AHH I AM SO SORRY. I didn't mean to make you wait that long for this chapter, I swear. But I couldn't write on the last week of school because exams, and then I went to A-Kon for all three days (cosplaying as Belarus), and then... well, I got distracted by the internet and designing Hetalia shirts and Ouran Highschool Host Club. Which, by the way, gave me the idea that if the highschool in this story had a Host Club, it would totally be the Nordics. Either way, IT WAS REALLY BUSY, OKAY. Still, I'm sorry. I have a long chapter for you, though~!

"Toris—Toris! Come on, why won't you—?"

Feliks reached out a hand to try to grab the back of his friend's shirt before he could walk any further away, but he snatched it back when Toris finally turned around on his own. He was relieved to see that he didn't seem to be giving him the silent treatment anymore, but he didn't like that his friend actually looked rather angry.

"I'll tell you why, Feliks—" he started, his face growing red, "—because you didn't even do anything! You could have tried harder, you could have gotten a teacher—but you didn't! You clearly don't care about this friendship that much!"

Toris was letting out all the frustrations that had built up after lunch had ended and he'd been able to leave Ivan's presence. Really, though, there were a lot of things Feliks did to annoy him that he'd been keeping himself from expressing since they met, but he wasn't going to get into those.

"Wha—hey, I totally did try!" argued, Feliks, frowning. He was honestly somewhat confused as to why Toris was getting so worked up about it. That Ivan guy wasn't even that scary…. "And, like, I do care…. Even if you didn't, I, like, still would…. But why don't you just forget about it? That stupid Russian bastard can't, like, legit do anything to you at home or school, so—"

But then Feliks was abruptly stopped by having the side of his face smashed into the locker he was standing next to. Hard.

"Feliks!" Toris had only noticed Ivan walking up behind his friend a second or so before he'd done that, and all his frustration had suddenly disappeared to be replaced with worry. Instead of looking up at the boy responsible (and still holding the side of Feliks's head in one hand), he instinctively bent down and tried to help—but he, too, was stopped.

It was actually very easy for Ivan to keep both the annoying blonde's head against the locker and his new friend at a certain distance away from being able to help. He hardly had to put any effort forth—which he supposed he owed to all the forced labor done as a child and the strong body he'd grown up with. But it also hardly occurred to him that he was really hurting these two—he just knew he enjoyed it.

"That's… like, him, isn't it?" Feliks choked out dazedly, ignoring the terrified look on his friend's face—even as Ivan gripped his head harder and smashed it into the locker again. At that point, he wasn't sure, but he thought he could feel his cheek bleeding.

"Da," said Ivan, sounding unintentionally scary. Still holding onto Feliks's head, he forcibly turned it, bent down, and smiled at him. "You know, I am thinking… that you are very stupid. You lost, so Toris is my friend now. But you are right, I am a bastard—I never knew either of my parents." With that, he let go of both of them and stood up straight, still smiling.

"Yeah, well—" Feliks immediately started talking back, hurriedly turning around to face the Russian and keeping his distance, all the while making sure Toris was out of range of being harmed. "You totally still can't keep us from hanging out, 'cause we're, like, neighbors! So suck on that, bastard!"

Toris's eyes widened at his friend's idiotic move in telling Ivan about that, but once he was able to react by using his hand to cover Feliks's mouth, it was too late. So all he could do was look frantically between the other two boys. Oh God why, why, why, why did you just say that?

There were a couple seconds where Ivan just stared down the both of them, scrutinizing them curiously. He started unconsciously reaching for the pipe hanging out of his belt, at which Toris blanched and cringed, not wanting to think about what was coming, but then—

"Found you, Ivan!"

He hardly had time to let his face fall in disappointment before he felt Natalya's arms wrapping quickly and tightly around him, trapping his arms to his sides.

"Vy do you haff to be a jerk and vander off like that? I told you to vait outside the bathroom for me…. And who the hell are they?"

Her head peaking around his side, Natalya scowled at the two boys Ivan seemed to be talking to. She felt a great surge of anger and jealousy merely at the fact he was talking to anyone, but it also looked like they were scared, so she figured Ivan probably wasn't being friendly to them, which was somewhat of a comfort.

