Work Text:
September 22nd , 2013
Amity woke up with a start.
It was still very early in the day; the sun had yet to come up; but she couldn’t sleep anymore.
Today was the day her plan would come to fruition.
It was time to show the ruling class that they should fear the German people.
Four years earlier
Amity looked out of the window of her room. She could see children playing outside, having the time of their lives, and she was stuck here, doing math. What a way to spend your fifteenth birthday, isn’t it?
At least Luz would be coming over later. The two had been dating for a while now, and Luz said she was going to come with a surprise. Now, Amity, as a good girlfriend, had obviously told Luz she didn’t need to give her anything – but Luz, as a good girlfriend, had obviously refused and, well, Amity was kind of looking forward to the surprise anyway. So why would she press the issue further?
They agreed the homework had to be done, though. And as much as Amity just wanted to skip this part, she knew that she would have to go through with it anyway. And the good news was, once she was done, she didn’t need to do a lot for a while longer. The whole day would be free, on the weekend they’d have a small party with a bunch of their friends, just… Life would be good.
But for now, math.
Okay, so… the square root of minus forty nine plus twenty four… that should be five, I think. So the roots should be… minus seven plus minus five, over two. So minus six and minus one.
She checked her result, and facepalmed when it turned out to be incorrect.
Oh God help me I’m gonna die here.
Then, the bell rang, and she perked up instantly. Luz was here!
She immediately closed her notebook, and hopped excitedly down the stairs. She opened the front door, and her girlfriend’s face stared back at her.
“Hey there, Amity!” Luz said, awkwardly waving at her from two feet away. Oh Luz, never change.
Amity ushered her in, and they quickly moved together to Amity’s bedroom. It was time to have fun!
“Sooo...” Luz started, drawing Amity’s full attention. “I’ve been thinking about what exactly to get you for your birthday… I mean, you only turn fifteen once, right? So I decided we should go out! And before you ask me, I am not telling you where we’re going. This is a surprise, cool?”
Amity mock whined, eliciting a laugh from her girlfriend, but accepted the situation for what it was. It was time to go!
That was a bittersweet memory. They never knew how hard their life would get. And they were happy. But life has a way of screwing you over, and Amity was about to face that reality.
Well, in this case it was more the giant megacorporations doing the screwing over. But they’ll see that they made a mistake.
The final phase of her plan was now underway. It took a long time to gather all the resources to make this possible, but she made it.
And now, she was going to watch the world burn.
It took a little while to arrive at the pair’s destination, but well, it was definitely worth the wait.
Before the two of them stood the largest amusement park Amity had ever seen.
And she realized what the surprise would be.
She had always wanted to ride on the largest roller coaster in all of Europe. And now that she crossed the age limit, she would finally be able to.
After getting inside, the pair didn’t even bother getting anything to drink – they went straight for the main attraction. And minutes later, they were getting strapped in for the ride of their life.
And the first few minutes really were amazing. Going up and down at incredible speeds, going through a loop several times, it seemed there would not be an end to the fun they could have there.
Until Luz’s strap loosened a bit.
The girls didn’t notice at first, but on their next big downhill, Luz realized something was wrong. She no longer felt as safe as in the beginning, and with the realization for why that was the case, her stomach was filled with dread.
She looked at the strap, clearly a bit loose now, and started panicking. Amity looked over at her girlfriend. And her eyes went wide.
Something was clearly wrong. The strap was loosening with each new twist, getting less secure with every passing second.
And then, with one final tug, it fell away entirely.
Luz was able to react in time, grabbing Amity’s hand, but would that be enough? If someone didn’t stop the cart now, something really bad could happen. She screamed to stop, screamed louder than she had ever screamed in her life.
But it was no use. The roller coaster cart moved to the top of the next hill, and rolled over it.
Luz was clinging to Amity’s form at this point, trying to hold on for dear life. But as the cart began to pick up speed, the wind became a problem. Soon enough, Luz was pushed almost out of the cart, with Amity the only thing stopping her from going flying.
And then, the cart ran into a loop.
Luz held on desperately for a few moments, but with the momentum of the cart changing this fast, there was nothing she could do.
She let go.
By the time the cart reached the starting position again, Amity was in hysterics.
She immediately exited the track, and went running.
She had never run so fast before. A step after step, moving at what must have been the speed of light, she sprinted towards the place where Luz fell.
Two minutes later, she saw a huge circle of people, and moved towards them.
Using whatever oxygen was left in her lungs, she shouted her girlfriend’s name.
The circle of people spread out, revealing a team of paramedics beside a battered girl. But she looked… wrong. Her limbs were bent at all the wrong places, and a piece of bone was sticking out of her left leg.
But that would turn out to be nothing at all compared to the worst of it.
“She’s not breathing!” someone shouted.
