Warning(s): Stream of Conciousness and copious OCs. Follow the links in my profile to find out more about America's States and Territories.
Diclaimer: I don't own Hetalia. If I did, I'd be very rich indeed.
Rating: K+ for family.
Note: Please no flames, constructive criticisms are welcomed however.
It started out like one those things. You know, those things. Where stuff happens. Like, stuff, stuff; like, movie stuff. Florida has never been any good at expressing what she means by "things." At some point in time that word had become her catchall phrase for any number of expressions. Maybe that's because "thing" was the first word Florida learned in English and it was the easiest word to go to when she wanted to express an object or feeling in what was not her first language. She doesn't care about what Texas had told her at the time; English is a complicated language to learn, especially when you suddenly find yourself in a strange house with a strange new family to get used to. Texas had been helping to translate for Florida until roughly 1849 for Disney's sake.
But it really doesn't really matter much exactly why she uses the word "thing" so often, since it just means that Florida says it a lot, generally in thoroughly confusing situations and contexts much to the chagrin of her family. As a side note, Florida has never been very good at remaining on any one topic for very long, either. Anyway, it started as one of those things. By "it," she means Time Travel. Yes, capital-lettered Time Travel. Florida finds that Capital Letters always give the impression of further importance than regular letters do.
The Time Travel thing. Right. Florida supposes that her long-standing Quest for Time Travel must have started at almost the precise middle of the Eighties, when she had found herself dragged to a brand new movie by a very excited California. Florida doesn't like live actions movies. They're almost never anywhere near as good as animation and the actors in so many of the films she's been forced to watch have been wooden and irritating; not nearly as expressive as her favored cartoons. But this one had been different. It wasn't so much the acting that had done it for her, nor was it the fact that Michael J. Fox was incredibly cute. No, it was the car thathad done it for Florida. Specifically, the Time Traveling DeLorean. Nothing has never been, nor will ever be any cooler than a Time Traveling car, especially such a good looking car.
After that, Time Travel wasn't just a goal to reach; it was a Quest. Yes, capital-lettered Quest. It had from that moment on become Florida's life mission to achieve Time Travel. It doesn't matter how long it takes, how difficult it will be, or how ridiculous it would wind up making her look; Florida is going to find Time Travel. Besides, the whole "time spent" thing won't matter once she has a time machine and she's never cared about looking crazy before, so why should she have started caring back in the Eighties? The difficulty… Well, the difficulty is making Time Travel work. Whenever she had brought it up around him, Maryland had always been extremely insistent that The Quest is impossible due to something about Einstein's Theory Of Relativity or some other pointless nonsense.
Regardless of Maryland's "science," television and animation have always told Florida that any goal is ultimately achievable as long as one just works hard enough. So Florida's going to follow through on her plans whatever it takes, since the end result will ultimately be worth it. Aside from the obvious benefits, like being able to travel to the future to see how her family will fare through the passage of time, Florida wants Time Travel for other reasons, namely Fixing Things. Yes, capital-lettered again.
Fixing Things is very important to Florida. She's lived through a pretty good chunk of History firsthand and from what she's seen, it has admittedly been pretty good to her family. But she honestly can't stand how badly some things had turned out. For instance, the many, many wars Florida has had to see her incredibly huge family be battered by. She believes that all those wars could have been Fixed, though Florida's smart enough to know that even when she gets Time Travel, she can't just go back in time and shoot Hitler. That has always proved to be a mistake in every movie she's ever seen. Nevertheless, several points in History need desperately to be Fixed, and someday they're going to be if Florida has anything to say about it.
But right now, she has bigger fish to fry, namely the sea bass on the cast-iron skillet she's got over the open driftwood fire on the white, sandy beach. "Pase al pescado, Florida." New Mexico elbows his "sister" in the side, half reaching for the wonderful smelling fish on the pan. Florida deftly shifts out her friend's way, almost bumping into the ever-quiet Nevada. Texas, who is in the process of reeling in another huge bass with his fishing pole from the beach calls out happily; "¿Oye, usted los tipos piensan que usted puede comer hasta a este mucho pescado?" Florida laughs happily as Arizona exclaims that she "podría comer a un caballo!" While Florida waits for Time Travel to catch up with her, there's no good reason for her not to take it slow every once and a while with her family. Things like this should be savored.
Spanish Translations: I hope they aren't too atrocious, please correct me if I've done this wrong, I apologize for the gratutitous Spanish.
Pase al pescado : Pass the fish.
¿Oye, usted los tipos piensan que usted puede comer hasta a este mucho pescado? : Hey, do you guys think you can even eat this much fish?
podría comer a un caballo! : Could eat a horse.
Trivia: When did Back To The Future premier in Florida?
-Answers: Unfortunately, no one has been answering the trivia... Someone humor me, I really, really hate giving the answers away. Head over to Sing Us A Song for the last trivia question. The deadline is by my next fic update, which will most likely be sometime around Memorial Day.
-Prize Winner: Yes, in order to encourage answers on the trivia questions, I'm going to start giving out free oneshots to the first person to correctly answer the trivia questions. Please answer via review if you'd like to try for the prize(s).