Strangely enough, once again, Feliks was the one who wasn't confused: Natalya was in both of the classes he had Ivan in, and she was absolutely crazy. Totally cray cray. Both in general and for her adoptive-brother—which was even weirder and, like, totally gross. But Toris was suddenly more focused on how pretty this girl was than concerned about his safety, and he was really hoping that Ivan wasn't her boyfriend.

Ivan, on the other hand, was just really wishing that Natalya hadn't found him. However, he supposed it was for the best that he could tell her now, because otherwise she would get even scarier later. So he sucked up his fear of her and pried her arms off of him just enough to turn to her.

"This vun doesn't matter"—he grabbed Feliks's face and easily pushed him out of the way—"and the other vun is my friend."

Okay. Jealousy again.

"Friend…?" Natalya repeated slowly and dangerously, staring angrily at the brown-haired kid. "But… he's so scrawny and veak-looking…. And… you already have me!" Her voice started to get louder and angrier as she grabbed his arm and gripped it hard. "Vy vood you need another friend?"

There were angry tears forming in her eyes, and Ivan was actually starting to feel a little guilty—he'd known how angry this would make her, but he never wanted to hurt her feelings. He also didn't want this to happen in front of his new friend, so he decided to try to reason with her.

"Natalya…," he said desperately, looking worried and grabbing her shoulders, "ve'll talk about this later, okay? But if ve don't move, ve'll be late for next class. Idyem."

Without saying anything else to Toris or Feliks (who was now standing up again, but still holding the side of his face in pain), he started walking away, followed by Natalya. Meanwhile, the two boys were watching them leave, glad to see that they were gone but still somewhat confused as to what exactly just happened.

"So… that was weird," said Feliks, more calmly than any normal person would after something like that.

"Uh… yeah…. Who was that girl, though?" said Toris a bit dazedly. "She… was pretty."

At that, Feliks just looked at him weirdly. A girl stops him from possibly getting bludgeoned with a pipe, but then turns out to be a crazy bitch and scarier than the guy who's forcing him to be his friend, and all he could say about her was that she was pretty? She's like, not even that pretty….

"She's no one," Feliks told him, harrumphing inwardly. "I'll see you after school."

It was only then, as his friend started walking away, that Toris remembered their previous argument. They hadn't really done any resolving with it… but he felt like they were definitely still friends, for some reason. He was still upset with him, but that sort of think with Feliks had been going on his whole life, hadn't it…?

Huh… whatever.

Before the bell could ring and mark them late, he started a fast-walk directly to Journalism.

Twenty or so boys sat on the cold metal bleachers on the side of the soccer field, most of them having already gone through the line to give the coach their names and parent's information. The ones that hadn't were only there either to watch or because they'd been dragged along.

Kiku Honda sat at the far left end, far away from everyone else, as he waited for the coach to get his things together and for the tryouts to start. He'd never even thought about being on any sort of sport team before the end of last week, when his mother had urged him to do something that would allow him to "socialize." Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Ugh, when were his parents going to realize that he didn't like to be around people and that there was absolutely nothing wrong with that? Having an extracurricular may have been helpful for his chances in getting into college, but it would severely cut into his anime-watching time…. So part of him was just hoping he didn't make it so that he would have an excuse, but at the same time Kiku decided he wasn't going to be purposely bad because he simply wasn't the kind of person to try to fail at anything. He wouldn't have been able to bring himself to do that.

Meanwhile, directly behind Feliciano, who was feeling nervous but talking to Ludwig cheerfully all the same, Arthur Kirkland was shifting uncomfortably on the cold bleachers and folding his arms (as was his habit when he got nervous and wanted to feel less awkward). Like Kiku (though he wasn't aware of the similarity between them, nor had he even talked to that guy yet this year), he had been pushed to come out of his shell by his parents. The difference, however, was that it had really only been a suggestion from his parents, and the real reason he was here was because… well, he wasn't entirely sure why. But it was mostly to prove Francis wrong—that he could indeed make it on a sport team and was most certainly not too weak or too awkward.

