I'm warned of butt sonatas… What happens if a toilet flushes underwater?
So here I am!
The first stage of the PAMNAC assessment is straightforward and personal: the conference with an agent! This is the part where we immortals have to share what makes us tick. Our natures. Our styles. And yes, our powers. We're usually presented with a different agent each time… owing to the fact that older agents are less wowed by the glitter and grace of thousand-year-old magic men… and they're pretty dang mortal themselves… Germany's the lucky one. He's seen the same agent three times in a row now, and before that he saw the same one four times! Is it good or bad that people are hanging around to see the human Germany?
I'm the least worthy to make that judgment.
My agent just told me to call her Oma. She led me through the coffee-stained carpet maze to a little room in the back of the eleventh floor. Pretty stuffy in here with all the filing cabinets and desk toys, but she let me choose a cake cup and popped it in the machine for me. Now I've got a peppermint hot chocolate mustache, and my toes are tapping from sugar. Oma's fake pearl bracelets click on the table as she rifles through paperwork. I recognize my own calligraphy on these pages, some of which are dated as far back as the 90s. Not a curlicue is out of place. I rock paperwork.
Now she takes out a crisp new file of papers, lined with watermarks and electronic microprint. With the click of a pen, we begin our little chat.
"Now, what would you like me to call you?"
"I'm Prussia! Like the country!"
She quirks her head and makes a thoughtful "hm" as she writes this down. "And are you still using the alias Gilbert Aloysius Beilschmidt?"
"The A stands for Awesome… wait… does it really still say that?"
She shows me my last assessment papers, marked 2012. There it is, in my own calligraphy. Aloysius — the Latin name I took as a monk, and later a priest. (No one was going to worship the relics of Saint Giselbert, now were they!?) I suppose it's irrelevant now, with my recent discoveries of the "afterlife." But there is something about being called "Gilbert Aloysius" that makes me sound ancient and powerful, like one of those forgotten gnostic alien warlocks America keeps telling me about!
"Ya. Keep it."
"Your age roughly?"
"800-something. Appearance-wise, twenty-something."
"Place of residence?"
"Bonn."
"Your day-to-day occupation?"
"Well, I recently started a career pulling bananas out of my pants for kids… Stop writing that! I'm a magician! I meant I'm a magician, and I volunteer!"
Oma's not fazed in the least. She sips her coffee and moves onto the next question with the steely precision of one who has to finish assessing Roderich Edelstein before the end of the day, or she's going to be one cranky woman at book club later.
"What kind of being are you, Prussia?"
My pale fingers press into the table. I think of Germany, and then I look at Germany through the slight perforation in space-time over in the corner. He's in the room next to me, laying down his truths and fanboying at all the red tape. Heh. Just like I told him. Being here is just like a flu shot! The needle might look scary, but afterwards, your skin's all warm and tingly!
I can't let Germany down. He's counting on me… but then again… this is my fight, not his.
"It's complicated. I'm… first of all, I'm a living nation. Prussia, like I said. I embody the dissolved state of Prussia."
She writes this down and looks at me expectantly. Go on. It's just going to sting a little…
"But it's more than that. Em… Prussia… my land and people, they don't exist anymore. Really, my earth power is one percent of my brother Germany's. Basically, I shouldn't exist at all. But I do… because…
"You can describe it in detail on your own copy. What's the basic explanation?"
"Because I'm not just the nation of Prussia. I'm the Entity of Prussia as well. I exist and I don't exist, and so I exist outside of space and time, but also inside it. Like… imagine if the universe decided it was time to annihilate you and poop your soul out into another universe, but it couldn't digest you, so it just barfed you out instead, and because you were covered in the universe's magical stomach goop, you have these extra abilities that are kind of like the universe itself… only the universe isn't actually a creature. It's more of a hivemind in the shape of a concentric circle, and there is no intelligent design because it's self-regulatory… dammit, I make poop jokes when I'm nervous! It's easier to describe it to Germany because I know he won't believe me!"
"The last report doesn't mention anything like you're describing."
"Well, since the last report, I've undergone a strange metamorphosis. Yeah. I'm still Prussia, but also, I'm Prussia."
"I'm still not understanding. What kind of being are you?"
"I'm a pan-dimensional cosmic superbeing who can do this," I tell her, seizing her coffee cup and crushing it in my left hand so the porcelain shards fly everywhere and the coffee makes an unfortunate part of my body all warm and tingly.
