Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia or Welcome to Night Vale. If I did, I would not live in the basement of someone I hold in contempt. So you know, there's that.

"... and they could not stop the bleeding.

"Listeners, there has been an incident at Night Vale International today. On a chartered flight from Heathrow Airport, several of the passengers, including the pilot, suffered an unfortunate fate: their faces melted off the brittle shell that protects the flicker of flame that is our conscious existence in this peril-filled hellscape of thinly encrusted, molten rock hurtling through time and space at unimaginable speeds. When interrogated by the Sheriff's Secret Police, the flight attendants and other passengers would only repeatedly ask, "Where is Night Vale? What is this place? How do we get home?" Several of them were then taken to the abandoned mine shaft outside of town for indefinite detention when it was revealed they had several contraband materials, including: pencils, notebook paper, a copy of Herman Melville's Moby Dick, and one container of Bubblicious Gum.

"And now, traffic."

"And what is your experience with Black Magic?" asked the man with a traffic cone on his head.

Arthur sputtered, for one bizarre moment considering answering truthfully, but then he remembered the last time someone had asked him that and he'd ended up at the stake. Burn me once, as the saying goes. "None!" he lied. "And I demand to speak to an actual officer! A man is dead! This is not the time for, well, whatever it is you think you're doing!"

The man, who Arthur now noted was wearing a felt mustache, scowled. "I am an actual officer!" he insisted. "In fact, I'm the Sheriff of the Secret Police!"

Arthur rolled his eyes. "If you were actually the 'Secret Police' then why would you have told me that? You're not exactly 'secret' if you go around telling everyone you are!"

This seemed to stump the man, as if the thought had genuinely never occurred to him. He gaped at Arthur. "My entire life has been a lie," he whispered.

Arthur strode away, furious and intent on finding a real officer. "Excuse me," he asked an older woman who had been standing nearby. When she turned to him, he took a startled step back. Her eyes held the paradoxical young and ancient gaze of a Nation, and yet everything else about her was definitely human. Arthur morbidly wondered if her eyes had been stolen, but that was ridiculous.

"Yes, dear?" she asked in a surprisingly firm and youthful voice for her age.

"Ah, well, could you direct me to the police station? It's a bit of an emergency."

"I could," she nodded, "but the sheriff is right over there. He's the one with a traffic cone on his head."

Arthur could have punched her.

An hour later found Arthur sitting on the curb outside the airport. He'd tried unsuccessfully to charter a flight to his original destination but had only been met with blank stares.

"Venice? Is that near Francia?"

"No, it's in Italy. And it's pronounced Frah-nce."

"Itolly?"

Arthur had known that geographic knowledge in the States was abysmal, but this was frankly just ridiculous.

"Les sourcils! Et ici je me croyais seul dans ce lieu désolé!"

"Oh fuck me," Arthur swore just as Francis Bonnefoy came into view. "And here I thought I was already in hell. The universe just has to get its jollies by fucking me over, doesn't it?"

"Don't be so dramatic, Anglais," Francis scolded. He flicked his hand over his shoulder as if pushing his hair back, letting his obsidian cufflinks glimmer in the desert sun. A superfluous move, Arthur noted, given that his hair was pulled back with an elastic band. He felt like he might be sick.

"Leave me alone, crapaud," he snarled.

Francis clasped at his heart as if mortally wounded. "Alas, I see our time apart has done little to fix your abhorrent manners."

"And I see it has done little to fix your abhorrent features."

Francis curled his lip in distaste. "And for a moment I was actually excited to see you."

Arthur smirked.

At that moment, a cab finally pulled up. Hoping to be able to distance himself from the other country, Arthur pulled open the cab door and came to an immediate halt. What he had assumed to be a regular human driver was actually some sort of being. Arthur could not adequately describe what he was seeing because he could not focus on more than one aspect of the creature at time. If pressed, he could only say that they were made of a lot of angles and more than one pair of eyes.

"Hello," the being spoke, "my name is Erika. Where to next, Mr. Kirkland?"

AN: happy Valentine's Day, you filthy animals. Since I'm some sort of loser with nothing to do this holiday other than sulk in the basement where I currently reside, you guys get another chapter of this garbage. Congrats, I guess. To those who favorited and followed, I can only ask, "why". And also thank you in believing in this thing even though I'm not entirely sure the plot is going. It's probably going to come out something like the unholy combination of John Dies at the End and Welcome to Night Vale weirdness. So if you're into that stick around. If not, do whatever the fuck you want, I'm not your mom.