(Note: This is a remake of a fanfiction I wrote on an alternate account ages ago titled Genderswapped Nations. It was very poorly written, and this one has virtually nothing to do with it, although you may read it if you'd like. I decided to revamp it in this 'rebootmix', as I'm calling it, because I feel like my somewhat clichéd idea from the past shouldn't go to waste. I hope you enjoy the story regardless of its atrocious past. :3)
"I can't believe you figured this out~!"
"I'm burning with anticipation…!"
"Well, come on, then, what are we waiting for?"
Two girls are looking over a third girl's shoulders at a piece of paper, which has a lot of complicated schematics and illustrations drawn all over it. The girl in the center, who looks tired, has a small smile but a serious look to her eyes. After a few seconds, she cracks her knuckles, and her small smile becomes a challenging smirk. "Let's see how well I can draw them out."
A young girl is sitting in her house, staring out of the window as she listens to music on an MP3 player. She's all alone in this house, her parents having been nowhere to be found for about a week now. The worst part about this, though, is that she has forgotten what they even look like in that short time. In fact, all of her childhood memories seem to have disappeared entirely for no reason that she could explain. She's growing a little tired as she watches the soft orange sun fade into the horizon, her pale green eyes growing drearier by the second. Her glasses are sitting comfortably on the end of her nose, having slid off as she became comfortable, and her two pale blond pigtails lay limply beside her. She lives in such a peaceful little town in rural England that the light from the dying sun is able to glow brighter than it would be able to in any larger cities.
Her eyelids begin to flit shut, but each time she finds herself with closed eyes, she flinches to keep herself awake. She needs to fall asleep in her actual bed, not at her windowsill. Eventually, she gets sick of drifting off only to immediately wake herself, so she stands up, putting her MP3 player in her pocket as she lazily leaves her quiet living room to head for her bedroom.
When she opens the door to enter the hallway, however, she is immediately snatched by someone—something—that is incredibly strong. It has its arms wrapped around her arms and her upper body, restraining her from moving too much. Eventually, her assailant lifts her a few centimeters from the ground. "Hey! What the hell do you think you're doing?!" she questions furiously, flailing around. It's too dark too see who has grabbed her, but she hopes that this is just a joke or something of the sort. Before she can stop it, a pillow case is forced over her head, muffling her screaming and cursing. While still being held, she can feel the presence of at least two people other than the one grabbing her. While her arms are still bound to her side by her assailant's arms, she can feel something wet—a rag drenched in some liquid- being pressed both against the pillow case and against her nose and mouth. She can almost suspect what her assailants might be doing, so she holds her breath for as long as she can to avoid taking in whatever chemical might be on the rag they're pressing against the pillow case. Eventually, though, she can't help herself anymore, and she inhales an alarming amount of the chemical on the rag, causing her mind to fade away with alarming swiftness…
…
Eventually, the young woman finds herself able to open her eyes. Her vision is cloudy and unfocused, and her eyelids are still half-closed, but she can make out a large steel table in front of her with a chair on the opposite end of the table that seems to have someone sitting in it that she can't quite make out, as the lighting in the room is mediocre at best, with the only source of light being a light bulb that hangs haphazardly from the ceiling with only one thick power cord keeping it from falling and smashing itself against the table below. Feeling for her body, she realizes that her arms and legs are bound to the chair with a very scathing rope that bites at her wrists and ankles. "What…the hell…" she manages to say, her mind still blurry.
"Oh, you're awake." The voice coming from across the table is noticeably feminine, and it sounds happy. "Well, then, I guess we can begin the test."
"What test…? Where am I?!" she questions, a scowl beginning to form on her face.
"I think I should begin with the first question," the voice says, ignoring the young woman entirely. Of course, the young woman gets annoyed by this, but she doesn't say anything, instead choosing to sit there and silently fume. "What's your name?"
"Why does it matter to you?" she snaps in reply.
"It's just a question, and since I have you tied up in a chair, you should probably answer it," the voice says, before repeating, "What is your name?"
The girl sighs, glaring at a wall. "Alice. Alice Kirkland."
"See, now that wasn't so bad, was it?" The sounds of a pen writing sound across the table, before the voice clears its throat and proceeds to ask the young woman—Alice-another question; "Alice, do you believe in magic?"
