Suburban Youth
Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
I don't have much else to say because this took way too long. I just hope I still have readers...>_>
You guys get the fairy icon because my updates are sooooo rare.
Seeing Things through Finite Eyes
It would take two weeks for Alfred Williams’ glasses to arrive from the Ojo Company in San Antonio, Texas. They were rectangular, small, wispy framed, baring an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Williams' specs; the similarities duly noted by a happy-to-finally-get-that-over-with Mrs. Williams. Alfred had fretted and squirmed the entire time he was on the chair and had even attempted to smooth talk the high school intern out of his examination. The boy was so much like his father. Once the doctor had written up their prescriptions, Mrs. Williams shooed the children into the SUV. Inside, the boys fell into a rather heated argument about something which she had no reference for. It would be a background buzz until they reached home and she’d shoo them to play for the rest of the afternoon.
While her boys were talking at a rate which made them sound like television static, the other child in her custody, Arthur (second cousin, thrice removed), was uncharacteristically silent. His mouth was nothing short of a hell locked pyre prodded by the fingers of Satan himself. The orthodontist, a small, masochistic Asian woman by the name of Doctor Li, had to bind Arthur to the chair with a slap across the cheeks, duct tape and promptly sending him down a guilt trip a Catholic nun wouldn’t dare tread. His green eyes were swollen and red rimmed because he had not been crying like a six year old girl lost in a Macy’s on Black Friday.
Mrs. Williams was just happy that one of these damn kids could keep their mouths shut.
Matthew had grown tired of arguing with Alfred over the benefits of starting Pokémon Red with a Bulbasaur versus Charmander. And Alfred had become enthralled with antagonizing their currently mute cousin. Matthew gazed out the window and watched the strips of land buzz by in wisps of green and blue. He didn’t put much thought into what he was to do when he got home, but he had assumed that whatever had sparked the incident between the Karpusis and Annans had blown over and life would return to some semblance of normalcy.
We all know what happens when one assumes, right?
Shadows were long when the SUV pulled into the driveway. Matthew saw Sadiq and Herakles sitting on the Williams’ front lawn. Their faces resembling the same enthrallment as a kindergartner in a lesson about the food groups. Mrs. Williams killed the engine and exited the car as her boys did.
“Sadiq?” Matthew asked, slamming the door shut. Alfred, who’d been sitting in the middle, let his brother know quite plainly that he didn’t take nicely to the door shutting in his face. Herakles huffed and flopped on his back, arms outstretched like a Roman cross.
“Sup Short Stuff?” Sadiq asked, nodding in Matthew’s direction.
“What’s going on?” Matthew asked. “Why are you guys sitting on our lawn?”
“Because it was here,” Herakles said in his near monotone voice.
“Are they still going at it over there?” Mrs. Williams asked, adjusting her purse. Sadiq and Herakles nodded.
“We came here because it seemed like neutral territory,” Sadiq said.
Mrs. Williams cursed under her breath. She instructed her sons and cousin’s son to stay here while she tried to diffuse the situation. Even though her husband was a lawyer, he was often too idealistic and was prone to…creative fixes to complex ordeals. She had to intervene before he made the situation worse and beyond repair.
“Herakles, which one is Mr. Williams in?” Mrs. Williams asked with a candy apple voice.
Sadiq and Herakles pointed to the Karpusi household. Mrs. Williams nodded. She gave Alfred her purse and told him quite sharply that he was not to do anything that would result in a burnt house or damaged goods- goods including his brother and cousin. Alfred twisted his face in a frown, but took the purse, noting with a slight heartstring tug that his mother continued not to wear her wedding band. She walked with a quick step.
“So why here and not over at the Braginski house?” Al asked, dropping his mother’s purse on the cement.
“The youngest one has a knife,” Sadiq said. Herakles rose, eyes wide and eyebrows creased. He ran his hand through his hair.
“I don’t understand!” he said, first to the ground, then he moved his eyes to the Williams twins and the mute cousin. “What culture would allow a seven year old girl to wield a knife!”
“It’s got to be a Russian thing,” Sadiq said.
“Or maybe a ghost thing,” Alfred said under his breath, though not as under as he had intended, because Matthew heard him and slapped his shoulder for being so ridiculous.
“Or maybe it’s a ghost thing,” Herakles said pensively. “They seem to be occupying the same residence as Old Man Johnson.”
Sadiq perked and cocked an eyebrow, looking at his friend over his shoulder.
“Say what now?” the Turk asked.
Matthew groaned. He slapped his forehead against the passenger window of the family SUV. Alfred’s lips pulled in a smug grin.
“Ha! See, told ya so,” he said haughtily.
“This doesn’t prove anything, Al,” Matthew said, voice muffled by his arms and the window. On the other hand, no amount of insulation could have prevented the masses from hearing Matthew’s sound barrier breaking voice destroying his phrase.
“Remember the curse of Old Man Johnson?” Herakles asked, stroking his chin and staring off into the distance, as if he were actually looking into the past. “Those who reside in his house will be cursed with his bloodthirsty tendencies.”
“Herakles,” Matthew pushed himself off the car and cleared his throat. “Those are just bedtime stories. I’m only twelve and I know that.”
“It…um…well, it could be a viable explanation for the strange behaviors,” a whisper, barely audible. Sadiq pinched his eyebrows and looked over his shoulder at the source of the sound.
“What happened to you, Limey?” he asked, looking the second cousin over.
“Braces tightening,” Alfred and Matthew chorused. Sadiq nodded, wincing sympathetically.
“Rest up, Little Man,” Sadiq said, giving the thirteen year old a reassuring nod. “You’re gonna get through this.”
“Yes, but is the neighborhood going to get through the unleashing of a spirit so foul that it was responsible for twelve deaths about ninety years ago?” Herakles posed the question.
“There’s nothing there!” Matthew said, throwing his hands up with indignation. It was as if he were speaking to a group of blind, quadriplegic babies on skateboards: they were on an uncontrollable tangent, and it was his duty to reel them back into some semblance of a logical conversation, but it was just beyond his grasp.
“Oi! Twins! Dumbasses!” called the bleached blonde haired devil of Hetalia Boulevard. Gilbert Weillschmidt trotted from across the cul-de-sac bend, hands buried deep in the pocket of his denim shorts, shoelaces untied and billowing in his stride, but miraculously never wrapping around his ankle and causing another disaster. “What’s goin’ down in Funkytown?”
“Nothing,” Matthew said, shooting his brother a stern look. Gilbert was already in their presence. He exchanged hellos with Sadiq and Herakles, the latter asking him if he’d reached his goal of becoming a mobile sun. The comment was missed by Gilbert, but not by Arthur who snickered in the back.
“Well, obviously it’s something or there wouldn’t be a powwow going on over here,” Gilbert said with a grin. “Whatever it is, I want in on.”
