Hamburg: Germany.
Present Day.
84 Years after Operation Rheinübung
14:00 hours (2:00 PM), Local time
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The streets of Hamburg were packed with students returning home from school.
Public transport, such as trains and buses paraded transported people around the large city
The city of Hamburg is one of the biggest in present day Germany.
One of these reasons was it's crucial position as one of Germany's biggest trade hubs.
The city was built right next to the water, and was one of the largest trade ports in all of Europe.
Daniel Gotthard, a 17-year old student returning from school, lived in this giant trade hub.
Usually other students would be chatting, or going somewhere like a local bar.
Daniel on the other hand, was too busy reading his books.
Even though the title was in English, Daniel could still understand it.
He was actually born in America, despite his parents being German (thus the Gotthard surname).
English was his second language, one he was very fluent in, having spent six years in the United States before spending the rest of his life in Germany.
He sat down on a bench near a local bus stop.
He opened his book,
The book talked about the battle of the Atlantic, how German U-Boats were the only thing Winston Churchill ever admitted to fearing.
Even though U-Boats were cool, they were practically deathtraps for their crews, at least in the later portions of the war.
He took small glances at the pages,
Admiral Hipper Class heavy cruiser....
Deutshland Class pocket battleship...
He flipped a few more pages.
Leipzig Class light cruiser....
Königsberg Class light cruiser....
"Too far" he thought to himself as he flipped the pages back.
Scharnhorst Class Battleship...
Getting close....
Bismarck Class...
Ah, there we go..
*Vrrrrrrr
But no sooner did he reach this page when his bus showed up.
*rrrrrrn-ksshhhhh
The brakes on the bus activated, bringing it to a swift stop.
The doors opened, and Daniel piled onto the bus.
Inside were people mostly returning to their homes, like it was normally.
Daniel found the seat that he usually sat in.
He plunked his heavy backpack down and opened his book.
Most of everyone sat down, and the bus prepared to leave.
Until,
"Wait!- Wait up!" Another kid shouted from outside the bus, running like a madman.
Daniel perked up, the voice sounded familiar.
The bus driver looked off to see who was shouting, and the kid made it aboard the bus just before it's doors shut.
Oh, it was Fritz.
Fritz was Daniel's friend,
The reason why a nerdy kid like Daniel could have friends was because both he and Fritz shared a mutual interest in warships.
However, even though Fritz had an interest in warships, it wasn't anything like Daniel's.
Daniel got interested in warships because of how cool they looked and the epic battles they had, especially in conflicts such as World War II, in which giant fleets of ships fought each other in huge battles on the high seas.
However, Fritz played one of these Asian gacha games called "Azur Lane" on his phone.
The main selling point of Azur Lane was moe-anthropomorphic warships.
Which basically means they take a warship, say the Bismarck, and turn it into a literal girl.
Of course they had all of the turrets attached to the girl's back by giant mechanical arms in order to make it seem like it was a girl version of a warship.
But it was so offputting, seeing a "ship" look like that, and for the game to be taken seriously.
Enough for Daniel not to touch that game, instead using memory space for World of Warships instead.
Even though Daniel and Fritz had their differences, they were still good friends nevertheless.
———————
The bus lurched forwards
Fritz shuffled down to the seat where Daniel was sitting.
"Afternoon Daniel!" Fritz said in a high spirited tone as he set down his backpack.
"You seem to be in a good mood. Get a good grade on a test?" Daniel said, not looking up from his book.
"Got a B!" Fritz said, plunking his stuff down.
"Oh, gorgeous, did you cheat?" Daniel said.
Fritz elbowed him in the shoulder
"No, In fact, I studied this time!" Fritz said.
"Instead of having cyborg ship-girl things commit war crimes?" Daniel said in a playing tone.
"Hey, shut it! I don't spend every single euro on getting the latest deal in the store!" Fritz said, elbowing him again.
"Ah, fair enough." Daniel said.
"And they don't commit war crimes, they save earth from aliens.
The aliens never signed the Geneva convention, so they can't commit war crimes anyway." Fritz said.
"And they're called Kansens, not ship-girl cyborg things-"
Fritz looked over to see that Daniel had completely lost interest and had earbuds in listening to that same Swedish band
again.
"You really should turn that down, I can hear it you know." Fritz said.
"Turn what?" Daniel said.
Fritz popped the earbud out of his ear.
