Current mood:	hungry
Current music:	Live is Life - Opus
Entry tags:	story

Live is Life(Part I of V)

Live is Life

When we all give the power,
We all give the best.
Every minute in the hour -
We don't think about the rest…

Chain of Command/ Important Characters
Sturmbannführer Adrian Dresdner
Scharführer Friedrich Köhler
Rottenführer Osterhagen
Rottenführer Eisenhauer
Sturmmann Kalb
Sturmmann Lehmann
Oberschütze Dietrich Becker
Mann Ebersbacher

Author's Note: C'mon. It's Friedrich. Y'all have seen his profile; he's not a cuddly puppy. So, yeah. Warning. Violence and bloody imagery. Also, I am not an expert on military or German terms, so there will probably be a few things wrong, but I am making it as accurate as I can, within reason. The title is from Laibach's Opus Dei. It is not as cuddly as the original song, Opus's Live is Life. Oh, Irony, I would be a lonely one without you. Also, comments demanded plz!


June 13, 1940
Somewhere in France

The sounds of battle were many – yelling, cursing, screaming, the constant sputter of machine gun fire. It was a deafening to a normal being’s ears. To the ears of Friedrich Köhler, it was an overwhelming cacophony, a nigh-physical wall of noise – even here. The camp was a small one; a quarter-mile from the front lines. It was also unofficial. Most of the other squadrons in the area didn’t know of its existence – and those that did had been told to forget they’d ever learned of it. He idly wondered how many of the sounds were from the men he was supposed to be leading.

“Scharführer.”

Had he been changed, his ears would have been resting flat to his head; as it was, he sat crouched, shoulders hunched almost to his ears, glaring at the battlefield. As near as they could figure, it was June twelve. Still a week before the moon went full…but a week was close enough that he felt edgy, antsy – instincts screaming at him that had nothing to do with the battle raging.

He eyed the sky – the sun was still high. It would still be an hour or more until he would be allowed to take the field in his chosen form. He snarled at the offending sun – he was bored, he was annoyed, and above all, he was hungry, a maddening hunger that ached in his bones and made his mouth dry.

“Scharführer Köhler!”

He had wondered, at the beginning, if the hunger was supposed to be there. Looking at his pack, he had thought it was a mistake. They couldn’t have wanted this, could they? Why would they? What could they gain from taking men and twisting them see others – others who were as they had once been - as fodder, as satisfaction, as fuel to slake the bloodlust?

Some questions never have answers. Some questions are never asked.

“Friedrich!”

The sharp, cross voice that interrupted his thoughts, finally pounding through the noise and the reddish haze, was that of Sturmbannführer Adrian Dresdner. Friedrich looked up from his almost-obsessive watching to blink red-rimmed, yellow-tinged eyes at the speaker – who returned the look with eyes the color and warmth of ice chips.

The older man was what they called a Wolfebrudder – a Wolf-brother; a human, but one of the few who knew them for what they were. He had been assigned to them back in Berlin, back in October, and had been with them since. He’d fought for them, they’d fought for him…and the current displeasure in his face and voice made Friedrich cringe; resentfully ducking his head forward to bare the back of his neck, to give easy access for the teeth that he knew the wolfebrudder didn’t have.

“You are supposed to be fighting.”

“Ja, Sturmbannführer Dresdner,” he agreed, but didn’t move to pick up his helmet, didn’t bend to take up his rifle. He just stayed sitting, crouched, until Dresdner cuffed him upside the head, hard enough to jar his mouth closed, teeth clamping on his tongue. He spat blood, and Dresdner growled, grabbing his chin.

“Do not ‘Ja,’ me, Friedrich, and then not do as I say.”

Friedrich’s eyes rolled; he scanned the camp. It was deserted, for the most part. Him, the wolfebrudder, and one of those under his command who had been injured. His leg was broken, three places - bad enough that he could not fight. He would be transferred out soon. He would get to heal, he’d been given his Heimatschuß – and he was oblivious to what Friedrich had suggested to the wolfbrudder. “Come, Dresdner, no one will know…let me release him from his misery, ja?”

He'd been slapped for his offer.

“After dark.” Friedrich managed, controlling the instinct to bite the hand that was forcing him to look at his superior. “After dark I will fight.”

