I don't think I've actually said the disclaimer yet. I DON'T OWN HETALIA, AND IF I DID IT WOULDN'T BE AS GOOD. Danke.

More pain inflicted in this chapter. You have been warned. However I don't like this chapter as much as I liked the other one.

And thank you to all my fabulous reviewers, I wuv you all so much I could eat you. ^w^

Apologies for any possible lateness and any grammar/spelling errors, my laptop has been removed again and I typed the second half of this on a tablet. It literally took me five minutes to type this sentence. -_-" Plus it takes just as long to get the cursor to appear. UGH I'M IRRITATED BY THIS TABLET FAILURE

SK is the abbreviation of South Korea. In case you couldn't tell.

Review some more! :D

Russia was strapped to a metal frame over a white chemical flame. The metal was scorching, and was wrapped around his limbs, or his limbs wrapped around it. It was hard to tell, because the air was full of an opaque, stinging vapor, and he could barely see. His nose brushed the fire, and once again he tensed his muscles, holding himself above it. His arms and legs screamed. From the position they were in, the strain of holding himself upright was breaking them.

The edges of his jacket and scarf were already singed and burning, the flame quickly eating up the cloth before going out again. Embers danced in the fabkkkjgrtgtric. Earlier they had stung. Now they were nothing, for a few times his muscles had already collapsed and he'd fallen in the fire. It'd burned like no earthly fire, like a demon had surfaced from hell and lashed him with its fiery, stereotypical whip. And the surface the flames were burning on was far from smooth. The scrapes across his torso were proof of that.

To make matters worse, one of the numerous pipes snaking overhead had sprung a leak, and a caustic, oily substance was splashing down across his back and into the fire, making it leap and dance. It stole his breath away, burning up the oxygen, and he hacked and gagged into the fire.

Russia forced his shaking limbs to stay rigid as his body started to sag for the umpteenth time. He would not allow himself to be burnt again. His wrists throbbed, and his hands -bloodied from when he'd beat them against the wall in the throes of the first nightmare- tingled from a potent combination of exhaustion and pain. Against his will, his sweat-stained fingers started to slip, and he barely managed to readjust his grip. Most of all, the sting on his back was the worst. It had reopened, and he could feel wetness dampening the area between his shoulder blades. Sweat beaded up on his forehead and rolled languorously down his face.

His muscles wavered again. He'd been suspended for heaven knows how long. He'd lost track of time, trapped in a hell of exhaustion. His bones groaned.

I can't do this much longer, Russia thought. I'm going to-

His exhausted limbs collapsed, dumping him unceremoniously into the fire, trembling with freedom from the stress. The fire, though he'd braced for it, was still unexpected, and he gasped. For a moment, his mind reverted back to the nightmare, and the arms of panic unfolded to envelop him. He couldn't push himself back up, either. He was too weak, too tired, too exhausted. There had never been a time when he'd never been strong enough...

Russia thrashed in his metallic bonds, sending bruises to blossom up his arms, bleeding now, and feeling the front of his jacket burst into flame. Soon the fire would consume more than just his jacket - his cold skin appeared to be repelling it, for now- and he'd go up like tinder in a bonfire.

Again, he struggled to lever himself up, and this time managed it. The fire snapped at the fringes of his scarf, and mercifully, his jacket went out. The sting twanged, sending a shockwave through him.

Russia wouldn't cry. He wouldn't give the aliens the satisfaction of it. He fell into the fire again, and his skin started to blister. The old medallion he'd kept pinned to his jacket glowed red-hot like a brand.

"No," he growled through gritted teeth, and put all his frustration, his anger into lifting himself back out again. Time rippled and slid around him, so seconds felt like hours, and minutes felt like years. All there was, and all there ever would be, was the stress of his bones slowly arching the wrong way, and the deadly fire at his feet, and the acid dripping like a metronome from the ceiling.

