Change of plans, everyone! I know we said last chapter that we were vanishing off the face of the planet for the month because we wanted to do National Novel Writing Month and because Warsaw wanted a break from WWII, but since we've been vanishing a lot lately, we felt bad about doing it again, so we came up with an alternate plan: Vilnius is taking over the story for the month.
So for National Novel Writing Month, I'm going to try and write fifty thousand words of In Our Solemn Hour. And edit them, and post them, and also try to deal with school at the same time. I'm just going to post chapters as I finish them, so don't expect a normal update schedule.
As France and England would put it, I'M GOING TO DIE! Wish me luck, everyone!
Disclaimer: Well, we didn't own the story when it was both of us working on it. Having only Vilnius working on it is unlikely to change that.
Chapter 21: Overreaction
August 5, 1940
Berlin, Germany
"They did not postpone the operation."
"They postponed the operation."
"They can't!"
"Yes, Prussia, they definitely can. And did. And I know you don't like it, but there's nothing you can do, so you're just going to have to—"
Prussia, unsurprisingly, interrupted his brother. After all, when you've thought of an argument to make, why bother letting the other guy finish making his. "What about you? Is there something you can do?" Prussia demanded. "Come on, just try and talk them into it."
Germany gave his brother a Look. "They're not going to change their minds. And I'm not going to try and convince them to change their minds because I agree with them. We're not ready to invade yet. You know that. Believe me, I want to fight England too." A thought occurred to him. "Although I must say, I'm not a fan of the idea of having him and France in the same house." Prussia shuddered at the thought, so Germany took this opportunity and ran with it. "Exactly, see? Nobody wants that. So instead of thinking of this as another annoying delay, try thinking of it as extra time to appreciate being able to boss around France without the headaches of having to deal with him and England in the same house."
Prussia considered this for a second, head cocked to the side as he thought it over, playing with his seatbelt with one hand. "Neh, if England and France get too annoying with their arguing, I'll just make them do some stupid, pointless, time-consuming chores on opposite ends of the house."
"You've thought this through already?" Germany asked.
"Mostly I just want to see how long it would take England to alphabetize the entire library. Or else chronological-ize the entire library by the year the books were published. And then when he's done, I'll tell him to put it back the way it originally was and I'll watch him go insane." Prussia leaned back in the passenger seat, clearly visualizing the look on England's face when told to undo hours of work. Between Germany, Prussia, and Austria's books, collected over the course of several centuries, the library was quite extensive.
"You really have thought this through," Germany observed. "What would you do to France, then, if England's reorganizing the library?"
"He'll be on his hands and knees, scrubbing every square inch of the floors until they shine," Prussia said immediately.
"Revenge for when he made you do that?" Germany asked. Prussia winced at the memory. Until the floor shines hadn't been an exaggeration; France had declared the floors not clean enough and made him redo the whole thing twice before finally letting Prussia go to bed. That had been the day that Prussia had learned that Napoleonic France did not tolerate backtalk.
"And he'll do it with a toothbrush," Prussia added vindictively.
"I don't think it's physically possible to finish that in a day," Germany pointed out.
"His toothbrush," was all Prussia said.
"You're evil."
"I'm awesome," Prussia corrected. "And I notice you're not saying you'd intervene."
"Well…" Germany tried not to look like he was fighting back laughter. "I'd have to intervene eventually," he said.
"How long is eventually?"
"Um…" Germany thought it over. "I'd at least wait long enough for the lesson to sink in."
"I have the awesomest little brother in the world, yes I do," Prussia singsonged, looking like Christmas had decided to come a few months early. "Of course, you'd be even awesomer if you'd get this invasion un-postponed."
Germany groaned. They were back to that already? He'd hoped to use the ways to mess with France and England topic to distract Prussia for at least a few more miles, but of course the obnoxious little warmonger couldn't wait to get back to complaining that the invasion of England had been pushed back because of bad weather and the fact that Team Germany had yet to achieve air superiority. Prussia had managed to wriggle out of coming to the relevant meeting (Germany was a little afraid to ask where he'd been instead), and had only reappeared when it was time to go home.
"Prussia," Germany started, in the calmest, least annoyed, most logical voice he could manage. "I know you want to beat up England, but we're simply not ready to invade yet. You know that." Germany strongly suspected that Prussia knowing that had been the reason for his conspicuous absence: he knew the invasion had to be postponed, but had avoided the meeting in order to avoid having to admit it.
