Pairings: Russia/America, France/England/Spain, Denmark/Sweden, Germany/Prussia, Japan/China, Poland/Lithuania, Turkey/Greece, Norway/Iceland, Hong Kong/S. Korean, Canada/Ukraine

Warnings: Gay and straight couples, explicit sex, language, mild gore, incest, minor character death, and a threesome

Un-official names: Denmark: Mathias
Norway: Lukas
Iceland: Emil
N. Korea: Hyungsoo
Hong Kong: Xiao
Taiwan: Mei
Vietnam: Lien
Ukraine: Kateryna
Netherlands: Lars
Lichtenstein: Lili
(I will probably throw in many more characters at least in name. I'll add those into notes as I go)

Prologue

September 21st, 2014
Colored bands stretched across the Icelandic night sky in the hours before dawn. Perhaps not that strange, but these were no northern lights. The yellow lights flickered and crackled, traveling quick. Bluish white flashes joined the broken darkness as hot, hot sparks jumped here and there. No one saw the coming storm.

The clouds moved south—over Germany and France. They mixed with the ones already over Britain. And still no one saw the storm coming. The thick grey moved to the far corners both east and west. They wandered over New York before settling at Washington, and on the far side of the world, Beijing. Five pockets of storms stretched across the distance. Each gathered as strong as the next, but left no scattered storms around it. It did not rain, no, not a drop fell.

People started waking then. News reports circulated. In China, standard news about sub-standard weather. Half awake Russians thinking how I missed the rain before falling back asleep. America issued flash flood warnings across the east coast before the rain even started because those clouds were just so thick you couldn't see the sky for miles. And suddenly, like a blade-cut wall, blue skies again. But, it was just a storm.

It was just a storm, but it did not leave. In some places they sat for hours without moving in the obvious breeze. Nor did they loose a drop of rain. Only in Britain did it rain, but then, it always rained in Britain. Nervous? The world had no reason to be so they ignored the signs.

At exactly five past the hour, it started to rain.

xx

China: 8:00 am
A small boy sat on the stream's bank, tossing flat stones into the gentle flow. Morning light filtered down to the fresh green earth slicked with dew. Despite the heavy cover of the clouds, the boy laughed. Three plips followed as he broke his rock skipping record.

"Liang! Brother Liang!" a tiny voice shattered the morning calm. The rock sunk beneath the water's surface, so soundlessly he didn't notice it. "Mother is calling!" And yet the voice continued to grow until it turned into a monstrous noise. Liang whirled around to see his little sister with her long twin braids and doey eyes. After a second of surprise, he decided her voice rode on the back of thunder and indeed he saw lightning flash in the sky, but the thunder growled all wrong.

Beijing lay beyond the hills, sparkling like a jewel against the heavy clouds that congregated there. Lightning flashed horizontal across the whole length of sky that he could see. Rather than yellow lightning or a bright white, it sparked blue. The few yellow shocks that shot downwards barely captured the boy's attention next to those blue sparks getting more frequent and numerous above the distant city. Then, like something from out of an American movie, a shape emerged out of the cloud. Liang's eyes went wide and he screamed.

His sister's eyes dotted with tears, her mouth opening in an 'o'. She squashed her stuffed rabbit tighter to her chest. Brother was mean, but he kept screaming. Kept screaming past the length for a joke. She turned slowly to see a slick sheet of silver tilt over the city. Black things dripped off or held onto its underside as horrid green and blue lights ricocheted off the top. The beast in the sky did not fully emerge from the cloud, but it already hung over a corner of the great city. Who knew how far it continued beyond. "Liang!"

The shrill cry ate up the boy's will to scream. "Jia-li!" He ran forward with his hands outstretched for the girl barely aged five. She fell into them and they both stared up in horror at the sky, even as they tried to hide their eyes in each other's hair. They could not look away, try as they might. Liang squeezed his eyes shut. What was this beast doing here?

Suddenly the stillness broke. In the sky, a roar began. Nothing like thunder, it grew from a gentle engine hum and as if that car rushed toward them, the engine noise intensified. Still the children did not scream. They did not believe. The thing in the sky slid further out of its cover and they trembled. They quaked as the stream water trembled in its banks behind them. Never before had they seen something bigger than the city but this thing dwarfed it. Beijing, the great city they went to shop and dine and visit their mother's sister in—her three boys just a little older than them. This thing so great, so foreign, could not be fathomed.

With a flash, the sky beast gathered up the sky and the electricity until the world held still that second.

"Run." Liang's tiny voice echoed hollowly. His hand tightened on Jia-li's wrist. A heart beat more. "Run!"

He pulled hard and they ran. They waded through the little stream, trampled the soft dirt beyond. Ran and ran without one glance back. Hands wrapped around each other's with a strength rarely seen in children, except the ones who had seen horror and these two had seen it. It would come after them, but they at least had legs to run. Those who did not have legs got left behind.

Forgotten on the riverbank, one little rabbit lay as it started to rain.