Chapter 1
Ontario.
The second biggest province in the country, bordering Quebec to the east, Manitoba to the west, Hudson Bay and James Bay to the North, and finally to the south, the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York through land and lake borders.
It is home to both the largest city in the Province, Toronto, and the capital city of the country, Ottawa.
From the CN Tower rising in the skyline to the flowing falls of Niagara bordering the Empire State, and finally the ringing bell of the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.
But this tale does not take place in the former nor the latter cities, for this story we go outside the capital city of Ottawa, heading west.
Situated on a rural road was a car, a white SUV Police Cruiser as evident by the unflashing lights on top of its roof and the insignia on the doors which belonged not to the Ontario Provincial Police, but Canada's National Police force; the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or the Mounties.
Inside this car was a member of this force, a prestigious one at that; but it wasn't due to rank or any years of service, it was who the Mountie was that made the law enforcement officer distinguished, although unknowingly to both the public and the wider force.
Inside the vehicle was the personification of the nation itself, Canada or known as Matthew Williams.
Sitting next to him in the passenger seat was his companion/conversation partner/pet, Mr. Kumajiro; and he is a Polar Bear.
A Polar Bear who talks and has been with Matthew since his early days, even before he was called that or Canada.
Matthew then began to speak to Kumajiro as the nation sat inside his car, wearing the uniform of the RCMP; not the Red Serge for which the force is known worldwide as he looked at the time.
"Huh, I guess I got here earlier than I thought. Granted, the meeting got done quicker than expected; heh, guess I'm doing a good job." he said to himself, smiling at his accomplishment.
"I think you're bragging a bit there, eh." Kumajiro suddenly chimed in, which kinda caught Mattie off guard for a second or two as Matthew replied back.
"How would you know? You decided to take a nap just as the meeting started because you said "You and these meetings are like me and hibernation, I'd rather just sleep through it."."
"It does get that way when you're the one just listening." the Polar Bear pointed out to the nation.
"I-...yeah, yeah, I kinda see your point now, Mr. Kumadasi." Canada started to retort, but gave it a second thought and realized his friend was right, talking was one thing, listening was another and might put someone to sleep, but then the Polar Bear said probably his catchphrase according to Matthew.
"Who are you again?"
*BEEEEEEEEEEEEEP*
Mattie had slammed his head into the horn after hearing his polar bear's response to him, causing it to make a prolonged sound before stopping as the nation lifted some pressure off it.
The thing was, Canada's polar bear almost always forgets his owner's name; and possibly on purpose given how many times he's done so and the only times he ever acknowledges him is either when he is hungry and even that's rare, and during the holidays.
"I'm…Canada…" he groaned, gripping the steering wheel in a defeatist but frustrated tone before turning to Kumajiro and started talking to him, starting a conversation.
"You know, you didn't have to come with me. You were the one who insisted that you accompany me, after all."
"Meh."
"Meh? What's that suppose-...?" Matthew's rant ceased when the sound of a ring from his phone went off as if someone was calling him.
The Canadian pulled his phone out as the Polar Bear commented on him.
"I'm still surprised you actually still get phone calls."
"That's starting to get old, y'know. Hello? Bonjour (1)?" Canada retorted back quickly before accepting the call, speaking both English and French in his greeting as the one-sided conversation began.
"What's going on?"
"What do you mean "They're arguing again!"?"
"Over what?"
"Look, just let them vent; but keep them from hitting each other, eh."
"Merci (2), so is there anything I need to take care of over the phone?"
"What? Why?"
"Well, he's with me. He insisted on coming with me, why would she be upset?"
A chill suddenly went up the Polar Bear's spine as Matthew mentioned "her", he knew who the "her" was as the nation slowly turned to his conversation partner.
"Really now?" he said, Kumajiro looked away from him as the conversation on the phone resumed.
"Alright, can you put her on the phone?"
"Well, hand it to someone who isn't doing anything with this and tell them to give the phone to her, please."
"Thank you."
"How is she?" Canada asked, clearly talking to someone else who delivered the phone to "her".
"Oh. Let me try talking to her." he offered the person on the other line as "she" was handed the phone.
"Hey, honey. Don't worry, he's with me. Shh-Shh-Shh-Shh, it's okay. It's okay. It's okay. Hey, if you stop crying for me, I'll let you have Kumajiro for your playdate when I return; can you do that for me?" The Canadian said softly, it was likely he was calming down an upset young child, offering what she likely wanted which got the attention of the Polar Bear as he turned quickly towards Matthew.
