Fatal Fury, The Lightning Strike, No Turning Back, Starvation, The Game Has Changed, old TMTR playlist because why not? Reanimation tracks. KRWLING, 1stp Closer, P5hing Me A*wy

Click-Clock: Unfortunately I can't find a video on youtube with just the song. Does anyone know where I could listen to "Wake Up" by Two Door Cinema Club?

I asked and I received! 10 reviews was a big storm for me, so thank you, everyone!

Recovery

All But Bulletproof

"One-One-Two, what is your emergency?"

"Gunshots! Someone's shooting at our friend- send help!"

"Sir, please slow down. Where are you?"

"Top of the hill in Seborga, just off the- Sealand, wait!"

"God, my wife...!" The first thing he could hear... "No, why would you-?" …was sobbing. "Jesus Christ I-"

"You really shouldn't try to bring God into this, your majesty." The second thing he could hear... was a southern accent. Calabrian.

Hearing usually came back first unless you'd drowned, but that happened to him even less than any other kind of death. This time he had been shot, and his hearing came back first as the dark dream-like sleep of death faded and let the Nation-born slip back into the world where he belonged.

First came sound, then came pain.

God never skimped on the pain.

It had not been a long sleep, no more than a few minutes maybe. How could the nation lay dead if the monarch was in danger? And it wasn't just a belief at this point, but a reality. God would not bring him back so soon if there was no danger. God would have let him sleep until the pain puncturing his skull and bursting out through the right side of his face had faded and healed before rousing him from slumber.

Smell would come back later, because breathing was always last, and his heart wouldn't begin yet because his body needed blood and the damage to his head, he knew, was too much.

'Always listen first.' As much as he didn't want it, now was the time when he needed to remember Veneziano's voice... 'Never rush. Your body is weak after you wake up, so all you've really got left is surprise.' It had been so... many... centuries, since he'd heard those words. It wasn't something they just discussed at the dinner table.

"I suggest you make your decision quickly, majesty, the air is growing stale."

'Count your enemies and orient yourself, idiot.' Romano's voice was a comfort too, actually. It cut through the fear and managed the pain firing back and forth over his shattered skull. 'You almost always get your hearing back first, so just lay there and listen to what's going on around you. If they're smart they'll cut off your head and then you're in shit, but most humans don't think like that.'

These humans hadn't, they didn't even know what he was: unless his boss had told them? But he was only crying, hardly speaking, he sounded like he was choking on the tears and trying to swallow his voice. He mentioned his wife- the Princess was dead? Oh no...

'Don't let the paralysis fool you, it always wears off too soon: don't gasp just because you can feel your lungs again.' Which he suddenly could, and they hurt. 'You have one chance. Don't waste it. Move slowly and-'

He felt his fingers and he inched them, tip by tip, across the carpet pills, walking them away from his body as the voices kept talking. The coercive, bullying voice of that one man kept going, the others remaining silent around the sobs. That man was standing across the room from the fallen Micro-nation, near the desk, and there was someone else breathing right over Seborga's body. The creak of leather shoes told him the man who had shot his boss's wife was still near the bookshelf at that wall. Without breathing he urged his hand further and further across the bloody carpet until he found- thin, metal, cold: a chair leg.

Good enough.

"You forced our hands in these matters, your highness. My employer is deeply sorry for your loss, but truly you brought this on yourself." The metal was so cold against his fingers. It was good to have his sense of touch back, it something beyond the thrumming pain burning and hissing in his skull. He knew it was bad when he could feel his body repairing itself...

Now don't breathe, just think.

"Sign here... yes, just like-" With his right hand wrapped around the chair leg Seborga braced his left palm on the carpet next to him. He wasn't prepared to raise his elbow yet but he tensed his left leg, ready to shift his hips and push himself up. He opened his left eye, the only one he had left, and he saw nothing but shadows and red and brilliant florescent light.

Now?

"What is that?" And then came the noise: shouting, yelling, more gun-shots?

Now!

There were words spoken, but through the pain and the anger Seborga couldn't hear them. Someone gave a terrified scream as he snapped his elbow up and pushed with his arm, hips shifting so he got his foot under his body and lift himself up. He tightened his grip around the chair and he didn't even know how heavy it would be, he just forced his limbs to act and tear it up off the floor. The weapon followed the turn of his body so it swung around and slammed into the man who'd been standing over him, toppling him with a breathless grunt. One of three.