Soccer had been his first choice, of course, since he wasn't bulky enough for football, he wasn't tall enough for basketball, baseball was much too American for his taste, and… he'd never learned how to swim. Besides—soccer was apparently this school's main sport, so perhaps more people could like him and he could get friends other than Francis that way—

No, stop it. I don't care about that….

A bit to Arthur's left (on the other side of Francis, who was there to watch) was Heracles, who already seemed ready to take a nap. A lot of the others had known him since elementary school, so they knew that he spent the majority of his time napping and were a little confused as to why he was interested in playing soccer. Only Kyle and Li Xiao had said anything to him so far, though, and he hadn't even given them straight answers.

Really, though, Heracles didn't think he needed to give them straight answers. As much as he liked sleep, he wasn't lazy, and he did like sports. His Greek physique could handle it, he was sure—and hell, the Greeks had practically invented most of the sports currently played in modern times. He figured it was only fitting for him….

At the very top of the bleachers were the Jones twins, one of them much more visually enthusiastic than the other. And you know which one.

"…Are you sure you should be eating junk food right before the tryouts start?" Matthew was sighing, frowning at his brother, who was popping skittles into his mouth about one every few seconds.

"What?—yeah, of course—it's energy, isn't it?" laughed Alfred, who was actually bouncing in his seat a little.

Both of them were there for similar reasons, but neither of them knew the other's real reason: They both wanted to be on the team to impress girls. Matthew for Yekaterina, since he'd figured that he'd be more noticeable to her even if he only tried out—and Alfred for Kim, since this was a sure-fire way to get her to like him…. Yeah. Definitely.

Mathias, Lukas, Berwald, Tino, and Emily were all sitting together, the latter three of them sitting in front of the other two. All of them were looking either bored or simply unhappy to be there but the leader of the group, who was blatantly refusing to notice that all of his friends (or at least that's what he would call them) were hating him at the moment. Especially Lukas, whom he had an arm around and who was pretty annoyed by the physical contact—and in public no less.

And next to that group was a very mismatched one that a few people were staring at—Ivan, Toris, Raivis, Eduard, and… Natalya. Ivan had made the impulse decision to try out for the soccer team that morning (and for a lot of good reasons, actually, one of them being to spend more time away from Natalya and with his friends) and had told his three new friends that they were going to try out as well… they didn't have a choice. Luckily, his sister wasn't as angry as she'd been before, since he'd told her that Toris and the others were more like servants. Which, really, they were.

At the moment, even though she knew she wouldn't be able to try out with him, Natalya was sitting directly next to Ivan and leaning on his arm. She was happy to be there to support him, and it made her even happier to finally see him not wearing the scarf that Yekaterina had made him (and also to see him in a t-shirt and shorts, which were very flattering on him), but she really wished those other three would just go away… especially that brown-haired one who kept staring at her and smiling. It was only with reluctance that she was going to put up with them at all….

And—well, Feliks was there too, but he wasn't really with them. Ivan wouldn't let him sit near his friend, but he and Toris had talked about it and decided that if they both made it on the team, then the damn Russian bastard wouldn't be able to keep them from spending more time together. And really, Toris was reluctant if only for his friend's safety, but he hadn't been able to talk him out of coming.

Down on the edge of the soccer field, Roma was finishing up with sorting out all the sign-up sheets. Once he figured that everyone who was trying out was actually eligible to try out, he turned toward the bleachers and looked at all of them for a second before blowing his whistle.

That definitely got everyone's attention. Along with a few inward 'Fuck, that was loud's.

"Alright, you guys," he started, smiling, "I… am Coach Vargas. Some of you will have to remember that; some of you won't. Depends on how skilled you are and whether you make it. And this year, I want to put together the best freshman team I can. We won the Regional Tournament last year, and I plan to at least get that far again. Now… before we start anything, I notice that there are a few girls and others who didn't sign up in front of me, so if you are only here to watch, I ask that you please move over a ways to the left. Thank you."

Because of Roma's not-so-stern tone, it wasn't at once or with any nervousness that Francis, Emily, Tino, Berwald, and a few others stood up and moved over. And as for Natalya, she nearly straight-up refused to move at all until Ivan pried her hands from his arm and urged her to go wait over with the other spectators.

