[i:7f722e9cbf] Berlin, Present Day [/i:7f722e9cbf]

"GET OUT OF THE WAY YOU FREAK!!!!" shouted the young female Berliner, or Jelly Donut, depending upon whether or not one subscribed to the John Fucking Kennedy School of German.

The one armed Vampire dove out of the way. He'd been standing in the middle of the road gazing up at the Brandenburg Gate for several minutes. He still wore the muddied uniform of an SS Panzer Commander. He could not come to grips with what had happened. One moment he was happily slaughtering Russians outside Stalingrad with that Wizard, the next he was sitting on a park bench in Tours, France watching the most radiant being he had ever seen dance with the Wizard.

He felt that something would have to be done about the Wizard, but not yet. Maybe not ever. Regardless, he was now sitting in a gutter with the filth of Berlin adding itself to the filth of Russia.

Was this a dream? It probably was. But then again, it may not be. It was difficult to tell the bounds of where the fanciful ended and reality began. VERY hard. The oddest thing, as Gerhardt had come to notice, was that ever since he had returned from Turkey with the entourage of oddly assorted kindred, the voices in his head had ceased talking. He was alone. For the first time in damned near 100 years he was alone. He couldn't hear his friends, he couldn't hear his fellow warriors in the "cause." He oculd hear nothing. He was free. Free to do what though, that was the problem.

He noticed that he had long since gotten up and was strolling past darkned shop windows and past sleeping families snuggled nicely in their beds completely unaware that death had passed them by that very evening. Freedom. What is freedom? You have to be free to do something. But what? That in and of itself was merely another prison sentence. He had been in bondage. He was no longer in "bondage" yet he was not really free to do anything. Free to be miserable of course.

Gerhardt found himself looking at the Reichstag. Those were heady days. The good old days. But where they truly good? Rapings? Killings? Helping turn over six million people into either air pollution or high quality soap? Gerhardt thought to himself. Freedom. He was free.
No more soap. No more air pollution. The good old days.

"Once more into the breach, dear friends, once more," whispered Gerhardt as his battered jack boots once again stepped onto the street with hob nails clicking.

Dreams. He had dreams when he was younger. Dreams had become a form of prison. He tried not to dream. But he still did. That Russian Princess. Her face haunted him. Her smile laughed at him. Her countenance inflamed him. The Wizard enraged him. He could do nothing. Dreams. What the hell was the point of them if all they did was hold you down. Weren't dreams supposed to lift one up? Or was that love? He seemed to recall some idiotic song from an even more idiotic movie where some incredibly idiotic scottish actor was standing on the vastly idiotic Eiffel Tower singing something of inifinite idiocy, "Love lifts us up where we belong." Idiocy. Sheer idiocy.

"I'm going home," said Gerhardt as he found himself walking on to a train platform to board a southbound train for Bavaria. Board it he did. He didn't seem to notice that it would be a journey of several hours and it was only TWO hours till dawn. Nah, he noticed. He must have. I don't think he cared. Why should he have? Nobody else did. It did make for a pretty nifty write up in various tabloids the next day however.

[b:7f722e9cbf]MAN EMOLATED ON TRAIN [/b:7f722e9cbf]

Yeah, that was a pretty nifty write up. Raised some eyebrows amongst the Cam in Germany.