The sound of Poland's voice chimed loudly from the phone before Finland felt Russia's arm loosen then rapidly tighten again around his throat, forcing Finland to let out a choked gasp of pain into the phone. Finland could faintly hear the panicked voice of Poland over the sound of his struggles as he weakly attempted to pry Russia's arm from his throat. As the black spots before his eyes grew, Finland wondered why Russia wanted to reveal himself on purpose. With another clench of the Russian's arm, Finland thought no more.
Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or any of its characters.
"Dude, it's so weird that Poland is calling a meeting, like, what's up with that?" America whispered loudly to Japan sitting in the chair next to him.
"It is indeed very strange America-san, but it might have something to do with that message from Finland." responded Japan as he glanced down the long conference table where many of the nations had already arrived and were talking to their neighbors in hushed voices. Surprisingly, or unsurprisingly, most of the nations had arrived promptly instead of staggering in at their leisure, probably unsettled about the sudden text Finland had sent to every nation over a week ago which was followed thirty minutes later by an urgent message from Poland of all nations, demanding an emergency meeting.
That made the empty seats scattered through the conference room glaringly obvious, the Italian twins and Liechtenstein seats had been empty for over two months now. The gap between the Baltic states looked like a missing tooth, and the way Latvia and Estonia's gaze kept flickering to the seat between them clued in the rest that Lithuania might also be missing.
Austria walked through the doors with an unreadable face, pausing only to whisper something into Poland's ear before heading to his seat and rigidly sitting down, studiously avoiding the gaze of everyone else in the room. Whatever he had told the blond left him stunned before he visibly seemed to shake it off and start securing the room to start the meeting.
Once he had finished, Poland took a moment to gather everyone's attention, a feat that took mere moments to have all of the world paying attention to him. The others had never seen the carefree nation so serious before, and the unease many were feeling about the situation grew.
"Okay, so like, I know it's unusual for me to lead a meeting I absolutely must, but like, this is really serious, so...let me give my report and we can go from there."
When he saw a large number of nodding heads, Poland tapped the laptop that had been sleeping and started his presentation. The first slide was a picture of Liechtenstein sitting next to Switzerland, a small smile adorning her face. The gathered nations were polite enough to ignore the small cry from Switzerland's direction.
"So Lichtenstein has been officially declared as missing for a month now, after the last sighting of her going to the marketplace in Vaduz and reported missing by Switzerland a couple hours later."
Click.
The next slide showed a happy North Italy giving his grumpy twin a back hug, capturing a rare grin from South Italy. The picture next to the twins was one of Prussia standing on top of the bar of one of his favorite pubs; the picture had caught him throwing his arm up in celebration, his half full tankard sloshing around as he grinned.
"And like, the Italian brothers and Prussia have officially been declared missing for two and a half weeks now. North Italy and South Italy were last seen around their main villa just outside of Florence and had plans to later meet with Germany and Spain respectively, which was when their disappearance was first noted. Prussia was last residing in Germany's house at the time of his disappearance and what was assumed to be the mess of a drunk Prussia may have been signs of a struggle. Sadly, Germany is a like, super clean freak or something, so any evidence is probably been disposed of or contaminated."
Germany looked down in guilt; taking care of his brother was his responsibility and knowing that he probably had helped Prussia's kidnappers get away made him feel like he failed his brother. The one who had taken such good care of him as a child, even while fighting and conquering over half the continent. The one he had pushed off to the side in recent decades just because he didn't want to deal with multiple obnoxious personalities and Prussia didn't seem to mind as much as Italy had. He stopped caring about his family and now Prussia was paying the price.
The next slide clicked to show Lithuania as he awkwardly smiled at the camera, Estonia and Latvia in the background like they were teasing each other, judging by the smile on his face.
"Lithuania and now Hungary are being declared missing along with Finland as of today. We all received the message from Finland last week, but I had answered the distress call he sent out. It was very short but," Poland paused as though he was trying to find his words, "it sounded as though the kidnapper choked Finland until he became unconscious before the kidnapper presumably found the phone and hung up."
"Why are we wasting our time talking about this? We need to make a plan to defeat these terrorists!" yelled Sweden halfway down the table. The giant nation, normally quiet and calm, looked a mess. He was disheveled, clothes askew and hair sticking up all over the place from repeatedly raking his fingers through it and nearly upending his glasses from his aggressive movements. His face was flushed red in anger as he glared around the room at the shocked nations. "They took my wife and they must be punished!"
