until Hansel got home.

When Hansel got home it was still raining and he had to know what happened when he saw Marion. She started griping to him about trying to push ‘The Bitch’ as Marion had started calling it since then, and persisted about the transmission being stuck. Hansel believed her, it’s the most annoying fault with the cat tanks. Banker was always careful with Marion- it was usually her own doing that put her transmission at risk. Hansel fetched Chandler from his room and they changed into old clothes before they began working. Marion had decided she absolutely did not want to see the decapitation process, so the first thing the boys did was drive the tank into Hannah’s room under the gantry. They cut the engine and Hansel began explaining to Chandler what the plan was. To summarize, they’re first removing the turret so getting the tools and parts in and out won’t be as bad, then they’re going to put the hull on blocks, and since the wife is so persistent about it, the first thing to be overhauled will be the transmission. However, the way Hansel referred to the transmission was akin to a legend, a mythical monster, the boogie man…

“I’ll tell you the nightmare stories you may have heard are a bit exaggerated. It was a problem, but it was a known problem, and they did try to remedy it. Replacing the few parts that usually broke is actually very easy… if you have the parts, that is. Getting to it, now that sucks.” Chandler asked him what usually broke, Hansel took him to the front of the hull and drew three vertical lines with his hand just inside of the drive sprocket they were closest to.

“Oh wow! It’s right there!?” Hansel nodded.

“Mm-hmm, final drive. The problem is that we have to take the treads off, and the drive wheel, remove the cover plate and all the gears of the final drive. Then, because when they break they tend to spread metal flakes and dust everywhere, we have to clean everything.” Chandler nodded, Hansel then pointed at the drive sprocket and slowly traced his finger towards the center of the vehicle. Chandler was horrified. “Everything.”

He told Chandler it might take them a month to get the whole thing cleaned, and not to worry about it too much. He reminded Chandler that first, they needed to get the turret off. Marion helped a little bit, mostly getting the gantry in the right spot and a turret basket holder set up for the turret to sit in. Once that was done and the boys were hooking chains up to the lifting eyes Marion said she had to start dinner and slammed the garage door shut so she didn’t have to watch. Hansel double-checked his work, and Chandler’s, then complimented Chandler on a good job and took him to the side where he was safe. Then Hansel went to the crane’s motor and turned it on. It warmed up and responded well to Hansel’s commands until there was tension on the chains. The motor cried and screamed terribly, Hansel slackened the chains and cut the motor.

“Why doesn’t Mis-mom like this part?” Hansel smiled.

“She hates it when I have to take hers off, that’s why.”

“Why do you take it off at all?” Hansel pointed at The Bitch.

“So if I need to, I can, and her turret doesn’t freeze, like this one.”

‘What do we do?”

“Find me a sledgehammer, and a metal pipe.” Candler acknowledged and went looking, eventually returning with what was asked for. Hansel explained what they were to do, go inside, Chandler holds the pipe to the turret ring and Hansel beats the pipe, and they got to it. They did one go around the turret, and tried again. It didn’t help. They did another go around and it still didn’t work, nor did the third go around. Now Hansel was frustrated, and also referred to the tank as The Bitch. Chandler didn’t know ‘bitch’ in German, in fact, he didn’t know any German swear words. Hansel and Marion were very clean around their children, so this one word that both Hansel and Marion keep saying that Chandler doesn’t know, after he’s been taught the reference nouns, he figured it’s a swear word.

“You’re swearing, aren’t you?” He asked. Hansel, bent backwards under the turret ring, his face flushed a brown-grey with blood and sweat, didn’t care to be clean anymore.

“Yes. Your mother has affectionately started calling it Die Hundin, which means The Bitch. I think I will also call it Die Hundin. He went back to whacking the pipe with the sledgehammer.

“Can I?” He asked meekly, Hansel stopped.

“Well, that’s its name now, you’d be insulting it if you didn’t.” He smiled at Chandler, who looked extraordinarily excited to call something a bitch in front of his parents. “This summer dad’s going to teach you all the cuss words he knows without trying, and mom’s not going to like it.”

“Can we christen it?”

“What?”

“Christen the tank… Die Hundin?” Hansel chuckled. 

“Sure son, we can christen the tank.” Chandler was bounding with energy after that. Once they finished a fourth rotation Hansel took a break, meanwhile Chandler opened the door and passed by Marion on his way to the fridge. He opened it up, searched around until he found a grape soda, and took it to the tank.

‘Hey, it’s late, you can’t have that!”

“Dad said I could use it!” She was delighted he called Hansel ‘dad,’ but… use it? The rear of the tank faced the three of them, Chandler stood between the armored cowlings for the exhaust pipes and raised the soda over his head. “We christen you… Die Hundin!” Marion’s jaw dropped and Hansel burst into laughter as Chandler smashed the soda can into the cowling’s upper lip. Soda sprayed and fizzed everywhere as the can ruptured.

“Excuse me!?” Marion blurted, making Hansel laugh even harder. “We don’t talk like that!” Chandler turned to explain, soda spraying his outfit, but Marion didn’t allow him the chance. “No! Absolutely not! No!”

“Marion, babe, it’s alright.” Hansel said, her glaring switched from Chandler to Hansel.

“No! Soon he’s going to be saying all the other ones, too!”

“He won’t know them until I teach him.” She glared harder at him. He shrugged. “You’re the one that married a mechanic.” Using the supernatural powers that all mothers are bestowed, she amplified her glaring another magnitude. He shook his head and looked at Chandler. “Clean up your mess, don’t leave it sticky, either.” He tossed out the can and wiped up the mess, Hansel tried again. In the absence of the motor wailing Marion realized the turret was coming off so she squealed and covered her eyes. “Oops…” Hansel said as he realized he hadn’t closed the door.

The turret creaked and groaned out of the socket. Chandler looked on with intense awe and curiosity as he could see the whole contraption easily. Once the basket was clean of the hull, Hansel told Chandler to crank the turret across the gantry. He approached the side opposite of Hansel and began, very quickly running out of breath. Still, he gave it his all, struggling and fumbling with it. He got halfway there and that was it, Hansel took over. Chandler’s arms were pounding as he spotted for Hansel, once lined up the turret was set on the maintenance stand and the motor was turned off. “Alright, babe, we’re done with the turret.” She exhaled a sigh of relief and got back to making dinner, thankfully nothing burned.

“How much does that thing weigh!?” Chandler burst out as he sat on the floor. Hansel scratched his head.

“I don’t remember exactly but I think it’s between twelve and fifteen tons.” Chandler was shocked. “Yeah, it’s very heavy. That’s a lot of metal, there.”

“Set the table, boys,” Marion called, “Dinner’s ready!”

The three of them ate a filling, delicious dinner. Marion excused the filthy boys of being dirty since they had just finished, it actually made her smile. Chandler tore into his food as fast as he could, but would pause and look at his hurting arms. Marion asked him how working with dad was, he simply complained that his arms hurt. Hansel looked at the treads, Marion noticed his gaze, and Hansel assured Chandler that the worst was yet to come. Marion grinned and shook her turret side to side. When dinner was finished Chandler expressed his wishes to just go to bed, which were granted-after he bathes. He trotted off to do so, happily. Hansel and Marion cleaned the table, Hansel inspected the tears on the turret and chassis while Marion loaded her new dishwasher. Hansel found that the grease was not only old, but it wasn’t ever rubbed in. All that was done was clean the old off and put the new on, the turret wasn’t spun around like it should have been to work the grease into the gears. He told Marion what he found, she wasn’t surprised. They wound down and went to bed, Hansel bathed and promised to one day make a shower big enough for both of them- a three decade promise. He returned to her as she laid down to relax and there he tried his luck with her. She wasn’t very receptive of him at the time.

“No,” she said coldly, still wrapping arms around him as he laid down, “I’m mad at you.” He flinched and snapped his fingers.

“Damn! Well, I figured. I thought I’d at least give it a shot.”

“Well then, was it worth it?” She asked sarcastically. Hansel knew his answer, but he jogged his memory anyways. Chandler standing there with the soda over his head, ‘We christen you… DIE HUNDIN!’ Hansel chuckled.

“Yes, it was well worth it.” He laced his fingers between hers and kissed the back of her hand, rolling under the covers. “And I can’t wait to make you mad again!”

Fin Chapter 8

The New Generation Chapter 7

by

Hey guys, I know last time I said I’d try to post more regularly, and I’ve been a piece of shit at that. Sorry about that, times haven’t been the greatest, and writing isn’t a high priority for me. I’ll try to write more often but, I can’t guarantee anything. Anyways without any further delay here is the next chapter.

 

Enjoy.

 

Chapter 7

 

Jäger pulled the stew off of the range top and carried it to the table. Normally Fritz and her don’t use the table, but Edwards came by to catch up with them. Jäger made his favorite stew since he came by, and as he watched on while she pulled the top off the pot and dipped a large ladle into the broth his mouth watered unstoppably. She scooped up a mighty size portion full of potato chunks, cabbage, pork, carrots, and peas and poured it into Edwards’s bowl. He thanked her and waited for everyone to be served before he began eating.

“So, how’s the yard, Ed?” Jäger asked him, he looked up from slurping on his spoon and answered.

“The yard’s good, the trains are good.” He quickly finished a spoonful before the next flurry of questions..

“Have you met any trains yet?” Fritz asked as he dabbed bread into his own stew.

“Yes, any to hitch to?” Jäger asked.

“You couple up to one yet?” Fritz snickered. Jäger grinned, too. Edwards had trouble swallowing his latest spoonful of stew because he chuckled too hard. Forcing his throat to cooperate he got his food down and clear.

“Oh there’re some trains down there, mostly men. Most of them run more northern lines, one or two come down here to operate as thier mainstay, but very few are based ‘round here.”

“Ah, that’s better than a few years ago.” Edwards nodded, “But are there girls now? You did say mostly men.”

“I did,” he smiled, “there’s one or two girls I’ve been hitting it up with.”

“Ah-ha!” Jäger exclaimed. “Get ‘em! See? Merging you was a good call.”

“No!” Edwards leaned in and shook his spoon at his hosts. “Fuck the both of you for changing me. I could have married a nice woman and had a good life and die by now. I’m still angry at that.” He sat back in his chair and ate more stew.

