The giant grabbed a handful of his gold coins and threw them at the prince with all the force he could muster. The coins, which were double the size of a normal human being, fell down on them like hail fire. The prince saw the coins crush some of the guards, their bodies smashing under them or decapitating them. The prince had amazing agility and reflexes, and avoided most of the coins, but not fast enough as eventually one of them struck him.
This coin was relatively slower than the rest and yet, even under the armour, he felt many of his bones break under the force as his body flew away, bouncing against the ground before sliding to a stop.
Prince Leo was in a haze as a pool of blood began to form underneath his head. He couldn't move and couldn't feel half of his body. The other half was screaming in pain. He felt the ground shake as the giant approached him eventually standing above him. The prince couldn't make out the giant's face on his silhouette and didn't get a chance as Ratchata raised his massive foot to crush him.
"Praise Princess Felenor," he said as the foot dropped onto him.
***
"No!" shouted Crazy Terry looking at the footage on their phone. Professor Terry had managed to crack into the palace's security systems and they were watching the feed from when the Giant had crushed Prince Leo. "Holy fuck, he's still going. Talk about overkill much?"
"That is ironic considering you did the same to the cockroach back in the motel."
"Yeah, but that's different. Cockroaches are scary."
"Ah, my brain really did pick the perfect alternate personality to protect me, huh?"
They were walking in the streets towards the outer edges of the city, which had begun to steadily degrade until they found himself in the slums. The buildings here were falling apart and the streets were full of muck and suspicious looking people. There were many homeless in the streets and they saw many people peeking from behind curtains in windows or around the corners. The greyness of the cloudy sky that covered the falling afternoon sun only made it look more depressing.
Crazy Terry was aware, courtesy of the professor, that the slum areas, which had been where the slaves had lived, still had many Jewish refugees, that had survived the mass extermination that had followed after the primary rebuilding of the Risenstadt infrastructure had been completed. Professor Terry felt a deep guilt inside him and was glad that Crazy Terry was in control. He knew how to handle guilt.
As they moved on through the narrow streets, they found a crowd gathered around what seemed to be like a protest. The protest was being undertaken by a group of mostly teenagers who Crazy Terry could tell did not belong from the city, let alone this part of it. They all held signs and wore clothes that read slogans speaking against 'Anti-Semitism.' They were gathered in front of one of the infamous sites of the Jewish extermination, which had been torn down and was being converted into a factory.
"It is disgraceful," said the one leading the charge, a young lady with blonde hair, into a microphone in her hand. She had a slight German accent. "That the Nazi regime commits one of the greatest atrocities against humanity, and then sweep away their sins under the rug. This concentration camp site, and all the others, should stand, as a reminder of what the Nazi regime has done."
"How has this protest been allowed to stand?" asked Crazy Terry. "She must have some really deep pockets."
"Not only that, she is Angelika Alleman, the daughter of the great General Alleman, the man who's campaign started the renovation of Riesenstadt," said Professor Terry as he looked down at his phone.
Crazy Terry whistled.
Most of the people quickly shuffled away from the protest, making sure not to be seen while the others who were gathered watched with dead and vacant eyes.
"The Jews are humans too, as are members of the other races, and yet they were treated as slaves, building the city where all of you live and after they were done, they were wiped away from existence. Tell me, what kind of justice is that?"
The other protestors cheered alongside her.
"Why do we celebrate the Giant in the colosseum when his selfish thirst of gold has led to the death of the Jews?"
The protestors cheered again. Crazy Terry noticed that the speaker had caught the crowds attention but just like that, they began to disperse. He looked around and spotted the approaching ghetto police alongside some of the elite guard. Within a minute, the crowd had all dispersed except Crazy Terry who stood watching.
"What are you doing?" said Professor Terry in a hushed whisper. "Move, will you?"
"They don't scare me."
The two elite guards walked up to Angelika Alleman while the rest of the police gathered up the rest of the protestors and formed a perimeter around them, chasing after anyone close by. All Crazy Terry got were a few insults which he did not understand. As he walked away, he saw that the police were dealing with the protestors very diligently which meant that they were all related to Nazi superiors.
"Guess Angelika decided she didn't want to be the typical army brat," commented Crazy Terry.
"It's good, isn't it," said Professor Terry. "She's aware of her father's sins and is doing something about it."
Crazy Terry scoffed. "Yeah, what a difference she will make criticizing her father's sins while living on her father's sins."
"She didn't choose to be his daughter."
"And we didn't choose to be where we are now, and yet we are doing something meaningful."
"What she's doing is meaningful too."
"Whatever you say."
The elite guards tried to reason with Angelika as they spoke to her in German. Judging by their body language, they looked very shaky and rightfully so, because the authority with which she spoke would've shaken any of them.
Crazy Terry continued onwards.
They stopped in front of a shambolic looking building covered in so much filth that you couldn't make out the name that was written before the red, fading word 'Bar' on the sign.
"This is the place, right?" asked Crazy Terry.
"Yes."
Crazy Terry climbed up the stairs onto the gallery and was about to stand on the welcome mat which was caked with mud but Professor Terry stopped him. Don't you ever see the filth on that thing? Towards his right, he saw a man who wore torn clothing, and a cybernetic platinum arm that was covered in muck. He had seen him before, and he didn't know why, but Crazy Terry had always felt some sort of pity for him.
At the moment, he was being bullied by some rich Nazi army brats (he could tell by their attire) drinking beer.
