A/N: Yeah, this is really, super short compared to 10,000 words for the other chapters and what not. I'm mostly sorry, but this was the way the chapter was planned. Expect the next to be extremely long.

"Heracles, welcome back!" many people greeted when the brunette walked into the hotel they'd called home. They saw the typical cat he brought back, but the sight of an unconscious stranger slung across his shoulder was beyond bizarre. Someone ran off to tell their leader of the stranger brought back.

"Hey, I heard you're back!" the young, bespectacled blonde greeted, eying the new guy warily. "Who the hell is this?"

The Grecian just shrugged and asked where he wanted his cargo.

"Bring him into the back room. We'll see what we think of him when he wakes up," Alfred requested, leading the way and parting the crowd of people who had gathered around to see Heracles' prize.

The twins followed the other two to the back room, observing the eldest male in the room dumping the unfamiliar face onto a torn cot they had salvaged. He left the room shortly after, cradling the injured animal and retreating to the room he kept his many other saved cats.

Alfred, Feliciano, and Lovino stood over the prone form of the Briton, searching for any sign of threat. Lovino was the first to notice the messenger bag that had been dropped off with him.

"What if he's got explosives in there?" he inquired, snatching it and sniffing for any scent of gunpowder.

"Look at his clothes! They're so clean!" the younger Italian pointed out excitedly. "Who is he?"

"Beats me, but if he's a spy he'll be thrown out of here as soon as he wakes up."

"Oh my god, look at those fucking eyebrows!"

"What if he's innocent?"

"How could he be innocent? Clean clothes means he gets good treatment, good resources. Must mean he's from their side, ?"

"I think he's innocent!"

"Well I'm searching his bag, innocent or not!"

Lovino stormed off with the bag, his mind made up. Alfred and Feliciano shared a look before taking a seat beside the cot. Who knew how long it would be until the stranger with large eyebrows woke up? He would face immediate interrogation. Hopefully Heracles hadn't screwed with his brain too much.

It wasn't often the other side sent over spies to snoop. It wasn't often they caught those spies in their act of snooping, either. So this one was either a very bad spy or not a spy at all.

Arthur found his mind teetering on the edge of consciousness. He felt himself fading in and out of the conversation held between the trio of rebels. He practically felt his brain trying to piece together the last things he remembered.

Leaving the college building and feeling fear. Running through the streets of London at some godforsaken hour because he had been convinced he was terrified of something.

He then remembered actually bumping into that something and running away from it. He wished he didn't remember when he was caught.

Remembering what had happened after he had been caught had been a little harder to recollect. It had all been very unbelievable; all very confusing. He remembered watching through the window of the pod, watching as the underwater marvel grew larger and larger as he got closer.

The sirens were still ringing, he noticed. It was very faint. He remembered them, thus was able to listen for them.

The pursuit of the three young men he had encountered. They had been too scared to talk to him and had fled. Arthur remembered giving up once they'd all split up. He could recall some of the backtracking he had done, only to end up somewhere new. He had been surprised from behind by someone with a cat. Then… then what?

He wasn't even sure he had heard an actual conversation or if his brain was so desperate to hear other human voices that it had conjured up a conversation for him to subconsciously listen to. He wondered what he would see if he opened his eyes; real people who had been conversing, or the side of the building he must have fallen against? Would he be lying in a heap of trash?

What he wouldn't give to just open his eyes and find himself lying in his bed back in London.

Hesitantly, he opened his eyes. His vision was blurry at first, but once it had focused, he saw the last thing he expected to see.

The brightest pair of blue eyes he had probably ever seen locked looks of surprise with his.

Out of shock, he couldn't help but sit up. Probably the most clichéd meeting he could imagine, if enough movies and literature he had encountered ever used it. He could practically feel his teeth click as his jaw bounced when his head collided with the other's. Arthur yelped first, then the victim of his head collision.

He saw many stars flash through his vision. The Briton clenched his head as the pain rang out through his head. He wondered if he'd have a bump now. He heard the other male laughing now, telling the other to put the gun down. Gun?

Arthur lifted his heads from his head and looked to the side. He was met with the muzzle of a handgun, an auburn haired male looking down at him with one eye. His right eye was covered with a dark eye patch, making him look pirate-ish.

"Feliciano, you can put the gun down," the man he had knocked heads with said cheerfully. "It was an accident."

The young man addressed as Feliciano looked a bit skeptical but lowered the gun at the orders of the spectacled blonde. He then turned to Arthur, an expectant look on his face.

"So, how are you? Aside from bumping noggins with me, you're okay, right?"

