Absolute Zero; Chapter 1

(Humans names are used)

The night air was cold and crisp, the young man trekking through the deep snow. He felt it go into his boots, cold and wet, freezing between his legs and boots. He could barely resist a sigh of defeat as he made his way toward Drumheller, Canada. He could drive there-after all, he was a long way away-or at least walk by the roads, but he prefered going through the woods. He felt like that was his most charming detail that his brother, Alfred, didn't have. Beautiful wilderness.

"I think my wilderness is better than Alfred's," the young man found himself saying aloud. The polar bear that walked behind him lifted his head up and asked, "Huh? Who are you?"

He sighed, murming to himself, "I'm...me." He was very soft-spoken, while his brother was loud and obnoxious. How could people mistake them so easily? The young man understood how people couldn't see him-although he disliked that fact, he understood it and accepted it, hoping to someday be noticed-but he didn't understand how, when noticed, he was believed to be Alfred F. Jones, the butt of every joke.

Behind him, the polar bear-Kumajiro, or Kilimanjaro?-let out a loud yelp. The young man gasped, turning around as quickly as he could in the deep snow, and he saw the bear, only his black eyes and nose, sticking out of the snow. He must've fallen into a rift, thought the young man with relief. For a moment, he worried that something had happened. Of course something did happen, but he thought that what had happened was bad. He didn't know what he had expected it to actually be, but it would've been bad. Like being caught by Francis.

Francis, granted that he wasn't trying to grope you, was a nice guy. When the young man had left Arthur's company, and the company of his brother, Alfred, Francis had been overjoyed to take care of him. The young man was still scarred, though, from the childhood. Good scars-like those that made you look manly-were having better food than Alfred and Arthur, and, um...there were a lot of bad scars. Nothing like being abused, no, just things that affected the young man's personality in the future. He was secretly a pervert, no matter how hard he tried not to be. Those "occurances" happened at the most odd of times. The young man would be minding his own business, see a girl-or sometimes even a boy, thanks to Francis not "discriminating" against his lovers' genders-and then suddenly feel like a complete pervert.

That just isn't fair, the young man would think often during those moments, or even just when he remembered those moments. Just because I have a Dildo by Newfoundland doesn't mean that I have to use it...

"Look!"

Jerked violently out of his thoughts, the young man jumped and wheeled around to face the polar bear again-what was his name? Oh, even though he was sorry about it, he didn't need to worry about the bear's name at the instant-to see what was going on. The bear's high-pitched voice came from slightly off of their off-the-beaten-path path, saying, "Look!"

Hurrying toward the bear's voice, the young man floundered through the snow. You would think that he would be used to it after so long, but the young man liked to "migrate" to different parts of Canada now and then, to get a full view of himself and what he was becoming. Alfred only stayed in his "District of Columbia" unless he had problems in any other part of the United States, like when Arthur messed up and spewed oil into Alfred's gulf. That was one of the first times that the young man had scene his brother cry.

Scared for a worst-case scenario, the young Canadian leaned around an old pine tree. The tree was unlike most pines, for it seemed "dented" in many places, as though some giant kicked it multiple times every couple of inches that it grew. The Canadian leaned around the crippled tree, expecting to see some vampire bull moose or something, or a flying cow-a female moose, not those things that Alfred enjoys eating-but what he saw scared him more than any cow-bull mating ritual.

The polar bear was nosing a limp bundle that lay half-buring in the snow. The young man gasped, purple-blue eyes widening, and, to make sure that he wasn't imagining things, he wiped his snowflake-dotted glasses onto his red snow coat. He placed them back on his face and saw that what he had seen first was still there.

"We have to..." the young man had no clue what he was saying, but he was sure that the bear hadn't heard him anyway, with how shaky and soft it was. He gulped in the dry air, blinking his blonde-lashed eyes. He awkwardly rubbed his pink nose with the back of his cold right hand, feeling cold skin against cold skin as he sniffed in. His nose was dry, so he didn't have any snot or anything, but this seemed like some unnreal world. He saw a young girl laying in the snow, sheltered from the wind by a large, talking polar bear, while he could smell nothing, feel nothing, and hear nothing in the silence of the night.

