Hey guys! Guess what! We're not dead! We just had a whole lot of drama going on, so we kinda dropped off the face of the planet for a few weeks. But we're going to update twice a week until we get caught up on our schedule. (Well, you may or may not hear from us next week, since we may or may not end up in North Carolina without internet access for a week, but if that happens, we'll post both of next week's chapters together when we get home.)

And Hetalia still isn't ours. Shocker, right?

Chapter 13: All Too Much Faith

May 10, 1940
Rotterdam, Netherlands

Being suddenly awoken by the intense need to vomit is probably the worst possible way to start a day, so it should really surprise no one that Netherlands was not in a particularly good mood by the time he found himself fighting Austria, who wasn't exactly in the best of moods himself, not helped by the fact that he had never really been much of a morning person. And naturally, when two people who are both in a bad mood meet and have to interact, it only makes the situation worse as the bad moods bounce off of each other and come back stronger than before. Whenever there are two bad moods in the same general area, homicidal urges tend to follow very quickly.

Fortunately, unlike most mornings in which people have to remain at least somewhat civil regardless of how they feel about the person they're dealing with, there was a war on at the moment, so homicidal urges were actually encouraged, which did make the situation slightly better. After all, when you're in one of those moods where all you want to do is smash things and yell at people, shooting at the source of the problem tends to go a long way toward solving the problem. (But don't try it at home. It's a lot more trouble than it's worth at the breakfast table.)

"I was supposed to be neutral," Netherlands grumbled as he shot at Austria, hoping to put a stop to this invasion before Austria and the troops that had come with him could get a decent foothold in Rotterdam. Judging by Austria's expression, Netherlands wasn't the only one who didn't want to be here. Austria didn't look like he had much of a burning desire to get a decent foothold in Rotterdam. He looked like he'd have preferred to be at home, playing the piano. Unfortunately, however, Germany had somehow managed to get Austria to take part in the invasion, which meant that the fastest way for Austria to get home was to win, so regardless of if he wanted to be there or not, Austria was definitely not going to do any of this halfway. Not when piano playing hung in the balance.

Austria responded to Netherlands' bullet with one of his own, coupled with an indignant glare that would have been much more suited to a situation where Austria was the one getting invaded instead of the one doing the invading. It's generally accepted that shooting at invaders is the logical response, particularly when they're shooting at you. It's also generally accepted that the person invading without any sort of provocation is the one being rude, while the person randomly getting invaded is reacting correctly by shooting back. Therefore Austria had no justification whatsoever for looking at Netherlands the way people usually looked at Prussia when he was being obnoxious. Of course, the lack of justification wasn't about to stop Austria from acting like an aristocrat. And, of course, the aristocrat is always right, even when it makes no sense.

Netherlands wondered how exactly Germany and Prussia had managed to put up with Austria for as long as they had. Clearly they had developed some kind of superhuman tolerance in the past few years.

Netherlands, however, did not have superhuman tolerance, so when Austria glared at him like he was the rude one, Netherlands got ticked off and shot at him some more, unfortunately without managing to hit him. Austria may have been an annoying and pompous aristocrat, but that didn't mean he couldn't handle himself on the battlefield, and like most Nations, Austria was more than capable of dodging a bullet the instant before it was fired.

The situation continued along those lines for a while: Netherlands fired at Austria, Austria fired at Netherlands, neither of them managed to hit the other, and both of them grew more and more frustrated with the situation as time went on.

Finally, Netherlands managed to get in the first successful shot. It didn't cause any serious injury; in fact it wasn't too much more than a graze. Still, Austria was bleeding now, and knowing that fact did wonders for Netherlands' mood, despite the fact that it also made Austria intensify the power of his Aristocratic Glare™.

Unfortunately, Netherlands' mood promptly evaporated when Austria achieved similar results with his return fire, having fired just before Netherlands managed to get completely out of the way. Netherlands muttered a few rather impolite words under his breath as he glanced at the wound in his side, decided that it wasn't life-threatening, just painful, and shot back at Austria with even greater determination to win this than before, both because he obviously didn't want to be invaded and because he was now taking this invasion about twenty times more personally than he had been before. Getting shot tends to have that effect on people. Netherlands and Austria continued their battle with renewed effort, albeit for different reasons, and the status remained quo until a sharp, sudden pain ripped through Netherlands's left arm near the shoulder. One strangled-sounding yelp later, Netherlands was giving Austria a glare that would have caused flowers to wither and small children to run away screaming. He fired at Austria, getting increasingly frustrated every time he missed, every time Austria dodged, and every time Austria shot back at him. It was too early in the day to deal with a firefight, and it was definitely too early to deal with a bullet wound, although if dealing with a bullet wound was absolutely necessary, it could certainly be made more tolerable by giving Austria one to match. Maybe an extra one for good measure. Maybe a couple extra. The more the merrier, right?

