Wounds Still Fresh

[Locutus Ferox]

"Lets try this again. He did shoot at me yes, but I wasn't the person he was there for. When you are tasked with dealing with someone they know isn't normal who just had an explosion of anger. Then all of a sudden you see an armed mystery man, with whom your target sat down with. No offense Goebbels, but I look like more of a challenge than you. That's probably why they shot at me. They would have probably done you in next. Though I suspect they'd have done so in a way so as not to kill you."

The car roared down the street before sliding around another corner. It then roared down that road for a short ways before it turned onto another road. Finally he let off the gas and the car started to slow down. He pressed in the clutch and put the car into fourth gear, where in he lightly pressed on the gas as he released the clutch. This time the car didn't leap forward. It sat at just above idle as it cruised down the road.

Locutus looked over at the falcon and chuckled. "Nervous much?" The roar of the engine had finally died down and Locutus reached forward and tapped the power on the radio, which sprang to life in an instant. Curiously enough Dire Strait's Ride Across the River came on and the sweet jungle inspired music began to softly fill the cabin.

[Joseph Goebbels]

Joseph felt a bit insulted by the patronizing way that Locutus has asked him if he was nervous. Of course he was nervous! Locutus was tearing down the road at a pace that would be highly risky for most men to drive at! He keened at him, a bit annoyed. He settled down a bit when Locutus slowed the car, settling his wings at his side. He ventured to leap up onto the dash, lowering his head to watch them travel down the road. He knew vaguely where they were, he had wandered these streets before...well...not purposely.

When he, Mengele, and Klaus had come here with barely anything...Klaus had gone mad. He was furious at having his comfortable life of interrogation being ripped from his fingers to live in poverty. Mengele had been miffed that he'd been torn from Auschwitz and his experiments...all his data lost. Joseph had been grieving the Fuhrer and his family. But Klaus had gone quite literally insane, killing several people in the space of a few hours. Joseph and Mengele had searched vividly for him. It was then that Joseph was forced to learn the layout of the town. The old parts hadn't changed even after all these years, and were quite familiar.

Joseph calmed down enough to change back after a good ten minutes, settling back in his seat. He slid his brace back on his foot, strapping his deformed leg in with a few hisses of pain. "...Will Klaus be alright? He doesn't deserve to be hurt on my behalf. But if people are looking for me, wouldn't they have followed us to Klaus' home?" he asked, a bit nervously.

[Locutus Ferox]

They were obviously on their way out of the city. They were on one of it's main outgoing arteries. They were still weaving in and out of traffic but their overall speed was only slightly higher than most, and slower than some. However, they didn't stay on that road long. Locutus shifted down and pulled into the exit lane. He turned off the road and down onto the exit ramp before turning onto one of the back roads.

Now they were on one of the rarely used "country" roads that lead out. He kept the speed down though as they cruised on over it. Despite it's poor and unpaved condition, the car had the stability of an off-road vehicle, with the performance of a race car. It sped over that rough terrain with little effort. Locutus pressed a button and suddenly the car seemed to lift up. If Goebbels looked outside the window he'd see that the suspension was also modified for off-road as well. It'd hinder his top speed, but it'd give the car more clearance. In the engine had been a compressor for hydraulic fluid, which controlled a set of hydraulic lifters that pushed the car up. It also helped to press the tires out slightly, to keep stability up.

After Joseph answered the question Locutus remained silent for a few minutes. Finally he looked over to Goebbels. "I highly doubt they would do anything to him. They aren't after you for what you did Goebbels. They're after you for your feathers. That being said. Anything they do to him he brought on himself. They aren't interested in him, but they might be interested in those vampires he was dealing with. However, I do not believed they managed to follow us. Why do you think I kept looking around?"

[Joseph Goebbels]

"For my feathers? I moult enough of them, they can have the damned things." Joseph grumbled, holding onto the door but less vividly now. He looked over at Locutus. "I can't transform when I'm dead. But they're going to be lucky if they get anything out of Klaus Barbie. He's a sociopath, he doesn't respond to pain or emotional intimidation. All he could tell them anyway was that we were headed out of town." he settled down in the seat. They were going out of town. Locutus was protecting him, for some reason, from men that wanted him dead because of what he was...not who he was. He was used to being persecuted for who he was, not for enjoying the occasional flight over Rio de Janeiro. Even letting the hawk instincts take over and destroy a macaw in mid-flight.

He rubbed his neck. "What use could they have for me?" he asked quietly. "I'm not any use alive...maybe a scout. Dead, nothing. So...what do they want?"

[Locutus Ferox]

"Dead? Who said anything about dead? Joe Joe Joe." The man shook his head as he steered the car down the road. "You are a sword with no handle. You are an uncontrolled asset. You also don't seem to understand your value. If they kill you, it'd only be because they exhausted every other option. As for Klaus....."

