Oskar had always treated the automobile like a weapon.
Not because he dreamed of running men down in the street like some terrorist or a videogame character, but because he understood something most princes and most generals did not:
A nation did not rise only through battles.
A nation rose through systems.
Steel. Roads. Fuel. Transport. Time.
And nothing tied those systems together more perfectly than an engine on wheels.
That was why he cared about Muscle Motors more than he ever admitted in public.
Guns were important, yes. Ships decided empires, yes. But ships sat in harbors until war demanded them. Cars and trucks moved every day. They carried the economy itself like blood through veins.
On the surface, a motor vehicle factory looked like any other factory: smoke, noise, metal, wages.
But the truth was deeper.
One motorcycle rolling off a line pulled coal behind it. It pulled steel behind it. It pulled rubber, glass, leather, paint, oil, copper, machine tools, lathes, presses, and a hundred small workshops that didn't exist until the big factory gave them a reason to be born.
It pulled rail schedules and depot workers and warehouse clerks and mechanics and petrol sellers.
It pulled jobs—direct and indirect—like a hook hauling a net from the sea.
A factory might employ ten thousand workers openly, directly.
But it fed another fifty thousand invisibly, indirectly:
Miners. Smelters. Machinists. Toolmakers. Railway crews. Road builders. Carpenters building sheds and garages. Shopkeepers selling spare parts. Doctors and teachers supported by wages those workers carried home. Even cleaners and night guards who'd never touch an engine in their lives.
There was no real service economy without an industrial economy.
That was why Oskar's eyes always returned to factories, not palaces.
Because factories were where the future actually lived.
He remembered the old world—his first life—clear enough that it sometimes felt like a dream he could still taste.
There, a man named Ford had built a car so simple and so cheap that it became a tool of mass civilization. The Model T didn't just sell well.
It changed the United States.
Fifteen million units.
An absurd number.
And it wasn't the car itself that mattered most—it was what the car forced the nation to build around it:
Road networks that stitched countryside to city. Petrol stations. Repair shops. Factories that learned conveyor work like religion. A middle class that could live farther from its workplace and still arrive on time. A whole country that began measuring distance not in days, but in hours.
The car reshaped the shape of life.
And if a single American company could do that…
Then what could the German Empire do, with discipline, planning, and an industrial group that controlled the entire ecosystem?
That was the true dream behind Muscle Motors.
Not luxury machines for nobles.
Not toys for rich boys.
But a national transformation.
Standing inside the Stuttgart complex—beneath gantries and belts and the steady thunder of presses—Oskar could already see it in his head.
Stuttgart alone was producing motorcycles like a metal river. More plants would rise. Pump Stations were expanding in parallel, not as an afterthought but as infrastructure. Safety Works fed helmets and gloves into the same pipeline. Even road projects—his "green roads"—were being planned with vehicle flow in mind.
His Oskar Industrial Group…
It was all one machine.
A machine that could outlive ministers.
If Muscle Motors could one day sell in the millions—if not fifteen million, then more—Germany would not merely be rich.
Germany would be modern in a way no one else could easily copy.
And, in a way no one else yet understood, it would all be under one person's coordination.
His.
Oskar didn't plan to stop at cars.
A real nation needed public transport—buses that turned cities into living organisms instead of cramped cages. It needed trucks that made supply reliable instead of fragile. It needed work vehicles, farm vehicles, postal vehicles, ambulances.
Vehicles that made a society faster, safer, and less dependent on the strength of horses and the endurance of men.
He even carried a private, half-crazy dream: that one day, buses might be free for German citizens—not as charity, but as one more of his statements.
A daily reminder that belonging meant something tangible.
You are German, the bus would say. This is your country. This is what it gives you. Be proud. Build it.
It was idealistic.
And yet, in Oskar's world, idealism was often just realism with a longer timeline.
If the streets filled with engines instead of hooves, workers traveled without horses, manure stopped being a permanent layer of urban life, and children grew up thinking machines were normal…
Then the country itself would begin to move differently.
This was not his end goal.
It was the start of his end goal.
He didn't need to conquer Europe.