“We know,” Fritz said as the bread dissolved on his tongue, “but admit it, it’s been pretty good living this long.”

“And-” Jäger cut in, “you wouldn’t be getting with those nice train ladies you’ve dreamt about.”

“But if it didn’t happen I wouldn’t have had to watch all my friends and family die in Germany.” Instantly the mood changed. Jäger thought of Chandler and Irish.

“Yeah,” she said, “you know that reunion we invited you to?”

“Yes, I remember. I was busy at the yards, unfortunately.”

“You would’ve met a little Irish junior.” Fritz said solemnly. Edwards seized up. Memories of Irish flooded back. He slowly put his spoon down.

“Irish… I’ve… I haven’t thought about him in a long time.” Edwards felt guilt and remorse for letting him go way back then. “I shouldn’t have let him go.”

“It’s how we all feel.” Jäger said, clasping the seat in her cabin that Irish used to sit in decades ago.

“You know,” Fritz said, “I never knew his real name.”

“Ian MacBrown, he,” Edwards started travelling down memory lane, “he was half Scottish, and half German. His German mother took him to Danzig to grow up, he joined the Kriegsmarine to help pay for his mother and sister to move over to London where his father was a professor, where his family died in the bombing raids.” The atmosphere was still and cold. “He had nothing left, so he stayed in, volunteered to go army and to the Eastern front just to die in battle.” There was a long pause before Fritz picked up.

“If he wanted to die he should have joined the U-boat corps.” The dark joke broke all their composures and they had a fit of laughter.

“Well,” Jäger said composing herself, “I guess in the end he got his wish.”

“Yeah I guess.” Edwards said, still chuckling. “He said that he regretted becoming such close friends with us, we somewhat ruined his plans of dying for a while.”

“I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing.” Jäger retorted before she gulped down some more stew. Edwards shook his head ‘no’ and began eating his stew again, too. “I still hate her, that bitch. I hope she rusted to death in a ditch.” Jäger scowelled and ate more stew. Edwards shrugged.

“He seemed pretty happy with her.” Jäger glared at him, hatred glossing over her eyes.

“He was a jolly fellow, regardless of who he was with. That fucking bitch shit on him and treated him like dirt every day. Fuck her. I can’t believe he died for her.” Fritz shifted uncomfortably.

“Babe, I don’t think he died for her.” He looked over to Jäger to explain himself. “So say what you want, but he and I were in the running for you,” Jäger tried to play it down but Fritz persisted, “everybody knew it’d either be him or me-because I’m not fucking sharing.” Jäger got flustered.

“What are you trying to say?”

“I don’t think he thought he could make you happy. I think he was insecure.” Jäger blankly stared at him and slowly raised her eyebrows. She smirked and shook herself left and right.

“Sure Fritz, sure.”

“It’s what I honestly believe.” They looked at Edwards, who had just finished his stew. He just blankly looked back and shrugged.

“Would you like more stew, Ed?” Jäger asked him. He nodded and handed over his bowl.

“Yes, please, Jäger.” She filled his bowl for him and handed it back.

There was a bit of an awkward tension as the question floated around their minds, did Irish and Jäger ever bang? They moved on to other subjects and finished dinner. They cleaned up the table and dishes and started talking about television shows. Gameshows quickly dominated the topic and that reminded Fritz that one of the gamesows was about to come on. He separated to go look for the TV remote and while his tracks made a huge ruckas Edwards had to ask the question.

“So did Irish ever…?” He jerked his head towards the rear end of Jäger. She pursed her lips, glanced at Fritz, and then quietly nodded. Edwards slowly nodded, he wasn’t surprised, but more impressed it was only a rumor for so long. Jäger raised a finger up to her lips to keep it quiet, Edwards vigorously shook his head in agreement. They heard the iconic theme music of the gameshow and were distracted from the subject. Edwards liked that he knew for certain, but he was already convinced of it so it never bothered him. He’ll keep it quiet for the benefit of his friend’s pride.

Because they’re a family of tanks Jäger and Fritz don’t have much furniture, and even less for humans. Edwards stops by often and is very close with the couple so they cater to him, but not enough for a couch. He had to sit on Fritz to watch the TV in any lounging state. Jäger came up next to Fritz and leaned on him, just far enough away to keep her skirts from getting caught on his. He leaned back into her and held her the best he could. As they watched this popular game of hangman they chimed in with their ideas. They knew they wouldn’t affect it at all, but they begged with the players to call their ideas.

After the gameshow ended they turned off the TV and broke out the beer. Fritz and Jäger had absolutely no way of getting drunk off of the amount of beer they had, and neither would Edwards, but they drank anyway to unwind and relax. Edwards brought up their daughter, Erin, and the couple talked about how she’s doing well and all. They said that her and Petre were looking to get their own place, but that was difficult for them. They talked about how their jobs are long-distance support and that they are limited in job opportunities because they’re tanks. Jäger and Fritz slowly turned remorseful, wishing that things were different for their kids. “Sometimes I wish Fritz was a human.” Jäger said bluntly. “Or that I was human.” Fritz nodded in agreement.

“I wish life wasn’t so hard for Erin and Petre, they grow up watching all these movies about other human kids get to do and they can’t do any of it.” Jäger nodded.

“If Fritz were human, or if I got with Irish, I probably would have had a lot more kids.” Edwards was sitting there awkwardly, looking at the amount of beer the two of them had consumed and he was concerned by it.

“Mini and Kram feel the same way for Petre.” Fritz stated.

“They do. Our kids were born at the wrong time. We should have waited babe, I’m sorry I pushed you for a baby.” Jäger said, rubbing his hand. He shook his turret.

“Jag, when would we have known it was the right time? Will it ever come?” Edwards intervened quickly.

“Well, Hansel and Marion pumped out two tanks, how’re they doing?” Both Jäger and Fritz shook side to side.

“Tyler had to join the Army to get another life, and Hannah just got a job as a museum piece!” Jäger exclaimed. “There should be way more options for our kids. I don’t want my baby to go off to war, and she doesn’t either, but then neither her nor Petre can be in a museum. They’re nothing close to their parents. If someone had no fucking clue at all, yeah, they fit the part, but anyone who knows even a little bit? Yeah, they’ll be caught and be labeled frauds.” Jäger held her mantle in her hands as she cried. “I fucked over my daughter.”

“You did not!” Edwards said, sternly. “Trust me, I’ve seen kids who are way worse off than her. Have you ever seen children hopping trains trying to just find food? Have you ever caught any breaking into freight cars trying to steal food? Your child has a lover, loving parents, loving community, she has a job and is even concerned with looking for her own house! Jäger! Jäger look at me! Look at me!” She peeled her hands off her eyes and looked at Edwards. “Your daughter doesn’t have as many options as I would, no, but she’s not hopeless. She’s not fucked, she’s going to be alright. Both of you did good, and both of you did the best you could for Erin. Ask her how she feels about it next time you see her.” Jäger sniffled but perked up. Arms shot out and grabbed a surprised Edwards, pulling him to her glacis plate. She hugged him with all her love.

“Thank you, Ed, I feel a little better.”

“Glad I could help.” Edwards squeaked. “Can I breath now?”

“Oh!” Jäger released some pressure so he could breathe again.

“It’s not too late, yet.” Fritz said as he glanced at the clock. “We could call Erin and settle it now.”

“I would like that, yes.” Jäger, still holding Edwards, backed herself over to the phone and called Erin’s cell phone number. It rang a few times before Erin answered, when she did her voice made Edwards think back to her childhood, what a little hooligan she was back then.

“Hello, mom? Dad?” Jäger always used the speaker mode on the house phone, Fritz used the handset and pressed the earpiece to his mantle to hear and it always made visitors laugh.

“Hey, sweetie! It’s mom, dad, and Eddie!”

“Eddie!” She squealed through the phone.

“Yup, how you doing, champ?”

“I’m doing goooood! I got a job-”

“Finally!”

“-Shut! Up! Uh, so mean! How are you Eddie?”

“I’m good, hey, your mother has a few questions for you.” He glared at Jäger.

“No! I’m not pregnant!” Fritz belched a hearty laugh.

“We’ll see about that,” Jäger snickered, she really wants grandbabies, too, “no, Erin, uhm…” she looked very uncomfortable. “Do you feel happy, being a tank?” Erin was quiet on her end.

“I like it, yeah.”

“Do you feel like you’re limited, challenged, about work?”

“Yeah, I can’t do a lot of jobs but I’ve got choices. There’s stuff to do.” Jäger bit her tongue on her next question.

“Erin, baby.., do you feel like your father and I.., fucked you over?” Erin replied instantly.

“No.” Jäger spilled out tears anyways. “I’m doing alright, loving life, I’m happy. I don’t think I’m fucked.” Edwards asked a question next.

“Do you think you’d rather be human?” Again her reply was instant.

“Pssh! No!” Fritz laughed again.

“Eat shit, Edwards!” He belched.

“Whatever, you fat bastard!” Edwards shot back, he turned back to the phone and asked Erin to continue.

“There’s so much I can do that a human can’t. I’m way stronger than any human, super tough, I have a huge gun and armor, I’m faster, too. I’ve survived so many things that I’m sure would kill any human. I’m a fucking beast! Like, dad, who’s going to mug me? Who’s going to rape me? Who’s going to fuck with me? Who’s going to overpower me? Try me, bitch!” Fritz was laughing extremely hard, his suspension was rocking. He loved how proud and cocky his daughter was, she was just like him.

“That’s ma girrrrrrrl!” He bellowed.

“See Jäger? Erin’s fine. You didn’t fuck her over.” Jäger was smiling, sniffling, but smiling.”

“I guess you’re right,” she said, “if you two could step outside, I’d like to talk to Erin for a minute.” The men went outside, alcohol in hand, and kept up the chatter. Edwards wanted to see what Fritz really thought of Irish.

“Fritz, when you said that Irish couldn’t make Jäger happy, what did you mean?” Fritz nodded and gulped down his keg.