The deity went silent for a while as he continued to drive the car, the music softly playing in the background. He didn't look at Goebbels as he drove, simply looking ahead at where he was going. Finally after a bit of silence he broke it with his reply. "Reichminister Joseph Goebbels.... There are things in this world that would make Auschwitz Birkenau look like a peace summit. There are things they can do far behind just physically breaking a man's body. IF.... IF he gives them a reason to....." He paused again, this time looking over at the man. "Then I offer my sincerest sympathy for the loss of your friend. If he survives.... he'll be far more broken than he is now."

With that he turned his attention back to the road. He sped the car up slightly as it cruised over the back road. By now the city had mostly faded. Here and there buildings would appear out of the sea of trees surrounding them. Until Joseph spoke, an eerie unsettling silence would fill the cabin just above the faint music that was playing.

[Joseph Goebbels]

"There was only one man on earth who would dare shorten my name and that man is dead." Joseph said sharply. "My name is Joseph, please address me as such. As for Klaus, I won't see him killed, I want him to die peacefully in his bed. It's more than he deserves, I know that. But he won't give them a reason to, he's too smart for that...it's impossible to break Klaus." he bit his thumb sharply, almost to the point of drawing blood. He eventually did. "What the hell do you mean my value? The only things I can do are transform and fly, and even then I still have a bad foot. The only things of use to me are my wings...and unless someone really wants a carrier pigeon I'm not the guy to call."

He looked up at the cabin and turned the music off. He'd learned by now what gaps in Brazil's loud bird population meant. Klaus' house had no birds by it because they could smell death, could smell danger. "...No birds." he said quietly. "Something's here. Above us. Those colorful fuckers chatter at all hours of the day and night, if theyre being silent we both have something to worry about that's worse than your driving." he was quiet, calm. He swallowed and rubbed his arm.

"Where are we going exactly? North...south? Belo Horizonte, San Paulo? Vitoria, hell, Jericoacoara?" he asked nervously. "I need to know where we're going. There's cartels, even here, we just left the safety of Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia."

[Locutus Ferox]

Locutus made no comment to the man's sharp retort. Instead he simply gazed forward as he was driving. "You had best hope he doesn't give them a reason to. However, a man changing into bird is also impossible. Yet you do it. There are many things you will soon discover that you will likely at one point have believed to be impossible. The world isn't as black and white as it appears at first. One must learn to accept that impossible, is nothing."

The car rolled along through the forest, sometimes the path narrowing to the point the branches were just on either side and right above them. Still the car pulled through. When Goebbels turned down the radio nervously, Locutus's brow perked. "You worry too much." He pointedly didn't say his name at all that time. "And you'll find out when we get there. There are things far worse than cartel thugs round these parts. I doubt we--" He looked over at Goebbels. "I doubt I have anything to fear from them." There was a nice cheery thought, the deity was certain HE wasn't in any danger.

He slowed the vehicle down even further as the path became more rough. The vehicle objected slightly, but went over the ground without too much trouble. It definitely shouldn't have been able to, but the car had shown itself to be far more than it appeared already. Locutus seemed to be paying more attention now than even before with driving the vehicle, though given where he was driving the car that wasn't too unsurprising. What might have been surprising was that he was actually going slower than forty miles per hour!

[Joseph Goebbels]

Joseph didn't like this. It was far too quiet, nothing but the engine and Locutus' voice, and the sound of his own breathing. He kept his knees up to his chest, his chin resting on them. "Running blindly isn't going to change anything then is it?" he asked. "You're avoiding telling me where we're going, that tells me you either don't know, or it's somewhere I'm really....really not going to like." Joseph quieted and looked out of the window. He couldn't tell where they were, which upset him...but he was willing to stay quiet until the car stopped.

He was however going to chew the hell out of his thumbnail. His eyes kept going from outside the car, vainly trying to figure out where they were, to Locutus. It was nearly impossible to puzzle the man out and he evaded questions better than a media mogul with a scandal on the line. "Locutus." he spoke up after another hour in the car. "Look, in our frenzied escape did you think about what we were going to eat or drink? It's not safe to drink the local stuff." he pointed out. Was Locutus planning on getting where they were going in a single day? He'd made it seem like they were leaving Brazil, which was a gigantic country. It would take a few days at least to cross with the winding dirt roads and sudden storms.

[Locutus Ferox]

The car rolled to a slow stop. The engine the only thing that could be heard over the silence of the area around them. Locutus sat there a moment, staring straight ahead, not looking over at Goebbels for a long time. Finally he turned his head and looked over at Joseph. He then motioned the door. "You're free to leave if you wish to. I can't guarantee you'll make it back to your home alive or not though."