Alice hesitates. "…Yes."
There are a few more writing sounds. "I have one final question before you're dismissed," the person across from Alice says. "How old are you?"
Alice actually has to think about this one. She can't even remember how old she is, which is troubling. In fact, this revelation is probably more troubling than how she forgot everything about her parents. Before she can examine her memories and look for the numbers, words unconsciously come from her mouth; "Seventeen." But somehow, that doesn't sound like the truth. Alice has no idea what the truth is, if not that, but it doesn't feel right coming from her mouth, and she can't place why.
"Hm. Interesting." If smirking had a sound effect, it would be playing right now. Alice hears a snap of the fingers, and the door opens. Two men enter the room; one looks hardened and muscular like he has recently escaped from prison, and the other looks disheveled and dirty like a homeless man. The hardened man snaps the ropes binding Alice's body with a switchblade, and the dirty man grabs her up from underneath her armpits and picks her up from the chair, setting her on her feet. When all the ropes are cut, the dirty man then grabs her right arm, with the hardened man grabbing her left. She tries to shoot a glance back at the person who was questioning her to discover their appearance as she is lead out of the room, but the hardened man swings at her head with his fist before she can fully spiral around her head. She exclaims in pain, fighting against the tears trying to escape from her eyes as she looks forward again. Her eyesight is spinning, tinted white at the corners, and she swears as she feels the bruise blossom on her head. The hardened man says nothing, and neither does the dirty man.
They proceed to drag Alice down the hallway. The hallway is just as dark as the room she was just in, but it's a little less daunting somehow; maybe the carpet on the floor is to blame for this. Eventually, the pair of men stop in front of a door. The hardened man grabs both of Alice's hands as the dirty man unlocks the door and opens it, allowing for the hardened man to shove Alice inside, before quickly shutting and locking the door behind her. "Oh, hell…how did I get myself involved in a situation like this…?" Alice questions to herself, picking her face off of her floor and sitting up as she rubs the bruise on her forehead. Once she is sitting, however, she notices that she's not alone in the room.
Sitting in front of her are three other young women; One of them has curly brown hair in a ponytail and looks somehow happy despite everything, another has short black hair and a bit of a worried expression, and the third has very short blonde hair and piercing viridian eyes with a little bit of vulnerability hidden within them. Something about them seems very, very familiar, but Alice can't seem to place it before the one with curly brown hair greets with a somewhat thick Italian accent, "Hello! Who are you?"
Alice is taken aback by the question, as she didn't expect such cheerfulness in such a dark situation. "My name is Alice Kirkland…" she replies, a forced smile on her face so that she can match the brown-haired girl's. "…Who are all of you?"
"Well, my name is Felicity Vargas," the brown haired girl introduces, before pointing to the two other girls. "That worried girl over there is Sakura Honda, and the serious one is Louise! Why don't you both say hi to our new guest~?"
The girls introduced as Sakura and Louise exchange looks, before Sakura gives a shy little smile. "Hello, Alice. It's nice to meet you." Alice notices that Sakura has a Japanese accent, and the voice starts to click with something in her head, before falling apart.
Alice smiles a little more, before Louise begins to speak, as well. "Have we met before…?" she questions with a German accent, peering over Alice's face with a confused and somewhat suspicious look.
"It certainly feels that way, but I don't think we have…" Alice says in reply, inspecting Louise, as well. "…This entire situation is quite strange…Am I the only one who can't remember much of anything beyond maybe a week ago?"
The other three girls react with surprise. "No way! That's been happening to me, too!" Felicity says. "My parents left to go on vacation a week ago, and I can't remember anything past that!"
"That's also how it's been with me," Sakura says quietly. Louise nods in agreement, but she keeps the confused look on her face without saying anything. A few minutes of awkwardness and attempted conversations about what's going on pass, before the door opens again, allowing another girl to be thrown into the room. Alice sees that this girl is a little bit older than her, looking about nineteen, and Alice discovers that she's French after the new girl mutters a few curse words that are very unbefitting of her, considering how pretty she looks with her fancy-looking French knot, beautiful dark brown hair, and stunning violet eyes. However, despite all of the prettiness the new girl reflects, Alice can feel some scorn rising up inside of her for whatever reason. She can't exactly place why, as she's just met this woman, but once again, it feels like that's not the case, and they've met before. And judging by her current emotions, their theoretical first meeting must have been a rough one.