"But it keeps getting postponed," Prussia complained.
"Then you can think of it as an opportunity to continue to torment France with the fact that we're going to beat up his ally and he can't stop us."
"Always a great way to spend an afternoon," Prussia said cheerfully, then glared at the driver in front of them. "Ugh, make that guy go faster."
"How exactly am I supposed to do that? Knock on his window and ask him to speed up?"
"He's going slow enough that you probably could. Blow the horn at him or something."
Germany sighed. This was why he hated driving with his brother: when Prussia wasn't half asleep and annoying people that way, he was complaining that not everyone liked to drive at the same ridiculous speeds that he did. "He's going at a perfectly normal speed, Prussia. I'm not…hey, get on your own side of the car! Get on the passenger side! Now!" Germany shoved at his brother, who had decided to take matters into his own hands by leaning over and trying to reach the horn for himself. "Prussia, move!"
The horn sounded off as Prussia finally managed to get his hands on it. A second later, Germany shoved him roughly away from the steering wheel and against the car door.
"Stay on your side," Germany warned. "We'll get home a lot faster if you don't cause me to crash into anything."
Prussia gave his brother a sulky look that had probably been copied off some four-year-old child denied candy. "I'm taking this out on France when we get home."
"Go ahead. Why would I care?"
"You tried to stop me last time."
"You were stopping him from doing his chores. And I didn't want to deal with another fistfight," Germany said, then caught sight of what his brother was doing. "Prussia, would you please stop making rude gestures at other drivers," he said, exasperated.
"It's not my fault they can't drive."
"Everyone I see is driving just fine. You're the one who drives like an idiot."
"I drive like an idiot? Look at that guy! He's using a turn signal! What kind of idiot uses turn signals? It lets the enemy drivers know what you're planning to do." Germany turned to look at him, and Prussia rolled his eyes. "I'm just kidding. I use turn signals."
"Sometimes. Just like you sometimes stay under the speed limit and sometimes stop for pedestrians instead of trying to go around them."
"I don't do that last one," Prussia protested, then backtracked, realizing that what he'd just said could be interpreted very differently than how he'd intended it. "I mean, I always stop for pedestrians instead of trying to cut around them," he clarified. "But speaking of going around people, you seriously need to pass this car in front of us. He's driving me crazy."
Germany glanced around and confirmed that, even if he'd wanted to perform such a maneuver, it wasn't a good idea in the current situation. "What do you want me to do? Drive into oncoming traffic?"
Prussia looked out the window. "Meh, you should be able to make it," he said, then grabbed for the steering wheel and attempted to prove this. "Speed up a bit."
Germany did not speed up a bit, and instead shoved Prussia's hand out of the way and put the car fully back into its rightful lane. "Prussia, if you don't stay on your side of the car, I will turn around, go back, and get our boss to order you to behave."
"You could have made it," Prussia sulked form the passenger seat. Germany ignored this in the interest of preserving his sanity, preventing a war from breaking out in his car, and not tempting Prussia to intervene in the driving process again.
When they finally got home, thankfully with no further interference from the passenger side, the very first thing Germany did when they walked into the house was to demand Prussia's car keys.
"What?" Prussia said.
"You have lost your driving privileges until you can convince me that your driving isn't going to generate a longer casualty list than your average war."
"I didn't do anything."
"What do you mean you didn't do anything?" Germany demanded. "You tried to steer the car into oncoming traffic!"
Norway, passing the foyer with a large, heavy looking laundry basket stopped and stared. "Why did you let him drive?" he asked Germany, a little nervously.
"I didn't."
Norway dropped the laundry basket and just stared at Prussia for a second or so before finally getting his mouth to form the word "oh." After a pause, he turned to Germany. "Could you maybe never give him his car keys back?"
"Oh, it'll be a while." He gave Prussia a pointed look. "A long while."
"So, just to clear this up, you trust me to fly a plane and drive a tank, but you can't trust that I know what I'm doing behind the wheel of a car?"
"When you're dropping bombs or driving a tank, you're supposed to destroy things. You seem to think the same principle holds true for driving a car. And thus, you are not allowed to drive until you learn otherwise." He considered this. "Nor are you allowed to sit in the passenger seat. You can ride in the back like a child until you can stop behaving like one." He held out a hand for the keys, and Prussia, clearly sulking, handed them over.
-o-
August 13, 1940
Over Kent, England
Germany still hadn't given him his keys back.
