Based on: Disney's Atlantis the Lost Empire. It should make sense without any knowledge of the movie. For those who have seen the movie, be aware that this story makes a lot of changes and cuts out a number of characters.

Pairing: USUK with a happy ending.

*Warnings*: Villain character death. (If you've seen the movie, you probably know who.) Also, genderbending because Helga had to be fem!Germany.

Somewhere Beneath the Atlantic Ocean, March 1914.

In a labyrinth of caves, a group of explorers sat around a campfire waiting for their American navigator to figure out if they should go left or right. The navigator pored over his books, muttering to himself in different languages as he reviewed his notes. The others waited with varying degrees of impatience. As the wait stretched out, one of the explorers pulled out a lighter, admiring the flame for a moment before he lit a cigarette.

"Remind me again, why is he in charge of the map?" Francis asked, using his cigarette to gesture in the direction of their navigator. Francis—called Franny by his friends and many lovers—was charge of demolition in case they ran into any obstacles in the extensive cave system. Franny's task was blowing stuff up and he was magnificent at it. Other people could create explosions; Francis had turned destruction into an art.

"Because he's the expert in gibberish," Angelique replied with a shrug, tossing one of her pigtails over her shoulders. Despite her youth, she served as the chief mechanic, ensuring that all of the trucks and equipment ran smoothly. At least, she made sure that they ran smoothly when they were actually moving, as opposed to when they had to wait for the navigator to figure out the next path. She ground her teeth in frustration, annoyed by the constant delays. "Not much of an expert, I say," she muttered.

The group looked up as a bubbly brunette arrived with pots and plates, ready to serve dinner. "Who wants pasta?" Feliciano asked cheerfully. He was the cook for the expedition. Feli never minded the breaks because it gave him time to bring water to a boil and make his favorite dish. He could cook any dish in the world... so long as it was pasta.

"Si! Pasta sounds delicioso," Antonio replied happily. He accepted a plate of perfectly cooked pasta from Feli and asked for a double-serving of tomato sauce. Toni and Feli shared a love of Italian cooking, especially when it was smothered in delicious marinara sauce. Antonio slurped up his meal happily. Despite his ditzy personality, Dr. Toni had superb medical skills (he could amputate a leg in under 30 seconds), which was the reason he had been chosen as the team's doctor.

The leader of the expedition checked his watch. "Any chance you'll be done today, Alfred?" Commander Gilbert called, a hard edge to his voice. He had served for a number of years in the Prussian military and he valued clock-like precision—a quality that he found sadly lacking in his American navigator. His second-in-command stood beside him, gazing disapprovingly at the navigator's confused expression. Lieutenant Monika shared her superior's love of efficiency and punctuality.

"Wait, I've got it!" Alfred grinned excitedly. He pointed to the right as the explorers breathed a sigh of relief. "I was holding the map upside down," he explained.

"Dummkopf," the commander muttered under his breath to general agreement from the other explorers. They packed up and moved on, wondering how the hell they had ended up with such a stupid navigator. Unfortunately for them, there was only one expert on Atlantean writing in the entire world, meaning that they were stuck with Alfred F. Jones.

Without the movement of the sun across the sky, the explorers had to rely on their watches to keep track of time. They always took an hour break for lunch (pasta) and after several more hours of traveling, stopped again for dinner (also pasta).

While the rest of the explorers made camp, Alfred struggled to set up his tent. He had never been boy scout material as a child, preferring reading in his grandfather's study to camping outside, so he'd never developed the knack for it. Everyone else had proper looking tents, while Alfred's was a flimsy, lopsided structure, but Alfred didn't want to ask them for help setting up his tent because they already thought he was a useless idiot. As his grandfather always said, it was better to be thought an idiot than to open his mouth and remove all doubt.

