As much as I would like to say that I slept or even wrote that night, alas, I cannot. By means of a forceful butler and a very slow Internet I sped the entire night watching the five-minute installments of the Hetalia: Axis Powers series. Never in my entire life was I so bored yet so, so... intrigued. Actually, I suppose I was not so much intrigued as I was frightened for my life (and sanity) as I watched the never-leaving timer on my computer tick it's way down from 17:-:- to 5:-:-. You, my friend, do not know what fear is until you are placed in a situation such as this.
Anyway, I ignored Cameron's wishes to me reading the translated web comics on a site he called "Livejournal", for I never did enjoy reading much (ironic, is it not, seeing as the main part of writing is reading and re-reading and editing and re-reading your work once more?), and instead sided with the English-subtitled version of the show (ironic, because I just said that I did not enjoy reading. Oh, I'm just full of oxymorons, aren't I?). Why are they all five minutes? I remember asking myself as I read the subtitles, and that ending song is so... obnoxious! Yet, despite how utterly confused I was in the first few episodes of the series and how utterly bothered I was by the way that the personifications of Germany, Italy, Romano, Spain, France and England reacted with one another (I have nothing against homosexuality, just... don't you think that's a bit much?), I found myself watching the series beginning to finish.
Now what is this Hetalia: World Series crap? I asked myself when I clicked on the next episode in the playlist, titled as "Hetalia: World Series - Episode 1". Is it the same thing? The same Germany with the same homosexual desires for the same Italy and the same Japan apologizing for nothing as the same France molests everything in existence?
Apparently yes, sparing the fact that there were less "Akisu Powasu" (or however they pronounced it) and "Hetaria" (which I later found out to mean "Useless Italy". Oh, you Japanese are lovely, aren't you? [I say that with heavy sarcasm]) in it- it mainly consisted of the other "Nations".
Weird.
I did not notice the timer going from 5:-:- to 2:-:-, nor did I notice Cameron sneaking up from one of the many tunnels in the underground of the mansion, so imagine the terror I was in when he goes behind me and says, in a voice I nearly mistook for the one of the Grim Reaper (the one that tried to kill England in that one episode... Oh damn, I was already making connections):
"You're not finished yet?"
I swear to my mother and father, that man will bring upon me heart attack I will not recover from.
"Jesus Christ!" I shrieked, whipping my head around to face him, instantly feeling my face flow from an expression of fear to an expression of relief, and later an expression of rage. "You idiot!" I shrieked once more, "how many times must I tell you to not sneak up on me like that?"
"But I was not sneaking," he said, sounding quite tired as if he did not get enough sleep that night, "I was just-"
"Rosaria!" I heard John Baravian call for the head maid from upstairs, "fetch me my good coat, will you?"
"R-Right away, s-s-sir!" she stammered in response, and I could hear her healed shoes clicking above us. Out of instinct, I panicked and deleted all windows aside from the timer. There's still two hours left? I asked myself, feeling the blood pound in my head as a horrible thought came into my mind-
What if the timer stopped?
"Cameron!" I shrieked, forgetting that he was, in fact, still standing right next to me in the dark, stinky underground.
"Yes?"
"Ahh!" I yelped in surprise, glaring at him and ignoring the fact that is was, in fact, my fault for forgetting where he was. "W-What, and he... but the... What time is it?" I hissed at him as he checked his watch.
"Only 6:42," he answered smoothly, checking his watch in the glow of the computer screen.
That means time itself stopped on us. Oh, I am screwed.
"Why is he leaving?" I asked him, gripping the wood of the chair so tightly that I didn't even need to look at my hands to know that my knuckles were turning white.
"Because," he began, inhaling calmly (why is he so calm? I asked myself in rage), "I suggested that he and his wife take a walk at this time- fresh air is good for the body, is it not?"
"... Oh." I should have thought of that, I scolded myself, basking in my ever-growing paranoia as well as my ever-decreasing common sense. "Well then, that leaves me with two hours to kill!" I stated brightly as I heard the sound of John and Anne Baravians' footsteps leave the house. Ah, how I love piping systems- they let me know when things were happening as they happened.
