Hello. I'm here to bring you a hopefully somewhat different fan fiction! Before we begin, there are a few things that I need to say. The first is that, obviously, I don't own Hetalia. The second is that this was heavily inspired by various Hetalia fan games, and therefore may be similar in style. Hopefully I move away from that eventually. Third, this has not been beta'd. If a mysterious friend appears to do so, I wouldn't mind, but unless you all beg for it I don't really care either way. Finally, I am very welcoming of any reviews, so long as said reviews are not simply flames. Constructive criticism is, however, appreciated. I hope you enjoy this! -#YOPO

The story goes like this.

Once upon a time, in an ancient kingdom known as China, there lived a young boy with dark brown hair, almost black. He had dark eyes and a certain childish air around him that many in his time did not posses. These were dark times, and not many people were given time to be childish anymore. However, like all people, this boy had a great fear. In order to remove his fear from existence, he went on a quest to find a dragon.

The dragon lived on the top of a mountain, and was moved by the boy's hard work and desperate quest. "Very well," said the dragon, "I will grant the wish, whatever it may be." As the young boy looked up at the gold smoke arising around the creature, he said this:

"Please! Immortal one! I am young, but everyone around me is dying. I am afraid! Please, Immortal one! Make it so that I, like you, may never die!" He shivered as a cold breeze crossed his own and the dragon's hands, a breeze binding the wish. Still, the dragon tried to warn the boy.

"I will grant the wish, but I must warn you. Once the wish takes hold of you, you will never be able to go back. You will never again be the human you once were." However, the boy was not to be dissuaded from his path. He begged the dragon again and again, each time the dragon repeating the words. Each time, the chill around their hands grew deeper and deeper until it refused to lift, and the dragon knew it was too late. The vow could never be undone. He lifted his massive paw, his long, worming body twisting as he reared his full height into the air, before falling down again to wrap around the boy. Soon, the dragon's nose was nearly touching the boy's nose.

"Very well," he said, "I have given you all the chances you have to undo your wish. Now I must grant it." The chill grew to unbearable levels, wrapping the boy, and suddenly the boy felt a spirit light up inside of him. This spirit hurt with the pain of the entire kingdom and sang with the love of the entire kingdom. It built and built until the young boy, who's body and soul were not strong enough for such a thing, screamed out. He fell to the ground, in immense pain, as the feelings from year after year before he was born rushed into him, giving him the memories of not a human, but a nation. He knew what he had become, and he knew that he would live for a long, long time. However, it hurt, it hurt so much as memory after memory of pain entered his blood and pumped through his heart.

"What have you done?" he croaked. The dragon gave a pitied look, and a tear fell down his face, though he tried to hide it.

"I tried to warn you, brave child, but you would not listen." As the boy cried out, the dragon felt great sorrow for what he had done, for the boy was a kind soul who did not deserve such pain. His length spanned into his cave, eventually coming out with a black ring. On the ring was a single twist, creating a shape that seemed to continue for an infinity. He slowly and carefully carried the ring out to the boy.

"Here," he said, "take this. It is the World Ring, and will connect you to another world, where another boy is making the very same wish as you are. Through this, you, and all of his and your own kind, will share each other's pain." He slid the ring gently onto the boy's finger. As he did, the boy looked up with golden eyes, eyes that had suddenly gotten much, much wiser, and suddenly held pain that wasn't there before. The vestiges of that boys earlier childishness remained, but only barely.

"Okay," he whispered, before slowly walking away before a saddened dragon's eyes.

However, another dragon, this one more powerful than the first was watching. Despite being more powerful, however, he had fewer emotions, and the two dragons had never won a fight against the other, for heart and soul and dreams can be just as powerful as magic. He roared at the first dragon, and the two began to fight again.

"WHY WOULD YOU GIVE A CHILD SUCH A VALUABLE AND DANGEROUS RING! THEY SHOULD BOTH BE DESTROYED!" screamed the second dragon dragon.

"CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT HE IS IN PAIN? CAN YOU NOT SEE THAT HE IS A CHILD, NOT A STONE TO BE CRUSHED?" roared the first dragon in response.

