The butter knife compels me! … Is it safe to swallow one's own glitter?
I have an enchanted sword!
I don't even remember when I had it forged. Was I a sniveling kid still, or was it during one of my battles with Poland and those guys? Did I get it to spite the time when prissy guns became more fashionable? I guess that's the nature of enchanted swords! They seem so ancient you can't put a finger on when or where they came from!
Or maybe I'm just old.
Anyway, it's an unbreakable iron blade laced with my immortal blood, with a hilt bearing a magic crystal infused with raw energy straight from the earth's core. It's so cool that it never even gets dusty! But I dust my sword anyway because what else would I do with my free time?
My sword has saved my life plenty of times. It's got my own power keeping it strong, so I can use it as a real extension of my arm if necessary. Come to think of it, if I have used this sword since the Middle Ages, it would explain why my aim was good with crappy eyesight back then! I remember one occasion when my arm swung, and the heads rolled, and the blood splashed, and I cackled with a smile on my face all the way back to the tent, where I wiped off my sword and petted the lost baby bird I'd found all through the night! Ah, I was such a cute little fluffy white monster back then!
But my sword is a double-edged sword. Because it's an inanimate object infused with my power, in the wrong hands, it can be used to control me. Stop laughing, Harry Potter weirdos! You and your Smart!Harry Evil!Harry Coffee-Loving!Harry nonsense makes finding good fanfics a bigger pain in the ass than folding fitted sheets! I watched the video with the mom explaining it! Several times! Moms are witches, I tell you!
There's something else about my sword that's pretty weird, even by my new standard of weirdness. Just as I swap out my breeches for gym shorts, so does my sword change its shape through time. Meaning, how do I put this? I control the sword, so I can transform it into a sword with a flick of my wrist, but now in the twenty-first century, that's not its natural look. It prefers looking like a butter knife.
As the saying goes, "Beware of the River Prussia! He is no longer confined to just one butter knife!" I'm not just a lowly cultural avatar from Earth anymore. I'm a part of the universe. I'm a part of the fabric of reality itself. And, as such, it's not just my magic butter knife in the wrong hands that can control me, but any butter knife, so long as my name is invoked upon its purposeful waving! Yes, it's a total kick in the pants, symbolic or not! More than half of my dream-huggers have butter knives in their back pockets! They know how to summon me!
Good thing for me, I only have to worry about the butter knives in my world, and not the worlds of the other Prussias. If that were the case, we'd have a few million Prussias in our house trying to fold fitted sheets whenever Germany decided the last attempt was too wrinkled.
It's a limit on my power that I have to accept. Damn vanity. But you can't knock the sword's creation if it helped me see better on the battlefield.
Every day I hope I don't get summoned. Being forcibly yanked through space-time isn't all that pleasant. Plus there's that other aspect of being summoned that I'm not sure exactly what to think of.
I'm in my room restocking the snack chest. Thank you, Germany, for letting us live in Bonn where the Haribo store is! It is the one place I haven't magically shoplifted from, though it has tempted me many times! Today I splurged and bought a whole bag of just raspberry bears, but I also got gummy pandas! My favorite! As long as I don't look at their faces when snacking, I'll just enjoy pure deliciousness!
I organize the packages so they're easy to grab and sit back on my heels pleased with myself. But just as I'm about to pick a chewy treat to reward myself, I feel the dreaded tug from somewhere deep in my chest.
"Oh, for Prussia's sake," I grumble as I scamper out of my room, across the basement, and up the stairs. "I'm right here! I got back from the candy store ten minutes ago!"
"You were at the candy store?" Germany says, swiveling his head. "Did you get—"
"Yes, I got you a whole bag of just apple bears. Now why are you trying to summon me!?"
"I'm not summoning you. Does your chest hurt?"
I can't speak, because suddenly the tug in my chest intensifies and I'm hunching into myself against the wall. Any second now. The pain is forcing its way upward, sliding through my flesh like an eager fish. I hold a hand against my shirt and feel it pressing up under my skin. I can't hold it back much longer. I hold my breath, but my chest is starting to split down the middle. And as soon as the crack is wide enough…
SPOOSH!