Locutus waited to see if the man would leave or not. "If not, have a little faith. " With that he'd continue to drive forward, shaking his head a moment. "You worry too much in your old age and you'll have heart failure. We're going to make a couple stops, you'll have plenty of food and drink when we get there. Can't promise there will be enough booze though."

The Corvette rolled through the jungle till soon the path widened out again. Now they were back upon a more used back road. Yay, now they were only partially lost. Well Goebbels might have been lost, the deity on the other hand knew exactly where he was. He was in a car! Well he knew where the car was too. What an entertaining thought to tell Goebbels.

[Joseph Goebbels]

Joseph shook his head, staying in the car. "I'll be fine." he muttered. "And I don't need any more booze. I...my body thinks I need it, but I don't. I need to be level headed for this." he said sharply. But he'd been torturing his liver for the good part of sixty years...all day, every day, since the war ended. From 1945 all the way to 2011. His body was definitely addicted to alcohol, there were no two ways about it. His teeth were aching for a drink, his body was starting to get cold. Another hour in the car and his thumb was bleeding profusely from the slits made by his teeth. He shivered. He'd tried to resist alcohol withdrawal before, but here there wasn't the option of stumbling to the fridge and swigging vodka to take the edge off.

His leg was pulsing in agony. "Where....are...we going?" he growled from between his teeth, trying not to hold onto his leg tightly. His pills were in his bags, which were in the trunk of the car. He rested his brow on his knees, gritting his teeth together. He had to close his eyes, try to sleep it off. It was something that had helped him the first time he'd gotten clean, when he'd had his first daughter.

[Locutus Ferox]

The deity chuckled as he rolled the vette down the larger path. It was slowly becoming clear why Goebbels held the position he did. He didn't take no for an answer. It was a good trait to have in politics, and sometimes a bad one to have in real life. One had to know how to pick and choose their fights, and when to back down. Goebbels did not seem keen on backing down.

The deity finally relented with a sigh. "Our first stop is not far out. It's a small place that some may have thought history had forgotten about. It's a place called Bunker 437." Locutus slowly looked over at Goebbels with a knowing gaze. "It was more commonly referred to as Die übernatürliche Bunker." With that Locutus looked back to the road.

He wasn't sure if Goebbels had remembered it, or even knew about it in the first place, but he suspected he did. The bunker was one of a few like it, certainly not the only one, but it had been placed in South America because there, it was less likely to be found. Even the Cartels didn't know of it's existence. Well, the average Cartels. After the fall of the third Reich, something else took up residence there. Either way, Locutus expected that something known in South America by a German name would not make Goebbels too enthused to visit it by any means.

[Joseph Goebbels]

Goebbels was certainly a dogged man when it came to wanting to know something. He did not give up until he knew what something was...and for this reason, he had an extensive knowledge of the inner workings of the Third Reich. How could he, as shepherd of the media, defend something he did not know about? How could he allow himself to be trapped by the questions of foreign media? That, and since he was one of the Fuhrer's oldest friends...he had gotten quite far into the archives.

He was aware of Bunker 437. It was an attempt at the formation of the Gotzesturm, or Storms of God...a military division of the SS. Hitler himself had made peace with the local supernaturals in Germany, particularly the trolls. Their tall, gangly forms and naturally aggressive culture had given them a large boon as far as pure brute strength. Likewise with the few goblins that were hanging on in Eastern Europe, excellent craftsmen that had branded the swastika and gear into their bodies as shows of loyalty. Eventually, they became targets on their backs.
The Storms of God failed near the end of the war, when people began to lose hope and the trolls began to slink back into the Schwarzwald to protect themselves.

Who knew what vestiges of the project still remained in Bunker 437? Gotzesturmfuhrer Ingrimm, a troll himself, had been murdered soon after the war by his own kind. Joseph looked over at Locutus. "How...the hell do you know about that place?" he asked quietly. He'd visited it once before, when he was younger, in order to reassure the higher ranking officers it would be safe to have supernaturals at their sides during war. He wasn't sure he remembered the layout...but since it had been abandoned for nearly sixty years, was that gigantic steel door still in place?

Were the signs of men training still there?

Or hell, phone records, diaries? Of course, if found by the ignorant masses it would be attributed to the...ahem...large amounts of drugs they were taking at the time. A lie executed quickly and brilliantly by the end of the Reich. It would make all ramblings of trolls, goblins, and the Storms of God seem like the scribblings of a drugged man. "What do you mean something else moved in there? Why the hell would someone want to get inside that place? I know when the project was abandoned several people slit their own throats there. They were shamed." Joseph said. "...Does anyone else know?"

[Locutus Ferox]

So he had heard of it. Locutus supposed that was a good thing. Even more so that he had heard of it, and wasn't freaking out. Least Locutus wouldn't have to struggle with him to get him there. Or at least not yet anyway.