Netherlands ignored Austria's annoyed, indignant glare, took careful aim, and fired again.

-o-

May 12, 1940
The Meuse River, Belgium

Belgium took a deep breath, closing her eyes just for a moment to try and calm herself down. She brushed some imaginary dust from her uniform sleeves and then let the lungful of air go free, opening her eyes and giving her head a quick shake, hoping to clear it.

The war had definitely arrived.

A couple of areal battles, some fighting at the border…already, Belgium was worried. To be honest, she had already been worried, and increasingly so for the last, oh, year or two. But England and France had repeatedly assured her that nothing would happen, that they were taking care of it. Well, Belgium thought huffily, apparently not. Because here she was, blowing the bridges over the Meuse River to try and stop the Germans before they managed to advance any further.

England and France, ha. Belgium wondered how the great powers of Europe were doing now. She strongly suspected they were busy working themselves into a tizzy as the war moved closer to home. Yes, yes, they had tried so hard to avoid the war and here it was anyway. Belgium got that; she really did. But, the thing was, she'd told them. Everyone had, but they'd been too blinded by their many, many arguments and what they wanted to see happen to really listen. Belgium had stood up in the meetings and flapped her arms at them, reminding them that she had some pretty useful ports if anyone happened to be planning an attack on the United Kingdom, so maybe they ought to do something about protecting them. In the end, though…

She hadn't been putting too much faith in France rising spectacularly to the occasion, but England…for goodness' sake, she trusted him. He'd come to her aid in the last war, hadn't he? All righteous anger and honor and promises and security, slightly adorable in all of his…well, no one actually dared to call it overcompensation for his unrulier, pirate-ier days, but that was what it probably was anyway. Because Germany had dared to attack a neutral Nation, yes, but more importantly someone under his protection, and, oh, there would be hell to pay.

But this time…this time he'd hardly seemed to notice her, offering up the token, "Thanks for your concerns," and moving right along, plowing on into other things with France at his side. And no matter how much it pained her, Belgium just had to say enough was enough one day and cut her losses, dropping back from their alliance as England and France continued their policy of repeating, "Well, I suppose that this is all right, but nothing else, do you hear me?" over and over in the desperate hopes that maybe Germany would somehow acquiesce. Germany was remilitarizing and all they saw fit to do was to waggle their pointer fingers disapprovingly and frown dangerously.

Whoop-de-do. Spare the rod and spoil the child, Belgium thought. Look, if that was how they prepared for war, then maybe she was better off on their own.

Shame, though…

France had been furious, naturally, when Belgium had announced her neutrality. He had rather been counting on defenses in her country to help protect his own, after all. So it hadn't been much of a surprise that, after seeing that she wasn't planning to budge in her newfound noninvolvement, he'd snapped a bit and ejected her from the meeting, not that she hadn't been planning on leaving immediately, anyway. She'd politely chalked it up to the stress of trying to maintain peace on the Continent, but still, it had been uncalled for.

England had gone after her. Followed her down the hall, caught her sleeve, and then given her that cursed kicked puppy look of his when she'd regretfully informed him that she wouldn't be having any more meetings with the Allies so as not to compromise her new policy of impartiality. At least he'd had the decency to be polite about his frustration.

She'd built up her defenses as the world sat back and watched Germany violate treaty after treaty, and she'd tried to get the necessary military force to back the fortifications mustered up, as well, but no. She was neutral, after all.

In late April of 1937, England and France had showed up on her doorstep, declaring that they suddenly felt her protection very, very important. France had offered up an apology, but one that could have been worded in a less…icky way, as most things Belgium's irritating neighbor said. England had demanded that he take it back and apologize properly, and then a fight had broken out in the kitchen, and Belgium had just said and gone to make tea, because really, it was England and France. What else could you expect from setting those two up as allies?

Once she'd calmed the situation a bit, Belgium had sat the boys down and explained that she was pretty sure that Germany could kick both of their butts in a fair fight—militarily speaking, of course—so they'd need to work out a plan. Just in case, you know, because Belgium was still neutral… So they'd talked and argued and then talked some more and argued some more, and in the end they'd managed to scrape up something that was fairly feasible, at least by Belgium's standards, anyway. Of course, that was before a German plane had crash landed in her territory, carrying Germany's attack plans, which—oh, joy of joys—had included an attack through Belgium, occupying some useful launching points for further offensives.

