Work Text:
The hard part was supposed to be over. Okay they hadn’t managed to take control of that stupid castle. But they had managed to shut it up, and take control of its voice is that it could declare her the Heterodyne. Once her legitimacy had been secured it would be smooth sailing from there. After all, Mechanisburg was infamous for its fanatical loyalty to the Heterodynes.
“Citizens of Mechanisburg!” Zola called out before the assembled town elders. “You’re Heterodyne has returned to you! Rejoice!”
Then the Doom Bell had rung out, and she awoke to find the town elders looking down at her with deeply troubled looks on their faces.
—
Zola prided herself on being a great actor. With the right acting you could convince anyone of anything. Over the years she had perfected her act down to an art form. The sweet, kind, helpful Zola who wants the best for everyone was the perfect mask for Zola who had bigger ambitions that just being someone’s puppet Heterodyne. She was confident she could manipulate anyone to do anything.
Except none of her tricks seem to be working on the people of Mechanisburg. Quite the opposite in fact. Every time she makes a public appearance she sees frowns deepen and eyes narrow. Whenever she gives a public speech she notices that only the tourists cheer and clap, the locals merely cross their arms and look disappointed.
It’s like they want something from her, and they’re not getting it. She can’t figure it out, nothing she does seems to satisfy them. It’s almost like they actually want the deranged old bastards back. It’s aggravating, they should be cheering and clapping about having anyone at all. Well, it won’t matter too much, soon she’ll have replaced the important officials in town with people loyal to her and will have her own troops stationed in the city.
Except it only takes a week for things to reach the flash point. She’s giving a speech when someone lets out a boo.
“You’re no Heterodyne!”
Agreement ripples through the crowd. Even the tourists can pick up the sudden change of mood and are starting to shuffle away from the square.
“She doesn’t even have the spark!” Someone else shouts.
The mummerings are getting angrier. The last of the tourists have fled the square. It’s then that she realizes a lot of the citizens are carrying weapons of some kind. She needs to get ahold of the situation before things can deteriorate further.
“Please there is no need for…”
Something flashes from the crowd and strikes her in the shoulder.
Oh, she realizes, its a knife.
“KILL THE IMPOSTER!”
“OPEN FIRE!” She yells to her guards. They snap their rifles to their shoulders and fire on reflex.
Normally, in most cities, a line of soldiers firing into a crowd of civilians is enough to disperse a crowd, or at least sort out the people fleeing from those who are looking to start trouble. In Mechanisburg, it was just the signal to charge.
—
The first clue Martellus has that anything has gone wrong is a formal request from one of his agents in Mechanisburg asking for reinforcements. That was followed nearly an hour later by another message begging him to ‘Help us please! They are going to kill us!’
By the time his airship is in sight of Mechanisburg, he has a feeling that it is already too late for that. At first he thinks the town is on fire, then he realizes it's only a few buildings that are actually on fire. Through the spyglass he can see thousands of people surging through the streets carrying lit torches, and he’s pretty sure its not part of any local festival.
“Search the frequencies. See if you can pick up any of our people,” he ordered his comm crew. He needed to figure out what the hell was going on there before he dropped his troops right in the middle of a potential bloodbath.
“Sir, there’s an airship approaching. I think it's one of ours.”
Martellus swung his spyglass over and sure enough it was the airship they had lent to the fake Heterodyne girl. The one she had painted pink to match her color scheme. It wasn’t looking so pink anymore. Black scorch marks marr the side of the envelope and its hull is caved-in in places. It pulled up beside them and a boarding tube was sent across.
“Sir,” the Captain saluted Martellus. “Am I glad to see you.”
“What’s happening down there?”
The Captain shook his head. “It’s like the whole town suddenly went crazy. We’re waiting on standby in case they needed us, when suddenly we get a radio message to get ready to depart, they’re evacuating the Heterodyne girl. Next thing we know there’s a torch bearing mob marching down the street chanting something about purging the invaders.”
“Did you evacuate the Heterodyne? Is she with you right now?”
“No,” the Captain shook his head again. “We barely made it out alive ourselves. They had rocket launchers with them! We took off right away and were lucky as hell they didn’t breach the gas cells.”
“Sir,” the Comm officer, interrupted. “We just picked up a transmission from some of the troops on the ground.”
“Bring it up,” Martellus ordered.
“Oh thank the gods,” the voice on the other end said. “We need evacuation right away! The entire town’s gone berserk!”
“What happened?”
“The entire town went crazy! I don’t know why! My squad were just in our barracks resting for night patrol when someone throws a firebomb through our window! We just barely got out in time! They-they were waiting for us outside sir. A whole mob of them armed with wrenches and hammers. And they had these killer clanks with them, gods, those clanks just started tearing us to pieces. We ran for our lives. We’re hiding in a warehouse somewhere in the west districts, and we need evacuation right now before they… OH GODS! NO! NO!” And then nothing but screaming.
What in the Blazes had that woman done to set the entire town out for her blood? It had only been a week!
“Are you picking up any other transmissions?” He asked. The Comms officer shook their head.
