A/N: Hello people of the world! Kairia and her Yami here!~ We welcome you and would like to inform you that we are the same person, just the Light (Kairia) and Dark (Yami) parts of who we are. We have decided to talk in plural so we don't confuse ourselves. But only in our stories, since we can't use voice inflection and such, and it's too much work to do so on our profile.

Now, to our newbie readers, you guys can go ahead and read the story!

For our returning readers, two things:

For the people who have only read this fic of ours: We've edited this chapter, and we will be editing the ones after this as well. We were rereading it, as well as our other stories, and we found we really didn't like how it was written. It seemed too cliche, and way too rushed. So, we've changed a few things.

For the people who came here due to our Death Note fic: We've talked to Nix-chan (our co-writer for the fic), and she says she's been busy. We PM'd her, and she said she'll work on her chapter, but it'll take a little while.

Now, we hope you enjoy the new and improved version of The Prologue of Oh Great, Now the Nations Are Personified.

Prologue

I quite vividly remember my life before my younger siblings were born - it stands out because of how happy I was. At the time, it was just me, the two family cats, and my parents. We lived in Paris, France.

My dad was a clothing designer - he was flamboyant, and kind, and he would always try to come home early so he could spend more time with us. He also loved dressing me up whenever he got the chance, much to my slight annoyance.

My mom ran a small bakery just off the main street. It was small and quaint and the regulars would always dote on me, saying how cute I was.

As for me, I was never the girl with long hair in pigtails or anything like that. I never liked putting so much energy and effort into my appearance. My honey blonde hair was cut short to the bottom of my chin, so it wouldn't get in my chocolate brown eyes as I read or helped my mom in the kitchen. I had no interest in normal "girly" stuff. I enjoyed watching the clouds, or listening to my mother sing while she baked.

A lot of the time, when there were new customers in the cafe, or when dad brought his clients home, I was mistaken to be a boy.

I admit, I was quite spoiled. After all, I was an only child of relatively wealthy parents. It is kinda to be expected. I had my parents' complete attention, with no one to take it away from me.

And, when I was seven, my little sister was born. My parents named her Adele, and she was the cutest! She had big, hazel eyes, and the small tufts of hair she had were light brown. I loved her with all my might, and I would spend all the time I could with her.

When I was ten, my dad began receiving requests for clothes from America - a growing actress had worn one of his clothes in a movie, and soon his clothing line became a hit. He had to leave a lot - sometimes, he had to leave for months on end. That bothered my mom, so when I was twelve we moved to America.

It was a year after that, when I was thirteen, that it was discovered that my younger sister was a genius. She was found reading a Chemistry textbook, and when questioned, she clearly understood the material at least a little. (Why did we even have that book anyway? My parents hadn't taken Chemistry since highschool, and those books belonged to the school...)

I had known it already; the signs were obvious, and well, geniuses can recognize each other, yes?

Officially, I wasn't a genius. But I had been reading books since I was three - big books, like Lord of the Rings. I had read some of my dad's old college math books on the rare occasions I didn't have anything else to do and it was raining, so I couldn't watch the clouds.

And, well, I never actually showed my intelligence. I mean, do you know how troublesome it would be to be an official genius? Having to go to special schools, and having people expect you to be the best, blah blah blah, etc. etc., all that annoying stuff.

My sister was quickly sent to a school for gifted children - called "Oak" or something - and soon the two of us began to grow apart. It wasn't surprising to me. She was going to a gifted school at the age of six, and I was still trying to adjust to living in America - and learning the annoying language that is english.

...Now, I'm sorry to all native english speakers, but english is just so confusing! The grammar makes no sense, the spellings are weird, and then there's the text and shortened language everyone seems to use...So troublesome. I actually kinda just put off learning it for a few months until I was forced to by the fact I was going to be in high school soon, so I had to study. It really cut into my cloud-watching time...

Anyway, back to the story. My sister and I still loved each other, and sometimes she'd join me in cloud-watching when she felt the pressure of being a prodigy. I knew she knew that I was one too, but in return for keeping quiet about her cupcake-theft (my mom's are the best), she kept my smarts a secret. But, we did start drifting apart.

On a side note, when I was fourteen, my mom gave birth to twins. They were named Tom and Hank (American-like names because my mom wanted to embrace the "spirit of America" or some other strange reason like that). They had brown hair as well, but their brown was darker. Their eyes were also darker. They were completely and utterly identical, so much so that no one but themselves and my mom (who apparently used some kind of woman's intuition to tell) could tell them apart. Not even me. I kinda ignored them mostly.

Now, while Adele was cute and sweet as a baby, my younger brothers were the exact opposite. Let's just say this: They were better than the Weasley Twins from the Harry Potter series when it came to causing chaos.

And yes, I've read the Harry Potter series. The books happen to be one of my favorites.

Also, by that time, we had somehow ended up with five more cats, ending up with seven in total. I'm...not actually sure how we got so many. But Adele was a sucker for cute animals, so she probably had something to do with it.