The Micro-nation went blindly after the next voice: the man at the desk. He lunged for the man with the cold voice, the southern accent, the one with no gun but enough clout, the one who screamed curses for God to strike down the unholy and protect his soul. It was the man whose throat Seborga clawed for because he could feel the burn of a crisis eating away at his gut again, and he could barely breathe, and he wanted this man to die!

The screaming hurt, the hands that slapped and struck him hurt, but the way his fingers slipped off skin and tangled in heavy fabrics instead was frustrating. He couldn't hold the neck, he couldn't gouge the flesh, he couldn't end the life or stop that noise, noise, noise from the human's foul mouth! He grappled with fabric instead, and when his ringing ears heard clicks and more shouting behind him, he threw all his weight back on one heel.

He spun around and he tore the human with him, just like the chair, and when his world filled with the echoing bang of gun-fire he felt the body he was fighting with convulse violently, and the screams were choked off by the copper stink of blood.

He could taste more blood on his mouth, probably his own, and he could feel it thick and hot down his cheek and curling around his jaw towards his chin. His shirt was warm and heavy with the wet, his head light and senses blasted by the explosions. He couldn't see, his ears were filled with echoes, deaf and blind he let the human he was holding fall to the floor, almost tripping over the body because he knew the next one was-

White noise screamed through his mind and a burning hammer struck him once in the left shoulder, then again in the gut. He fell when a third strike blasted apart his right knee from the side, because he hadn't killed the first human, and they both had guns.

So he braced his weight on his working leg and lunged again, putting all of his strength into clearing the distance over the dead body of his citizen. He hit the wall with both arms instead of the man he wanted caught and hanged, but his hearing recovered just enough to hear terrified male voices before he turned and forced his legs to carry him over furniture.

He couldn't even feel the pain anymore; his body was getting ready to give out again. His heart was burning and any moment it would rend and tear inside his chest. As soon as he fell again these men would do something to damage and harm him even more than they already had, they'd do anything to keep him from getting up again. Unless he eliminated that threat first, Seborga would-

"Sebo!" His hands found another body, but instead of tearing away from him this one wrapped its arms under his. "Sebo, stop! Enough!" Kill it, kill the voice- he wouldn't let them take him! "It's me! It's over! STOP!"

Like flesh splitting open under a knife, he felt the fire of his heart ripping open from too much stress and not enough blood. The sensation of his limbs faded and the white noise reverted back into the endless dark.

Seborga took his first breath and died again.

America knew he wasn't supposed to go hanging out around Washington anymore, at least not the White House where his boss was administrating things, but that by no means meant that he was out of a job. He had a rover on Mars, he had an active movie industry, he had wild-life conservation projects, he had inner-city school programs; America had all kinds of things to keep himself busy.

He also had phone-calls to dodge from the other Nations, and that alone was almost a full-time job.

The only reason he picked up his phone this time was because he couldn't quite remember the last time that Nevada number had shown up on his display. But what were those other funny numbers in front of the code? That was a European sequence…

"Hello?"

"Do you have any people in Italy!" Uuuh, what?

"Hello? Who is this?" The voice sounded familiar, but why the panting? America flicked the mute button on his television, setting aside his plate where his half-eaten lunch had been sitting in his lap. The person was speaking English, but for a moment he almost thought it was Australia?

"Air Force, Army, Navy- anything! Do you have any personnel left in north Italy!?" North Italy? Why was Australia calling him from North Italy on a cell-phone registered to Nevada?

"Who is this and what the hell are you-" crying? This person was so scared they started crying just hearing his voice. He didn't know how to take that, but America stood up in a hurry and marched away from the pictures flashing over his TV screen, swiping his glasses off the arm of the couch and slipping them on as he walked out of the large den in his Tennessee home.

"Whoever you are, just slow down and talk to me."

"Hutt, gimmie the phone." That voice was one America almost knew. It was a south-west accent, but it was far away along with- was that a child crying too? Someone else was screaming in the background. "Hutt!"

For some reason, America felt compelled to move. There was something wrong about standing still in the middle of his house with so much shouting and screaming warbling through the phone. Padding with socked feet down the warmly lit hall leading away from the den and across the main level, America shuffled quickly into his little home office and immediately went to his laptop.