Like how Evangeline was waking up right no-
Wait.
"Hm..." I heard through the pipes.
Oh for the love of God.
"S-She's waking up?" I squeaked out, griping Cameron's shoulder as if it were the chair, "Doesn't she wake up later?"
"Well, I don't know! I'm not her keeper!" he hissed back at me as I heard her light footsteps go down, down the stairs into the living room. Oh, I could see her now- I could see her gracefully striding not in a house, but in a sweet meadow of grass, clad in the silken nightgown she wore... the wind just barely grazing by her in a way that caused said nightgown to flutter with each step as her curly red hair blew behind her, exposing to us all her pale, freckled face I had come to love. When she walked - oh I could see it so clearly! - Even the grass would bow down to her elega-
"Louis, you alright?" came Cameron's voice, erasing the dream as soon as it had appeared.
"Fine," I sighed, still trying to hold on the strands of the dream I had dreamed for so long, too long, as they blew away from me by the musky scent of sewage and dust.
God damn it, I liked that one too.
I quickly shook my head, remembering my place in this mansion as the invisible person who had ordered accidental money-grabbers that were on their way to this house I am not supposed to be living under oohhhhh I'm dead I'm dead I'm dead I died I'm de-
"Louis!" Cameron hissed, whacking me on the head after checking my history, nosy little bastard!
"Ouch! That's the second time tonight you jerk!" I whined, rubbing the place he had smacked me.
"What were you thinking, watching the anime?" he snarled, his face growing red in rage, "I told you to read the web comics! And you didn't even go on Livejournal, you oaf!"
"Oh, so I'm an oaf now?" I asked, "and you know I hate reading!"
"Well, then why are you a writer? Oh, wait, I forgot. You're not." he growled. Who would've thought, I asked myself, that he'd get so riled up over a silly kid's show, anyway?
"Well, that stung," I said simply, far too tired and brainwashed to think of anything to fire back at him. He simply let out a vexed sigh and shook his head at me, as if I were a disobedient child.
"So, who's your favorite character at least?" he asked me, his voice returning to its usual flat state. Oh, oh okay! I thought, simple question...
"Well I like... I like..." what were their names? "Uh..."
"Well?"
"...The blond one and the one with the, with the... the, you know!" Breasts, I thought to myself, the one with the breasts.
"... Louis."
"Yes?"
"You do realize how many blonds are in Hetalia, correct?"
Oh damn, he wanted me to specify now?
"Uh, uh, he was the one with the uh... or, wait, was it a she? Hard to tell with that hair..." I mused out loud, thinking about the character who was, yes, blond, but had a thing for... no, wait that was someone else...
I heard the slap of skin and I did not even need to look up to know that Cameron Shylers had reached his maximum point of annoyance and was currently smacking his forehead with his palm.
"I'm thinking, I'm thinking!" I whined, trying to remember some other detail about the blond she-man.
"Oh, God, help us all..." he moaned, rolling his eyes at my ignorance to the series. What was i-?
"The one who's cheap and... guns and stuff!" I suddenly yelped, remembering another crucial trait to the character whose name escaped me.
"... You mean Switzerland?" he asked me in disbelief.
"So that's who she was!" I said with a grin.
"It's a he, Louis."
"Oh, I knew that," I said with a grin, "and there was another one... the one with the brea-"
"That's Ukraine, Louis," he hissed, covering my mouth before I could finish my sentence, "and it's disrespectful to speak of her in such a way!"
"But she does have them!" I whined in protest against his hand, but since he was, in fact, holding his hand against my mouth, it came out sounding more like "Bmh hm dnn nhnf dm!"
"What?"
And that was when I heard a ring at the doorbell.
Oh. SHIT.
I quickly looked at the timer on my desktop, fearing the worse, and simply sighed in relief as I saw that I had, in fact, an hour and thirty minutes before I met my certain doom.
Just peachy.
