As police officer Vash Zwingli exited the hospital room, he was surprised to find a large the number of people in the waiting room down the hall.
He paused in the doorway, "How many of you are here for Mr. Kirkland?"
Most of the room stood. A teenage pair of twin boys sitting in the corner wrestled an absurd amount of balloons into submission. A leggy Frenchman with shoulder-length hair had been pacing in front of the door, and he immediately confronted the policeman.
"Excusez-moi, Officer! Is he alright? What happened?"
Vash crossed his arms, "He's stable. Listen, everyone!" He paused for a moment, "We are opening an investigation into this incident. If any of you have any information you think is relevant, contact us immediately. We will be in touch if we need to speak with any of you, but unfortunately none of you will be allowed to leave the country until you can be eliminated from the suspect list."
"Suspects?" One of the twins buried his flustered brother in the swarm of balloons and stood on a chair to see the police officer over the sea of murmuring people, "Hold this, Mattie. Wait, wait, are you saying he was poisoned? Like someone tried to-"
"I'm not at liberty to discuss that," Vash interrupted.
"Poisoned?" The Frenchman went pale and put a hand on his own forehead.
A cute girl with her short blonde hair pulled back into a green hairband patted her distraught friend's arm, "When can we see him? Is he awake?"
"I'm sorry, only family is allowed in for the moment."
"That's us! Come on!" The enthusiastic twin leapt from the chair and shoved his way to the front, his brother scampering after him and apologizing from behind the balloons.
"Are you Alfred and Matthew?" Vash asked, looking them over. He supposed there was a certain kind of family resemblance, but they were not at all what he pictured when Arthur had told him he had younger brothers.
"Yes," the boys chorused.
Vash nodded to let them know they could go. The twins exchanged a look, and Alfred smiled broadly.
"Francis, could you help me with these? Please?" Matthew asked politely.
The Frenchman raised his eyebrows in surprise.
"Matthew, I'm sure Mr. Bonnefoy is very tired after such a long day," The blonde girl replied, tugging on Francis' arm and sounding slightly annoyed. "We need to prepare for the challenge tomorrow and get some sleep, something to eat, and-"
"Oh, It's fine, Bela," Francis interrupted, pulling away, "I don't mind as long as the good Officer here doesn't. We'll only be gone a minute."
Vash sighed and paused before nodding again, half-heartedly, "Come right back. I'll give you five minutes."
Francis grabbed an armful of balloons and set off down the hallway with the boys, another officer showing them the way. When the officer pushed the door open to the room, the dim lighting and silence was only interrupted by the steady beeps of the EKG. The trio entered the room, focused on the prone figure in the hospital bed.
Matthew spoke what they had all been thinking, "I hope he's okay."
"Of course he's okay!" Alfred said, a little too loudly. "Artie's always okay."
{~*~*~*}
Six Weeks Earlier:
Arthur adjusted his headset and glanced over his clipboard again. This was the biggest baking competition of the year, and everything had to be perfect. Ushers were showing the audience to their seats as the lighting and sound were checked and re-checked. The teams were getting ready, setting up in the cooking stations that had been neatly lined up across the stage. Arthur paged the host, Antonio Carriedo, to the stage area, over his headset.
"Ten minutes to curtain!" He called to the contestants.
Most of them looked up and nodded in acknowledgement, but one team made no sign that they had even heard him. Arthur sighed and headed in their direction. The Vargas brothers were having a rapid, spirited discussion in Italian, their supplies arranged into messy piles or left in the boxes they had arrived in.
"Team-" Arthur squinted at his list, "…Cannoli? Ten-minutes to curtain."
The spatula the older Vargas, Lovino, had been wildly gesturing with slipped from his grasp and whizzed narrowly by Arthur's shoulder with a surprising amount of energy and landed at the foot of a camera stand. The brothers froze, Lovino's face blossoming red.
"Team Cannoli?" He boomed, whirling back to his brother, "Feliciano, the fuck kinda name is that?!"
"Only ten minutes, Lovino!" He replied nervously, changing the subject. "Thank you manager guy!"
Arthur rolled his eyes and decided to make a lap down the line, just to make sure everything else was in order. A few stations down, Chief Toris Lorinaitis seemed to be on the receiving end of a particularly icy silent treatment from his assistant. But everything else seemed to be running smoothly, or as smoothly as things could go in this business.
Arthur almost let himself breathe a sigh of relief when he reached the last station and found it completely vacant.
Oh no. "Where's team Crème Brule?" He asked, pressing a hand to his headset.
From the other side he heard the question repeated, and the sound of people scrambling around backstage.
After a moment a voice answered: "Here!"
Arthur sighed loudly, an intern must have found them, "Where is here?!"
"The, uh, first floor men's room," the voice stuttered back. "Chef Bonnefoy won't come out!"
"Be right there," Arthur nearly ran across the studio and bolted through the doors.
