England roughly shuffled his meeting notes together, heavy brows drawn into a menacing glare, silently daring any of the dawdling nations to make some of the usual jokes and jibes meetings in the United States typically prompted.

The newest American administration representative looked harried as she hurried to complete her notes regarding the final presentation and discussion of the day. They were only on day two of their environmental conference, and she was already falling behind.

England barely suppressed a sneer as he tucked his carefully ordered notes into his briefcase and stalked out of the room.

She wouldn't last. None of them did, no matter how hard they tried. A Personification didn't need opinion polls or direction from any political party. They were the people. Their blood pumped to the rhythms of their land, and they knew without prompting every disjointed movement, feeling, and desire that flowed through their borders.

But here? It was galling, a nation as superficial and fragmented as the United States of America becoming a power, let alone a Superpower. There was no shared culture or core identity. Nothing to create a living personification.

America was both fascinating and terrifying. A sanctuary and a bloody powder keg.

There wasn't a personification alive today that didn't secretly fear that America represented the end of their kind, a fundamental shift in human nature. None of the nations that emerged after it had failed to generate a personification, so it was, for now, an anomaly, albeit a highly concerning one.

America's lack of representation was a topic rarely discussed in the open by their kind but nearly guaranteed to come up once the alcohol started flowing. Russia, as the Soviet Union, had decried America a soulless black hole, always consuming and destroying but never creating. Its lack of proper representation, he claimed, proved the inherent flaws of capitalist systems.

The more philosophical of their kind waxed poetic about ever-shifting cultural values and lack of official authorities on matters such as language and naming customs, suggesting that the existence of a representative for such a country couldn't possibly exist.

He had to put up with being the first nation to be defeated solely by humans. Fucking France. They wouldn't have managed it without him. He'd used the humans as a puppet to break him. Served him right, the whole thing turning around on him a few years later back home.

England paused his mental ruminations, a twinge of guilt sliding through him. Best not to bring that up. That revolution had been especially hard on his neighbor.

Still, he considered, stepping onto the elevator to head up to his room. It didn't matter that the United States had shaken the world to its core at the end of World War II and terrified every living personification with its might. He'd been the first to lose and no matter how large he'd built his Empire, he had never lived that down.

He rubbed his face, the indicator lights ticking away as he neared his floor. Once he secured his documents, he could head out and find a bar, hopefully avoiding the other nations just waiting to pounce. Pricks. Three more days and he could head home, leaving the god-awful late spring heat of Austin, Texas, behind. Live Music Capitol of the World or not, the bloody heat alone should have prompted the event planners to pick another city for this environmental conference and charity music festival.

Christ, he needed a drink.