The early afternoon sun was bright enough that he didn't need to turn on a light, and as the Australian voice gave way to a throaty American drawl, he could have sworn he heard that child wailing 'His head, his head!'. What the hell was-? Wait.

"Molossia?" He did know that voice!

"I'm sorry, we shouldn't have called you- we panicked." No kidding, he could hear the panic- don't hang up on him! "Well whaddya want me to do? You can't help us from home!" No, but he could figure out what the hell was going on. Where was he exactly? "A small town in North Italy, look, we're shaken but the police are on their way." Then don't hang up on him, America was going to stay on the line until someone local got there.

"What happened?"

"The- there were men with guns, they were all over the place." Was anyone injured? "Them, mostly, but- but one woman, they just…" Molossia was a tough talker and he could pull his weight in a fight, but he wasn't a killer… "She's his boss's wife? I think? I don't even…" Wait.

"Wait. Are you- are you telling me the Italian President's wife was just-?"

"No! No, not that boss: Seborga's." Sebo-? Italy's brother? "Yes, he- look it's too much to explain right now, what are you doing?" He was typing his login information into his laptop, doing what that first voice had been asking for and-

Access Denied.

It took a second to register, but they'd changed his security code. America held his breath for a moment and stared at those two little words in red hovering over the crest of the United States Armed Forces on his desktop. The system wouldn't let him in, and he didn't have the patience right now to dig up his officer's codes from his last personal tour in Afghanistan: it wouldn't have the proper permissions anyways.

"My closest base is in France, you said the police are already on their way?" So fuck you, Mr. President. America closed the program and reached for his desk phone instead, punching the speaker option on his cell before setting that back down on the table and sitting down. This wasn't shaping up to be a fun Saturday afternoon, but he listened to Molossia's voice as he quickly started hammering in numbers, hoping- wait. "Does Italy know yet? Either of them?"

If Molossia didn't already know Romano's big secret then America would make it up to him, he'd find a way to do it, but right now wasn't the time to go worrying about keeping secrets. This was need-to-know.

"He called South Italy from Rome before we left, North Italy knows something's wrong but- Jesus. They blew his head right off!" Okay, calm down. America changed the number he was dialling and placed the receiver against his ear, rifling through his desk looking for those important papers from his personal military files.

Gulf War, Iraq War, Afghanistan- there! Switzerland! Pulling out the thin paper file, it was the smallest of the bunch and he knocked the drawer closed with his foot, snapping the sleeve open and standing again so he could get a better look down at the papers as he flipped through them.

"There's no answer in Rome." Italy's house phone just kept ringing and ringing in his ear- maybe Italy still couldn't answer it? Was he speaking yet? See this is why America had wanted to go to Hong Kong, then he could have asked South Italy these questions in private and got a proper update. Now he was left guessing instead, which sucked, and he hung up without answers.

It was one in the afternoon here at home, it was probably like eight at night in Italy, so if South Italy was still in Hong Kong then…

Whatever, he entered the cell code and waited.

"Blew his head off- whose head?" Italy's little brother was a Micro-nation, unrecognized, but still real, right? But Molossia wasn't answering him, he was still breathing heavily into the phone, but… "Molo-?"

"I… I just…" Get it together, man. Wasn't he always going on about having been at war with East Germany for thirty years? "That's different. You know that's different…" Yeah, so talk to him and explain how. Who was crying in the background?

Romano's phone was taking forever to connect…

"He's gonna wake up, right?" If his head was damaged then they should cover it, same thing went for any other big wounds. "Cover, like, bandages?"

"A sheet would be better, you don't want things to, uh, overlap…" Bad war memories came up just from mentioning it, but America shook his head until a rash of new voices broke in over the sound of Molossia's unsteady voice. "That the police?"

"Yeah, I- uh, no- no! Sono Molossia- Sono Americano?" That was probably all the Italian Molossia knew, and his voice faded in a way that suggested he was putting his hands up as-ordered by the men around him. That was okay, and with his phone still struggling to connect to wherever Romano's was, America cleared his throat and was ready for the Italian voice that came blaring through across the line.