“There’s nothing going on, Gilbert,” Matthew said with pinched lips and a growing heart pressure rate.
“Ah, but that is where you are wrong, mon cher,” Francis Bonnefoy spoke with his plastic slick French accent, peeking behind the SUV. The fourteen year old had donned himself in a paisley print olive shirt and crisp white pants and dazzling shoes Cher wouldn’t touch with a twenty foot pole. Arthur curled his lip, partly because the boy’s presence made him want to throw up, partly because those shoes actually made him do so.
“What do you want frog?” the Briton asked with as much sarcasm as his pained teeth could allow, which, wasn’t much. He seemed as intimidating as a cat in a thunderstorm.
“What the rest of us want,” Antonio said, creeping behind Francis, a very angry Lovino in tow. “Isn’t that right, Lovi?”
“Piss off, you stupid son of a-”
“Right then!” Francis spoke, clapping his hands together, cutting off Lovino’s implied curse. “What is this rendezvous about?”
“Ghosts!” Alfred said enthusiastically pumping his fist in the air. Matthew dropped his face to his open palm and muttered something under his breath about being surrounded by overenthusiastic idiots.
“Ghosts?” Francis said with a disappointing tongue click. He sighed in a pretentious sort of way reserved for aristocrats and Hollywood types. “Gilbert,” his voice almost a whine, “I was expecting something…less fake.”
“They’re more real than your accent, Frankie,” Alfred said. The accompanying children snickered, even Arthur, who found great joy in any sort of blow against Francis’ ego, no matter how minor. Francis curled his lip, and when Alfred had returned his attention to Gilbert, had stuck out his tongue.
“I’ll have you know, l’Amérique,” Francis protested, “that my family has-”
“No one cares, Francis,” Gilbert said, cutting off his friend, waving his hand nonchalantly.
Francis huffed and flitted with his fingernails. His eyebrows crossed, he looked up from them. “Well then, why don’t we get this under way then,” Francis said, defeated temporarily, “I’m getting bored.”
Arthur rolled his eyes. He would have done more to berate and destroy the French American, but the metal bars across his teeth, searing them rather than shifting them into position, forced him to keep his mouth shut.
“So, ghosts, is it?” Gilbert asked, a wicked grin gracing his face, his deep violet eyes glinting with mischief. This was the sort of thing he’d wanted all summer. It was getting boring in the Weillschmidt household, and with the hawk like gaze of his mother, there was only so much a fourteen year old could do. He stroked his chin, thinking up the possibilities, recalling the various ghost hunting shows and books he’d perused. This was going to be fun-yes, this was going to be fun.
“What kind are we talking about?” Antonio asked, a pleasant, yet slightly unaware grin upon his face.
“Lo-vi!” came the shriek of a small child. It was pathetic and whined like a kitten who had lost its mother.
“Oh Christ, look what you did,” Lovino spat to Antonio. “I told you I couldn’t just leave him alone.”
“But Lovi, your brother’s what-ten? He can handle himself.”
“The last time I left him by himself, my parents ended up calling Poison Control and the FBI.”
“And if Chef Boyardee is on his way-ah, yes, my dearest little cousin. Oi! West!” Gilbert called, waving.
The slick haired, thirteen and a half year old, jogged behind the sobbing ten-year-old Italian, saying comforting trinkets like, “don’t cry, we’ll only play Name that Participle one more time!”
“Oh, good afternoon, Gilbert,” Ludwig said slightly winded, coming to a halt next to his cousin. Gilbert nodded in return. “What’s the occasion for this meeting? And why wasn’t I invited?”
Somehow, Feliciano had managed to climb on Ludwig’s back in that conversation.
“Lovi, why did you leave me alone?” Feliciano asked, or, rather, whined.
“The better question is why haven’t I killed you yet?” Lovino spat in return. He grumbled and rubbed his temples, a tension headache coming on.
“Anyway,” Gilbert said sharply, bringing the conversation back to him and the pressing moment at hand. “We were talking about ghosts.”
“No, we’ve gotten past that part,” Antonio remarked. “We were getting to que tipico ghosts.”
“Come again?”Alfred said, raising an eyebrow.
“What type, Al!” Matthew said. “How can you not know any Spanish when you spent the same amount of time in Texas as I did in Canada?”
“Quebec French is not French,” Francis interjected, voice full of disdain as if someone had come along and scuffed his only-appropriate-in-Las-Vegas shoes.
“Ladies, ladies, ladies!” Gilbert cut in once more, feeling his patience wear thin. “What kind of ghost are we dealing with?”
Sadiq and Herakles, who had been remarkably quiet throughout the ordeal, filled in the missing bit of information with a simple: “Old Man Johnson.”
Where there had once been kafuffles on the brink of total war, there was only silence. Antonio, Lovino and Feliciano crossed themselves and praying something inaudible. Once he had moved that abruptly though, the ten-year-old fell off Ludwig’s back. Ludwig had been to Hetalia Boulevard enough summers to know the story of Old Man Johnson; he also knew that any shenanigans Gilbert was planning would most likely be against The Rules, but he’d get dragged into the mess anyway.
“Old Man Johnson, huh?” Gilbert asked, nodding, thinking of the possibilities of awesome this would bring them.
“What’re we gonna do, Gilbert?” Alfred asked, eyes wide with anticipation.
“We’re not going to do anything, because Gilbert Weillschmidt is a fool and a stupid, stupid boy.”
A female voice. Everyone turned to the mouth of the cul-de-sac, where Elizaveta marched up, with Roderich behind her. Her chin length brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, a flower in her left ear. A black messenger bag slung over her shoulders.
“Fool and stupid are pretty much the same thing, Eliz,” Gilbert said. “You repeated yourself.” Elizaveta paid no heed to Gilbert’s remarks.
“Gilbert Weillschmidt, I leave you alone for three minutes and what do I find?” she said, tapping her right foot, looking uncomfortably similar to his mother. Gilbert pushed away the resemblance in his mind and shrugged.
“It’s nothin’, babe and-”
WHAP!
A paperback manga slapped Gilbert across the face. He reeled back, holding his scarlet cheek, eyes flaring.
“I am not your babe, Gilbert,” Elizaveta said. She tucked her manga in her bag. Her right hand, the one closest to Roderich, slipped out. The aforementioned boy laced his fingers through hers. “And I will not have you poisoning the minds of the little kids!”
“Hey!” Alfred retorted. “I’m not that little anymore!”
Arthur, who was closer to Alfred than Matthew, saved the older twin the trouble and slapped Alfred across the back of the head for him.
“I was talking about them.” Elizaveta said, jutting her chin in the direction of Francis and Antonio. Lovino found this hysterical. Francis and Antionio protested loudly, but the fourteen year old girl quickly shut them up.
“Look-Liz-here’s how it’s gonna happen,” Gilbert said. “If a ghost is what caused this little situation, we’ll conjure it, find it, and capture it. End of story. If there is no ghost, we don’t do anything and we look for alternative methods. Is that all right with you? Either way, we solve the problem.”
