Disclaimer: Hetalia is not owned or created by me...
Acknowledgement: Thank you to the following for reviewing, favouriting and alerting this story: Hotel of California, DeviousDragons, Frustration, WinterLake25, JuniperGentle, icantthinkofausername, Beelzineff, PhantomPrussia, Nekolandia flippyanimegirl, Azamiblossom, Waverripple of Team Sunrise, button-pusher, Shrapnelgirl, Dogsrule, Chattie 98, Timisafunsucker, Irishmaid, Becky 999, Pedro-is-Madi12, ZeroLuver567, Lilypad The Fourth, Teh Awesome BeastMODE6,
Warnings: None... just suspend all rational belief.
Chapter 4- Brilliant Disguise
The next day
Lovino rung the doorbell of the nursery, hoping and praying that somebody besides Antonio, the Spanish kindergarten teacher that constantly bothered him, would open the door and accept the pizza.
"Come in~!" Antonio said cheerily from inside the building, and Lovino shuddered a little.
"Bastardo," Lovino muttered to himself, "what does he have to be cheerful about that I don't?"
Lovino walked in, stepping gingerly over a doll's house and a discarded trainset, negotiating a path through a group of four-year-olds (one of which tugged at his trouser leg, clearly wanting attention, which Lovino wasn't about to provide. He just wanted to get in here, deliver the pizza – throwing it at Antonio's head and making a run for it if he had to – and get back out again.)
Antonio was kneeling by a colouring mat, attempting to teach a young boy how to write his name (which could have been Tom, but may just as well have been Tim; Lovino couldn't quite tell as the kid's handwriting was atrocious. He wasn't about to stick around and find out, though.)
"Lovi!" Antonio said happily, jumping up to greet the little Italian. "Long time no see!"
"The last time I saw you was yesterday, idiota," Lovino said grumpily. "Here's your pizza, bastard."
Antonio took the pizza, exchanging it for an assortment of coins. "Gracias, Lovino! Why don't you stay a while and eat with us?"
Lovino was taken aback by this. Hadn't Antonio realized the Italian didn't like him? Most people would have given up by now, but since Lovino and his brother, Feliciano's arrival on the Isle of Snoring, Antonio had relentlessly tried (without success of any kind) to befriend (or possibly date, Lovi wasn't really sure) the South-Italian. Insults, proclaimations of hatred, toy cars being thrown at his head... all of this did nothing to cool Antonio's passion for Lovino, much to the Italian's annoyance.
"Fuck, no." Lovino replied, with a glance down at the Tom/Tim kid to check he hadn't heard all the swearing (hey, he wasn't completely careless, and besides he didn't want the kid's parents finding out he taught their son to swear). Thankfully, the kid had heard nothing; he was too busy drawing on himself even though there was a very large colouring mat on the floor in front of him, much to Lovino's amusement.
"Maybe some other time, then?" Antonio called to Lovino's retreating back, as Lovino took the pizza-money and made his escape past a small tea-party made up of little girls and teddy-bears and lacking actual beverages.
'When Hell freezes over, and maybe not even then...' Lovino thought, heading back to his bike.
At the other side of town there was a street. At first glance it seemed largely to consist of grimy terraced houses, parked cars, dirty, boarded-up ex-shops, and not a lot else. The smell of chimney smoke and general dirt was the main thing one would discover here, unless you went far enough down the street.
The oily tarmac road and once-white paving stones seemed to get cleaner the further you went, and even the smells changed, for at the very end of Chestnut Avenue – almost but not quite on the corner of Sycamore Boulevard, the "main" (a.k.a. only) shopping street on the Isle of Snoring, there were two restaurants, across the road from each other.
Wang's Chinese Restaurant & Take-away stood on the right-hand side of the street. Built of dark bricks and with red velvet curtains covering the window and door, with traditional Chinese décor inside, it had a welcoming look to it.
Honda's Sushi Bar stood opposite. The look of the place was very minimalist. Somebody had obviously recently re-painted the white windowpanes and door and the inside was almost obsessively clean.
Kiku Honda himself had left his two employees to keep an eye on the few customers while he stepped outside to sweep up some leaves a few minutes ago. He'd made quick work of the job and was about to step inside and repair whatever damage Yong-Soo might have caused over the past few minutes when his business rival stepped out of the restaurant opposite.