The human officer demanded to know who this call was and why he was talking to someone at a crime-scene. America slipped into the adopted language with only a small bump in his throat just trying to get his accent to work properly, and answered:

"This is Master Sergeant Alfred F. Jones of the United States Armed Forces." He could have bumped up his rank, but that wouldn't have agreed with what was in his most recent file. He wasn't like the Italian brothers: America didn't put himself at the top of the chain without earning it like everyone else. "Sergeant, did you say? With all due respect, sir, please organize a guarded compound for the victims of tonight's shooting. The young man with the head wound is the brother of Italian General Lovino Vargas. As I understand it the General has been informed, but I don't think he knows the extent of the crisis."

You didn't have to be forceful to get respect, Nations didn't have to flood the human mind with a patriotic fever to make them act or obey. A calm voice in a recognizable language was enough sometimes, an understanding of the situation, recognition of authority, and a willingness to co-operate all kept the human from losing his head over the phone.

America was allowed to hang up just a few seconds before Romano's voice finally crackled through the receiver pegged between his shoulder and ear. Instead of speaking firmly, America found himself frowning deeply and made his voice as soft as he could…

"…America?"

"Everything's gonna be okay." America knew what it was like to have everything go wrong all at once. He knew how hard it was to deal with what he was about to say: "Just listen to me and stay calm, alright? You're not alone…"

"…What do you know?"

It was hard to find things now. It made sense that those things weren't in the places he'd thought they'd be, but it was hard to find those memories. The last time he had been here had been back before everything else that he'd dealt with. It was back before the white walls and the bright florescent lights, back before the cold air and the red blood, back before screaming in a place that was so perfectly perfectly clean.

His desk had been moved, the files cleared out, the office supplies put away in Romano's drawers. His chair was still there, but there was no point using it: his computer was gone. Someone in the government had probably confiscated everything or given it to Romano. Whatever his brother hadn't been able to use or confirm the importance of was either being held in storage or had been shredded for safety.

He marvelled at the level of detail in this dream. It was almost over whelming, especially when instead of being caged inside for hours trying in vain to find what he wanted, he actually found it. He found them in long leather-bound books in the deep drawers of the storage unit bolted to the wall adjacent the street-side window. When he opened them on Romano's desk they were there in startling detail, all the numbers and codes and accounts, all the math with little totals done in red and black ink. There were pencil checks and the soft marks of erasers grazing the pages too, even the paper smelled the way it should: the accountant who handled them smoked too much.

There were more pencils in the drawer next to him. There was a calculator in the one beside that. There was a pad of lined paper resting under a set of files his brother had left stacked there for when he came back from across the world.

He had worked from the time just after Seborga had left until now, when it was dark outside and the numbers were endless and logical. He expected the cascade of information to do him in, to tear him away, to drown his senses until he couldn't breathe, couldn't swim. He expected them to be what dragged him back down into the cold and the pain and the fear.

Instead, the anger kept him buoyant. This wasn't making any sense: everything here made sense. If it all made sense and it all evened out, every number balanced against another number, then why was it hurting like this? Why did it get so, so bad to the point where he doubled over again in Romano's chair, behind Romano's desk, his crippled arm hugged close to his body as the pain, pain, pain, pain…!

"Veneziano?" It wasn't here. The answer wasn't here. "A-Are you alright?"

He had everything else: a father who helped him sit up again, and numbers that added up and made sense every time he looked at them, and guests downstairs who stayed away because he was too upset to see them. But he had no answer. There was no relief for him here, and if he wanted that then he would have to go there. Could he manage it? Maybe. Maybe he could, but not tonight… No, it had to be tonight.

"Ge-" But it was so hard to say it. His throat opened and he cinched it shut again, he wouldn't say it. Even when Papa touched his face and crooned his questions: was he hungry? Was he tired? Did he feel alright? Did he want to try calling Romano? Did he need help standing? Did he want to go take a rest? He wore through the questions and leaned his head on the shoulder next to him, alright with the hand on his face as his arms stayed curled around the throbbing pain in his gut.

He had to say it. He had to ask.

He had to just do it.

"…Get out."

Take the night shift, he'd said. Help out a friend, he'd said. I'll make it up to you, he'd said.

