The Squad apprehending the alleged Lady Heterodyne
The Black Squad are a special unit (or units) of Wulfenbach troops which have an as-yet-unexplained ability to apparently appear and disappear from thin air (a sort of European ninja, if you would). Their variation of the Wulfenbach badge is the tower and wings in matte black on a gold oval, and is worn on their shakos.
For as-yet unspecified reasons, Ardsley Wooster quails at seeing them appear in this fashion to accost Zeetha and himself when they attempt to approach Castle Heterodyne;[1] most likely from being familiar with the level of their skills. When Zeetha comments they "came out of nowhere", Wooster replies this is more true than she knows, but no further information is forthcoming. On the other hand, we see ✣ Sergeant Scorp of the Wuflenbach Vespiary Squad working rather casually with them as their "expert Agatha identifier".
The Black Squad consist of both men and women, unusually for the Empire's ground forces; all other Wulfenbach ground forces shown so far are all men, with one (possible) exception. One of the members of the Squad, possibly an officer, is a woman. At least Sergeant Scorp calls her "Ma'am", suggesting she ranks above an NCO, though it is one of the male members[2] who seems to be in overall command of the squad as he gives the verbal order to "disperse", meaning to go back to wherever they hide.
A bit later, Zola "Heterodyne" (or, more precisely, her minion Herr Vikel) deploys ✣ a device which seems to warp and distort the Castle-guarding squad-members painfully out of existence, leaving their rifles behind to clatter on the ground. Because the Black Squad has previously been shown appearing from, and disappearing into, nowhere as part of their normal operations, it was unknown for a long time (many volumes of the comic, that is) if this was a permanent de-materialization, or simply a temporary banishment to their usual hiding place. But we eventually learn that at least one member of the Black Squad shown in this scene survived, as is described below.
Much later ✣ , while inside the Mechanicsburg time-stop field created by the Take Five device, Agatha and Co. encounter a member of the Squad lying badly injured, but still able to move in chronological terms. This worthy gloatingly states the Black Squad exists "outside of time"[3], which lets them shadow the group outside the range of Prende's Lantern and then snatch away Gil when Agatha leaves the rest of the group frozen for a short time. It should be noted that this status does not make them immune to being stabbed, the attacker (evidently) being the target's own squad commander. Said commander identifies himself as "captain Dal Maghiar", and explains ✣ to a rescued Gil that he did this because all of the other members of the Squad are (possibly) Revenants. [4] He also reveals that the squad is somehow "trapped" - but not by the timestop. He is possibly referring to Zola's device leaving them stranded in the "outside time" they use, but see below. Gil is able to hear and react to this explanation because direct physical contact with one of the Squad automatically passes along their immunity to the time-stop; it even works when Gil is patching up Maghiar's own wounds or physically grappling with the other Squad members.
Maghiar also says ✣ that the "core team" of the Squad has been given orders by some unnamed individual to extract Klaus from the time-stop and take him to Castle Wulfenbach, while he and some others are supposed to patrol around Mechanicsburg and deal with troublemakers like Gil and Agatha. He also adds ✣ that they've only been in the city for a week, having sneaked in during the Polar Ice Lord incursion, and were previously hanging around in the city of Zagreb, seemingly forgotten. So it's not at all clear if his group is the one that ran afoul of Zola and her henchmen. That being said, Mechanicsburg citizens are seemly immune to enslaver wasps, so Maghiar is highly likely to be the male officer who was commanding the Castle-securing group ✣ (where it is said he was born and raised in Mechanicsburg and that his aunt was one of the midwives at the birth of the new Heterodyne) and also means his squad is the one that fell afoul of Zola.
See also[]
- Night Master - Assassins with a similar disappearing/reappearing power
- Stealth Fighters - Another Wulfenbach group with a stealth focus.
References
- ↑ "The Black Squad. Argh. I need a drink." - Vol. VII, page 23 ✣
- ↑ Who incidentally identifies himself as a Mechanisburger; this becomes relevant later on.
- ↑ Which puts in a new light Wooster's answer to Zeetha:
Zeetha: "Those soldiers - they came out of noWHERE" (emphasis added)
Wooster: "That's... more true that you know" ✣ - ↑ His own lack of revenant-ness foreshadowed years ago by the fact that he is from Mechanisburg, whose citizens are somehow resistant -or even maybe inmune ✣ - to being turned into revenants.