Homeless (a Hetalia Fanfic, Book Three)

Chapter 27~!

Okay, first thing's first: start playing the song now. It's sad-sounding and mellow, but also sweet. Listen to it while you read, m'kay? WUVS!

------------------------------------------------

As the concrete was being chipped away, chunks of ice came away with it. "Hey, this is frozen!" America announced, having been the first to break through the cube's exterior.

"It is cold in here," England began from where he stood beneath his former colony. "The water was probably allowed to freeze over time." 

"They're all frozen inside these blocks," America growled before putting in that much more effort to crack these prison cells.

Just a short distance away, the empty cube that had been reserved for Australia was just sitting there, a hollow reminder of what could have been. Carrying a sleepy polar bear on her back, Willow bent down to examine something that seemed odd to her.

"Hey... Are these heaters beneath this cube?" she asked, pointing her free hand at what she meant. "They look like it."

Sidling up next to her, Alice also bent down with a bear on her back. "Hey, I think it is! Wait... They put the water in, but until they put the nation in, they have to keep the water from freezing, right? That's gotta be what these are for."

"We can use the heaters to help defrost the others!" Willow exclaimed upon realizing it. "Perfect! Let's go tell the others."

The message was relayed, and the mechanisms for turning the heating units on were figured out thanks to a certain German with a knack for mechanics. The going was slow, and England, Romania, and Norway helped pitch in by contributing their own magic to the effort of melting the ice. Washington hung back, choosing to reserve her magic for healing, and Iceland wasn't confident enough in his meager abilities to lend a hand.

"Come on, Vale. One punch?" the Vindicator pleaded with The Scribe, who shook her head firmly.

"No, Alice. I'm not going to be fixing up your arm after every single mission," she stated. "Just sit this one out; you've done more than enough with helping us take the base over."

Oregon held her tongue then-- she'd wanted to point out that even with all the magic she possessed, Vale wasn't doing much to help them out. Adding The Scribe's power to the mix would definitely speed up the process of thawing out the countries trapped in the ice.

Still, there was that policy of maintaining neutrality throughout her life, and Vale wasn't able to defy that policy very much at all. It must be a very trapped, confined lifestyle...

"Am I going to do that weird thing again?" Alice asked after a few more minutes of just waiting for something new to happen. "Y'know, where I suddenly can't breathe and I say something weird that doesn't really make sense to anyone except you?"

"I don't think so, but just be careful in case you start to feel that happening again," was her advice to the young state.

'Well, how am I supposed to be careful when I'm more than just a little clueless?' she wondered.

America, who always claimed to be the hero, had left himself a little corner of concrete to stand on while he worked on breaking down the adjacent sides of the block he was working on. Whoever was inside wasn't visible yet, however. The ice was too thick and destroyed any hopes of peering through it.

England, whose hands were all but numbed by the cold, kept at his task of heating up the ice. Already, a substantial puddle of water had collected around his thick-soled boots.