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Chapter Text

Mechanicsburg lay there, nestled between her mountains tall, like nothing had happened -- to those looking from certain angles, anyway.

Mechanicsburg, the beautiful, unconquerable Scourge of Europa. 

...at least, it used to be unconquerable. Before The Other, before the cascade of tragedies that destroyed the family -- so much more thoroughly, in the end, than cascades of tragedies usually did.

Because the end had come.

And what happens after the end of the world? Particularly when people -- and those who used to be people -- have to go on living?

Well, apparently, good old Klaus, Baron Wulfenbach, wades in through mud and blood, with absolute ice water in his veins. A little bit like the way he'd been wading in everywhere else, except while definitely knowing that Mechanicsburg wasn't everywhere else. Still, Klaus wanted to finish the job of ending the long war -- Pax Transylvania, people were calling the idea -- and he wanted the Jaegerkin to do it with him.

Maxim looked at the ruined Castle Heterodyne. Then he looked at a spot on the city walls. There was the Mechanicsburg coat of arms, with good old Franz, his spine of alchemical sigils ending in the sign of the trilobite. Trilobites were a really good symbol for the Heterodyne bloodline: they were old, and they were weird, and they left their marks.

The Baron was being very considerate, treating the negotiations as negotiations, as if he thought the Jaegerkin could walk away from such an offer, as if he needed the extra enforcement manpower as much as the horde needed a m -- a... an employer to keep the mobs off, keep them together, keep them safe. 

But what kind of Jaeger gave up just like that? They could specify contingencies, but if they knew no one was even looking, that knowledge would eat them all alive. Sure, it was impossible, but the masters would never accept that as an excuse, not even in the Jaegerkin's own hearts.

Nobody loved the Heterodynes for caring about the possible.

And so there assembled the volunteers. A few handfuls of Jaegers to be scattered to the wind in tribute to the Troth. Detached -- exiled even more than all of them would be -- until they found a Heterodyne. And they wouldn't. But no one could say they hadn't looked. One final hunt that would end only with their deaths or with the impossible. Some of the Jaegerkin would turn from predators to prey (or, at best, scavengers) so they all wouldn't have to. 

Ognian came out. His face was salt-wet, and so were his clothes, and Maxim wasn't going to give him any grief about it. They had grief overflowing enough. 

"Where you descendants?"

"Didn't want them walking me out. We said goodbye at the corner of Lightning and Least Resistance. Is better spot for it."

Maxim nodded a little. "You is sure you don't want to be where they can write you easy?" Mechanicsburg wasn't allowed to have Jaegermonsters anymore, but maybe a guy with a human family shouldn't be doing this volunteer detachment thing.

"How is writing ever easy? I has made my decision. Besides, one of the great-greats wants to grow up and be a troubador, like his great-great grandmomma. We can run into each other sometimes on the road."

Maxim just nodded. "It'll be good to have you, brother."

"You bet it will. Favorite great-granddaughter packed me whole box of gingerbread."

Maxim chuckled, lucky it didn't become hysterics for either of them. With a flourish, he removed his hat just long enough to bow in the general direction of the walls, of the Castle, of the Dyne. "Thank you and good night, Mechanicsburg."

It was time to report to the Generals -- for the very last time.

Chapter Text

It was no longer possible to just pillage up some supplies when they ran low. Not without pack tactics to fall back on in a pinch, not while ... masterless. There is no cavalry to call upon when one rides with no one.

So the five of them -- Fuest was one of them, animal or not, and Jenka often claimed he was more clever than Oggie and Maxim -- were around the campfire tonight, roasting some feral ox-crab thing. Maxim stoked the fire while Fuest cracked claws within his jaws. Oggie prepped the scraping-sticks as Jenka reviewed the map they'd decided to use and Dimo worked on his knitting.

Softly, slowly, Maxim found himself singing.

"Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,
You're wise to fear Mechanicsburg!
A name that causes nightmares from
Zelenograd to Rome."

Gradually, the others chimed in.

"Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,
The Heterodynes' Mechanicsburg,
Scourge of Europa and
The place that we call home."

Maxim could almost imagine that it was an ordinary hunt, that they'd be going home when it was done. Almost.

"How mighty are her mighty walls,
How deadly are her clanks!"

