"Comrades, today we step onto a new battlefield! Today, the moment to sacrifice for the Fatherland has come!"
Zemo stood atop a small hill, lush with green grass and wildflowers. Beneath the shade of a tree's canopy, his mask took on an even more sinister edge.
Endless troops poured from the teleportation array, forming neat phalanxes across the vast plain—ten thousand soldiers he'd summoned.
Clad in gray uniforms, clutching submachine guns, they gazed silently at the diminutive figure on the hill, just as they once stared at another small man.
A prepared amplifier carried Zemo's voice across the plain, his words brimming with fervor and love for the Fatherland.
Giant projectors ensured the soldiers could see Zemo standing tall, fearless, ready to embark on a new campaign. It gave these defeated remnants a slightly better view of Hydra.
They didn't know where this place, Alfheim, was, nor why the sky held a sun and several moons at once. But they knew the Fatherland needed them again.
The Third Reich endured, and their cause lived on.
Super Axis members stood below the hill, facing the crowd. Zemo despised anyone standing behind him—it distracted him. His speech was critical, and he forbade anyone from approaching.
Zemo borrowed the Little Mustache's favorite phrases, mimicking his oratory for his own ends. He needed these men to serve his purpose, and deception was an excellent tool.
The Frost Giants, Zemo's blue-skinned, hulking allies, were in a frenzy. His promise to let them slaughter Asgardians hadn't yet come to pass, but the massacre in Vanaheim had.
To the Frost Giants, both god clans were equally repulsive.
The raid on Vanaheim succeeded—at least in the giants' minds. Before their warriors fell, they'd slain enemies many times their number.
The same tactics should work in Asgard. The giants eagerly awaited the next battle.
The Vanir gods fled via the Rainbow Bridge, and Odin was distracted by Zemo. The Frost Giants' losses before retreating were far smaller than expected.
They ignored Zemo's speech, incomprehensible in German, instead savoring memories of Vanaheim's tender flesh, the smooth glide of blades through corpses.
Whenever a giant showed off a Vanir limb stuck in their teeth, they earned envious glances, admired for prolonging the taste of blood.
Zemo glanced at the chaotic giant ranks but quickly looked away, a flicker of disdain passing through his masked eyes.
"Comrades, the Fatherland needs you now! Raise your heads, look at me, look at the image beside me!"
Hydra's leader called to the legion, directing them to the projection of his face, cast by Blindfold, ensuring every soldier saw him.
What followed was empty, inflammatory rhetoric. Amid thunderous chants of "Heil X-ler," Zemo signaled Madame Lotus.
The giant screen shifted from Zemo's face to the radiant Japanese woman. She smiled, as if thanking Zemo for her chance to speak. The army fell silent, the entire plain hushed.
"Offer your heart to the Fatherland," she said, her voice a whisper in their ears, uncaring if they heard clearly. She knew it worked.
"Offer your heart to the Fatherland!"
The army roared back, hanging on her every syllable, utterly convinced. Her image filled their eyes; her words were law.
Under the gaze of Super Axis and the Frost Giants, the soldiers fixated on the projection, uniformly drawing daggers or bayonets and carving out their own hearts.
Like a receding tide, the ten thousand who stood moments ago were reduced to a handful of survivors, their faces etched with terror.
"This—! Help!"
No one saved them. Axis agents opened fire, using assault rifles to precisely eliminate the survivors from nearly a kilometer away.
German discipline was ironclad, obedience near absolute, but among ten thousand, a few inevitably resisted, unable even to stare at the projection. The agents despised this.
"Not voluntary, no use. Hearts must be willingly offered, Baron," Blindfold reported in mechanical German, the title drawing a glance from Blood Baron, who stroked his chin.
As a vampire, Blood Baron couldn't endure sunlight, but thanks to Hydra's scientists, a UV-blocking clay had been developed.
