Justinian sighed and leaned back in the grotesquely ornate chair he found himself seated in, placing a head over his forehead and closing his eyes. Augustus, having placed his wrists on the wooden table that he, along with Justinian, Isabella and Montezuma, was seated behind, turned to look at his colleague with a somewhat quizzical, but mainly indifferent, expression.

"What?" the Emperor removed his hand from his head at his ally's verbal prodding, sparing a venomous glance at the paperwork that sat on his part of the table before turning to answer the Roman.

"Don't you think this is a bit... demeaning?"

"How so?" the question, coming from his left, and bearing a distinguishable detached dignity that Isabella was famous for, came across as more of a demand.

"Well, think about it; the four of us have been tasked with interviewing new candidates for leaders, but our civilizations happen to be some of the most static when it comes to that. It's either me or Theodora for Byzantium, Augustus or Julius for Rome, and both you and Montezuma have continually been the only leaders of your civilizations throughout every title."

"Meh," Augustus commented with an apathetic shrug, snatching a few of the papers off his desk. "Job security. Now, the first applicant is... Alexander?"

"What?" the Princeps passed the papers to the Byzantine, who quickly scanned over them before passing them to the Spaniard on his other side.

"Perhaps it is a different Alexander?" before either of the leaders could reply, Montezuma, who was seated on the other side of Augustus, pounded his chest with his fists.

"LET THE DOGS OUT!" he shouted, immediately drawing the attention of the other three. "I have a clambake I need to marinate by yesterday!"

The other three leaders blinked simultaneously, each sharing the same dumbfounded expression. Somehow, the person waiting seemed to understand Montezuma's gibberish, and the gilded doors to the room swung open. Sure enough, the Alexander they were all familiar with paraded in.

"Why are you here, Alexander?" the Byzantine's question echoed the sentiments of two of three of the other leaders. Montezuma was too busy sacrificing the animal crackers he brought on a chocolate bar altar to care.

"Simple; I'm here to petition for my own Civilization." Isabella crossed her arms, eyes narrowing slightly at the leader.

"Alexander; you're already the leader of Greece and have been since the original Civilization."

"Well, yes," he conceded with a dismissive wave of the hand. The woman leered slightly at the action, and the King felt a shiver run down his spine before recomposing himself and carrying on. "But I was the king of Macedon, not Greece. Greece wasn't even a unified nation at the time; it was just a bunch of City States and leagues that were usually divided between Athens, Sparta, Thebes, Corinth and later Epirus! Give it to Pericles or Pyrrhus or Lysander, and-"

Augustus let out a mildly irritated sigh. "Oh, good grief."

The Roman then reached into his stark white tunic and pulled out a small remote control riddled with various red buttons. Alexander seemed oblivious to the movement as he continued his rant, while both Justinian and Isabella eyed the development with increasing curiosity as Augustus looked over the device for the proper button. He finally found it, and with no decorum whatsoever, pushed it, causing the floor underneath Alexander to suddenly open up.

"Pella isn't even a city in th-" it took the Macedonian a few seconds to realized he was standing on thin air, before letting out a few words under his breath and falling into the abyss below. The floor closed up behind him, leaving no signs of it being a trap door, and Augustus disinterestedly returned to the papers at his desk while Justinian and Isabella looked on in shock.

"W-Where does that even lead to?" the only answer Justinian got was an apathetic, non-committal shrug.

"How many trap doors do you even have installed in your palace?"

"I forget." Augustus didn't even bother to look up from the paperwork at Isabella's question, but immediately pushed another button. This time the floor fell out from underneath Montezuma's chair. Both Justinian and Isabella shifted uncomfortably in their seats, and the Princeps looked back up.

"Right, the next applicant is a Charles V." he commented as if nothing had just happened.

"Carlos?" the Eastern and Western Romans both turned to look at the queen, who merely shook her head. "Never mind."

Immediately after she had said that, a man with a well trimmed beard and a chin that could give Justinian's a run for his money, clad in an elegant black and gold suit of plate armor, entered the room. He stopped before the table now consisting of three leaders and gave a slight bow.

"You look... vaguely familiar." Augustus remarked, eyebrows furrowed in a slightly interested, scrutinizing gaze.

"Erm, yes... Well, I was a leader. Somewhat." Justinian put a hand to his chin.

"Somewhat?" the man nodded.

"Yes, I was supposed to be the Leader of Austria in Civilization III, but both of us were cut last minute to make room for the Zulu and Sumerians. We're still in the files, though." the Byzantine blinked, tapping a finger against his temple, before his eyes widened in disbelief slightly.