"Good," the coach said cheerfully when those few people had moved. "Now, I've tried a lot of different methods of how to go about this over the past few years, and I've figured the easiest way is to make the first day—today—a trial day, where basically I can have everyone test their basic skills at once and weed out the people who I am definitely not going to put on the team. Oh—and, just a heads up, I don't want any tears or mental breakdowns or hissy fits if you get rejected. I'd really rather not deal with any of those this year, and I don't think any of you would want to humiliate yourself in front of everyone else here. Okay. Got it? Good. We'll start now, then. Everyone get over to that end of the field"—he pointed toward his left—"and get ready to run. But not until I tell you to!"

With that, there was a relatively loud creak as a lot of pressure was being lifted from the metal bleachers all at once and the boys all started walking down to the left end. Roma stayed at the back of the group so he could keep an eye on them, and he noticed that a good number of them looked much less eager than the others. That made him a bit less confident that this year's freshman team would be as stellar as he'd hoped. Or even close.

"Yo Feliciano," said Mathias soon after he hopped down from the bleachers with a sense of arrogance he had no right to have, "you know this is a boys' tryout, right?"

Only the surrounding people heard—and luckily not Roma. Mathias was completely aware that the coach was his grandfather, though. There were a couple of sniggers from Arthur and Kyle and some others, but otherwise there wasn't much feedback (Toris was just surprised that that comment hadn't been directed at Feliks instead). Except a heavy glare from Ludwig.

Ignoring the glare and the fact that his joke clearly hadn't been that funny to the rest of them, Mathias laughed and casually raised his right hand for a high-five from Lukas. When his boyfriend (as he referred to him, at least) merely glared at him for a second and didn't make any effort to high-five him, he just grabbed his wrist and forced the high-five.

"Wait… what's that supposed to mean?" said Feliciano innocently, frowning in confusion and turning towards Mathias. He had a feeling it was supposed to be an insult, but he was pretty slow on getting it.

Frowning more deeply, though he was actually glad his friend didn't get it, Ludwig put a firm hand on his shoulder (the one farthest from him, so it was more like putting an arm around his upper back) and turning him back around.

"Just forget about it, Feliciano…," he told him, taking another second to glare at Mathias. Granted, his friend was kind of high-maintenance… and physically weaker than average, and he even remembered thinking he was a girl when he'd first met him, but that had still been unnecessary and mean. "Now—vait here for a second; I need to go ask your grandfazzer a question."

"Hm? Oh—okay~!"

Ludwig purposely fell back to the back of the group to walk where the coach was, and where hopefully no one else would hear him.

"Coach Vargas?"

Slightly startled, he glanced downward to see his grandson's friend looking at him seriously. It was odd enough to see that kid away from Feliciano, really….

"Oh—yes?" He raised his brow curiously.

"I—just needed to ask zis question," Ludwig started, feeling somewhat awkward in that he was talking to his best friend's grandfather in a much more formal way than usual but frowning in his seriousness. "…You're not ze type of person who vould let Feliciano be on ze team simply because he's your grandson, are you?"

That was an odd question, but okay. "No, of course not. You know me; I don't play favorites like that."

Ludwig wanted to raise an eyebrow to show that he begged to differ (considering how much attention he obviously paid to one of his grandsons and not the other), but he decided not to. Especially since he figured the man wouldn't try to get away with that now that he'd mentioned it.

"Vell," said Ludwig with his short nod, "if you end up not letting Feliciano on ze team, please don't allow me to be on ze team eizzer, even if I'm good enough." He wasn't going to continue with the rest of his thoughts, but it was obvious even to Roma: It's eizzer both of us or neizzer of us. I don't vant him to be sad zat he didn't make it if I did, or zat ve vould spend less time togezzer.

Roma frowned for a moment, but then couldn't help but smile. That was too damn cute right there, no matter how serious Ludwig was trying to be. He was glad to know his grandson had such a good friend.

"Okay," he said, nodding a little in agreement.

"Tsank you." Ludwig didn't even look at him again before quickening his pace to go return to Feliciano's side and taking a spot at the end of the field.

