Crystalline Constellations

S2 E2: Blood Ties [Part 1/2]

This video below is the Season 2 opening title sequence for Crystalline Constellations. I made it in MMD by using motions from ureshiiiiii on DeviantArt, and AgentSandraCartrip recommended to me the idea of it being the opening! 

"Come on come on come on come on... YES!" Cheered Eleanor loudly in the lounge of her flat on the afternoon of the very next Saturday, January 26th, clutching her controller as she and Russia were currently playing Mario Kart on her PlayStation. She'd just won 1st place while the East European country had come in 4th, and Italy, Germany, Sandra, Jenny and England were round right now as well, because this was one of the group's weekend get-togethers. It often varied which of the 2 worlds it would take place in. 

"How are you so good at this?" Ivan turned to the girl with the frizzy blonde hair, impressed with her gaming skills as he had put up a tough fight against her in the race they'd just played. 

"It's all down to experience, to put it simply." She beamed proudly from her years of PlayStation gaming both in her parents' home before she moved out and in the couple of recent years since she'd got her own flat. 

"Our turn! Ve~" Chirped Italy as he excitedly got up to claim one of the controllers, as it was now his turn to play a Mario Kart race against Jenny, and to him so far the game had looked like tons of fun. 

All of a sudden, though, the ringtone of the Hetalia song 'Let's Enjoy Today' began to play on Sandra's mobile phone to notify her of an incoming call. Because of him being shown some of his character soundtracks before in the last month, England perked up a little bit at the sound of this song. The young brunette picked up her phone off Ells' coffee table to answer it, with the caller I.D saying that it was an 'Unknown Number' and the others paused the video game as she pressed the green button on the screen of her communications device.

"Hello?" She raised her phone to her left ear, still sat on the sofa at the same time. Within a few seconds of hearing what the voice on the other end of the line said and recognising its owner instantly, her eyes widened slowly in surprise. "Really? I can't believe it's been so long since we last talked! How are you?" She asked whoever was calling her. "Mhmm... yeah... yep... okay. What time...? And how long will you be in the country for again...? Alright. I'll see you later, then. Bye." After a couple of minutes or so of the phone call, she hung up by pressing the red button directly adjacent to the green one. 

"Who was that?" Asked Germany.

"It was my sister, Starfire. She just told me that she'll be arriving at Heathrow Airport tomorrow morning and she'll be staying in the city for 4 months before moving to Berlin." 

"Hang on, I remember her! I knew her on DeviantArt." Jenny said. "We can take my car and pick her up from the airport when she arrives at the airport tomorrow, if you like." 

"That'll be fine, yeah. She'll apparently be landing there at about 9 AM..." Sandra trailed off a tad at the end of her 2nd sentence, her facial expression indicating that she was thinking in-depth about something in the back of her head. 

"What's wrong? Are you alright?" Enquired Ludwig considerately.

"Yeah..."

"Are you sure? Because it didn't really sound like a happy 'yeah'. It sounded a lot more like a 'hey America do you want to try some of my scones' type of 'yeah'." Said Arthur in a tactful manner. 

She did let out a bit of a laugh at his comparison before answering with, "I'm mostly fine, honest. It's just that it's been a bit of a while since Starry and I last spoke, and I'm just worried that I'll end up making the wrong impression..."

"You'll be okay, she's your sister! It's not like you're going to be picking up a total stranger from the airport or anything." Said Italy, patting his hand on her shoulder encouragingly. 

"He's exactly right." Added England as he shuffled up closer to her on the sofa. "She's a human being, and you're a human being too, so all you need to be even remotely worried about is being polite and you won't make any sort of wrong impression, I can promise that. And if there are gaps in the discussion and awkward silences, don't worry about it, because no conversation is perfect." 

"You really think so, England?" She looked up from staring off into space and turned her eyes towards her anime crush, the one with the wide eyebrows, whose lips were turned upwards into a reassuring smile at one side. 

"Would I ever offer you false advice?" He said in response, greatly enjoying the sight of that twinkle in her eyes, such a similar colour to his own. It was like 2 identical twin stars radiating throughout a miniature galaxy, contained within the orbs of this girl sat right here in front of him. 

The hours had then gone by so quickly that it was as if someone had pressed a 'fast forward' button on a watch that controlled the flow of time, with the sun receding to provide space for the moon and the darkness of the nighttime, to make a reappearance a few hours later, meaning it was now 8:45 AM. It felt almost like the sun and moon were constantly taking it in turns to show up in different parts of the world's sky because they were playing a never-ending board game. A game they'd been playing ever since time began, and would continue to do so until time itself ran out, alternating between the 2 of them and whichever rolled the dice next would be the adjacent one to show itself in the universe of mortals. 

It makes you wonder whether, after about 2019 ish years of playing this exact same game without stopping, the moon and sun ever went mad with boredom at any point in all that time, if such things as them even had feelings like humans did since they're astronomical bodies.

"She said she'd be arriving at the airport at around 9:10, so when we do get there we'll have to wait a few minutes for her, but not too long." That same morning, Sandra was telling Jenny this as the latter was currently walking towards her BMW with the former by her side. Jen was picking up the older female so that they could go and meet Starfire together. 

"Alright. That's fair enough. And Heathrow's only a couple of miles away from here, so it's not like we have to worry about being late and therefore making her the one who's waiting, either." She answered, climbing into the driver's seat again and turning the key in the ignition. 

Miss Kohnka, getting in the car and sitting in the passenger seat, was indeed nervous about meeting her sister again after all this time, a deep feeling of uncertainty rising in her gut, but she nonetheless did her very best to push this feeling and these thoughts far away from her mind and was equally excited about seeing her. Both of these feelings were colliding in a mixture, so opposite from each other that they couldn't fully go together, but were swirling around and still formed a combination. Right now the excitement side was winning the war of emotions by about 15%. 

Meanwhile, in her own lounge, Eleanor was gently humming a tune to herself while she sat herself down on the sofa, with her morning glass of water in one hand and her laptop in the other. She put it on her lap and opened it up, placing the glass in her other hand on the table in front of her, and continued to hum as she opened up Firefox in order to go onto the BBC website for her daily News updates. 

After some short moments, the BBC News page appeared. As well as the usual sort of reports showing up, involving politics and the stock market and all those sorts of things, one particular article caught her attention just briefly, so she scrolled down until she could see it fully. And what she read on it made her place her hand over her mouth and keep staring at it in shock.

"Oh my goodness..." Ells gasped. The pit of her stomach froze at what the article she'd just found said, backed up with one main emotion: pure anxiety and worry for her friends.