“Jäger is a very insecure woman, she’s riddled with self doubt and second guesses everything about herself, as you saw. Irish was very similar, it’s why they got along so well. Sure, they leaned on each other and helped each other out, mentally, but it wouldn’t last forever. What was going to happen is Jäger or he would end up slipping, and the other would end up slipping, too, then no one is standing and it’s a cesspool of pity. He saw that happen, I did, too. Now, I’m a hard headed, stubborn-ass bastard, mentally I’m great for Jäger. I’m the brick wall she needed that wouldn’t budge, never letting her fall. Irish knew that, he’d get me to help Jäger out when he was out of ideas. Do I need her to set me straight? Absolutely. But the sort of authority, mental fortitude, you could say, she needed to live a rather happy life was not going to come from Irish. Irish is too selfless for that, he said he’d rather see his friends as happy as could be. That is the entirety of why I believe he left Jäger and I.”

Edwards was quiet, he already knew what Fritz said individually, he had never pieced it together like Fritz had.

“Do you think he had to kill himself for that, though?” Fritz shook his turret as fast as he could.

“Oh no! He didn’t kill himself. No, not his character. He hated the concept, now, I don’t think he lived long after he left us. I think he was shot as a deserter. I just could never tell that to Jäger, it’d break her heart.” Edwards nodded.

“So what do you think happened to E, then?” Fritz raised his eyebrow.

“Now that is my second idea of what happened to him.” Edwards couldn’t help but smirk. “Her whole toughness, cold attitude, it was all a charade. Mini hid his feelings better and we still knew he was faking. Her? No. Jäger hates her because she’d bash on Irish but so did you, and I, most of the crew, and she never noticed that Irish would bash back at E. I’m also fairly certain jealousy also played a huge part of the hatred, though. E liked the attention Irish would give her. She just didn’t know how to get more from him.” Edwards nodded, he could see it. “Personally, I think Irish and E would do great together.”

“Why?”

“The same reasons why Jäger and I are great together.” Edwards shrugged.

“So, that ‘Irish Junior,’ what’s so special about him?” Fritz made a shrugging motion with his hands.

“I dunno. Jäger’s quite superstitious- something else she picked up from Irish- and she believes that if you’re wronged or murdered in a previous life then you’re reborn or reincarnated, or some other crazy shit. I don’t know. I don’t believe any of it. The kid does look a little bit like Irish, though. He’s no carbon copy, however.” Just then the large garage door shuttered open and Jäger came out with more beer. She’d recovered her emotions and now just looked sad. She let out a loud sigh of despair as she closed the door and opened a keg of beer.

“Erin said no children were on the way.” Edwards chuckled.

“That’s it. I’m getting the two of them drunk and telling them that making babies is the best fun ever.” Jäger said jokingly, but in a serious tone, now Fritz began chuckling. “I’m getting my grand-babies one way or another.” Edwards wiped some beer spillage from the corner of his mouth and looked into the mouth of his empty beer can. “Oh, and Edwards, you’re not safe from my wrath, either, I demand children from you and your train boo, too.” He smirked.

“When that happens you’ll be the first I tell, Jäger.”

“Fuckin’ better. They spend the rest of the night drinking all the beer they had and bullshitting with each other until dawn, where Edwards passed out in a poorly made bed until he cared enough to go home.

 

Fin Chapter 7

 

The New Generation 6

by

Sup guys, I hope I can start putting content out more regularly than I have been recently, but life has not been a helping hand in that ordeal. Anyways, without further delay, chapter 6.

 

Enjoy.

 

Chapter 6

 

    Chandler finished his homeschooling with Marion and was granted the summer off at around the same time Jasmine finished her freshman year. Jasmine had taken Chandler out to interact with people more his age a few times and tried getting him to make friends. He was always timid and awkward, not able to hold a conversation for too long, which frustrated the social butterfly. She talked to Hansel and Marion about it, saying that he’d rather be at home drawing or building stuff. They said he liked games, electronic and outside games alike, and recommended those activities to her but Jasmine said she didn’t care to do that kind of stuff anymore. About two weeks after summer started Hansel grabbed Chandler and brought him to the porch with him to wait. Chandler had brought one of his model kit instruction manuals with him and was examining it tediously, getting bored and asking Hansel why they were waiting on the porch.

    “It’s a nice day out, I thought it’d be a good time to sit outside. Don’t you think so, too?” Chandler shrugged. He put his booklet down and scanned across the yard, taking in the lush green grass, shady oak trees along the fence, and the gravel driveway that led up to the still noticeable dirt runway that used to dominate the property.

    “It’s a good day, relaxing.” His imagination ran wild with events going on in his mind, using the scene for the setting of an epic battleground. “I wish I had friends to play with.” Hansel nodded in agreement.

    “I wish you did, too. Hey, Jasmine said you didn’t talk much to the kids she showed you to, why’s that?” Chad had to think about it, formulating his answer.

    “They weren’t interesting. They talked about stuff I didn’t know about.”

    “Like what?”

    “Sports teams, movie stars, singers. I don’t care bout it much.”

    “You like stuff like tanks and planes more?”

    “Yeah, history, too, like war history.” Chad looked back at his model kit booklet, it was a model of the Bismarck. Hansel got it for him as a summertime project. “Mister Hansel, you said you had a friend on the Bismarck?” Hansel nodded.

    “Yes, I did.”

    “How did you know him?” Hansel searched way back into his memory to recall the event, he smiled and chuckled when he did.

    “Oh, oh I remember. We fell for the same prank. I was running late for school one day, I was maybe seven or eight years old, I rushed to school, ran through the halls, bursted into the classroom and jumped into my seat-and landed right on a thumb tack!”

    “Ouch!”

    “Yeah, big ouch! Everybody was laughing, I jumped out of my seat, hollering mad! I couldn’t get it out  and it started to bleed so I was sent to the nurse’s office. Sitting in there getting his butt wiped clean and patched up was Rudolph, that’s where I met him. He had sat on a tack, too, and both our butts were hurt.” Chandler giggled a little bit, Hansel smiled and thought of all the fond memories he had with Rudolph. “So, Chandler, are you excited for school?” Chad shrugged again.

    “Yeah, I want to make friends. I don’t like homework, though.”

    “Nobody likes homework, Chandler, but you have to do it.”

    “I know,” he whinned, “but it’s stupid.”

    “No it’s not!” Hansel said, just then he heard a truck rumbling down the road. “You hear that?”

    “Yeah.” Hansel could see Chandler’s giant red hair spinning around as he searched for the sound’s source. Meanwhile it occured to Hansel that he should probably get Chandler a haircut.

    A huge, lumbering blue semi-truck roared through the trees that hid the driveway. A massive truck with a full cab on its back and hauling a thick and heavy trailer for a thick and heavy load. Bright yellow and black signs all over the truck screamed out ‘OVERSIZED LOAD’ and as the trailer was revealed from behind the treeline Hansel and Chandler could see just how big this load was. Even with a heavy green and retaining straps to mask the form both Hansel and Chandler recognized the silhouette of a King Tiger tank. With how big the semi-truck was, the Tiger tank still managed to dwarf the thing. Chandler remembered back to when he was told that a monster truck could beat anything -but a tank. Hansel was impressed that there wasn’t any bluffing, the man actually had a King Tiger, and Chandler looked distressed again.

    “Oh no, more family?” Chandler whined, Hansel chuckled.

    “No, I hope not.” They both chuckled a little. The giant truck’s brakes hissed as it was brought to a stop a dozen yards or so from the house. “Come on, Chandler, let’s go check it out.”

    “Yes, sir.” Chandler put the booklet down and followed Hansel over to the truck. A man with a short grey beard and shoulder length brown hair climbed out of the driver’s side. He was on the heavier side of things, but with his wrists and veins exposed Hansel saw no traces of morphing. He was completely human.

    “Hi-ya, I’m Ted.” He stretched his arm out to Hansel, Hansel stretched his arm out and they shook hands.

    “Hansel,” Ted nodded, broke from Hansel, and turned to shake Chandler’s hand, “and this is my son, Chandler.”

    “Nice to meet you, sir.” Chandler said and shook Ted’s hand.

    “Thank ya, boy. Up in the truck is my father, his name’s Will. He’s too old to really be here, but he wanted to meet y’all in person.” Hansel nodded. The truck door began to swing open, hesitantly. Through the glass they could see a small man struggling on the door. “No, dad, stay up there! We’ll come to you!” He turned to Hansel again. “Would’ya mind?”

    “Not at all.”

    “Thank ya.” Ted leads them to the passenger side of the truck and fully opens the door for his father. Will is a tired old man, stout and pale with deep eye sockets ringed with bags. Loose skin hangs from his chin and arms while thin stray hairs dot his mostly bald head. Hansel could tell Will was once a large muscled man built for work. He wondered if this is how Meats looked like in his later years. “Hey dad, this here is Mister Hansel, and that’s his little boy, Mister Chandler.”

    “Oh? Ah well, good to meetcha, my name’s Will. Y’all’ve met Ted, my son, already. I’d come down and shake yer hands but, uh, I’m old.”

    “Yup, that’s fine Will. You’re worse for wear than I am, by far.” Hansel said, Will laughed.

    “Yeah, age has not been kind to this old geezer.”

    “How about the Tiger? How’s it holding up?”

    “Better than me, that’s for damn sure. I should probably give you the run-down of it while I still can.”

    “It’d be nice, but it’s not necessary. I plan on gutting it and rebuilding it with my boy, here.” Ted smiled.

    “I wish we did that,” he said, looking at Will, “I was a snobby brat, never helped dad with it.” Will laughed.

    “Even if you weren’t a brat you think I could take that sum-bitch apart? Maybe, I know it’d never get back together if I did!” Now Hansel smiled.

    “Oh they aren’t easy! Not in the slightest!”

    “Hell no!” Will responded. He shifted his weight around and looked back to where the tank was. “I could work on the engine, it’s a diesel, beefy one, too. The motors are good, I never had to worry about the transmission-luckily-but then again I only ran the thing once or twice a month for two ‘er three hours. The paint’s old but lead so, it’s still there, too. It was in a shed for most of its life, so it shouldn’t be too rusty. The seats are original, no floor mats,” the men chuckled at that, “but everything is more or less how I found it in forty-five. Oh! One of the fuel tanks is rusted through, don’t fill the port side one. Unless you like to smear diesel all over the cabin.” Chandler looked back to the house and saw Marion nosing out of the hanger door, but he didn’t see any eyes. He usually could see them, even from this far away. He turned  back and couldn’t think about anything else. “Well, we should probably get it off the trailer, now. Ted, could ya, please?”

