I grow a bit sludgey … Is Spain actually a plant?
Meet my friend Spain! He's got grapes, guitars, and the worst farmer's tan in all of Europe! Today we're doing a workout together! And I'm a bit confused on how he's running faster than I am.
Don't think for a second I've got the same cakey middle as Austria! Germany and I swear by good health, and our regimen is one we've followed for over a century. We sprint, stretch, sprint again, lift, stretch again, do push-ups sitting on each other's backs, do pull-ups hanging off each other's legs, hike, bike, swim and sprint again. Sometimes I'll give him a sword lesson, or Japan will lead us through some kata forms. We may have had that pause in our relationship after the Wars — him growing taller and stronger and me getting a bit wingy around the elbows and squishy about the stomach — but when we reunited, we were at it again like the perfect team! Eggs and chocolate milk all the way! Super Force Ja!
It's easy to burn calories when your body is an engine fueled by superheated molten rock, but we can't spend our days schlurping extra EP to give ourselves godlike figures. That's cheating. We have to work for muscle, to feel proud and accomplished like the mortals we resemble. I'm not sure where this leaves me and my dodgy shape-changing abilities. For now, I'll keep munching my cabbage and feeling the heat. I have to be the prime example for my little Germany! If it's a competition, I know I'll win!
I have to channel Italy here! Light and quick! Just like the powers that potion gave me! I lean forward and jump past Spain, my legs springing like coils of steel. Salty sweat is pouring into my eyes, and my breath comes out like an animal's, but Prussian persistence is not always demonstrated in the grace of a uniform. Out here, my pride is my tracksuit, keeping the sun off my rippling biceps. My sweat may as well be blood! The blood of my enemy, who's managed to catch up again!
"You want a slower pace, amigo," Spain huffs, checking his watch. "It's a ten kilometer stretch from here to the Solo house. Can't push yourself."
"Let me be in front, then. I will win," is my snarly reply.
My buddy obliges, and I hop in front, savoring every painful jab of that rock in my shoe carving into my arch. Germany thinks I'm so humble and tame and righteous now, but I still love to feel pain! To know I'm alive and breathing and hurting in this solid body with these heavy muscles and burning lungs!
This is my essence! This is my chaotic soul expressing itself to the fullest extent! I was born a simple region! A nameless pagan wasteland! And I showed them all what I was capable of! My birthright! My destiny! To bleed and conquer, then bleed again and soar on eagle's wings! If not beyond my own fading borders, then beyond the earth itself, to the stars! To the galaxies! To the universe! To the impossible voids beyond all comprehension!
"Please slow down! It's not supposed to be a sprint! We're admiring the countryside, no?" Spain snivels behind me. I turn my head to look at him, my eyes all bloodshot and my nose dripping with what condensation is left in my body. I can barely breathe I'm so caught up in my crimson reveries. My heart pounds like a pulsar, and my veins are the currents of an electromagnetic storm. I feel way too powerful right now!
Way, way too powerful. Better cut it out.
I slam my heels into the path and skid so fast my face ends up in the dirt. My body is throbbing. I was just running way faster than any human should. Luckily this isn't abnormal for nations. Spain will just think I got too excited and zoomed on accident.
He catches up to me bathed in his lime-green aura, in fact. It's not a full zoom, but an enhancement of his physical abilities. Spain can focus and store little EP pockets in different parts of his body. Says he mastered this art to keep from getting seasick! Imagine!
I raise my head and spit out some dirt. My brain feels fried. Spain bends down and lifts me onto my knees. His tank top is exposing even more pasty skin to the crisping power of the Spanish sun. I don't think the guy can get burned. Maybe he's the one country who grew from the earth like a plant. He's got those weird planty-green eyes, and he likes extra tomatoes on his pizza.
"Getting the old spirit back, eh, my friend? You know I'm the kinda guy who can understand that, for sure."
I give him a smile, then force myself to my feet. I feel sore all of a sudden, and incredibly hot. We're out in the middle of nowhere — rural Aragon, this hilly place with infinite trees in every direction. I can't even remember how we got here. The land spirits are erasing my memory. Did we drive? Did we walk? What are we looking for again? City of Gold? Spain wanted to find the City of Gold, right? Or was that Portugal? Was Italy looking for it?
"I suppose we're similar now," I tell him. We're on our path high on the side of a hill, looking at the bumpy basin below, like a boiling pot frozen in time. Add Spain to the list of "never-gonna-die." This sun-bending country is so charming!
"We're the same. Calm and happy now, but fiery in our younger years. Los niños don't understand."
"Uh-huh," I echo. The countryside is looking a little wobbly in my vision. The tracksuit. So hot. Am I tearing up? Do I have the sweat to do that?
"What're we looking for?"