"Turn that down before you get hearing damage!" He said.
"Meh, Going deaf would be worth it." Daniel said, popping the earbud into his ear
Fritz shook his head,
"What are they even saying anyway?" Fritz said.
"Who is what saying?" Daniel said.
"Gaaah!" Fritz simply remarked, not bothering to speak after that.
———————
After listening to Sabaton: Bismarck for the second time the bus finally pulled up to his stop.
"Bye Fritz!" Daniel yelled.
Fritz yelled something back, but his music was too loud for him to hear.
Daniel scrambled off of the bus,
He could hear it's motor going as he entered his house, which was a small apartment style building,
"I'm home!" He shouted as he dumped off his backpack on the hangar next to the door.
"How was you day at school?" His mom shouted from the living room.
"Meh, fine.
I'll be upstairs if you need me!" He shouted.
Daniel's mom was the only one present in the house most of the time.
His dad was in the German navy, or Deutsche Marine, so he was rarely home, only visiting a couple months of the year at most.
————————
He ran into the small upstairs and slammed the door shut,
His room had all kinds of models of Kriegsmarine ships, as well as many Cobi models.
A half-complete Tamiya 1/350 scale Battleship Bismarck model dominated the bookshelf near the windows of the room.
He was planning on completing it once his dad came back.
He sat down on a beanbag chair and fired up his console,
And then the air conditioner turned on,
*shhhhhhh!
But it actually wasn't the air conditioner, as Daniel later realized,
It was raining.
The muffled sounds of the rain impacting the roof of the building made it seem as if the air conditioning was flowing
The rain began to pour down harder.
*boom
Thunder echoed out slightly.
And then, the lights flickered.
His console shut off, his room lights shut off, the Wi-Fi shut down, everything.
Daniel groaned in annoyance,
"Seriously?" He said to himself.
It would be a few minutes wait for the Wi-Fi to come back up.
Thunder boomed again.
He looked over at his bookshelf, not seeing anything better to do,
He snapped up a book about the Naval Battle of World War II off of the side of his bed.
It had come in just yesterday from his grandparents living in the further reaches of the country.
He hadn't gotten the opportunity to read it yet.
He peeled open the fresh, untouched pages.
It was always a cool thing to get your hands on a new book, so you can read about the same things in a different way,
It felt almost refreshing.
He started rapidly flipping through the pages. As he glanced by the pages,
He momentarily looked back at his console, which was screaming about a lack of Wi-Fi connection.
The Wi-Fi had not been on for at least five minutes at this point, that lightning must've done a number on the system.
Daniel sighed and looked back at his book.
After looking through a bunch of pages, he finally found Operation Rheinübung,
He looked through the pages some more.
Sinking of hood,
Hunt for the...
"Ah here it is" he said
"The Bismar-"
He flipped the page, revealing the cross section of the mighty battle-
*rrrrrip!
"Ah.... Noooooo.." he said, cringing.
This was brand new book, and he ripped the page, absolute genius he was.
He placed the book down, huffing out of his lungs hard
"Is the Wi-Fi back up yet!!" He yelled downstairs in frustration,
It had been six and half full minutes since it went off.
But there was no response,
He looked back at his tv,
It was now covered in static,
The air felt exceedingly stiff, almost cold, all of a sudden.
He checked out of his blinds,
it had gotten extremely foggy,
So much so to the point that you couldn't even see out of the window.
But then,
A Smoke started leaking out from the air conditioner vents,
The thick, white smoke starting blowing into the room.
"Fire!" He shouted
He ran for his door
And then, smoke started pouring out from underneath the door.
He looked back at the window,
The smoke was pouring in through the window as well.
There was no escape,
The TV started muttering something,
Almost like....
Morse code?
Daniel looked from side to side,
He turned back ready to bust down his door and make a dash for the front door out of the house,
But it was gone,
He looked around,
He couldn't even see his own room, the smoke was so dense,
But he didn't even cough,
And then, the floor gave way from underneath him.
"WAAAH!" He shouted, doing an out of control backflip
*THUMP!
"Agh!" Daniel shouted, hitting a surface.
He rubbed his head,
There was a thick mist, surrounding the surface he was standing on.
A glowing red cube sat in between his legs,
"What is this??" He questioned, still trying to find out his surroundings.
He turned around.
His mouth hung open,
Two large gun barrels poked out of the mist,
Running water splashed on the wooden surface,
No way....