Yao Wang was a small and rather effiminate man, around thirty years old, though he had the aura and wisdom of somebody much older. While he didn't look particularly intimidating (unless he happened to be holding his wok and ladle, which seemed to change him from 'meh' to 'terrifying'), rumour had it that he held a black-belt in every martial art you've ever heard of, a few more you haven't, and one he'd made up.
Yao stepped out with a rag and began cleaning his window, glaring at Kiku all the while.
Kiku stood his ground, folding his arms. His sushi-chef's tunic, a size or two too big, crumpled a bit as he did so.
The two would've stood there, just glaring at each other, for quite some time (and continued to ignore the strange noises coming from inside Honda's as Yong-Soo did something-or-other) if the Braginski's Florists van hadn't pulled up in the middle of the road and a large Russian hadn't gotten out of said badly-parked van.
"Privet, Yao!"
The small Chinese man, ran back into his shop, slammed the door shut, locked it, bolted it, pulled down the shutters and hid behind the counter.
There was tapping on the door, metal tapping on glass.
"Yao... little Yao... can I have some spring rolls?" came the deceptively chirpy voice. How such a sweet voice could come from such a large intimidating person baffled Yao.
"Go away... I'm closed!" he yelled.
"Da! Okay... I'll come back later... and then we'll become one!" came the unnervingly chirpy voice.
Ivan wrapped his scarf around his neck and strolled down the street whistling happily. It was the second time in two days that Wang's Chinese Takeaway had been closed. But he was undeterred.
He had no idea why he liked the small delicate Chinaman so much or why he felt that he'd known 'little Yao' for centuries. Or why the scary cookery teacher at the primary school kept sending him scary texts or why he hated the German doctor and his annoying younger brother so much. He reached inside in his coat and felt for the metal faucet pipe he'd ripped out of the bathroom the night before and felt reassured as he crossed the road to avoid walking straight past the doctor's surgery.
His urge to break Dr Beilschmidt's windows was sometimes just too hard to ignore, but then the two police officers – PC Kirkland and PC Jones would come and visit. The last time they visited the florists shop, PC Jones' extremely loud voice gave him a migraine and he had an urge to punch PC Kirkland in the face.
He whistled happily to himself when he saw Toris putting buckets of sunflowers outside the shop and patted young Raivis as he left to go to school.
"Have a nice day, little one," he chirruped, "It's going to be a very nice and interesting day..."
Raivis shivered, not knowing why he felt so scared, or why Ivan's latter sentence seemed so dreadfully ominous.
Feliciano Vargas had long been contemplating hiring more staff for his pizzeria. Yes, it was nice for it to have a familial feel, since it was run by just him and his older brother, but he had come to realize that he wasn't going to manage like this for much longer.
But before he did anything rash that might make Lovi angry (and an angry Lovi is not good) he consulted the most rational person at his disposal – Dr. Beilschmidt, or "Luddy-kins" as Feli called him.
"You see, Luddy," Feliciano had dropped the 'kins' as it made Ludwig wince, "it's not enough with just me at the pizzeria and Lovi delivering the pizzas."
"Ja, I understand," Ludwig said. "It is a big restaurant to manage all on your own. And you do most of the cooking as well, right?"
"Si~!" Feliciano said proudly.
"Well, I think you do a very good job, but-" Before Ludwig could finish his sentence, Feliciano jumped on him and wrapped his arms around his neck.
"Oh, thank-you, Luddy! You don't know how much that means, especially coming from you!"
"Me? Why?"
"Well..." Feliciano's reply was interrupted by the door swinging open. Two men walked in.
The one on the left had long, silky blond hair and startlingly blue eyes. He was wearing a costume that looked a lot like one Feliciano had once seen in a history book on a Roman guard, which would have seemed strange if Feliciano hadn't known that there was a fancy-dress festival going on in the town square. Feliciano had earlier that day served two pink rabbits accompanied by a clown (which had scared him a bit), as well as several knights, so he was well aware what was going on.
Still, the costumes looked startlingly realistic, particularly the one the other gentleman was wearing. He was wearing a toga which actually didn't look as if it was made out of bedsheets, like most 'togas' Feliciano had seen people wearing; it somehow looked genuine. The man was also wearing a hairband made out of leaves, under which Feliciano could see an unruly mop of dark brown hair and kind brown eyes.
"Can I help you, signores?" Feliciano asked, ready to lead them to a table.
"Si, I think so," the man with the dark hair said. "You see, we're new in town, and I need a job, so I was wondering if maybe you have any job vacancies."