If he could turn Germany into the most efficient, mobile, productive society on Earth, then Germany would conquer the future simply by existing.
That was the real war.
And unlike the wars generals dreamed about, this one could be won without trenches—if he moved fast enough.
He turned from the sleek B‑Class prototype, eyes still measuring it like a weapon, and faced the two men waiting beside him.
Paul Daimler looked proud and exhausted in equal measure—like a man who hadn't slept properly in months but was still somehow offended by the idea of slowing down.
Wilhelm Maybach looked worse.
Not because he was unhealthy.
Because he was happy.
Happy engineers always looked slightly deranged, like saints who'd finally found their cathedral.
Oskar folded his arms.
"Arrange it like this," he said. "We lock the product ladder now. Officially."
Paul straightened. "Yes, Your Highness."
"Three lines," Oskar continued. "A‑Class. B‑Class. C‑Class."
Maybach nodded emphatically, already thinking in parts and platforms and shared tooling.
"And we set the public launch window," Oskar said, voice calm but absolute. "January 1st, 1908."
Both men blinked.
Oskar held up a hand before they could panic.
"Not mass release tomorrow," he said. "Development first, production capacity second, distribution network third. But we announce the line as a national project at the start of next year. We begin taking orders, begin demonstrations, begin the myth."
He tapped the B‑Class roof lightly.
"Whether Muscle Motors becomes a legend depends on this."
His gaze hardened slightly.
"Especially the C‑Class. That one matters most. Speed up development. I want it first—early next year. Not 'sometime.' Not 'when convenient.'"
Paul hesitated, then said carefully, "Your Highness… why the urgency? There isn't a competitor in Europe that can match this—"
Oskar's mouth twitched.
"There will be," he said.
He didn't say Ford's name aloud, because that would sound like madness in 1907.
But inside his skull, the old timeline sat like a ticking clock.
If Muscle Motors could push a cheap, reliable small car into the world before Ford's Model T became a global contagion, then Europe's market could be seized before it even realized it was a market.
And Europe, right now, was still larger than America in ways that mattered—more cities, more dense industry, more cross-border trade. If you dominated Europe early, you didn't just win sales.
You won the standards.
You won the supplier chains.
You won the habits.
"Trust me," Oskar said simply. "There are rivals you can't see yet."
Maybach didn't question it. He never did anymore. He only nodded, like a man being handed a holy duty.
"Yes, Your Highness. We'll push the C‑Class team harder. Shared platform where possible. Shared parts. That will cut time and cost."
"Good," Oskar said. "Make it cheap enough that a skilled worker can dream of it without laughing."
Paul swallowed. "Under two thousand Marks is… aggressive."
"It's necessary," Oskar replied. "The C‑Class isn't a luxury item. It's a cultural invasion."
Maybach's eyes gleamed.
Paul looked like he wanted to argue.
Then he remembered who he was talking to and wisely did not.
Oskar turned, scanning the test bay again.
"And now," he said, "show me the part of this factory that actually wins wars."
Paul blinked. "Your Highness…?"
Oskar pointed, as if the answer was obvious.
"The trucks."
Passenger cars were important, yes. But Oskar valued trucks like a miser valued gold.
He had seen what modern war did to horses.
He had seen supply lines collapse because wagons could not keep up.
He had seen men bleed because food and ammunition arrived late.
He wanted the German Army to become the first army on Earth that could truly replace mules and horses with engines.
It wouldn't happen overnight.
But it had to start now.
Maybach recovered first, almost relieved. Engineers loved trucks. Trucks were honest. Trucks didn't pretend to be art.
"Your Highness," he said quickly, "the heavy‑duty project is complete. The prototype is ready. Please—follow me."
They crossed the factory floor past lines of motorcycles that rolled forward like obedient soldiers—frames, engines, wheels, fuel tanks, and then the finished machines, polished and stamped with the crowned double‑M shield.
Workers glanced up when Oskar passed.
Not in awe like peasants seeing a prince.
In that sharper way—pride, ownership, belonging.
He built this.
Not with his hands, but with his decisions.
