Aaaand, we're back! I've got a busy day today, so I'll keep this short; this one's pretty dark, so content warning for: a slap to the face, discussions of trauma, hair pulling, and a lot of crying. Keep that in mind as you read. I'll see you at the bottom.


Chapter 10: Being Tormented; Part 3

His outfit was the most elaborate out of everyone's: a long white tunic-thing with a black cross on the front, a belt, long black boots, gray chainmail sleeves, and black gloves. On his back and tossed slightly over his left arm was a long white cape with another black cross stitched on the side. His gray-white hair was thick, and could have been called fluffy under better circumstances. It was pulled into a ponytail thrown over his shoulder, and his eyes were navy blue—the first person to not have a variation of pink, red, or purple in their eyes.

He stared down at me, mouth pressed in a thin line and white eyebrows furrowed. His eyes burned into me, an almost physical heat trailing up and down my form. My unfortunately correct assumption: he loathed me with a burning passion.

Veneziano, Romano, England, America, Canada, China, Japan, France, Russia, Germany, Spain… I guess that leaves…

I slowly held out my hand and tried to have a presentable smile. "H-hello, are you… Prussia?"

He was silent for a few seconds, then gave a slight nod.

"Oh, o-okay, well, I'm… The Author… You, uh, probably already know that, haha…" I held my hand a little higher.

He continued to stare.

Then slowly… slowly… he took my hand. I tried not to flinch. Whereas Russia had clearly suppressed his strength when he shook my hand, Prussia was doing no such thing.

Despite this, I had the distinct suspicion that he was only giving me a taste of his true power.

After an agonizing moment, he let go; but he didn't back away. He just… kept… staring.

As much as I hated conversation with strangers, I hated being at the center of an awkward silence even more.

"…Uh." I began. His eyes snapped onto mine and I faltered. "I, uh… was in your country! For a bit…Um-"

"I am aware."

I jumped slightly at his tight, quiet voice. "Uh, right…" I paused. "It was… interesting! And… yeah. Um, I'm actually kind of curious about… a lot of stuff… about your country. Like…" I drew a blank until the deep blue of his eyes reminded me of something. "The buildings in the city! They were, um, really pretty! But I don't actually know what the buildings were for? Like, were they residential, or business, or-?"

"Residential. That is my only city, so there is nowhere else for the people to live legally," he answered.

"Oh, okay." He began to walk around me, never taking his gaze off of me. I did the same, turning in place with him so I didn't end up getting beaned over the back of the head by an angry outburst. "Would you mind if I asked you about some other… stuff?"

He stopped when he was behind me, and I was now stuck between one rock that really, really hated me and a bunch of other rocks who only seemed to slightly hate me. "You will insist on it, anyway."

I opened my mouth to deny that, but closed it again when I realized he was right. So, I decided to press. "Um, okay, so… how long have there only been twelve nations in your world?"

"Two hundred years."

"…Only two hundred?"

"The memory of the other nations was erased after we took over."

"Why?"

"…'Why'?"

"Why were the memories erased? And also, um, why are there only twelve countries?"

It occurred to me then that none of the other nations had spoken up, to complain about "lost time" or for any other reason. I got the feeling that Prussia had specifically requested some "alone time" with me, and the other second players had to respect that.

After a long pause, he said: "The twelve great nations were trapped in the mansion for countless time loops, Veneziano being the only one to survive most of the time. Eventually, though, we all managed to escape—without any outside assistance—" he gave me a look, "—and we were approached outside the mansion gates by her. She proposed a deal: we would be the only nations in the world, powerful enough to eventually be unbound to humans, and in return, we would serve her when she needed us, and help her become a supreme being."

"…Ah." I was once again unsure of how to feel about the information I was given. "And… you were okay with that? With losing your friends-?"

"We were not 'friends' with them," Prussia said tightly, "and we are not 'friends' with each other now. It's a pure alliance, untainted with 'bonds' and 'friendship'. The border around my country was a further testament to that, though it seems the others didn't agree." He looked pointedly at the countries before snapping his attention back to me. "The only reason Veneziano is the 'leader' of our alliance is because he was the one that survived the most throughout the time loops."

"Oh, well, I guess that makes sense," I mumbled. "What about your 'no-foreigners' policy? Wouldn't that be an aggressive move to make on your allies?"

"It was a simple defense mechanism, to avoid influencing the people with ideas—"

"He was worried one of our leaders would try to marry his boss," America said.