It had been more than a week and Prussia still didn't have his keys. Heck, it had been more than a week and he still didn't have front-seat privileges. So not only did he have to rely on Germany to drive him anywhere he couldn't walk to (well, Germany or Austria or Hungary, but he hadn't sunk so low as to ask Austria or Hungary for a ride anywhere), but whenever he'd go to get in the car, Germany would make sure to remind him to get in the backseat, since he clearly couldn't be trusted near the steering wheel.
Austria, Hungary, and Poland were, of course, milking this for all it was worth, and everyone else, while not quite as outspoken as the three of them, certainly seemed to be enjoying it immensely. Well, everyone but France was enjoying it; Prussia had to take his frustration out on someone, after all, and France was an easy target since he was still all mopey and depressed, which was starting to really bug Prussia because he wanted his gloating rights to actually mean something, darn it. The only thing that made gloating at France any different than gloating at a brick wall was the fact that he could gloat at France without people looking at him weird, whereas talking to walls was the sort of activity that generally would cause people to question the mental health of the one doing it.
Prussia was getting sick of Sad France and wanted Normal France back as soon as possible, thank you very much. It wouldn't be any fun to make Sad France do stupid things like alphabetizing the library or scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush, and Prussia was starting to get really sick of waiting to use those or any of the other plethora of fun ways to mess with France that he'd brainstormed.
And while we're on the subject of things that Prussia was getting sick of waiting for, he was also more than a little fed up with this postponing-the-invasion nonsense that kept popping up. Seriously, why couldn't they just beat England up already?
Okay, so Prussia knew why. Invading England before achieving air superiority would be more than a little problematic. Prussia wasn't exactly a fan of the idea of fighting England while England was still in a position to rain destruction from above. He knew that the invasion couldn't happen until that issue was taken care of, and he fully acknowledged that the invasion needed to be pushed back. Heck, if he was the one planning this whole thing, he'd have set the date for the invasion even farther back than it was currently set. He totally recognized that the date needed to be further back. But he also wanted to beat up England, and since it was someone else's job to be the voice of reason here, he didn't have to be logical. He could, and would, complain as loudly as he wanted.
He wasn't complaining at the moment, though, because right now he was working on the air superiority problem, and he couldn't really complain about not getting to invade England soon enough while he was in the process of fixing the problem that was holding the whole thing up to begin with. Well, he could, but he'd have needed someone to listen to him. Germany wasn't around at the moment, even in a radio contact way, or if he was, he was pretending to not be, and Prussia knew for a fact that Austria and Hungary weren't around because they were in Berlin and he was flying over England getting ready to bomb England's airfields.
He supposed it didn't matter at the moment anyway, because in a few seconds he was going to be hurtling toward the ground at breakneck speeds, and it's pretty difficult to complain about anything—or talk much at all, for that matter—while doing that.
He'd remembered to leave Gilbird with Germany this time, which was good since dive-bombing with a bird stuffed down his shirt once was more than enough. So with no fear of being pecked this time around, Prussia got to work on the dive-bombing that he'd come here to do. He pulled the dive lever and started laughing like a madman as his plane hurtled toward the ground. Bombs dropped, the target presumably blew up or was similarly destroyed, and one near-blackout later, Prussia was headed back toward the clouds. There was something about dive-bombing that made it impossible for him to stop laughing like a madman, and something about it that made him really, really want to keep dive-bombing again and again. There was a reason he loved this plane, and it wasn't just because he had yet to change his mind on his first impression of the plane as being ridiculously cute. It was the best adrenaline rush ever, and for a minute or two, he was able to forget his frustration over the invasion being postponed and how he'd had his car keys confiscated and the fact that France was disappointingly boring. Because really, not only is it hard to complain while hurtling toward the ground at breakneck speeds, it's hard to think all that much, period, except about what you're doing at that exact moment.
So when it was time to go, Prussia was a bit disappointed because suddenly he wasn't speeding toward the ground, in danger of blacking out, pulling out of a vertical dive at the last moment, laughing like a madman all the way. Now he was back to putting up with boring France and stubborn Poland and snobby Austria and invasions that simultaneously need to be pushed way back and need to happen right now. Now he had to start formulating a strategy to get his car keys back from Germany, or at least to be allowed back in the front seat. And there was paperwork to do, and people to annoy, and all those other things that come with building a massive empire.
And he seriously wanted his keys back, darn it.
