Hey peeps! So guess what! This is my first Hetalia fic ever! And you're all here to witness it, you lucky ducks. I'll warn you, the characters might be out of character. After all, it took me over a year to get the Lord of the Flies boys right, who knows what it'll take for these people. But I hope you guys'll enjoy the story and my...unique character Eliza.
The halls of the Central Intelligence Agency's headquarters are more bustling than usual as I stride towards my office with Starbucks hot chocolate in my hand. Supposedly the director has scheduled an inspection for today, but seeing as they've said that three times just in the last month, I think it's safe to say that it's just a rumor. Still, a lot of the jumpier techies are anxious, including...
April. The second my phone buzzes in my pocket, I know it's my twin sister and a glance at the screen proves me right. I press 'accept call' and say, "What's up Ape-shit?" Normally, my sister would whine about my nickname for her, but she's obviously too worried to care.
"Ellie," she whines, using the nickname only she is allowed to call me, "I need your help."
"April, I have a job too now. I can't come to your aid everytime your shoelaces come untied. Have you considered velcrow?" I say sarcastically.
"But Ellie!" she pleads. I sigh.
"What do you need?" As I reply, I can just imagine her massive, pearly white grin, and grimace.
"I need to pee really bad but I'm worried something will happen while I'm gone and the director will fire me and no business will take me and I'll have to live in a box and-" she starts hyperventilating, a clear indicator of why she's a tech-monkey and not an agent.
"Breathe April! Use your words!" I say, rolling my eyes. She takes a deep, somewhat huffy breath.
"Can you pretend to be me for, like, five minutes pleeeeeeeeaaaase!" April begs.
"April, I"m busy, and we'll get caught!" I reason. I wince when I realize what a goody goody I sound like.
"It went fine last time!" She reminds me, referring to that fateful day when she had a nervous breakdown before her job interview here and I was sent instead. It went fine actually...until they fingerprinted me at the end. It looked bad for a while, but they did a little research on both of us, were fairly impressed, and offered us both jobs. Strange, I know, but the details that hold it together are classified.
"We got caught," I point out.
"But they gave us both jobs anyway," April reasons. I roll my eyes. Damn logic, why can't she see I just don't want to help her?! "Please Ellie!" she whines, once again using her nickname for me from when she still couldn't quite pronounce 'Eliza.' I sigh.
"I'll be there in a minute," I say. She squeals. "Yeah, yeah, I"m sister of the year. Love ya, I"ll be there in a bit." Skipping the elevator in favor of the stairs, I dash up two at a time to the top floor, the control center; a whole floor wasted on super computers and April. Meanwhile my office is little more than a broom closet with a desk. Seems legit.
"April! Where are you?" She emerges from between two computers and an iPod doc playing One Direction obnoxiously. Her rather stylish reading glasses rest crookedly on the bridge of her freckled nose, ink is smudged along her jawline, her short blonde hair is lifted by static, and her face is lit up with a childish grin. I set my jaw. Of all the people to be identical to, of course I got her. Don't get me wrong, I'd die for my sister, but sometimes I just don't know about that girl. She disentangles herself from cords and wires and runs up to hug me. "Really April?" I say, squirming under her grip. "You know I'm not a hugger."
"I know, but I'm so glad to see you!" she says excitedly.
"Apes, we've shared a room since birth, you saw me this morning!" I point out. "Whatever, are you going to piss or not?" She releases me and jumps.
"Right! I'll be right back!" Then she races out of the room. Laughing a little in spite of myself, I clear away her mess and sit down in front of the main computer. Scanning my eyes over the screen, they stop on the shortcut to the files, probably only there to give April easy access. Every one of my nation's secrets is now at my fingertips, and it's just too tempting. I move the cursor to the link, close my eyes, and click.
"Oops," I say absentmindedly. I look again and find that the files are encrypted. Good thing I know my sister, I think.