Arthur stared at him, wondering if he'd seen his face before.

"Where am I?" he asked, ignoring the question and asking his own. Apparently these were not the next few words the seemingly familiar man wanted to hear next. His expression quickly morphed to one of open-minded excitement, to narrow-minded suspicion.

"Look here, you- you eyebrow monster!" he started, losing a bit of face upon the quickly made up name. Arthur could only lift one of said eyebrows in question.

"You come here, into my base, and you demand questions? No way." He brought his fist down; pounding the edge of the cot Arthur lay on. "You answer my questions first or Feliciano blows your brains out, got me?" Sensing his cue, Feliciano brought the handgun up again and released the safety.

The sudden 'good cop-bad cop' switch-off started Arthur. He looked between the gun steadily locked on to his face, to the stern appearance the young male had taken on.

"I have no idea where I am and what happened, I don't want to be here and I'm pretty fucking sure I saw some people shooting goddam lightning out of their hands," Arthur quickly rambled, trying to cover the question as thoroughly as possible. "I'm freaking the bloody hell out because last thing I remember is running around this godforsaken city trying to escape that… that gargantuan monster!"

With the question hastily answered, Alfred dropped the aggressive, suspicious appearance and reached over to Feliciano's gun, pressing it down. Arthur heard the safety being clicked on.

"Sorry to hear that, Art. Where are you from?" he asked, pushing his glasses up higher on the bridge of his nose.

"London, England, sir. That thing abducted me and dragged me down here, I think."

The blonde snorted and rolled his eyes.

"Don't call me sir. That sounds like an old man thing, y'know?" And true, the male did not look like 'an old man.' He couldn't be much older or younger than Arthur. "Welcome to Hell, by the way."

"Uh, thanks, I think," Arthur responded sheepishly. "I say, I swear I've seen you before!" He searched his mind, trying to remember a familiar face from England, only to come up empty. Not from England or Uni, then. But where?

Blonde hair, glasses, a white buttoned shirt.

"Ah! You're from those wanted posters!" the Briton suddenly exclaimed. "You're wanted for treason to… whoever is left down here, aren't you?" The poster hadn't shown a face or bright blue eyes, but he didn't need that detail to guess that it was talking about this fellow right here.

"I beg to differ!" he shot back hotly. "I'm the hero in this story." As if that would explain everything and suddenly clear up whom he was for the current situation. "Alfred. Alfred F. Jones."

There was a knocking to their left, causing them all to turn and look.

Arthur did a double-take as a darker haired version of Feliciano walked in. He thought he had been seeing double due to the trauma done to his head today.

The first thing he noticed other than the fact that this newcomer had a darker shade of hair than the gun wielder in the room was the noticeably gloomier features fixed on his face. His left eye was covered with a dark eye patch, similar to the auburn hair's features. The second thing he noticed was that the man was in possession of his messenger bag.

"We're brothers, dumbass," the deep, accented voice commented upon seeing Arthur's confusion. "Stupid fucker had this in here. No explosives, by the way."

Alfred caught the bundle of paper thrown carelessly at him, grinning widely once he realized what had come to his possession.

"Wow! A newspaper! I haven't seen one of these in… Jesus Christ! Look at the d-"

"The date, yes, I know," the other shot back. "I saw it."

"What is it? What is it?" Feliciano asked excitedly, leaning over the leader's shoulder. Arthur felt forgotten. He coughed lightly, re-announcing his presence. The group looked at him quickly before turning their attention back to the newspaper.

"1975, wow! A lot of time has passed us by, huh? And look at what the Surface is doing!" Alfred pointed to some article on an event that had occurred. "Hey, look! They have a column for the people who are going missing! They sure keep track, huh?"

"Excuse me?" Arthur coughed again, confusion building as he watched the trio get flustered over the events happening in London. "Why is this so exciting?

Alfred handed the newspaper over to Feliciano and his brother, bringing his attention back to the Briton.

"Good news is, we now know you're not a spy for the Order! You really are from London! Great to hear!" Alfred clapped him heavily on the back a few times, making Arthur practically pitch forward in his seat.

"The Order? What? And of course I'm from London! If I tell you I have no idea where I am and what those things out there are, then listen next time!" He felt his temper growing short.

"Yeah, yeah. Excuse us if we didn't believe you. We're just a little nervous when strangers start showing up. But you have a newspaper. You're undoubtedly from the Surface!"

The Briton had no idea why a newspaper would assure them of his authenticity of being from the world above, but he shrugged it off.