    “Sure thing, dad. Would y’all like to watch?”

    “Yes!” Hansel said enthusiastically. “Chandler would love to, here, Chandler, go on.”

    “Yes, sir.” Chandler followed Ted over to the tank and helped take the tarp and straps off.

    Hansel talked to Will about how things have changed over time for a little bit before he also went over to the tank to oversee everything. They did the usual start by hand cranking the engine and electrically starting the ignition. Marion doesn’t have to do that so Hansel almost forgot about it. Once the engine roared to life and was thumping steadily Ted moved to the cab, properly. Hansel noticed that this engine noise was nothing like any of the tanks he knew of. The cabin was like every other production King Tiger, which is not like Marion’s, this Tiger had the hydraulically assisted steering wheel while Marion had hydraulically assisted steering levers. Chandler noted and listened to Ted as he showed how to prepare, start, and drive the tank while they waited for the engine to fully warm up. He eased the behemoth off the huge trailer, using Chandler and Hansel to help guide him. From his vantage point Hansel could see the road wheels on the tank barely move when the weight was removed from them as the tank backed off, he suspected that the torsion bars had seized up and that they’d need to be taken apart, cleaned, and lubricated. As the tank backed off the trailer and moved around the truck Hansel carefully listened and watched it move. Aside from the torsion bars Hansel didn’t notice anything. Once the engine was cut Hansel told Chandler to inspect the insides of the cabin carefully and walked with Ted over to the truck to talk with Ted and Will.

    Chandler did as he was told, looking and feeling around very particularly. He could feel the cold metal walls flaking their paint off, and large sprouts of early, fine rust forming and emerging. There was a lot of grease on the gears and mothballs placed in random spots everywhere. With the power off there was no lighting, so he couldn’t see any discoloration, but the leather seats felt like they needed to be tossed out. Looking out of the various sight glasses he saw the glass was hazy and dirty, it also smelled funny, too. He tried to exit through the commander’s hatch but it was stuck closed so he climbed out of the loader’s hatch. He carefully climbed down and went to Hansel to report his findings. While he waited for Hansel to finish talking he looked over to the tank, wondering if it was alive and just hiding. The base color was a dull earthy brown, it had thinned and blended with the red primer coat to be a mute color good for the mud of the Florida swamps. His mind raced with imaginations of what they would paint it to look like. Army green? Grey? A sandy yellow? Maybe look like Marion? What about the markings, like eyes, a unit, a cool logo or a scary monster? So many options crossed his wondrous mind. His mind wandered off as he thought about endless possibilities and he looked forward to making look good again.

 

Fin Chapter 6

The New Generation 5 (For real)

by

Yes, this one is actually what I meant to post as chapter four, but I fucked up and so now it’s chapter 5. No big deal. I know my writing has been very, inconsistent to say the least, I’ll try to change that but I don’t promise anything. So, without further delay, here is the next installment.

Enjoy.

 

Chapter 5

Once Chad had been released and given a plate of food he calmed down and came around to talking. He took a liking to Kramia and Mini-Rommel quite fast and was comfortable. Eryka the experimental E-100 super-heavy tank was monsterous to him, her giant hull, turret, and gun dwarfed even Marion and captivated his curiosity as to why make something that big. He didn’t know much about Betty, a Pershing tank, either, but knew a lot about Faust, the Panzer IV. His family were very delighted to meet him, his aunts and uncles, biological blood or not, this was his new family and they took him in with open arms. He was still hesitant, and when he learned that Banker was Marion’s driver, Inbred her gunner, Whacker her radio operator, and Hansel her commander, he wondered who her loader was. The gang sorrowfully told him that he died in the eighties, he stayed in Germany with his family. They talked about him for a while, who he was and his personality, and how much they missed him. He spent the day listening to stories, meeting many tanks, taking an interest in Vitaliya and Devastator, the estranged couple from the eastern front. He couldn’t figure them out, just something appealing about them, like Kramia and Mini-Rommel. When there was a lapse in activity he was sitting with Marion and Hansel and he spoke his mind.

“Mom, dad, how are we related to them?”

“Who?”

“My aunts and uncles, how?”

“So, Uncle Anton is actually your cousin, he’s also mine,” Hansel said, “that is real blood for us. As for the others? There’s nothing closer than the bond we share.”

“Why?”

“It’s both simple and it’s not, I’ll ask a question, why do people fight in war? What makes them do such things, Chandler?” Chad thought for a minute.

“Family? Country?” Hansel nodded.

“From what I’ve seen, it’s more often for family than anything else. Your mother here has had no life before the war, she doesn’t love Germany like myself, or any of your Uncles, she didn’t know anything about the political side of the war, the racial side. She had nothing but the knowledge to go forth and kill the enemy. So what do you think made her keep going?”

“You, you guys told her to.”

“Half right,” Marion said, “I fought for my friends, my family. Hansel, Adam, I did it for them.”

“When you ask a soldier why he did it, you will get hundreds of answers, pay, power, prestige, honor, tradition, duty, whatever it is, but when the battle starts and it’s real it’s not about that anymore. Almost none of it. You fight for the man beside you, and he the same for you, in that moment he is your family, he becomes your family. There’s many names for it, blood brothers, battle buddies, firefight family, whatever you call it, it’s all the same. That’s why I call them my family, there’s nothing I wouldn’t do for them. Or you.” He poked Chad in his belly. Chad nodded and was quiet, satisfied with his answer and deep in thought and analysis, looking at the couple’s from opposite sides as he thought about it more. Looking around, Chad thought of another question.

“Are there any kids my age?” Hansel shook his head no.

“Sadly not, son. Our families started many years ago, decades ago, even, all our kids are either grown up or in their teens. Jasmine, for example, is the youngest of the bunch, except you, of course.”

“So, are there grandkids?”

“Sadly not,” Marion said, “when we fought through the war we all felt rushed to have kids, have a family, before we ended up dead like all the others around us. We never knew how long we’d be around, and since our kids grew up without that looming doom, and they could see how healthy we were and long our lives are, they don’t feel a rush.” Chad looked sad, he slouched over and looked at his shoes resting on Marion’s glacis plate. “Don’t feel bad, Chandler, there’s going to be a bunch of kids to make friends with at school next year!”

 

Veronica chewed on the pen cap some more, deep in analytical thought. Beads of sweat from her forehead rolled down into her ees and into the lens of her microscope. Frustrated by the heat, sweat obscuring her her vision, and the seemingly nonsensical way that Adler’s body makeup interacted with blood pushed her to take a break. She shoved the cart with all her equipment awar from her stool and fanned herself while looking around the garage. There was already a fan at every window, all trying their best to to cool off the garage. She shook her head and combed her long curvy brown hair. Adler noticed her annoyance and looked up from his microscope to confront her. “What’s wrong, Vinnie?” He combed over her body with his hawk eyes, noticing her deeply sweat-soaked sports bra and track shorts. Her skin glistened with a coating and drips plucked off her body to the smooth cement floor. Veronica threw her head back and wailed back to him.

“It’s so hot!” Her hair fell from her mid back and drooped over Adler’s right treads, just behind his forward idler wheel. He carefully picked up her flowing mane so it wouldn’t get caught in his robust metal treads-again.

“Yeah, I’m a bit uncomfortable, too.” He wiped condensation off his hull and flicked it off his mechanical hand.

“Addie, baby, are you cool?” She asked with such desperation in her gleaming eyes. Adler frowned as he felt himself.

“No babe, I’m pretty warm.” She groaned.

“I really need to get AC in here soooooo badly!” She slouched over and wiped her forehead again. “What’s worse is that it’s not even summer yet! It gets so much worse in the summer, here!” She moped for a bit and looked back into her microscope. “And they’re already dead!”

“Which ones?” Adler asked her. “My blood or your blood?”

“Yours.” She answered. She picked up the petrie dish and closed it, labeling it ‘A. DEAD’ and stacked it with the others. “I need another sample, babe.” Adler raised an eyebrow at her.

“How much more are you expecting to test, Vinnie?”

“Until I see you consume my blood again!” She was reaching for the vial of her blood when Adler stopped here.

“Babe, I’ve seen sixty tests where my blood dies out, and this is your fifty-seventh. I think that one time is just a fluke. Either you were sick, or using already dead blood.” She shook her head.

“No, no, no, nothing ‘just happens’ like that for no reason. And they were alive, I saw them wiggling around.” She turned her back towards him and leaned back onto his sloping hull. “Please babe, just a little more?” She looked back to him seductively like a pin -up girl, even lifting a leg up over the other’s knee. Adler combed over her and grunted.

“Alright, one more. This will be the last withdraw for a while, I’m getting sore.” Adler picked up a very beefy syringe and needle from the cart-desk and brought it up to his arm. He slid the tip between the kinks in his arm plating and winced and seethed as is penetrated his firmer outer shell and sank into the more fragile metal muscle strands that articulated his body like a snake. He withdrew  a full syringe this time and removed the device, gripping his arm while his body recovers. He handed Veronica the device and she kissed the back of his hand as she took it from him.

“Thanks babe, I love you!” She threw herself upright.

“I love you, too.” He rubbed his arm and looked into his microscope, his blood died out to her blood.

“Babe, you said you could turn me into a machine, right?”

“Somewhat.” He responded, getting uncomfortable. “Not a machine, more like a half-blood.”

‘Right, right, but how?” Adler grew weazy.

“Uh, I-uh, need to inject you with my blood, deep into your tissues. I need a lot of it, too.”

“Hmmm…” She took a dropper and collected some of her blood, dropped two drops into a new dish, then placed it under the scope. “Babe, hold this, inject it into the dish when I say so.” She handed the syringe of his blood to Adler.

“How much?” He asked as he took it.

“As much as you can.” She peered into the scope, noting the activity of the blood wriggling around in the tray. “Do it.” Adler set up the syringe and flooded the tray until there was a little red spot in an ocean of dull grey goo. Veronica watched as the blood slowly beat back at it’s surroundings, then, it slowed to a stop and began shrinking. Veronica grinned and smiled as she watched the consumption accelerate until nothing was left. She did a little shimmy in her seat due to her uncontrollable excitement. The machine essence had beaten off the white blood cells and began consuming, converting, and emulating the red blood cells.