When everyone was lined up (some of them were stretching a little), Coach Vargas blew his whistle again—"Alright, I want you all to run to the other end of the field and back. Twice. I'll choose whether or not to keep you on after this based on when you finish, how exhausted you are when you finish—or if you even finish at all. Questions? Okay. Just let me get the advanced stopwatch app on my phone up… and, there it is. Only start running when I blow the whistle! And…"

He blew the whistle and started the stopwatch at the same time, and then just watched.

Most of them were doing okay on their way to the other side for the first time, whether they were trying to pace themselves to a point or just run as fast as they could, as Roma could see. The first one to just stop altogether, though, did so only halfway through his first run back to the left side.

Raivis couldn't deal with the pain in his side (which had started a little before he'd reached the right end of the field) anymore—and it was to the point that he probably wouldn't have been able to make his legs work harder to run if he tried. And he really didn't want to try, since spending even more time around Ivan would be hell…. So he just stopped and started walking off the field (finding it difficult to do even that, his legs were throbbing so much) and back to the bleachers.

"I'm… done…," he panted as he passed the coach on his way to the gate that led out of the soccer area.

Honestly confused, Roma turned around halfway and furrowed his brow at the kid. "Why did you even try out in the first place…?"

Raivis stopped for a second, staring at the ground to avoid looking towards the field for fear of seeing Ivan, who he guessed was angry at him right now. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Um… okay," said Roma slowly. "But—uh, hey, don't forget your backpack on the bleachers."

"Oh—thanks…."

Meanwhile, Eduard was trying his best to get farther away from Ivan, and he was feeling extremely jealous of Raivis for getting to leave. If only he had as little dignity as that kid….

Around five minutes later, most people had finished with the laps. It was clear just how helpful this one test of skills was afterwards, as Coach Vargas had to have one other person leave for nearly collapsing while running, two for not running near as fast enough, and yet another three for simply being much too exhausted once they reached the left end the second time. Luckily, none of those were Feliciano or Ludwig.

The weeding out continued with (after a short break) a test in general kicking skills, which took longer than expected and only knocked out another two people from the chance to be on the team—Carlos for not being able to aim his kicks at all and Eduard for not being able to kick a far enough distance (which was totally not because he was sucking up his pride and purposely trying not to in order to avoid being on the team with Ivan. Okay, it totally was).

"Well then… oh. Wow, that was actually almost an entire hour? I blame you guys, heh." Coach Vargas put his phone back in his shorts pocket and clapped his hands together. "As I told you all before you signed up, tryouts go on all week—and now that I've weeded some of you out, we're able to start with the individual stuff. Which we can't start today, since I have the Sophomores to try out once the hour's over. But I have the order of which I plan to have each of you try out officially—" He then read off the list he'd written earlier, giving them the days they'd each be likely to be do their individual tryouts. "I do recommend, though, that you still come each of the days for the rest of the week no matter when yours is, since you'll want to see how the other people do—and also in case we finish that day's round of people early. So… any questions? No questions? Good. All of you are free to wait on the bleachers until your parents pick you up, if you need to wait for them."

Anyone who didn't already know Coach Vargas personally (everyone but Feliciano and Ludwig) was pretty much deciding at that point that they really liked him. He was definitely not the harsh, military-esque sort of coach that was generally expected of any highschool coach—he actually seemed like a pretty cool guy, and any of them would have be glad to have him as their grandpa.

Well, except for Matthew. Because he'd been raising his hand to ask a question right when Coach Vargas had confirmed there were no questions.

And the question he'd been about to ask was about why his name hadn't even been on the list at all.

He supposed that the only reason he hadn't been weeded out during this whole thing was because he hadn't even been noticed. And right now, he felt like putting his head between his knees.

"But… but…," Matthew said, his extreme disappointment obvious on his face.

"Huh?" Alfred looked up from his phone, on which he'd been texting their mom to ask when she was going to be there to pick them up. "Whatsa matter?"

"He didn't even… ah, just—nevermind. It doesn't matter."

The ones quickest to leave the area and start on their way back home were Kiku and Heracles, who both walked home, followed by Li Xiao, Natalya, and Ivan, who all had a parent who taught at the school and was waiting for them in the student-staff parking lot.