Somehow, Cameron and I managed to get ourselves into a full-fledged debate over whether or not Hungary and Liechtenstein would make a good couple, my argument that they were, first, fictional personifications, complete opposites, and - here's the part that ticked him off the most - masses of land.
Apparently, he said I was being too dense with this whole "Hetalia" thing and that I "wouldn't last a minute with those units without him". Now, while I agreed with him one hundred and sixty nine (aha, France was rubbing off on me already, it seemed) percent with that last tidbit, I refuse to believe (or admit) that I was being dense. It just seemed a trifle silly and I was not so much a silly person as I was paranoid and... paranoid. Just paranoid.
Paranoid, yet to some extent relieved when Rosaria came down through the tunnels to announce to us that the Baravians were out of the house (apparently Evangeline was taking a walk through the gardens. Oh, was I lucky today or what?). Now I could actually get some work done without having to hear the incredibly distracting sounds of the house (and Evangeline), thus delaying the date when I'd finally slip up and miss a deadline a-
"Louis, maybe you should come up," Cameron suggested.
Oh hell no.
"G-Go up there?" I yelped, the ignoring the almost painful stench of my being and the growl of my stomach, "No way!"
"Mary- I mean, Louis," Rosaria started, instantly correcting herself on the ever-so-commonly-made blunder of my name, "I can smell you from down the hall..."
Well, that wasn't offensive. Not at all.
Please note that I thought that with heavy, heavy sarcasm.
"Well how do you know it's me?" I said, subtly sniffing my short, short hair and almost vomiting on the spot, how long has it been since I last took a shower again...? "I-It could very well simply be the hallways! Or this room! Or-"
"Louis," Cameron hissed, shutting his eyes as if just looking at me made him feel less and less alive, "I think I can safely assure you that there is absolutely nothing in this world that smells exactly like you."
"Thank you," I responded simply, taking the supposed-to-be insult as one of the finest complements I have received from him in quite a while... mainly because it was.
"That wasn't a complement..." he groaned, taking a fistful of my grimy shirt and dragging me away from the computer.
"Woah woah woah what are you doing?" I screamed, trying to shove his fistful of shirt away from my person and get my ass back where it belonged - in that chair, "I can't go up there!"
"You seem to be physically capable of dragging yourself into the chair, so I don't see why you cannot get yourself into the house," Cameron hissed, beckoning Maria's assistance in attempting to pluck me from the chair. I, being as valiantly persistent as I was as a child, found no better way to prevent myself from unwillingly being dragged into the palace-like estate than clinging to the table which my computer rested atop.
"I ain't leaving!" I whined, ignoring my blunder on the English language and I clung to dear life.
"Why not?" Rosaria questioned between grunts of labor and the nonstop pulling of my abdomen and legs (which, I might add, were starting to hurt quite a bit).
"Because!" I squeaked, gripping the table as I was pried mercilessly away from my comfort zone, "If someone comes out here, who's gonna be able to beat them up? W-What if they take my Forget-Me stick?" I wailed, thinking of the big black stick that I had kept in the back of the room; you know, just in case anyone ever happened to stick their noses in places they should not.
"If they-" grunt, "found you here," pull, "they would-" another grunt, "-throw you in the nea- why won't you let go? - Nearest jail se-"
This is where they finally managed to pull me off of the table, which sent us flying backwards into the wall. Oh, what fun that was!
You know, after the massive headache.
Somehow, even after my futile attempts to keep myself underground, I found myself in Mr. Baravian's shirt and not smelling like a sewer, as well sitting in the kitchen, swallowing every edible thing that I could get my hands on, even the cold Moo Shu pork.
Heck, especially the cold Moo Shu pork.
"Why are you eating that?" Cameron asked me as he bit into his sandwich.
"'Because it's good," I said in between rabid mouthfuls of Moo Shu. "You want some?" I continued, offering him the container.
"Um... no," he said simply with a grimace, shuddering as I shrugged and continued to stuff my face. Oh, this stuff is good... I beamed as I threw the now-empty container into the trash.
"Well! That was nice, but I really think I should be go-"
The clock caught my eye.
8:29.
8:29.
"...Damn and blast."