"They cut out Austria in favor of the Zulu and Sumerians?" the Hapsburg shrugged.

"I didn't exactly comprehend the logic behind it either," Charles then cleared his throat and placed his hands behind his cuirass. "Regardless, I also served as the basis for the unnamed King of Spain in Colonization, and had a cameo in the Gods and Kings intro."

"Very well," Augustus commented monotonously. "And what Civilization would you like to apply for?"

"I was the Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria and the first King of Spain, so I can be what the situation demands of me."

"We'll send your application upstairs, thank you." the man gave a nod in appreciation to Isabella before turning around and leaving. Justinian let out a sigh of relief.

"Well, that went better than expected. Who's next?" the Roman glanced down at his papers.

"Constantine." Justinian leaned over to the Roman's side, examining the papers with interest.

"Does it say which civilization he would like to apply for."

"It says Rome, so I assume that means he would like to apply for Rome." Justinian furrowed his brow.

"It would be possible he means Eastern Rome, or rather Byzantium, considering he was our first Emperor." Augustus turned to look at him.

"Just because he moved the capital to Constantinople, does not mean he was the first Byzantine Emperor, Justinian. Ravenna had already served as the de facto capital of the Empire for some time before Constantine." the red-clad man grimaced slightly.

"Er... Yes, but-" he was cut off by Augustus, whose neutral façade had broken down in the face of a slight frown and narrowed eyes, hovering his hand over the remote control lying on the table. Justinian closed his mouth with a disdainful frown, turning his attention back to the doors. Both Romans blinked at the sight of the aspiring leader leaving the doorway and disappearing down the hallway.

"In the time that you two were busy bickering over semantics like children," Isabella began, straightening out her stack of papers against the table and drawing the attention of the two men. "I had conducted the entire interview with him and set aside his application for later."

Augustus raised an eyebrow disinterestedly, pursing his lips as his hand continued to hover of the remote, his gaze boring into the Spanish queen. She just returned it with an equally icy one of her own. Justinian began to sweat from the intensity of the glares on both sides of him, and let out a sigh of relief as the Princeps chuckled amusedly at Isabella's refusal to give ground and lifted his hand away from the device on the desk.

"Now, I believe the next applicant is a Taizong." the trio's attention turned back to the doors as a man clad in a ornate yellow robe, emblazoned with the pattern of a dragon on the front, entered this time, giving a deep bow in the direction of the table and obscuring his head underneath the headdress he wore, before resuming his path.

"So, Taizong, tell us why we should consider making you a leader?"

"Well, my reign was so successful it was considered a standard to compare against the reigns of all my successors, dynastic or otherwise." the edges of the Roman's lips curled upwards slightly, and he suddenly took great interest in his fingernails.

"You'll have to be more creative than that; I'm pretty sure that's the reason I'm here." Justinian rolled his eyes, his voice becoming a few octaves lower.

"Amazingly..." he then cleared his throat after, standing from his seat. "While Augustus does have a point, I do agree that China could be represented... better."

He drummed a few fingers against the desk below, drawing an irate look from the Roman and a disconcerted glance form the Spaniard. "Tell you what; we'll pass along your resume, and though I can't make any guarantees about the main civilization series, we can get probably get you into one of the Revolution spinoffs."

The man blinked. "Isn't that the one that dumbs down the series to a laughable level?"

"Well... put bluntly, but yes."

"Should I consider that an insult?" Augustus leaned back in his seat.

"Well, considering they put in Kennedy over Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Roosevelt and Reagan, I wouldn't blame you if you did. But it also means you have a better chance of getting in as well." the yellow-clad man scratched the back of his head.

"Should I consider that an insult as well?" Isabella pinched the bridge of her nose.

"At this point, I just think it would be better if we just ended this interview."

"Agreed." and with that, the prospective Leader left with a bow, and the Ice Queen turned to the two Romans. Justinian chuckled nervously at her gaze, while Augustus just let out a blithe sigh and pushed another one of the buttons on the remote control.


Author's Notes:

So, I've always wondered what it would be like if the Civilization Leaders had to go through some screening/interview to get selected to become leaders, and combined with my inner history buff, this somehow happened. But hey, it had Montezuma in it!

Anyways, Charles V is probably the greatest, and only, 'pseudo'-leader in Civ history due to how many cameos and mentions he's had, while Taizong was sadly regulated to the Revolution spinoffs. Constantine, on the other hand, will probably never become a leader outside of another Fall of Rome scenario or mods, simply because his position on what civilization he should lead is so confusing and debated.