Prussia glared at me as if I was the one who said that. "And what happened as soon as I opened the borders? Yes, they were insistent on… courting her." His attention actually focused on me again. "Any other stupid questions, you—"

"Why is your land so small?" I blurted. Someone snorted loudly behind me, and it occurred to me that I could have phrased that better. "I mean… why is the size of Prussia not that big…?" More restrained laughter. Prussia looked five seconds away from snapping me in half. "Um, w-what I mean to say is—"

"We drew. Straws." His voice was so tight that I worried he would pop.

"…Oh," I said. "So you got the—"

"Yes."

"Okay!"

That was probably a good time to stop asking questions, but something occurred to me that I should have asked before, and now that it was on my mind, I couldn't ignore it. "…How's Mari?"

The room grew about ten degrees colder. I had gone somewhere I should not have gone.

Prussia took a single step towards me. I nearly stepped back, but realized that I'd just back into the others and get trapped. I had to stand my ground.

"I'm just curious," I mumbled, not meeting his eyes. "She was sad when I last saw her, but… determined, too. She and Brittany Davidson were going to try… you know, leading the people and stuff… and maybe she'll be nicer to her people than—"

I was on the floor, pain radiating across my right cheek.

"HOW DARE YOU?!" Prussia roared. "KATHARINA WAS THE BEST THING TO HAVE HAPPENED TO THE PEOPLE OF NEW PRUSSIA IN CENTURIES! SHE COULD HAVE RULED THE WORLD WITH AN IRON FIST! ALL THOSE BEFORE HER WERE TOO WEAK AND SENTIMENTAL AND SO ARE YOU! IM VERGLEICH ZU IHR BIST DU EINE VERLEGENHEIT!"

I don't know how long I lay there, listening to him—a few seconds or a few minutes—but only one thought managed to make its way to the comprehensible surface: he hit me. He actually hit me.

It was stupid of me to think I could get out of this without that happening, but the emotions that went with such an action... I couldn't help it.

"hic…hic…"

"…Are you crying?" His voice was one of utter disbelief and disgust. "Gott, you're pathetic!"

His angry footsteps grew closer; to kick me or something, I didn't know what. I curled in on myself to hide my tears and await the impact.

The footsteps suddenly stopped, as if something had appeared in Prussia's way. "That's enough whining about your weird obsession with your leader, Prussia," Veneziano's voice said. "Remember what we were told—we're not supposed to hurt her."

Oh, well, that was—

"Physically."

…Ah.

I flinched when I felt a hand settle on my arm. "Are you okay?" Veneziano asked.

"…N-no…" I managed.

"Too bad." He grabbed my wrist and pulled me to my feet. I hid my face, humiliated.

"Are you sure we can't hit her?" France asked suddenly.

"I am less inclined to psychological torment myself," Germany agreed.

Please say you cannot, I wished at Veneziano, peeking through my hands.

Veneziano sighed, clearly annoyed at the answer he was about to give. "No, we can't. I'm pretty sure—"

"Pretty sure?!" China repeated. "Didn't you read the file?!"

"I did!" Veneziano insisted. "…A week ago…"

Everyone groaned, even the slightly more chipper ones. "Give me the file, I'll read it," Spain said, reaching a hand in Veneziano's direction. I turned to where he was pointing behind me.

Veneziano was holding a plain-looking office folder with lots of paperclips on the top defensively to his chest. "I'm the only one allowed to read the file, Spaniard, you know that!"

"Stupid rules," America muttered. Canada smacked his arm and they glared at each other. It occurred to me right then that I could have tried to manipulate the situation earlier so that they were at each other's throats, since they seemed to not actually like each other that much. Well, hindsight is 20-20, as they say.

"Un attimo, un attimo," Veneziano said as he began to flip through the file. "Likes and dislikes, strengths and weaknesses, birth certificate—"

Why do they have my birth certificate?

"…Okay, here's the 'deal' section. Now let's see…"

He slid a finger down a bullet list, reading quietly. "Time given, weak points… do's and don'ts, here we go, and then… ah-ha! Found it!" Everyone (except me) leaned forward in anticipation of the verdict.

"'Don't' numero cinque: any form of torment is permitted, with the exception of physical attacks explicitly meant to cause harm; the 'poor girl'," he put quotes around that part, "will be going through enough of that without any outside help. Accidental injuries will be assessed; don't try your luck.'"

Everyone groaned again. Prussia didn't seem to care about his potential punishment.

Why does everyone want to beat me up so much?

"Well, that's that," Veneziano sighed. "We'll have to stick with emotional trauma-oh-wait?" His inflection rose at the end and I thought, uh-oh.

