K. I love Hetalia, and I've had this idea just marinating in my head for a long time. I thought it was about time that I got it out of my system.

Like it says in the summary, there's no romance (as of yet) and the four characters that are on there are only a few of the many that will be showing their faces. The whole story is basically from Arthur's POV though, so if you hate him, I'm sorry. (seriously, I'm sorry. How could you hate him?) The main characters will definitely be England, France, Prussia, America, Canada, Germany, Italy (North and South), Spain, Russia, China and Japan.

I'm open to suggestions later on as which random characters I can add in passing.

I probably won't update often, but I'll certainly try (that's literally as good as you're gonna get from me. I'm as flaky as dry paint. Again, sorry.)

So again, like it said in the summary, this is an AU that I came up with while racked with boredom and after an attack of plot bunnies. The story will explain itself, but feel free to ask any questions in the reviews, and I'll explain it as best I can. Anyway, the story may start slow, but I promise action and good times ahead. :) ;)

It was idiotic. To think that one man could manipulate an entire world, as though it were nothing … take what he liked from it, not enough to really be noticeable, but enough to be greedy. The whole of history to choose from, and for what? Entertainment? Kirkland snorted derisively at the thought. He was sure that the bosses found he and his rivals entertaining. It's not as though he wasn't known in every corner of his zone.

Ah, the zones. The Overseer, who all of the Bosses deferred to, … it had been his idea. It's as though some- … loon (God forbid he ever say it out loud, as the Bosses would soon string him up by his thumbs) with a fascination for collecting, had come across an all powerful device that could pull anyone from anywhere and put them somewhere else. Kirkland, along with every other displaced person, had been told that the Overseer was their new god. As though He could be replaced. All the Overseer was, was an overgrown child, taking the history of a world and playing with it as though it were his personal nursery (he certainly must be childish if he was naive enough to believe that everyone he'd kidnapped would suddenly believe in him.

Kirkland looked out over the ocean, missing England. The real England. Here, it was as though he was supposed to believe that this- this facsimile that had been created to look like his England was the real thing. But England and France and a few more European countries were all they had, along with random continents across the way. There was no world. Not really. Just this phony look-alike of the real one. And it didn't even look alike. Captain Arthur Kirkland was a brilliant navigator and seaman in the Queen's Royal Navy. He knew what England and the other countries looked like on a map, and the 'new' England was a completely different shape, with Ireland and Scotland and Wales all jumbled up next to it.

Even his Queen wasn't real. Whoever this juvenile Overseer was, the babe obviously at least realized that he couldn't steal very big and important historical figures without being caught. So the big baby had been whisking away people from random instances, when their disappearances could be explained. A ship lost at sea, a lumberjack who went into the forest, and just never came back. Soon, the fake England and the countries surrounding it were full of displaced people, forced to listen to Queen Jane. Queen Jane. That wasn't his Queen. No. Arthur Kirkland knew that. The King in France was the same, with some silly name like Bernard. Spain and Portugal suffered the same fate, along with all of the other surrounding countries. It made the sea-hardened Englishman wince when he truly recalled first arriving.

There had been a disembodied voice, explaining the situation in a terrible, final way. It left he and his crew to their own devices after that, and they all knew exactly where they stood. Jane was no Queen of theirs. And thus, Arthur Kirkland began his notorious career as a pirate. He was just grateful that he wasn't one of the unlucky wretches born in this grey zone, since that's what it was. Droves of people from 1650 and its surrounding dates, all pulled here, for- for who knew what purpose.

Yet, Kirkland was only part of one zone. The Explorer Zone, lovingly shortened to Ex-zone by the natives. He knew there were other zones as well, all different periods of time from Earth, all displaced. There was a Mid-zone, home to the same few countries, but during Medieval times when knights in shining armour fought off dragons to rescue beautiful damsels. It sickened him. Especially since the dragons were real. In this fake zone world, magic had more meaning than it ever used to. Kirkland had used to believe that anyone with magic had sold his soul to the devil. Now, with rather powerful, untapped, unmanageable magic himself … he wasn't so sure. In fact, everyone had magic of some sort, even in the Tech-zone, where they could supposedly fly without it.

Kirkland couldn't control his magic. He had no idea how. Magic was becoming dangerous to use, since the resistance had begun to try to usurp the leaders in each zone years before he'd been displaced. The Bosses were immediately called in, and the resistance had disappeared, with all its useful knowledge. All of the families of the resistance had been scattered from zone to zone, children who were born in the Mod-zone (Modern) suddenly found themselves in the Diesel-zone (1940's). Parents were executed.

From what Kirkland had heard, the most magic still used was in the Barb-zone, closely followed by the Mid-zone. Barbaric and Medieval. It made sense that the two most primitive zones would rely on magic the most. Yet the art of Jumping had been lost. Jumping, from what the Englishman had gathered through rumours that he pretended not to be interested in, was the art of leaping from zone to zone. A feat which had been immensely helpful to the resistance, but in the end, could not save them from the retribution that the Bosses rained on their heads. And now, with the resistance crushed and broken, all Kirkland had left was his crew and his dignity.

The Englishman had never taken part in the resistance, but he hated the Bosses. More even, than his fake Queen. Yet, with the resistance gone, all he could fight against was the latter, since he and his crew could only do so much.

And so he plundered, stole from, and was an all around nuisance to "Her Majesty", deciding that it was his duty as an Englishman to make certain that the true spirit of his country lived on. So naturally he expected to be hunted and fought and threatened by the people who had decided to just roll over and take life the way the Overseer had made it. Kirkland expected to become wanted and feared all throughout the Ex-zone.

