Chapter 1: New Neighbors

(MATTHEW POV)

"Come back here Williams!"

Matthew Williams-Bonnefoy ran as fast as he could. Bullies. Again. It didn't help that his twin brother had moved to America when his parents divorced and it didn't help that his self-proclaimed 'hero' of a brother was the only one who protected him from the bullies. The sophomore panted deeply and sighed. 'Just a few more yards Matthew. Just a few more and you're in the clear. It's going to be alright.'

"Where are you going Williams?"

Matthew turned around. Behind him were Carlos, Ivan, and Natalia, three of the most feared figures in school, well, to Matthew they were. Carlos used to be a friend of his until his brother Alfred pissed him off and now Carlos hated him as much as Alfred, and sometimes he mistook Matthew for Alfred. Ivan was an exchange student from Russia. Alfred didn't get along with him either, and now that he was gone, the only person available for Ivan to unleash is anger on was Matthew, the closest thing to Alfred. Natalia was Ivan's brother, and was Ivan's closest follower. If Ivan hated someone, Natalia hated that person ten times more. She was a deadly vixen, and when one of Matthew's friends, Toris, tried to ask her out, she broke all of his fingers. It was a wonder that sheand Ivan were related to Matthew's crush, Katyusha.

Matthew gulped as he stared at the three of them. "L-listen, I don't want any trouble…" he murmured, walking backwards. He looked behind him and saw the old house looming behind him. 'Just a few more steps,' he thought. He widened the collar of his t-shirt and breathed heavily. Beads of sweat ran down his face.

"Where are you going, little bear?" Ivan said, grinning the sick smile that made Matthew's class shiver in fear. "We're just getting to the fun part, da?"

"L-look guys, I don't really want trouble, so can you leave me alone, s'il vous plaît?" Matthew said, chuckling a little. Carlos cracked his knuckles and glared at him. "Neither did your idiot of a brother," he said. Matthew gulped.

"I-I'm not my brother," Matthew countered, his hands rolling up into fists.

"Maybe, maybe not," Ivan said. "But Alfred is not here, so who else to take my anger out on besides you, little bear?" Natalia walked towards Matthew with stone cold eyes, taking a dagger out from under the dress she always wore. 'How does she always hide that thing?!' Matthew thought.

A light breeze wavered past Matthew. "You need help?" a voice whispered, making Matthew shiver.

"Oui," Matthew said, skill keeping his eyes on the three figures in front of him.

"Ready?" the voice asked. Matthew nodded.

"Set?" Ivan crept up closer to Matthew as Natalia brandished her knife.

"Run."

Matthew turned around and ran into the old house as fast as he could. He didn't care to look back at his tormenters screaming in fear, nor to watch them run away in fright. He ran straight to the door and slammed it close. He collapsed on the ground, rubbing one of his bruises. "Hah…thanks…" he panted, exhausted.

A figure with red eyes and silver hair appeared in front of him. "Geeze birdie, do have to save you every time zhose guys come around?" he said.

Matthew chuckled. "No, but you do insist every time," he said. "All I have to do to be safe is walk inside the gates and those guys will start running. You know that as well as I do, Gilbert."

"Vhatever Birdie," Gilbert said. He floated over to his friend and frowned. "You have more bruises zhan last time," he said. He took out a roll of bandages and started wrapping them around Matthew's arms and legs. "Honestly Matt, you have to start looking after yourself more."

"Says you," Matthew said. "I'm not as strong as my brother. You and I both know that."

"Ja, ja, vatever," the ghost said. "Ze point is, you're not Alfred. You're Matthew. Birdie. Now become stronger so I don't have to save your butt every single time you come here!"

Matthew laughed. "Sure Gil. Whatever you say." Gilbert laughed his weird little laugh and floated away.

After Matthew found Gilbert in the garden, he always considered the ghost to be his best friend and he had even helped Gilbert chase away a couple of unwanted guests. Now Matthew was a sophomore in Hetalia World Academy, and he was still Gilbert's closest friend, even though he was fifteen while his friend was eleven. He had learned that Gilbert's family was a very pro-Nazi family from a decade or so ago who hated Gilbert for his looks, and so when their second son was about to be born, they killed Gilbert and ran away from the house. Matthew thought that they were being morons, but the deed had already been done and there was nothing he could do about it. Now Matthew was sitting on the ground wrapping up his bruised arm when he remembered the real reason for him coming here. "Gilbert!" he exclaimed

"Ja?" Gibert asked.

"A new family is moving here. Papa told me this morning." Gilbert nodded and floated down to Matthew's level. "Ja, okay," Gilbert said. "Danke."

"So, how are we going to scare them away?"

"You mean how vill I scare them away," Gilbert said. "I don't want you to risk yourself again. You know how you almost got caught last time?"