Not very likely, but there wasn't a terrible amount the Air Force Captain could do at well past midnight while on duty. It was required for at least one commissioned officer to be present at all times and the Captain had mistakenly agreed to help out a friend in the same unit. He'd kept busy for an hour or so doing some filing and reading through a few technical documents, but the productive time had passed and now he was just so, terribly, bored. Being transferred to Rome had been good for his career, but that was about it.

There was no sense complaining about it though. Decorated or not, all officers wound up with the night shift eventually, which would thankfully only last another hour before he was relieved. When the phone on his desk abruptly rang at quarter to one in the morning the Captain was equal parts surprised and elated by having something to do.

At least, those were his thoughts until he actually heard the voice scraping and gasping through the line…

"Ge… General Va-" that name..? "-Vargas, needs three- three honourable men…" The emphasis on honourable was tangible, but how did you measure something like that?

"Now."

Yes sir.

It had taken an executive order from Yao Wang of the Chinese Army to get the pilot to take off in the high winds of that Hong Kong storm. Romano was thankful for it, enough so that he didn't even care about that hazing. It had been embarrassing to have himself torn down like that right before he'd sprinted up the steps and into the jet, but he'd weathered that first emotional storm.

Almost five hours later, the lack of sleep and progress had taught him just how helpless he still was. It had been terrible while he was on the ground, but at least then he could run around and hassle people. He'd been able to get into an argument with China with the wind howling past them on the run-way, he'd spoken to his boss and given orders, taken advice. He'd been doing something, even if it hadn't been much.

Now he was trapped in a pressurized tube rocketing along at nearly eight-hundred kilometers an hour high above Eurasia. It was almost 8am again by his body's time, but he couldn't sleep. There was room to walk around on a jet this big since a tiny Cessna couldn't make it all the way across Asia in one leap, but he could barely stand. He'd asked the tired stewardess to turn down the cabin lights so the compartment was dim, but he wasn't resting. The vibration of the engines had turned into a low drone, the soundproofing keeping most of the noise outside and away from him, but he wasn't relaxed.

Romano'd let himself sink into the plush leather chair, feet up on the low table between it and the next seat. He had one hand up over his eyes, the other just resting in his lap. He'd spoken to America hours ago, and he'd struggled to call Rome and figure out what they knew, but he ultimately had nothing, and he'd told his family nothing.

His brother had been shot.

Nothing else really mattered after he heard that. His brother had been attacked and shot in his own home. He was a Micro-nation and he was too small for shocks like that. At least one of his civilians was dead too, and Micro-nations couldn't handle that sort of trauma. Micro-nations with authority and power like Vatican, or with tradition and a recognizable presence like San Marino, yes. Those kinds of nations could survive a death or two. They could take the physical trauma of being badly wounded.

But Seborga..?

His brother had been shot. Romano had done everything he could to contact the military in the area, but they'd told him they already had orders from "General Vargas" and didn't know why he was calling again. There was nothing to update him with, not yet. He'd been so undercut by their confusion that he hadn't reminded them that there were two military executives with the surname Vargas.

The e-mail that had made his blood boil was useless to him now. It had cut through the nauseous fear China'd inspired in him, but now it was just another taunt. That message was just one more thing he couldn't do anything about, and it would only get worse by the time he touched down in another five hours.

He'd told the pilot to make adjustments so they could land in Nice, not Rome. The human hadn't liked that idea but he wasn't allowed to argue with Romano. They had enough fuel for the extra leg, but just barely. Landing in France wasn't appealing to Romano but he couldn't stand the idea of returning to Rome just yet. He couldn't face his family right now; he couldn't do it any more than he'd been able to handle Germany, or Spain, or China back in Hong Kong.

He'd failed them.

And Veneziano knew.

And even if Veneziano didn't know that it was a bullet to the head or a murder in the town hall, he knew something was happening to their little brother.

And Romano wasn't crying about it, he just didn't know what to do.

Romano rode in a Canadian-made Bombardier Global Express private jet. The range is roughly 12,000KM, but most aircraft don't carry their maximum fuel load (the tank is typically only about 2/3rds full). I'm not sure about the flight path from Hong Kong to Rome so I can't tell you whether it would be closer for them to land in Nice or not.

Originally I had time-stamps, but it's also in the text? If it's too confusing then I'll reinsert the time-stamps, just keep in mind that things weren't happening at the exact same time.

And another on Sunday!