And Amity’s heart broke.
In the end, they managed to bring her back.
But she would never walk again. The fall had severed the nerve connecting her upper body to her legs.
And that wasn’t the only body part that was permanently damaged.
Due to how long Luz spent without oxygen, her brain was on the verge of just giving up. And nobody could tell whether this would result in permanent damage, or if she would be able to recover. Even if she did, by some miracle, would she still be the same Luz Noceda?
Nobody would know until she woke up.
So now, fourteen days after the incident, Amity stared at her girlfriend’s comatose figure, and silently cried.
Every day, Amity came to see Luz at the hospital. Every day for the next three months.
And the situation was still the same.
Still lying on the bed, not moving an inch. The doctors came and gave some updates, but it felt like nothing was changing. It wasn’t getting worse, but it wasn’t getting better either. It just… stayed the same.
So Amity started concentrating on other stuff, instead of just sitting in the hospital, watching over Luz.
She needed to find out how it was even possible that something like this would happen in the first place. Do amusement parks not have safety regulations? Some rules they should follow?
So she studied the intricacies of all of these regulations. Compared everything she experienced in the park with the law. And everything seemed to be perfectly in order.
Sometimes she would enter the park, paying the exorbitantly high entrance costs, just so she could lurk around the place, try to find as much information as she could about the inner workings. And still, there was nothing she could find that would indicate there was any problem that could’ve caused the accident.
All of the safety checks were conducted by a government agency weeks before the accident, and they were given the A-OK. It seemed like everything was on the side of Allamara, the corporation in ownership of the amusement park, and their story that this was an accident.
But Amity would not give up. She owed her girlfriend that much.
And finally, about two months into her investigations, she finally had results.
One day, she entered the park closer to the evening, intending to look around some more, trying to find anything more that could help her. She knew that a safety check was due soon, but could not know when exactly it would come until it actually happened.
And that day, it did.
After moving through the park this many times, she knew her way around, knew the quiet spots, and could sneak around well. And when she knew the park was due to close any minute, and she saw the group of men in yellow vests coming toward the cabin for the roller coaster operator, she knew this might be her best chance yet.
She sneakily moved close enough to be able to listen in on what was happening, and quickly got a feel for the situation.
It was worse than she could have imagined.
She could not hear everything, but from the little she could, it was obvious.
The safety check people were taking bribes.
She would not know what exactly they were taking bribes for, but she could hazard a guess.
Just give them a couple thousand Euro, and you suddenly don’t need to worry about rebuilding the whole roller coaster track.
She felt sick.
She realized she should be recording this – quickly pressing the button on her phone, and hoping it wouldn’t be too late.
And it wasn’t.
She actually did it.
She had actual proof of fraud from Allamara.
It was a good thing Amity’s parents were loaded. She would need that money.
As much as she found out about the details of law over the last few weeks, Amity knew she wouldn’t be able to get through a suit against fucking Allamara without a lawyer.
And so, she searched for one.
And eventually, Amity found someone who she felt would represent her case well.
So now, on the sixth month anniversary of the tragedy, Amity walked into the office of Lilith Clawthorne, Attorney at Law.
The case would not be an easy one. But Ms. Clawthorne – or just Lilith, as she insisted Amity call her – was confident she could win. They had direct evidence of bribery, and Lilith was certain she could beat whatever the defense threw at her.
And so Amity brought the recording before the court.
And the battle began.
Amity wondered how difficult it would actually be to take down this corporation, but she would do what was necessary. Whatever it took to make them pay. She was optimistic, and ready to help provide assistance with whatever her lawyer needed.
That optimism started slowly disappearing after a few weeks of legal battle.
It did not seem like they were making any progress.
The defense kept to a particular strategy of submitting a new piece of evidence the court would have to consider, then waiting until just before they got to a conclusion, and then starting over.
And as much money as Amity could get for this suit, it’s not like she actually owned all the money she spent. And her parents would notice sooner or later, which was definitely not fun.
A month in, Lilith was still just as determined as she was at the beginning. But something was starting to change now. When she thought nobody was watching, Amity could see how tired she looked. This suit could run her into her grave.
Amity knew Allamara was a powerful company, but she’d severely underestimated just how much money they were willing to spend to fight off a girl’s lawsuit, after they caused someone to actually fall into a coma.
And after three more weeks, the exhaustion finally got to Lilith. The rotating team of the defense lawyers looked exactly as it had at the beginning of this whole ordeal, but Lilith… broke down.
She managed to hide her breakdown from the judge, but people noticed.
And after a few more days of this torture, spending days trying to convince the judge of the company’s wrongdoing – they had literal proof, how was this not enough? – Amity’s lawsuit was dismissed.
Amity remembered that day clearly. She had been… naïve then, thinking she herself could take down a corporation “the right way.”