"Just… Please. Tell me where I am. What's going on here?"

Alfred thought about it, counting on his fingers something and mouthing a few words.

"Okay, so look. You totally rode in the Pod, right? Well that video should have given you a good idea of where you are.

"You're in the Atlantic Ocean – below it, I mean,- and Romulus and Adalbert were the founders of this place, Pangaea. They made it all themselves!" The fact that the two brothers perked up at the mentioning of the founders did not escape Arthur's notice. He let Alfred continue.

"There are districts and levels that make up this place, I'm sure you saw the levels, at least. The districts are kind of another story. It's like…" the young leader paused, screwing up his expression in thought. "It's like having a building in a building. You're walking through hallways and doorways to get to different districts and to go to buildings. Pangaea is the entirety of this place. The WHOLE thing, y'know?

"So with Pangaea being the whole place, you've got your cities and areas in here. For the most part, we're in the middle. The bottom floor is completely collapsed in on itself. Water is rising gradually as the place fills up. I'm sure you've noticed plenty of leaks around here, too. Not helping. Anyways, like I said. It's like walking down a huge hallway to get to the next area of the city. You'll find different things if you walk so far, or if you take the elevators up.

"The elevators, mind you, are unavailable to us, the rebels. The Order has complete control of those, so we don't usually go up the floors unless we use a few secret passages that we made. I can show you those sometime, if you like."

The unnamed brother spoke up quickly, scowling and shooting Arthur a nasty look.

"Don't, Alfred. You show him those passages, he tells the Order. He rats us out, they close up those holes we made. We don't make it to the food and so on."

Arthur had just been about to shoot in that he wasn't a spy before Alfred beat him to it.

"Relax, Lovino. He's not a spy. He had a newspaper!"

The two shared a long stare-down, neither wanting to look away. Feliciano looked between his brother and his leader worriedly, his lip curling in a pout. Arthur could almost feel electricity crackling between them. He didn't know if it was literal or figurative.

"Wh-what about the people who can shoot lightning and shite from their hands?" Arthur spoke up, wondering if he'd even be answered. The intensity between the two made him feel as though they would never let up.

Thankfully Alfred did let go, mouthing a few words Arthur believed were curses.

"I can do it too," he responded, holding up his hand and allowing a few sparks to flicker from his finger. He snapped, making the electricity crack sharply, fizzling before it dissolved into thin air. Arthur couldn't help but stare at Alfred's fingers as though they were magic.

"M-magic?" he questioned curiously, stopping himself from reaching out to touch the fingers that had created lightning before his eyes.

Alfred laughed loudly, a sound that resonated from his chest and filled the room.

"No! It's from Gene Changers!" He didn't elaborate after that. Arthur couldn't help but feel annoyed at the fact that he had just let it linger in the air.

"Well… Can you at least tell me where we are?"

"Didn't you hear? We're in Pa-"

"Pangaea, yes, I know," Arthur cut off. "But where in Pangaea? I can't picture how large this place could be. I don't know districts. Where are we, exactly?"

Alfred flashed him a childish, lopsided grin.

"I can show you!" he offered, standing up and offering Arthur a hand.

Before Arthur could take the proffered hand, he found it slapped away by another.

"Stupid! Why would you show a spy our base? He'll just report back to the Order what's in here! He'll tell them our weaknesses; our soldier count! Stop telling him things!" Lovino spat, standing between the two blondes.

Arthur couldn't see from where he was sitting, but he saw Lovino being forced roughly to the side. He gave a yelp as Alfred placed a quick hand on his side. Arthur assumed he had been zapped lightly as a punishment, or a warning.

The Briton found the other's hand offered once more to him. He was wary to take it because he knew what could come from it.

"Sorry, thanks, but no thanks." He declined the hand, admittedly afraid of it. "I can stand on my own."

Choosing to ignore the frown that quickly slapped itself over the leader's bright smile, Arthur stood shakily, steadying himself quickly to show that he was fine and really hadn't needed the help.

"Shall we?" he asked, gesturing to Alfred to lead the way.

A/N: This was more or less a bridge between Arthur's confusion to now having a place to fit in. I guess that's the best way to word this.

I'm really quite embarrassed it's so short compared to the other two monster chapters. It'll probably be the shortest chapter in the entire story. At least from where I can see. I actually got stuck in planning. We may hit a bump in the future until I know what I intend to do at that point.

For those who played BioShock before, you'll notice I've changed the names of the items. The names sound dumb, I realize. Just, sit with it and giggle, yeah?

Once more, all mistakes are mine, and characters belong to Himaruya!