-o-
August 25, 1940
Berlin, Germany
Germany had hoped for a single day of peace and quiet. He really should have known that there was no way that would ever happen, and that he may as well just give up on the idea and embrace the insanity. But he stubbornly refused to give up on the idea, so he continued to be disappointed whenever his potential day of peace and quiet was thwarted by the craziness that always seemed to happen whenever two or more Nations were in relatively close proximity.
Germany often wondered how anyone had ever forged an empire without going insane.
Today was, as usual, the very antithesis of peace and quiet. Poland was banging on the piano again, attempting to play something that sounded vaguely like Für Elise, only about a thousand times slower and with the occasional wince-inducing wrong note. Meanwhile, there was a crash somewhere else in the house that Germany did not want to look into right now, the dogs were going off about something or another, Gilbird was chirping like there was no tomorrow, and Prussia was calling his name from upstairs.
Germany sighed and looked up to see his brother in the upstairs hallway outside of Poland's room, leaning over the railing, calling his name, and flailing his arms as if it would get Germany's attention sooner than the yelling would.
"What is it?" Germany called up to him, barely resisting the urge to add this time to the end of the question.
"You're going to want to see this for yourself," Prussia called back. Germany rolled his eyes, but headed for the stairs nonetheless, wanting to get this madness over with as quickly as possible.
When he reached Poland's room, Prussia was waiting impatiently, tapping his foot. At least he'd stopped the flailing. "What's wrong?" Germany asked, trying to brace himself for the answer. Considering they were outside of Poland's room, it could have been anything from illegal publications to a pony in the house. Frankly, neither would have come as much of a surprise.
Prussia led the way into Poland's room. "Whoever it is who does laundry—is it Norway?—put one of Poland's shirts in my room, so I went to drop it off in here and…well…behold," he finished, a somewhat overdramatic gesture indicating exactly what Germany was supposed to be beholding, namely a large Polish flag that had at some point been painted on to the wall.
"When did he do this? How did…where did he even get paint?" Germany asked nobody in particular, the surprise having apparently caused his priorities to become a little skewed. After several seconds, his mind began working properly again, correcting the imbalance of priorities and replacing "where did he get paint" with "how dare he paint his flag onto my wall?!"
"So what are you going to do?" Prussia asked eagerly from his seat on the windowsill, clearly more interested in the fact that Poland was going to get in trouble than in the fact that Poland had defiled the wall with his flag.
"For starters, we're not leaving this on the wall. There should be some paint in the basement. Get rid of the flag, and then search his room. If he had paint hidden in here, he might have other things hidden in here as well. Feel free to tear the place apart. While you deal with the room, I'll be downstairs having a little talk with Poland about what I expect from him now that he's living under my roof. You may want to hurry up in here, because I expect that Poland is going to end up in time-out for a few days."
Prussia snickered at the phrasing. "Hey, while I'm doing all this, do you want me to nail his window shut? If we keep locking him in here, sooner or later he's going to get the idea take advantage of the fact that time-out means we don't see him for day or so, and he'll just climb out the window and run off."
"Good idea. Just do it quickly."
Prussia eagerly headed off to retrieve the appropriate materials from the basement as Germany went off to confront Poland. Germany's anger grew with every step as he made his way downstairs, and by the time he'd reached Austria's piano room, he was beyond furious. Inside the room, Poland was still taping out Für Elise in slow motion, with Austria sitting on the bench next to him making corrections.
"Poland," Germany growled from the doorway. Poland and Austria looked up. Austria looked annoyed by the interruption, but Poland just looked curious about the cause of Germany's anger, waiting expectantly to find out if he should be proud that he'd caused Germany trouble or annoyed that he was being blamed for something he hadn't done and wished he had.
"You're, like, totally interrupting my piano lesson here," Poland complained, but he clearly wasn't too upset, since he was grinning as he said it. Someone, probably him, had caused Germany to not be happy, and that was always grin-worthy in Poland's book.
Germany, on the other hand, was not smiling at all. "Shut your mouth until I give you permission to open it," he snapped. Poland's grin faded. He might not have been scared of Germany, but he at least had the common sense to be a bit wary when Germany was clearly feeling homicidal.
Poland shut his mouth, at least for the time being, and Germany ignored him for the moment and turned to Austria. "Austria, why don't you go see if Prussia needs any help upstairs. I want to talk to Poland alone."