Clearly, the biggest players on the market didn’t respect anything other than violence. No empathy. Simply ontologically evil.
She made her way to Berlin’s main train station, boarded her train, and went into her first class seat. It was possible this would be the last train ride of her life, so she would at least be comfortable during it.
On September 22nd , 11:00, the train left Berlin Hauptbahnhof, headed for Leipzig, and then later Munich. Amity looked out the window, got ready, and pressed a button on her phone.
A large fireball appeared out of the window of a skyscraper, placed only a block or so away, in perfect viewing distance from Amity’s train window.
She grinned.
In the days following the lawsuit, Amity felt miserable. It wasn’t only that she lost, no. It wasn’t even that she for some goddamn reason had to pay the defense’s lawyer fees, too, and that her previously fairly well off family was now on the verge of going into debt.
It was the whole unfairness of the world. If a person could do their best, even more than their best perhaps, and come up empty for it – not even empty, but worse off than when they started, then… what was the point of trying to do one’s best?
It felt like the world was threatening to come down on her. All the intrusive thoughts, threatening to consume her.
She saw no way to get out of this. It just seemed she was going to have to suffer now.
Every day, every hour, every minute.
All the while, the endless stream of thoughts running through her mind would get worse and worse, more angry at herself, and the world.
There was only one thing she hadn’t bothered to try yet.
And so, in desperation, she turned to the internet, to see if she could maybe find some semblance of hope there.
The internet did not make Amity’s situation better.
She only found more. Of everything. Other horror stories, so many people like her – thrown aside, made fun of by the rich and powerful.
It was the perfect situation for her loathing of the world to grow.
Well, not necessarily of the whole world. More… the way the world was run.
Left and right, at every corner, she could find thousands of people suffering, and for what?
She thought long and hard about the question. And no matter how long she thought, she could not come up with a satisfying answer. Was it money? Power? What was it that the wealthy wanted? She could not for the life of her understand the reasoning behind any of it!
And then she arrived at the only logical way to get rid of these thoughts, and to help other people. She realized a simple thing.
The system was not improving.
The system that only allowed the wealthy to grow wealthier, and cast the poor aside, not even bothering to throw them a lifeline.
Every struggling person, nearly every problem they had to face – it was all the fault of capitalism.
Capitalism had to go.
That one thought took central place in her mind for the next two years.
As she learned more and more about the intricacies of the system designed to only benefit the lucky few, she became angrier and, well, more desperate.
She did manage to meet some cool people on the internet, and… that was great. She had someone to vent to now, and they all had one thing common – the disgust at the current system.
Granted, there were varying degrees of that among her new friend group – some were just mildly annoyed, mostly in the group because their friends joined, while others were more aggressively advocating for change.
Amity, after all she has gone through, was definitely in for some aggressive advocacy.
And so, she came to learn all of the socialist movement’s points from her friends, and quickly became able to counter all arguments in favor of capitalism right out of the gate.
She wanted to move people over to her side, through discussion in the marketplace of ideas.
She created social media accounts, tried to promote her views everywhere she went.
But as much notoriety she got from niche groups on the internet, nothing really changed in the real world.
When the second year anniversary of Luz’s accident came, and a big ol’ pile of nothing continued to happen (with the exception of Amity now having the pleasure of reading daily death threats from random idiots online), she started to think differently.
Nothing done in good faith seemed to bring good results. Ever.
So… what if she did some bad faith stuff? Everyone else was doing it, and it’s not like anyone is completely pure! She could sometimes be a little bit dishonest in presenting her views, if it got the job done and some people were moved on her side!
And… she saw results.
In just a few months, she gained a rather large following online, and was now invited onto television. She could present her views to more people! The boomers could finally be swayed over! Really, it was a perfect opportunity!
Except the host of the program she was invited on to was… kind of a patronizing dickhead.
Nothing she could ever say could convince the man that she wasn’t just some kid talking out of her ass. Capitalism was good, that was all there was to it. You can never change anything, because… what if anything bad happens?
Completely disregarding the fact that a lot of bad stuff was already happening, and had been for a long time.
But blowing up at him would only make everything worse. And so Amity ground her teeth together, did her best to answer any annoying questions, until fifteen minutes later, the interview was finally over.
The next couple of interviews weren’t better.
Everyone thought the teenager couldn’t make her brain work – everything she talked about was impossible, apparently. Capitalism had worked for centuries, apparently. Nobody was listening when she tried to convinced that no, it actually hadn’t .
But as much as she fought, the end result was still the same. Nothing changed.
The bitterness she felt started to increase.
With every interview that went nowhere, her mind became more angry.
Until finally, when one particularly irritating chauvinistic douchebag asked what the problem really was with putting spikes under every single bridge to remove the homeless, she snapped.
Suffice to say, when that interview aired, she did not get positive feedback.