The moment came again, where he couldn't hold himself up any longer. This time, though, it was not his muscles that failed him, but his bones. There was a snap and a sudden clearpain and the ghostly white flames welcomed him back. Russia's limbs wouldn't respond to his commands anymore, numb pieces of flesh hanging loose at his side. Within seconds his skin was on fire. Like his nightmare, but real. Before he could even open his mouth to permit himself a scream, fire rushed in, dancing in his lungs, swallowing all the oxygen and leaving with a whoosh. Screaming hurt, and the least he could make was a weird croaking noise.

And all the while, while his vision darkened and his nose filled with the scent of cooking meat, the acid dripped slowly down, right onto his sting. Plip. Plop. Plink.

England was glaring into space when it was his turn for the aliens to use him. There was the whisk sound of skin on temporarily insubstantial bars, and then their sheathed claws reached for him, wrapped around him, and dragged him out in the space of a blink. He twisted in their many-fingered grip and tried to scream out, maybe catch the attention of one of the other nations, but as soon as he opened his mouth, a metal plate was inserted that melded to his teeth and held them shut, stretching slightly like old taffy when he tried to open his mouth again. Afraid of pulling a tooth out, he ceased with that train of motion.

He kept wriggling around like a greased eel, but there were enough aliens to restrain him, and one eventually threw its tail around him and left the stinger a millimeter from his left eye. England froze. When he blinked, the very tip of it scraped against his eyelid, and a bead of blood welled up on it. The whole kidnapping was played out in horrible silence.

Without further incident, England was transported to a room and thrown on a platform. He tried to roll off it, but an alien at a sort of control desk flipped a switch and restraints sprang over his body. Powerless, he watched the six-fingered hand fill a syringe full of an opaque white substance.

No bloody way. You wankers are not going to just shoot me full of some random chemicals. He pulled futilely at the restraints, feeling his skin already start chafing. Just like my nightmare.

The alien approached with the syringe, and England began thrashing wildly. With much effort on the part of the aliens, two gripped his arm with bruising force, and the third pricked his arm with the syringe. The liquid was thick and cold. He felt it slithering through his system like a plague of snakes.

He felt tired, as if he had a hangover. The alien faces above him swam, their clickety voices petering down to his ears through a marsh of air. Time passed, and then he was alert again. It was weird - no left-over tingling feeling, no remaining slowness. It was as if he'd just woken up perfectly refreshed from a good nap. If only.

"We've let you understand our language for now," said a groaning, raspy voice. "You will answer our questions."

To his utter horror, England found that he couldn't speak. There was a block in his throat that wouldn't let his words out, even though the metal-ish plate holding his teeth together was gone.

The alien asked the first question. "We know you are not quite humanoid. We've done something to a few of you that a normal human could not have survived for long. What are you?"

England clamped his lips down over the desire to answer it, a desire that he did not allow. It wasn't his. Was it the thing they'd injected? And, worse, what had they done to his companions? "You'll-never-know." His voice was like sandpaper on the inside of his throat, but he was proud of himself for defying it.

"Tch." The alien clicked its tongue, and one approached with a small, spiky green thing. "Do you know what this is?"

England correctly perceived that the question was rhetorical. The alien went on. "It is a worm species we have taken from another planet. It is much like yours, except this one contains different species of humanoids, and large, sentient lizards. But this-" it held up the 'worm species' - "is from an island that used to be abandoned. It is infested with the sentient lizards now, and they attempt to burn us as we come, so we have kept only a scant few and bred them to perfection."

The alien squished the spiky thing slightly between its fingers. As England watched, it shifted, roiling under the carapace of spikes, and then a mouth that was a circular gash filled with teeth emerged. Hard pieces formed under the skin, and then burst through it, four angular prongs like drill bits made for crushing. Still oozing transparent fluid, the mandibles turned to him and whirred loudly, hunger staining the edge of the sound.