Austria didn't argue, leaving before things turned violent, as things were clearly about to do. He did warn Germany to be careful around the piano, but nobody paid any attention to that. Germany followed Austria to the door and, once Austria had left, shut and locked it. Poland swallowed hard and got off the bench, clearly wanting some freedom of movement when violence inevitably happened. Because really, nobody locks the door of the room they're in if they don't expect someone to feel it necessary to use that door. Germany turned to the smaller Nation. "I was just in your room," he said, his tone one of forced patience. "Prussia found the flag you painted on the wall."
"Awesome, huh?" Poland said, grinning in a sort of hooray, I did something defiant; now I get to be murdered for it way.
Germany strode over to Poland (who, Germany was pleased to see, leaned a bit away from him as he approached, not quite backing away, but clearly wanting to. Good; he should be scared) and backhanded him. "You'll speak only when I give you permission."
Poland rolled his eyes, earning him another backhand, this time hard enough to cause him to lose his balance and stumble a step or two before catching himself.
"So you thought you could get away with painting your flag on the wall of my house," Germany said, still not letting himself devolve into yelling just yet. "Exactly how long did you think you could hide something like that?"
"I wasn't hiding it. You just, like, never happened to see it."
Germany exhausted his supply of patience and seized the front of Poland's shirt, which he used to slam the rebellious Nation into the nearest wall. Germany glared down at him. "Your old flag has no place in my house," he growled. "You are not a country anymore. Poland no longer exists."
Poland glared back at him, defiant. "I don't know about that. I'm standing right here, and I'm not going anywhere except out of your house."
Germany punched him. "I didn't give you permission to speak. Hold your tongue or I'll cut it out."
What would soon become a black eye didn't seem to faze Poland, but the threat shut him up, if only from the unexpectedness of it and the fact that he maybe wasn't entirely sure if it was hyperbole or not. Germany wasn't quite sure either, to be honest. He certainly felt angry enough to do, if not that particular bit of violence, then at least that level of damage if this insolent little piece of scum didn't learn his place soon. Poland didn't turn off his defiant glare, although the fact that his soon-to-be-black eye was currently squinted closed and turning puffy certainly knocked the impressiveness of his glare down a few levels. And he did, in fact, for once in his life, shut up and stay that way.
"Your flag, or rather, your old flag, has no place in my house," Germany continued, now without interruption. "You are not a country. You have no flag, no language, no culture, no history because you are nothing. The only reason you still have your pathetic life is because I allow it, and you'd better learn your place in this world soon because I can stop allowing it whenever I choose. You live under my roof, you work for me, you obey my rules and my orders, and that's it. Your flag has no place in my house. Your rebellion has no place in my house. You are not a country; you're barely even a person. You exist for the sole purpose of serving me and the sooner you accept that, the better.
This was well beyond Poland's ability to ignore, and he quickly found a counterargument: he spat in Germany's face.
Germany froze, standing perfectly still for several seconds as he processed what had just happened. Finally, he reached up and wiped his face on his sleeve. Then he let go of Poland's shirt and grabbed him by the throat, slamming him against the wall a time or two, then holding him there with enough pressure to nearly crush Poland's windpipe. Poland choked, trying to get air into his lungs, digging his nails into Germany's hands, trying to force him to let go. He struggled desperately, trying to pry Germany's hands loose, kicking Germany in the shins, growing more desperate and more scared by the second.
Finally, Germany flung Poland forward and let him fall to his hands and knees, gasping and choking. Germany let him recover for a second or so before kicking him hard enough to make him fall on his face. As Poland rolled over and shakily tried to sit up, Germany pushed him back down and more or less beat him to a bloody pulp over the course of the next minute or so before he finally stopped and stood up, noting as he did so that there was blood on his uniform. That was annoying; he'd have to wash it out once he was done here. Poland groaned and tried again to sit up. He wasn't in any shape to actually accomplish this, even without Germany planting a combat boot on his chest and pressing down.
Break his will to resist, break his ribs, were the two really all that different?
Germany didn't break Poland's ribs, though. Not yet anyway. He waited until Poland was getting good and ready to scream when the bones broke, waited until Poland was resigned to the fact that he was about to be in serious pain (well, more serious pain), then picked back up speaking where he'd left off before being so rudely interrupted, now that he'd ensured that it was unlikely to happen again.
"You are nothing," Germany told the boy under his boot. "I am superior to you in every way."
Poland scoffed, although it sounded more like choking than anything and was accompanied by flecks of blood from his mouth. "As if," he managed to get out.