In the end, neither dragon won, and a compromise had to be made. The child was to forget everything he had learned on that day, as well as his past self. He would continue to wear the ring, for the ring helped him to never remember a past that was too painful for him to bear, a past in which he had been happy, brave, and afraid of death. However, he would no longer know what it was truly doing, only that he should never take it off.

Thousands of years later, the boy has grown into a man, a man reaching the peak of his power. The world has created many of his kind, and his kind all found themselves sharing power, though they did not know it. However, each time a new nation-spirit was born, the boy could not help but feel guilty, though he would never remember what for.

And so it remained for a long time...

In a hotel room, a boy wakes up. Next to him, sleeping soundly on the nearby twin bed, is his half-brother, or something like that. The room is small. Their parents are most likely sleeping in the adjoining room. The boy smooths down his blonde hair and slowly sits up. He is wearing pajamas with anchors on them. Next to the bed is a hat. The Principality of Sealand sits in silence, partially because he doesn't want to wake Ladonia up, and partially because he is trying to remember his dreams from that night.

What exactly had they been, anyway? He remembered a ring, and some voice, but he couldn't remember or recognize much else. The ring though... that had sure been something nicer than he had ever owned, not that he didn't own nice things. Sealand sighed. Then again, most of his nice things technically belonged to his parents... Being an unrecognized state didn't give him access to much money.

He glanced at the clock on the wall. He still had half an hour before he was to be woken up, but he wasn't going to be able to fall back into sleep, was he? He got out of bed completely, wandering over to the closet to change clothes. His parents had probably woken up hours ago, so they wouldn't mind him waking up a little early. It was exciting; they were going to a World Meeting, and Peter was going to sneak in! Again! This time, he could feel it. He would learn of an important problem that only he could fix, and the world would be grateful, and everything would be wonderful! Maybe that was a bit optimistic, but he had to be at least a little optimistic at all times. Otherwise he would have given up long ago. It wasn't easy, after all, to be constantly told (even by his own parents!) that he wasn't a nation, but Sealand knew better!

Putting on the hat, he skipped out of the room to his parent's adjoining room, where breakfast should be waiting. To his surprise, however, he found a note on the table, and no parents. Odd. Deciding the note would most likely explain things, he pulled the not off the table.

Hello Sealand! Hello Ladonia!
We got called in early for some kind of emergency meeting. Sorry that we weren't here when you woke up!
-Mom and Dad

"The meeting... started early?" he murmured, before it hit him. The meeting had already started! He had to wake up Ladonia! "LADONIA! THE MEETING'S ALREADY STARTED! COME ON, COME ON, COME ON!" he shouted. After a few moments, a groggy but dressed Ladonia wandered into the room.

"Why do you get to be in charge, idiot?" said Ladonia. "We can miss the first part! After all, I should be in charge here, and I'm too tired for that right now." Sealand impatiently tapped his foot.

"But I have a feeling about this meeting! This one's going to be the one!" Sealand said it, and he truly meant it. He had some intuition that he needed to get going to the meeting right now.

"Shut up," said Ladonia, "and let me eat."

"We can eat afterwords! COME ON, LAD!"

"MY NAME'S LADONIA!"

"AND MINE'S SEALAND! WHATEVER! WE NEED TO GO NOW!" However, as opposed to actually helping, Ladonia stubbornly sat down to eat.

"Fine," muttered Sealand, "but let's eat quickly, okay?"

"Yeah yeah," muttered Ladonia. Sealand had a feeling they wouldn't be leaving anytime soon.

Meanwhile, the meeting had started. The emergency had turned out to be a fluke, and everyone was rather angry. No one knew who had made the official call, since it was an automated message in their chosen language, but most of them assumed it was America. He forcefully denied it, and it was a little bit difficult not to believe him. He wasn't one who liked to be awoken terribly early, after all. Still, who else would be so rash? They would have blamed one of the Italys, but the two were still asleep. In the end, they just assumed America was trying to dodge the blame.

He wasn't the one who called the meeting.

The one who did couldn't remember why, but he had an utter feeling of dread. Something was missing. Something important. Therefore, he had pressed the button, only to realize he didn't know what to say. All he knew was that it was buried deep in his hidden past, a past that, try as he might he never could remember. But how was he supposed to explain that?