Hunger-hunger-hunger-must-eat-flesh-must-must-must -go-forth-and-eat-devour-eat-EAT-

The voice echoed inside his head, a grinding of teeth on bone, a rending noise that threatened to spill his mind into madness. He cringed and tried to block it out. It didn't work, and the voice and the chanted litany went on until the alien placed the green thing into a jar, quickly slamming the lid on. The worm impacted the lid a moment later, an impressive leap for something without limbs. England shuddered to think of what they planned to do with it.

"Answer us. What are you?"

When England stubbornly remained silent, the spiky worm was removed again and set against his skin. "You have three seconds. One...two..." He felt the worm undulate against his arm until its jaws pricked his flesh and felt a very large pang of foreboding. Can-taste-it-smell-it-flesh-blood-eat-destroy- "Three."

The alien jammed its hand down on the worm, which needed no prompting to burrow straight into his arm, mandibles spinning. The rasping, fangs-over-bone sound of its voice filled his entire body. His muscles were singing with it, to say nothing of the pain. It drilled straight down, and then angled sharply to crawl up his arm. He could see it bulging under his skin, and he forced himself to avert his eyes. There was a cleaner pain suddenly, and he opened one eye to see the alien dropping the bloody worm into a jar, where the mandibles whirred futilely against the transparent substance, leaving thin red streaks. He slumped in relief.

"Again. What are you?"

The fear of the worm being set to his skin again overwhelmed any rational thought, and he blurted out the answer.

The aliens smiled fearsomely, the V shape of their mouth turning upside-down into a smile. Their new toy had become more obedient, and it didn't even take that long to break.

The questions flowed like water, and the answer flowed a lot less well, like cement, or perhaps a strawberry smoothie. Sometimes, England needed prompting from the worm. Once or twice it reentered his body, doing all sorts of untold damage before he relented and vomited up all the necessary information, sometimes with the actual contents of his near-empty stomach going with it.

At the end of the session -the drug was wearing off, their voices twisted even more and were fading- he lifted his head as much as he could and croaked, "Why are you doing this? Why us?"

The largest alien paused. "For fun, of course. For kicks, as you say." The voice was so garbled that he could barely make out the words.

They left the room but for one, who smirked at him and emptied the worm onto his collarbone before departing. England cringed.

He could feel it under his skin, chewing through muscle, bone, and who knows what else. He'd never really made a detailed study of anatomy. He didn't know what was inside him. Maybe it was different from a normal human. It's not as if any of them had volunteered to be vivisected...

That's right, keep distracting yourself. If you concentrate on the pain too much...

So England thought painfully about the very organs that were perhaps being destroyed, hearing the grating voice in his mind as it twisted and turned and mashed at his innards. Finally, the creature leaped out of the skin near his ankle. He'd felt it going, a large, malevolent bulge slithering down the inside of his leg. An alien he hadn't noticed caught the creature again in the jar, where it raged futilely, smearing blood -his blood- against the glass.

England closed his eyes, feeling like a cartoon character. There was always a cartoon in which a character got shot full of holes, and then went to drink some water and water splashed out of the holes to the ground. He felt like that, as if he'd been sliced to pieces.

It hurt like hell. Hurt wasn't much of a word to cover it. The pain he was feeling went beyond hurt, and England found himself wishing the worm had chewed out his nerves as well. He probably would've ended up sobbing, but he hadn't drunk any of the sludge that passed as water and what with all the blood oozing into the passages the malicious beast had made - he was probably saturated with it - of course he was dehydrated enough to have no tears in their ducts.

The pain did not abate. It was like a sea, an ocean, a whole bloody world of pain, but he wouldn't go under. No way in hell.

Unless you're already in hell...

England mustered his courage and glared at the aliens. More had come in while he was writhing in pain. He twisted his cramping neck and looked out the window in the door. No matter what the aliens thought, they had not broken him. They'd merely tortured him. He laughed at his own peculiar logic.

He was stronger than this, this wanting to break down in tears. He could, no would, no will escape, and take the others with him. He smiled triumphantly, and then let the smile drop as there was a sudden pain in his face from one of the tunnels.