Then I boost my dimensional awareness and reach my hand into the billowy fabric of space-time, easily reversing its movement and pulling the cup back together. I sip a bit of coffee and place it back on the desk, giving a little grin. Okay. I'll admit it. That's gotta be one of my cooler powers.
Oma refuses to drink any, even when I explain that there's no stinkiness in her coffee… but she's more focused on flipping rapidly through my last report. She's not going to find anything that even remotely matches this. I really have changed. Guess that's why I have to do the assessment again. Germany's just squealing like a dumbass at all the paper. I'm the one who needs help adjusting to modern society.
"So how long has it been since somebody impressed you during an assessment?"
"You're the first one I've seen who can reverse time."
"I reversed entropy, actually. That's space-time and the way it flows in chaotic iterations through the material universe. If that sounds like bullshit, it probably is. My brother and I watch a lot of Star Trek."
"What else can you do?"
"Mmm, I can disobey the laws of physics, phase in and out of existence, manipulate reality, bend energy to my will… oh yeah! I can kind of shapeshift! You wanna see me inflate into a disgusting mass of half-man half-seal!?"
Oma doesn't need that right now. She holds up one fake-nailed finger as she scoots her chair up and pulls open the top drawer of a filing cabinet. Within are enough papers and faded sticky notes to make Germany shit an iron brick.
"You need a different kind of form," she grumbles.
"Well, I'm a nation first. Do you want me to fill out two forms? I'll do two! That'll give me more time in Berlin!"
Oma shakes her head. "No. there's one form for a being like you, if that's the kind of being you are. We'll need to perform a litmus test. First, would you say you're a god, Prussia?"
"Why the ever-living fuck do people keep asking that? It's like asking for silverware to eat pizza with! No, I'm not a god! I'm Prussia!"
"I meant, are you all-seeing, all-knowing? Are you omnipotent?"
"Far from it. I have a lot to learn before I'm ready to save… before I can understand what my purpose is, if I have one."
"Hmmm… Prussia, can you smirk for me?"
An odd request, but I take on the challenge, stretching my lips into their smirkiest Prussian smirk. My eyes narrow into a crazy glare, and my fingers intertwine on the desk.
"Now, I want you to tell me the most disturbing thought that comes to your mind right at this moment."
"Gurgling buttcheeks," I tell her in my deepest growl.
Oma sucks in her breath. Then she divorces the filing cabinet and hobbles over to the bookshelf, where she takes the rattiest tome on the lowest shelf and cracks it open to shower the desk in dust.
"Have you always felt out of place? Before these powers came to you? Were you born with your appearance?"
"It's more like 'coalesced out of bloody snow and mud,' but yes, I've always been albino, and I've felt out of place. But that's just sociology, right? Oh, oh, are you gonna tell me some destiny shit? Is there a prophecy in that book!? Lemme see!"
"Why would we keep the prophecies on bookshelves?"
"You have a magical creature assessment going on in the middle of an accounting firm. Pretty conspicuous."
She's losing her patience. Gently, she places the book in front of me and points to a page.
"The ancient Greeks believed it was impossible for a being to have two natures."
"Heh. Yeah. The ancient Greeks told me that when I met them in hyperspace. Of course, I'm the one exception to that rule, right? I'm nation and celestial bla-blah."
Oma nods, dead serious. "Prussia, there is a word for a being who defies everything, yet plays along. Who transcends space and time, yet walks among people in human form."
"Jesus?"
"No."
"Q?"
"Q is a fictional character."
"Am I a Q, though? Is that what I'm called?"
"You, Prussia, are a —"
Entropy stops.
My head explodes into fiery pain, but my reflex to deconstruct into quarks and atoms is halted somehow. All of me feels sluggish, like my cells are suspended in a frozen soup of absolute zero. Zero motion. Zero thoughts. Zero waves of love. Zero energy.
And yet I defy it.
"Prussia. I'm not gonna let this happen, okay? You're not ready for it, and you might never be."
Oh, gawd. Not this loser again. I swing around on a stool that doesn't move, squishing my butt into a seat that doesn't squish, and face what looks to be a delinquent, baby-faced teen in sunglasses. His whole body glows with an eerie blue halo, like his veins are full of argon.
