The Extent of Love

1

In a sort of daze he watched. The interactions. So many conflicts between 'First-world nations', a group he was slowly being pushed out of. After-all, first-world needed a middle class, and his was shrinking.

Surprisingly, that was the topic of today's meeting. He was almost surprised he stayed on track this long.

"America! You're up!" Germany's voice rang out through the throngs of fights. The blond had been dozing almost since the meeting started, probably tired from playing his Xbox or something, I mean, there was no other reason it could have been.

The sound of Germany's voice did little to faze the American, besides a slight shuffle and him attempting to bury his head more into his arms.

"America, I swear!" England exclaimed from beside him, cutting off his fight with France to start another fight with the American.

"What Iggy, I'm tired," America muttered into his arms, not even bothering to move, "I didn't sleep last night."

"Then maybe you shouldn't have played so many video games!" England snapped, hitting him on the back of the head, hard. China and Japan winced from their spot off to his side, and Philippines looked about ready to throw hands before she was stopped by Malaysia. Otherwise, no reaction from his neighbors.

Now, Alfred would have been fine with that insult to his pride if he had actually been playing video games. But no~ he was the one that had to deal with the Russian selling Russian artillery to his portion of the Italian Mafia. And not only that, another underground fascist advocating genocide, just ready to test his patience.

"America, we need you to present your topic on First-world nations," Germany urged with an irritated look, "you yourself are one, now go!"

"So you know how the hero is totally awesome!" America proclaimed as several nations groaned and stopped listening. It was one of his many tactics, say something stupid, get everyone to stop listening, throw actual facts about his nation into incoherent jumbo, and end with something weird so everyone gets drawn back in.

As he started his speech he threw in the occasional, 'illiterate children don't fight back', 'technically, I'm not even first-world', 'capitalism is kinda slowly killing me', and of course the golden 'ya by the way did you know by today's standards, America is a dictatorship?' before getting to his grand finale, "And that's why my military's so big!"

"America, we're talking about the act of being a first-world nation, not military size," France responded, getting drawn back in by that last comment like everyone else, "Are you honestly that dumb to relate the two? Oh wait, you are."

'Like I'm the dumb one,' Alfred thought bitterly, trying not to let the Frenchman's words affect him, 'you're the that fell for some half-cooked bullshit that I've been using for two centuries.'

He knew nobody listened to him. Other countries had a tendency to leave out everything unneeded, but Americans, no. They'd bring up your shoes while talking about Hitler and wait till your done talking about shoes to talk about how world domination is so easy as long as you have Catholics under you. They could take anything unusual from a speech, a conversation, easily. A great skill to technically never lie in these meetings (something they weren't allowed to do), while still getting away with everything he had been, and is getting away with.

And besides, it just made them more stupid in his eyes.

'Ha, as if,' his mind supplied, 'there's no way that they could be the stupid one, you have to be, we can't lie in these meetings and you get called idiot in every one of them!'

Keeping his smile evident on his face he sat down. Nobody ever noticed it was fake, unlike some nations who were just generally pleased with being around noise (cough Russia cough).