His green eyes skimmed the aliens again. They were procuring a new worm to gorge itself on him.

So he let himself float away. It was a skill he'd perfected and had to master over the years. He could throw his soul? spirit? aiua? out into the air, and leave his body behind. He didn't really know what sort of process allowed him to do it. He suspected it was magic, though Norway and Romania had never mentioned anything like this.

Maybe I'm just insane...

With that pleasant thought in mind, England's consciousness drifted through the empty silver maze of hallways that was the aliens hip. He walked the halls, sank through the floors, watching the aliens work and prepare weapons and tech the likes he'd never seen before. Eventually, he found his way into a nager of sorts, full of strange ships and more, miniaturized hexagons.

There in a corner was a very decrepit looking plane.

From Earth.

England's consciousness traversed the distance in seconds, pressed up against the window. There were six seats on the plane, and only one was occupied. There was Greece, wearing an 'I Heart Cats' shirt. How typical, England thought with a smile that was more a quirk of the mouth than anything. The Greek was supposed to be on watch, but was instead sleeping.

Who else? England's consciousness rampaged about the ship in excitement. Maybe they'd be rescued. Maybe they could go home. England thought longingly of his old Victorian home equidistant from Buckingham Palace and the Thames. He saw several empty rooms and finally stumbled across one not occupied by aliens. He counted them off.

Prussia, Switzerland, Belarus, and surprisingly, SK. An unlikely rescue party if I ever saw one, hethought dismissively. But then again, any rescue would be welcome. Any rescue would be infinitely better than none.

Then Canada came in, looking timid. 'Who?' asked a small voice, and his bear followed him.

They were talking, but England couldn't spare enough of his magic to hear them. Normally it required a bit of effort to eavesdrop, and all his strength was being used just keeping himself out of himself. He offered a small smirk at the weird expression, and then swore.

Maybe they're not here at all. Maybe I've just gone loony.

Cracked in the attic, as he once heard Scotland say.

Definitely crazy. Insane. Twisted. Fou bâtard. He'd been called all of those and more upon trying to explain his UN-imaginary friends to others. He glanced around. He hadn't seen hide or hair of his magic friends since he'd arrived. Maybe they're not real after all...

I'm just a crazy man, hallucinating, pretending to be a nation, and none of it is real. The words hurt, but he wasn't sure if it was the truth or not.

None of it.

On a random end note, I finished reading some books by one of the authors it says not to take ideas from in the guidelines for stories. The first one is 'Wizard's First Rule' by Terry Goodkind. Good read. I sort of wish I was allowed to steal an idea from him -the Mord-Sith- because I like those characters a lot, especially Denna, even though Richard kills her eventually. However I shall respect the good author's wishes and not take his idea. Or any of his ideas. Or any of the ideas in general.

Random end note #2: You may have noticed I stole the evil worms from the Inheritance Cycle. Credit for evil worm torture goes to Chris Paolini, even though I modified it a teeny bit. I wasn't able to easily explain the mouth of the worm, so just look up 'world boss Ragnoch' for the mouth shape if you care that much.

Another: Putting "strawberry smoothie" at that one part wasn't meant to be overly humorous, it's just that's all I could think of that moved slowly at the moment [as I was drinking a strawberry smoothie...]. I don't actually think you all care that much either about my reason for writing strawberry smoothie, but now you know. You have been enlightened. Go tell your friends. Spread the word! Save a polar bear! XD Okay that's enough.

On the final random end note, one of my mom's sisters came to visit with her husband, and said I had really beautiful, model-esque eyebrows. My mom mentioned that too. *rubs eyebrows* They seem like normal eyebrows to me... *rubs eyebrows again*

Translation: fou bâtard- crazy bastard. French. Guess who said that.

Yay, random update on my life of no real purpose whatsoever! :D Now, by putting the review reminder here, I hope you all shall review even more! :3

Well frabjous snarkles, this end bit is long.