Not enough. The Castle had been as good as murdered.

"Impassible her mountains tall,
With monsters in their endless ranks."

Many monsters got to stay home, as long as they kept out of sight. The Jaeger horde was always a bit different in that way: more focused and outgoing. But even for other kinds of monsters, the guildhall had been shut down.

"The Heterodynes, they rule us all.
We load their guns; we forge their steel,
We know their house will never fall..."

That was when Maxim felt his voice break. He could hear the tears in Ognian's. But Jenka and Dimo kept singing with will in their voices, even as Maxim had to stop and swallow for a moment.

"They keep us safe beneath their heel."

And, pressing forward emotionally, Maxim fell back into line for the final verse and finale.

"Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,
We live to serve Mechanicsburg,
With blood and sweat and hearts and minds,
With every erg and ohm.

"Mechanicsburg, Mechanicsburg,
The greatest burg you've ever heard of,
Scourge of Europa and
The place that we call home!"

And then dinner was ready for people who weren't bears, and Jenka was slipping down her scarf  -- she still had such difficulty, sometimes, exposing her defanged face -- to eat. Focused on the chow, no one said anything for a while.

Eventually, though, Maxim had to say it. "They is going to have to change the words to the song, ain't they?"

Jenka nodded. For years, Master Bill and Master Barry hadn't liked the song much, anyway. Now... now it would definitely need to be updated.

"... Here's hoping the masters at least hit The Other where it hurt, yeah?" Dimo muttered, and Maxim nodded in turn. There was something very frustrating in the idea that the entity that destroyed all of their lives mostly in ways that could well end up worse than killing them, might have gotten away with it. But The Other's 'getting away' would likely have resulted in coming right back and continuing the war, which hadn't happened, so ... probably The Other was done for. And all it had cost had been everything.

Chapter Text

Obviously, one couldn't just stay sad. That'd be ridiculous. So the squad got adjusted to the new normal: staying alive, reviewing any possible signs of the Masters' trail, and finding ways to enjoy life...

Until Solstice, when everything hit them in the hearts again.

But no, they were not going to let this get to them. So as they sat around the fire, Maxim raised the question. "Okay, I got a question for everybody: what would we say were ten best pre-stomp Solstice rantings?"

"Hoho!" Oggie said gleefully. "Master Saturnus's whole thing about the fires in the Year of Three Winters has got to go on list"

Maxim had to agree there. "And then there was his poppa's first Solstice, what with the cursing about magnets and how they worked!"

"Hmm. Master Dagon's making-something-rhyme-with-purple gots to be up there," Dimo said, scratching thoughtfully at his stubble. "It was real long one for not having very much to work with."

"Wellll," Maxim laughed with a flourish and struck a pose. "I is sure not arguing with the subject matter!"

Dimo nodded. "He said herbal and burble were closer than hurtful and mirthful, because of the -- what was word...?"

"Plosives," Jenka said with that enunciation she'd been able to talk with ever since Andronicus maimed her.

"Yeah, I should have remembered that, 'cause there is one in Boom. So yeah, Master Dagon said that those rhymes was closer, but that he didn't have to like it."

"Hmph. Speaking of not liking," Jenka said. "How about the first solstice after Master Alexandros got that new jaw? Sure was big help in being an incomprehensible madboy, but..."

Maxim nodded. "Like nails on chalkboard."

Oggie canted his head in confusion. "No, the nailed-up chalkboard was Master Bloodtharst's first Solstice."

Maxim sighed. "Like, Ognian. Like. Is analogy."

That quizzical head remained canted. "What has 'not using a thinking engine' got to do with anything?"

"...Never change, brother. Well, maybe change a little." Granted, it was hard to think of change as something Jaegers could still do. But right. Not Thinking About It.

But Oggie, indefatigable Oggie, just said, "Okay. Hey, remember that time with the Unseen Empire, and we had to spend Solstice underground?"

Maxim grinned. "Ho, yeah. The Master went on and on about differences between rare bat and well-done bat. Flavor profile issue."

Oggie nodded. "What was the food thing Master Ominox was on about his second solstice?"

"Soup-based deployment of chemical weapons. Potato-based counter... counterfeiting? Counterculture?"

"Countermeasures," Jenka said.