“I’m afraid that I’ve gone silent long enough,” Arthur said, internally cringing at making his mouth move against the push and pull of the metal wires. “I must interject.”
“We really wish you wouldn’t,” Gilbert and Alfred chorsed. Arthur ignored him and continued.
“There are such things as spirits and we cannot disturb them.” He paused to run his tongue over a metal bit, sending a shock of pain through his entire body. He cleared his throat and continued, hands behind his back and walking toward the ringleader.
“Besides that, you don’t have the capability to understand the intricacies of the Spirit Realm. If you open the door wide enough, you can unleash a whole lot of other rotten beings. Demons are particularly tricky and I have no desire to see the end of my days by the hands of one of the devil’s creatures.”
“And you know these intricacies?” Gilbert asked, raising an unbelieving eyebrow.
“I’m not masterful in them, but I know enough not to go meddling in the afterlife,” Arthur said, crossing his arms. His mouth was on fire, and his toes ached from the pain of talking. He hoped this conversation would end soon, or he was certain that he would pass out from the pain. He also had a feeling that the neighborhood children would be particularly grateful if he simply done so and figured he should stick around for another lecture just to spite them.
“You’re all a bunch of idiots,” another male voice. This time, the new speaker was Vash Zwingli, in tow with his younger sister Eva. Vash had an air soft gun in the shape of an M-16 strapped over his shoulders. Where Vash was mostly calculated behavior and big guns and defense mechanisms (he would put the Home Alone kid to shame with the amount of booby traps he could set up), his sister was small, petite and sweet as a cupcake on top of a mound of Hello Kitty memorabilia. Eva didn’t say anything, simply slipped behind her brother. She was dreadfully shy.
“Whatever caused the fighting this afternoon was not natural. The Karpusis and Annans have been quiet for years. It almost got onto my lawn and I swear to God, if I have to trim it again because someone stepped on it, someone is going to pay for it.”
“Vash…don’t you…like, have parents who should be worried about this sort of thing?” Alfred asked, not really remembering the last time his parents asked him to mow the lawn, but something told him it wasn’t that long ago, and it was passed instead to his brother.
“I do!” Vash sniped back. “They feel the same way. Do you-do you have any idea how long it takes to make a lawn as perfect as ours is? I mean, really? Do you?”
Alfred had to admit that he did not.
“We’d like to keep it that way. And if trapping a ghost is the only way to do so, then we’re going to do it.”
“Aren’t you rushing to conclusions?” Roderich spoke, tightening his grip around Elizaveta’s hand; Gilbert pretended that he did not see it. Vash and Roderich had been very close childhood friends, but different interests, different schools had pulled their relationship apart to a mere acquaintance. Roderich hoped he had the leverage to stop the madness from spreading, halting it with the Swiss.
“Not at all, Roddy,” Vash said, crossing his arms. “I want this thing fixed and I want it fixed as soon as possible.”
“Vash-” Roderich started again, trying a different angle.
“He’s made up his mind, Piano Man,” Gilbert said from behind, slapping Roderich on the back, releasing his grip on Elizaveta’s hand. “And I’ve made up mine. We’re going ghost hunting tonight!” A fist pump from Gilbert and the small crowd that had procured cheered. With the exception of the nonbelievers, which made up roughly half the group. So, in all, it wasn’t quite the rally Gilbert wanted, but at least he got some fists up, which was better than nothing, he had to contend.
“We’ll go to the Tree Fort tonight,” Gilbert said. “Someone bring an Ouija board.”
“You can’t open the Gate of the Sprits with an Ouija board!” Arthur protested, throwing his hands up in indignation. Honestly, the naivety of some people. Gilbert creased his eyebrows. “Besides that,” Arthur continued, “Johnson’s spirit is already in this realm, isn’t that the what’s causing the ruckus? You’ve got to lure the spirit away from its capsule, the house and-oh bullocks.” Arthur stopped. For one because his braces began to place an exuberant amount of pressure on his teeth. For two, he realized the depth of what he’d said.
Gilbert grinned again, slightly this time, but there was the same level of mischief in his eye. He pulled his face in the same look a seven-year-old boy in want of a Tootsie Roll would give his mother. “Now, you wouldn’t want us to get hurt while we were calling on this ghost, now would you Arthur?”
“I wouldn’t mind throwing him,” he jut his head in Alfred’s direction, “in front of a steam roller-”
“Hey!”
“-But…ugh…you lot of imbeciles would probably kill yourselves and about five hundred other people in Greater New York. You’re all a bunch of gits.”
“Would you want all those bodies on your hands?”
“But I told you not to do it!”
“But we would got out and conjure the spirits anyway. Zwingli over there’s gotta have his perfect lawn, duh. Anyway, Arthur, you knew how to conjure the spirits properly, but you didn’t. And now us,” he swept his hand over the crowd. Elizaveta rolled her eyes. “We’re gonna die because of your inaction.”
“You don’t want us to die Artie, do you?” Alfred asked, turning his face in a similar fashion as Gilbert.
Arthur’s resistance was melting faster than an ice pop on the leather interior of a car parked in Dallas in the summer. He grumbled and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Christ, you two are insufferable.”
“What’s going on over here?”
“Ach! Another one?” Francis asked, tossing his hands in the air. “Why don’t we just go door to door asking everyone if they want to join our stupid little crusade against ghosts that don’t exist?”
“They do exist, you stupid frog, and you’d do well to remember that. Ivan, these idiots,” Arthur motioned to Gilbert, Alfred, Sadiq and Herakles, “believe that they can capture the spirit which resides in your house and stop the madness of ill feeling before it can spread to anything more disastrous.”
His sisters were with him.
The youngest Braginski dashed in front of Arthur. She wore a blue dress that billowed in a light breeze. Her blonde hair was held back with a black satin bow, which lay limp over her bangs. Her gaze was as icy as a night in the Yukon, her mouth a small line. She held a knife to his throat. The small horde gasped. Arthur stopped, suddenly feeling that a slight pressure of metal on his teeth was better than the slight pressure of metal on his jugular. A drop of sweat ran down his back.
Sadiq and Herakles were on their feet at once. Matthew and Alfred had stepped closer to their cousin, though exactly what they could do to deter the situation was beyond them.
“Natasha!” Ekaterina cried, horrified. The oldest Braginski dashed to her sister and pulled her back. She spoke hurried Russian to the seven year old, reprimanding her. When Ekaterina took the knife, the girl burst into tears and jumped, demanding to have the blade back. Ekaterina held her sister in place and tucked the blade in the back pocket of her overalls.
“I guess the rumors are true,” Herakles said flatly, though that was the only way Herakles spoke, flatly.
“I guess,” Sadiq agreed. “She’s just lucky I’m not eighteen with a gun permit.”
