I went zip-lining with several people from my camp, and it wasn't as terrible as I thought it'd be XD No, I jest, it was wonderful. Me and my friend N [not gonna use full names here] watched "Cabin in the Woods" and decided that all horror movies have stupid endings.

On another note, I decided to re-re-re-read one of my favorite series, Rick Yancey's 'The Monstrumologist.' It's three excellent books [the last one coming soon I hope] of good ol' terrifying monsters and themes of what defines humans and separate them from the very thing they hunt...and I attempt to model my writing style after that, but it doesn't quite come off that way. Horror-themed books are always invigorating.

Yet another note: My internet is frazzled so I've only got computer time on other laptops. So even more delay between updates, I guess... :( This chapter is short compared to the other ones.

Last note: The Majesty of Colors is the name of a game. I take no credit for it.

No, I'm not shipping FrUk. Just because France had a non-negative thought towards Iggy doesn't mean they're in love.

At this moment, exactly 42 reviews. MY STORY CONTAINS THE MEANING OF LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING :D Well no not really, that'd be some scary version of messed up life...

Review! :D

France was in sort of a half-doze when the aliens came for him again. He cracked open one eye. "Mon Dieu, haven't we suffered enough already?" His voice was thick with sarcasm.

Life was actually getting monotonous. He was bored. Not the okay-kind of boredom that occurred when he knew he was safe, but a boredom crafted of fear and reluctant expectation.

To be translated, living in a constant state of fear was dull, and harrowing, and it was already wearing on his psyche. He couldn't remove the feeling of being hunted, of being prepared for something, of preparing himself for something that would be far worse than what had happened already. What that would be, he didn't know. He didn't want to know. But his imagination could speculate, and the nightmares could tear his imaginings into shreds stretched over a canvas painted red.

He noted that his imagination could also make this fear seem poetic by using interesting language. Imagination was a wonderful thing, make him be somewhere else, or he could feel the other edge of the blade and scream in hell. His mind was a double-edged sword, plunging ever deeper into the quagmire contained within his skull. Nothing was to be trusted; everything was doubt.

The nightmares; never as vivid as the first time, no, nothing could match that, but the subsequent remnants that hazed through his mind like temporal ghosts terrorized him, a wild race back in time to throw the memories into disarray. And there was pain to match, and a bleeding of the spirit, throwing itself at this cage of metal until it tired and slumped down defeated.

He was sure the others felt the same. Take Russia, for example, who was already half-crazy from his history. And Italy, his little brother, who was just too childish to stay happy.

Everyone had their secret weakness. France thanked all the gods he could think of that they hadn't found his yet.

He struggled as the aliens pulled him out, twisting and writhing in their grasp. Finally, one of them coiled something like an electric rope around his throat, grazing his adam's apple, and tucked in tight. He couldn't breathe without inhaling little electric sparks. They scorched his esophagus.

The aliens dragged him by the shoulders, hands clamped down tight, acutely aware of the threat of the hellish claws bursting through the skin of his shoulders and tearing straight through his joints, ligaments, a solid, round hole bored through his arms, rendering them useless.

France never realized how much he valued his arms until just one stray twitch could send them flying free from his body.

He passed several rooms, with porthole-like windows set far back in the thick doors. Was that Russia, lying in the flame as if he were a slab of meat? So shocked he was by that, he almost missed the sight of America's flayed-open body, the blood surging and pulsing in crimson waves. Bile rose into his throat, and as he tensed to retch, he felt the very tips of the claws pierce the skin on his shoulder. He returned to rigidity and, out of his peripheral vision, saw his old English enemy, unconscious, with a bulge swimming under his flesh.

However, the aliens got him to a different room with no more incident. The end of the electric rope was hooked to a metal pole in the center of the room, and then with a brutal shove he was tossed to the other side of the room. The collar, of sorts, yanked him back at the last second with such force that the light shot straight to his brain and darkness bloomed behind his eyes momentarily.

France opened his eyes a moment later, feeling a dull ache in a ring around his throat. He glared at a glassy smooth patch on the wall that he assumed was a sort of two-way mirror. "Chain me up like a filthy dog, eh?" he murmured. "Have fun with that."

As if in reply to his words, a drop of pinkish water ran from the side of the room and landed on the ground. Out of nothing more than curiosity, he bent towards it, catching just a drop on his finger.

It burned as if it were acid, and he hissed and shook it off.

Unknown to the Frenchman, there was a room with the barest flickers of white fire and a warped metal frame, and there was blood-swirled acid pooling on the floor. The fires had been extinguished, the acid collected, the frame melted down to re-use elsewhere, for resources were scarce. The pure, raw, energy of the fire could not be harvested, but rather than produce a fresh batch of acid, they could simply reuse it.

Another drop of pink liquid fell on France. He shook it out of his hair, wincing as the electricity brushed his neck, and then making a sort of strangled snarl, like a duck choking on peanut butter. I have to get out of here.

