Matthew tapped his foot as he stood in the familiar elevator as it moved upwards. It had been a week since the…"first" kiss at school, a week since Matthew and Gilbert had started dating. Gilbert seemed to enjoy the fact that he could just pull Matthew into a kiss whenever he felt like it, even if it got the two in trouble. Alfred heard about it and first complained about the fact that Matthew didn't tell him anything, and then complained about the fact that Matthew had decided to go out with Gilbert, of all people. But Matthew tiptoed past that easily enough. Alfred was mostly busy with avoiding Ivan like the plague anyway.
Currently, however, Matthew was going to Gilbert's penthouse for a very specific reason. Not to be swept away with kisses or anything else. No, this was serious. They had an English project due in a few days and Matthew had no way to access the internet for it. So they would have to do this project at Gilbert's place and this was one of the few days Matthew didn't have hockey or work. The elevator made a small ding as soon as it stopped moving and the doors opened to reveal the vast penthouse. It was just as clean as the day after the party and it left Matthew wondering just how much the maids cleaned this place.
There was a maid in front of him when he stepped off the elevator and the door closed and she bowed respectfully to him, making Matthew feel slightly awkward.
"Good day, sir," the maid said and smiled warmly at him. "May I ask your business with the Beilschmidt family?"
"I'm here to see Gilbert," Matthew mumbled and the maid nodded before scurrying off. Matthew wasn't quite sure if he should stay where he was, so he did what his instincts told him and stayed put, feet shuffling on the expensive tile underneath him. It managed to escape his mind a lot that Gilbert was this rich, considering the way he acted. Ludwig, too. They both acted like regular people, completely unlike the rich kids that Matthew imagined he would meet when he first came to their school.
"Birdie!" Gilbert shouted and Matthew heard him running from further down the hallway. He braced himself and was quickly picked up into a hug and spun around. Gilbert loved to show affection, especially if they were in private. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Well, we were paired up for a project, weren't we?" Matthew chuckled as he was set down and regained his balance quickly. Gilbert's smile fell and he let out a groan.
"Is that seriously the only reason you're here?" Gilbert whined. "That's so not awesome!"
"Maybe if we get it done soon, we could celebrate by doing something else," Matthew shrugged with a smirk as he walked further into the penthouse. He didn't exactly know where he was going, but Gilbert quickly took the lead and started down a hallway Matthew didn't recognize.
"Like…?" Gilbert raised an eyebrow, turning around so he was walking backwards.
"I think I'll leave that to your imagination for a while," Matthew smirked and Gilbert laughed before turning around again and going up to a door that he opened dramatically.
"You shouldn't leave it there too long, Birdie," Gilbert laughed and motioned for Matthew to go in first. Matthew nodded in thanks before entering and stopped in his tracks when he saw the room. It was huge and filled with desks, computers sitting on top of all of them, some with laptops as well, though most of them were closed.
"Why do you have so many?" Matthew wondered out loud.
"Eh, sometimes mein vater is home," Gilbert shrugged. "When he is, he likes to get a bunch of his business guys to do shit and it's easy if they're all in the same room or something. And this shit's more secure than what's at the office building he's never at, so they use this a lot. But things like that happen maybe three times a year, so I mostly have it to myself." Gilbert smirked as he ran for a rolling desk chair and landed in it so hard that it slid all the way across the room. "It's fucking awesome, right? I can play a game or some shit on one screen and try to focus on school work on the other, but that doesn't usually work out so well."
"I know that part," Matthew smirked. "I've seen your progress report in homeroom."
"Oi!" Gilbert whined playfully. "I try my best!"
"I'm sure," Matthew rolled his eyes and walked towards Gilbert, who was at one desk with two computers that he was currently booting up.
"Whatever," Gilbert smirked. "This project is just a PowerPoint, right? That's easy as fuck, let's just slap the slideshow together and do some other shit. I don't wanna have to worry about this for too long. Why are you here just for this, anyway? Don't you have a computer at home or something?"
"No," Matthew shook his head and sat down on the office chair beside Gilbert, watching the screen flicker to life. This computer had apparently already been used before, as an internet browser was still up. It was on a news website, talking about a story that Matthew had seen on the news earlier. Energy had come to save the day, but the story that was up on the screen was from before Energy came to the rescue, while the robbery was in progress. Odd… "We don't have internet or computers."
"What the hell do you guys do for fun, then?" Gilbert asked as he pulled up the PowerPoint program. He glanced at Matthew's screen and swiftly rolled over to turn the browser to Google. "You can do the research bits and I'll put the shit on here."
Matthew nodded. "We have cable," Matthew shrugged and started to look up information on the current event that their teacher had them researching. The teacher had every pair of students looking up a different one and Matthew wasn't really looking forward to the presentations. It was obvious that no one was taking this project seriously, not even him. "And I don't really have a lot of spare time, outside of work and hockey and school. Alfred, I'm not so sure about. He's been ditching classes a lot recently."
"Last I heard, he was avoiding Ivan, good on him," Gilbert shrugged as Matthew clicked on a website. It seemed reliable enough by a first glance, so Matthew started looking through it.
"Ivan's not that bad," Matthew rolled his eyes. "And I have no idea why Alfred's avoiding him, too. At least at first, he just hated him, he wasn't skipping classes for the mere purpose of not seeing him again."
"Let them figure their own shit out," Gilbert shrugged, reading over Matthew's shoulder for a second. "Wait, is that really what our topic was?"
"Yes," Matthew nodded slowly. "Did you not pay attention in class?"
"I've mastered the art of sleeping with my eyes open," Gilbert laughed. "You'd be amazed how many classes I'm sleeping through."