Alfred settled down in his tent and tried to fall asleep. In the back of his mind, he could hear the whispered mutterings that they must have taken a wrong turn somewhere or were wandering in circles. He had been a little too optimistic in his time estimates and now he was paying the price. He wanted to find Atlantis more than anyone, and he wanted to do it as soon as possible. Alfred pretended to be oblivious, but he wondered sometimes if there was a flaw in his translations that was leading him astray. That thought—and the shoddy construction of his tent—kept him awake at night. After a couple hours of restless tossing, Alfred decided he might as well have a snack if he was going to be awake at midnight. He climbed out of his tent, nearly knocking the poor thing over. He grabbed a flashlight and walked over to the truck that stored the food. Alfred found some biscotti near the top of the boxes and happily munched on the hard Italian cookie. Feliciano was the nicest of his fellow explorers. The cheerful Italian loved anyone who loved food, and no one loved food quite as much as Alfred did.

The American looked up at the stars and sighed. He had joined the expedition because he had few other choices after he lost his job at the university. He liked to think of himself as a researcher—an expert linguist with a real talent for dead languages—but his university had actually kept him around because he knew how to keep the boiler working. Once they upgraded the boiler to a new system, they didn't need him any more and he had been out on his ass the next day. The chance to join the Atlantis Discovery Expedition had been a godsend after he lost his job. It was also his best chance to prove to the skeptics that his grandfather's translation and research were sound. His chance to prove that Atlantis had actually existed. He just wished his granddad could have lived to see it.

A sudden thought intruded on Alfred's nostalgia. It occurred to him that there shouldn't be stars because he was in a cave. Even worse, the stars really shouldn't be moving closer, looking more like an incoming hail of miniature comets. "Fire! Fire!" Alfred shouted to warn the others as he raced through the camp.

"I am going to kill that kid," the commander muttered under his breath, annoyed at being roused from his dreamless sleep. Realizing that the danger was real once he cracked open his eyes, Commander Gilbert began shouting orders, instructing the explorers to save the essentials and get in the trucks. Lieutenant Monika tried to organize a bucket line, but soon discovered that the insects created new fires faster than they could put them out.

Alfred dashed towards his tent, hoping to rescue his precious map and journal before the tent went up in flames. He saw that his tent was already on fire and without a second thought dived in to save his book, remembering to tuck and roll. The tent's shoddy construction worked in his favor, allowing him to roll out again because he hadn't properly staked down his tent flap.

Still a little dazed, Alfred rose to his feet. He saw Monika shouting; she was gesturing at the closest vehicle, her words drowned out in the commotion.

As he glanced at the truck, he realized it was the one holding Franny's entire collection of explosives. Alfred felt his stomach turn to lead and he turned to run away, making it only a few steps before the truck exploded. The force sent him reeling into a ditch. Ears ringing, he gripped the journal tightly against his chest and tried to roll into a ball. Studying dead languages hadn't prepared him for this.

Rocks dug into his side as he tumbled into the darkness below. He tucked his head into his chest, clutched his precious book, and desperately hoped that the cave had something soft at the bottom. He came to an painful stop at the base of the ditch, knocking his head hard against a jagged rock. Alfred's vision blurred and filled with black spots. After a few moments to catch his breath, he lifted one hand to the back of his head and felt warm blood oozing from the wound. That didn't feel good. On the bright side, somehow his glasses were still on his face, and he still clutched the precious book against his chest with his other hand.

Alfred gathered his breath to shout for help, but his shout turned into a gasp of surprise as a figure suddenly materialized in front of him. He could tell that this wasn't a member of the expedition. None of the explorers had strange masks, blue tattoos, or glowing blue necklaces. Kneeling next to Alfred, the man lifted up his mask. With his wild blond hair and bright green eyes, he looked a few years older than Alfred and somehow ageless at the same time. Alfred had never seen someone so beautiful before in his life. He wondered if he was dead.

"Are you an angel?" Alfred whispered, awestruck.

The man replied with a string of syllables that tickled at the back of Alfred's mind. In his confused state, it took him a few moments to realize that the words sounded like Atlantean. Alfred and his grandfather had used the dead language as their own secret tongue during his youth and that practice came in handy now. Alfred thought he recognized the last few words as "hold still." The stranger lifted his blue crystal and touched it against Alfred's head. The rest of his body still felt bruised, but his headache disappeared.

"Who are you?" Alfred asked, speaking in Atlantean and hoping that his pronunciation was understandable.