Dresdner glared down at him. “Sturmmann Becker is fighting…”

Friedrich’s snarl was loud enough that the wolfebrudder took a hurried step back, hand going to his holster.

“Sturmmann Becker,” The sentence that followed was spoken in palpable disdain, he could feel it dripping from his tongue, could tell that his eyes were changing – the color was leaving the sides of his vision. “Is a puppy, Dresdner. He’d rather play at being a silly soldier. That is not why I was made – you’d have turned me into a gun were I meant to be a gun.”

He did not like fighting as a human, unless it was with hand and foot. Fighting hand and foot and knife was difficult when the other side was using rifles, and rifles, guns and grenades lacked the vicious brutality that he hungered for.

“After dark I will fight.”

Dresdner sighed and turned away, accepting his subordinate’s defiance. “After dark.”

----

When dark came, it came abruptly, here in the mountains. One moment it was twilight, the next – dark. The silvery glow of the half-moon rising above the mountain peaks shone through the trees, casting shifting patterns on the leaves and loam under paw. Razor sharp fangs parted in a grin as Friedrich padded his way between trees, loping faster than a man could run.

He could smell blood on the air - taste it on the wind - and it made his mouth water. Exacerbated the hunger in his belly, the tension in his mind. He could smell things other than blood – the rank smell of human sweat and fear, the challenging scent of another wolf. He growled, low in his throat, and focused on his target.

It was easy for a wolf to enter a camp designed to prevent humans. His black pelt blended in with the blackness of trampled grass and night, footsteps certain and swift, avoiding trip-lines, corpses and field gear alike. Ears and eyes flickered, absorbing and calibrating and calculating as he made his way to the farthest side of camp and the lone sentry there.

The sentry didn’t even have a chance to scream before fangs and strong jaws clamped around his throat, crushing his windpipe. Friedrich twisted his head, sharply, and the sentry’s neck cracked. The man fell limp as Friedrich jerked his teeth free, licking the fresh blood off his face.

Weak sheep.

There was a cry from the other side of the camp; Becker was not as efficient, or as quick. Friedrich just grinned another wide, sickly grin, and lunged into the now-awake-and-warned camp, mind clicking over into a mode more hungry and primal than his typical.

Dresdner had been clear this time. No witnesses, no survivors. Clear the camp, burn it down. The mission was a vast improvement on surgical assassinations, no one to keep alive. Just ripping and tearing, letting the hot blood spill, the warm flesh split, the siren song of screaming echoing loud in his ears. He worked, and he worked fast, and he worked well.

It was a dangerous dance to the tune of howls, a graceful two-step of leading those attacked into the line of fire their comrades were attempting to get – let friends shoot friends, trick soldiers into wasting bullets. Chaos and madness spreading like poison at the touch of tooth and claw, he shifted back to human –in body if not in mind- behind a soldier, sank still-long teeth into the top of his spine and jerked, almost laughing at the sickly wet snapping noise.

He caught the soldier’s gun before his corpse hit the ground, spinning towards the confused mass of enemy soldiers fighting with shadows and fears.

you’re all sheep

He pulled the trigger, held it down.

Things got very messy, very quick; and – even quicker than that – it was all over. He dropped the spent rifle on its original owner’s body and surveyed the deathly quiet camp with yellow eyes that practically glowed; blood dripping from the tousled ends of his hair, painting crimson lines down his bare shoulders.

He'd been grazed, once or twice - some of the blood on his chest was his own. He didn’t care. This was, after all, what he was meant to do; what he was made to do.

Becker appeared out of the darkness, shoulders slumped and face smeared – same as Friedrich’s – but a haunted look in his gray eyes.

“We are done, yes?”

Friedrich didn’t look at him, fingers twitching. Becker wasn’t a wolf. He was a tamed mutt, only following orders. He makes my skin crawl…

He finally did look at Becker, with a slow, lazy smile, before he dropped to all fours, letting the shift take control again. He dropped his mouth to the soldier’s side, tearing through fabric and skin alike, listening to Becker turn away.

It didn’t take long.

He wasn’t hungry when they got back to their camp.

Glossary:
Scharführer: A rank about equivalent of a Sergeant.
Sturmbannführer: A rank about the equivalent of a Major.
Sturmmann: A rank about the equivalent of a Senior Private First Class.
Heimatschuß – “home shot,” literally a wound that is not permanently damaging, but gets one sent home.