Germany applied more pressure on Poland's ribs, causing the boy's face to contort in pain. "I told you, you'll be silent," here he applied slightly more pressure, "until I give you permission to speak."
Poland didn't reply out loud, instead making a small, pained sound in the back of his throat and grabbing at Germany's boot, trying to force it off his chest.
"Cut that out unless you want me to crush your hands," Germany told him. Poland did as he was told. Maybe he did have some survival instinct left after all. "Now, what on Earth gave you the idea that you could get away with painting your former flag on the wall of my house?" Germany demanded, then added, mostly to tick Poland off, "you can speak now, by the way."
Poland's reply was a pained and raspy "already told you, wasn't hiding it."
"So you knew you'd get caught and yet you did it anyway?"
A weak nod. "Worth it." More pressure, a grimace. "I…I just wanted something—" a strange choking sound "—something from home. Something from my culture."
"Whatever pathetic culture you may have had ceased to exist the moment I defeated you," Germany snapped, sick of explaining this.
"There is nothing pathetic about my culture!" Poland retorted, which would have been much more impressive had the words come out a little clearer and if he hadn't had to stop mid-sentence to choke out blood and if he hadn't been lying on the floor with Germany's boot holding him down and threatening to break his ribs. "Especially…" another pause to cough up blood "…compared to yours…"
Germany was sorely tempted to break Poland's ribs right then and there, but he figured he should save that until the end of the conversation. It was hard enough to get Poland to shut up and listen to him as it was; broken ribs would only distract him more.
"What were you playing when I came in?" Germany asked instead. "Für Elise? Beethoven? That's my culture. What have you ever had?"
"Chopin, for starters. You'd, like…" Poland paused and coughed up more blood, and Germany wondered why Poland would put in the effort to add unnecessary likes to a sentence he was having enough trouble getting through as it was. "…You'd think you'd know that since Austria's always playing his stuff. He doesn't seem to have a problem with my culture." He coughed, and squirmed under Germany's boot, so Germany dug his boot into Poland's chest a little harder. "That's just you, since you're all egotistical and stuff," Poland added.
"If you think your culture is so much better, why were you playing my music?"
"Austria picked it. It's kind of a standard piano lesson piece." He paused, but didn't cough up blood this time around, making Germany think that what came next was mostly added as an afterthought to make up for the lack of defiance in the previous statement. "Your composers suck, but it's sort of a piano lesson thing to be able to play the first bit, so..." he trailed off, the effort of so much talking having obviously hurt him quite a bit.
"Well then, if you don't like my composers, you can stop playing their music," Germany retorted. Poland rolled his eyes.
"What, are you six? I insulted you so I can't play with your toys anymore?" He spat out a glob of blood, then continued. "Am I not invited to your birthday party either?"
Germany finally lost his patience and stomped down on Poland's chest and broke his ribs to shut him up. How well this worked is debatable: it stopped Poland from continuing to speak, but he did scream. Germany watched him in disgust for several seconds before finally snapping "be quiet and get up." He didn't get anything comprehensible from Poland, just more sounds of pain, so he took matters into his own hands and roughly pulled Poland to his feet. He dragged Poland to the doorway, unlocked and opened the door, then more or less dragged him through the living room, up the stairs, down the hall, and to Poland's room, the floor of which was covered in Poland's few belongings, and the wall of which had fresh paint on it. Germany shoved the injured Nation into the room and shut and locked the door. There was a thump on the other side of the door. Poland had kicked the door. And he accused Germany of being childish?
"Shut up and stop kicking the door," Germany snapped and walked away to inform Austria of this new restriction on Poland's piano lesson music.
"Oh, hey, Germany," Prussia said, half-running up the stairs to meet him. "You done talking to Poland?"
As if on cue, there was a crash from Poland's room; probably he'd tried to crawl onto his mattress (which Prussia had shoved off the bed) and knocked something over in the process.
"What did you do anyway?" Prussia asked. "There was a bit more screaming than I was expecting." He peered curiously at Poland's door, as if he'd be able to see the answer through the wood.
"I gave him some bruises, broke a rib or two, and locked him in his room," Germany said, ignoring the fact that the some bruises bit had been the understatement of the century.
Prussia raised an eyebrow skeptically, and Germany suspected that Prussia had seen through the understatement. "You don't think that was maybe a little much?" he asked. "I mean, yeah, he painted his flag on the wall, and yeah, he shouldn't have done that, but that was mostly just a stupid, kinda desperate attempt at hanging on to some of his old identity. It's not like it really affects anything in the long run."