"What are they saying?" Crazy Terry asked clenching his fist.
"My German isn't very strong but I think they're saying he's crazy because… he claims to have gone into… the giant's vault?"
Crazy Terry's ears pricked up. "What?"
One of the kids was taking a video with his phone as he laughed alongside his friends. The tallest among them, was comically imitating the poor man's nodding, as he talked to him in weak English.
"Giant? You see his gold?"
The poor man continued to nod. They all laughed.
"Er ist so voller Scheiße," said the tall kid and poured down his beer onto the poor man's face. They began to laugh hysterically.
"Fucking bastards!" growled Crazy Terry and walked up to them. He grabbed a beer bottle from one of them and pushed the tall kid on to the great.
"Hey!" he protested but didn't get a chance to say anything else as Crazy Terry shoved the bottle into his mouth. The kid tried to fight back as the beer poured down his throat, his gag reflex activating, but Crazy Terry held on, not bothered by the other kids who tried to grab on to him.
When the beer bottle had emptied, Crazy Terry grabbed onto another one nearby and pushed it into his mouth again.
"Jesus, calm down," said Professor Terry. "He's just a kid."
Crazy Terry didn't stop and the kid's eyes were going red and the veins in his neck had started to pop. Professor Terry desperately took over and pushed their body away from the kid. The beer bottle fell to the ground, and the kid got up sputtering for breath. His whole face had gone red and it looked like his eyes were going to pop out of his sockets. The others desperately tried to get him to his feet as they inched towards the stairs, fear etched into their faces as they looked at the crazed Crazy Terry.
Professor Terry did not relinquish command of their body to Crazy Terry until he had calmed down. He got up to his feet and dusted off his coat. The beggar who the kids had been bullying had disappeared.
"Guess I really let myself go there, huh?" he said sheepishly.
He looked into the bar through the cracked window before pushing open the door into a dreary-looking bar and walked inside over the mat. The bar may have been a shithole but it was still a welcome sight from the lifelessness outside. The inside was quiet and he only saw a few people inside: a group of men played poker with smudged, battered cards, and others either talked in low voices, drank silently or were passed out on the tables.
Crazy Terry took his place on an empty stool at the dirty counter of the bar. He was going to place his arms on it but Professor Terry resisted the action. There is no way I am letting you touch that place teeming with all sorts of germs and diseases.
While the bartender tended to other customers, Crazy Terry looked at the dusty LCD in the corner that had a crack in the corner where the colours of the images divided into their primary colours. The channel on the TV was the Lodge of Assassins channel which a group of people were eagerly watching. An old reel of a Lodge event from two years ago, featuring the Giant fighting warriors, was being shown in anticipation of the coming event and it had just ended. This was followed by a brief intermission before the news would come up.
"What will you be having?" asked the barman, his back to him, as Crazy Terry resignedly placed his hands in his lap. He was a chubby, balding man with a ring of black hair on his head and a round potbelly that pressed against the corner of the counter. The apron he wore was so dirty that you wouldn't even had guessed it had been white once upon a time. Regardless, Crazy Terry liked him because he had a cheery persona and damn well made the best beer he had ever tasted. Professor Terry did not share the same opinion, but his qualms were more to do with the hygiene.
"Your finest beer," Crazy Terry answered in a loud, booming voice.
The bartender instantly recognized the voice and replied in an equally booming voice. "Ah, if it isn't Terry, my favorite customer!"
"How're you doing, Liam?" asked Crazy Terry. "All good?"
Liam was a part German part Belgian, as he had told them plenty of times already. He had retired from the Nazi army early, because he could not deal with the killing of innocents, so instead he had decided to settle into the US and make his own brewery. Liam had been a key figure in helping the Jewish refugees and minorities within the city, which was why he had kept away from dealing with the Lodge. You would tend to see them in the smallest of bars with the Lodge of Assassins gambling stations for the crazy amount of money that they'd make.
"Everything is fine," he said with both his hands resting on the table. Crazy Terry nodded his head as a gesture and Liam instantly caught it as he nodded moving to the back of the bar. "I will go get your beer."
Crazy Terry turned back to the news.
It seems the Peak City can't really catch a break. Approximately a month ago, the respawner Evans mysteriously broke out of his RCU cage to once again wreak havoc on the city born from the flames of his destruction. Many structures were brought to the ground and many citizens were massacred before the Nazi army finally managed to bring him down. Many rumors began to circulate around that Evans had been killed, with some even outlandishly claiming that another respawner had killed him. The Nazi Army claimed these rumours to be false.
And now, with the city only just recovering from the destruction, the Soviets have launched an attack on the city. A bombing run was enough for the Nazi army presence in the area to be significantly hurt who were not expecting the attack at all. This was because the Peak City as such seems to be one of the least valuable outposts from a strategical and economical point of view, and the presence of a respawner as insane as Evans does not help matters. This attack by the Soviets comes after many years, and with them suffering heavy losses in the previous wars, it seemed that the war for America was strongly in the hands of the Nazis.
Experts, however, claim that this attack is a result of the Nazis alliance with the respawner, Billy the Kid, who reportedly has captured the other three respawners and has made himself ruler over the Freelands. As the Peak City connects directly to the Western states, it seems the Soviets would be in prime position to hijack the still young alliance which could help them turn the tide in their favour. Either way, it seems the Peak City will have to suffer and might suffer even more with the Nazis, reportedly, already preparing an attempt to retake the city.