'It appears to me that your eyes are roving where they ought not be. Remove them, before I do so myself.'
Ortlinde Waechter. 149 centimeters tall. 44 kilograms in weight. She wears an old, well-kept German uniform with cap as her only outfit. Who is she? Why does she cling to something from the past like that?
Ortlinde... well... Ortlinde used to be a Valkyrie once. A long time ago. In a way, she still is. She's just... different, now.
Fallen Valkyries are not particularly new. Ortlinde's own sister fell from grace before her, so it can be said that it runs in the family.
But oddly enough, whereas her sister was cast out, Ortlinde left on her own. Claiming a mortal shell, the Valkyrie abandoned her birthplace and many of her powers in order to live amongst the humans. And in doing so, she became more infamous than many of her sisters.
July. 1944. The Normandy Breakout.
Oberscharführer Ortlinde Waechter served extensively with German forces in this era. Her unit? 2. SS-Panzerdivision.
During the war, she became a master of mechanized warfare. The petite little girl proved to be a brutal tactician on par with the Desert Fox himself. The reluctance of command to listen to what she had to say is likely the only reason the Allies were victorious in that theater of war.
Ortlinde personally commanded a Panzerkampfwagen VI Tiger I she named 'Adelinde', after her sister. The tank remains functional today, though pockmarks and gouges tell a story without words in regards to the machine's service.
Seventeen times during this conflict, Allied forces reported her death. And each time, they were correct. While she was able to discard her powers, she was not able to stop being a Valkyrie, even with her mortal shell. Every time she was torn asunder by machinegun fire or artillery, she would return anew, sometimes moments later.
The war has been over for decades now, of course. Ortlinde still lives on, however. Her final words before fading away, spoken to an Allied commander moments before a failed execution? 'Your task is complete. I congratulate you, humans... there is hope for you, after all.'
Humanity has degraded since then, in her opinion. The girl has watched the soldiers of the last great war age and die. All over the world, signs of the epic conflict remain... battlefields, graveyards, monuments, all a testament to the sacrifices made in order to keep the world free.
Why? For what reason did she fall in the first place?
The sad truth is, she did so in order to kill her own sister, Adelinde. It takes a warrior bereft of divinity to destroy one as corrupted as Adelinde, after all. But as she remained with the mortals, she learned herself that she prefers their company over her own kind... and Adelinde, too, is not as horrible as she had seemed.
Ortlinde leads a dual existence, now. A cold, saddened shell of a girl who watches our world with disappointment and disdain, she only truly comes alive when she allows her powers to return, shifting herself back in time to relive the Second World War through infinity.
Would you like to join her? Perhaps you can write your own chapter in the history of the last Great War...