"Yah, Sweden!" yelled Poland from the front. "Like, I'm not done with my awesome and well-done presentation. Calm down so everyone can get all the deets!"
Sweden looked ready to kill until Denmark sitting next to him began speaking quietly to his Nordic brother. The tall blond huffed angrily at the situation but acquiesced with a small nod at Poland.
Letting the interruption slide (because actually hearing one of his fellow nations get kidnapped was terrifying) Poland continued.
"Anyways, the last thing was Lithuania was noted missing a few days ago after no contact with Latvia or Estonia, his last whereabouts were unknown and due to the current situation, he will be declared as missing. Hungary, as reported by Austria, is officially missing as of today," Gasps ran throughout the room, and Poland had to raise his voice to be heard above the muttered conversations about Hungary's kidnapping, "her house is empty and there are signs of a struggle through her house that are similar to those in Germany's and Finland's safe house. Now-"
"Excuse me, I have a question."
Heads snapped towards England whose hand was raised in query.
Poland whined in frustration. "Now what?"
Ignoring the whining nation, England rested his head upon his steepled hands, looking like every British detective film as he spoke. "Why haven't there been further investigations? Checking out the scenes where they were last sighted for clues, start forming a profile about this terrorist organization, doesn't Interpol have a secret division created specifically for us just in case our secret is compromised?"
Murmurs of agreement went around the table as multiple eyes looked towards the former Empire. Poland sighed tiredly as he waited for everyone's attention, which didn't take long as the nations waited anxiously.
"Yeah, normal procedure for something like this happening would be to send the special division since this would qualify as a global threat. But as I was explaining what I heard on the phone call with Finland combined with the preliminary searches they made to Switzerland's, the Italian brothers', and Germany's, the Head Director of N.S.D (Nation Security Division) pulled me to the side and declared this as a Code White."
Gasps and curses in various languages burst through the room as nations turned to each other in panic. A Code White was the highest state of alarm that they had ever since the N.S.D was formed and contingency plans were made to protect the biggest asset every country had, the living embodiment of their country. The level they were currently operating at was a Code Yellow, where the safety and security of the nations was being threatened or at risk because not all the nations were accounted for but officially declared as missing. With Poland's announcement that the seven nations were officially missing and presumably kidnapped, it made sense why the Director ordered the threat level to Code White. A Code White meant that all unaccounted nations were M.I.A and that any further actions or knowledge about finding them was to be told to no humans, even if they had the clearance to know of the existence of nations. A Code White meant that there was a possible leak somewhere in the system and no one knew when or how it had happened. There was a mole, possibly even within the nations.
"So effective immediately," Poland was now forced to start yelling over the panicked conversations, "regular world meetings will be cancelled until further notice and, as advised by the Director, any further emergency meetings should be done without the knowledge of the Director, our bosses, or any government personnel. Until they have created a new team composed of agents personally vetted by the Director or a small group of nations decides to take up the investigation, nations are asked to stay underground and the crime scenes are to remain untouched while the investigation is paused."
"But the trail can go cold by the time they form a team!" England protested vehemently as other nations nodded in agreement.
"Well if you've got a problem with it, then start a team to investigate." Poland said sharply as he pushed his hair behind his ear with an irritated flick and instantly gained everyone's silence at the out-of-the-norm outburst from a usually laidback nation.
Huffing at everyone's stunned expression, Poland began powering down his presentation as he spoke. "I've given you all the information I've got and now the world is up-to-date on what's going on with the terrorist situation. I've done my part so now we've gotta decide on like, what we're going to do next and I'm telling you now, I'm not leading it. Not with all the egos floating around here." said Poland with a smirk as several affronted "Hey!" echoed through the room.
America stood up proudly, hands on his hips as many inwardly groaned at the mirage of an American flag fluttering behind the blond came to mind.
"As the hero, it would be wrong to let the bad guys trail disappear, so I shall take on these terrorists for the good of the world. I-"
"Oh no you don't America!" shouted England as he also stood up. "You'll ruin the investigation with your stupid ideas, there is no way in the world we'll let you lead, especially with lives on the line. I will head the investigation obviously; I have some of the best investigation teams in the world-"
"Angleterre, I really think you shouldn't try to be your pipe smoking detective right now; your investigation skills really aren't the best, non?"