Belgium had thought the whole thing to be a little bit on the fishy side. Isn't this just a little too convenient? she'd worried, but England and France had taken it seriously enough. So Belgium had taken matters into her own hands, done a bit of scouting and snooping of her own, and concluded that Germany had a different plan—whether he'd changed it since the incident or had been planning it all along. She wasn't sure which, but what she was sure about, or at least reasonably so, was that Germany was going to attack through the Ardennes and, if all went well for them, they would surround the Allied troops and take them out.

If that was how things panned out, France's plan would end up putting Belgium in some very real danger, and the same went for England and France's troops. So, like any good, reasonably nice person would, she'd hurried off to warn them.

Apparently, an attack through the Ardennes was impossible. Apparently, Germany would obviously come up with something less insane. Apparently, Belgium was just on edge because of the increasingly tense climate in Europe, and that she really needn't worry because the Allies had a plan and they knew what they were doing.

Apparently, England and France were just a couple of giant douche-nozzles in the end. Clueless, stubborn, frustrating douche-nozzles.

Belgium had been right, not that she was particularly happy about it or anything. The next time she had the opportunity to say "I told you so," she hoped that it wasn't precipitated by an invasion of her country that she wasn't prepared to defend against. She strongly suspected that the Allies were screwed, or at least in for one very bloody, very painful, very nasty fight.

Things were getting ugly in Europe, and she also suspected that they were going to get even worse. And Belgium's suspicions had a pretty impressive track record for correctness as of late. So, here she was in retreat, hoping that France's surprisingly substantial offering of troops would be able to get her out of this mess. England had pitched in too, of course, but not as much as she'd hoped, and frankly, Belgium was beginning to feel more than a bit disillusioned with that unhelpful little bugger, that so-called gentleman.

But there was still some time for Belgium and France and England to turn this around, right? Still time for a fresher, cleverer plan, a surprising new tactic, and valiant, game-changing stand, wasn't there? Still time for someone to step up and really do something, to protect her country and everybody else's?

Belgium would've liked to think there was, but her sneaking suspicions wouldn't let her have all too much faith in that.

-o-

May 12, 1940
Ardennes Forest, France

Somehow, Prussia had gotten his way on his risky attack plan, and Germany had to admit, it wasn't actually as much of a disaster as he'd expected it to be. Either France was a lot slower than Germany had anticipated, or France was a lot more surprised by Team Germany's tactics than Germany had anticipated, or else maybe England had just thrown one of his rock-hard scones at France's head and caused some brain damage. Maybe all of these reasons, maybe some other reasons that Germany wasn't thinking of. It didn't matter. The point was that, despite Germany's reservations, things were actually going according to plan. Despite Germany's long list of the many ways that things could potentially go awry, everything was working out just fine.

Well, close to fine, at least. There was one problem with the plan: it required sneaking a whole lot of tanks through the Ardennes. A lot of tanks. And while the actual task of getting the tanks across the terrain was working out better than Germany had anticipated, there was still one big, glaring problem: the sheer number of tanks was becoming problematic. Traffic jams and congestion were slowing down the operation considerably, and giving Germany a passionate hatred of mountains in the process. And a passionate hatred of forests, and a passionate hatred of tanks, and a passionate hatred of this plan.

However, all of these passionate hatreds didn't actually matter because while they made this task somewhat more annoying, they paled in comparison to Germany's passionate hatred of France, and the thought of defeating the arrogant, perverted bane of Germany's existence was more than enough to make lesser hatreds seem utterly inconsequential.

Germany hated France, and had hated him for as long as he could remember, with the exception of a very brief period where the general dislike of the Nation that Prussia and Austria were at war with had yet to become personal. Then France had defeated Prussia at the battle of Jena, occupied Prussia's country, and dragged its personification off to Paris. Germany, not yet a country, physically and mentally a ten year old kid, and chronologically not even a year old, had gotten away, barely, and had hidden out at Austria's house for a few years, until France defeated Austria and included hand over Prussia's little brother in the peace terms. Austria hadn't had much choice in the matter, and thus France had dragged Germany off to Paris to use as leverage in order to keep Prussia in line. That was the point where life had become a living hell for Germany, and the point where Prussia's life had become even more of a living hell than it already had been, which was saying something. France had not been a particularly nice person to work for at the time.