"Hi, Arthur!" His friend, Bela Maes, chirped, smiling. She waved him over to the bathroom door, standing next to a very distressed looking intern.
"Hi, Bela," Arthur replied, "Ten- minutes until curtain."
"You got it," she winked.
Arthur felt his cheeks threaten to go pink, "Where's your chef?" He asked as an excuse to look away.
Bela laughed, it was too easy to fluster Arthur. "He had to do his hair," she replied, gesturing.
Another vain chief, big surprise, Arthur thought. "Let's hope for your sake he's as meticulous about his food as he is about his hair," he hammered on the door. "Chef Bonnefoy! Are you in there? Ten minutes-" Arthur checked his watch. "Six minutes to curtain!"
There was no response.
"Francis, we have to go out!" Bela called.
"Just one more minute, s'il vous plaît," was the muffled reply.
Bela shook her head, smiling in exasperation, "I've been working with Chef Bonnefoy for three years, and he does this before every television appearance. I think it's stage fright, honestly. Would we be able to postpone for fifteen minutes? Is that possible?"
"Possible?" The image of his disapproving boss's face popped into his head. Arthur shoved his clipboard into the intern's hands and rolled up his sleeves, "Like HELL it is!"
Arthur burst through the door, "Chef! You're needed onstage immediately!"
The surprised blonde jumped and looked Arthur over for a moment, but looked back at the mirror, "No, no, désolé, I am not ready! Look at me!"
"You look fine!" Arthur snapped, "Look, I don't know who the hell you're used to working with here, but I'm not going to bend backwards to accommodate one chef!" He lowered his voice, "Not get your ass out there, or I'll have you disqualified."
Francis' eyebrows shot upwards and he looked back at him, "Do you have any idea who I am? I am the world-class award-winning-"
"Yeah, so you're good with food!" Arthur threw up his arms impatiently, "So is everyone else out there on that stupid stage! I don't have time for this! Are you coming or not?"
Francis paused, as if actually thinking it over.
"Um, Arthur," A voice crackled over his headset, "We start in two minutes."
"Oh, for fuck sake," Arthur muttered.
Bela and the intern waited patiently outside. The sounds of a struggle came from behind the door, and lots of swearing in several languages.
Bela looked at the intern, "Is this your first competition? It's a lot of fun, huh? I love it."
The two men tumbled out of the door and continued to fight all the way back to the stage. The countdown to going live started in Arthur's ear, and he managed to shove Francis into his station around the count of '7'. The Chef irately tugged his shirt back in place and made comments to Bela under his breath in French as she cheerfully took her spot.
Antonio smiled brightly at the camera and Arthur took up his spot near the edge of the stage around count of '4'. Arthur didn't bother to fix his disheveled look, he pretended as if nothing had happened as the intern gave him his clipboard back. He thanked him for holding onto it.
2…1… "Welcome to the fourth annual world baking competition!" Antonio beamed. The crowd applauded. "Let's meet our competitors!"
"Your brothers are here," Eduard von Bock from the sound room said over the headset.
Arthur looked back up at the room in the back of the studio and saw him gesture to the twins, who waved excitedly. Arthur waved back.
"So, the rules are simple!" Antonio explained, "Once a week, for the next six weeks, our chefs will compete to fulfill two challenges. The team will the lowest scores will be eliminated! Of course, things can't be that simple, no? We must keep things interesting and challenging! The team with the highest score will have to choose a tool or ingredient that will be banned from the next week's competition. This week's challenge is: soufflé! You have one hour. Good luck everyone!"
Arthur swore that he saw Antonio wink at the Vargas brothers and he smacked himself in the face with his clipboard. Why must that man flirt with the competitors?
Alfred and Matthew sat down in a front- corner seat. Matthew took out his homework and spread it across his lap to work on, but Alfred just watched the competition.
"Arthur, psst, Artie!" Alfred took one of Matthew's erasers and pelted Arthur in the back with it.
"What?!" Arthur threw it back at him and missed.
"I'm bored."
"Do you homework! It's only an hour long! Look, Matthew's doing his."
"I told you," Matthew said.
"But I'm hungry," Alfred wined, "I did all my homework during study hall."
"You spent study hall throwing little bits of paper at the study monitor," Matthew corrected.
"Shut up!"
"You shut up!"
"Boys, please!" Arthur rubbed his temple, "We'll go get take out after, okay? Just hold it together until after the show."
What else could go wrong? Arthur thought, when flames suddenly erupted from one of the station stoves. He threw his clipboard down and grabbed a fire extinguisher. He shouldn't have asked.
Hello! Sorry for the slow start, it's a bit rough, but hopefully I'll be able to explain things a little bit better in the next chapter. Just for future reference, the teams competing are:
1) Austria and Germany
2) North Italy and South Italy
3) China and Taiwan
4) France and Belgium
5) Russia and Ukraine
6) Lithuania and Belarus
7) Finland and Sweden
Also, Bela is Belgium and Eduard is Estonia. Who do you think will be voted off first? Let me know!