The man's eyes widened. "You shouldn't be here. Go home," he hissed, before disappearing back into the darkness. Alfred sat up, intending to chase after him, but by the time he staggered to his feet he realized he had no idea where the other man had run in the dark cave. The only light was at the top of the mound, where the explorers had made their campsite. The American slowly and unsteadily climbed his way out of the ditch. He saw the rest of the expedition sorting through the wreckage.

"Verdammt," Monika muttered, running a hand through her cropped blond hair. She tossed a broken tent into the pile of useless equipment. Alfred vaguely recognized it as his tent.

The expedition's leader picked his way past the pile. He frowned and leaned against one of the remaining trucks before calling the explorers to gather around him. Where there should have been seven, there were only six. Gilbert frowned when he realized that Alfred was the one missing. "Someone should go find our navigator," he said, "...or at least find his map."

"Here I am!" Alfred called, enjoying the surprised looks. He wasn't quite as incompetent as they assumed, although he had to admit to himself that the mysterious stranger had helped. Antonio whistled and stepped forward to check him for sprains and broken bones. Other than a bump on the head, he pronounced Alfred in surprisingly good condition. The American grinned. "Guess I've got a hard head," he joked.

"Our supplies aren't in such good condition, I'm afraid," Monika said, ticking off the list of lost supplies. She frowned. "We only have enough fresh water for a week. So we either push forward and hope to find more, or we go back."

"And my explosives are gone," Francis moaned, gesturing dramatically at the track's charred remains. Antonio patted him on the shoulder sympathetically.

"If we head back now, we'll make it. It's the only guaranteed path," Monika said calmly.

"But we're so close!" Alfred protested. He pulled out his book and showed the map to Monika and Commander Gilbert. "We're almost there."

"You said that three days ago," Monika remarked.

Hoping to convince them to continue forward, Alfred decided to pull out his trump card. "Listen, I know this will sound crazy... but I saw one of them. An actual Atlantean. We must be close. I can't believe there are still people living down here after all these years."

The others stared at him dubiously. "You hit your head pretty hard..." Toni murmured. He stepped forward and checked for bumps on Alfred's head.

Alfred pushed the doctor away and crossed his arms. "I know what I saw. He was a little older than me, with blue tattoos, and this glowing blue crystal around his neck." He decided not to mention the crystal's magical healing properties. Then he would definitely sound crazy.

"A glowing blue crystal?" Antonio asked skeptically.

"Sounds about as believable as bugs that create fire," Angelique said dryly, gesturing to the camp and tents that had been reduced to ash and rubble in front of their eyes. Of course, some of the destruction had been caused by Francis' explosives, but most of it was the result of the firebugs.

Commander Gilbert leaned forward, his interest piqued by the word 'crystal.' He rubbed his chin and nodded to himself as he quickly made a decision. "We're continuing forward. Load up the trucks," he ordered. Monika nodded and began carrying out his orders, while some of the others opened their mouths to protest.

"I'm too pretty to die," Francis complained.

"Yeah, I didn't sign up for a suicide mission," Angelique added, crossing her arms. "The whole point of getting paid is being able to spend it once we get back home. I don't like the odds of relying on him," she pointed to Alfred, "to find fresh water before we die of thirst down here."

Gilbert lifted up his hand and cut them off. "This isn't a democracy, people," he reminded them coldly.

"Don't panic. I know where we're going," Alfred said, trying to reassure the other explorers. Their expressions remained dubious. He glanced down at his book, gulped, and pointed out the correct direction on their path to Atlantis. Despite their dire straights, he still felt excited that every step was taking him closer to the ruins of the ancient city and the mysterious people who still lived there. He had so many questions for them.

Gilbert nodded. "You all heard our navigator. Get a move out!"

Still grumbling, the group of explorers nonetheless obeyed. Gilbert was a terror when you got on his bad side. Monika left to pack up the remaining food and break the news to Feliciano that he couldn't cook any more pasta because it was a waste of water. Then she reminded him not to waste water by crying.

Once the trucks were loaded and ready to go, the commander turned to face Alfred and smiled. "Now, tell me more about this crystal..."