Unlike future sunscreens, this was thick and sticky, like wall plaster, rendering Blood Baron unnaturally pale.
Coated in it and draped in a hooded robe, he could move freely in daylight, though with slight discomfort.
Zemo sniffed, turning to Hydra's elite guards on the hill's other side. Some unlucky souls among them had also carved out their hearts and were being carried away by comrades.
He remained calm. He'd summoned ten thousand for this purpose. Himmler thought he aimed for world war?
Zemo knew his strengths lay in covert espionage, not commanding armies to conquer cities. He'd never trained for it, nor had battlefield experience.
"Handle the rest. No issues?" he asked, raising an arm to pat Blindfold's shoulder. The alien felt like a tall statue draped in cloth, his touch eliciting a dull metallic thud.
The alien, stranded on Earth for years, knew a shoulder pat was friendly, though it reminded him of his lost body. He nodded his canister-like head in response.
"Odinforce, key, hard to obtain. Use fate threads, mimic," Blindfold said, his speech device and logic faulty, but Zemo understood: combine alien tech with Asgardian mysticism to utilize the dead's hearts.
"I said it's all yours. Don't disappoint me."
Zemo stepped aside, feeling blood seep from facial wounds aggravated by his speech. Without skin, his muscles had fused to his mask.
Blindfold acted, retrieving a golden thread and approaching the Heart of the Sun, a furnace holding stellar power.
Blood Baron collected the hearts, his vampiric blood control, paired with Blindfold's tech, processing them like potatoes into the furnace.
"The corpses—are they ours?" a Frost Giant asked, approaching Dokuzen, eyeing Zemo, who sat under the tree, deep in thought.
Dokuzen, second to Zemo and Super Axis's captain, led Hydra's remaining forces.
"To eat?" Dokuzen asked. His enhancement serum sharpened his mind, surpassing even Captain America's intellect.
Anyone fooled by his towering, muscular frame into thinking him a mere warrior would regret it.
He was Captain America's nemesis. His lower body, crushed to pulp by a train thanks to the Invaders, had been rebuilt with cybernetics.
Blindfold's tech was advanced—Dokuzen moved freely, could climb walls with anti-gravity legs, and even detach his lower half to attack.
The giant, unashamed, stood with arms crossed, his frost-covered beard twitching, his stench assaulting Dokuzen and War Woman's nostrils.
"Armies need food," the giant said.
Dokuzen smirked, crossing his arms and surveying the battlefield's carnage. "Take them, but not the hearts. Miss one, and yours replaces it."
The giant bared his teeth in a half-smile, then turned away. His Frost Giants, given permission, swarmed the corpse pile, feasting wildly.
The plain became a slaughterhouse, blood turning the ground to mud.
Dokuzen glanced at the black cross on his chest, sneered, and ignored the giants.
"Beggars. They're like beggars," War Woman muttered, toying with her whip.
Dokuzen looked at her, correcting, "They're not even human—just scavenging hyenas."
War Woman inhaled deeply, the blood's scent thrilling her. "Whatever. Ten thousand hearts as spell components—hope the results meet expectations."
"Zemo has a plan. That's the last thing you should doubt."
"I don't know him well," War Woman whispered, leaning closer. "I mean, he's so young."
Dokuzen understood. The current Zemo, heir to the old, was barely thirteen or fourteen. But age didn't matter—victory did, whether through strength, powers, or cunning.
"Just watch. No more Nazi Party—only Hydra."
…
War Woman said no more. She habitually followed Dokuzen's orders, and his repeated stalemates with Captain America proved his intellect and strength.
Soldiers knew a strong leader's value. If Dokuzen trusted a boy's command, so could she.
Shoulder to shoulder, they climbed the hill, watching blood-soaked hearts fly to the container under the tree, watching Frost Giants pick through corpses, falling silent.
Meanwhile, Zemo pondered: how to use the newly forged Stone of Fate, and how to cover his tracks and escape unscathed.