He shifts his stance, then points in the direction we were going. A thick stream of sweat pours down my nose and sticks to the tip. My legs feel like a jar of currant jam, and my stomach is starting to protest, groaning and sagging to brush up against the jacket.
"There's a designer house out that way. It's open-concept and shaped like a circle, with sliding glass walls. Kind of weird for my tastes, but Germany would like pictures of strange new architecture, wouldn't he? Ey! ¿Estás bien? You are looking a little… em… melty!"
I bend over, clutching my knees and shuddering. Curse me for thinking about "dodgy shape-changing" when such a power comes a little too easily at times. My hands travel up my legs to my middle, pressing in and feeling not chiseled abs, but a marshmallowy substance that's swelling and sagging more every second. My eyebrows quirk at the plushy sensation. Curious, I reach under my track jacket and explore the area. No toughness remains. It's all moist, sweaty fluff that expands in my hands and sloshes like a water balloon the more I manipulate it.
Just tired, I think to myself. I'm just getting ploomphy after that sprint. It's nothing to—
My whole body slumps, and I hear this squidgy-squelchy noise, like someone stepping in mud. Wait, is my nose growing? No, that's the same thick sweat as before. No, not sweat…
My nose is melting like a candle. I'm melting like a candle!
"I'm gonna step in the trees 'n throw up a bit, 'kay, amigo?" I slur out. My tongue is growing thick and slimy in my mouth. I swallow some of it, ploomphing up my gooey gut even more.
Spain gives me a worried look and offers me a sip of water, but I tell him it'll be better to drink after I've sacrificed my last meal to the sun god. "You have a sun god, right?" I ask, to which Spain replies he thinks he's Catholic, but probably also still Muslim and whatever cult those mermaids got him into one drunken, seasick night. I'm barely paying attention anymore. I scramble into the trees while he waits, ripping off the track jacket. My belly flops out — a great, sludgy mound of flab melting over the waistband. Thick liquid flesh runs in rivulets down my arms and legs. I touch my face, only to pull back plasticky strings of sticky goo, hot enough to start my fingers in the process.
"So sorry to all the wicked witches out there. This sucks," I burble before my syrupy tongue is swimming in its own goop. Another film obscures my vision, and I'm blind to my transformation.
I'm shrinking. My legs are still trapped under the black fabric of the track pants, and they're doomed to melt the fastest. The churning squidgy-squelch intensifies. Great splats resound below as I'm forced to sink lower into the warm, thick puddle of ooze. I grasp at the sandy ground, but all the dirt sticks to my bloating, bubbling hands. I rub it off on my face, and it's quickly absorbed, never again to lay idle on the earth.
My left hand falls off and becomes one with the puddle. My right hand follows. The remaining stumps drip their slop all over my shiny glop of a gut. The rest of my bones all wriggle and twist like twigs in a fire as they're stripped of their carbon strength. With no bones, I'm a man of jelly, and I slump with a gurgly splish-splat! into the pink-and-white puddle of Prussian muck. The rest of my flesh and muscle all shudders and melts away. The sun has won. I've changed phases.
I'm too thick and gelatinous to be a slime, and it seems I can't absorb things like a blob. Then I must be a sludge! A rare albino sludge — the first of its kind to be discovered in the forests of Aragon. I would commend myself if I'd made the change in my room and not out in the middle of nowhere.
This feeling… it's as if I have infinite limbs. My body has no limitations. I could shape and mold myself into anything I wished! I reach one gooey arm out and brace my stance against a tree. Stance? Am I standing? I have no eyes, but I can sense temperature and feel my balance on the ground. Shaking a peak of blobbiness I'm going to call my head, I undulate over a few rocks, grumbling to myself with a voice of blubby bubbling goop. I feel no pain. I feel no sensation at all except for the ground beneath me and the churning of stuff composing my body.
"¡Prusia! ¡Amigo Prusiano! Are you sick? Should I zoom you back home? Where did you go?"
Spain won't be able to carry my sludgey body back home! He may get worried, but with this sun and my friend's connection to it, I won't be able to schlorp back to my rock-solid self without sliding my way out of Aragon first!
I reach a few limbs out, searching, until I find a twig and some ground to work with. I let one precious bit of sludge melt even further into a moist spot, then compose my message about zooming home sick the best I can. I stretch myself up ten meters tall, arc over the trees, and chuck the stick at the back of Spain's head, hoping he notices.
I could use some Sangria, I think to myself, in that slow and muffled way a sludge thinks to himself. Then I morph back down and slither down the hillside like the biggest slug you've ever imagined.
~N~
Prussia melts. Spain has One For All.
Updated by Syntax-N FanFiction . Net June 30th, 2020. Reposters more cursed than this.