Maybach led them into a more open bay where the air smelled different: less perfume of polished metal, more stink of oil and heavy grease.
And there they sat.
Trucks.
Rudimentary by Oskar's standards—long noses for the engine, boxy cabs, stiff leaf springs that looked like they'd punish any spine that dared sit too long.
But the bones were there.
The stance.
The purpose.
"Your Highness," Maybach said, patting the nearest one as if greeting a loyal dog, "this is the heavy‑duty truck. Payload: one and a half tons. Maximum speed: forty kilometers per hour."
Oskar walked around it slowly, eyes narrowing.
In his old world, this would be laughed at.
In this world, this was a revolution wearing crude sheet metal.
He knelt, checked the axles, the suspension mountings, the drivetrain layout. He inspected the cab, the steering, the brakes.
Then he stood and asked the only question that mattered.
"How reliable is it?"
Paul answered before Maybach could.
"We ran endurance tests," he said quickly. "No major failures. Minor issues, yes—inevitable with the current state of materials and tolerances. But with spare parts and trained personnel, they can be managed easily. It won't cripple usability."
Oskar stared at the truck's crude front grille like it had personally offended him.
"Hm," he grunted.
He knew why it was like this.
Precision machining was still growing. Rubber compounds were inconsistent. Oil quality varied. Roads were brutal. Even fuel delivery could be contaminated by stupidity.
His blueprints were good.
Reality just needed time to become worthy of them.
Still.
He could not accept "minor issues" as a slogan.
"Then we solve the 'minor issues' before the Army solves them by refusing to buy," Oskar said flatly.
Paul nodded quickly. "Yes, Your Highness."
Oskar pointed at the truck.
"This isn't a civilian toy. It's a logistics weapon. If it breaks down on a muddy road under artillery fire, 'minor' becomes 'dead.'"
He looked at Maybach.
"I want a full package," he said. "Not just the truck."
Maybach leaned forward, instantly interested. "Your Highness?"
"Spare parts standardization," Oskar said, counting on his fingers. "Depot stocks along rail hubs. A mechanics training program. A manual written so even an infantry sergeant can understand it."
He paused, then added with a grim edge:
"And I want the fuel system idiot‑proofed as much as possible. Filters. Clear instructions. If a soldier pours garbage fuel into the tank because he thinks it's clever, the engine shouldn't explode like a bomb."
Paul blinked.
Maybach looked delighted, because only a mad prince would say "idiot-proof the German Army" out loud.
Oskar continued.
"And we build a military variant with standardized mounts for crates and ammunition boxes. Stronger suspension. Better cooling. And a canvas cover that doesn't become a wet rag in winter."
He wasn't describing a product.
He was describing a doctrine.
One truck meant a supply column.
A supply column meant a faster army.
A faster army meant choices.
Choices meant survival.
Maybach nodded rapidly. "Yes, Your Highness. We can do that. It will require revisions, but—yes."
Oskar circled the truck again.
"Does it have a name?"
Maybach hesitated.
Paul coughed.
"…Not yet," Maybach admitted.
Oskar's mouth twitched.
"Then we name it the Maybach Truck," he said, as if the universe had always intended this. "Or, if you prefer to sound German and serious: Maybach‑Lastwagen."
Paul nodded instantly, like a man witnessing a birth. "Yes, Your Highness."
Maybach stood there for a second, stunned.
Then his face split into a grin so wide it looked painful.
For a man who had spent his life in the shadow of Daimler, then watched Daimler become a subsidiary under a brand called Muscle Motors…
Having his name stamped onto a real vehicle line was not a consolation prize.
It was immortality in steel.
He tried to speak. Failed. Settled for bowing slightly like a man who wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry.
Oskar patted the truck again.
"My man," he muttered, mostly to himself, "this is how you write your name into history."
Maybach, still beaming, heard it anyway.
Oskar didn't stay in Stuttgart long.
He never did anymore.
He came like a storm—asked brutal questions, gave impossible deadlines, funded the solutions, and then left before anyone could catch their breath.
Because if he lingered, people started treating him like a symbol.