My chest explodes. Don't worry, it's not blood and guts that come flying out. It's pink glitter. Pink glitter that I command to change to Prussian blue glitter at once. It does, but this does little to remedy my situation. As the glitter keeps bursting from my body, it completely surrounds me in an impenetrable cloud. Then my whole world shakes, and I feel like I'm being sucked into a dryer and tumbled for a good minute.
Then I'm shot out of a patch of trees somewhere and land with my face in a muddy puddle. Yep. Definitely swallowed some glitter.
I push myself up, groaning. I always knew this day would come — the day I get summoned on accident. Whoever did it must be some huge history nerd or an old man or something…
"So you've been hanging out with him more, huh? Sorry, it was a really funny joke he told that one time."
The voice sounds like it's still trying to hold back laughter. I take in my surroundings. I'm on a patch of earth outside a cabin with a screened-in porch. Grass runs by me, leading to a dirt road that snakes through a little patch of forest. I hear lakewater and feel the sting of horseflies buzzing around my head.
"Yeah, he's cool when he isn't yelling. An' he's a sci-fi nerd like me. We've been working on some stuff together."
Crap, that's America's voice! Don't reveal my secrets, kid!
I army-crawl to the edge of the porch, then slowly push my head up to see past the screen. America's just within, having a cup of coffee, and with him, buttering his toast, is… if that's America, the other one has to be his brother! Candyland? Kanabec County? Canada, that's it. Canada summoned me on accident? Because I told him a funny joke? Must've been toilet humor. I use a lot of toilet humor around nations I don't know well. Keeps my good material safe.
"How old is he, like a thousand? And he likes toilet humor! I don't even know how it was funny, but the way he said it! Comedy gold!" Canada screeches, sounding just like his twin.
"You worry me, Canadude. I thought you were the mature one."
Canada wipes a few tears. "Maybe it's childish, but like I said, if Prussia were here, he could tell that same joke, and you'd be rolling in laughter."
Crapcrapcrapcrapcrap, I feel my legs wobbling and shaking and pushing me up all on their own. I can't ignore the call of the butter knife. I've tried. I have to do whatever the wielder says, and if I don't, I'm forced to do it. I don't even remember what joke that was!
I strain against the wish. I hold onto the grass and bolster my feet against the gravel. But control of my body soon leaves me, and I'm helpless watching as my hands crawl up the screen and my legs walk me around to the porch door and my signature smirk crawls up to nestle itself on my face.
I'm standing in the middle of the porch with my hands on my hips and mud coating my whole front. Then my lips part without me telling them to, and I utter a single word.
"BUTTHOLE."
A minute passes. The twins look to me, then to each other. Canada looks shocked out of his mind, while America is just confused. But slowly, slowly, both pairs of bespectacled eyes start to crinkle, then water, then squeeze tightly shut. Two bodies are heaving and quaking. Two pairs of fists are balling up to hold back whatever's balling up inside.
It isn't enough. Both of them break out in hysterics. America's laughter is as loud as the ghost of Prussian generals past, and his brother's is the same, yet more sophisticated somehow, like if a mountain were laughing… a mountain with a butt.
"Oh my GOD, Prussia. Why are you he-he-here!?" America chokes out. He's squirting hot coffee out his nose.
"The spirit of the crude appears when the world needs him most," I tell him.
I can't deny the internal crisis I'm having. Spirit of the crude? I'm Prussia, right? The bureaucrat, master of blood and iron, engineer of Germany, spirit of the crude?
Ach, no man can deny his fate.
Do you laugh at mine?
~N~
One time my best friend was tired while we were talking, and she randomly said, "Prussia is filled with pink glitter." This is real now because I took it from the Anticanon and wrote it into existence. ovo
Updated by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net June 9th, 2020. Reposters cursed.