Another drop.

"Stop it already!" He shook his fist at the mirror in impotent rage.

France wondered, in the back of his mind, if he could just lose all abandon and bring himself to flirt with the aliens. With that thought, he burst into raucous, helpless laughter, the kind where tears of mirth gather in your eyes, except he wasn't sure if these tears were of mirth or not.

As if displeased by his laughter, a few other drops fell. A runnel began steadily flowing down the corner. The sound was anything but soothing. He couldn't imagine being immersed in the acidic water.

Tumbling head over heels in inky red froth while his city lay destroyed behind him...

Non, no need to go there. You're perfectly fine...

In an act conceived of desperation, he turned to the window and purred, "Any of you lady aliens lonely?"

In answer, the runnel of water in the corner turned to a wild gush of acid. He was somehow already up to his ankles in it, and he hopped from foot to foot before standing on his tiptoes. You'd better be grateful that I'm standing up for you, Angleterre. Because that's what friends do.

Because they were friends, in the worst sort of way.

The acid was already up to his ribs, and it felt as if his skin were peeling off, sloughing to the ground as the acid picked and pried at his muscles. Surely they must be eaten away by now...

Yet he used those self-same muscles to force the choking scream down his throat, and to haul himself above the rising level of acid, no matter the shocks that sent his heartbeat into irregular swoops, and he closed his eyes tight against the image of a tide of blood overcoming his city, without a little bird to stop it.

The acid crawled up to his neck in a slow dance, sticking needles into his blistering skin as if the pain were a grappling hook to draw the level still further. Higher, higher, the clear liquid seeking to permeate his mouth and slide dryly down his throat, to float up his nose and cause him to gasp with the pain, to draw in itself.

The acid tasted of blood. Not his, as he'd first assumed, but other blood. Not his. The horror of drinking blood, blood that did not belong to him, as well as accidentally pulling in a lungful of the transparent solution to do untold damage to his insides, and the scalding heat coursing down his throat caused him to scream. His mouth opened wide under the surface, skin pulling tight, gums being stung and releasing their own billowing clouds to violate the blushing pink tinge of the corrosive fluid.

Pink the color of the sunrise's halo falling through the ranges until the delicate ribbons of blood around him turned a color commonly defined as "French Rose", irony at its greatest. In the part of his mind not crippled with pain, he wondered why it was not a darker, redder shade, and then he was forced to slam his eyelids shut, clap his hands over them in the vainest effort, the war against his fingers; do not let the acid into my eyes.

France knew his eyes were blue. He'd seen them in mirrors, or reflected in the irises of others. It was funny; such a gorgeous shade, Majorelle blue, a color after sunset before the light fades. He'd adopted the color after his own artist, Jacques Majorelle and his blue garden. The bright, bright blue, almost painful to look at for too long in such an expanse. The Moroccans had already had this color, smidges and smears around their windows, but Majorelle had taken it and made it wonderful, transcendent.

There were many different shades of blue. America had, at one point, sat down and looked on Wikipedia at all the different shades of blue. There were sixty-three 'main shades'. The American had likened the color of his 'heroic' eyes to cornflower blue, and teased the Frenchman with 'Cambridge Blue' or 'Bleu de France', which was a ridiculous name.

But Majorelle blue...

Bleu, rouge, blanc, the colors on his flag and their selective blends, all the colors he would lose if the acid won this fight. The liquid clawed at his hands, and unseen to him, the pinkish color rusted and gathered around him, a loose shroud in the erosive elixir. Elixir of death, he thought, with melancholy.

The war boiled on, and a new enemy was added to the mix; the fluid had long since risen above his hair, and his rust-tasting breath was erupting in his lungs. He couldn't float suspended forever...he couldn't hold his hands to his face forever...

When the shock came, France cursed himself for forgetting. Obviously the electricity of his collar would travel quickly through this not-water, this elixir of death, and being tethered at the top of the pole, he was a sitting duck in standing water for this.

The electricity wound around his bones, caressed his body with salient bolts, wrapped her arms around him as he juddered in her grip, a living thing in the way she snaked through him, breathing the sound of static into his ear. His skin burnt around his neck where her arms lay, and his eyes flipped open and shut, open and shut as the acid frothed and churned with the presence of this dangerous, beautiful, lover.

She left him with a kiss, a scorching brand to his temple, and then the acid drained out, the mistress gone from her home, leaving the unwilling volunteer behind on the metal floor.

Jacques Majorelle painted an entire garden in Morocco a shade of blue. Guess what he named the blue.

And I couldn't help anthropomorphizing the electricity; it was just too much of a chance to pass up. NO, I am not implying that the "female" electricity did anything overly...uh...explicit. *wince* Ah my brain.

Oh, I had to google how to spell anthropomorphizing. Just FYI.