Eventually, Felicity cheerfully requests the new girl's name, and the new girl responds in a very evident French accent, "My name is Francine Bonnefoy. And hopefully one of you knows what's going on here." She raises one of her somewhat thick eyebrows inquisitively, and for some reason, this makes Alice a little bit more annoyed with the French girl. She tries to hide this, however, as they're all in the same boat and starting fights with people you could befriend and who could help you escape kidnappers would be a dumb idea.
"Oh! What a pretty name!" Felicity exclaims. "My name is Felicity! This is Sakura, this is Louise, and over in the corner there is Alice!" She gestures to everybody else in the room cheerfully, and Alice can see a little bit of an amused smile appear on Francine's face.
"You're just a little ball of sunshine, aren't you…?" she asks sweetly, going over to sit beside Felicity and placing a hand on her shoulder. Felicity laughs embarrassedly, as Sakura looks a little bit taken aback and Louise looks a little incredulous, as if she's quietly debating what she should do about this. Alice gets a little creeped out by this, but she decides not to do anything except look away and face a wall instead. Eventually, Francine notices this. "'Ello? Earth to pigtails? Why don't you come join the fun~?"
Alice flinches and she instinctively grabs her pigtails apprehensively with a blush. "I rather like it here in the corner…" she murmurs quietly, trying to hide the scorn she inexplicably wants to show.
"Oh, nonsense! At least come into the light so I can see you!" Alice is caught off-guard when Francine grabs the back of Alice's shirt and drags her out to sit beside her. Francine curls around to take a look at Alice's face, and Alice can see a small spark of recognition. "I'm very certain that I know you from somewhere…" Francine says, continuing to look over Alice's face with a confused expression.
"I don't believe we've met," Alice says, still blushing and hiding the annoyance from her tone. She adjusts her glasses slightly. "I somewhat recognize your face, but I can't place why…"
"Well, if you don't fully remember my face, then I'm sure that we've never met before." Francine begins to chortle a little bit, which makes Alice a little angrier somehow. Eventually it becomes hard to hide, so Alice develops a scowl. "Hm? Is there a problem?" Francine asks.
"You're miffing me a little bit…" Alice mutters. "It's bothering me how much you're miffing me because we've never met. Usually I wouldn't immediately scorn someone this much after so much as seeing them."
Francine gives Alice a curious look. "That's kind of funny," she says. "I'm feeling the same way about you, too."
Alice raises an eyebrow. "Are you really? How peculiar." She lets a bit of a glare onto her face. If the strange hate is requited, then there isn't much harm in letting it escape her, she reasons.
Francine scoffs and looks to Felicity instead. "Well, we'll just have to make the best of this situation…" she says, seeming to be suggesting something. Felicity smiles at the optimism, seeming not to catch on to the hidden meaning.
"Okay, I think we should just stop there…" Louise says warningly. However, before Francine can rebut this, the door opens again, and a sixth girl is thrown in. She gets tossed right onto Alice, who is immediately knocked onto the floor. While Alice's head is still spinning, she can hear the new girl begin to speak while absentmindedly sitting on top of her.
"Shit…! Those guys are just asking to get their asses kicked!" The very first thing that Alice notices is the girl's colorful language and her American accent. The second thing she notices is that she's not strong enough to get the American girl (whom she also vaguely recognizes) to get off of her.
"Excuse me, but you're killing me down here," Alice croaks. "If you would kindly get the hell off of me, that would be superb."
"Oh. Sorry." The American gets off of Alice, and offers her a hand so that she can properly sit up again. Alice is immediately given a strange look when she meets the American's pale blue eyes. "Okay, who are you? I swear I've seen you somewhere before."
"You and everybody else," Alice says with a bit of a frown, deciding that being herself would probably be a good idea because she was very mentally taxed after resisting the annoyance that came with Francine's presence. "My name is Alice Kirkland. What's yours?"