"That was it.”

Chapter Text

Jenka was off on a separate recon when Dimo, Maxim, and Oggie found a few revenants shambling around and put them out of their misery. After checking that they themselves had no notable injuries -- and checking further that Dimo wasn't rhinohiding again -- they looked back to the bodies.

"The Other is such a lousy master," Maxim found himself hissing with disgust.

"Ho, yeah," Dimo said. "That strong a Spark, but can't trust own charisma? Worthless."

Maxim nodded. How much flash and fire must The Other's eyes lack, to have to take hearts by force? Oh, Maxim was in favor of force for plenty of things, like a good raid, sure. 'Your treasure and/or your life!' and all that was just fine, just fine. But there was a big difference between putting the Fear in someone and putting the Not-Someone in someone. It was cheating in the worst way.

Being Gifted with the Spark was supposed to cultivate a way of being where people wanted to serve them. The Other wanted to be a god? The first Heterodyne in Mechanicsburg had been hailed as a divine consort just by what he did with himself. 

The Heterodynes went mad, and the Jaegers went along happily. 'Here, drink this. Nine chances out of ten it'll kill you' didn't work any other way. The Other would probably have had to use a funnel.

Sometimes, Maxim remembered being human, riding with the horde, proving himself over and over and over again. He remembered the Heterodyne of the time. Now that was a Master, real command in every step. A wind through the world, he was. Not just a Spark, but a forest fire: all-consuming curiosity and blazing vitality. The whole family did tend to run hot; that was probably part of why so many of them had been not so much with the shirts -- not that Maxim had ever Tried Anything; just saying.

He remembered when the big night had come: his turn. The Master saying, "Yes, I see what you are." And then the ritual and the taste and the searing slide down his throat. The not-quite-dying and the way his skin filled with different blood and his senses opened up, with the Master the first thing he saw and heard and smelled.

He remembered helping bury the nine-out-of-ten, then watching -- and feeling -- as the survivors' teeth and claws came in. He remembered the big party with more-regular drinks and fighting and women in hats. He remembered every battle after that being so much fun.

And serving the Heterodyne could get people killed, of course, but he didn't put people to risks he wouldn't take himself. Quite the contrary, as the insisting on leaving the Solstice parties alone had always attested -- and he always did leave alone, because he knew what the Jaegers would do if he were in danger around them, and he was not a cheater!

Eventually, well... Jaegers tended to live much, much longer than their masters. But it was kind of like what Oggie sometimes said about his wife not really being gone when he looked at his descendents. Every Heterodyne was not only a new and wonderful little nutcase, but also a remaining piece of the one who picked Maxim for the draught.

That was how love worked, wasn't it?  Clearly, hardly anybody had ever loved the Other.

Chapter Text

It had been five years since they'd left Mechanicsburg. Seemed like fifty.

Right now, the three of them were looking at a singed hat that had fallen in the field in front of them, somewhere quite a bit west of the Carpathians. It was a tall shako with the Castle Wulfenbach badge, which as usual looked like a thing from a chess game that was also a bird at the same time, like some kind of wacky pun. That was front and center. Clipped to the side was a very, very small Jaeger pin, just the stylized horns and eyes and tusks. Both were metal, of course, and either one would scorch your hand and sizzle if you poked at it. And they'd poked at it.

They looked up — and up, and up — and there, indeed, was Castle Wulfenbach, the hovering, billowing city of silk and steel, looming over Europa as usual these days. One of its subsidiary dirigibles was in flames, filling the air with the scent of ash, but still kept up by the Baron's emergency-safety measures. The hat had clearly fallen from there.

"Well," Dimo said, still looking up. "Somebody had a bad plan."

"Whose you think it is?" Oggie asked.

"Hard to say," Maxim said. "The uniforms is different now. More... uniform. What I want to know is who the guy's going to get a replacement from. How often does the Baron send them against regular-sized enemies what knows how to dress?"

The thought of the whole pack fighting together hit a longing ache inside him.

"Maybe the Baron'll just ... issue him a new hat," Dimo said, and Maxim felt his own face mirror his brother's disgusted look. Still, even if it meant the others' being at risk of going a bit soft, they knew they'd done the right thing. 

