Paint It Red

{7}

A man walked into a shady building, a wicked smile stretched across his face, and a knife in hand. He entered, expecting a warm welcome, but was instead greeted by shouts of anger.

"WOULD YOU JUST SHUT UP ABOUT IT?" he heard a man roar.

"BUT DUDE, YOU TOTALLY SCREWED ME UP! MY BODY HURTS LIKE A BITCH!" he heard another man retaliate. Of course, the man knew who these people were. It was Luciano and Flavio, having another one of their pointless fights. But the smile did not wither; it stayed, like it was set in stone.

Inside, a voice in his head shouted.

"You LIAR! Get me out of here, you bloody twat!" the voice echoed.

"Please shush, poppet," the man replied calmly. "You're starting to give me a headache!"

"Excuse me? I'm the one who was bloody drunk! Who do you think is the one with the headache?" the voice raged.

"You still haven't realized yet, have you Arthur?"

"Realized? Realized what?"

"That I am your enemy. You should have realized that when you saw your mirror image." The man chuckled.

"You-you're a 2p?"

"Yes. But that's not all. Don't you remember Arthur? We've met before."

"What? But-but I don't remem-"

"OLIVER! Get your ass over here and stop this idiot!" Luciano shouted.

"NO! Help me pleeeease!" Flavio begged.

"Can't you two just hug it out?"

There was a long silence. Oliver smiled, thinking he had given the best solution to the problem. Luciano looked confused and a little disgusted at the thought of even touching his brother. On the other hand, Flavio had a sparkle in his eye.

"You know what, fratello? Maybe he's right. I totally forgive you, dude. C'mere!"

"No."

Another long silence plagued the group as Luciano walked over to the head chair of a table. His face looked infuriated, but it could be seen that he was trying hard to stay calm. Flavio's face was blue from the rejection.

Oliver examined them both. Flavio was what he would dub "fabulous." He was dressed fashionably, in skinny jeans and a white jacket, topped off with a stylish scare and of course, he was wearing his pink shades.

Inside.

His body was, however, covered in bruises, scars, and bandages due to the torture session to release him from Romano's conscience.

Luciano was very much different. He was already dressed for war in a beige uniform, equipped with a knife strapped to his belt. Luciano was notorious for wearing his hat. Purple feathers were stuck to the hat, courtesy of his brother. Oliver knew he didn't mind those too much, however.

And then there was Oliver.

Little Oliver. Dressed in his usual purple vest and pink shirt, with his bow tie sticking out proudly. His eyes glowed like a fire, a beautiful vivid blue, and his teeth shown like the moon.

If only he was as cute on the inside as he was on the outside.

"Enough of this nonsense!" Luciano spoke up. "Time to put out battle plans into work. Right now we are simply a group. A small mafia. Not weak, but small. We are aiming for something more: an army. We have three countries, but that's definitely not enough."

"Yeah. So we get more people," Flavio interjected.

"Flavio, it isn't that easy, and you know that. Idiota. I may be amazing at combat, but the two of you are useless. Well, at least you are. At least Oliver here has some sort of a weapon." Luciano pointed a finger at his brother.

"Rude!"

"Guys! Hugging!" Oliver reminded them.

"Stop trying to make hugging happen!! It's not going to happen!!"

And their arguments continued late into the night.

~~~

Another meeting. All of the countries were exhausted. They were, understandably, unable to sleep, knowing they had the eyes of the enemy watching over them. Everyone glanced around, making sure each country was accounted for. Suddenly, America jumped up.

"Dude. Where's England?!"

Everyone looked over at the seat that England would usually be in. He was always one of the first people there. How they hadn't noticed the lack of shouting was crazy.

"He must have been captured. There's nothing we can do for him until we figure out how to fix this," Germany said at last. Everyone seemed to agree, though America and France both looked at each other, worried looks on their faces.

"We're going to need to keep this on track. Please, let's continue," suggested Japan.

"Yes. First, all of you will be referred to using your 'traditional' human names," Germany continued. "Do you understand, Alfred?"

The blonde nation was a bit taken aback with his real name being used, but answered nonetheless. "Yeah, Ger-Ludwig..."

Germany nodded at the other and continued to speak.

"Moving on, from the information we received from Rom-Lovino, we can be sure that we are all prone to this...'virus'...and it can be triggered when we are having very dark thoughts. Lovino didn't say anything about humans, but from what I remember in my time of torture, they surely would have snapped due to that pain. Therefore-"

"It can only happen to us countries?" Spain asked.

"It would appear so. But that could pose a problem. I don't think the micro nations will be of any help to us. They're just a bunch of kids. So...do you guys know of any humans that could help us?"

The was silent for a bit, until Germany felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned and looked down to see Japan.

"I do not know of any humans. But I do know someone who isn't a country that may be able to help, assuming our theory is true."

Germany pondered for a moment, confused.

"Please don't say Pochi."

"No, Ludwig. Someone closer, and much louder."

Germany stared at Japan, when it clicked.

"Gilbert."

Alright from now on I'm using their human names in writing! I just didn't want it to awkwardly switch over in the middle of a chapter, and I also didn't want to leave it because let's be honest here. It's weird to read writing where the author refers to them using the country name, but they refer to each other by their human name.

Yeah.

Sorry it took so long by the way. I no longer have a computer I can easily use for this, and I transcribe these beginning chapters from my phone onto my computer so.........