“Vinnie, babe, what do you see?!” Subtle excitement made Adler’s voice flutter.

“I need to separate white blood cells and red blood cells!”

 

Fin Chapter 5

My goal with these stories is to define my lore a lot more, more bluntly, too. I know that it’s not as fun as hiding things in the main stories and spreading it all over the place, but to do some of the lore points like that would take way, way longer and more effort than what it’s worth. Lore wise, it’s going to be a bit more straightforward, story wise, character wise, hopefully I can make it a lot deeper. Thanks guys, I appreciate y’all reading and enjoying this stuff. All criticism welcome! And questions, questions are good, too.

The New Generation 4

by

First off, no, you probably aren’t missing anything. (Actually I posted the wrong chapter so I’m just gonna fix that and… done, now this is the right one. I just changed the chapter number. Am stupid.) This is the title for the second HaM story, some time I’ll get around to changing all the “HaM 2” to The New Generation. Yes I’ll be accronyming it as TNG. I know it’s been a long while since I’ve posted and I apologize, no I’ve not given up on it, I’ve actually been writing a lot, I just write it down in a journal first and later I type it up. So you probably figured out I’ve not been typing it, and you’re right. I’ve just been busy out the ass, not much time to myself anymore. I hope everyone is doing well with this hell-hole year, I wish y’all good luck and fortune. Anyways, without any more delay (until you finish reading this chapter and have to wait for the next) I present TNG 4:

 

Enjoy.

 

Chapter 4

Hannah sorted through her tool chests to find the slot she missed. Holding an oddly shaped wrench-crowbar device for maintenance on her treads, she scoured over the drawers for where it belongs. Hansel had filled the drawers with foam and cut out slots where all the tools go for her, yet she couldn’t seem to find where it went. She’d gone through everything four times over and gave up, setting it down on top of one of the chests. She looked around her new home at the museum, a shabby old maintenance garage with drab and spotty white paint for the walls and evidence of rust staining along the rafters for the ceiling. The lights were harsh and bright, the floor was cold, bare, and showed evidence of cracking and terrific impacts. At least it was a comfortable size for Hannah and she had all her stuff. She ‘propped’ her gun mantle on a hand and rubbed it like her father would his chin. There was a knocking at her door, her little home had two, one large garage door for her, and to her left was a small door for humans.
“Come in!” She answered. The wooden door slowly and silently opened enough for a man with short curly black hair, green eyes, and a tall, slender head to poke through.
“Hey! I’m Austin, thought I’d stop by and welcome you to the museum.”
“Thank you.” Hannah replied as she dusted her hands off, “I’m Hannah, nice to meet you, Austin.” Austin stepped in and looked around the room as he closed the door.
“So,” he started before he looked back at Hannah, “as frank as you can be, how do you feel about your new place?” Hannah raised her metal eyebrows as much as she could, gandering around the room.
“It’s pretty bad, honestly.” Austin gently nodded along and crossed his arms as Hannah went down the laundry list of complaints.
“Yeah, I figured,” he admitted as he scratched his head, “I wouldn’t want to live here, we didn’t have muh notice before you were supposed to arrive. Me and the boys tried and made huge improvements, if you can believe that.” She nodded.
“Oh I saw the other shop, this is so much better.”
“Yeah, well, I know you’re not the most nimble one,” he leaned in and air quoted her agility, “so I thought it’d be nice if we helped finish the place, at least.” Hannah smiled at the jab.
“You’d be surprised at how agile I really am, I could do it myself but I’d love the help. I’m guessing you’re one of the mechanics?” He closed his eyes and nodded slowly.
“I am. I thought helping you spruce up the place would be a good way to get comfortable with everyone before things have to get… intimately awkward.” He seethed through his teeth, thinking of all the ‘turn your head and cough’ moments ahead of them.
“Ah-” Hannah thought of those moments, too. “-yes, good call.”
“We don’t have many German panzers here, so we son’t be as good as your old mechanics from the forties.”
“Oh, Austin, I’m not from the war.” Austin was taken aback.
“My mom is, I’m not.” Austin’s face lit up and he started nodding.
“Oh, okay. That’s cool, I didn’t know that. So,” he was trying to formulate a way that two seventy ton tanks would make a baby, nothing was looking practical-or healthy. “…how…” he gestured at her with open hands, still thinking.
“Did I happen?” She asked with a brow raised and half a smile.
“…Yes?” He wasn’t sure if he wanted an answer. Hannah smiled, she liked teaching.
“The same way you happened, the birds and the bees.”
“Huh,” he was relieved that she didn’t explain everything in explicit detail, but confirmed that she was made the natural(???) way, “I didn’t know tanks could do that.” Hannah realized he thinks both her parents are King Tiger tanks. Her face turned devious.
“Did you know that a man could do it, to?” His face scrunched up.
“Well, yeah, it takes a man and a woman, so-”
“No, no, a human.” His jaw dropped. Hannah started laughing. “Only my mom is the tank, in this marriage!” Austin shook his head, still bewildered, and scratched his ear.
“WHAT?” Hannah laughed harder, pulling a family picture off her desk.
“Yes! Here, look!” Austin took the picture from her and examined it closely.
“Uh, which one is you?”
“I’m in the middle. Mom and dad are on the left, my younger brother is to the right, and sitting on top of him is my youngest sister on my brother.” He felt really racist not being able to tell the tanks apart. Her little sister looked really young, though.
“Hey, how old is this picture?”
“A year.”
“How old are you?”
“What if I told you my younger brother served in the Vietnam war?” His eyes went wide.
“What the fu-!?’
“I was born in nineteen-fifty.”
“HOLY-” He looked to her and back. “You’re older than my grandparents!” She smiled. “How old is-”
“Thirteen in that picture, my little sis is fourteen now.” He almost dropped the picture at that point.
“What the fuck?”
“We think mom could still crank out kids, we aren’t sure.” Austin needed a moment. “Would you like to sit down, Austin?”
“Yes…” He wasn’t feeling very good, “My head is spinning.”
“Your head can’t spin, but mine can!”
“STOP!” He commanded, he weakly struggled over to her bow and leaned on her glacis plate. She spun him around and sat him on the bow.
“This doesn’t bother me, just recompose yourself. Take your time.” After a while he started feeling better and asked some more questions.
“Do you have any traits from your dad?”
“Mmm, not much. I’ll explain why another time, but I have his eyes. Unlike my mom, though, I have more human traits, like a belly button, a more human like mouth, and hands.”
“Your mom doesn’t have hands?”
“She does, just not like mine. Here.” Hannah extended her arm and showed him her hand, it was as big as his head and looked like anywhere that didn’t bend was a big fat calyst. “My mom doesn’t have skin, her hand is made of plating. You can kind of see it here, like here, and here, but my brother’s hands are even more like dad’s. Almost no evidence of plating.”
“Can I?” Austin reached for her hand.
“Yes, go ahead.” He grabbed her hand and felt it, she was warm, firm, and definitely metallic. But he also felt the skin, the familiar grip and texture of skin but much thicker, he could compare it to rubber gaskets, or thick leather. He held her hand like it was a book as she flexed it for him. His fingertips slipped into the skin-like portions and he felt no bones.
“Do you have bones?” His fingers writhered around searching for a structure inside her hand.
“No. I don’t have bones, I don’t think my brother does, either, but my sister does.” His eyes trailed to her wrist, a large knob covering a ball socket joint, then up her arm. He turned her hand over to the back of it, examining the finger joints. The best way he could describe it would be a knight’s gauntlet, just metal fingers that overlap each other.
“Your hand is huge.” He pressed his hand against hers and noted the disparity.
“Compared to you, sure, but to me, not so much. Here, look at these hands.” He heard very apparent metal manipulation noises around her corners. He got up and peeked around her right side to see a portion of her metal skirt lifted up over a very large version of the hand he was just shown. This hand, however, didn’t bare nearly as much resemblance to a human hand. This arm was maybe six inches wide and two inches thick, much beefier, and held up a hand that was more akin to a transformer’s hand than a human’s. “Mom never had to really use hers until she had us, so dad didn’t actually know these existed until then. I have two pairs of these, like mom, one pair here, towards my front, and another pair more towards my rear. Both anchor above the wheels on the underside of the sponson. They were very useful when fighting my brother way back when.”
“Holy shit.” His fascination was overtaking him. “So when you overcome the initial shock of everything this is really, really cool.” He looked up to her face, she was smiling wide, showing off a flat row of humanlike teeth, and her eyes sparkled with glee. It caught his eye. “So, how do your eyes work?”
“Oh that,” She really smiled now, “this was super hard to research, but I found it! You should sit down again, it’s a really long story.” He sat down on a tool chest behind him, to Hannah’s right. “My eyes and my mom’s eyes are different, like our mouths, too, as well as most of our organs. My mouth takes up a good bit of space in the cabin, as well as my eyes, which is why I can’t raise my gun as high as my mom can, and my gun just barely fits between my eyes when I lower it. Anyways, my eyes are just like yours, my mouth is comparatively condensed, but more or less the same as yours. Man-made machine eyes are very different. Way long ago, in the twenties, the idea came up to dope glass with the metal that allows me to live, one-fourteen. They found that this let machines react to visuals around them, eventually it was used in plastics and resins, as well, it just needs to be thin enough for the light to pass through-whatever. So my mom’s eyes are thin sheets of the metal and resin layered over each other just enough to be a physical, sturdy structure and let light pass. So, that let the makers imprint an eye into my mom’s socket, but if you watch our eyes you’ll see that my eyes follow you and roll, her eyes slide to follow you. Her eyes are on a pane, mine are in a ball. One neat thing is that if you can see through the glass or resin or whatever it is, there’s actually not an eye there, it’s projected onto the glass. They can see through the glass-like, it’s still their eye, there just isn’t a pupil.”
“Huh.” Austin was intrigued, it was thought provoking. “So your mom’s eye isn’t real, then?”
“Her eye is real. You can’t see through the resin, for her pupils they’re there.”
“So, how did machine people see before?”
“Machine people are called colonials, and before eyes were made, we didn’t.”
“Colonials?”
“Yes! Our organic makeup is best described as a fungus parasite. One-fourteen is like the carbon for metals, it latches on and bonds with metals easily, carries the energy that sustains our life, and is cellular enough to where we don’t need organs but complex enough to allow advanced thought and consciousness.”
“So, like plants and animals?”
“Yes, scientifically we are our own kingdom.”
“That’s… woah, this is cool” He had a smile on his face, he enjoyed this conversation a lot. He looked down at his watch, it was late in the evening. “Well, Hannah, thanks for your hospitality, but I need to get going.”
“Oh, no worries, Austin, thanks for stopping by, it was great meeting you.”
“You, too, I’ll see you again sometime.”
“Stop by anytime, I’ll be here!” They giggled a bit.
“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, Hannah.”
“When this is how you lived your whole life you get used to it.”
“I’d definitely take you out if I could, you see like great fun.”
“Oh.” Hannah’s engine turned a stroke, a chill shot down her hull. Was it really that fast? “Oh, well, maybe one day.”
“Yeah, maybe one day. Goodnight, Hannah.”
“Goodnight, Austin!” As he left Hannah noticed a gold band on his ring finger. As quickly as her hopes soared, they were crushed.