Ivan was disappointed that two of his new friends had proven to be so physically weak that they couldn't even make it through the basic skills trial. Natalya wasn't. In fact, she was spending the majority of the walk to their adoptive-father's car trying to tell him that that was a good reason to stop allowing them to be his "servants." …At least he still had Toris. He seemed to be very fit…. Ivan just needed to make sure that kid's stupid friend didn't make it on the team as well.

Back at the bleachers, Mathias's friends were making their way back over to meet up with him and Lukas.

"So, are you going to tell me I was awesome, or what?" was the first thing Mathias said, putting an arm around his boyfriend's shoulders and smirking. "Lukas and I are so totally going to make the team—except, sweetheart," he started to added, turning to face the boy in question, "you need to work on the way you run. I noticed you get a little bowl-legged when you—bfpfpfft!"

Annoyed, Lukas had slapped him across the face—right on the cheek. But it only forced his face away for a few seconds as he got into his dramatic mood and remained in that position for longer than he needed to, and he didn't let go of his shoulders.

"Um… so, who's getting us a ride home?" asked Emily almost boredly, though suppressing slight giggles at her twin abusing his boyfriend (she knew what went on; he may have constantly denied it, but they were totally boyfriends).

"My mom can drive us," said Tino, raising his hand slightly and absentmindedly checking the time on his phone. "I texted her while Lukas and Mathias were doing the kicking-thing. She's probably waiting at the front of the school right now."

"Alright then, to the car, Midgardians!" Mathias half-shouted dramatically, hopping down off the bleachers and putting his hands on his hips while he waited for them to do the same.

"Oh God, he's in a Thor mood again…." Lukas muttered, getting off the bleachers and walking toward the gate with the others.

"Hold on, dude," Emily started to say to Tino as they walked, "doesn't your mom have a small car, though? There'll be six of us."

"Yeah…," Tino made a face and stuffed his hands into his pockets. "We'll have to squeeze. Or someone will have to sit on someone else's lap."

"Lukas can totally sit on my lap—!" Mathias shouted, but he was promptly cut off by Lukas hitting him in the stomach.

And Berwald couldn't help but glance down to his left, where Tino was walking, at the mention of someone sitting on someone else's lap. (Lukas ended up sitting in Mathias's lap anyway.)

Arthur and Francis (who were going to be driven home by Antonio) were walking a ways behind them, the former seemingly stuck with a smug sort of smirk on his face.

"Told you I could make it, Frog."

"I wouldn't speak too soon—zat was only to weed out ze completely inept people…," said Francis teasingly, and in a sort of sing-song voice. "Even if you do do well enough tomorrow, I 'ighly doubt you'll be able to make it in a team wis ozzer people. Your lack of cooperation skills will likely get you kicked off razzer quickly…."

"You shut up; I can bloody well cooperate when I want to!"

"Exactly—you never want to. Don't fuss so much about it, zough; your immaturity's kind of cute sometimes~," Francis added, leering a bit at him as he pushed the gate open.

While those two were leaving, Roma, having heard them, approached the part of the bleachers where his grandson and his friend were sitting.

"Do you know those two?" he asked, jerking a thumb over to where Arthur and Francis were.

Feliciano looked over and almost immediately smiled and let out a short laugh. "Heh, yeah. And yes, they've always been like that."

Frowning slightly, Ludwig turned his head toward his friend. "Zey have? I know Francis is one of my brozzer's friends, but… I vould have tsought zat he'd tell me zat, since it seems important to know." He then deepened his frown, annoyed that his brother would neglect to tell him everything that he could once he lost a lot of his memory.

At that, Feliciano glanced over to Ludwig with a somewhat sad look, as he couldn't help but feel uncomfortable whenever the subject of his friend's memory loss came up. He just didn't like to think about a person as strong as Ludwig losing enough to make him vulnerable in any way.

But then he smiled, looking as cheerful as ever again before his friend could see the sad look. "I'll have to tell you all about them later, then! Oh dio, it's actually a really long story with them…."

"Oh—do you need a ride home, Ludwig?" said Roma. "Because I've got to stay here for another hour…."