A part of him wants to drop the troops, shoot anyone who tries to fight back, and find out who's responsible for this and kill them himself. That part is currently being outvoted by the pragmatic side of his mind. Which is reminding him that his troops are not equipped to fight a civil insurrection on this scale, that the internal defences of Mechanisburg are likely not as deactivated as they are supposed to be, and that the lives of his loyal troops are a poor trade-off for the life of some flakey fake Heterodyne.
“Withdraw back to Storm’s Refuge,” he ordered. “The situation is past any hope of salvage. Even if there still is some of our people left alive, if we can’t get their location we won’t be able to help them.”
Looks like they were going to have to rethink a large part of the plan.
—
There is a moving sea of fire outside their safehouse. The streets are choked with angry Mechanisburgers carrying torches and chanting “PURGE THE INVADERS!” and, “KILL THE IMPOSTER!”
“They’re burning you in effigy,” one of her agents whimpered, peeking out through the slats in the shutters. “We’re going to die aren’t we?”
Zola didn’t even bother to acknowledge them as she paced back and forth across the room. There had to be something they could do, anything! They had plans in place for this kind of thing, they had c-gas canisters stockpiled, they had street-cleaner guns, they had a whole suite of combat drugs, they had escape coats. Those were all back in headquarters, and headquarters was on fire. The fire department wouldn’t be putting it out any time soon, because the fire department was the ones who started it.
“What about your contacts?” She asked one of her assistants. “You said you had good relations with the crime syndicates here?”
“I thought I did too,” the assistant sighed. “I was wrong. They’re the ones controlling those killer clanks out there.”
“What about the new chief of police? He’s one of ours right?”
“That was him nailed to the front of the police station,” another assistant whimpered. “We’re going to die.”
Zola bit back a growl. “You, you said you had agents all over this town.”
‘“I did.” the man agreed. “They’re all dead now. Sera was my last one. She’s the one they set on fire over there.”
”Where was Gil when you really needed him?” She thought. There had to be something…
“HERE!” Someone outside shouted. “HERE! THIS IS THE PLACE!”
The crowd outside let out a collective howl of rage, and the door to the safehouse came down with a crunch.
—
The streets of Mechanisburg were quite the next morning. After all the excitement last night, most of the locals were sleeping in, and those tourists who hadn’t immediately fled the moment the gates were opened, were still cowering in their rooms.
The only people out on the streets was the occasional patrol of Wulfenbach troops, who were mostly there to reassure the tourists, and members of the Graverobbers Guild, who were busy taking the bodies down from the lampposts.
“What a bloody mess,” Carson sighed, kicking a burnt-out torch out from under his boot. This was going to put a major damper on tourism for the rest of the season.
Thanks to bad timing, or good sense more likely, Wulfenbach troops hadn’t arrived to restore order until events had more or less run their bloody course. At that point the only thing left to do was to yell at everyone that the show was over, you’ve had your fun, go home!
Now all that was left was the thankless task of cleaning up the mess, and the big question as to how the Castle could have let such an obvious fake pass. It should have used her perfectly coiffed skull as a paving stone in the castle chapel.
He took a puff of his pipe and wandered up the street towards the castle. The Street Sweepers guild was starting to show up and were getting started on cleaning away all the discarded pitchforks, burnt-out torches, throwing rocks and rotten produce. He even sees the young woman who was supposed to be spying on the Burgermeister pulling herself out of a hole in a tree. Clever woman, she will tell her masters why they shouldn’t try to put their own false Heterodyne in Mechanisburg.
The body of the imposter is still hanging in the castle square. She had put up a fight right up until the end, screaming and shouting that she was their rightful ruler and they were committing treason by doing this. She might have even been one of the ones that honestly thought they were the real deal. Not that it made a difference. All false Heterodynes share the same fate.
There’s someone else in the square, standing there staring at the body with a shocked look on their face. It takes Carson a moment to realize it's actually the Baron’s son.
“You knew her?” He asks, coming up to stand beside the boy.
“I…” He stumbles on his words. “Actually, I do, did, know her. It’s…” He seems genuinely shocked by this. “We met each other in Paris. She was always getting into trouble and needed someone to help get her out. I… I thought she had gotten married! I never heard from her again so I thought she had smartened up and put all that behind her!”
“Hmmmmm…” Carson took a thoughtful puff from his pipe, as if he was just any other old man who had just came by to see what the fuss was about. “Sometimes boy, the only thing you can’t save people from is themselves.”
“I’m sorry,” the Baron's son shook his head again. “This is just a shock is all. I never thought I’d see her again let alone… like this.”
Carson just let out another acknowledging hum. Always a shock to find out the people you thought you knew had secrets after all. We watched as the Baron’s son casually checked his pocket watch, and then blanched at the time. Finally realized he was late for his meeting with the Burgermeister eh?
He wasn’t worried. He had already briefed the Burgermeister on what to say and what the ask for, the man would tell him anything important he needed to know. Besides, he had more pressing matters to deal with.
“So…” he mused to the corpse hanging from the flagpole, as Wulfenbach hurried away across the plaza. “How did you fool the Castle I wonder?”
Looked like a visit to the crypts was in order.