Fin Chapter 4

I hope that was satisfying, I’m sure for such a long wait there should be oodles of content, but, sadly, more waiting. Sorry about that, I’ll try getting some out sooner than later.

 

No I don’t follow Ratbat’s cannon. We’ve certainly bounced ideas, but our lores are separate.

Hansel and Marion 2 Chapter 3

by

Hey guys, sorry for such a long delay for a somewhat small amount of content. I’ll be honest I was a mix of busy, lazy, and distracted. I wanted to do so much more with this chapter but if I did what I wanted to this chapter would drag on, and on, and on. I’m basically trying to make my pacing better. Well enough excuses, here we go!

Enjoy!

Chapter 3

 

Two months after they adopted Chad Hansel and Marion got word that the folks on the base were having a get-together, they thought it would be a good opportunity to show everyone Chad. They had chatted with some friends about him, but nobody could make it down while he was around, Hansel would take him out around for errands and town was so far away that it usually took too long to get out, get the groceries, and make it back before the visitor left. Hansel went up to Chad’s room to tell him that he’d be meeting family and friends over the weekend, as he did he noticed Chad was reading his big book about shipwrecks, one of the books he loved reading. Curiosity got the better of him and Hansel peeked over Chad’s shoulder to see what he was reading about, it was about the world war two German battleship Bismarck, Rudolph’s ship. A painting of the ship’s hull on the bottom locked his attention.

“That’s the Bismarck?” Hansel asked, he had never really seen what Bismarck looked like, the sight of a rusted, blown out, rotting hull sent shivers down his spine.

“Yeah.” Chad squeaked, he looked up and saw Hansel was staring at the page with the big picture of the sunken hull.
 “I told you my best friend was on that ship, right?” He spoke softly, thinking of Rudolph.

“Yeah,” Chad felt the tension in the room, Hansel had peaked his own interest with a bedtime story and wanted to learn more, “I wanted to learn more about it..,”
 “This weekend we’re going up to see family and friends on the base. You need to bring your student I.D. or library card with you.”
 “Ok, Thanks Hansel.” He didn’t refer to Hansel as his father yet, but he did refer to Marion as his mother, a reference Hansel strived for, but in that moment he was locked by that picture, staring at it unwaveringly

“No problem, Chad.” He forced himself to break away, he went down to the table and sat at it. Tonight’s going to be a very long night.

When the weekend came Hanse, Marion, Jasmine, and Chad set out for the base, Chad was thrilled to be riding in a tank. Jasmine put her MP3 player in and took a nap in the assistant driver’s seat, Hansel sat up in the cupola and Chad was moving all around Marion’s cabin. He bounced from the loader’s hatch to the gunner’s sight and then to the driver’s seat and back around again. Marion just told him to be careful, she carefully tracked his movements as he moved about, she didn’t want him to fall into the driveshaft or get stuck somewhere. She laughed as he bumped his head here and there, but he was thick-skulled and shook off the blows. While she was out and about she asked if he wanted to move the gun around-he just about exploded. She put him in the gunner’s seat and held his hands as she walked him through all the controls. Hansel watched where they were going while her attention was preoccupied. She showed him the electric triggers and the manual ones, as well as the electric drives and the manual ones. Sadly he couldn’t reach the foot pedals that operate the electric drive so he had to use the manual crank to traverse her turret. She would move her turret with him to help ease the load off him.

“How far can I turn the turret, mom?”

“I can turn all the way around, Chandler.” He pressed his head up against the binocular eyeglass and watched the word move around as he turned the turret around.

“Chandler, flip that dial above your right hand.” Hansel said real quick. He looked over Chad as he found what he meant.

“This one?”

“Yes, that’s the magnifier.” He went back to watching the road.

He had an absolute blast, Marion spotted targets for him and had him line up on them, she had him range on it with the sight and corrected him on it. He especially liked moving the huge gun breech up and down, he was very entertained by that. Amidst his play he found some writing on the wall, Marion knew what it was and tested Chad’s ability to read German. He did his best but failed. Marion explained that it was Inbred’s little chart for gunnery and a chant he would recite to calm himself. That prompted him to look around for more notes from the past, he found Meat’s signature by his old loader’s seat, and then he found the kill tally Hansel kept by his seat. Marion had shown Chad her kill stripes, they were quite obvious, but never the grand tally. He was impressed by it, and he was also humbled by it.

Chad often realized and thought to himself about his new parent’s past, what they had done. He knows a few of their stories, but not everything. With these badges and tallies, personal notes and signatures, the very real history of death and destruction his parents shared hit him. Often he thinks about life, how little it means yet how great it is. The respect he held for his family was undeniable, he had an idea of what they had to do, what dark and mortifying world they braved through. He wanted to know their whole story so badly but respected their boundaries and he was afraid to probe for more. His new family very early on recognized his thirst for knowledge and would feed it often, with or without his request. Hansel and Marion would constantly tell him it was okay to ask, and over time they would share their deeper, darker stories. Even the ones they didn’t tell their other children. They saw that he respected and understood these topics on a higher, much more mature level. Chad’s mood shifted as he read the tallies, he felt ashamed for playing like he did and stopped, he went silent and sat still in the gunner’s seat. Marion felt his mood swing.

“Hey sweetie, are you alright?” She patted his shoulder gently. “What’s wrong, sweetie?”

“I’m sorry I played with you.”

“Hey, hey, it’s alright. You aren’t upsetting anyone, you’re fine. I liked playing that game!”

“It’s not a toy, it’s a gun, you’re not a toy, you’re a tank.” Marion was glad he knew guns were not toys, but she sought to crush this sour mood. He’s a kid, he should be having fun, enjoying himself, playing with the world. He had some solid reasoning, she was stumped by him and didn’t know what to do.

“Chandler, sweetie, you’re just a kid. You should be having some fun and enjoying yourself, play with the world around you and learn about it. Let your imagination run wild and have fun with it, you aren’t hurting anyone by having fun.” Hansel heard Marion’s half, she was looking ahead already so he decided to see what was up. He patted her turret to tell her he’s checking on Chad and ducked in, he glanced at the kill tallies as he sat in his chair. He leaned over to Chad and put his hands on Chad’s shoulders assuringly.

“Hey little guy, what’s wrong?” He turned his head to bring his ear to Chad’s mouth. He should go find the comms set one day. Chad said something but it was too soft for Hansel, he reached up and closed his hatch to block out what noise he could. “You’re going to have to speak up, Chad, I can’t hear you.” Chad raised his voice.

“I said Marion is not a toy, her gun is not a toy. I shouldn’t be playing with this stuff.” Hansel shrugged and nodded at the same time.

“You are right, guns are not toys, remember that, but don’t be afraid to play games with us. We like games, too, and we like to play, too. We used to play soldiers with our other children Hannah and Tyler, even Jasmine, Jasmine loved it so much. We played it with them and we’ll play it with you, too, Chad. It hurts us that you don’t want to play, we’re people, too.” Chad looked at the controls and nodded, silent. “Of everyone, Jasmine likes to play army the most!” Chad looked back, confused.

“Girls play army?” Hansel laughed.

“Yes! Yes! Jasmine loves it!” Everyday she would beg us to play!” They looked to Jasmine, who was curled up in the corner asleep, Marion’s hand held him still. “We would play Panzer Jager with her, she had a big stick as her bazooka, and she would hunt mom down in the small woods by the house. She had to get real close and on mom’s side or behind her before she could get caught. She got really good at the game, so good I had to join mom’s team. She still got us.” Chad was smiling, Marion could feel his mood shift back to something more up-beat.

“Hansel, the dummy shell is still in here, right? I can’t remember.” Hansel saw where she was going with this. He looked at the ready rack behind him and saw three of them there.

“Yes, we still have three in here.” He turned back to Chad. “Come on, Chad,” he grabbed his shoulders, “I’ll show you how to load the gun!”

“Really?” Chad looked back with excitement.

“Yes, we have fake rounds, come on!” Hansel ducked and swung himself under the recoil guard for her gigantic gun. Chad crawled underneath it, Hansel squeezed Chad to the other side of him, towards the back of the turret. He reached over Chad and moved the rounds closer to the ready rack Chad would be close to. He gave Chad a quick tour of where everything was, the ready-use ammo racks in the back of the turret, the ammo storage racks in the hull sponsons and floor, the recoil guard, the breech block and manual operating lever, safety, and the loading tray. “So that’s where everything is, I’ll show you how to load now. Gun’s empty, the commander calls out a target and ammo to use, and you, as the loader, find the round and get it ready.” He opened the gun breech and grabbed a round. He pulled out the round halfway out and then put his left hand on the bottom of the round, put his right hand in the middle of the casing, then pulled out the round and held it vertical, pulling it close to his chest. “When the gunner calls ‘load’ you load the gun.” He tipped the round so the shell tip pointed forward and then cradled the round against him as he hauled it up and over the breech and into the loading tray. “Alright, now this part is very, very, very important, Chad. When you push the round into the breech your hand must be in a closed fist. Like this.” He showed Chad his balled fist and then pushed the round into the chamber. An automatic trigger felt the round seat and closed the breech. The shape of the block is a scoop to push the loader’s fist out of the way. “If you do not use a fist your fingers will be eaten. Understand?” Chad nodded feverishly. “Then you stand back, and do not cross this bar here, this is your recoil guard.” Marion held Chad still with her hands, she triggered her gun and threw it back herself like it recoiled. The trigger and force tricked the mechanism into thinking the round was real and automatically ejected the shell into the brass catch. Chad jumped when the gun recoiled, which is why she was holding him, and he looked like he was panicking while he thought they shot a real round. “Don’t worry, Chad, mom did all of that herself. It was a fake round. One last thing, to close the breech you grab the handle underneath and swing it back under the block.” He demonstrated for Chad. “Now it’s your turn.”