Chapter Text

It was raining. That happened sometimes. This time they were lucky and ducked into a little building by the wayside.

The building turned out to be a shrine. Torchlight shown on some floor-cushions and a little low table. On the table were candles painted with a very familiar figure, along with a fancy little sign etched in wood.

'St. Teodora of Transylvania, Deliver us from the Mad.'

Maxim looked at the lady's portrait for a minute. "You know, from what I is remembering, any time that she 'delivered' anybody else from the Mad, things never ended up going very nice for her. Why would she be wanting still to do it now?"

Dimo shrugged. "Ain't like it can kill her again."

Maxim considered this, then nodded. Nothing could stick her in an awkward marriage again either. He looked once more at a woman who had very much feared and disliked him -- not him personally, but still -- and who had spread some of the dislike, if not so much of the fear, to her sons. He was thoughtful for a moment. "You know... we had worse."

Dimo made an affirming sound. "Not long after, really. With Lady Teodora, you could be figuring 'Well, she is not getting how things are, because she ain't mad.' Lady Lucrezia, she was mad, and it maybe made her harder to deal with."

"Master Bill was a bit better at being in love than his Poppa was, though," Oggie pointed out. 

"Ho, better from the lady's point of view, sure," Maxim said. "And maybe, for a while, from the little young master’s, rest his soul. Rotten luck for everyone else, though." Lady Teodora hadn't much liked many of her husband's direct subordinates. Lady Lucrezia had only liked them the way she liked the furniture sitting on one particular wall. She hadn't respected them at all.

"And I gots to give Lady Teodora one other thing," Dimo pointed out. "When she decided a thing needed doing, she did that thing. Took nerve, even if she did some of it in a weaksauce kind of way."

They nodded. It was... a complicated bundle of feelings. The members of the family normally only attacked each other if they were having philosophical debates. For the Master to have tried to do... well, kindasorta the very thing that they soon kicked a guy out of the Jaegerkin for trying to do... that was complicated. And that it had gotten him a somewhat sneakier, way more personal 'Solstice in July' was a different kind of complicated.

He had to wonder sometimes: if Lady Teodora hadn't done what she did, would the Jaegerkin all be back in Mechanicsburg under some regular Heterodyne now? Or would they have been left masterless all the sooner?"

Maxim stared at the candles for bit, then leaned over and lit one. Hey, whatever was between them, and whatever the maybes might be, in her way, she'd earned it.

Chapter Text

They swam out to the little Greek island in the darkness before dawn -- dark enough, Maxim hoped, that certain things from the older stories wouldn't be too active in the water. They had to check out any lead, after all, even if they knew they were only chasing after snipes and geese.

Their hats and boots were bundled carefully on their backs, and they'd told each other that was all the was to really worry about, but Maxim kept listening to make sure there were really the sounds of each of them swimming. Sometimes the prospect of being left alone started to feel like too much of a possibility.

They made it to shore, then spent the day drying out their clothes, napping in the shade, and, occasionally, eating from the grove of synesthetic cherries they found. It was just like the reputation said: they tasted like fairy tales. Well, he thought so, anyway. Oggie thought they tasted like his wife's jokes, and Dimo wouldn't say what they tasted like — and stopped eating after the third one.

When dusk came again, they ventured out of the shade and tied themselves to each other to scale the mountain in order to check the summit for evidence that the Heterodynes had visited again. "Either we all stay up, or we all go down together," Dimo said as he secured the knots.

Maxim was very much in favor of this, but he had to say it. "If is second one, Jenka will kill us when she finds out," he said.

"Well if we doesn't survive to report, who is going to tell her?" Oggie asked cheerfully.

And then they heard it. "HOMPK!"

The bird that soon appeared in front of them had a wingspan longer than a badminton court. 

"A Hatzegopteryx goose?" Maxim hadn't thought of them in a long, long while. Engineering them out of Dyne-valley waterfowl with old fossils for models had been a multi-generational father-son project of some of the old masters. "What is they doing so far south?"

"With them wings? Maybe just having an evening constitutional," Dimo replied. 

"Anyway, if this guy is here, I is definitely not thinking an heir is!"

"So what is we going to do?" Oggie asked. "We is still tied together!"

"We finds a place what is uncomfortable to peck, and we defends it," Dimo said. "Head for the feetses, boys!"