Germany still had nightmares about it sometimes. He suspected that Prussia did too.

After Napoleon had been defeated, France had gone back to what was apparently his usual self. This was all fine and good for most people, but Germany's less-than-stellar first impression of France had kind of stuck around. The new France (well, really the old France, but new to Germany) may have been a whole lot nicer than the less-than-sane version that Germany was used to, but a first impression that traumatizing doesn't go away overnight, and France and Germany never did grow any more fond of each other. On a good day, they could hold a civil conversation without attempting to kill each other. On a bad day…well, on a bad day, there was a world war going on, and they were trying to murder each other. And that wasn't even the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario was when the war was over and France was forcing Germany to take the blame for everything.

Today, however, Germany was on his way to get revenge for that worst case scenario, not to mention for a whole lot of other things. So even though Germany was caught in the most nerve-wracking traffic jam ever—this plan was going entirely too well, after all, traffic jam notwithstanding, so Germany was naturally expecting France to attack him out of nowhere any minute now—he was in an oddly good mood, completely and totally ready to make France pay for…well, for a long list of things, really. He'd been waiting for this for pretty much all of his life. More than a century of waiting was about to pay off; Germany was finally going to completely crush France. And England, for that matter, but crushing England wasn't quite as important. Germany didn't like England, but really only because of the last war. He certainly looked forward to defeating England, but nowhere near as much as he was looking forward to having France groveling on the ground before him.

(It suddenly occurred to Germany that all his talk about defeating France was starting to make him sound like Prussia.)

Germany had absolutely no doubt that he would be able to defeat France. Particularly not if France had yet to so much as make an appearance in this war. Most likely, it was because France's military was horribly, hilariously unprepared for Prussia's new strategy. Germany may have had his doubts at first, but he had to admit, aside from the traffic jam, the plan seemed to be working. France wasn't going to know what hit him, and Germany had to admit, he rather liked that idea. Just defeating France in the war would have been enough for Germany, but if this plan worked, France was going to be completely crushed in a matter of weeks. Conquering France's country was good enough on its own. Humiliating France himself, leaving him utterly defeated in every sense of the word? That was something Germany had been dreaming of doing ever since he was a kid, ever since he'd been forced to flee Berlin with nothing more than a hastily-packed bag of essential items and the stuffed bear that Prussia had given him before leaving for the war.

Compared to the prospect of seeing his wildest dreams finally come true, the traffic jam that was slowing things down seemed oddly unimportant.

Authors' Note:

Historical Stuff:

- So finally, we get to the invasion. First off is the Battle of Rotterdam, in which German forces attempt to capture Rotterdam, which was certainly not obvious from the name of the battle. The battle lasted from May 10 to May 14, Netherlands put up a good fight, but Team Germany eventually wins.

- Considering Belgium's scene was basically nothing but exposition...you can probably figure out what happened. Because, you know, all I did was tell you what happened. 'Cause I'm a loser and stuff. Also, did anyone get and England/Belgium vibe off that scene? Because I did, but then, I see shipping EVERYWHERE. That's just me. (Love from Warsaw!)

- And meanwhile, Germany is sneaking through the Ardennes. France thought that it would be impossible to get tanks through there, which is why he's not attacking or anything. France is pretty unprepared for this whole strategy, for that matter.

- Not quite a historical note, but the references to what France was like during the Napoleonic Wars might need some explaining. Basically, we're working under the assumption that the French Revolution and the whole everyone-losing-their-head thing that came with it sort of did a number on France's sanity, so he really wasn't a nice person to be around when he was fighting half of Europe during the Napoleonic Wars.

Authory Stuff:

Vilnius's Note: Um...hey, everyone. I'm so incredibly sorry for going so long without updating! I had no free time to write for the last two weeks of school, then Warsaw had no free time to write for her last two weeks of school, so we're just finishing the chapter now. But we're going to get caught up on our schedule, I promise! Please don't be mad!

Warsaw's Note: So I got a perfect score on my American History end-of-course exam. Which is different from the final exam, by the way, because America has some sort of a freaky test fetish and all American schools do is test you on how to take tests and then test you some more. At least, Louisiana schools do, anyway... I can't speak for anyone else, but I'm mostly self-taught when it comes to history. In August, I'm starting my senior year and believe it or not, I've never been taught the American Civil War in school. This includes the American History class I just finished. Ugh. But yeah, perfect score. As in, didn't miss a single question. As in, I'm awesome. Yeppers. Sorry...just thought I'd squee...