Chad just stared at Hansel with a blank face, and Hansel smiled. He encouraged Chad and pressured him to act. Chad was a quick learner, but the pressure made him overthink things and get confused. Hansel guided him when he got stuck, but kept up the pressure. Chad really struggled with the shells, they were almost as big as him and almost weighed as much as him. He strained to get the shell up and over the breech but he did it. He put his whole body weight into jerking the shell into the breech, which slammed shut and spit him out. Then he stood back, panting and tired. Hansel complimented him while Marion took the first shell and slid it into the rack. Marion kicked back the gun and the shell was spat out into a basket for collection. Hansel again pressured Chad to hurry up and act. Chad fared better this time but still got stumped, almost putting the shell in backwards. Once it was the right orientation Hansel helped him pick it up and put it on the tray. Chad punched the shell into the breech and sat back, very weary.

“You alright, Chad? Too hard for you?” Chad shook his head no, the breech kicked back and out popped the shell again. “Alright then, move! Another round, there’s a hundred tanks out there!”

Chad acted as fast as he could, Hansel ran this drill with Chad again and again. Hansel noticed that Chad was struggling with the shells more and more, but he was getting much more fluid with his actions. Eventually Chad finally said enough and crawled into the sponson between shell racks. Hansel told him he did very well and to take a good nap. Marion said Hansel was too pushy and rough with him, Hansel said Chad was a trooper, that he could take it. Nonetheless Hansel and Marion wrapped Chad up in a spare blanket and tucked a rolled-up jacket under his head. Hansel sat in the loader’s seat next to Chad, stroking his vibrant head of hair. Chad’s hair was thick and soft, nice and straight, too. While Chad was asleep Hansel relayed his extreme pride to him again. Hansel said Meats would be proud. Hansel peered through the loader’s periscope to watch the road while he and Marion talked. They were discussing how they thought Chad would be at the party. They hoped that he would be bouncing off the walls with excitement, just like when he met them.

That would not be the case. They woke Chad up after they got on base to have Hansel and he get him an I.D. for the base. He was groggy and quiet, very reserved. He got his new I.D. card and Marion took them all over to the park where everyone hung out. Hansel and Chad stood in the cupola together, Hansel would point to tanks and ask what they were. Chad named almost all of them, he couldn’t name the model of Eryka, Shellproof, most of the tanks’ kids, or any of the artillery vehicles. Hansel and Marion were impressed again with what he did know but were quite disheartened when he chose to stay with Marion and avoided confrontation. He sat in the assistant driver’s seat after Jasmine up-and-left to go hang out with her friends on the base, and Hansel went off to talk to the guys. When Whacker saw the Walters had arrived he B-lined it to them. He had stopped by many times trying to meet Chandler but he and Hansel would be out in town.

“Where is he? Uncle Adam’s looking for a red-headed nephew!” Marion pointed to his old seat, Whacker chuckled with excitement and heaved himself up her side. “Aw shit! I gotta lay off the fast food!” He grunted as he got to a good spot, he had a wave of nostalgia hit as he grasped the hatch’s handle and turned it to the side. He peered down into the chair and saw a startled boy staring at him. “Good morning, son! I’m your Uncle Adam, what’s your name?”

“Chandler.” Chad squeaked before his head dropped down. Whacker saw that he’s going to have to get closer and engage him more. Marion told Whacker that Chad loves learning how stuff works.

“Scoot over, Chandler, Uncle Adam’s a fat man, now!” Chad scooted over and pressed himself against the radio set. Whacker eased himself into the hatch and squeezed himself into the seat and put Chad on his lap where Chad faced the radios. “A little birdie told me you like learning.” Chad shrugged, staring at the radio. “Can you tell me what that is?” He tapped on the radio set.

“Looks like a radio.” Chad squeaked.

“You’d be right, Chandler, now, do you know how it works?” Chad shook his head no. Whacker began teaching him the dumbed down basics, but he saw that Chad was fairly disinterested. Out of the corner of his eye Whacker saw the bow-mounted MG42 made especially for Marion stowed on its rack in the sponson. “You seem bored, Chandler, want to mess with something else?” He tapped the bold cylinder of the machine gun. By the way Chad reacted he was much more interested. Whacker took the gun up to the deck where there was more room and light.

Marion watched over them, Chad laid on his belly under Marion’s gun mantle. She saw how captivated Chad was in learning about the machine gun and loved it. He was so adorable. Whacker explained how the gun worked, then took it apart while explaining what each part does. Chad got really involved, asking questions and jumping ahead. When the gun was apart and laid out in front of Chad, Whacker tested him and had him put it all back together again. Chad did fairly well, but he wasn’t perfect. Whacker corrected him and shared some tips and tricks. When all was said and done Whacker asked Chad if there was anything he wanted to know. Marion tapped on Chad’s shoulder and whispered into his ear. Whacker smiled, cocked his head, chuckled, and lifted his eyebrows as he expected the question to be about his nickname. Chad instead asked about his time in the war instead.

Whacker told a few stories about serving with Hansel, the places they’ve been, the good things they’ve seen, and some of their most challenging times. It was difficult at first to bring a story out of him, but once he had told a few they wouldn’t stop coming. He kept firing stories off one after the other, he probably could have chatted for the whole day if his throat didn’t dry out. Marion had sat there with the two boys while everyone else mingled, she was surprised nobody interrupted them, but when Whacker asked her if she could take them over to the gazebo where all the food was she saw the chance to show off Chad. She held Chad where he was and Whacker pointed out who everyone was. Marion got to the gazebo and found Shellproof with Chuck and Katelyn, instantly Marion introduced Katelyn as the same tank he played in his game, a Firefly, then she introduced Chuck, a ‘Jumbo’ Sherman. Whacker introduced his wife, Shellproof, an IS-1 with an eighty-five-millimeter gun. Chad was shy as expected, but the soft and friendly nature of the tanks eased him, as well as encouragement from Whacker and Marion. He didn’t know much about the IS series of tanks, so Shellproof elaborating on her tank lineage was a great way to break in Chad, and when she asked how much he knew about the T-34 tank he said he didn’t know much, so instantly Shellproof snatched up Chad to go find Kramia or Vitaliya, maybe Adler.

While they went off looking for the T-34s Marion caught up with old friends. It was great to see everyone again, Jäger the JagdTiger brought her husband Fritz, an experimental Tiger II, over to Marion hoping to see how Chad was doing and introduce Fritz to him, the couple was bummed that he was not around. Hansel came back over with Inbred and Eryka, Marion’s Gunner and his wife, an E-100, Banker and Betty, Marion’s driver and his wife, a Pershing. Anton, Hansel’s cousin, and his Panzer IV H. wife, Faust, were also in town to get together. Shortly thereafter they were all talking about their children and Chad and then what stories they should tell him and what he would like most. They had a grand time passing around beers and spirits and coking and joking. They shifted to sports, work, celebrity jabs and humor, making fun of how stupid the world is. Around this time Mini-Rommel and Kramia came up to chat and hopefully meet Chad, they laughed at the irony of Shellproof, Whacker, and Chad going off to find them.

Shellproof, Whacker, and Chad drove around the field where everyone had grouped up for the party, Chad sat in Whacker’s lap and Whacker sat in his favorite “chair” with his ass on Shellproof’s hood and leaning against the driver’s viewport. She held them down with arms around their waists. Shellproof told Chad some of her stories from the Eastern front and how gory it would get sometimes. She emphasized how brutal and immoral war turned people, how instinctual and chaotic the battlefield is. From the way Chad felt about it she knew he was understanding the point, she told him all these ‘glorious’ battle stories but her underlying message was to de-glorify war and ensure he did not twist the image of war like so many young people do. She told him that unlike the games he plays, in war there are no second chances. Most family and friend gatherings are filled with laughter and joy, and while there was plenty here to go around there was also a serious amount of darkness surrounding these veterans. However only a small part of the time spent there was enforcing the dark reality of war, most stories were heroic or funny, dark humor swarming around him and to their great joy Chad enjoyed it. While going around and searching for the T-34s Chad grew quite hungry and the search was fruitless, so they went back to the gazebo and found Mini-Rommel and Kramia. Instantly Kramia admired how cute Chad was and yoinked him off of Shellproof and gave him a warm hug and a kiss on the top of his head. Chad seemed quite uncomfortable with such a personal interaction, his poor little face he made had Marion chuckling to herself. She couldn’t wait for Chad to blossom like he did when she first met him. It’s her one drive right now, her ultimate goal, foster him into that bright and wonderful ball of warmth and glow again.

 

Fin Chapter 3

HaM 2 Chapter 2

by

Finally, I got this chapter ready, I wrote a ton of content for this chapter, but then realized I was not typing it up fast enough, and just how much there was. This is noticeably shorter than chapter 1, but still a decent chunk. Not long enough for the time between posts, I’m sure, which is why I have more stories, too! Yay! I still need a witty title or name for this installation other than “HaM 2”
Well enough chatter, here’s the main course.

Enjoy!

Chapter 2

 

Hansel and Marion continued the process to adopt Chad, all inspections and record reviews were handled by specially selected and screened personnel. Very often Shelby would help over the phone or swing by the house, always with Chad, to ensure there were no hiccups with the process. As the visits went on Chad’s hyper enthusiasm dulled as everything became the norm to him, Hansel and Marion noticed and were slightly hurt by it. They had seen what he could be and looked forward to bringing that back and seeing more of it in his future. Shelby said that he’d warm up to them again, that he just needs some time, attention, and affection. Marion said she had plenty of affection to share with the little guy, and by the time he was adopted and moving in he was quite comfortable around Marion. Marion was always around when Chad was brought over, while Hansel was mostly around there were many times he had to work late or be in an office someplace else filing records, it was noticeable by them how much Chad gravitated to Marion over Hansel, Hansel looked to change that.