"Gilbert!" Matthew hit the back of Gilbert's head.
"What?" Gilbert pouted slightly.
"Pay attention in class," Matthew muttered and turned back to the matter at hand. "Next time I notice you sleeping, I'll wake you up myself."
"You can't do that," Gilbert whined. "How else am I supposed to get my sleep?"
"Go to bed at night like a normal person?" Matthew rolled his eyes.
"You say that like it's easy," Gilbert grumbled, but started typing onto the PowerPoint with some of the information they'd already gathered.
They continued their project and research for maybe another hour, Gilbert constantly attempting to distract Matthew by doing things like blowing in his ear or stealing a kiss every now and then and Matthew simply rolled his eyes and continued working. He was getting harder and harder to distract at this point.
"Let's get something to eat!" Gilbert announced suddenly, standing up and gripping onto Matthew's arm to pull him out of the room. Matthew couldn't get out of his grip and so allowed himself to be dragged out of the room and towards the kitchen, which Matthew noticed, Ludwig was cleaning.
Energy easily ducked out of the way of a bullet aimed at him and put up a wall behind him, to ensure that none of this guy's buddies got the same idea, to try to shoot him. He had to think through this one carefully, this man just escaped from prison a few days ago and he was definitely sure that he wouldn't be going back. He'd already killed a few cops that tried to take him into custody, which was why Energy was using this time, where Gilbert would normally sleep, to take the man down. Luckily, on that day, Gilbert had found that he had his temporary x-ray vision at his disposal (Matthew had become a target of many long looks), so he glanced around, peering through walls and ignoring how he could see through the clothing of the men around him.
Another gunshot alerted Energy to where this man was hiding and he ran for him, keeping himself covered with his energy box to ensure he didn't get hurt. The people behind him were firing rapidly now, but Energy ignored them, using his strength through his feet to get himself to run faster. The men behind him stopped to reload their pistols and Energy smirked, dropping his cover as he turned a corner quickly. The man was completely caught off guard and attempted to shoot at Energy, but the hero was quicker, placing a box around the man and trapping him inside with his gun, which would be useless in freeing him.
"Awesome," Energy mumbled to himself and raised his hand up, the box following it perfectly. The box was maybe 10 feet in the air when Energy turned back around the corner and saw the two men, a lot closer, aiming their guns at him. "You even think about pulling that trigger and I'll drop him without a second thought. Got that?"
Sirens blared in the background and the dark alleyways that surrounded them began to light up with red and blue. They were at some kind of warehouse location with multiple warehouses. Energy didn't really care, as long as he got the bad guy. The two men slowly dropped their guns, hands up in the air.
"Get on the ground and wait for the police to come," Energy ordered them and the two men shakily complied. The police came running in, all of them holding guns and prepared for a fight. They were useless before, stuck behind their own cars as the men fired their guns at them in hopes to kill them. Then Energy came on the scene and saved all of their asses. About five of them went to the two men on the ground and cuffed them, saying their rights as they led them to the nearest car. "You're welcome," Gilbert said happily to a police officer as he carefully set the man who'd escaped from prison on to the ground, keeping the box up. The man still had a gun and they had to be careful with that.
A lot of police officers looked at him with disdain, some because he was a mutant and some because he was a vigilante and sometimes went against them. There were a few that stared at him with admiration. But the looks didn't last long. They circled around the box, guns poised at the man, who saw no way out, valuing his own life and setting his own gun down. He kicked it away at the request of a police officer. Energy allowed the box to disappear around the man and he was swiftly arrested, placed into a different car than his accomplices, and they were all driven away.
A few police officers gave him thanks and some just walked away, not sparing Energy a second glance. Energy just smirked and ran off, quickly jumping onto his own energy boxes to get himself higher in the air. If he was lucky, he could run home now and be able to actually be more awake the next time he saw Matthew. It was way too often when Gilbert would be tired when he was around Matthew. He just wanted to enjoy it sometime, fully awake.
"There's no need to be upset."
"I'm trying! I can't do anything! He's breathing down my neck and we still can't get anything on Energy and we can't do anything to Matthew due to the fact that he's human. There's nothing we can do!"
"Take a deep breath. In and out. There, just like that. It'll be alright. We can figure this out. Within a few weeks, alright? Mutants that go out as superheroes are the hardest ones to get to, but they're a better target, right? Isn't that what you were talking about when we accepted this job?"
"I didn't expect it to be this difficult. Our hands are tied, all we can do is watch Energy as he fights and hope he slips up and gives us something on his identity."
"Well, we know he goes to Hetalia Academy. We know, then, that he is most likely rich, and that he is an upperclassman, based on simply what we can see. That is a lead of some kind. Here, let me look up a roster. We can look through the kids and see if any of them have a match to Energy."
"To what end? What if, like his hair and eyes, he has more on him? Like makeup that would make his face look different? This is pointless, we need something more than guessing games if we want to get anywhere."
"It's okay, I believe in you. The boss won't do anything to you, you're one of his most valuable people. We both are. Let's just take this slow and figure it out."
The heat's coming down on the two voices. Yes, those are the two original ones and we still don't know who they are, how interesting. Anyway, we got a little bit of PruCan fluff and a little bit of Energy fighting. In any case, this appears to be mostly filler chapter, but their bonding moments are important. Don't worry, I'll have a little more plot move next chapter. I need things to happen before other things happen, so don't worry, things will be happening.
By the way, to clear things up, to me at least, x-ray vision is when you can look through a layer. Like, if you're looking at a person with clothes on, it's the ability to see through to the skin. If it's bare skin, you can look to their bones. If it's a building, you can see through a wall. Simple things like that. Just to clear things up.
Please review! It's great and kind and all that good stuff!