“What kind of crap are you pulling, Braginski?” Herakles said.
“Ivan!” Arthur cried, trying to keep his gentlemanly composure (and eyes tear free) despite being seconds away from death. “Y-your sister i-i-is psy-psychotic!”
“She meant no harm!” Ekaterina tried, but even she knew the excuse was weak. She gripped her sister’s shoulders tight enough to elicit a cry from the younger one.
“She put a bloody knife to my bloody throat!”
“So,” Ivan said. He readjusted the beige scarf. “Is ok for Vash to wear guns, but not ok for my sister to have a knife?”
“She put it to my bloody throat!”
“It’s Old Man Johnson’s spirit!” Alfred said, dashing to the center of the mass, taking advantage of the situation. “Don’t you see, guys? It’s spreading! We’ve got to stop the crazy old man before he kills us all!” He turned to the nonbelievers, Elizaveta, Roderich, his own brother and Francis. “Frankie, Frankie can’t you see that there is evil among us?”
“Only the evil of stupidity,” Francis said looking down his prominent nose, pushing away the twelve-year-old.
“Eliz, Roddy, you gotta see the light here. Matt-my own flesh and blood-Matt. You’ve gotta see it too!”
The eldest twin made a quick glance to Ekaterina. She was looking particularly lovely today: the same faded overalls, a pink shirt and red headband. Her large blue eyes were wide with horror and anger at her sister, whom she kept in steady place. His heart beat faster, and he was certain it had nothing to do with the near death experience of his second cousin (thrice removed). He had no idea what she felt of the Old Man Johnson story, but he knew showing her that he would not fall to bedtime stories and superstition was a good move.
Yes, there was Celine Dion once more.
The oldest Williams twin finally spoke. He cleared his throat and hoped to every deity he’d ever heard of to keep his voice in check.
Whatever he said was undistinguishable. Dogs in Syracuse cringed. His stomach dropped somewhere between his knees.
It was then that he realized he was no less foolish than Alfred-doing the same thing over and over again, trying to woo the Russian girl who occupied the majority of his dreams and failing miserably. Every time he tried, he got the same results: a cracked voice which made holes in the sound barrier, a giggle and humiliation. Good judgment told him to forget about Ekaterina and return his focus to Mindi, but something in his heart told him otherwise. Matthew looked over his brother and was jealous for the blissful non-woman life he led. The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.
“Matt! Matt! Matt!” Alfred called, snapping his fingers in front of his twin’s face, dragging him kicking and screaming from his thoughts. “You keep staring off into space like that. I’m really starting to worry about you. You’re not runnin’ a fever are you?”
As Alfred reached for his brother’s forehead, and as Matthew shoved him off, Gilbert filled the Braginski siblings in with what had happened, their conjecture and their determined solution.
“This um…hunting of ghosts…is this a common practice in America?” Ivan asked, unsure.
In the background, the shoving match between Matthew and Alfred had broken out into a full-fledged scuffle. With a pack Alfred was pinned to the ground. He grunted, and answered Ivan’s question:
“Only for those brave enough to face them,” Alfred said. He rolled to the side, throwing Matthew off balance. The eldest fell and now Alfred had the upper hand. No one seemed to notice or care that the boys were playing on a cement drive way.
Ivan furrowed his eyebrows and glanced at his older sister, whose demeanor had not changed since Natasha decided to show everyone what a brilliant knife collection she had. He wasn’t sure he could trust a lot that couldn’t pronounce his name correctly even after he’d been on the block for more than a month. On that note, he was almost sure that was what sparked Natasha’s violence; even if she couldn’t understand English, she could hear when someone mispronounced his name. It was an act of defense and honor defending. No shame in that really.
It’s what he kept telling himself. The latter, that his stepsister really was psychotic, was a bit too large of a pill to swallow. And on that note, Ivan did just that, wallow, and turn to his half-sister, whose demeanor and grip on Natasha’s shoulders had not changed. “Katya, chto vey dyemaete?”
Ekaterina seemed to trust the boys, especially the speckled blonde one, who was currently slamming his brother into the grass. Gilbert, the bleach haired one, called for the fight to continue. Ivan wasn’t so sure. But if their moving into the house somehow disturbed a serial killer from the nineteen hundreds, it was their responsibility to send him back.
“Gilbert!” Ekaterina called, making the fourteen year old jerk his attention back to the Braginski siblings. He barked at the Williams boys to knock it off. They did so, no questions asked. Although Alfred elbowed Matthew’s side and Matthew flicked him on the bridge of his nose.
“Have ya decided then?” Gilbert asked.
Ekaterina nodded. “We will go with you.”
“W-will the knife wielder b-b-be staying at home then?” Arthur piped. Ivan nodded, and reassured the frightened Briton that there would not be a drop of human blood spilt from his sister. It seemed to calm him down.
“Excellent,” Gilbert said. “Now, I assume you lot will be staying surface bound then, since ghosts don’t exist?”
“I will go down as well,” Francis said, “but not to hunt for a ghost, to see the terror upon Arthur’s face when you conjure nothing.”
Arthur responded with as many obscenities as his metal clad teeth would allow.
Elizaveta huffed. “I suppose we’ll go down too,” she tugged on Roderich’s hand and he moved closer. “To make sure you don’t actually kill someone. We don’t need a Blair Witch-”
Antonio, Lovino and Feliciano crossed themselves quickly.
“-Project on our hands.”
“Gilbert, please tell me that you’ve thought this through,” Ludwig said with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Of course I have,” Gilbert responded.
“For more than five minutes?”
“Let’s not worry about it, West,” Gilbert said, patting his cousin on the shoulder. “You comin’ with us?”
“Well, Feli, are you going?” Ludwig asked his…well, he wasn’t quite sure he could call Feliciano his friend, more like a pet or a mascot really.
“Maybe we can lure the ghost with pasta! Lovi, do you think the ghost will like Nana’s canolis?”
“Maybe he will like paella!” Antonio said brightly. “My mom made some the other night. It’s so good and ah, I can taste it already, though it needed some more tomato sauce. It always needs more tomatoes I don’t understand…”
All the while, Lovino’s face continued to resemble the fruit (or is it a vegetable?) that Antonio described.
“That food’s for the living!”
“Hey guys,” a new voice asked. The group turned to the new comers: five blondes of various height and Scandinavian origin. The Nordic Five or the Scandi Five: Tino, Berwald, Jakob, Kris and Ice. Tino’s dog yipped at his feet. It was Tino who spoke first, and it was he who asked the question: “What’s going on?”
Gilbert slapped his forehead with his open palm.
myopic
(mī-ō'pē-ə) adj.
1. Ophthalmology. pertaining to or having myopia; nearsighted.
2. Unable or unwilling to act prudently; shortsighted
3. Lacking tolerance or understanding; narrow-minded
I don't have much else to say because this took way too long. I just hope I still have readers...>_>
You guys get the fairy icon because my updates are sooooo rare.