"What are you on about you bloody frog?"
"Yeah Iggy, everyone knows your phony magic tricks won't help in a real investigation."
"My magic is real you idiot, and stop calling me Iggy, it's England, stop butchering my bloody name!"
"Hey, you take back the name-calling! I'm not an idiot, I'm the-"
"OH MY GOD, JUST SHUT UP!"
Everyone paused and turned their eyes from the argument to peer back at the head of the table where Poland was still standing as he glared around the room.
"This is exactly what I was talking about you guys. You can't get your shit together and figure out solutions. With all your squabbling, the terrorists would catch you like easy bait before you could even begin tracking them. You might as well hope that any evidence will last the amount of time it takes the Director to form a team."
Poland lifted an eyebrow at the protests that England, France, and America made while some of the nations laughed at their embarrassment before it awkwardly petered out. But the truth was, most of the nations either didn't have the resources to start a full-scale investigation or still weren't concerned, even though the threat level was now a Code White. At the end of the day, it was still only a few nations missing (one barely even qualified as a nation) and humans tended to exaggerate a lot. It wasn't unusual for a nation to separate themselves from civilization to find themselves- America had done a year-long disappearing act two years ago and had come back more energized than ever- and their governments always panicked when they did. To the rest of the nations, they probably thought that the missing nations were just doing the same thing and didn't want to waste precious resources looking for countries trying to get away from the world.
That's why it was no surprise that everyone sat awkwardly around the table, not making eye contact with anyone or fiddling with the papers in front of them until a quiet voice spoke up from somewhere in the middle of the conference table.
"We can split into small teams?"
Canada inwardly cried at the obvious looks of confusion on everyone's face, he could practically hear the question "Who are you?" echoing through everyone's mind.
"I'm Canada."
Pause.
"Canada? The only country with a maple leaf on their flag? The country above America?"
"We knew who you were Canada." blustered England as he straightened his outfit in a fluster. "You just didn't give the rest of us time to respond. Now, when did you get here? I'm not sure how much you need to be brought up to speed about the situation, you know."
"I've been here this entire time." Canada quietly deadpanned.
A moment of awkward silence before America's booming laughter broke the silence.
"Haha! Iggy, you look like an idiot right now, my brother's been here since this meeting started, oh my gosh that's so funny!" said America between bouts of laughter as England yelled at him to shut up.
Finally calming down, America turned to face his brother and asked him to explain what his idea was. Canada was a little flustered at having everyone's attention on him for the first time ever, (except for England who was still glaring holes towards an oblivious America) but he was pretty proud of himself for getting positive acknowledgment from the world without being confused for his brother.
"I said we can split into groups and work as teams to investigate and start tracking the terrorists. If we group together the nations who want to investigate into small teams instead of a singular large unit, they can lessen the amount of resources that they need to pull in while decreasing the amount of infighting from too many egos in the same team. And if it gets to the point where the Code White is maintained or becomes worse, we can pull all our resources together as a global effort.
"The idea has merit, non?" France thought aloud as the other nations stared at the blushing Canadian.
"Much better than anything his corkscrew idiot brother would create, that's for sure." Cuba said with a smirk towards American who let out an indignant "hey" before grumbling quietly to himself.
"So, we'll take it to a vote?" asked Germany as he stood to count the hands in agreement or disagreement.
By the meeting's end three groups were formed to check out the last sighted areas of the missing nations. The team investigating the Italian brothers and Liechtenstein consisted of Switzerland, Greece, China, Germany, and Canada who would lead the team. Japan would lead another team with Russia, France, South Korea, and Spain to investigate Hungary and Lithuania's locations. And leading the investigation for Finland's safe house was England and his team with America (after much complaining and bickering), Sweden, Denmark, and Australia. They all agreed on bimonthly check-ins unless the situation got worse or they had found a lead in the investigations. Given a week to prepare and either find a place to lay low or head off to the investigation sites, the meeting was adjourned and nations trickled out solo or in small groups muttering quietly to themselves, but all had worried looks on their faces. They had never had a Code White despite planning for such a possibility and it was alarming that after all these millennia, all the wars and life changing events, the biggest and oldest secret in the world was at risk.