hetalia fanfiction(need title suggestions)

chapter 2: here be a girl

The thunderous roars, the bomblike snaps of fluttering wings, and most of all the smell of burnt flesh and gas everywhere. This is the world Rossi lives in now. Giant beasts once thought myth reign the skys and have thrown humanity back to the dark ages. It has been three years and the human race has dwindled. Few places are safe as nature has reclaimed the lands. Buildings she once knew as libraries, police stations, and homes now ruined museums of life before the hordes.

Her boots thumped across the old wooden floors of the store as she ran as fast as she could to collect any supplies not raided. Her heart filled her ears. Her walkie talkie crackled from being out of range of her friends. Not many were as crazy as them. Not many would do what they do. Theyre shamed for going outside the towns. Blamed whenever an attack happens close to their scavanging trips but they dont care. To restore life they have to find the truth of what happened to the world. To keep others alive they have to help scavange even if the guardsmen wont allow them to join for being weak.

"Rossi! Rossi!" A shrill squeak from the walkie talkie alerts her her friends were close."rossi we gotta go theyre coming! "

The roars overhead told her their time truly was up.

"Im coming Yuna, whats our eta?" Rossi tossed the last of the books and canned food into her bag and secured it as she climbed upon her horse outside.

"Now!" Was the response as rossi felt the heat of another building burned.

"Shit!" She whispers and races off, her friends each joining her "to the docks! We can use the old tunnels to avoid it!" The large brown dragon screeched in anger as they rode under a collapsed skyscraper. Its maw had drool dripping down, its teeth jutted out in an orthodontist's nightmare. Its yellow eyes filled with hatred as it searched for its prey.

The skyscraper gave them a moment of peace but as was the norm in this world, rossi and her people were spotted upon their sprint to the docks. The sound of liftoff told them so. Rossi dugg her heels into the horse, urging it to go faster. They were gunna make it.

Until a scream of terror rang out. Looking back, rossi watches as the beast picked up one of her friends, his eyes filled with terror as the winged demon tossed him into his mouth with the horse, the sickening crunch of bones and wails that turned to gurgles made rossi want to throw up.

" JACKSON!" Rossi's wails of anguish broke the silence of everyone, each one crying out in heartbreak but keeping going forward, bursting into the tunnels just in time, the beasts claws knocking rossi off her horse and cutting her shoulder down to her butt, but she was safe.

It was a silent ride home. The tunnels let out to a gated sewer opening beside the fish market. The horror and sadness on their faces, one less horse and rider sith them, made the townspeople silence their usual taunts. While they were hated for being the Scavies, noone dared disrespect the memory of a human now lost.

Rossi silently rode to Jackson's home. Being the one who recruited him, the one who made his chocolate brown eyes light up behind his flaming orange hair by saying he could join, she felt she should tell his mother.

The old crone answered the door and tears were in her eyes already.

"Jackson was lost. Im so sorry." Rossi spoke quietly, but the woman did not. Yelling slurs and angry wails at rossi, the woman struck her in the nose with her fist, the crackling of the bones in her face heard loud. The ground hurt more that day as rossi laid upon it, hearing the wails and slamming of door from inside the home.

A single tear rolled down her pale face. Her blonde hair covering her green eyes as blood flowed from her nose and back, she stood, leading her horse down the road. Mothers pulled their children away, fathers glared at her.

The guardsmen were revered for their bravery to kill the creatures, the Scavies were ridiculed as they didnt kill just scavenged. Rossi knew she would be martyred. Knew she would never be anything but a worthless person. But standing in town center, picking up a paintbrush, and writing Jackson's name, tears rolled down her face for she knew she was a leader of her own people and she had let them down.

"The happiest Scavie to ever live." She whispered as she wrote the words under his name. 347 names were now on the plywood around the center. 347 people from a 987 people village gone. The numbers dwindling as they had in previous villages. Soon, if nothing changed, the place she loved would be destroyed.

She turned away from town center, the click of her horse's hooves the only sound as night fell. She didn't care to go home yet. The questions from her family, the mocking she couldnt escape even at home, it drove her to the stables by the inn, yuna's parents greeting her with sad looks, surely their daughter told them their troubles of the day.

"You are always welcome here." Yuna's mother, a chinese immigrant who came to america as a child, was a sweet kind woman, motherly to rossi when her own wasnt so.

"And we shall let jackson's memory not be forgotten." Yuna's father, an african american scholar from kenya who came for a teaching job a year before yuna was born, was kind wise and had started the Scavies by being their official leader and going in front of the council to take punishments for the crew when the guards claim they commited crimes.

"Thank you. Thank you both.." She nodded, putting her horse away. They both knew Rossi had a rough home to go to, being 21 yet being put down day by day by siblings and parents, they did their best to be the parents she needed. They left her food and blankets and the man fed her horse and cleaned and bandaged her wounds.

"I would share a whiskey and some Dickens with you but i have some guests in the inn. Seems they are wanderers. See you in the morning Rowboat" he chuckles, the nickname having stuck when rossi was first becoming a scavie and claiming she'd find the truth even if she had to take a rowboat around the world.

"See you in the morning, Brian." She smiled and curled up beside her horse in the hay, preferring it that way. As she cried herself to sleep, she pleaded with her lost friend.

"Jackson, please, if you can hear me, i dont know who i am or what i should do. I was adopted into a family that hates me and proves im worthless... Send me a way to find who i am..send me some kind of worth before this job kills me.. Please... I beg you.." Her voice falters as she sobs, sadness over her life and her lost friend melding into one until she falls asleep, tearstained cheeks licked comfortingly by the horse beside her.