The only thing he didn't expect was the competition. "Sir, he's coming straight at us!"

"Of course he is." Kirkland gave his most recent cabin boy his best one eyed stare (He'd found that he'd gotten a new respect after killing One Eye O'Brian, and as a trophy wore the eyepatch so no one could forget) wilting the young man almost immediately, "The Frog recognised my flag, just as I'd hoped."

"You changed flags so he would come?!" The boy's wide grey eyes expanded and Kirkland chuckled dryly,

"I've been feeling a little under the weather lately, and I think stabbing that pervert might just lift my spirits. Of course, I may have to do it twice …" He watched out of the corner of his eye as the boy paled. He didn't have time to properly enjoy it however, as just then his first mate Greenland shouted from the deck,

"Captain, shall we prepare the cannons?"

"Naturally." Kirkland's tone reverted to the clipped, hostile one that the boy was used to, and he found a small sliver of pleasure in the fact that the boy actually found comfort in it. That was his goal after all. To disarm people with a sinister and sadistic personality, so that they would give more respect to his more military side, "But don't fire until I give the word, unless you'd fancy an eyepatch of your own …?"

"Yes, sir." Greenland saluted and ran off to give the orders.

"What shall I do, sir?" James Renheart, the young lad, inquired, his hand quivering in a salute of his own.

"Go get my bed ready. If all goes well, I shall be sleeping much more peacefully tonight." As the lad ran off to do as told, Kirkland kept his eye on the approaching ship. The vanity of its Captain showed in the beautiful woman at the front and the silver stitching shimmering in the sails. The Englishman suppressed a snort as he finally spotted the Captain himself at the head, blond hair blowing backwards with a smirk on his face as his own telescope sighted Kirkland. He blew a kiss, and Kirkland put down his telescope in disgust, mouthing 'sod off' right back. He just knew that the idiot Frenchman laughed in reply. It would be so like him.

This would also be their third meeting in a month, and the Frog had won the last two rounds. Kirkland didn't intend to be beaten again.

"Sir!" Greenland's voice was shouting again, pulling him from his thoughts abruptly, "They're in range, what shall we do?"

"Nothing." Kirkland snapped as he descended to the lower deck, pulling back his blood-red, brass buttoned overcoat to reveal the gleaming hilt of his rapier. "This is my fight."

"But what if they fire their cannons?"

"Then bloody fire back, you twat!" Kirkland looked sidelong at Greenland with a scowl. His first mate shrugged, having commented to his Captain not two days earlier that he was getting a little ruthless. Now Greenland's face merely reflected Kirkland's answer.

I would never truly become a pirate, so I would suggest you remember what we're truly fighting for. I haven't forgotten. His first mate's dark eyes seemed to ask, 'who's forgotten?'

Kirkland deepened his scowl, turning away to approach the railing, straining his eye to see his target as the other ship pulled ever nearer. It didn't take him long to locate the prat. He was wearing his trademark silk shirt, hanging loose with the strings blowing in the wind while his scruffy chin tightened for his thin lips to form a smirk. Well, Kirkland couldn't actually see the smirk, but he knew it was there, and he knew what it looked like. He'd certainly seen it up close often enough.

A silence seemed to fall as the ships neared each other. The sun was nigh near the horizon now, threatening to turn the sky red and gold, while the wind picked up, almost taking Kirkland's velvet feathered hat with it. The other ship turned as it neared, paralleling itself with Kirkland's. He could now read the name on the side, C'est Manifique. His mouth turned into a scowl of its own accord. The Frog was anything but magnificent. His own ship, Godspeed, made much more sense (not to mention that it gave credit where it was due).

Now, fifty feet apart, everything was still silent. The Frenchman was close enough that his smirk was now obvious, though Kirkland couldn't quite see the twinkling blue eyes. "Well Bonnefoy?" He called crisply across the short distance, and the wind stole his voice in another random gust. Captain Francis Bonnefoy heard it nonetheless,

"Angleterre, you put up your flag. I assumed you must have wanted to see me if you dropped your disguise as one of the Queen's men."

"At least one of us has the sense to have a disguise at all!" Kirkland called back, ignoring the idiotic nickname (He was English, yes, but he wasn't England. He'd always figured that England would be female anyway), "It's a wonder that you haven't been strung up yet!"

"Oh, Angleterre. You always know just what to say!" Bonnefoy's irritating laugh floated back across, "Is that why you called me over? To warn me to disguise myself?"

"I couldn't care less about-"

"I'm touched, mon ami! I did not know that you cared!"

"I don't!" Kirkland finally barked.

"Why do we always have to fight?" Bonnefoy pouted, "We could benefit so much from each other! Why, I could teach you the benefits of a pair of tweezers, and you could give me a flag to disguise myself!"

"I would rather die than ever have you as an ally!" Kirkland bellowed, face red at the slight to his perhaps bushier than was normal eyebrows.

"Such cruel words!" The Frenchman clutched his chest, as though he'd been caused physical pain "Yet," His face turned coy, "I would rather you died, too."

"Was that a threat?!"

"Non, it was an invitation." The Frog looked ridiculously smug as he proffered his own rapier.

"I'll be the one to kill you, Bonnefoy." Kirkland promised.

"Bonne chance!" Again with the laugh, "Fire at will!"

Then their third battle of the month broke out, while Kirkland cooly removed his blunderbuss pistol from his belt with his left hand, drawing his sword with his right. He would teach that Frog to insult him.

Again, any questions, feel free to ask. Also, if I'm portraying anyone out of character, I demand that you tell me. (of course, these characters are open to a lot of interpretation, so hopefully I'm in the clear) I did my best, and I'm going to get going on the next chapter ASAP.