So, my mom spent a lot of time doting on my little sister, fussing over my little brothers, cleaning up after our multitude of cats, or at work. My dad spent most of his time at work or trying to adapt to the strangeness that was America.

In the end, that meant that I was forgotten about a lot. I was quiet, didn't ask for much, and I didn't need as much attention as my siblings.

I didn't mind at first. I mean, I got to stay up as late as I wanted, no one was bugging me about being so lazy or my cloud-watching habits, and I could eat whatever I wanted; it was awesome.

But...I got forgot about a lot. And as a young girl who was going through puberty and about to enter high school, that hurt. I mean, my parents weren't negligent or any such thing. My mom was just kinda scatterbrained, and really busy, as was my dad, so as the easy child, I wasn't the top priority.

So I decided that maybe I'd stop being lazy. I studied more, instead of watching my beloved clouds.

And as I entered my freshman year in highschool, and being only halfway fluent in english, I did my very best in all my classes. I wasn't exactly top of my grade, but my rank was pretty good seeing as I wasn't a fluent english speaker. The teachers were pretty happy at having such a smart girl in their classes, even if she had trouble speaking sometimes.

I thought, when I brought home my midterm grades, that my parents would be just so proud, and ten times as happy as my teachers. And they probably would have, had they had the chance to see them.

Whenever I would try to show my report card to my mom, she'd get a call from the shop telling her that another order had come in, or Adele would ask for help on her homework, or one of the twins would knock something over or start wailing, and so she'd rush off to do whatever was needed of her.

And my dad...well, dad has always been kinda frail. The culture shock - it had only been a year since after we immigrated over, after all - got to him sometimes as he walked through the city, and even when he just traveled the rather large country due to his jobs. So with him either out of town working, or just not paying attention to anything as he tried to get used to everything, I could never get him to see my grades.

I continued trying until the winter break of my sophomore year. Nothing worked. Things only grew more hectic as dad's clothing became more popular, and the cafe gained fame, and my sister was speeding through her classes, and the twins were entering the feared Terrible Twos stage.

With the way things were, I just gave up on trying to get my parents attention, and focused once more on my beloved cloud-watching (which was kinda hard during the winter, but I made due with snow). I hardly studied - I had already learned the material with my extra reading, after all.

Over the summer before my junior year in high school, I found out that Adele would be entering my high school, four years early. I was a little annoyed. I mean, couldn't they have waited until I had graduated, at least?

When her first day of high school came around, my little sister was being fawned over - my mom was even crying about how proud she was, and that her petit chaton was all grown up now. They were ignoring me as I leaned on my car, ready to drive the two of us to school.

...I won't describe the car, it's really not important at all.

Anyway, I felt my heart ache a bit. Petit chaton - little kitten - used to be my nickname.

When the time came I quickly hopped into my car and put my headphones in as I swiftly drove to school, led my kid sister to the front office, and then headed to talk to (i.e., silently listen to him ramble) my only friend. More about him in a second.

Around those who were in my classes, and those I hung out with on a semi-regular basis, I was known as the "French Lazy Genius", due to my apathetic approach to school and my French accent that was still rather thick. My sister, on the other hand, was secretly called the "Chibi Genius", due to her small size. She didn't have "French added on to her name because her accent was all but gone, seeing as she tried harder to learn english than I. And yes, that means my acquaintances were anime fans. I'm not really one, though I do enjoy some of them.

All in all, to sum up my rather long rant, my home life, while definitely not the best, is far better than some others. Like Hugo's, for example.

Which brings me to my next point. My Friends. Or rather, my Friend.

His name is Hugo Schmidt, he's German, he moved to the U.S. when he was eleven, and he is probably the biggest anime fan out there. Name an anime and he's probably seen it. He usually switches what his favorite anime is almost every week, but currently, and for the last month, he's been in love with a show called "Hetalia". I don't get what's so great about it, but that's just my impression after watching the first ten seconds of the first episode, and hearing Hugo's crazy fangirl (and yes, I did say fangirl. Hugo is rather feminine considering his parents...) praise.

I met him on the bus ride home my first day of high school, and he's been my friend ever since. We had had the same problem - I spoke barely a lick of English, and he only spoke enough to understand military commands. I'll explain that part in a bit. And technically, he pretty much forced the friendship on me.

He also forced me to join the Drama Club with him. Unfortunately, my plan of acting horribly and then being kicked out of the club failed. When I was auditioning, despite my attempts to sabotage myself, it was revealed that I was apparently a natural at acting. Luckily, so far I've been able to avoid getting caught up in any big school productions.

In fact, the Drama Club is actually where our story starts.

A/N: We hope you all enjoyed that!~ We should probably have the next revised chapter out in a day or so, if not sooner. That's what we hope at least. We're not very good with getting motivated to write.

For example, all those Dropped fans had to wait a year once. We felt sorry for them, and uploaded what we think is a not very good chapter. But we can't bring ourselves to edit it like we're doing this fic.