A groan came from the girl. The young man gasped, finding himself instantly kneeling by her side. He pushed his hands under her and hoisted her up out of the snow without a moment's notice. Her brunette hair, slightly wavy-about as wavy as his-brushed against his right cheek, and he felt her burrow her cold face into his neck. A shudder ran through his body, and he told the bear, "I have to get her home!"

"Who are you?"

Ignoring that for the first time in his life, without any reply or thought whatsoever, the young man began running agiley through the trees. He didn't hit any trees or trip on anything, nor did he bump the girl into anything. For some reason, carrying the girl was hard. He could carry his polar bear-WAIT, HE LEFT HIM BEHIND?!-without any strain, as if he were simply holding a bottle of water or something light but heavier than a feather. Yet, for some reason, this girl was heavy despite her thin stature and young appearance. She was about as heavy as a Grand Piano. A mister Roderick would relate to that comparison, the young man thought to himself.

After only a few minutes of ceaseless running, the young man saw his log cabin. It was like a mansion of cabins, being four stories high-plus a basement and an attic-with eight rooms on each floor. Smoke came out of one of three chimneys-normally it came out of two of three chimneys, but only the houseguest was there, and he was too obnoxious to be able to handle the complexity of handling two fireplaces.

Running down the hill, the young man felt his right foot hit a slick, ice-covered rock beneath the snow. His feet flew out from under him, and his back slammed against the snow, and he skidded down for several meters, snow flying up his shirt and coat. Shivering, yet not bothering to try and get it all out, he stood up and continued toward his cabin. He had built it himself, even though he wasn't a professional at house-building, and he had chopped down and planted more trees all by himself, although he wasn't even a professional lumberjack.

Coming to the door, he swung up his left foot and kicked it in. A German-accented shout came from inside, "WHOA, NOT AWESOME!"

Ignoring his houseguest for one of the first times as well, the young man strolled into his house and headed to his left, to the kitchen. He lay the girl down on the empty dining table, and the German man closed the door and called to the young man, "I was hungry, so I ate your ice-cream! It was pretty yummy, but not nearly as awesome as it could have been!"

Heat coursed down the young man's body at that comment. He instantly shed his coat onto the floor without a care, clumps of snow falling off of it and onto the cold wood floor, and the young man stared at the German man. The man was fairly young in appearance, with white hair, pale skin, and red eyes. He wasn't actually albino-albino people have pale blue eyes, unlike animals.

The young man gulped, and raised his voice-which was a normal speaking tone-as he said, "Tell me that again. You ate my icecream?"

With a snort, the German said, "Ja, so? I vill buy you some tomorrow to replace zem, 'cuz I'm awesome like that."

Now that that was settled, the young man turned his attention to the girl on his dining table. He grabbed onto the table cloth and yanked out from under her like a magician, and he lay it over her like a blanket. He ran around the messy bar that seperated the kitchen from the living room, and he began to run up the stairs. He halted, though, spinning around just as the blue-clad German began to creep into the kitchen, and he pointed at the man, saying as loudly as his soft voice could manage, "Don-don't touch her. I'm j-just g-getting things, s-s-so when I come back, a-and you are mess-messing with her, I w-will replay last w-week's hockey game."

Startled, the German froze, sweat beading his forehead, and he said as nonchalantly as he could, "Oh, pffft, nein, I am too awesome to mess vit tuh girl. Just go get your tings, ja?"

Not entirely trusting him, the young man hurried up to grab a hand-made quilt, a downy pillow, and a first-aid kit. He hurried back down even faster and found that the German was only taking a drink of whatever was on the bar.

As he took the table cloth off of the girl, the young man laid the blanket over her. The German looked over his shoulder at the Canadian and asked, "Mattie, vhere did you find her?"

Matt looked over his shoulder and told the German, "In the woods." He began to continue to pat her cheeks, trying to wake her up, when the German asked, "Perhaps she is country like you und I, und she ist Quebec?"

That hadn't occured to Matt. He gasped, eyes wide. Quebec had kept wanting to become independent...what if they had become so free-willed as to have created their own representative?