"If we let him get away with this—"
"I know, I know. And I'm not saying we should let him get away with this. I'm just saying that I think you might have overreacted. I mean, you're right that we can't let him get away with this sort of thing, but…but that was a lot of screaming. And I looked, and there was a lot of blood. Discipline is one thing, but that looked like something else entirely."
"You're right," Germany admitted. "I guess I might have overreacted a bit. I just…I don't even know," and now that he thought about it, he really didn't know what he'd been thinking. "I guess I just wanted to make sure he never tried anything like that again."
"Well, you definitely made sure he's not going to try anything like that anytime soon," Prussia said, glancing in the direction of the piano room and shuddering a bit, even though he couldn't actually see the room itself. "Seriously, West, you don't have to kill people over graffiti."
"I didn't kill him."
"It sure looks like you tried to. You're starting to scare me a little. First you burn down his house and don't know why, now you massively overreact to graffiti and try to paint the piano room with his blood."
"Sorry," Germany said. "Next time I won't overreact like this, I promise."
"How about you just don't let there be a next time?" Prussia suggested.
"That works too," Germany agreed.
Author's Note:
Historical Stuff:
- Right. Operation Sea Lion got postponed because of weather and the failure to achieve air superiority. Prussia is endlessly frustrated by this, and he's going to continue to be endlessly frustrated because it's going to continue to happen. In other news, France wasn't exaggerating a few chapters ago when he said that Prussia drives like a maniac, although he doesn't usually try to intervene from the passenger side. Either way, he's not getting his keys back for a long while.
- So Team Germany had to postpone their invasion because they hadn't achieved air superiority yet. Obviously, they should do something about that. So Prussia gets to go dive-bombing again on what Team Germany called Aldertag, or "Eagle Day", the first day of Unternehmen Alderangriff (Operation Eagle Attack), the operation in which Team Germany attempted to destroy England's air force and gain air superiority in order to invade England. (Spoilers: it didn't work. You can tell by how they never invaded England.)
- And finally, Germany goes ballistic over finding out that Poland had painted a Polish flag on the wall of his room a couple chapters ago and through pure chance, this is the first time anyone noticed, or at least the first time anyone noticed and told Germany. (It's not like Team Germany goes in Poland's room very often, and nobody else is likely to tattle.) And while anyone in Germany's position would probably be pretty ticked off about this, Germany overreacts kinda like he overreacted to Poland's house daring to exist a while ago. Yay, he's going crazy. Just...you know, slowly. Just to clarify, if a country is going crazy on the scale of Nazi Germany, it's definitely going to start affecting the Nation sooner or later, whether they like it or not.
Authory Stuff:
Vilnius's Note: Oh my gosh. What have I gotten myself into? Well, at least I seem to be off to a good start: I had the last scene of this chapter mostly done already, but I finished it up and wrote the first two scenes in one day. That's not too bad, right? Of course, I have no idea when the next chapter is going to be posted, since I have a German test tomorrow and Quidditch practice tonight. (Yeah, Quidditch like in Harry Potter. Look it up; it's the best sport ever, even without flying broomsticks.) Anyway, my word count is currently at 3089, and I am way behind, so I'm going to shut up and start learning German so I can get back to writing and hopefully catch up soon.
Warsaw's Note: Heh, no, I didn't write anything here. But I did help plot it, so...you know. And I wrote some of the next chapter last National Novel Writing Month (or was it Camp...?), so it's not like I'm completely sitting the month out, right? Anyway... I have this research/persuasive essay due tomorrow for English 101, and I hadn't started it when I got home today at 6:00. That's a bad habit, guys; don't copy me. Anyway, I currently have two research papers due soon, rehearsal every day until 5:00 PM after school, five big tests in the next two days, and...basically just the perfect storm of life complications. And National Novel Writing Month, which is, like, the crown jewel in the Life Complications crown. Also, I'm out of Earl Grey tea. How is a person supposed to survive without Earl Grey tea, I ask you? Also, is it wrong that I nearly cried in History last week trying to choose between Blitzkrieg and U.S.-China relations during the Cold War as my history paper topic? Thank goodness I have a friend who's doing the Opium Wars, or I would have been downright hysterical trying to choose between the three of them. Wow, I'm a geek. I mean, gosh.