It was March 19th, for all purposes another regular day for New Zealand until he recieved a phone call. A phone call which would pull the entire country into a state of crisis and despair. A phone call which would bring about a time of self-sacrifice for all his citizens in the face of hardship. The phone call that would change everything.

"What do you mean "We're out of marmite"?"

The young man's usually carefree demenour started to ice over as he tried to compehend what he had just heard.

"I'm sorry mate, but we've had to cease production at our only factory, due to earthquake damage. We expect a massive shortage, if not a complete clearance of our current stock but unfortunatly we just can't produce anymore until the factory is repared."

New Zealand squeezed the phone tighter, trying to stop his hand from shaking. This was bad. Really, really bad.

"Well, how long is that going to take?"
"Urm, it's hard to say, but we estimate that we can have stock ready to retail by mid-July"

New Zealand's jade eyes widened in shock.

"Woah woah woah, hold up. Are you trying to tell me that we won't have any more marmite for four months?"
"Well, there's always the remaining inventory a-"
"But that's gonna run out? Surely?"

He held his breath as the man sighed on the other end of the line.

"...Yes. Eventually, there will be no marmite left in New Zealand."

With those words, New Zealand went numb with disbelief, his gaze fixed on the patch of Auckland's streets he could see from his office window. All those poor people, unable to apply that delicous black goo to their toast in the morning or give their stews an extra yeasty kick. Worse still, how would they deal with having marmite and cheese toasties without the marmite? What could he do? How was his country possibly going to survive this?

"New Zealand? Hey, New Zealand! You 'right mate? You still there? New Zealand?"

His eyes flickered from the window to the phone in his now-lowered hand. Very gingerly, he lifted the headset to his ear and resumed the conversation at a near whisper.

"What am I gonna do Doug?"
"I dunno, I thought you would have sorted something yourself, seeing as the factory has been out of production since November."
"Wait, November? Why am I only hearing about this now then?"
"You're having me on right? We sent you a letter the day after we shut it down."
"No way."
"We did. Check now and see if you can find it."

New Zealand immediatly went over to his mail organsation folder i.e. the place where he chucked all his mail that wasn't about rugby or possible free trade agreements with East Asian nations he hadn't really heard of. He was more of an email guy really. Sure enough, as he leafed through the flyers and envelopes, he found one with the marmite logo in the corner.

"Okay, you were right. Still, what am I supposed to do?"
"You are going to have to figure that out yourself. We'll deal with the public as best we can and call you back when we have more information"
"Be sure you do."
"Good luck."
"Chur..."

He set the phone down briefly, hestitated as he thought to himself then picked it up again, punching in the numbers with a quiet determination. He was going to have to take some drastic action if he was to protect his country, even if that meant calling up some people he hadn't spoken to for a while and wanted to keep that way in some cases.

But in the name of marmite, he was prepared to do anything.

A/N Just to give a little bit of background on this story, the 2012 marmite shortage or "Marmageddon" as it has been dubbed by the press, although hard to believe, is actually a real "crisis" in New Zealand at the moment. I guess it shows how casual people are in New Zealand. While the rest of the world worries about debt, unemployment, terrorism etc, we go into a frenzy over a preservative. People have caused traffic jams rushing to the shops to buy marmite, jars have been auctioned on trademe (NZ equivillant of Ebay) for $60+ and we even had the Prime Minister go on the news about it. New Zealand is so crazy.

Hopefully I will have the next chapter up by next weekend, but this week will be hectic so I'm not sure. Reviews are much appreciated (as always). Thanks for reading :D