And so they did, and indeed, the way the trio wound themselves around the legs while fighting upward made it difficult for the goose to maintain a proper attack -- not that that made it give up. Still, it wasn't all that long, only until just before dawn, really, before Maxim stood, sword held high, one foot raised high enough to step on the monster's beak. It was going to take forever to get all the blood and ichor out of his clothes, but he knew he still looked stylin'.

"Brothers, we is going to have so much jerky.”

Chapter Text

It had been maybe ten years since they'd left Mechanicsburg -- nearly fifteen since the Masters had -- and the five of them were gathering brush for a night's fire. 

"Hey," Oggie said, holding up a piece of striped cloth with 'TELLURICOM' emblazoned across it. "What's this?"

"That's when they talks to the whole world. With magnets or something," Jenka said.

"Who does?" Oggie asked.

"Fortune-forecasters," Jenka said. "Prophets."

Dimo sniffed. "Not even the Masters was wacky enough to try that with magnets.”

Maxim found himself staring at the cloth as he nodded slightly. "So was this from a theater or something? Like the opera?" He asked before he managed to reflect on the fact that the opera was sometimes a very sensitive topic for Jenka.

Maxim had never even known Mistress Euphrosyne.

"Not quite so high-falluting," Jenka said softly. "More likely a circus." Because it wasn't like she was going to not explain something just because she had other things on her mind. She and Fuest always had a wider range and wider intel, after all.

Oggie smiled. "Circus? Ho, yeah, like the ones that pretends to have magic dolls and stuff?"

"I hear that ain't what they pretend so much anymore," Jenka said. "I hear these days the pretendy funtime things is about The Heterodyne Boys. Master Bill and Master Barry, and all their heroics. They goes from town to town with the theatricals."

Maxim chuckled. "Ho, yeah. I bet they gots real Leading Man Types for Master Bill."

Jenka nodded slowly, eyes narrowed. "And real clowns for Mister Punch."

Maxim nearly flinched.

Bill and Barry Heterodyne had been better than many of their ancestors at making friends, but the first two friends they had literally made had been a bit physically rough in places. Nevertheless, Mister Punch had managed to be strong and intelligent and sane all at the same time. He'd been young and in love, and he and his wife were so classy. The Jaegers for the most part could barely even be envious that the masters liked them better, that the masters only wanted to bring the respectable Punch and Judy along on their adventures and leave the Jaegers behind. That was how likeable Punch and Judy were.

Maxim was proud to be a Jaeger and always would be, but Mister Punch had made things, and they were good. He and Missus Judy could've had a life together even after losing the Masters. But no, they'd been trusted to stick by the Masters' sides when the horde hadn't, and now they were lost, too.

So didn't it just figure that people would manage to not respect those two, despite their being more respectable than the Jaegers? Foreigners, seriously. "And us?" he asked, pretty sure he knew the answer.

Jenka's eyes narrowed, but they did not water. "We is not there."

Right. No one had ever seen Jaegers on adventures, because they only managed to be there if hidden and quiet-like, and only that until the masters caught them trying to help. "Of course."

Chapter Text

It was a wonderful and awful day when they found, amid some boxes of roadside jetsam, a tin of genuine Mechanicsburg gingerbread trilobites, the distinctive lines chased right on the box.

It was hard to even unseal the tin. It was hard to even brace themselves to face the scent before they could unseal the tin. The tantalizing torment they were in for wasn't hope, of course, but it was almost as rough.

"You know," Dimo said quietly as the five of them were staring at it. "I has heard it said that the reason ginger and cinnamon smell so good is because they is actually hurting the inside of you nose a little. In a good way."

Oggie laughed. "Even noses like a good fight."

Maxim grinned. "No wonder Mechanicsburg makes the best."

"So is we opening this or what?" Jenka asked.

Maxim braced his ungauntled hand against the tin and used the gauntleted one to pry it open. It soon became clear that however long the tin had been away from Mechanicsburg, the air of its bakeries had still been trapped inside. The scent hit, and not long after that, the sniffling started.

"Sure does pick a fight with the nose right away," Dimo said softly as Oggie grabbed a handkerchief.

"Sure does," Maxim agreed. They all had their pride. 

