I'm just hoping that everyone from NPIS finds this; I loved your support for that fic, guys, and I hope this one can be as popular!

As is typical of me, I've already thought of a sequel to this XD. It's little more than a concept at the moment, but what would you think of a trilogy? :D

Okay, back to the current fic. Enjoy!

~England's POV, sometime in 2079~


My head throbs, the only signal that I have returned to consciousness, since the burning pain is fully gone.

Experimentally, I try to move my right arm, but it feels almost like it's pinned to the ground with fatigue. I try again, and succeed in getting a finger to twitch, then my whole hand. The floor beneath me feels carpeted, yet not as comfy as my living room's floor.

Where am I?

Sluggishly, I open my eyelids. The room around me is blurred, but I can see several long, thin, and evenly spaced lights above me. I strain to focus, and just about see that they're energy-saving lights, the type you'd have in a classroom. But why would I be in a classroom?

"...transferred too much," I hear a faint voice saying, somewhere to my left.

I tip my head to the left, but something prevents me from doing so. Then I notice the thick helmet on my head, buzzing faintly. Needless to say, it confuses me just as much as my present location.

But nothing confuses me more than the familiar person, whose identity I can't pinpoint, I see lying to my left. I begin to lapse back into sleep again, but not before I recognise him.

He's me.


My eyes open again, and even though I can't tell how much time has passed, it feels like I only just blinked. The same ceiling hangs above me, and the same carpet is underneath me.

I look over to my left again, wondering what was just going on, when I notice that he isn't there... or rather, I'm not there.

There's still a strange device attached to my head, which I notice as I turn my head back to look up at the ceiling, but the helmet is so heavy that I start falling to my right.

And there's the other me.

Still tired, I just stare at him, blinking sleep away from my eyes, and try to figure out what's going on.

"Is this a dream?" I mumble, flexing my fingers.

Suddenly, the door bangs open.

"Hey! I heard that they're all waking up now; is Artie awake too?" yells the person who - I assume - just entered the room. It takes a few seconds for me to recognise his voice.

"G-Gilbert?"

I hear quick footsteps, increasing in volume, until Prussia kneels down, leaning over me. He opens his mouth to speak, but then closes it. In all of the years that I've become closer to him, he's very rarely been short of words. On the contrary, really.

He takes in a deep breath, as if wondering how to put something into words, before finally speaking.

"You've been out for over a year. It's 2079."

"How is that even-"

He cuts me off. "When they removed all the borders, every nation around the globe lost consciousness. To put it frankly, you were all going to die."

"And you saved us with your awesomeness?" I joke.

"Ha! I wish it was that easy," he chuckles. "Actually, your survival's all because of him." Prussia motions to the side, and with difficulty I lift my head slightly, seeing a man in a lab coat standing next to a large control panel. A wire trails down from it, in my direction; it's probably linked to this helmet contraption.

"It wasn't just me, you know," the scientist replies modestly, pushing his lab goggles up to rest on his curly brown hair.

Prussia shrugs. "You conducted operations in here, so you technically saved England."

"There are two hundred more countries out there. Even if most scientists monitored two nations, some even more, that's still a considerable amount of people in our group."

Something in my brain clicks. "So this is why we're in a classroom? Because a school is the easiest place to get a hundred rooms?"

"Yes," he replies. "This school closed down about a decade ago." He looks around the room, sighing wistfully. "I used to go to this very school, in fact."

"Right, okay, fascinating," Prussia adds sarcastically, "but I think Artie deserves to know what's happening."

He clears his throat. "After all of the nations fell unconscious, Prussia here came to us for a solution. As you know, the majority of the public don't know and would never believe that there are personifications of countries in existence, so there was little to argue for bringing the nations back. Once we'd heard Prussia's story, we sent our colleagues around the world to seek out each country and bring them here, to America-"

"Ugh," I interject.

"It was an agonisingly long - and expensive, may I add - process, but we sped up one of mankind's longtime goals for the purpose of this project." He pauses. "We managed to combine science and magic."

"That would make humans insanely powerful," I comment, propping myself up on my elbows as energy flows back into my body. "Are you taking measures so that this power doesn't get into the wrong hands?"

"Of course. But just imagine the possibilities!" His eyes light up with excitement. "If it weren't for a couple of our colleagues being gifted with magic from birth, we would never have put this process into motion, obviously, but now our entire team has magical arts on our side. Why, in just a few years, we could-"

"Ahem," Prussia interrupts.

He seems dejected for a second, but soon picks up the pace. "Anyway, we managed to create a cloning machine using the new magic we wielded. This we used to create copies of another machine we engineered over several months of hard work, with a touch of magic: a memory transferring device." He pats the control panel next to him, careful not to press any buttons. "We set these aside in every room, until we were sure that we had enough to carry out the next, more difficult, phase of our plan. Cloning the nations."

He takes a moment to gather his thoughts, giving me time to absorb the information. Being uncomfortable in my current position, I sit up during this time.

"Each clone holds a country's memories, so that they cannot die, despite all borders being gone."

"How does that work?" I ask.

He gives me a blank stare for a second. "The science of this is rather difficult to explain. As is the magic. With these two factors combined, it's safe to say that it will be a while before we'll be able to explain this properly. A long while."