Alfred spent the next night sleeping next to the fire. He stared into the cavernous blackness and hoped that Atlantis didn't have any new nighttime surprises for them. Even though he was hungry and tired from a long day of travelling, they were close enough to arrive at the lost city the next day and he felt too excited to fall sleep. It felt like Christmas Eve and he had just learned that Santa Claus was real.

A few of the other explorers didn't have the same problem with falling asleep. Feliciano and Antonio were already snoring merrily on the other side of the fire. But Francis and Angelique were still awake. They spoke quietly in French, trying not to disturb the sleepers.

"I just hope I make it back to my papa's shop," Angelique said. "With the money I make from this job, we could even open that second shop he's always wanted!"

"I'd like to see my sweetheart again."

"Which one?" she asked with a wry grin.

"All of them," Francis replied. He rolled onto his side and gave Alfred a discerning look before switching back to English. "What about you... do you have anyone waiting for you back home?"

Alfred frowned as he thought about the question. For some unexplainable reason, young women had never appealed to him. At least not enough to distract him from his books. The few who tried to get to know him were soon turned off by his Atlantis obsession. "Not really," he replied. "My grandpa raised me after my parents died, and he passed away last year. I wish he could have seen all this. He always believed in Atlantis, you know, and he did most of the research into this book," he added, pointing to his journal. After the firebug attack, he had started sleeping with the book at his side. He didn't want to risk losing it again.

"You want to make him proud," Angelique commented, nodding to herself because Alfred's obsession with the lost city finally made sense, as did his willingness to jump into a fiery tent to rescue a book. They both wanted to help fulfill the dreams of the people who had raised them. For her, it was running her father's machine shop after he retired, and for Alfred it was discovering an ancient civilization. The only difference was a matter of scale.

Alfred nodded eagerly. "Yeah, that's what this is all about, right? The thrill of discovery, broadening the expanse of human knowledge, seeking out new civilizations." He looked around the fire and started to frown as he noticed the unenthusiastic faces surrounding him. "Unless, uh, you're just in it for the money?"

"Money," Angelique immediately agreed.

"Money," Antonio called from the other side of the fire. Their conversation must have woken him up.

"Pasta," Feliciano murmured in his sleep.

Francis rubbed his chin. "I'm going to say... money."

Alfred sighed and lay back on his bedroll. His fellow explorers weren't as excited about archaeology as he would have liked, but once they saw the city, he was sure they would understand. He had studied Atlantis his whole life, and in just a few hours he would finally have a chance to see it and even meet real Atlanteans! He hoped that he would see his mysterious benefactor again. There was so much he wanted to ask him. Still jittery with excitement, Alfred eventually managed to fall asleep.

A pinprick of light in the distance was the first sign that they had found the lost city. Alfred had to remind himself to breath as they crossed the vast cavern. Pillars had been erected in the four corners and even from a distance Alfred could tell they were covered with intricate carvings and Atlantean runes. The team drove directly for the light and excitedly watched it grow larger and brighter. They pulled short, however, when they discovered a deep chasm blocking them from reaching the other side.

Alfred glanced down, but his flashlight wasn't powerful enough to show the bottom. At the other end of the chasm, he could see sunshine pouring out of a narrow crevice, like the light at the end of the tunnel, but he didn't have a way to cross the gap. Monika frowned as she sent a flare down into the chasm and watched it drop for a very long time.

"This must be Santorini!" Alfred cried out excitedly. He grinned at the other explorers and explained, "It was the volcano that sent Atlantis to the bottom of the sea."

"Vol... cano?" Feliciano asked, his voice trembling.

"Oh, don't worry. It only explodes once every few centuries."

"And when did it explode last?" Angelique asked.

"1707."

They all did the math in their heads and realized that they would really like to cross the chasm and get outside of the slumbering volcano. Francis attached a few of his remaining explosives to one of the pillars, while Monika held Alfred back. The American struggled furiously, once he realized what Francis planned, but he couldn't overpower the lieutenant. "That's a valuable artifact! It took years to create!" he protested.

