Arthur could not, for the life of him, understand nor fathom why God had deemed it acceptable to send him sixty-eight years in the future by way of a university student's infernal, beta contraption that could have very well ended up killing him and the maker and possibly have gone off like a nuclear bomb with all the thingamabobs and whatchamacallits whirring around inside of it. Especially when the first thing he heard after the humming and buzzing of the machine died down was a bloody Yankee's overly obnoxious voice.
"Dude, welcome to the year 2015!" the voice exclaimed. It belonged to a blond haired, blue eyed young man with a bomber jacket. There was a wide, toothy smile slathered across his face and a cow lick atop his head bounced along with his excited movements. "If I calibrated my thingy right, you are from the year 1947, which means I can tell you a Hitler joke!"
Arthur's eyes rose in shock as another man standing next to the excited man moved forward quickly and caught his shoulder saying frantically, "Too soon, Alfred!" 'Alfred' looked back at his companion (an oriental man with a long ponytail hanging over his shoulder) and frowned. "He just got out of the war, have some tact!"
"But Yao," he whined. He turned back to Arthur. "It's a good joke. Wanna hear it? You guys told jokes about Hitler, too, right? Wanna hear mine?" Arthur was still too much in shock, praying frantically to God to take him home, but Alfred appeared not to mind and went ahead with the joke, much to the chagrin and worry of the other man. "Okay, so, dude, what is the difference between Hitler and a homosexual? Forty-five degrees!" With that, Arthur watched with a pale face as Alfred held his arm up in the famous Nazi salute before dropping his hand to make a forty-five degree angle and shouting in a higher, nasally pitch, "Fierce!"
Yao face-palmed and Arthur got over his momentary shock to say, "That was terrible." The situation he was in was barely comprehensible and didn't make a lick of sense, but Arthur knew that in any year the joke that Arthur's ears were just forced to listen to was awful.
Alfred raised an eyebrow, his smile turning to a smirk. "Think you can do better?"
The Englishman was completely prepared to wipe the floor with the American's ass, but was promptly cut off by Yao. "No, no joke fight. The experiment worked, it is time to send him home. We need to write a report and validate our findings. No time for jokes."
Alfred pouted and Arthur couldn't help but feel the same, though he was not exactly sure why. He felt like he was supposed to be freaking out more than he was. There was no way that this was real and, even if it was, Arthur was pretty sure being brought forward in time was a reason to cause a scene and not casually listen and tell jokes whilst praying to be sent home. Which he still was doing because even God wasn't cruel enough to do this to him, right? Yao paid no attention to his colleague and went to fiddle with whatever controlled the monstrosity that had brought Arthur to this moment in time. But hell if he could pass on showing a Yankee up, even if he was caught in a strange predicament such as this. With a smirk, Arthur began his brilliant joke as quickly as possible in case the machine started its whirring sound again.
"Hitler goes and visits a mental asylum somewhere in Germany," he started, catching Alfred's attention right away. Yao paused momentarily in his calculated movements to frown at Arthur before continuing on with renewed vigor. "All of the patients are saluting him as he walks down the hallways, but in one hallway, a nurse is not saluting him. Hitler walks up to him and says, 'Why are you not saluting your Früher?' An-"
"No time for jokes!" Yao cut in. The machine began to make the loud thrumming noise Arthur had heard when he arrived. It seemed to Arthur that he now had only so long to finish his marvelous joke. Alfred looked eager to hear the punchline and loose the joke fight, anyway, which only egged Arthur on.
"And the nurse replied," Arthur continued, stopping briefly for the quickest dramatic pause possible, before finally, with bated breath, Alfred hear the funniest conclusion to a joke he had ever had the pleasure of hearing. "'Sir, I'm not crazy!'"
Arthur caught the beginning of Alfred's laugh right before everything went hazy and blurry and crazy again for the second time in Arthur's life. God had put him in an unfathomable situation in the blink of an eye and had gotten him out of it just as quick. When all of the miraculous traveling stopped, Arthur was back in his own home in his own time.
A/N: The last and final day of AnimeExpo, Day 4. As much as I enjoyed these past days, I am sad to see the last has come. I thank you all for the favorites and reviews on the three previous days fics, and in advance for this fic. I hope you enjoyed them as much as I enjoyed sharing them. And I'm very sorry if the Hitler jokes offended you; the one Alfred told was literally told to me once and I have still not gotten over the fact that it exists. Have an awesome day! :)