"So then," he continues after another pause, "I need to ask you a few questions." He gives Prussia a pointed glance. "This is for scientific purposes. Prussia, you may leave now."

Prussia looks for a second like he's about to snap at him, but then he steps back.

"I'll get you some food while I'm gone, okay?" he says to me, before walking out.

As the door closes, the scientist tells me I can remove the helmet. I gladly comply; it was making my head hurt.

"What's the last thing you remember?" he asks, picking up a clipboard from the side of the control panel.

"I remember... a burning pain coursing through me, but I was too exhausted to properly react. I was barely conscious enough to even think that I was dying." He nods and takes notes of that, commenting on how other nations reported the same thing. "And Prussia called my name just before I blacked out."

Before he asks the next question, I decide to ask a question myself.

"Did he bring me here?"

I look up to see him smiling. "Yes. He paid for the entire Pacificapsule trip."

"Pacificapsule?"

His expression changes to surprise. "Did you never hear about the dual tunnel system they built under the Pacific?" I shake my head. "I can't imagine why you haven't; its development was on the news for years..."

"Well, Gilbert usually takes control of the Linaron in our house," I reply - I suppose that's partially true.

"Haha, I see. Well, in these two tunnels, there are several capsule-shaped carriages, which can take you from Spain to the USA."

"Wait - that means he drove to the southern coast of England, took a ferry to France, and then drove all of the way to Spain?"

"Evidently, he'd go great lengths for you."

I stare at the door, trying to take in the fact that Prussia, who's known for being egocentric and incredibly annoying, would do such a thing for me.

"Wow," I eventually whisper.

"You owe him your life."

I chuckle. "I owe you too."

"I'm just doing my job," he replies, shrugging. "You really should thank my boss, but she's busy dealing with a very different clone."

"Different?" I tilt my head to the left slightly, in confusion.

"We didn't have any of the ancient nations to clone directly from - Rome, Germania, Ancient Greece, or Ancient Egypt, to name a few - but they were once countries too, and it's important to preserve their memories as well. So, we collected information about all past nations from their descendants' minds, and combined them all together into one entity. However, something went wrong in the process, and this 'clone', if she can be called one, is twice as big as the average human, and somewhat... unstable."

"Ah," I reply, pretending that I understand what's happening. "So when is he meant to be waking up?" I enquire, nodding towards my sleeping clone.

"He woke up not too long ago," he replies, "although, that was technically you. I went too far with the transfer, and not only copied over your memories, but also your conscious mind. That was easily resolved, though. Anyway, he should be waking up again, as a separate being, any time now. The transfer is complete, and the vessel itself is clearly functional."

I look over to my clone while he's speaking; his chest is moving up and down, an obvious sign of him breathing.

"Is he actually... alive?" I ask.

"'Alive' is a rather ambiguous term at this stage. I suppose you could say that he is."

At this point, the clone awakes. As he opens his eyes, the first thing that strikes me is their colour: bright red. I give the scientist a puzzled look, and he explains that they edited each clone's genes slightly to make their eye colour negative, as a method of differentiating between the clones and originals.

The clone's eyes dart around, and he tries to sit up, but barely manages to move due to the helmet.

"Shhh," the scientist comforts him. "You're still weak. Just stay there for a while."

However, he doesn't manage to calm the clone's panic. "Wh-what's happening? What am I doing here?" His voice is somewhat raspy, but also... vaguely angelic, for want of a better adjective. I suppose it's a result of the magic.

He looks him dead in the eye. "What am I?"

The scientist fails to reply, stuttering, for a second. "Y-you're a clone."

"A clone?" he echoes.

"Yes."

"But... I'm the United bloody Kingdom! What are you on about? I'm not a clone!"

"Oh dear." He looks at me. "I think I need to reprogram the machine slightly."

He moves over to the control panel and begins to change something there, pressing multiple buttons and entering commands. Not entirely sure what to say, I just stare at my clone.

Suddenly, he stops speaking, and his eyes widen with horror and confusion. His limbs twitch for a few moments, and then are still.

"Okay, he shouldn't think that he's you anymore," the scientist calls over his shoulder. "I'll just remove the helmet now."

As he does so, the clone begins to speak again, to me this time. "Who am I? I can't remember my name."

"It's your responsibility to give him a name," the scientist adds. "He's going to be living within your household. Unless that's inconvenient for you, in which case other arrangements could be made..."

"No... no, that won't be necessary." For some reason, looking at a being who's only an eye colour and identity away from being me, I feel a strange sort of bond. I don't want to call him by my name, since that would cause confusion, but it would feel wrong to give him a completely different name...

At the perfect time to derail my train of thought, Prussia bursts into the room.

"Who wants McDonald's!" he shouts, in a tone that's more of an announcement than a question.

"Well then, you three enjoy your meal," the scientist says as Prussia opens a huge box full of chicken McNuggets and onion rings. I'm surprised that they're still in business. They even devised new formulas for their food a couple of decades ago, which completely destroyed their junk food reputation.

I hand some of the food to the clone, giving him a little bit of energy to actually reach the box itself.

"In the meantime," he continues, "I'll book a Pacificapsule for your departure."