Matthew nodded as he remembered the terror in his eyes from the last time they chased someone away. "Anyvays, don't vory about ze awesome me. I'll be fine!" Gilbert exclaimed. Matthew laughed and shook his head. "Whatever you say Gilbert."

(CHARACTER CHANGE: ? POV)

"We're here!"

A young woman with long brown hair opened the doors of the large house and stared inside. It looked larger inside than it was on the outside, and was certainly dirtier than it was on the outside, but she knew with a little hard work, she could get it!

"Vow, Elizaveta, you really got a good house. Und at a cheap price too!" a man behind her said. He had brown hair, purple eyes, and an odd curl above his head. Elizaveta laughed lightly. "Roderich, you like everything cheap."

"No, I'm serious," Roderich said. "With enough cleaning and dusting things off, zis old place will look like a mansion!"

"You mean if we clean it off," someone else said. Behind them was a young man with blonde hair and baby blue eyes. He looked young, and had a stern and annoyed look on his face. "Zats vat you always do, anyways."

Roderich twitched his eye and Elizaveta side-sweat. "Ludwig, don't worry. Even if Roderich decides not to help, we'll do it just fine," she said. Ludwig sighed and walked in carrying two luggages. "Vatever you say Elizaveta," he muttered, setting them down.

"So, are you ready to go to your new school?" Elizaveta asked. Ludwig shrugged. "I'm more interested in passing zhan anything," he muttered.

"Well, if you need any help, you know I'm working there too," Elizaveta said. Ludwig nodded. "Ja, I know," he said. Elizaveta smiled and she walked upstairs to the bedrooms before she spot something on the floor. "Hmm? What's this?" she murmured. She picked it up and inspected it. "An iron cross. Heh, looks kind of like Ludwig's," she said. She frowned, her features quivering. "I wonder…" she murmured, "No, it can't be…" She sighed and shrugged off the feeling of someone watching her and walked into the bedroom, not noticing the pair of glowing red eyes behind her.

(CHARACTER CHANGE: MATTHEW POV)

"Again?!"

Matthew shrugged off the urge to roll his eyes as he sat by his more-or-less-friends Toris, Feliks, Lars, and Lovino. Only a few days after Matthew had told Gilbert about the new neighbors and already word had gotten around that Matthew went into the 'haunted' house again, and he was once again, the talk of the whole school. At first Matthew liked the attention, he found it weird that someone would pay attention to him, but he liked being noticed. That was, until the bullies realized that he looked a lot like his brother, almost like a clone. That's when things started to get bad.

"What? Isn't it my business and my business only about what I do after school?" Matthew said, drizzling maple syrup on a pair of pancakes.

"Well, yeah, but no…" Toris said. "I mean, you could have been hurt badly."

Matthew sighed. "Those guys are afraid of that house more than they hate me," he said. "Besides, I'm fine. Like I always am."

Toris sighed. "Anyways, it looks like you won't be able to hide in there anymore. Someone moved into the house yesterday."

"What?! Idiots!" Lovino said. Lars shrugged. "Maybe this time they won't leave," he said.

Feliks snorted. "Like, I highly doubt that," he said. The cross dresser turned to Lovino. "By the way, where's your like, brother?"

"Hmm?" Lovino said. "Oh, he's eating lunch with Kiku and some new kid named Ludwig."

Matthew frowned. "Ludwig?" he repeated.

Lovino frowned. "Yeah, the stupid potato bastard hasn't been here for a day and already he's made friends with my fratello." For most people, Lovino looked heartless to his brother but to the four males, he cared about his brother and wanted no one to touch him. Matthew admired the older boy's love for his brother and wished that his brother cared for him like that. As far as he remembered, Alfred had ignored him as much as everyone else did, only stopping to save him to feed his giant ego. Matthew sighed remembering his brother when he saw Lovino's hand waving in front of him. "Hey! You still there pancake man?"

"What? Oh, yeah, sorry," Matthew said. Lovino shook his head exasperatedly as Matthew scratched the back of his head awkwardly until he saw Lovino looking up and frowning, his eyes dark. Matthew frowned at his closet human friend's expression. "What's wrong?" he asked.

The curl on the side of Lovino's head twitched slightly. "Right over there."

Matthew turned to look at what Lovino was looking at. Standing a few yards away from them were Lovino's brother Feliciano, his friend Kiku, and someone else with blonde hair and baby blue eyes. "You see that potato bastard over there? That's Ludwig," Lovino said. Matthew nodded and studied Ludwig. Somehow, Ludwig looked…familiar, like Matthew had seen him before…but, before Matthew could figure out what it was, Feliks spoke.

"I heard he just moved from Germany," Feliks said. "He's like, totally crazy if he actually wanted to go to school right after he moved here from another, like, country. Shouldn't he still be experiencing like, jet lag or something? I heard it's still nighttime in Germany."