For each of the five consecutive required cods, I type Apriphobia, PJOislife, 42, Mulan, and HeilDeutschland. I roll my eyes at the last one. Someday somebody's going to accuse her of being a crazed German spy, or something along those lines.
An endless list of files appears on the screen before me. I go through all the obvious ones (Area 51, aliens, World War II military secrets, etc.) but one thing particularly catches my eye: UN1. What's that about? I click on it, and to my surprise, this is the only individual file that's encrypted. Using my meager hacking skills, I run through all the codes I know until a box appears that reads 'Access Granted. Press 'Open' to view file.' The patriot in me knows I don't need to know my country's every secret, but the rebel in me doesn't really care. Let's just say the rebel won this time around.
Yet another long list including photos of men and women in their twenties appears before me. Also included is background information on each one. I click on the first one, a handsome young man with messy blonde hair and thick eyebrows.
Names: United Kingdom, Great Britain, England
Human name: Arthur Kirkland
Confused by the name business, I skip ahead to the bio hoping to make sense of this whole thing. It's fairly generic, describing alliances and enemies of this Arthur guy, but then suddenly something really pops out at me.
Kirkland is the living personification of the nation of Britain.
I read on with more interest after this, and pieces slowly fall into place. Well, as much as the biography of a twenty year old who fought in the 100 Years War, the American Revolution, World War I, World War II, and many others can. Whoever this Arthur guy is, he's slightly more than human. And if he really is a country, he really needs to work on his relationship issues.
I speed through all the others, knowing that April will be back any second, and it all seems like variations of the first. Francis Bonnefoy, personification of France; Gilbert Beilshmidt, personification of East Germany; Feliciano Vargas, personification of Italy. If I believe in what I'm reading here- and I'm not saying I do- these guys really are the countries I've been reading about for as long as I can remember. I'm about to click on he information for a g-g-gorgeous man with blue eyes, glasses, and cowlicky hair when I hear the door open behind me and quickly close all the files.
"Hey Apes, good piss?" I say grinning at her.
"Actually, they were out of soap in the first bathroom and I didn't want to go without washing my hands because that's disgusting so I had to go to all the other ones-" she starts rambling.
"April, have I ever told you that you talk too much?" I ask. She pauses to think about it. "Guess not. Nice talk Ape-shit." And with that, I jump out of the chair and stroll out like I've done absolutely nothing wrong.
"-and so then me and my new boyfriend Enrique- he's a Puerto Rican gangbanger you know- marched off to Alaska and shared our abundant supplies of dosed Coke with all the needy penguins living there," my best friend and training partner Megan replies nonchalantly as I pummel the punching bag she's holding still for me. I hardly take in a word of what she says; instead my attention is entirely on the shaking bag and the sickening crack of my blistered knuckles each time they make contact.
"Uh-huh. That's great Meg," I say, pretending I've been keeping up with her story.
"I knew it! I knew you weren't listening to me!" she exclaims, seeming torn between disappointment in my poor listening skills and pride in her deductive abilities. "Seriously, what's up with you? You've been acting funny all week." I punch the bag a little less enthusiastically.
"Sorry Megan, I've just got a lot on my mind," I sigh, cursing at the stinging sensation in both my hands.
"Well, snap out of it! You're killing yourself with all this extra training!" She takes a good look at my hands and joins in my symphony of cursing. "Shit, Liza, you're bleeding!" I ignore her and take another swing, but she pulls the bag out of the way and grabs my wrist. My friend may be petite, but I've long since stopped underestimating her. This girl has been training in every kind of combat since the age of three, and I'm pretty sure she cracked a few bones in my wrist just now.
"All right, all right I'll stop!" I exclaim, pulling my arm back. "Can you get me some bandages?" She flips me the bird.
"Bitch, I'll take your drink away but I won't get within twenty feet of you during your hangover," she says philosophically.
"Nice metaphor, Socrates," I reply sarcastically. She bows.
