It was dark, so very dark, and then light. Not light where he was, that yet eluded him, but a blaring spotlight in the center of the circular room. A cold, sterile, cruel light.
His arms and legs were bound to an icy iron board bolted against the wall, there were others around him restrained as well, but their identities remained a mystery. Despite most of the people in the room being restrained, two of them remained upright, standing in the merciless light. Both were tall, strong, could even be considered handsome if their hands weren't soaked in blood. The two superpowers, for that was all he remembered of their names, smirked to themselves, as if they secretly enjoyed their present situation. The blonde shifted his weight, "I guess that this is what it comes to in the end, eh, Russia."
"Eh, I suppose so comrade," said the taller purple eyed man "the two of us, former enemies, being the last ones standing." With that they both drew their guns and aimed at targets that lay in the dark, the taller one, the one called Russia, pointed his gun at him. He tried to scream, he wasn't the enemy, but found that his voice was gone, as if someone has ripped out his voice box, or the greedy air was devouring his every word. As the gun went off he found his vision fading out, and then, nothing.
Lithuania found himself serving a strange man pancakes. In a strange kitchen, wearing an apron that he had never seen in his life. "Hey, Tori," Toris looked around, the man must be talking to him, there was no one else in the room "would you get me another cup o'Joe?" Toris warily complied, his hand automatically reaching for the coffee pot as though it was running on a program. "Thanks sweet'ums" The strange man, the name Charlie popped into Toris' head, said as he inhaled the scent of his coffee like a drug. Toris gave the man a dirty look, Charlie stared back with a mixture of compassion and pity. "I know it's been hard for you lately sweet'ums, with the move from Arizona and all, but you'll get used to it here soon. Heck, maybe you'll even like it here." Lithuania kept quiet, if his time with Russia had taught him one thing, it was to play along with every situation, even if you didn't know what was going on. Charlie glanced up at the clock and let out an exasperated sigh, "Well, Tori, I'd better get down to the station. Have a good first day of school, kay?" The door slammed shut loudly and Lithuania sat alone in the foreign house. Where the heck was he?
Just a second ago he'd been held hostage in the circular room, he assumed by the two former superpowers since they were the only ones who were free, and was about to be shot down by his former occupier, so how did he get here? He spent the next thirty minutes scouring the house, which was surprisingly small for an American home, for any clues of how he'd gotten there, but all he found were framed pictures of him as a small boy and Charlie that rested on the mantle collecting dust. As if they had always been there. But yet Toris knew that this wasn't so.
His feet lurched forward, pulling him towards the door as if on their own accord, forcing him outside, and dragged him into a beat up old pickup (which really wasn't to Toris' taste, but he figured that he didn't have much of a choice in the matter). Images flashed in his head, an old high, official looking high school, outdoor hallways; Lithuania struggled to keep the titanic truck in the country road sized lane, driving had never been his forte; more images kept pouring in classrooms with old, small windows that touched the ceiling, a cafeteria that fed a population so small that its tables could be circular, oh no. Charlie had mentioned something about the first day of school, now the nation could only pray that it wasn't his destination. However, he soon discovered, there were more important things to worry about. His heart leapt into his throat, the highway. Oh, god. He could manage driving on normal roads, but driving on an American highway. Whatever, or whoever was compelling him to do this was out of their mind.
He mentally ordered his foot to slam on the brake as hard as it could, however, apparently now having a will of its own, it disobeyed. Toris helplessly put his life into his controller's hands as they directed him to his divinely chosen destination. It was strange, being controlled physically by someone else. He'd been mentally controlled plenty of times, mainly by Russia. Told what to think, what to do, who to talk to, and if he did talk, what to say. This had defined his life for centuries, but for the last two decades or so he'd been free. Free to make his own decisions, his own mistakes, to be the king of his own life, and he liked it. But no, this new control was an entirely different monster. In confined his limbs and used then as tools to their controller's own use, it felt oddly like being strapped to the metal board in the blood soaked room.
Before he could do any serious pondering of how he got to this strange place, a distraction arose once again. The nation's hand reached out and shifted the truck into park and yanked out the old, rusty keys. The car engine's constant murmur fizzled out and he was left sitting in the parking lot of a high school. The force that had been controlling him the entire finally released its iron grip. Lithuania cried out, it felt like someone was slowly removing a needle that had been deep in his body, pulling it out as lethargically as they possibly could, as if they intentionally wanted to cause him pain. He lay in the seat panting, of all the strange things that had happened that day, this had to be the icing on the cake, nothing could top this. He lay there for a couple of minutes, trying to recover from the strangeness, and somewhat wishing that he was back in that room being shot down by Russia instead of contemplating going to high school or running for his life.
He manually clicked open the fifty year old car door, no he was going to do this. He couldn't chicken out now. He had to stand tall. He had promised himself, and the others, that much. Even since he had gained independence he had tried to make a name for himself, to see his self worth, and most of all, to face adversary with determination and not the fear that had plagued his waking nightmare for most of his life. No, he had to do this, there was no other option.
The old high school campus was a maze to say the least. Buildings added on in random places whenever the school grew, with no rhyme or method to their madness. It took him a good thirty minutes to find the front office. Toris wandered up to the middle aged women at the desk. "Um, excuse me." He said warily. The women looked up from her work and gave him a funny look, almost like a mixture of curiosity and disgust. "I'm new here and came to pick up my schedule." The women gave him an expectant look. "Oh! My name's Toris Lorinaitis." The women raised an eyebrow, clicking the keys of her keyboard rapidly. As his schedule printed he swore that her heard her say "Damn foreign exchange students, kept getting weirder every semester."What was so strange about him? He wondered as he took his schedule and left the office. He was fairly sure that he didn't have much of an accent, and if he did, well, things would be a lot more complicated.
The first class listed on his schedule was English III. So that means I'm a Junior. He pondered to himself bitterly. People always thought that he didn't look like a young man of nineteen, but saying he was sixteen was a bit of a stretch. His English class was already half full, and most of them, in Lithuania's opinion, looked kind of dim. He smiled to himself, maybe being stuck here wasn't so bad after all, maybe he was just dreaming and all this strangeness was a figment of his overactive imagination. And then he saw Alfred F. Jones.