"I'm Allison!" The beaming smile on the young woman's face is astounding, heartwarming, and underlying annoying—all at the same time. As her face perks, her shoulder-length golden brown hair seems to copy it, seeming to become spontaneously brighter. "Allison Jones!" For some reason, though, the name sets off alarms in her head not for sounding familiar but for not seeming to fit. It feels like she should be addressed by a different alias, but as Alice doesn't know this alias, she'd just have to stick with calling the American Allison for now.
"Charmed, then," Alice says flatly. Allison laughs a little bit and tugs on one of Alice's pigtails, which makes Alice flinch and retreat to the corner again. Francine looks slightly disappointed by this, but she maintains a smile. Allison, on the other hand, keeps laughing. Alice glares at both of them, hugging her legs and resisting the urge to begin shouting. "Both of you had better leave me alone…" she says in a somewhat growly way.
"Well, I suppose our kidnappers are going to keep sending people in here for a while," Sakura says, obviously trying to make everybody stop getting riled up as she's sensing the mood and anticipating a heated battle. "We should all wait for more people show up. I nominate Felicity to be the head of the welcoming committee, but everyone should at least try to be nice."
And, indeed, more girls were thrown into the room for the next three hours or so; three more, to be precise. The very next one who was thrown into the room addressed herself as Chun-Yan Wang, a Chinese girl with auburn hair brought up into two buns who seemed like a complicated person, as she didn't answer a lot of questions very straightforwardly. After her came a Canadian girl named Mattie Williams, but after Francine pushed her a little bit, she corrected herself and said that Mattie was short for Mathilde, which Francine seemed to like. She had two curly blonde pigtails and a pair of glasses, which Francine began to bother Alice about, claiming that Mattie looked better with glasses and pigtails than she did, which made Alice begin to shout and forced Louise to have to force them away from each other. Mattie didn't say much, and she prompted to silently sit in the other unoccupied back corner of the room with a shy little grin. Finally, a girl named Anya Braginsky was introduced, who was Russian and had long blonde hair and light purple eyes. According to Felicity, she gave off a bad aura, so nobody decided to attempt to speak to her despite the warm-looking smile on her face. Alice keeps getting closer and closer to recognizing them, but it feels like there's a piece missing.
A few minutes after Anya arrived, the door is opened to reveal a group of five or six men. One of them snaps for the girls to stand and walk out into the hallway, and as they have no other choice, the girls all obey. They're flanked on all sides by the men, who are all reasonably larger than them. A few of the girls, such as Allison and Louise, look like they want to take action, but they're restricting themselves because they can feel that they'd lose and only end up getting hurt. They're all escorted further down the hallway they were dragged down much earlier, and eventually they're herded into a large auditorium-like room. They're forcefully seated into some folding chairs on the ground below the stage, and the five men who had escorted them there began tying their wrists together to keep them from moving. The auditorium is well-lit at first, but after all of the girls are restrained and surrounded by guards, the lights dim, only for spotlights to shine on the closed curtains, which open a few seconds later.
Standing on the stage were three girls. The first of them, a woman looking to be only a little bit older than Alice, had an olive complexion and platinum blonde hair, but her dark brown roots were showing underneath. She wore a dark gray tank top with teal lace and darker teal skinny jeans. "Hello!" She greeted cheerfully. "I see that Lynn's attempts worked!" Alice recognizes that this woman is the one who was interrogating her earlier, and she starts to get a little annoyed that she'd been punched for trying to peek at a woman who would later proudly show herself off on a stage for the world to see.
The young women sitting at the foot of the stage exchange glances, before Allison decides to speak up. "What the hell are you talking about?"
"We'll explain that later. First, I think we should introduce ourselves. I'm Michaela," the platinum-haired woman introduces with a smile, before gesturing to the woman beside her who looks to be about the same age. She sports short warm black hair with rounded glasses, a sweater that looks to be too large-fitting, and a black miniskirt. "This is Lynn," Michaela says, and then finally gesturing to the woman on the end of the line they've formed. She has long pink hair (which is a noticeably better dye job than Michaela's) with aqua blue eyes, a red tank top, and blue jeans. "And this is Luca. It's nice to meet you all."
"Who are you all?" Louise questions.