Seeing Things through Finite Eyes
It would take two weeks for Alfred Williams’ glasses to arrive from the Ojo Company in San Antonio, Texas. They were rectangular, small, wispy framed, baring an uncanny resemblance to Mr. Williams' specs; the similarities duly noted by a happy-to-finally-get-that-over-with Mrs. Williams. Alfred had fretted and squirmed the entire time he was on the chair and had even attempted to smooth talk the high school intern out of his examination. The boy was so much like his father. Once the doctor had written up their prescriptions, Mrs. Williams shooed the children into the SUV. Inside, the boys fell into a rather heated argument about something which she had no reference for. It would be a background buzz until they reached home and she’d shoo them to play for the rest of the afternoon.
While her boys were talking at a rate which made them sound like television static, the other child in her custody, Arthur (second cousin, thrice removed), was uncharacteristically silent. His mouth was nothing short of a hell locked pyre prodded by the fingers of Satan himself. The orthodontist, a small, masochistic Asian woman by the name of Doctor Li, had to bind Arthur to the chair with a slap across the cheeks, duct tape and promptly sending him down a guilt trip a Catholic nun wouldn’t dare tread. His green eyes were swollen and red rimmed because he had not been crying like a six year old girl lost in a Macy’s on Black Friday.
Mrs. Williams was just happy that one of these damn kids could keep their mouths shut.
Matthew had grown tired of arguing with Alfred over the benefits of starting Pokémon Red with a Bulbasaur versus Charmander. And Alfred had become enthralled with antagonizing their currently mute cousin. Matthew gazed out the window and watched the strips of land buzz by in wisps of green and blue. He didn’t put much thought into what he was to do when he got home, but he had assumed that whatever had sparked the incident between the Karpusis and Annans had blown over and life would return to some semblance of normalcy.
We all know what happens when one assumes, right?
Shadows were long when the SUV pulled into the driveway. Matthew saw Sadiq and Herakles sitting on the Williams’ front lawn. Their faces resembling the same enthrallment as a kindergartner in a lesson about the food groups. Mrs. Williams killed the engine and exited the car as her boys did.
“Sadiq?” Matthew asked, slamming the door shut. Alfred, who’d been sitting in the middle, let his brother know quite plainly that he didn’t take nicely to the door shutting in his face. Herakles huffed and flopped on his back, arms outstretched like a Roman cross.
“Sup Short Stuff?” Sadiq asked, nodding in Matthew’s direction.
“What’s going on?” Matthew asked. “Why are you guys sitting on our lawn?”
“Because it was here,” Herakles said in his near monotone voice.
“Are they still going at it over there?” Mrs. Williams asked, adjusting her purse. Sadiq and Herakles nodded.
“We came here because it seemed like neutral territory,” Sadiq said.
Mrs. Williams cursed under her breath. She instructed her sons and cousin’s son to stay here while she tried to diffuse the situation. Even though her husband was a lawyer, he was often too idealistic and was prone to…creative fixes to complex ordeals. She had to intervene before he made the situation worse and beyond repair.
“Herakles, which one is Mr. Williams in?” Mrs. Williams asked with a candy apple voice.
Sadiq and Herakles pointed to the Karpusi household. Mrs. Williams nodded. She gave Alfred her purse and told him quite sharply that he was not to do anything that would result in a burnt house or damaged goods- goods including his brother and cousin. Alfred twisted his face in a frown, but took the purse, noting with a slight heartstring tug that his mother continued not to wear her wedding band. She walked with a quick step.
“So why here and not over at the Braginski house?” Al asked, dropping his mother’s purse on the cement.
“The youngest one has a knife,” Sadiq said. Herakles rose, eyes wide and eyebrows creased. He ran his hand through his hair.
“I don’t understand!” he said, first to the ground, then he moved his eyes to the Williams twins and the mute cousin. “What culture would allow a seven year old girl to wield a knife!”
“It’s got to be a Russian thing,” Sadiq said.
“Or maybe a ghost thing,” Alfred said under his breath, though not as under as he had intended, because Matthew heard him and slapped his shoulder for being so ridiculous.
“Or maybe it’s a ghost thing,” Herakles said pensively. “They seem to be occupying the same residence as Old Man Johnson.”
Sadiq perked and cocked an eyebrow, looking at his friend over his shoulder.
“Say what now?” the Turk asked.
Matthew groaned. He slapped his forehead against the passenger window of the family SUV. Alfred’s lips pulled in a smug grin.
“Ha! See, told ya so,” he said haughtily.
“This doesn’t prove anything, Al,” Matthew said, voice muffled by his arms and the window. On the other hand, no amount of insulation could have prevented the masses from hearing Matthew’s sound barrier breaking voice destroying his phrase.
“Remember the curse of Old Man Johnson?” Herakles asked, stroking his chin and staring off into the distance, as if he were actually looking into the past. “Those who reside in his house will be cursed with his bloodthirsty tendencies.”
“Herakles,” Matthew pushed himself off the car and cleared his throat. “Those are just bedtime stories. I’m only twelve and I know that.”
“It…um…well, it could be a viable explanation for the strange behaviors,” a whisper, barely audible. Sadiq pinched his eyebrows and looked over his shoulder at the source of the sound.
“What happened to you, Limey?” he asked, looking the second cousin over.
“Braces tightening,” Alfred and Matthew chorused. Sadiq nodded, wincing sympathetically.
“Rest up, Little Man,” Sadiq said, giving the thirteen year old a reassuring nod. “You’re gonna get through this.”
“Yes, but is the neighborhood going to get through the unleashing of a spirit so foul that it was responsible for twelve deaths about ninety years ago?” Herakles posed the question.
“There’s nothing there!” Matthew said, throwing his hands up with indignation. It was as if he were speaking to a group of blind, quadriplegic babies on skateboards: they were on an uncontrollable tangent, and it was his duty to reel them back into some semblance of a logical conversation, but it was just beyond his grasp.
“Oi! Twins! Dumbasses!” called the bleached blonde haired devil of Hetalia Boulevard. Gilbert Weillschmidt trotted from across the cul-de-sac bend, hands buried deep in the pocket of his denim shorts, shoelaces untied and billowing in his stride, but miraculously never wrapping around his ankle and causing another disaster. “What’s goin’ down in Funkytown?”
“Nothing,” Matthew said, shooting his brother a stern look. Gilbert was already in their presence. He exchanged hellos with Sadiq and Herakles, the latter asking him if he’d reached his goal of becoming a mobile sun. The comment was missed by Gilbert, but not by Arthur who snickered in the back.
“Well, obviously it’s something or there wouldn’t be a powwow going on over here,” Gilbert said with a grin. “Whatever it is, I want in on.”
“There’s nothing going on, Gilbert,” Matthew said with pinched lips and a growing heart pressure rate.