"Thanks, I worked hard on it," she says. I walk over to the table where the medical supplies are kept and grab a roll of bandages. I'm just beginning to wrap my knuckles when I hear someone talking to the guard outside.
"Listen sir, I'm sorry but this is a private training room, you can't go in there." I open my mouth to call out to the guard asking who it is, but Megan holds a finger to her lips to tell me to shut the hell up. She does love herself some drama.
"I don't care if it's a private training room, I have orders to retrieve Miss Schleidden," replies a man with one really sexy British accent. Megan's eyebrows quirk up and she mouths, 'what'd you do?' I shrug.
"Can I see some ID?" the guard asks. I can tell he's joking- no damn Brit has the authorization to take a CIA agent from Langley in the middle of training- but our pal doesn't seem to get it.
"I'm the bloody director of MI6, you will let me in there," he says in a low voice, and I hear him pull something out of his jacket. Megan's eyebrow's widen some more, but this time when she mouths, 'seriously, what the hell did you do?!' I'm lying when I mouth back that I have no clue. Just then, the door swings open and in walks one attractive ma, about 6 foot tall and no more than 25, with wild hair and bushy eyebrows.
"Which one of you is Eliza Schleidden?" he asks, looking between me and Megan. I raise a hand and take a bow.
"'Twould be me, my fine fellow," I reply in an outrageously fake accent. Behind him, Megan draws a finger across her throat, signalling to shut my overly large trap. Eyebrows grimaces.
"Miss Schleidden, you are wanted by several national protection agencies and are hereby under arrest. You can come willingly or else you will be taken by force." I smirk at him and beckon him forward.
"Come get me then, Kirkland." He scowls again at the use of his name. I don't make any attempt to escape when he comes up and grabs both my wrists in one hand. He hesitates before cuffing me though.
"Is there anything else you can put on before we leave?" he asks uncomfortably. I look down at my favorite workout getup- a sports bra and yoga shorts. I smirk at him once again, then ask with mock concern, "Do my boobs intimidate you Arthur?" He gulps and blushes.
"Don't flatter yourself. It's only gentlemanly to allow you to cover yourself before escorting you out," he says, quickly regaining his composure. I jut my lower lip out condescendingly.
"How sweet. But this is all I've got with me, everything else is in my office," I say. "And I have a feeling you're not about to bring me to my office." He sighs and removes the jacket of his suit and drapes it over my shoulders.
"You're welcome," he hisses. He then cuffs me and leads me out of the room, leading me through the halls. "You know what this is about, I trust?"
"You betcha," I reply. "Don't get comfortable Artie. I've hacked the motherfucking CIA singlehandedly, do you really think I won't be able to get away from one little Brit?" He chuckles.
"I might look young, but I've got a lot more fighting experience than you," he replies.
"I never said you didn't," I respond. "But you wouldn't believe how beautifully these people still respond if you yell 'the British are coming' loud enough." I can tell I've hit a nerve when he sets his jaw and pushes me forward faster.
Not ten minutes later, I've been shoved through doors and gone through rooms no innocent agent of my clearance level has been through in centuries, gone through spaces I never could've gained access to in my lifetime, and in the end I'm locked in a great big glass cell with a bunch of creepy grown-up nerds staring in at me. I shudder at the feeling of being a bug in a glass jar and I can see Arthur laughing at me as he starts to leave the room. Angry, I throw off the jacket and yell, "Aw shit, the jacket's off! Fear me Arthur Kirkland! Fear me and my fucking boobs!" He doesn't respond and I get the impression that they can't hear a word I say. When he exits the room, I look around at the people watching me and sigh. "You people are going to be really boring aren't you?" They don't even so much as look at me.
Lovely.
I hope you picked up on the incredible German-ness of her name. It took me forever to summon any German names out of my memory, most people I know are Irish. I hope you all liked it, please review and give me absolutely any feedback you have, I'll take whatever advice you guys have on how to improve!