In the meantime, Hannah and Hansel had fleshed all her details and paperwork out at the museum. Hannah had a small team of mechanics to maintain her because she wasn’t the only operational machine there, just the only living one, and her place, for the time being, was the museum’s back workshop. It was a garage big enough for her and all she needed, a bit smaller than her expansive bedroom from her parent’s house, but overall a cozy spot. She really didn’t mind the downsize as she already lived out of her room with her parents and stuck to a portion of her room anyhow. Hansel had been teaching her about taxes, bills, tricks to balancing checkbooks and many other financial responsibilities she would need to take on as a stand-alone being. All the while he said that her mom and dad were always a phone call away and the place was always open. She left just a week before Chad moved in, a heavy-duty truck the museum had for its other tanks came to haul her to the museum. All of Hannah’s tool chests and boxes were put on her and strapped to her, some spare links and gas were strapped on, too, and just like that everyone was waving goodbye as she left. Just like with Tyler leaving for boot camp, it was a very touching moment.

Chad didn’t bring too much with him, mostly books, drawings, and clothes for the majority. He did have a few models and toys, and a game station, with the majority of his toys being tanks and legos, his models were all the glue-together and paint type of ships. His books were almost all historical books, split just about evenly between ships and tanks. The more they talked to Chad about his toys the more they learned how much he actually cared about them; he could name the tank and rattle off a few facts about the model tank the toy was based on. Whether the facts were right or wrong they didn’t matter, it was amazing to Hansel and Marion. They went along with what he said for a while but one time Hansel corrected him on an inaccuracy. They expected the usual child response of a ramble about how Hansel was wrong and Chad was right, but it didn’t happen, Chad was silent, inspected the toy tank for a bit longer in thought, then asked more questions about it. He asked questions until he was satisfied and convinced that Hansel was correct. Some of the answers Hansel had to explain were long-winded but Chad listened closely with obvious interest. His parents decided this was how they were going to break him open, and it worked. He clung to every word when they told stories or went over history, he made opening up about their past somewhat enjoyable.

He was not enrolled in the local school yet so Marion homeschooled him for the rest of the year. She had to consciously put forth the effort to speak only English with him, being very fluent in both English and German the Walters could and would switch back and forth between them, even mid-sentence while in the house. It was obviously painful and hard for Chad to follow along in conversations as he tried to do so very desperately. Marion taught him German to help out, he did learn but he was nowhere near as fluent or talented as his adopted siblings. He quickly took great interest in the mechanical work Hansel did on Marion, that thrilled Hansel. He instantly took Chad under his wing and taught him engineering and mechanics, Chad loved it, he loved learning how stuff worked.

In two months Chad had antiquated himself to the family well, and Jasmine let her floodgates go and picked on him to all of her leisure, nothing was held back, she did what siblings do and picked on him in any way she could enjoy. Chad just seemed to be indifferent to most of it all, that aspect worried Marion, she’d never seen an insult or jest go uncontested, not from her kids, her friends, nobody. Occasionally Chad would fire back, but it wasn’t as sharp as Jasmine’s cuts, a veteran of sibling wars, but on very rare instances Chad would cut Jasmine and cut deep, leaving everyone around blindsided and recoiling in shock, with the best part of his jab being how cool-headed and smooth it was. He would utter his strike and get back to whatever he was previously doing, Jasmine would be too surprised to react most of the time.

He liked his room, it’s where he spent most of his time. He was a very creative and ingenuitive kid, building tons of lego contraptions and models, drawing a lot of pictures, sketching out ideas and designs, many of them were affiliated with warfare. He had a very apparent obsession with war somewhat concerned his parents, and they learned that he had seen many very mature war movies at alarmingly young ages, the exposure concerned them but it wasn’t an extraordinary concern. For how young he was he displayed high maturity and comprehension of very deep and powerful themes. He was also well-disciplined, for the most part, doing as he was told and not being too much of a bother. He was low maintenance, and after two children that needed literal maintenance, they were happy to have him.

He didn’t ask for too much, he liked video games and history a lot, and always asked for video games and historical books or the combination of both. They just wish that he didn’t ask for games about world war two. They discussed the subject with each other in-depth and decided that he was mature enough to handle it. He was thrilled, he and Hansel set up the game in the lounge upstairs so they could tune in to the game, but it peaked their interest so much that Hansel brought the system down and they watched him play his games. He would also ask about specific battles and if they were there, or if anyone they knew were there. They sat and watched him play and they saw how Chad got so into history, between missions historical footage would play that was from the war, and large over scaling maps displayed where units were, where armies were moving, and what the objectives were.

Hansel and Marion would watch Chad play his game and they saw it as a movie, while Jasmine saw it more of an annoyance and ammunition to call him a nerd. They made him restart his game from the beginning so they could see everything, that’s how interested they were. The accuracy amazed them for a game, but they still noticed glaring inaccuracies and cheesy Hollywood tropes. Nonetheless, it was still well done. One night Marion gave the game a go, there was a huge learning curve but she eventually enjoyed playing, too. She was very thrilled to have a way to bond with him. On weekends Hansel would watch Marion and Chad duel each other match after match, nobody thought too deep into the fact that they were world war two veterans bonding with their adopted son by killing each other in a world war two game. Marion and Chad got very good at the game, while whenever Hansel played he was always hopelessly lost.

One day Hansel and Marion were watching Chad play the story mode and this mission had him play as a Polish Firefly, it looked almost exactly like Katelyn, it got them excited for the mission. Hansel leaned in and watched closely, Marion rose up at tad bit on her suspension. At first Chad was just shooting up a convoy of light-skinned trucks and troops, but once he rolled over a hill three Panther tanks stood in his way. Instinctively, with Marion thinking it was her, she told Chad to stop and shoot the one in the open field. Hansel recognized that Chad’s Firefly could not go through a Panther’s frontal armor reliably and commanded Chad to turn left and move behind the house. Chad, who’s played the mission before, moved behind the house. Marion was aggravated but remembered Chad was playing a Firefly. Chad passed the building and had perfect flanking shots on the Panthers. Chad shot up one Panther with two shots to the flank while his comrades knocked out the Panther in the back. Chad adjusted forward and hit the last Panther behind the house in the ass. Once those were taken out he moved up, dealt with more infantry, and went head-on to four more Panthers. Here he used a hill to cover him and stay hull down as he shot them off one by one, against his parents’ judgement he didn’t flank or even attempt to. After knocking them all out from the front it occurred to them this was just a game for fun, mostly. He moved on and fought his way through infantry armed with Panzerschrecks, then he ran into two Tiger tanks.

“Careful boys! Tiger’s have thickest hides and sharpest teeth!” Marion felt a hint of flattery, even if the game’s quote was more directed at the Tiger I’s they were fighting, and if the Panthers they just fought had better frontal armor, and firepower. Hansel heard a callout to go right and flank the Tigers, so he had Chad scan right and directed him down a road. He did get the flank of the Tigers and got three shots into the side of one before it blew up, but the other one repositioned and now faced Chad and put a shot into Chad’s tank. With the massive clung noise Marion and Hansel flinched and expected a game over screen, but instead it was followed by panicked breathing and another crewman’s callout not to give up. Chad laid the gun onto the TIger and shot on the move, driving to the right to flank the tank. Chad took another hit but pumped four rounds into that Tiger before it exploded, as well. After moving through another Panzerschreck ambush where Hansel and Marion both saw it coming it was just Chad and another Firefly left. He moved down the road to the mainstreet of a town, turning into a cutscene where Chad found himself staring at a broadside King Tiger, staring right back at him. Marion’s heart skipped a beat, flashing back to the SS King Tiger she killed, the same fight Hansel was stabbed.

“The monster Richter’s tank!”

“Oh, that makes me feel good about myself.” Marion snarked, Hansel chuckled.

“You’re not a monster, mom.” Chad said, Marion smiled.

“Thank you, Chandler.” The thought of how many people she has killed crossed her mind, maybe she was a monster?

By then a P-47 strafe blew up everything but the King Tiger. The massive beast suddenly lurched forward and hauled ass out of there, shooting and killing Chad’s only friendly Firefly. The shot went through the Sherman’s frontal plate and came out the back, landing in the road next to Chad’s tank. Hansel and Marion were impressed, somewhat exaggerated, but impressive. They watched with great nervousness as Chad chased the beast through the narrow streets, fighting various Panthers and Tigers along the way. Chad eventually chased the King Tiger until it was stranded in a courtyard. The crewman shouted to target the fuel tanks, but Hansel and Marion had other things in mind.

“Chad shoot the turret! Right in the middle!” Marion went for a crew kill, her worst fear but one she would happily default to for her foes. The first shot did nothing but anger the beast, as the terrifying gun began laying towards Chad. The long barrel swung out to the side just as Chad’s gun was ready.

“Again!” Hansel blurted with excitement. Chad’s gun rang and the Tiger 2 snapped back to its earlier position for an animation of the turret exploding off the hull and into the sky, landing yards away from Chad.

“Good job.” Marion said as the screen faded to black. Hansel and she sat back and caught their breaths, giggling at how involved they had gotten with a video game. Before he could even ask any questions Hansel and Marion went over the small details about the engagement, what was right, what was wrong, why the engagement was so hair-splitting for them, and Chad listened. He proposed his own plans and his parents would rebuttal them, or would deeply consider them. Their conversation lasted until dinner, where Marion cooked up a quick meal and then it was time for chores and bed. As a bedtime story, Hansel shared a tale about how he learned to fly a crop duster to help his parents keep their shop. It was a well-placed bet and shady ethics that led Hansel to swindling lessons from an old fighter pilot and in his story he mentioned Rudolph and how he helped Hansel. So after the bedtime story Hansel drug into a dark reflection of Rudolph and how he ended up on the Bismarck, never to come home again. This made the goodnight hug more of a comforting one for Hansel.

 

Fin Chapter 2