“Ah, but that is where you are wrong, mon cher,” Francis Bonnefoy spoke with his plastic slick French accent, peeking behind the SUV. The fourteen year old had donned himself in a paisley print olive shirt and crisp white pants and dazzling shoes Cher wouldn’t touch with a twenty foot pole. Arthur curled his lip, partly because the boy’s presence made him want to throw up, partly because those shoes actually made him do so.
“What do you want frog?” the Briton asked with as much sarcasm as his pained teeth could allow, which, wasn’t much. He seemed as intimidating as a cat in a thunderstorm.
“What the rest of us want,” Antonio said, creeping behind Francis, a very angry Lovino in tow. “Isn’t that right, Lovi?”
“Piss off, you stupid son of a-”
“Right then!” Francis spoke, clapping his hands together, cutting off Lovino’s implied curse. “What is this rendezvous about?”
“Ghosts!” Alfred said enthusiastically pumping his fist in the air. Matthew dropped his face to his open palm and muttered something under his breath about being surrounded by overenthusiastic idiots.
“Ghosts?” Francis said with a disappointing tongue click. He sighed in a pretentious sort of way reserved for aristocrats and Hollywood types. “Gilbert,” his voice almost a whine, “I was expecting something…less fake.”
“They’re more real than your accent, Frankie,” Alfred said. The accompanying children snickered, even Arthur, who found great joy in any sort of blow against Francis’ ego, no matter how minor. Francis curled his lip, and when Alfred had returned his attention to Gilbert, had stuck out his tongue.
“I’ll have you know, l’Amérique,” Francis protested, “that my family has-”
“No one cares, Francis,” Gilbert said, cutting off his friend, waving his hand nonchalantly.
Francis huffed and flitted with his fingernails. His eyebrows crossed, he looked up from them. “Well then, why don’t we get this under way then,” Francis said, defeated temporarily, “I’m getting bored.”
Arthur rolled his eyes. He would have done more to berate and destroy the French American, but the metal bars across his teeth, searing them rather than shifting them into position, forced him to keep his mouth shut.
“So, ghosts, is it?” Gilbert asked, a wicked grin gracing his face, his deep violet eyes glinting with mischief. This was the sort of thing he’d wanted all summer. It was getting boring in the Weillschmidt household, and with the hawk like gaze of his mother, there was only so much a fourteen year old could do. He stroked his chin, thinking up the possibilities, recalling the various ghost hunting shows and books he’d perused. This was going to be fun-yes, this was going to be fun.
“What kind are we talking about?” Antonio asked, a pleasant, yet slightly unaware grin upon his face.
“Lo-vi!” came the shriek of a small child. It was pathetic and whined like a kitten who had lost its mother.
“Oh Christ, look what you did,” Lovino spat to Antonio. “I told you I couldn’t just leave him alone.”
“But Lovi, your brother’s what-ten? He can handle himself.”
“The last time I left him by himself, my parents ended up calling Poison Control and the FBI.”
“And if Chef Boyardee is on his way-ah, yes, my dearest little cousin. Oi! West!” Gilbert called, waving.
The slick haired, thirteen and a half year old, jogged behind the sobbing ten-year-old Italian, saying comforting trinkets like, “don’t cry, we’ll only play Name that Participle one more time!”
“Oh, good afternoon, Gilbert,” Ludwig said slightly winded, coming to a halt next to his cousin. Gilbert nodded in return. “What’s the occasion for this meeting? And why wasn’t I invited?”
Somehow, Feliciano had managed to climb on Ludwig’s back in that conversation.
“Lovi, why did you leave me alone?” Feliciano asked, or, rather, whined.
“The better question is why haven’t I killed you yet?” Lovino spat in return. He grumbled and rubbed his temples, a tension headache coming on.
“Anyway,” Gilbert said sharply, bringing the conversation back to him and the pressing moment at hand. “We were talking about ghosts.”
“No, we’ve gotten past that part,” Antonio remarked. “We were getting to que tipico ghosts.”
“Come again?”Alfred said, raising an eyebrow.
“What type, Al!” Matthew said. “How can you not know any Spanish when you spent the same amount of time in Texas as I did in Canada?”
“Quebec French is not French,” Francis interjected, voice full of disdain as if someone had come along and scuffed his only-appropriate-in-Las-Vegas shoes.
“Ladies, ladies, ladies!” Gilbert cut in once more, feeling his patience wear thin. “What kind of ghost are we dealing with?”
Sadiq and Herakles, who had been remarkably quiet throughout the ordeal, filled in the missing bit of information with a simple: “Old Man Johnson.”
Where there had once been kafuffles on the brink of total war, there was only silence. Antonio, Lovino and Feliciano crossed themselves and praying something inaudible. Once he had moved that abruptly though, the ten-year-old fell off Ludwig’s back. Ludwig had been to Hetalia Boulevard enough summers to know the story of Old Man Johnson; he also knew that any shenanigans Gilbert was planning would most likely be against The Rules, but he’d get dragged into the mess anyway.
“Old Man Johnson, huh?” Gilbert asked, nodding, thinking of the possibilities of awesome this would bring them.
“What’re we gonna do, Gilbert?” Alfred asked, eyes wide with anticipation.
“We’re not going to do anything, because Gilbert Weillschmidt is a fool and a stupid, stupid boy.”
A female voice. Everyone turned to the mouth of the cul-de-sac, where Elizaveta marched up, with Roderich behind her. Her chin length brown hair was tied back in a ponytail, a flower in her left ear. A black messenger bag slung over her shoulders.
“Fool and stupid are pretty much the same thing, Eliz,” Gilbert said. “You repeated yourself.” Elizaveta paid no heed to Gilbert’s remarks.
“Gilbert Weillschmidt, I leave you alone for three minutes and what do I find?” she said, tapping her right foot, looking uncomfortably similar to his mother. Gilbert pushed away the resemblance in his mind and shrugged.
“It’s nothin’, babe and-”
WHAP!
A paperback manga slapped Gilbert across the face. He reeled back, holding his scarlet cheek, eyes flaring.
“I am not your babe, Gilbert,” Elizaveta said. She tucked her manga in her bag. Her right hand, the one closest to Roderich, slipped out. The aforementioned boy laced his fingers through hers. “And I will not have you poisoning the minds of the little kids!”
“Hey!” Alfred retorted. “I’m not that little anymore!”
Arthur, who was closer to Alfred than Matthew, saved the older twin the trouble and slapped Alfred across the back of the head for him.
“I was talking about them.” Elizaveta said, jutting her chin in the direction of Francis and Antonio. Lovino found this hysterical. Francis and Antionio protested loudly, but the fourteen year old girl quickly shut them up.
“Look-Liz-here’s how it’s gonna happen,” Gilbert said. “If a ghost is what caused this little situation, we’ll conjure it, find it, and capture it. End of story. If there is no ghost, we don’t do anything and we look for alternative methods. Is that all right with you? Either way, we solve the problem.”