This guy's name is Ignorance. And he's just that. Ignorance, personified the same way I'm Prussia in human shape. I met him in hyperspace too. Just like me, he can phase through the fabreality, only he's got even more clearance than I do — slipping right past the toga guy and into the puppet party.
I don't know much about him, but he's originally from a universe called Cascia, and he's omniscient. Completely all-seeing and all-knowing, because of course Ignorance is. He seems to like following me around, even giving advice sometimes, but he never helps me. And his awesomeness level drops every time I see his squishy cheeks puckering at something stupid I've done. Strangers do not have the authority of judging the Great Prussia.
"If it isn't the teeny meanie!? What are you freezing this poor old woman for?" I cut through the motionless air. The particles don't vibrate at my voice, but sound is still heard through my defiance of all logic.
"I've told you this before, Prussia. There's a caveat to being the Greatest Man Who Ever Lived and Never Died."
"Yeah! I don't get invited to the puppet parties!"
"No, it's that the more powerful you become, the sillier your existence becomes. You have the power of the universe at your fingertips, but you don't have the same authority as the universe itself. If you must grow stronger, you will also grow more disgraceful. That includes gaining knowledge. You don't know what «O = Ɐ» means, do you?"
"The ultimate equation of my universe!"
"But what does it mean?"
"Osmosis equals An Airplane!"
"No. Now, it is your choice, but I had to intervene here. This woman can tell you the true name of a being like yourself. If you know that name, you will unlock unimaginable power. But I don't wanna see you punish yourself like that, Prubo. Power like that'll have you spewing toilet jokes and inflating into a seal every few minutes. You won't even sleep because your ass'll be singing sonatas."
He lifts his shades and frowns at me. His eyes are the same blue of the sky above the Eleventh Dimension, where the Treasure Chest is kept. So clear and so beyond anything even comprehensible. Not cold. Not warm. Not material and not celestial. A cosmic being like myself, and yet I'm still the odd one out. I hunch my shoulders and pout.
"But I'll realize my true power eventually. What then?"
"Then you'll be ready for it. But you cannot rush on through. You are still transforming, and the changes will take ages to complete."
I look at my fingers, intrigued. A few magenta sparks leap across my nails and fizzle out when they hit the frozen matter of the room.
"The PAMNAC people could help me, though."
Ignorance squeezes his cheeks. "Yeah, they can't help you much. Nations are their thing. Cosmic superentities, not really a lot they can do. Oma's got the lore, but I'm telling you to refuse it."
"Oh yeah? And what if that lore gives me the infinite power I need to break into the puppet parties?"
"Do you want ass sonatas?"
"I do not want ass sonatas, no."
"Then reverse entropy and save yourself a world of torment. Believe me, there's a parallel Prussia who told me to fuck off… his ass has a record label."
"Does he make lots of money?"
"He's in a maximum security galactic prison for being the most godawful being in the Great Attractor Area."
I give a huge sigh. "Fine, then. The journey's mine to take. Now straighten that collar before I make you eat it. I was once the most formidable general in the western world."
"I know. I also know your middle name is Aloyisius, and you won't grow a mustache because the Disney princes are all clean-shaven."
"Except the Beast!"
"Goodbye, Prubo."
With a blast of argon and a whiff of fritos, he disappears, and time begins again. I shriek as Oma reveals my true nature, then throw myself into a state of higher consciousness and start world-yanking. Coffee cups break. File folders fly. Papers peel and ink schlorps back into the pen. Then there's Germany behind the drywall, slapping his hands on the table in excitement of another stack of paperwork.
My memories flow backwards, one by one, but I hold onto the core of Ignorance's warning before it dissipates entirely into a cloud of ozone.
"What's the basic explanation? Why are you still around, Prussia?"
I shift my feet. Something within my wants to expand and transform, but I force it down again.
"Because Germany loves me enough to keep my memory alive, and I'm stubborn enough to hold onto this body."
Oma glances at my old report.
"Hm. Same thing you wrote last time."
~N~
Ah, Ignorance. The butt of many jokes in my old stories. The guy can never catch a break when he's responsible for keeping all the universe's most chaotic beings in line... usually he just ends up making friends with them.
Updated by Syntax-N on FanFiction . Net at 2am on October 12th, 2020. Leave tips. Eat bread. Worship Prussia. Go to bed.
Don't repost.