And he didn't have time for symbols.
He had time for outputs.
The following afternoon, he departed.
But he did not leave empty-handed.
He took one hundred Muscle Motors B‑Class cars—the first batch produced in meaningful quantity—and he took them not as purchases, but as weapons.
Gifts.
Propaganda with wheels.
"Your Highness," Paul said carefully as they watched workers load the cars onto reinforced rail flats, "one hundred units… this is a very expensive set of 'gifts.'"
Oskar didn't even look at him.
"Advertising," Oskar said.
Paul blinked. "Begging your pardon?"
Oskar finally turned and gave him a look like a teacher pitying a slow student.
"I'm going to hand these to the most visible people in the Empire," he said. "Men who cannot walk into a street without being stared at. Men whose carriages are watched by journalists like hawks."
He gestured at the gleaming line of vehicles, each one polished until it looked like a black mirror.
"When those men start showing up in these," Oskar continued, "it won't matter what the newspapers say."
He smiled faintly.
"The public will say it for them."
Paul's eyes widened slowly as the strategy clicked.
"Ah," he breathed. "A… rolling endorsement."
"A rolling demand generator," Oskar corrected.
He had a list, of course.
He always had lists.
The Emperor.
Key members of the royal family.
The Chancellor and ministers.
The senior leadership of the Navy and Army.
Industrial magnates whose opinions became trends even when they didn't want them to.
And most importantly—
He stared at the cars as if seeing through them, across borders.
The royals of Austria‑Hungary.
That part of the plan was… delicate.
Austrian aristocrats had pride like glass: beautiful, brittle, and eager to cut anyone who touched it wrong.
Would they be willing to be seen in a German car instead of an Austrian carriage or some locally produced contraption?
Probably not.
Not at first.
But Oskar was betting on two things:
First—vanity.
Once a single archduke rode in one, others would not tolerate being seen as poorer, slower, or less modern.
Second—survival.
Oskar's mind flashed, uninvited, to a future street in Sarajevo.
A wrong turn.
A stalled car.
A panicking driver.
A man in the back seat with no roof and no escape.
A pistol.
A world cracking open.
He had always hated that part of history.
Because it was so stupid.
So small.
So avoidable.
He couldn't say it aloud. He couldn't explain to anyone why an Austro‑Hungarian archduke mattered like a keystone.
So he turned it into a joke in his own head.
Maybe reverse gear will save your ass one day, Franz Ferdinand.
And a roof, too.
A roof mattered more than most kings understood.
Paul watched Oskar's expression shift—too far away for a man standing in the same room.
"Your Highness?" he asked cautiously. "Is something wrong?"
Oskar blinked, returned to the present, and waved it off.
"Nothing," he said. "Just… thinking about traffic."
Paul didn't understand.
Maybach did, a little. Engineers always understood the hidden terror of "traffic."
Oskar watched the hundred cars being chained down—black bodies gleaming under yard lamps, headlamps like bright eyes, the crowned double-M badge stamped proudly on every grille.
The chains clinked. The wagons creaked. The flatcars took the weight like patient beasts.
Oskar exhaled.
"Good," he said. "Now Germany's future has wheels."
Behind him, Stuttgart's chimneys smoked like a hundred black pens writing the next century into the sky.
The train that would carry those cars north—one hundred gifts, one hundred rolling declarations of modernity—shuddered, hissed, and began to move.
Toward Berlin.
Toward palaces.
Toward ministers.
Toward foreign courts that still believed horse-drawn dignity mattered more than speed.
Oskar smiled faintly to himself.
Let them laugh at first.
A year from now, they'd be begging for keys.
Potsdam greeted him with winter sunlight and palace silence—the kind of quiet that existed only because servants and guards worked constantly to maintain it.
Oskar didn't give himself time to enjoy the peace.
He went straight to his father's office.
And did what he always did when he wanted something: he ignored the concept of "proper procedure."
"Father," he announced, and before Wilhelm II could even finish his sentence, Oskar had already taken him by the elbow and steered him out like an unwilling museum exhibit.