“I’m afraid that I’ve gone silent long enough,” Arthur said, internally cringing at making his mouth move against the push and pull of the metal wires. “I must interject.”
“We really wish you wouldn’t,” Gilbert and Alfred chorsed. Arthur ignored him and continued.
“There are such things as spirits and we cannot disturb them.” He paused to run his tongue over a metal bit, sending a shock of pain through his entire body. He cleared his throat and continued, hands behind his back and walking toward the ringleader.
“Besides that, you don’t have the capability to understand the intricacies of the Spirit Realm. If you open the door wide enough, you can unleash a whole lot of other rotten beings. Demons are particularly tricky and I have no desire to see the end of my days by the hands of one of the devil’s creatures.”
“And you know these intricacies?” Gilbert asked, raising an unbelieving eyebrow.
“I’m not masterful in them, but I know enough not to go meddling in the afterlife,” Arthur said, crossing his arms. His mouth was on fire, and his toes ached from the pain of talking. He hoped this conversation would end soon, or he was certain that he would pass out from the pain. He also had a feeling that the neighborhood children would be particularly grateful if he simply done so and figured he should stick around for another lecture just to spite them.
“You’re all a bunch of idiots,” another male voice. This time, the new speaker was Vash Zwingli, in tow with his younger sister Eva. Vash had an air soft gun in the shape of an M-16 strapped over his shoulders. Where Vash was mostly calculated behavior and big guns and defense mechanisms (he would put the Home Alone kid to shame with the amount of booby traps he could set up), his sister was small, petite and sweet as a cupcake on top of a mound of Hello Kitty memorabilia. Eva didn’t say anything, simply slipped behind her brother. She was dreadfully shy.
“Whatever caused the fighting this afternoon was not natural. The Karpusis and Annans have been quiet for years. It almost got onto my lawn and I swear to God, if I have to trim it again because someone stepped on it, someone is going to pay for it.”
“Vash…don’t you…like, have parents who should be worried about this sort of thing?” Alfred asked, not really remembering the last time his parents asked him to mow the lawn, but something told him it wasn’t that long ago, and it was passed instead to his brother.
“I do!” Vash sniped back. “They feel the same way. Do you-do you have any idea how long it takes to make a lawn as perfect as ours is? I mean, really? Do you?”
Alfred had to admit that he did not.
“We’d like to keep it that way. And if trapping a ghost is the only way to do so, then we’re going to do it.”
“Aren’t you rushing to conclusions?” Roderich spoke, tightening his grip around Elizaveta’s hand; Gilbert pretended that he did not see it. Vash and Roderich had been very close childhood friends, but different interests, different schools had pulled their relationship apart to a mere acquaintance. Roderich hoped he had the leverage to stop the madness from spreading, halting it with the Swiss.
“Not at all, Roddy,” Vash said, crossing his arms. “I want this thing fixed and I want it fixed as soon as possible.”
“Vash-” Roderich started again, trying a different angle.
“He’s made up his mind, Piano Man,” Gilbert said from behind, slapping Roderich on the back, releasing his grip on Elizaveta’s hand. “And I’ve made up mine. We’re going ghost hunting tonight!” A fist pump from Gilbert and the small crowd that had procured cheered. With the exception of the nonbelievers, which made up roughly half the group. So, in all, it wasn’t quite the rally Gilbert wanted, but at least he got some fists up, which was better than nothing, he had to contend.
“We’ll go to the Tree Fort tonight,” Gilbert said. “Someone bring an Ouija board.”
“You can’t open the Gate of the Sprits with an Ouija board!” Arthur protested, throwing his hands up in indignation. Honestly, the naivety of some people. Gilbert creased his eyebrows. “Besides that,” Arthur continued, “Johnson’s spirit is already in this realm, isn’t that the what’s causing the ruckus? You’ve got to lure the spirit away from its capsule, the house and-oh bullocks.” Arthur stopped. For one because his braces began to place an exuberant amount of pressure on his teeth. For two, he realized the depth of what he’d said.
Gilbert grinned again, slightly this time, but there was the same level of mischief in his eye. He pulled his face in the same look a seven-year-old boy in want of a Tootsie Roll would give his mother. “Now, you wouldn’t want us to get hurt while we were calling on this ghost, now would you Arthur?”
“I wouldn’t mind throwing him,” he jut his head in Alfred’s direction, “in front of a steam roller-”
“Hey!”
“-But…ugh…you lot of imbeciles would probably kill yourselves and about five hundred other people in Greater New York. You’re all a bunch of gits.”
“Would you want all those bodies on your hands?”
“But I told you not to do it!”
“But we would got out and conjure the spirits anyway. Zwingli over there’s gotta have his perfect lawn, duh. Anyway, Arthur, you knew how to conjure the spirits properly, but you didn’t. And now us,” he swept his hand over the crowd. Elizaveta rolled her eyes. “We’re gonna die because of your inaction.”
“You don’t want us to die Artie, do you?” Alfred asked, turning his face in a similar fashion as Gilbert.
Arthur’s resistance was melting faster than an ice pop on the leather interior of a car parked in Dallas in the summer. He grumbled and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Christ, you two are insufferable.”
“What’s going on over here?”
“Ach! Another one?” Francis asked, tossing his hands in the air. “Why don’t we just go door to door asking everyone if they want to join our stupid little crusade against ghosts that don’t exist?”
“They do exist, you stupid frog, and you’d do well to remember that. Ivan, these idiots,” Arthur motioned to Gilbert, Alfred, Sadiq and Herakles, “believe that they can capture the spirit which resides in your house and stop the madness of ill feeling before it can spread to anything more disastrous.”
His sisters were with him.
The youngest Braginski dashed in front of Arthur. She wore a blue dress that billowed in a light breeze. Her blonde hair was held back with a black satin bow, which lay limp over her bangs. Her gaze was as icy as a night in the Yukon, her mouth a small line. She held a knife to his throat. The small horde gasped. Arthur stopped, suddenly feeling that a slight pressure of metal on his teeth was better than the slight pressure of metal on his jugular. A drop of sweat ran down his back.
Sadiq and Herakles were on their feet at once. Matthew and Alfred had stepped closer to their cousin, though exactly what they could do to deter the situation was beyond them.
“Natasha!” Ekaterina cried, horrified. The oldest Braginski dashed to her sister and pulled her back. She spoke hurried Russian to the seven year old, reprimanding her. When Ekaterina took the knife, the girl burst into tears and jumped, demanding to have the blade back. Ekaterina held her sister in place and tucked the blade in the back pocket of her overalls.
“I guess the rumors are true,” Herakles said flatly, though that was the only way Herakles spoke, flatly.
“I guess,” Sadiq agreed. “She’s just lucky I’m not eighteen with a gun permit.”