"Well, those are Germans for you," Matthew said, his mind turning to Gilbert, the crazy ghost Prussian, "Crazy, batshit people." He ate a piece of his pancakes calmly as his friends stared at him in awe. "What?" he asked, trying to hide the blush on his face as he tried to regain his composure.

"Whoa, Matthew, like, I didn't know you have that kind of language!" Feliks exclaimed.

"The more you know," Matthew replied, chucking as Toris pat his confused best friend comfortingly.

"And it's these kinds of things that make you the only sane person at this table!" Lovino whispered grinning. Lars shook his head and chuckled as Toris laughed along with Lovino. Matthew smiled. At least he had human friends, and not crazy, make-believe friends like his mom. Now he was a crazy man.

(CHARACTER CHANGE: ? POV)

A thirty-ish year old man with blonde hair and the biggest eyebrows the world had ever seen, watched as his son played with two of his new friends, a boy named Matthias and his adopted Norwegian brother Lukas, however, he was more intent on watching Lukas, however. Somehow, the boy seemed special, a certain kind of special that the man had only felt on his friend Vlad and his other son, Matthew. Ever since that faithful day when Matthew and Alfred were kids, the man felt as if something was off with Matthew, and Matthew always seemed to disappear and reappear at random times of the day, and the man had wondered why he had never noticed it before. Not only that, but he always caught Matthew staring at the odd house next to theirs, the one Alfred had said was haunted, and he thought that somehow Matthew and the house had some connection with each other, something unreal, or at least, unreal to the mortal world. Because of this and his uncanny ability to re-appear and disappear at will, the man wanted to take Matthew away instead of Alfred, just to try understand what was going on with Matthew. But his husband was too attached to Matthew to let him go, and now as the man looked at Lukas, he saw Matthew in him and it made him shudder. The pressure from not knowing about his son and the strange house he always stared at was killing him. He sighed and picked up his phone. He dialed a number.

"Hello? Is this who I think it is?"

"Yes, it's me Vlad. Isn't your cousin living in my old neighborhood?"

"You mean Elizaveta? Yeah, she's living in some crazy old house with her husband and his adopted brother."

"Is there anything...weird about the house?"

"Well, I didn't tell her, highly doubt she'll believe me anyways, but rumor has it that it's haunted. Why?"

"…"

"Arthur?"

"Come here within a week. There's something I want to find out."


HELLO! If you have read this chapter, it means that you have acknowledged the existence of the prologue and this chapter and wish to learn more about this story which I am writing. Which means I am a very happy person. VIRTUAL COOKIES FOR ALL! *throws out cookies*

Now then, to avoid confusion that may have occurred in this chappie, I will state some things that might need stating here in this chapter. (You do not have to read if you don't care)

Matthew's adopted parents are Francis and Arthur, but he keeps his deceased mother's maiden name to honor her memory, I guess, and because he was used to being called 'Williams' as a child and Francis never brought it up so Matthew keeps on using his mother's name. Same goes with Alfred, except he uses his deceased father's last name because he was more in touch with his father.

If some of these characters seem a bit OOC, like Matthew, Gilbert, or Ludwig (or at least I see them being a little OOC, I don't know about you guys) well, most of the characters are teenagers, and in my mind, Matthew is a bit more, ahem, colorful in his words, seeing how his best friend in school is LOVINO, not to mention his adopted mom was ARTHUR, making him live with the two most colorful tongues in all of Hetalia at least one point in his lifetime. Ah well, at least Matthew's still a gentleman. ^.^ Ludwig's teenage self a bit more cranky than his older country self, if you ask me, but I just say it's because his older brother figure (in this fic at least) is too prissy and Ludwig's a teenager and JET LAG. And if Prussia seems to be OOC, well, he's around ten years old in this fic so he won't be cussing or talking about five meters. But he still thinks he's awesome.

Disclaimer:

Me: Scottie, will you do the honors?

Scotland: Alright lass. *turns to reader(s)* Iggy-bunny does not own Hetalia and the chances of her owning Hetalia are as more far away than the chances of me willingly wearing pants.

Me: You should wear pants instead of that skirt.

Scotland: *eyetwitch* This is not a skirt, it is a kilt.

Me: What's the difference?

Scotland: You wear something under a skirt.

Me: ...

Scotland: Ask England. He should know.

Me: ...like Scottie said, I don't own Hetalia. Now I need to ask England a question...

NEW CHARACTERS (and lots of them!):

Carlos - Cuba

Ivan - Russia

Natalia - Belarus

Katyusha - Ukraine

Elizaveta - Hungary

Roderich - Austria

Ludwig - Germany

Lovino - Romano

Toris - Lithuania

Feliks - Poland

Lars - Netherlands

Kiku - Japan

Feliciano - Italy

Matthias - Denmark

Lukas - Norway

Vlad - Romania

Arthur - England

Hope I got 'em all!