"—Oskar, what in God's name—"
"Come. Outside," Oskar said. "You will like this."
The Kaiser tried to resist out of pride.
It lasted three seconds.
In the yard, the Empress was already there, drawn by rumor and curiosity like any true aristocrat who smelled something new to show off. A cluster of ministers, guards, and attendants hovered in a loose semicircle, pretending they weren't excited.
Then the first Muscle Motors B-Class rolled into view.
Black lacquer. Clean lines. Proper headlamps. A body that didn't look like a box with wheels nailed on as an afterthought.
It stopped in front of Wilhelm II like a confident animal presenting itself for inspection.
Oskar stepped aside with a flourish.
"Father," he said, smiling, "this is a car produced by my company. A gift. A proper means of transport for an Emperor who deserves something better than whatever clattering contraption Mercedes-Benz sold you last."
Wilhelm II stared.
His expression shifted through disbelief, pride, and the faint indignation of a man realizing his own son was about to upstage him in his own palace.
"It looks…" Wilhelm began.
"Modern," Oskar supplied helpfully.
"…insultingly good," Wilhelm finished.
Oskar's smile widened.
"Please," he said, holding out the key. "Test it."
The Kaiser took the key like a man accepting a ceremonial sword.
Then, to the horror of the guards, he got into the driver's seat himself.
The Empress immediately climbed into the passenger seat as if it was her natural right.
The guards stiffened. One of them looked as though he wanted to throw himself in front of the vehicle and take the impact preemptively.
The engine started with a smooth purr that made half the old aristocrats blink. No coughing. No wheezing. No violent shaking.
Wilhelm II eased forward.
One lap around the palace yard.
Then a second.
Then a third.
Then a fourth, because once a Kaiser enjoyed something, he enjoyed it like a child who had discovered a forbidden toy.
The ride was comfortable. The suspension did what it was supposed to. The noise insulation made the world feel suddenly softer. And the cabin smelled like clean leather instead of oil and desperation.
At last the car came to a stop.
Wilhelm II leaned out the window, eyes bright, moustache bristling with satisfaction.
"Oskar," he declared loudly, for everyone to hear, "this is a fantastic car. Unbelievable. Your company can produce such a vehicle—truly remarkable."
He looked almost delighted.
"How many more surprises will you show me in my lifetime, my boy? You have outdone yourself once again."
Oskar bowed slightly—just enough to look humble without actually being humble.
"Thank you, Father," he said. "And it would not be possible without your support. But do not worry. I intend to keep surprising you."
Wilhelm II laughed, pleased.
Oskar, meanwhile, noted what mattered:
A Kaiser seen driving his car was worth more than a million Marks in advertising.
He didn't even have to pay newspapers.
The Empire itself would market it.
And then the palace yard turned into chaos.
Because once the Kaiser drove, everyone wanted to drive.
Karl's own B-Class arrived next. Karl marched toward it with the seriousness of a man approaching a battleship.
He climbed in.
Then stared at the steering wheel.
Then stared at the pedals.
Then stared at his own legs.
The truth was obvious: Karl could reach the wheel.
Not much else.
Heddy went forward, let a maid take little Durin as she, very amused—slid into the seat beside Karl.
"I drive," she said sweetly.
"I am the man," Karl insisted.
"You are the navigator," Heddy replied.
In the end, they compromised.
Karl held the wheel with the gravity of a captain steering through a storm, while Heddy handled the pedals and gears.
Karl barked directions like a tiny admiral.
Heddy ignored half of them.
Their car made exactly one perfect lap, during which Karl looked smug enough to be insufferable for the next month.
Oskar then took Anna and Tanya—along with the six children—for a short demonstration ride around the grounds, because he couldn't resist showing off that a "family car" could actually carry a family.
The children squealed. Tanya clutched the seatbelt with suspicious reverence. Anna smiled as if she'd just been handed proof that the future existed.
Which it had.
Then the Empress watched all of this.
And grew inspired.
"Wilhelm," she announced, "I wish to try."
The Kaiser's smile faded.
"No," he said immediately.
"Yes," she said, smiling brighter.