“What kind of crap are you pulling, Braginski?” Herakles said.
“Ivan!” Arthur cried, trying to keep his gentlemanly composure (and eyes tear free) despite being seconds away from death. “Y-your sister i-i-is psy-psychotic!”
“She meant no harm!” Ekaterina tried, but even she knew the excuse was weak. She gripped her sister’s shoulders tight enough to elicit a cry from the younger one.
“She put a bloody knife to my bloody throat!”
“So,” Ivan said. He readjusted the beige scarf. “Is ok for Vash to wear guns, but not ok for my sister to have a knife?”
“She put it to my bloody throat!”
“It’s Old Man Johnson’s spirit!” Alfred said, dashing to the center of the mass, taking advantage of the situation. “Don’t you see, guys? It’s spreading! We’ve got to stop the crazy old man before he kills us all!” He turned to the nonbelievers, Elizaveta, Roderich, his own brother and Francis. “Frankie, Frankie can’t you see that there is evil among us?”
“Only the evil of stupidity,” Francis said looking down his prominent nose, pushing away the twelve-year-old.
“Eliz, Roddy, you gotta see the light here. Matt-my own flesh and blood-Matt. You’ve gotta see it too!”
The eldest twin made a quick glance to Ekaterina. She was looking particularly lovely today: the same faded overalls, a pink shirt and red headband. Her large blue eyes were wide with horror and anger at her sister, whom she kept in steady place. His heart beat faster, and he was certain it had nothing to do with the near death experience of his second cousin (thrice removed). He had no idea what she felt of the Old Man Johnson story, but he knew showing her that he would not fall to bedtime stories and superstition was a good move.
Yes, there was Celine Dion once more.
The oldest Williams twin finally spoke. He cleared his throat and hoped to every deity he’d ever heard of to keep his voice in check.
Whatever he said was undistinguishable. Dogs in Syracuse cringed. His stomach dropped somewhere between his knees.
It was then that he realized he was no less foolish than Alfred-doing the same thing over and over again, trying to woo the Russian girl who occupied the majority of his dreams and failing miserably. Every time he tried, he got the same results: a cracked voice which made holes in the sound barrier, a giggle and humiliation. Good judgment told him to forget about Ekaterina and return his focus to Mindi, but something in his heart told him otherwise. Matthew looked over his brother and was jealous for the blissful non-woman life he led. The definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over, expecting different results.
“Matt! Matt! Matt!” Alfred called, snapping his fingers in front of his twin’s face, dragging him kicking and screaming from his thoughts. “You keep staring off into space like that. I’m really starting to worry about you. You’re not runnin’ a fever are you?”
As Alfred reached for his brother’s forehead, and as Matthew shoved him off, Gilbert filled the Braginski siblings in with what had happened, their conjecture and their determined solution.
“This um…hunting of ghosts…is this a common practice in America?” Ivan asked, unsure.
In the background, the shoving match between Matthew and Alfred had broken out into a full-fledged scuffle. With a pack Alfred was pinned to the ground. He grunted, and answered Ivan’s question:
“Only for those brave enough to face them,” Alfred said. He rolled to the side, throwing Matthew off balance. The eldest fell and now Alfred had the upper hand. No one seemed to notice or care that the boys were playing on a cement drive way.
Ivan furrowed his eyebrows and glanced at his older sister, whose demeanor had not changed since Natasha decided to show everyone what a brilliant knife collection she had. He wasn’t sure he could trust a lot that couldn’t pronounce his name correctly even after he’d been on the block for more than a month. On that note, he was almost sure that was what sparked Natasha’s violence; even if she couldn’t understand English, she could hear when someone mispronounced his name. It was an act of defense and honor defending. No shame in that really.
It’s what he kept telling himself. The latter, that his stepsister really was psychotic, was a bit too large of a pill to swallow. And on that note, Ivan did just that, wallow, and turn to his half-sister, whose demeanor and grip on Natasha’s shoulders had not changed. “Katya, chto vey dyemaete?”
Ekaterina seemed to trust the boys, especially the speckled blonde one, who was currently slamming his brother into the grass. Gilbert, the bleach haired one, called for the fight to continue. Ivan wasn’t so sure. But if their moving into the house somehow disturbed a serial killer from the nineteen hundreds, it was their responsibility to send him back.
“Gilbert!” Ekaterina called, making the fourteen year old jerk his attention back to the Braginski siblings. He barked at the Williams boys to knock it off. They did so, no questions asked. Although Alfred elbowed Matthew’s side and Matthew flicked him on the bridge of his nose.
“Have ya decided then?” Gilbert asked.
Ekaterina nodded. “We will go with you.”
“W-will the knife wielder b-b-be staying at home then?” Arthur piped. Ivan nodded, and reassured the frightened Briton that there would not be a drop of human blood spilt from his sister. It seemed to calm him down.
“Excellent,” Gilbert said. “Now, I assume you lot will be staying surface bound then, since ghosts don’t exist?”
“I will go down as well,” Francis said, “but not to hunt for a ghost, to see the terror upon Arthur’s face when you conjure nothing.”
Arthur responded with as many obscenities as his metal clad teeth would allow.
Elizaveta huffed. “I suppose we’ll go down too,” she tugged on Roderich’s hand and he moved closer. “To make sure you don’t actually kill someone. We don’t need a Blair Witch-”
Antonio, Lovino and Feliciano crossed themselves quickly.
“-Project on our hands.”
“Gilbert, please tell me that you’ve thought this through,” Ludwig said with a sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Of course I have,” Gilbert responded.
“For more than five minutes?”
“Let’s not worry about it, West,” Gilbert said, patting his cousin on the shoulder. “You comin’ with us?”
“Well, Feli, are you going?” Ludwig asked his…well, he wasn’t quite sure he could call Feliciano his friend, more like a pet or a mascot really.
“Maybe we can lure the ghost with pasta! Lovi, do you think the ghost will like Nana’s canolis?”
“Maybe he will like paella!” Antonio said brightly. “My mom made some the other night. It’s so good and ah, I can taste it already, though it needed some more tomato sauce. It always needs more tomatoes I don’t understand…”
All the while, Lovino’s face continued to resemble the fruit (or is it a vegetable?) that Antonio described.
“That food’s for the living!”
“Hey guys,” a new voice asked. The group turned to the new comers: five blondes of various height and Scandinavian origin. The Nordic Five or the Scandi Five: Tino, Berwald, Jakob, Kris and Ice. Tino’s dog yipped at his feet. It was Tino who spoke first, and it was he who asked the question: “What’s going on?”
Gilbert slapped his forehead with his open palm.
myopic
(mī-ō'pē-ə) adj.
1. Ophthalmology. pertaining to or having myopia; nearsighted.
2. Unable or unwilling to act prudently; shortsighted
3. Lacking tolerance or understanding; narrow-minded