When everyone had regained their composure, they each took one trilobite almost reverently. Teeth like theirs -- well, besides Jenka -- piercing into these sort of cookies ... well, it was always a funny thing, but this was the kind of funny where you could end up crying, so they had to be careful. They also just went ahead and tossed Fuest's right into his mouth. The cookies wouldn't last long, but he deserved, too.

The cookies crumbled. They all ate slowly. They did not wash it down with anything. The wanted the taste to linger. The nostalgia ached, and they wanted it to be torture.

Chapter Text

The noose was feeling itchy when the circus came to town. 

The three of them been hanging for days. If they'd just been people, Maxim knows that they wouldn't even have been having their current conversation. But Jaeger strength was enough that the neck muscles supported the throat even with all the rope and knots and whatnot. Air came in; air went out; conversation happened.

So here they were, on the gallows in the unimpressive village of Zumzum, their own weapon satchels right there under their dangling feet, reflecting on how Jenka was absolutely going to kill them. Especially if they ended up dying. Especially especially if they ended up dying because they lost a game of Hangman to Othar Trygvassen, Gentleman Adventurer.

Maxim never had been very good at spelling.

He definitely didn't like Othar -- or his name. You'd think that anybody whose name sounded so much like the word, in the world's primary trade tongue, for the world's most awful person -- and not in the fun way -- would change it. Granted, the guy was Norwegian, so he'd maybe have been used to thinking of The Other as Den Andre, and Maxim was pretty sure that the last time he himself had seen the horde's very own Andre, he hadn't changed his name either.

Still didn't like Othar, though. What with executing them all like a big sneaky-pants -- and then making a big deal, when asked if he wanted to join in on the betting pool, that he had a moral objection to betting pools and had brought them in only in the interest of heroism. That was just downright unprofessional. If somebody was going to be a sneak, better to do it with a real sneak's flair. Maxim could respect being turned on in cold blood, but this was weaksauce.

But then came the circus. Maxim figured that was going to be nice. It was hardly the first time they had the prospect of getting to see a show for free, but it had been a while. He and Oggie were appreciating this when Dimo suddenly interrupted. "Hey, shut up. Shut up! Use you noses!"

Maxim sniffed, and -- oh. Oh. Through all the scents of the square, there was one that was very, very nice. Warm base, deep aquatic heart, tangy and evocative as fancy tea made of Dyne water. It was the nearest thing to heaven.

"Where is it?" Dimo muttered desperately. "Where? Him?" Maxim was looking that way, too. The circus's advance man looked a little like Master Bill in his way -- or, well, what a lot of the pictures that were supposed to be of Master Bill looked like these days, anyway. But he wasn't the source of that heavenly scent, and Dimo agreed. "No -- There!"

Right there. Hair like rose gold with a bit of a cowlick. Glasses. A girl, which was confusing, but when something's already impossible, who cares if it's unusual? Scavengers couldn't be choosers.

"Ah! Jaegerkin!" the miracle yelped. Maxim watched her, smiling hungrily. He vaguely heard the local sergeant talking to her about how they deserved this or whatever. He kept staring. 

Hours went by, and whenever the girl wasn't behind one circus curtain or another, she was all that Maxim could see. Othar Trygvassen showed up, and Maxim paid him no mind. Occasionally, when she was out of view, he would let his mind wander enough to calculate how, if he were cut down, he would proceed to get his hands free and grab his weapons. He speculated the best ways to follow the girl's trail if she might leave the square while they were still on the gallows. 

But after those first moments, he, Dimo, and Oggie did not talk about her out loud. They couldn't. Not yet.

The words of the players echoed a lot different, in this 'Heterodyne Show,' with that familiar stranger on stage. Oh, the way she snarled and the way she strutted. Maxim breathed, just to make sure he still could, neck muscles holding up, and wasn't hallucinating in any last moments or nothing.

Later, there was a commotion, and the roaring of Fuest as the townfolk freaked out, and then square caught fire, and still all Maxim looked at was the girl -- who came running over toward them. She addressed them -- with a plan. A Heterodyne was giving them orders. Good ones, too, not that that mattered. A living, breathing ghost, a walking, talking ticket home, could say anything she wanted.

Maxim acknowledged the instructions. "Yes."