"There's an asterisk~" he said enticingly (to them, not me). "It says, 'no physical torment is allowed with the exception of the common weak point of all cult members. In other words," he sneered at me and pointed to the long strand coming from the left of his head, "…her hair curls."

Everyone immediately turned to me, and I shrunk in on myself. Even after all this time, I still didn't know what that meant, but the way everyone was looking at me made me feel very afraid. A series of memories flashed by:

I reached up to pat the hair curls down when Brittany Davis grabbed my hand. "Best not touch them, mate."

"It's just hair—"

"Oh look, a door. Shall we go out?"

I reached up to find the curl, but Brittany and Casey smacked my arm down and glanced at each other for a split second.

I looked in a mirror that hung on the wall. The curls were there. That was odd. I thought about reaching up and touching them, but remembered how violently people acted when I tried. No one ever explained it to me.

"…I'm telling you; it won't work," I said. "My German is nowhere near fluent enough to pass as a native Prussian, I can't see a thing without my glasses, and I can't do anything about these." I pointed in the general area where my top curl should have been. I felt a strange tug at the base of the curl, as if it was trying to sneak out of sight.

Brittany Davidson looked at the curls oddly. "It's just hair, isn't it? Why not just brush it over?"

"That's what I want to know." I looked up at Arthur, who had been studying me with a curve of his bushy eyebrow. "I have no idea what these are for, and any time before when I tried to touch them, people would freak out, but I never knew why. No one ever told me. Do you have any ideas?"

Everyone looked at each other, then back at me. Brittany just seemed confused. I started to reach up to touch the curl that floated beside my left ear. "NO!" The Earth shouted. Brittany and I jumped. I nearly tripped over Edward the cat, who hissed and pattered away to lick his paw furiously.

"That is…" Arthur straightened his tie. "If you don't know what would happen, then I doubt that now's the time to find out, is it?"

"I suppose not…" I said slowly. "But it's just hair…"

Oh, for heaven's sake.

"If you want to conceal them, then you just have to think about it," Alfred said with a thumbs up.

I raised my brow at him. "Think about it?"

Lovino waved his hand to draw my attention. He pointed at his curl. "You have to imagine it being concealed within your hair, as if it was just another strand. It takes focus, but it's not hard, si?"

As soon as Lovino's words echoed through my head, I felt the crescent at the top right of my part slide under my hair. The thin strand that seemed to float beside my head straightened and weaved itself into the hair hanging from my head.

"Haha what curls?" I laughed weakly.

Veneziano smirked and stepped towards me.

I backed up fast, stopping less than a foot from the other countries, who were now in a fan shaped formation behind me; ready in case I made a run for it.

"Come on, ragazza," Veneziano said in a voice that was so sweet it practically made me choke. "We know they're there. You know they're there. Won't you let them down?"

"I'd r-rather not." My voice cracked. "Your tone makes me not want to do that."

"But you love learning." He sounded a little less sweet. "This is just a new experience to learn from. Aren't you curious?"

"Not curious enough for this!" I squeaked.

"Hurry up."

I shook my head. "I don't even know if they'll… listen? To me?"

Veneziano rolled his eyes and sighed. "Well, I tried to be nice about it. England," he snapped his fingers, "you're up."

England strode coolly away from the group until we were face to face. He raised a hand, and I cowered, the jewels on my bracelets flaring again.

England smiled, his face betraying no real emotion. He lifted one hand and curled his pointer finger inwards a few times, and whistled like he was ordering a dog to heel.

That wasn't what I expected.

Nothing happened, but this didn't seem to deter England; he continued to whistle, making a "come here" gesture with his finger.

"…What are you doing?" I asked.

His smile grew, and he kept right on whistling.

The sheer absurdity of the situation started to get to me. "Th-this doesn't make sense…" My voice grew lighter, and the corners of my mouth twitched.

He continued to whistle and smile, whistle and smile. I started to grin incredulously, and I covered my mouth; I was so close to laughing—no, I needed to laugh.

"This is—ridiculous!" I shook from repressing my laughter, hunched over and eyes closed.

Then England gave an unusually squeaky whistle, and it was all over.

I had never laughed at something so stupid in my life, and I had laughed at a lot of stupid things. I felt free. My eyes stopped stinging from unshed tears, and my mind stopped swirling with dark clouds of despair.

With an audible boing, my hair curls bounced out of hiding.

"Oh, goshums."

"Indeed," Veneziano replied.

New Objective:

ESCAPE!