"What?!" Kumajiro exclaimed, his black eyes widened as his human companion put his hand up to quiet him before resuming the comforting over the phone.
"Okay, just wipe those tears from your eyes and you know what, I'll even join you. Would you like that?"
"Good, Good. Now I need you to hand the phone over to your sister, okay?"
"Bye-bye, my little narwhal." Mattie said to "her" before the phone transferred over to the previous person and a quick conversation ensued.
"So, it sounds like everything is more or less under control then?"
"Well, just keep an eye on things, okay? Thank you. Bye."
Canada ended the call and that dreaded feeling the Polar Bear felt earlier came back as Matthew Williams said his name.
"Kumajiro…"
He turned around to face his clearly infuriated conversation partner as the nation asked him this, still keeping his calm composure.
"Is this the reason why you've been insistent on being with me lately? Why did you not go to her playdate? You made her very upset, she thinks you hate her."
"I was busy?" the Polar Bear fibbed, which clearly didn't work as Canada replied back to it.
"From what I heard, this is now the fifth time you've done this. What's going on?" he asked, indirectly pushing the Polar Bear to tell him the truth, which he did immediately after.
"You don't understand, she is going to eat me! You hear me, EAT ME!" Kumajiro exclaimed in clear dread and fear; the nation now knew why the Polar Bear did what he did and could understand why; but the thing was he knew "her", so he replied to his conversation partner's fear.
"She is not going to eat you, Mr. Kumapidiro."
"How do you know? I could be turned into her next meal, or turned into a rug or something!" the Polar Bear argued to which Canada gave this detailed response.
"First of all, you're a special polar bear; you know it, I know it, and she knows it. And secondly, I know it's her traditional way of life, but I think she just wants to spend time with you and besides, I regulate the hunting of Polar Bears not only to keep the population from growing too big and to not interfere with her traditions."
This caused Kuma's eye to twitch after Mattie was done giving his response and proceeded to vent, in both languages, no less.
"How could you say that when I'm here!? Je ne peux pas croire que vous venez de me dire cela! Moi! You don't say that! Ever!"
"Okay, Okay, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that in that way to you, but I promise you, she won't eat you, or turn you into a rug, or turn you into anything." Matthew apologized to the Polar Bear, reassuring his companion.
"Are you sure?" Kuma asked.
"I am perfectly sure. Just take a few deep breaths to compose yourself while I go to my meeting with an old friend of mine, we'll continue on this later." Canada answered, telling him to not only relax but decided to drop it as he started the cruiser once more and got ready to drive down the road to where he was going.
"Why is he your old friend anyway? Isn't your status as a nation supposed to be secret?" Kumajiro asked which Mattie answered with this.
"Well, he's one of the select few and I like to spend time with all of the select few, past and present."
"Okay then, whoever you are." the former retorted as the cruiser drove down the road.
A forest.
Quiet.
Peaceful.
Serene.
And within this grand and beautiful forest sat an RCMP SUV, situated to be partially surrounded by the forest's giant trees; and within that vehicle sat two individuals.
He started to open his eyes, groaning a bit as he lifted his head up and looked outside the windshield to see the forest that the cruiser was in. He turned his head left and then turned his head right, nothing to indicate where he was.
Canada just stared outside at what he was seeing, he was in a forest, alright. And the fact he was still in the RCMP vehicle he was driving, he couldn't seem to figure out how and why he and the SUV were here, wherever here was.
He then turned to the passenger seat and saw Kumajiro in an unconscious state like he was earlier.
"Mr. Kumaachi?" he said, gently shaking the polar bear awake which seemed to work as the animal opened his eyes and started talking to Matthew.
"Ugh…what happened, eh?"
"I honestly don't know, all I remember is we were driving down the road when-...now everything is a blank, like a blur. What about you?" Canada tried to explain, but it seems he was drawing blanks in his mind as to what transpired to get them there before asking the Polar Bear if he could remember anything.
"Sorry. Hey you, where are we ?"
"Seems to be a forest, I honestly don't know where we are, but I guess we could have gone in the wrong way and ended up here somehow." Mattie managed to deduce, even if it really didn't make much sense; but granted, he did not have much to work with.