"No," he repeated. "Absolutely not."
The Empress ignored him with the practiced ease of a woman who had been married to an Emperor for decades.
She slid into the driver's seat, alone.
The Kaiser standing at the side, began to protest.
Oskar considered intervening.
Then remembered: the Empress was stubborn enough to declare war on physics if it offended her.
It was too late.
The car lurched forward.
It went well for approximately five seconds—until the Empress turned too sharply near the palace corner and clipped the stone edging.
The impact wasn't catastrophic.
But it was dramatic.
The car jolted sideways, bounced, and—thanks to Oskar's "unnecessary modern paranoia"—everyone inside stayed exactly where they should: restrained, protected, alive.
Seatbelts.
The Empress blinked.
Then, instead of being frightened, she became excited.
"Oh!" she cried. "It's wonderful! It didn't even hurt!"
"Stop," the Kaiser shouted.
The Empress did not stop.
She pressed the pedal harder.
The car surged into the gardens.
And Potsdam's palace garden staff learned, in real time, what it meant to be collateral damage in the age of engines.
Bushes were flattened. Decorative hedges shaped like animals were massacred. Fences snapped. Benches died heroic deaths. Anna's strawberry plants—carefully tended—were obliterated in a single glorious sweep.
Gardeners ran.
Some cried.
The Empress screamed the entire time—not in fear, but in wild, delighted exhilaration, as if she were fifteen again instead of nearly fifty.
"Brake!" the Kaiser roared, voice cracking.
"I AM BRAKING!" she shrieked back.
She was not braking.
She had frozen.
Both hands welded to the wheel, foot welded to the wrong pedal, trapped in the most dangerous form of confidence: panic disguised as determination.
The car hit a slope.
Skidded.
And flew—with a truly imperial lack of dignity—into the lake.
For one suspended moment, everyone stared at the rippling water in disbelief.
Then the Empress surfaced, sputtering and flailing, her hat gone, hair loose, shrieking something that sounded like a mixture of rage, laughter, and shock.
Without thinking, Oskar stripped off his coat, boots, and shirt like a man shedding armor.
The palace staff witnessed, open-mouthed, as the giant Acting Crown Prince jumped into the freezing water in only his trousers and swam with powerful strokes toward the screaming Empress.
He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her toward the shore as if rescuing a particularly loud cat.
She clung to him, spluttering.
"I—" she coughed. "I couldn't—my foot—"
"Yes," Oskar said grimly, dragging her onto land. "You pressed the wrong pedal."
The Empress blinked at him, dripping and furious.
Then she began laughing.
The Kaiser looked as if he might have a heart attack.
The gardeners looked as if they might have a funeral.
And the crowd—guards, ministers, servants—slowly began to realize that what they had just witnessed would be retold for years.
Not as scandal.
As legend.
Even the Empress, soaked to the bone, sat up, pointed at the ruined garden, and declared proudly:
"See? Very safe car."
Oskar just stood there, dripping, breathing hard, and thought, with dull disbelief:
This is my life.
Later, as the chaos settled into laughter and shouted orders and frantic towels, one of Karl's clerks brought in a visitor.
A thin young man with intense eyes and an eager posture, dressed modestly, hair slightly too long, clutching a small case of sketches like a holy book.
Adolf Hitler.
Employee of the year.
Invited as one of the "rewarded" workers for his absurdly effective car-sales talent—given a palace visit, a badge pin, and a brief handshake with the prince whose products were changing his world.
He arrived just in time to witness the Empress's lake flight.
His eyes were wide, not with horror, but with something else.
A desire to capture it.
To freeze the moment.
To turn it into an image.
To paint it someday.
Oskar noticed him only briefly, offered the promised pat on the back, and handed him a small enamel pin with the crowned double-M badge.
"Good work, my man. Keep up the good work, and don't do politics. " Oskar said, sincere.
The young man's face lit up like he'd been blessed.
Oskar moved on.
Because to Oskar, it was just another day meeting historical characters.
Cars delivered. A nation nudged forward.
And the future—unpredictable, ridiculous, unstoppable—continuing to arrive.