Francis set off the explosives and they all watched the pillar break and create a bridge across the chasm. Francis smiled. "Look, a valuable bridge. Took me ten seconds tops."

Alfred broke free and seriously considered punching Francis in the face. Then he realized that he was only thirty steps away from fulfilling his life's dream and he was probably too weak for a punch to matter anyway. So instead of attacking the explosives expert, he dashed across the bridge, leaving the other explorers behind. For once, his scrawny build came in handy, allowing him to slip through the narrow crevice without any problem.

At first, the light at the other side blinded his eyes. His eyes slowly adjusted, allowing him to make out general shapes and colors. Alfred realized that the cavern was so large that he could barely tell it was a cavern at all. The ceiling stood more than a mile tall, with the center of the dome lit by a glowing light that resembled a miniature sun. The walls shimmered with a pale blue light that resembled the sky. Beneath the light lay Atlantis in all its glory. The island city rested at the center of a great lake. The lake rose above the floor of the cavern, creating a moat of waterfalls at the edge with water continuously cascading into the depths below. Billows of fog and steam rose up from the waterfalls, looking like clouds.

"Wow..." Alfred whispered, amazed at the beauty and grandeur of the lost city. It was everything he had ever dreamed it would be and so much more. He barely noticed as the other explorers arrived behind him.

"Looks like you owe me ten francs, Franny," Antonio said with a grin. He clapped Alfred on the shoulder. "I always knew you could do it, Al!"

Their elation at finding the city (and a source of fresh water!) was short lived. "We have company," Gilbert murmured to Monika as Atlanteans warriors leapt out from behind them, quickly surrounding the seven explorers. Clad in masks, armed with spears, and adorned with blue paint and tattoos, the warriors looked ready for a fight.

Alfred felt his heart race in excitement. The warriors wore little clothing and had all sorts of interesting and beautiful tattoos painted on their bare chests. He felt a strange new desire kindle in his heart. It was the thrill of discovery mixed with something more. He couldn't even give it a name. Ignoring the threatening spears, Alfred stepped closer to one of the warriors and started examining his weaponry and clothing. He dimly realized that the Atlantean was actually a bit shorter than he was, although the mask made it difficult to judge heights. His gaze drifted downward to admire the man's lean legs. He probably should have been studying the man's strange tunic instead, but they were really nice legs.

Still confused by his thoughts, Alfred forcefully pulled his gaze upward and refocused on studying the man's tattoos. He leaned closer to see if he could read them. He wanted to touch them (or maybe he just wanted to touch the man's lean muscles?), but even Alfred realized that wouldn't be a good idea.

"Wowzers... I think we've just made the archeological discovery of the century," Alfred said excitedly. He reassured himself that he was simply excited because of the discovery and not for any other reason.

The warrior responded by roughly pushing Alfred away and then poking him in the chest with the spear. The man spoke and Alfred gasped. He recognized that voice and accent. It was definitely the young man who had healed him with a crystal after their camp caught fire.

"You are trespassers here. Lay down your weapons," the man said, his voice low and harsh. He then gave out orders to the other Atlantean warriors, speaking too quickly for Alfred to understand. Whatever it was, it didn't sound good.

Alfred stared blankly. Caught up in the excitement of discovery, confused by the unfriendly welcome, and still a little lost in thought over a pair of nice legs, he found that words failed him, a rather sad state of affairs for an expert linguist. He couldn't understand why on earth the Atlanteans would be unhappy to see them. "Huh?" he asked.

Angelique arched an eyebrow and sighed. Even though she didn't speak a word of Atlantean, she provided a surprisingly accurate translation:

"I think your 'great archeological discovery' wants to take us prisoner," she said.

. . .

Author's Notes

And now for my second Hetalia / Disney crossover... Atlantis!

. . .

Cast List

Alfred as Milo Thatch
Gilbert as Commander Rourke
Monika as Lieutenant Helga
Francis as Vinny (plus Mole's lechery)
Antonio as Dr. Sweet
Feliciano as Cookie
Angelique as Audrey (plus Mrs. Packard's deadpan humor)

I wonder who Kida is? XD

. . .

Reviews, comments, and critiques always appreciated!