"Well, then we just get back on the road and back to where we were going to go then." Kuma suggested after hearing Matthew's deduction on what had happened.
"Hold on, Mr. Kumajira. We need to find out where we are first." the nation countered, pointing that out as he grabbed the police radio and was about to speak into it when he noticed nothing was coming out of said radio.
"No Radio?" Canada said as he then pulled out his phone, seeing the lack of bars, invoking the same response.
"No signal either? Okay, Mr. Kumadairo, looks like we're going to have to walk. We can't stay here and wait for rescue." Matthew said before getting out of the car, followed by Kumajiro being let out. Mattie locked up the car before looking at the sky to try and tell the time as he did so very long ago.
"Looks to be midday, if we hurry, we may be able to find someplace before nightfall, Allons-y (3)." he said as the two walked together through the forest, but within a couple of minutes, Kuma's ears perked up.
"Do you hear that?" The Polar Bear said to his human compatriot, Matthew looked around for a few seconds without hearing anything.
"Hear what?" the nation asked before he started to hear the same thing Kumajiro was, it sounded like…screaming, a male screaming; one that seems to be far enough away to listen to it but seems to be getting closer.
"That." the Polar Bear answered as Mattie's attention turned his focus towards the noise from the screaming by whomever it was.
"Eh?" he said questioningly as the screaming grew closer and closer to Matthew as he could hear whoever it was approaching.
The Canadian looked up at some trees as he could hear the approaching screaming when suddenly, something came out of the tree; it was grey, black, red, and yellow and almost like a blur.
"Woa-Oof!" It suddenly slammed into Mattie, knocking him down hard and unconscious when he hit the ground.
For Matthew, he didn't know how it long was before he suddenly blacked out and started to groan a bit before starting to open his eyes, his vision was a bit blurry as he also started hearing muffled voices through the slight ringing in his ears; he could tell that there were at least three or four voices, one of them being female.
As Canada's vision started to clear up, which started to happen a bit quickly and the ringing stopped, he started to see more clearly as he stared at the forest-covered sky and the muffledness went away as well, also letting him start hearing things clearer, to which he heard a clear voice from someone.
"Look! I think he's waking up!"
It was the female voice that he heard clearly as Matthew managed to muster up enough strength to lift his head and his chest slightly up, groaning a bit as he did.
When Canada looked, his eyes widened in shock and his mouth was agape; for what he saw was who, or rather what the voices belong to.
In front of him were three anthropomorphic bipedal raccoons and one anthropomorphic bipedal sheepdog which were all evident as all four had humanoid hands and were standing on two legs like people as they kept staring at him; Mattie even readjusted his glasses, which thankfully weren't broken and to make sure he wasn't seeing things, he wasn't.
Frankly, Canada didn't seem to care about his glasses being unbroken for what he was seeing, it was like he stepped into a cartoon. He looked to his right and saw the most likely female voice he heard, belonging to a female raccoon on her knees near his right arm; easily noticeable by her anatomy and the fact she was wearing a pink sleeveless shirt, she looked at the Canadian with an expression mixing both shock and worry.
He then looked to the next one in his view, it was the one who slammed into Matthew, a male raccoon with a shocked but clearly guilty look on his face, but Canada quickly took notice of his nose and compared to the other two raccoons, his nose, more his entire snout was bent at a weird angle; Mattie looked at his clothing which was a sweater of some kind which was red with yellow cuffs and trim and a giant letter B on it.
The Canadian then turned to the sheepdog who seemed to not wear anything at all, in fact, he couldn't even see his expression as his hair tuft was covering his eyes.
And finally, the fourth and final of the group Mattie turned to was a male raccoon across from the female one, he was also on his knees as Canada noticed he wore a white scarf that was wrapped across his neck, almost like a tie and a shocked face was written on his face.
As he turned his head back straight, he suddenly started to feel a bit lightheaded and his vision started to blur a bit, the four just stayed where they were, still reeling from the most likely shock from seeing Matthew as Kumajiro spoke up once more.
"Who are you?"
Mattie groaned as his head, shoulders, and arms just gave way and, likely due to him getting slammed by the sweater-wearing Raccoon, and likely a slight concussion from the sudden hit, the nation blacked out once more.
Chapter 2, coming soon
Prwtfalcon6
Review.
Happy Canada Day
Translations
(1) French/Canadian French for Hello
(2) French/Canadian French for Thank you
(3) French/Canadian French for Let's Go