Renee: Neither Tono nor I own Hetalia. If either of us did, there'd be a helluva lot more nudity, profanity and sexy hot mansex.
Tono: yummy
Now, enjoy!
Kiku Honda stood at the bow of the ship, gazing out at the sea. Its serene beauty captivated him. Kiku had traveled for many years, traveled to many places, seen many things, but the calm of a body of water, either lake, river or ocean, never ceased to amaze him.
The water was a beautiful cerulean blue. Just past the surface swam fish and eels and other marine wildlife. Beyond the living animals, Kiku could see the silhouettes of coral reefs, dark against the bright sapphire of the ocean.
The scent of the ocean was sharp to Kiku's mind. It revealed a sense of nostalgia and melancholy, making him remember. He remembered when he was powerful; He remembered when he was great; He remembered all the times, both good and bad, before becoming his new king's favorite dog. This was not the way he had planned to be, for he had trained and studied, going beyond every requirement, striving to be the best he could be. But that was long ago. He knew that he can no longer afford to be lost in his past; this was now, and that was then.
Hundreds of years had passed since Kiku's samurai days, but now they were all coming back in a flash. In the past two weeks, he had relived his time in seven different dynasties. They all came back quickly and unexpectedly, leaving Kiku to always be on his guard. Unfortunately, that occurred often in Kiku's world. Their world was not the one that anyone had known, as was it one no one had expected. In this world, a world called Neo-Earth, the past mixed with the present, creating a very different future from what had been expected.
Neo-Earth was a land of beauty, of diverse culture and everything that had been lost over industrialization. Nothing was gone for good; in fact, reality sometimes switched between what had been there in the past and what was there now. If you were to walk down a busy street, it was very possible for you to end up walking through a forest, for the forest had been there once. The greed of man had cleared it out. But now it was back, interchanging between the present and past all because of the curiosity of men.
After decades spent working with time and space, humans had eventually changed their world for good. As the saying goes, curiosity killed the cat. The continuous ripping and tearing, poking and prodding of the very fabric of time had a bigger effect than anyone realized, eventually causing what would be known as the Unraveling.
Time divided, splitting in two before converging again. When it converged, it had an unexpected effect; past merged to become the present.
However bad the Unraveling was, there's was always the possibility to distinguish past from present. Walking through the past would be like a technicolor, IMAX movie to anyone who experienced it. All their senses were heightened tenfold. From the moment time switched, adrenaline pumped through the person's veins, allowing the fight or flee action to take hold. The past became so vivid, so real, that some people had trouble believing it was fake. Americans could marvel at wonder of the I Have A Dream speech every time they walked on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Germans could experience the horrors of a concentration camp and see the fury of the Gestapo on an innocent citizen. Russians could relive the Siege of Leningrad, thankfully not for the full eight hundred, seventy-one days.
An episode like this had been labeled timechecks. They usually lasted for no more than five minutes, if you were lucky. There had been thousands of unlucky people stuck in timechecks. Their spirit was suspended in a different time period while their body lay in a coma back in the present. In the worst case scenario, a person was thrust back in time during a battle or a riot or some other unappealing situation and was killed, as a literal example of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Whilst humans were thrust into unknown situations, the nations were merely led to live memories that had faded to the back of their minds. Those memories became their reality changing all the most notable things about them: their personality, their mannerisms, literally everything. Reliving hundreds of years in a matter of days has a way of changing someone, and that's exactly what happened.
The newer nations weren't affected as badly. They didn't have enough history behind them to change that much. But the older countries, the ones like France and England and Spain and Japan, those were the ones that had the most dramatic of metamorphosis.
England and Spain both stayed in the same time period. A time of pirates, of pillaging and plundering. The way they spoke, dressed, and acted all changed, with England becoming one of the most ruthless pirates on the seas and Spain working his way to the top on a cursed ship.
Japan crash-landed in the middle of an era where samurai's, shoguns and dynasties ruled his lands. He re-learned the tools of the trade, becoming a feared fighter that almost none would take on.
France however, wasn't the same wine-drinking person that would cower in fear behind Jeanne d'Arc. He was more military minded, and it showed. His military took over Japan, making Japan one of the French territories. It was the first territory France had conquered on his own for many years.
In Neo-Earth, things are different. Pirates in ships roam the seas, and in one special case, they roam the air. Samurai's are as loyal to their rulers as ever. And it was because of that samurai's loyalty that Kiku was roaming the Mediterranean Sea right then and there.
Kiku, the recently appointed head of the new French navy, had been sent on a mission to take over what was left of non-French Iceland. It was a success, rebels don't stand very much of a chance in this Neo-Earth. Sailing away now, in the dangerous, pirate infested waters and skies; he was on his way back to report to his king.
Chapter Uno: Done.
Read and review our lovelies!
~Renee and Tono