Side Effects of Superstrength (Hetalia)

Author: Ashynarr

Summary: So you know how, canonically, Alfred can drag around cars and swing bison like it's nothing? Yeah, the other Nations do too.

Disclaimer: Hetalia's not mine.

Warning: Hilarity and chaos involving Alfred

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"Hey, Alfred?" Matthew asked near the end of the call, in the tone of voice that generally accompanied a bite of the lip and his gaze looking up and to the side.

"Yeah, Mattie?" The American replied, curious as to what his brother could be so embarrassed about asking this time. It wasn't all that common an occurrence, drawing his mind away from the longing gazes he'd been giving to the package he'd just gotten from Kiku.

"How strong are you, exactly?"

Alfred blinked. "Uh, I 'unno, pretty strong? I mean, I can bench press Tony's ship, and that's not light when the antigrav's off. What, you need something hauled without anyone else finding out?"

"No, nonono, nothing like that," Matthew was probably shaking his head rapidly now, face flushing just a bit more. "I just, well, I was rewatching this show, and there was this one scene…"

Ah, he was starting to see where this was going. "What show, and who'm I being measured against?"

"...Tsunade. You know, the knife scene, where the picks it up and hurls it? I mean, that has to be a hundred tons, and I don't know if I've ever seen you try and lift something that heavy."

Alfred tapped a knuckle to his chin. "I'm pretty sure a hundred tons is about the weight of one of the larger planes, and I haven't ever actually trying shoving one of those around - never really crossed my mind, ya know?"

"Heh, I guess that makes sense," His brother replied, not entirely managing to hide his disappointment no matter how good he thought he was at it. "Sorry for bugging you about it, it's just, well…"

"Yeah, yeah, you're a nerd, I know," Alfred laughed. "'S not like it bothers me - you know I'm down for those sort of projects so long as nobody get hurt. Just hit me up sometime when we have a free weekend and I'll see if I can get us hooked up."

"That sounds fun," The Canadian agreed a bit more cheerfully. "See ya, Al."

"See ya, Matt."

The call ended, Alfred stuffing the phone into a pocket as he finally grabbed the newest games from Kiku's place and made his way to the living room. Tony was already in there, watching some hokey ancient aliens show and laughing into his popcorn, the American shaking his head even as he passed by to start digging out one of the handhelds. Any lingering thoughts on his brother's question were pushed away as he started mentally translating the opening dialogue for the first game he'd grabbed to English.

However, the thought was not so far gone that, later the next day, it couldn't stray forward again while Alfred was scrolling through Twitter. Several costumes from various shows had passed through his screen in short order, one of which at first glance looked just enough like his brother's old uniform that it dragged him, and thus their last conversation, back to mind.

His fingers tapped against the plastic of his phone thoughtfully, eyes sliding up to focus on nothing in particular for a moment before finally flickering over to the clock.

"Hey, Tony?" He called out, deciding there was in fact still enough time to catch his alien friend before he disappeared into his lab for the rest of the evening. "Think you can help me with a project real fast?"

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Matthew couldn't help but raise a brow at the video his brother had sent - the thing didn't even have a proper title, must less a description telling him what it was actually about. Sure, it could have been a rickroll or jump scare video, but Alfred wasn't the type to send the latter and he almost always did the former with some silly quip about it being definitely not a prank this time.

Well, at worst he could prank his brother back, maybe by putting hot sauce in his drink or something. He hit play, the scene of his brother standing in the fields behind his house fading in almost immediately.

"Hey Mattie!" The American greeted, waving. "So I got to thinking about that thing you brought up the other day, and got Tony to help me run the calcs."

He held up an image, which on closer look was… huh, Tsunade perched on the massive tanto Gamabunta wielded. "We calculated that this blade would weigh about 74000 pounds, or 33500 kilos, or 37 tons, depending on what you're using. Since we probably wouldn't be able to forge something that big without drawing some attention, we decided to substitute in the weight."

The camera moved as his brother walked, revealing three massive anchors. "These are cruise anchors, each of which weighs around 11000 kilos. And yes, we've already put them back before you see this, 'kay? No one even noticed they were gone."

Matthew snorted, but was inwardly tickled pink that his brother had gone out of his way just to answer a dumb question he'd had.

"Right, so here's the first one," Alfred continued, grabbing the anchor and lifting it up in both hands. "Not the heaviest I've lifted. Now for the second…"

It took some shifting to free up the hand to grab the second, but soon he was holding two of the anchors rather awkwardly. "Yeah, this, whooh, isn't too bad… gonna try and grab the third…"

The maneuvers he had to make to the current two, each of which were larger than the American holding them, was perhaps even more entertaining than the question being answered. After two minutes, Alfred did managed to get a hand around the last, pulling it up with a grin only to overbalance and fall backwards, the anchors colliding with the ground around him with notable thuds.

"...right, I think that answers that question," His brother eventually replied, easing any concerns of injury. "Sorry Matt, looks like I lose out this time."

The video ended, Matthew finally giving in to the laugh he'd been holding back. Only his brother…

Still, he pondered idly while saving the link for a rainy day, would Alfred have been able to manage it if he hadn't fallen? He chastised himself for thinking it after it'd shown up, because the last thing he needed was Alfred actually putting together something to manage just that and injuring himself in the process.

...that didn't really help soothe his ever constant curiosity, but it was an attempt.

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AN: Wow, this almost has plot! Or not, who am I kidding, this just struck me while I was bumming around for novel things to write for this collection. I spent a whole fifteen minutes trying to figure out the size of that dang tanto so I could plug the numbers into a weight calculator and then use that as my guesstimate for the actual weight even though I probably offended a lot of people by not accounting for it not being a perfectly flat, even sheet of pure carbon steel. Oh well.