Finally the car again turned of the "maintained" roads into what looked like little more than ruts in the grass. It was clear other vehicles had traveled here at some point, though given the look of the road it looked like that had been quite a few years ago. There had never been any signs leading to the road, that would have been a bulls eye for it, and all the records about it, outside of the bunker, had been thoroughly destroyed. Most of the people who remembered this particular network of bunkers was long dead. Most of them executed by the allies. So they had no idea what was hidden just south of them.

He ignored the question about how he knew of the place, and instead motioned out the window past Goebbels. "Does that answer your question?" He was of course referring to the question of what would want to move in there. Out the window Goebbels would see a looming object. At first it might have been mistaken for a tree, except behind the dirt that covered it was pale white....bone white even. As one gaze wandered up they would see that the object was the leg of what had once been a rather large creature. Now it was nothing but a skeleton. It was monstrous but somewhat humanoid in shape. Around it were numerous smaller forms, most of them skeletons. However in various places one would catch sight of what had to have been recent kills. They still had flesh on their bones and a couple of them didn't even have any signs of decay or bug damage. All of them were mounted on pikes, some just bodies, some bodies with heads, and some just heads. It was clearly a warning sign.

"They didn't fail. Not completely." Locutus remarked as they kept driving forward. The bunker wasn't in sight yet but it was obvious that things were becoming more and more deathly still. "They also didn't destroy their records like they should have. Records that were later found. Except... those that found them realized what they were...." He soon trailed off, simply letting Goebbels digest what he had just been told.

[Joseph Goebbels]

Joseph saw the bones and paled. If the trolls were still active here...many of them had been taught German, and would have passed on this skill, but trolls were vicious creatures. They wielded chunks of tree trunks, spiked with sharp stones and ornamented heavily with trophies. Trolls regenerated from slicing cuts and bullet wounds...but against the crushing power of a varghammar, they got wounded quite easily. Joseph gulped.
"If the trolls are still here then I suggest you turn around..." he said. "They're obviously warning people to keep the hell out, what stops them from killing us?"

He was definitely on the defensive now. His paranoia was rearing its ugly head...he'd been terrified of the trolls when they were shaking his hand, much less charging at him with tree trunks broader than the damn car. In addition, they had no problem consuming human flesh. He bit his lip. Locutus didn't want to kill him, he had to keep repeating that to himself...but being eaten alive was one thing Joseph did not want happening to him. "This...is about the farthest thing from safe." he said softly, his brain scrambling to remember what he'd learned about troll culture.

The male with the longest tusks and the largest harem would be the dominant one. They had no projectile weapons, and their long legs were excellently suited to roaming through forest and jungle. Females spawned in pools of still water, and the males protected these pools for long periods of time, until the trolls were aged enough to climb out of the water on their own power. Despite their ferocity and quick regeneration, their cells were very highly dependant on water, and succumbed to frostbite and dry heat more easily than humans did. But there wasn't exactly a desert handy around here.

[Locutus Ferox]

"Trolls?" The deity's chest heaved slightly in a stifled laugh. "Trolls would probably be the least threatening thing here." Despite saying these oh so comforting words, Locutus continued to drive the car forward. Either he was a fool, or truly wasn't bothered. Either way it probably wouldn't comfort Goebbels any.

"Those in charge of this place knew what they unleashed. It was something they couldn't control. Something they were afraid of. Yet they unleashed it and never bothered trying to clean it up. They never even told their leader that it existed. Luckily, for the sake of humanity, the bunker proved enough to contain it. It took shelter within the halls of the tunnel complex deep beneath the surface. There, it slept for fifteen years before it was stumbled upon once more. Only the ones that found it, proved more capable than those that had created it."

Soon the car came upon the remains of a cement and wooden structure. Goebbels would have easily recognized it as being the first checkpoint leading into the bunker. Only now it had fallen into complete disrepair. If anyone had taken up the bunker like Locutus said, they certainly were not maintaining, or as far as could be told, manning, the checkpoints. The car slowly rolled over the remains of the wooden arm that would have normally been a stopping point for what little traffic the bunker had received. Soon the checkpoint disappeared as quickly as it had appeared, lost in the dense jungle floor.

That eerie silence ensued as soon even the raspy whine of various insects came to a halt. Something that even caught Locutus's attention. There were no howls of various primates or other mammals, there were no birds, it was totally... silent. Even the crackling of the sticks under the tires seemed strangely muted. Then off in the distance came a cry unlike that of any creature Goebbels would have likely heard in his life. It was a cry that however, brought back memories to Locutus. Memories he was not quite interested in sharing with Goebbels if he didn't have to. Or repeating for that matter.