"Oh, hm..." Feliciano faltered. It probably wouldn't be a good idea to just hire the guy without telling Lovino, but something about him made Feli not want to turn him away. He felt like he knew him, even though he didn't. "I'm not sure. You could leave your business card, signore, if you have one, and I'll get in touch."
"Si, okay." A little white card was pressed into Feliciano's hand and the two men left as quickly as they'd come in.
"That was odd." Ludwig remarked.
"Was it?"
"Well, yes, I think so. We're just sitting here talking about whether you should hire somebody and someone walks in and asks for a job."
Feliciano thought about it. "It could be fate, Ludwig." He looked to his companion and discovered the German was trying not to laugh. "Or coincidence."
"Well, either way, I have to get back to my patients." Ludwig pressed a five-pound note into Feliciano's hand. "For all the coffee," he explained to Feli's puzzled face. "Bye, Feli."
Ludwig got back to the surgery with time to spare on his break. When he looked to the reception window, however, he discovered that Gilbert was not there. There had been a twenty-minute break between appointments that morning, but it was still irresponsible of Gilbert to leave his post when he knew Ludwig and one of the dentists were out.
"What is he thinking?" Ludwig muttered under his breath. "Someone could come in and steal..." Ludwig looked around the room for something valuable enough that someone would actually consider stealing it. "...The lamp."
Someone came out of one of the doors at the back, the offices. Ludwig expected it to be his Romanian colleague, Andrei, who while slightly eccentric was quite good to work with – well, he was quieter and less crude than Gil and easier to understand than Berwald, anyway. But, weirdly Dr. Roşuvan only worked in the evenings and never seemed to leave his office during daylight hours. But, he was a good doctor, if a little over-zealous about taking blood samples.
Much to Ludwig's surprise, however, Andrei did not come out of the office. Instead the man that had been in the pizzeria, the man with the long hair that had not spoken a word, did.
He had tied up his blond hair and changed into a dentists' uniform, but it was definitely him.
"What're you doing here?" Ludwig asked.
"I work in Room 3." The man replied, as if that answered every question that had ever been asked.
"But Andrei works in Room 3."
"Andrei resigned. Now I work in Room 3." The man disappeared into his newly (and possibly unlawfully, Ludwig considered) acquired office, the door banging shut to reveal the recently changed plaque that had gone from "Dr. Roşuvan" to "Dr. Schmidt."
"How did he do all this so quickly? Who hired him? Something weird is going on here..."
Over at City Hall, Mayor Matthew Williams was yelling down the phone at the U.S. President's secretary.
"Tell him code red on the Isle of Snoring operation!"
The woman twirled the phone cord around her finger. "The snoring operation? Is that some kind of thing to help people sleep?"
"No! Just... okay, tell him code red with the Nation situation. He'll understand. Oh, and tell him to call me back."
The secretary wrote this down, making sure to put hearts over the i's. "But who are you?"
"I'm Canada!"
Matthew proceeded to hang up and then bang his head repeatedly against his desk. This was why he hated dealing with the President. Why couldn't the man answer his own phone instead of getting some dopey woman to do it for him?
After the fifteenth bang of Matthew's sensitive head, the phone rang. "Yes?"
"Matthew Williams? John Smith, President of the United States."
"Thank-you for calling, Mr. President."
"Talk to me, Williams. Is it true we have a code red?"
Matthew considered this. "Not quite, sir. But two of the ancients have been spotted in town and I have a bad feeling about it considering they've had close ties with most of our Nations."
"Who or what are these 'ancients', Williams?"
"The ancient nations, sir. The ones that came before me and Alfred and... you know who else. They aren't dead, no nation can die, but they're not normally... around. Sorry to be so vague, but we're not too sure what the ancients do or where they went when the Nations appeared, only that they used to keep turning up all over the place. The worst one for that was the Roman Empire, he kept singing to people..."
John Smith considered this new information. "Huh, maybe we should've wiped the memories of these 'ancients' too. Well, I trust you can handle it. You're done a good job so far, blocking the TV signals so their memories don't get triggered and whatnot. That was clever, I wouldn't have thought of it. Well, talk to ya later, Williams."
Author's Note: Sorry for the long hiatus, had a bit of writer's block. A lot of things will start to make more sense in the next chapter...
Andrei Roşuvan is my human name for Romania.. but I'm sure there's others out there.