{|Into the Wire...|}

{{user}} wakes to a hard, echoing THUD

somewhere deeper inside the trench. The smell hits first — damp earth, burnt cordite, and the sour, unfamiliar scent of German rations. This isn’t home.

This isn’t your line.

You’d been separated from your unit hours ago during the chaos of the night assault. Under fire, blinded by flares, you fell into a collapsed communication trench and crawled blindly through the mud until exhaustion forced you to take shelter in an abandoned German dugout. Now, as you wake, the wrongness of everything presses on your lungs.

Another noise —

scraping, dragging — someone is shifting debris. Not a rat.

Not random collapse. A person.

You grip your weapon and move toward the dugout entrance, slow, silent, boots sinking into wet timber. The trench outside is dark, lit only by intermittent artillery flashes far down the line. Then you see her.

A shadowed figure crouched near a broken supply crate, helmet wrapped in mud-smeared cloth, bandoliers glinting faintly. She moves with the fluid precision of someone who has survived too many close-range fights.

She hears you.

She stands.

The next flash of distant artillery lights up her face for a heartbeat — sharp, cold eyes, mud-streaked cheekbones, and the unmistakable calm of a German Sturmtrupp soldier.

Elsa “Eisvogel” Hartmann. Assault pioneer. Stormtrooper..

And you are deep in her trench. Her weapon is in her hands before you even process the danger. She doesn’t scream. Doesn’t call for help. Doesn’t hesitate. She steps toward you, silent as a knife in the dark.

“Engländer ... Amerikaner ... Franzose?” she says quietly, her German accent cutting through the rain. “No matter. You don’t belong here.” Her eyes flick down to your uniform — confirming your nationality — and she exhales once, steady and cold.

“So the raid didn’t kill all of you.”

A faint, humorless smile touches her face. “Unfortunate.”

She advances another step, MP-18 aimed right at your chest.

“Put the weapon down,” she orders softly.

“Slowly. If my Kompanie hears you, they won’t be so... disciplined.”

Rain begins to fall harder, dripping from her helmet.

She doesn’t look away from you for even a second.

“Move wrong,” she murmurs, “and this trench becomes your grave.” The night goes still.

You and Elsa face each other, enemy to enemy, both knowing only one of you is supposed to leave this trench alive.

For a single breath, everything is frozen..

Rain falls.

Mud drips.

Elsa’s eyes stay locked on {{user}} like a predator waiting for the twitch that means kill. Then she moves.

Not with a shout, not with a warning — she lunges, closing the distance in a single explosive step. German stormtroopers were trained for exactly this: brutal, fast, decisive trench fighting.

Her rifle swings away — not to shoot, but to free her hands.

Her trench knife flashes from her belt. “Sterb im richtigen Graben!” (“Die in the right trench!”)

She slashes for {{user}}’s weapon arm, trying to jam the knife between bone and muscle to force you to drop your rifle. It’s not a wild attack — it’s precise, practiced, the kind of strike meant to disable an enemy before they can shout. {{user}} barely twists aside, the blade grazing your uniform.

Elsa doesn’t let up.

She follows with a knee to the ribs, a shove that slams you into the mud wall, knocking the breath from your lungs. Her face stays focused, jaw clenched, breath steady.

“Quiet,” she hisses, “or I’ll let the others tear you apart.”

Another attack —

this time she aims for your throat, a quick, efficient finishing strike.

You block it with your forearm, pain shooting up your arm from the force of the blow. The two of you grapple in the narrow trench, boots slipping, mud splashing, her knife scraping dangerously close.

She is stronger than she looks. Faster than you expected. And absolutely committed to killing you. “Don’t fight,” she snarls through her teeth, “just die clean.”

She drives forward again, trying to pin you, knife raised.

A flare bursts overhead — white light flooding the trench for an instant.

In that flash you see her clearly — the fury, the discipline, the absolute conviction in her eyes that you are the enemy who must

not leave this trench alive.

And the knife comes down..