“Communism is a Blight on the Modern World.”
“Radical attacks talk show host over homelessness.”
“Has the internet been a way to fall into extremism?”
The articles said it all.
And as the ridicule and hate she received online only grew, she decided.
They wanted her to be the villain?
Alright. She’d be the villain.
The train moved forward at a normal pace. So far, everything was going smoothly.
Ten minutes after the first explosion, two more occurred.
Both of the yellow fireballs could conveniently be seen from the window of one IC 98 train headed for Leipzig.
Amity sighed happily. This was glorious.
When she thought about how the elite were getting crispy, she could only laugh.
And the spectacle had only just begun.
After the interview, Amity withdrew her online presence, making it appear that the world beat her.
But oh boy, was that not the case.
Every hardship she could encounter would only make her more determined.
She debated with herself on what the best way to take revenge would be.
But nothing she came up with would do justice to what she was feeling.
And well… she hadn’t considered actual violence yet.
Now that was a thought.
And whatever counter arguments she tried to make, her brain was certain that that was the only way to go. She was simply overcome with this… clarity.
The only time the elite would actually respond to her was if they felt threatened.
And nobody could threaten the elite without some sort of violence.
And so, a plan began to form.
Obtaining plans for the construction of homemade explosives was almost too easy. She had read something about fertilizer having convenient qualities, and then… as limited as her online presence was these days, she could still use her account to get some contacts.
And on January 19th , 2013, she was set to use her first prototype.
She entered the abandoned parking lot at the edge of a highway, lit the fuse and watched.
A ball of fire, unlike any she had seen before, was unleashed.
Yep, thought Amity bitterly. This will do.
By the time the train left Berlin, it felt like half the city was levelled, based on the amount of smoke rising up into the sky.
And there was much more to come. So much more.
At 12:47, the train entered the city of Leipzig, and the glorious spectacle began anew.
Amity wondered if the German police would notice a pattern of these explosions.
Oh well! No need to bother herself with that now! Not when such an amazing view was before her!
The last few months passed by very quickly.
Amity was mostly in the process of gathering more resources, making new bombs, et cetera.
She also had to get some people on her side, though; some workers that would hate their bosses as much as she hated the world.
But in the end, that turned out not to be a problem at all.
When you have an economy that relies on the exploitation of the worker, you will always find those that are way too sick of their boss.
And you can also lie to them about what the package they should deliver them is. That also works.
And it was on September 11th, 2023, that all of the “suitcases” were ready to be distributed to Amity’s “coworkers” across Germany.
She just had to find the best timing and get ready for the show.
The train left Nuremberg a few hours later.
And Amity was headed towards her last stop – Munich.
Leaving behind her three absolutely devastated metropolises.
And there was still one more to go.
And she saved the best for last.
The headquarters of Allamara were placed in Munich.
And she would not stand and watch that one from afar.
Arriving in Munich saw only three more explosions. Amity was a bit surprised that nobody caught on to the fact that all of the explosions were in time with the train passing by – but she wasn’t about to complain. It was only a few blocks to reach the office of Philip Wittebane, CEO of Allamara.
And everything was going as smoothly as she planned.
She entered the headquarters to sounds of panic – people were clearly noticing the big booms shaking the building. And that served her perfectly.
Acting like she belonged, she opened some doors, climbed some stairs, and arrived at her final destination.
The door before her held a name plate, with Philip Wittebane written on it with large, golden letters.
Examining it more thoroughly, Amity realized that… the writing was actually made of gold.
Jesus. How full of yourself do you need to be to have that done?
No matter. She pushed the door open, revealing the man that had caused her all this trouble to begin with.
“Hi!” She said cheerfully, and opened up her jacket, revealing to Philip that there was only one way this encounter was going to go.
It was a miracle the building was not completely levelled in the coming boom.
The influx of patients to the Berlin Memorial Hospital was immense.
There was not much there could be done for many of them, but the doctors and nurses would do their best to help. Any human life was worth staying the extra shift or two.
And as much as a coma patient still needed care, many other people needed the space Luz occupied more.
Which is why when Luz woke up, she was being wheeled off to another room, down the panic filled hallways of the hospital.
She had so many questions. What was going on? Why was she in the hospital? Why couldn’t she move her legs? Where was Amity?
Three of those questions were answered as she was pushed into her new room.
“The number of fatalities is still climbing. It seems the terrorist attack targeted largely wealthy individuals, as the remains of many of Germany’s top 1% have been identified on the scenes. The perpetrator is unknown so far, but new police reports point to Amity Blight as a suspect. The nineteen year old extremist first became radicalized when-”
Luz could not hear the rest of what the TV broadcaster was saying. She stared in shock as the pictures ran across the screen, not believing her eyes.
But it was true.
It was all true.