"No, my grandfazzer's picking up both me and Feliciano—actually, I tsink he's over zare at ze gate right now…. Yes. Zat's him. Come on, Feliciano."

"Alright, good," Roma said, glad his grandson and his friend wouldn't be made to wait on the bleachers for an hour during the sophomore tryouts. He decided to follow them to the gate, though, since it occurred to him just then that he'd never actually met Ludwig's grandfather…. The kid had only lived with his parents before going off to Germany, where they'd died (as Feliciano had told him). It wasn't so much that he had any suspicions Ludwig's grandfather was untrustworthy or anything as it was that he just wanted to thank him for driving his grandson home. Because he was just that kind of person.

He stopped walking the moment he was in greeting range of the other man, before he could even open his mouth all the way, though. It was… his face. He recognized that face. And the hair.

"…You!" said Roma in shock, almost unable to even fathom what—whom—he was seeing.

Ludwig's grandfather didn't see him at first, but once he caught a glimpse of his face—hell, once he caught a glimpse of his torso—he knew it could only be one person in the entire world. And… Heilige Scheiße.

"You," he echoed, though a lot more calmly. Of course, he'd been known throughout much of his life for being calm, and the other had always been known for quite the opposite. "I haven't seen you in over tsirty years… I tsought I vas rid of you."

"Yeah, so was I! Not that it was even my fault that that happened…." Roma couldn't believe this. Over thirty years, and he was actually meeting the one person he could honestly say he hated, whom he'd never wanted to see again. He could hardly help but be angry. "And now I know why Ludwig always looked so familiar when he was over…. But how the hell did you even end up being his grandfather?—hell, I thought you were—"

"You don't need to bring my grandson into zis," Baldric said abruptly, a vein flickering in his temple. Both he and Roma knew the real reason he had cut him off, though. "I vould like to know, however, vhy I am only discovering zat you vork here now…." He narrowed his eyes at him.

"And why would it matter to you?"

"Because I am ze principal here, starting zis year. Alzough, I suppose I von't have to interact vis any of ze coaches much…."

"You're the principal, and I'm only finding out now?" Well… damn. This day was certainly getting better by the second. "They don't tell me anything."

"Or perhaps you're simply not observant enough, Roma, as alvays," snapped Baldric, practically hissing the other's name. He hadn't said it since the last time he spoke to him. "I loathe to say it, but ve may have to get used to zis if our grandsons are friends. Und I have notsing against ze rest of your family—just you, so I'm fine vis taking Feliciano home—"

"Oh—hey, speaking of us—" Ludwig finally cut in, raising a hand as though trying to get them to remember he and Feliciano (who was looking hopelessly confused) were still there, "—vhat in ze hell is going on?" He found that his only option was to be extremely blunt about it. Because he and his friend were way too confused.

"I… I'll explain it to you later, Ludwig," Baldric sighed, unconsciously gripping his grandson's shoulder.

"Yeah… you too, Feli," Roma said awkwardly, hating that Baldric had had to say it first. "You can… you can just take them home. I don't have anything against your family either. I just don't feel like looking at you anymore…. And I'm busy. I'll see you at home, Feli."

With that, he turned and walked back to the soccer field with a bitter expression, leaving his and his enemy's grandsons to look at each other, shrug with bewildered looks on their faces, and then leave to Baldric's—the principal's—Ludwig's grandfather's—his enemy's—car, feeling pretty awkward about it.

And back at his table, Roma felt almost more awkward than angry himself. Because he may have hated (if nearly forgetting about him counted as hating) that man for most of his life, but he still trusted him.

And because I'm evil, you have to wait until the next chapter to find out about Roma and Baldric (I don't think I'll need to explain who that is... hopefully). Kesesesesesesese...

BUT I'm expecting theories from you people! And if not theories, then at least normal reviews. PLEASE. *cute Italy eyes that no one can resist* ...Please?

Oh- and also, if any of you went to A-Kon, I WOULD LIKE TO KNOW, PLEASE. I mean... it would just be crazy if I'd happened to see any of you guys there and hadn't known it. I was walking around with my friend, who cosplays Italy (and he's a male!), and I glomped a LOT of Russias.