"We're just fans," Lynn says with a smile.
"Fans of what, exactly?" Alice says.
"Fans of you, of course~!" Michaela chimes happily. "That's why we brought you all here! We're so honored to have you here with us!"
"What's so special about us?" Allison asks; Alice can tell that she's anticipating an interesting answer as the girls on the stage who introduced themselves as Michaela and Lynn smile and laugh. After they calm down, Lynn decides to begin speaking. "Well, there are personified versions of the various countries around the world. Most of them are male. But I discovered with the powers I possess that there's another world—or dimension, rather—where the males are all female instead. Those female versions of the personified countries are all of you. I brought you all—and a few others who we haven't found yet-here from your dimension to ours with my powers because we very much wanted to meet the personified countries, but the ones in this dimension would be too hard to find."
The young women all start muttering to one another confusedly, not really understanding what they mean. Alice can feel herself starting to remember something, but she can't place what. "You wouldn't understand, as all of you are pretty out of it from the trip," Michaela says. "From what we can gather, you're all not only unable to remember that you're nations, but you've also transformed into humans, thus why you're addressing yourselves with human names rather than with your nation names."
"And younger humans than you're meant to be, at that. Your age differences are ranging from four years to an astonishing seven years," Lynn explains. "And from the conversations we heard in the cell you all were locked in, you have artificial memories of families and you don't fully recognize one another. You all should come to with the proper prompting, though. Your nation mindsets should be triggered by various things, which we will test on you shortly. For now, you're going to be escorted to some bedrooms. We'll come to you one-by-one and try to bring you back to normal."
"As normal as we can get you, that is. We can't turn you back into nations or give you back the ages you lost when we brought you here, but we can get your minds in the right places, at the very least," Michaela says, before clapping her hands. "Guards! Escort them to their bedrooms, please~!"
The guards all proceed to untie the young women's hands, before surrounding them again and leading them to a door on the opposite side of the auditorium. The girls all scaled a very narrow staircase, and once they got to the top, they saw a large and reasonably extravagant living room-like area with five sofas and a table in the center. The girls didn't get any time to marvel at the splendor, however, as they were all led to nine separate doors in the room and shoved in by the guards, who locked the doors behind them before they left. Alice found herself left in a fairly small bedroom with white walls and teal-colored carpet with a black twin-sized bed in the corner. Across from the bed was a white wardrobe, and beside it sat a nightstand with a lamp atop of it.
Alice sat on the foot of the bed, and she sighed, resting her head on her hand. She feels so, so close to remembering something, but she can't place what. She knows that she should be thinking that whatever those three insane women were spouting on that stage should be nonsensical gibberish to her, but something is telling her that it holds some meaning somewhere. But how? There's no way that countries could be people, there's no way that her scanty memories of living in that small town in England are imaginary, there's no way that someone could de-age, there's no way that there's an alternate reality, and there's no way that Alice could be from there. It's ridiculous, silly; stupid, even. Yet Alice can't forget how familiar the other girls she'd met today are, and there's no mistaking the recognition as anything else. The three women had mentioned that they don't recognize one another, so that must mean that, according to their logic, they used to know each other, but the fake dimension travelling they were going on about made them forget everything and become different people from the people they were before. And since Alice can't remember a lot about her parents, it might be plausible to say that they never existed to begin with. As far as Alice can reason, a few of the women's points are somewhat accurate, but the others are idiotic and don't make any sense. But they did say that they'd try to 'put her mind in the right place', so perhaps their probably cryptic ways of trying to inspire alternate mindsets will fill in a few more blanks.
I'm sorry to end so abruptly, but as this is the first chapter, I didn't want to have it be any longer. This entire fic is, like my other fanfictions, written all at one time on one Word document, so I had to cut it down to make the first chapter. It was originally meant to be around 5,000 or 6,000 words, but I was told that it would be too intimidating that way, so I cut it down to 4,500ish words. Anyway, I promise the next chapter will be more climactic, if this one wasn't enough for you. So, I hope you'll join me next time! Be sure to follow this story and follow my account, as I have a splendid Pokémon fanfiction that you can read, as well, if you also happen to be a member of that fandom. Until then, see you~!