I bolted. I didn't know which direction I went, and I didn't care. I didn't know where the exit was, and I didn't care. There was only my animalistic panic to get out of there.

It didn't last long.

The other countries grabbed me and I was yanked backwards, my struggles so ineffective that I might as well have been punching a wall.

My shoulders were pushed forward, my arms were forcibly straightened like bird wings mid-flight, and when I tried to kick at them, I was shoved onto one knee and generally rendered immobile. I yelped in protest, but they barely made a sound, seeming to need no effort in restraining me.

Veneziano took his time, strolling up to me at an agonizingly slow pace. I kept struggling, but he grabbed my chin and forced me to face him. I pulled at his grip uselessly and stared up at him with big, watery eyes. He stared back, never leaving my gaze.

"Please…" I whimpered, ashamed of myself for begging.

"Don't be so dramatic, ragazza," he said coolly. "To be honest, I'm just as curious as you." I shut my eyes tight.

With his free hand, he hovered a single finger next to the crescent at the top of my head. He hadn't touched it yet, but I took a sharp inhale through my teeth. I could feel his presence like an electric current, the curl sending pulses of electricity down into my forehead—no, not quite electricity; it was more of a feeling of disconnect, of a part of the body "falling asleep". That fuzzy, numb, stinging feeling radiated like a strong heartbeat into my face, settling especially around my eyes. It was extremely uncomfortable, but it didn't quite hurt.

He stroked the air next to my curl slowly, sending the pulses at different intensities into my skull and brain. My breath was strained, still hissing out from behind my teeth. Aside from that, it was deathly quiet.

Then he wrapped a fist around the curl and yanked.

"AGH!" I choked out, the "sleeping limb" sensation erupting into genuine electricity.

My brain pounded and I felt like the entire surface area of my eyes and tongue with were being stabbed with thick needles. My tears burned my skin.

Veneziano let go of my chin, and I desperately pulled away, but he hadn't let go of the curl. After a few panicked and painful yanks, I forced my head to be still and tried to stifle my shouts.

"Interessante," he murmured to himself. He pulled my hair curl around, seemingly at random; first to one side, then the other, then in a circle, all to my increasingly pained protests.

Amidst the burning pain, two cold spots were on my neck, as if nitrogen were freezing my skin. A pair of eyes; a familiar, hateful pair of eyes.

Prussia grabbed the curl floating next to my left ear and pulled as hard as inhumanly possible.

Electricity stabbed into my ear, rattling the bones and hair follicles in the canal and piercing my brain like a hot knife.

"STOP!" I cried out.

Everything blurred, worse than a thousand slaps to the face. I was being pulled back and forth, pushed around as I was passed from person to person like a toy. And the laughter…

It surrounded me, screaming along with the pulses in my head, cruel and uncaring and insane. It hurt almost as much as the yanking itself.

It went on for so long that I barely noticed it was over until it became clear that the room was darker now. I could barely think, but I noticed that the room felt smaller, closed in, with a single light source that glowed dimly yet painfully from across the space.

I was back in the cell. I hadn't even noticed being put in there.

My ears rang as I trembled; I could barely stand, so I did the only thing I could think of.

I lied down.

I tried not to cry.

I cried a lot.


The flashbacks are quoted directly from the first two books in this series. The curls are not unique to The Author; most of the other cult members have something similar (again, see the prologue).

England's method of summoning The Author's curls is a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 2005 movie, wherein a similar technique is used to summon the space president's second head. Don't ask.

Prussia's rant translates to something along the lines of: "Compared to her, you are an embarrassment". Prussia's respect for his previous duchess Katharina may seem unusual, especially since part of the deal was to get rid of the world leaders. At the time, Prussia was fine with this part of the deal, but he never expected a ruler like Katharina to come along, and especially not to have someone like her be the leader when things finally went down. He's not in love with Katharina (that'd be really weird), but he greatly admired her resolve and ability to get what she wanted despite the obstacles ingrained in her (which were vaguely referenced in The Cult of Steve). At some point, I'll release a one-shot that further explores this relationship.

The "lie down, try not to cry, cry a lot" meme is probably extremely dated (that's always been an issue of mine), but I don't care. the juxtaposition of something vaguely humorous after an extremely serious scene was my intention from the beginning, so I don't intend to change it.

Things cool down in the next part; and we get to meet someone who should not be there (you can probably guess who, or, if you read the earlier version of this chapter, you already know who). I'll see you all next Monday. Don't forget to leave a review! I'll give you a shout out if you do! Until then!