We Are Zodiac (Hetalia Fanfic)

Chapter 15

Traveling across Washington turned out to not be quite a picnic. Well, the obligatory ants of a picnic were present when Germany accidentally wasn't paying attention and stepped on a hill in the Okanogan-Wenatchee National Forest.

Speaking of that particular National Forest, that's where our group is at the moment. 

The dappled summer sunlight wasn't doing much to aggravate their sunburns, but Alfred still felt like his skin was peeling off on the back of his neck. 'Damn... Sunscreen would be so nice right now! Or aloe... Yeah, aloe would be great.'

The tree house had been toppled two days ago, and so far the trip across the continent was going rather smoothly. Only once had they had anyone get hurt by a Zodiac, but it had just been a Libra that hadn't been spotted until they were practically right on top of it. It had sprung from its hiding place and latched onto Mary, but the largest injury she'd gotten was a cut on her shoulder from the Libra's overgrown fingernails. 

And the Libra had been slayed simply by cutting off one of the scales dangling from its skull, so no one else was hurt.

"Are you alright?" Alfred asked her quickly after sheathing his hunting knife. 

Mary kicked off the dead Libra draped over her leg and clutched her shoulder, which was barely weeping blood. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Her gaze was drawn to the severed scale lying on the grass a few feet away. "Did... Did just cutting off the scale kill it?"

"... Yeah, it did," Al said, eyes widening as he realized what this meant. 

"Scheiße, zhat came out of nowhere!" Germany grumbled as he knelt to examine the Zodiac more closely. The Libra was young, maybe nine years old at the most. He'd most likely been separated from others for a long time, and became desperate for food, Germany deduced. When he glanced around, he realized something he had also subconsciously noticed a while ago.

There was hardly any small game in the area. Nothing had run out across their path, or been startled by their presence. There was nothing to startle. They'd all been devoured without scrutiny.

'Vhat if zhe smaller animals are being hunted to extinction?' Germany wondered silently, his stern gaze hardening even further. 'I can't imagine vhat zhat vould mean for zhe rest of zhe vorld...'

"Do you think... maybe there are weak spots on all of the Zodiac?" England asked no one in particular. He was partially being rhetorical, so it was a surprise to him when America answered him.

"Yeah, I'll bet there are! We just gotta find 'em, right?" the hero replied. His tone said he was raring to go and find those weak spots right then and there. 

"Well, we aren't going to go looking for trouble," England reasoned, "but if we do run into more, we should try to figure it out."

"N-Not if it means losing our lives, of course!" Lithuania piped up fearfully from where he was wiping antibacterial ointment on Mary's cut. A band-aid was in his hand, waiting to be stuck to her shoulder.

"No, no!" England agreed quickly. "But if we can discover secrets about these beasts, it would be better for all of us."

"They're not just beasts," Mary hissed too quietly for anyone else to hear. Her pitying glance was for the dead, little Libra and the Libra alone. "Sorry this had to happen..."

With Lithuania's ministrations finished, Mary stood and picked up her fallen hammer, holding it in a firm, two-handed grip. What she didn't really want Alfred to see was that this was her favorite hammer, and that she had carved the word "Mjolnir" into its handle long ago as a tribute to the fallen mythology she had taken such an interest in even before she'd met Lukas.