As Ladonia finally finished his breakfast, Sealand was already impatiently tapping his foot. Something was telling him that they had missed something important, or at the very least were about to. "Finally!" he practically shouted as his somewhat-brother micronation stood up from the table. "We have to get going! Now!"

"Yeah yeah," muttered Ladonia, "We probably just missed them arguing over the emergency meeting call."

"That still doesn't matter! We have to get going!" snapped Sealand, and with that he dragged Ladonia out of the bedroom and into the hallway. It was lined with a red and gold carpet, and led down the rooms until they reached the elevator. Each room had a name assigned to it in English, though the meeting was being held in China at the time. America... Italy... Germany... Romano... Spain... ran the names as Sealand pulled Ladonia down the hall. One thing stopped him for a moment: China's name had been knocked off the wall somehow, as though someone who was tired and not thinking straight had slammed the door, or at least into the side of it. Sealand was slightly unsettled by this. China's room was near the Button.

And what was the Button? The Button was one of America's only sane ideas. From what Sealand could tell, it was a button that allowed a nation who found themselves in distress or who had just had some sort of national emergency to call the assembly of nations together before it was normally time. This only worked if all of the nations were already congregated; they had phone hot lines for if it happened while they were away from each other. Sealand then remembered something: hadn't the meeting started early due to an emergency? Maybe the button had been pressed. He hoped everyone was alright...

By now, Ladonia had gone on ahead, muttering to himself that "you were the stupid idiot who wanted to get going early," and other such nonsense. Peter shrugged, then started to walk, only to notice a trail of what looked like water- no, not water, black ice. But what was it doing in a hotel? Curiosity got the better of him, and he followed it down the hotel hallway, leaving Ladonia behind. Wait. No, shouldn't he be going to the meeting? However, and odd bravery overtook him, and he started using arguments against himself that sounded flimsy, especially considering their similarity to Lad's arguments, but... it certainly couldn't hurt, right? He'd then get China to tell the hotel about the ice so that nobody fell. Nodding to himself, reassuring himself that it was a good plan, Sealand followed the path to a small fountain situated in the lobby of the hotel, or at least, he was fairly certain it was the lobby. He hadn't been paying attention when they had arrived the previous night. In any case, the receptionist seemed to be out. Glancing in the fountain, he found a perfect sphere of black ice.

"What... What is this?" he murmured, before carefully lifting the cube out of the water. The ice melted in his palms, much faster than he would have suspected it would. One glimpse at what was inside made him gasp. It was... the ring from his dream? But how? How had it gotten there?

Maybe what he was about to do was stupid. Maybe it was rash. Maybe it was what anyone would do. Regardless, what he was about to do would change his life forever, as well as set a fate in motion that had no ending but bittersweet. He should have walked away. He couldn't, though.

The black ring with a single twist was slipped onto his finger.

All at once, all the sound and color in the world seemed to surround him until it all swirled into a black, reptilian shade. It seemed that for a moment, his eyes went out of focus, then black into it. Suddenly, the world flashed again, and it was all gone. It was nothingness, and such a feeling is what caused him to collapse.

When Ladonia was crossing the street to get to the meeting, it hit him: Sealand was nowhere to be found. He was in sooooo much trouble... He shouted out "SEALAND!" to no avail. He broke into a run, searching as hard as he could. Sealand had the route memorized, so he wasn't lost... Wait. The hotel. He had been left behind in the hotel, right? Maybe he was there. Yeah! That was it! Sealand had to be there! He rushed back to the hotel, only to hear a loud rushing noise. He reared back at a great light, then rushed inside, only to find...

...absolutely nothing.

No more than five minutes later, an impressive time for a ten-minute journey, a breathless Ladonia threw open the meeting doors. "SEALAND! SEALAND'S MISSING!" Finland and Sweden and, surprisingly, England all rushed towards him. No more than ten seconds later, China collapsed. Pandemonium erupted.

A third dragon smiled. This dragon was not painted in brilliant, bright colors like the others, but was instead the color of a black snake. His eyes, however, seemed to reflect the world in four ways at once, and were the most startling blue. The dragon smiled.

"Capture your destiny, my champion. The Children's Tragedy has begun. Do you think you can stop it in time?" He smiled, and it was a cruel and pointed smile, the smile of not a god, but of a beast.

Darkness. The dragon is gone.