I did this while doing my Geography homework :p
———
Loud pounding sounded on my dormitory door. The shouts of the officer disrupting our sleep seemed frantic and scared.
I immediately got up and unlocked the door to find the officer in her pajamas, panic written all over her face.
"What is it?" I asked urgently. She was too panicked to say any words, instead she pointed to the window behind her. Clouds of smoke accompanied by flashes of flame erupted from the landscape of the camp grounds behind the dirty pane of glass. Okay, something was definitely wrong.
I slammed the door shut and turned on all the lights, which triggered curse words from my roommates.
"Y/n, are you mad?"
"It's fucking 4 am in the morning!"
"What are you doing?"
"We're under attack, you bitches!" I yelled, shoving a pen which had a dagger concealed inside it into my pocket and adjusting the opal pendant on a black cord around my neck. "You can get those lazy asses off your beds, or die here! I'm not choosing for you!" I finished dressing and shot out of the dormitory.
The officer was still frozen where I had left her, and I grabbed her arm.
"Officer, do you know who's attacking us?" She fixed her eyes on me.
"It's one of the Empires," she stammered out. "They've almost broken down the inner gates. This building is about to be breached, so Germany ordered all the people to get ready."
I gritted my teeth. This situation was more complicated than I thought.
"Make sure my roommates get to safety, I'm going to find Germany." She started to protest, but I had already gone down the corridor.
———
Tremors from the small bombs hitting the building made the corridors sway as if I were on a ship. I staggered my way to the place I thought Germany could be : the midst of the fighting, which was outside.
Sirens were blaring everywhere and the inside of the building was tinted red from the warning lights. I burst out of the building into a disastrous war zone.
Officers were grappling with enemy soldiers, who had modern military uniforms on in the colour of dim grey. Each had a shield either in the shape of a teardrop, rectangle or large circle. Printed on the back of their uniforms were a red flag which had a yellow cross on it, and rough yellow "B"s were on the four red patches.
Dread prickled through me. This wasn't a normal Empire attacking us. It was the Byzantine Empire's troops. One of the Apex, meaning they were in the top ranks of the Empires' twisted hierarchy.
I grabbed my pen from inside my pocket and yanked off the cap. The silver blade immediately grew to three times the pen's normal size, with the pen as its handle.
With my ridiculously thin dagger, I helped an officer hold back a Byzantine soldier. After a few moments, I was able to disarm the soldier and knock him out with his own shield.
I spent the last ten minutes of 4 am in the morning searching the assaulted camp for Germany, hurriedly knocking out Byzantine soldiers who got in my way.
By now all places of the camp had been breached, and fighting was everywhere - in the corridors, on the staircases, on the training grounds.
I noticed that the units of Byzantine soldiers were more numerous in the eastern training grounds, so I joined a group of officers and fought our way through. We must have had the same thought : where there were lots of soldiers, it meant that they were trying to get through to Germany.
We had been right - once I knocked over the last soldier and turned the corner into the training ground, I saw Germany in the middle of the carnage, fighting an Empire. The Empire.
The Byzantine Empire, or Byzantium, as we called him, was gaining on the German with ferocious speed. His signature Danish axe whirled into the spots where Germany's limbs were a second ago, and he counterattacked so quickly I cringed when his weapon grazed Germany's elbow, which left a thin line of blood on the axe's blade.
The officers set to work fighting off the rest of the Byzantine soldiers around the field, while I zoned in on the Countryhuman and the Empire.
Germany saw me first and yelled,
"Y/n, what are you doing here?" A lethal axe tip almost sliced into his face, and he jumped back in time. "Go back! It's too dangerous for you to be here-"
"I can help you," I called back. Readying my thin dagger, I slipped between the combatants and sliced at Byzantium's axe hand. The dagger made contact with the wrist and drew blood, but before I could disarm the muscles, he twisted his hand away at the last moment. Byzantium drew back a few paces and studied his new attacker.
He curled his mouth into a small smile.
"Are you making younglings fight for you now, Germany? I expected more of you." He was about to resume fighting when he saw my eyes. His own widened, but he regained his snooty composure and fixed me with his dark eyes. They no longer held contempt. They held hunger.
Ignoring Germany completely, he charged at me and locked us into a vicious dagger-axe fight. I barely managed to dodge his blows and small red cuts sprang up on my limbs now and then.
"Good old Imperio said that he wiped out all of them all those years ago," Byzantium sneered softly, parrying my attacks with ease. "But he never told me that one of them escaped. Slipped his mind, I suppose."
He chuckled darkly. "I'll spend the rest of the journey back to the East imagining his face when I bring you to him."
Germany rushed forward and helped me hold back the Empire's attacks. My strength was fast declining and I breathed heavily. However, I still had a few questions to ask Byzantium, regardless of the situation we were in.
I got close enough to finally slam him down on the ground, and gripped his neck until he started choking slightly.
"What do you mean, wiped out all of them?" I hissed angrily. "Why did this Empire attack my village? Who is Imperio?" He twisted out of my grip and regained his stance. I leaned against Germany, breathing hard.
"All will be revealed in due time, youngling, if you come with me." Just like a dumbass, he held out his hand.
Me and Germany split up and ran on either side of him. I rammed my shoulder into him, and he staggered right into Germany wielding a sword picked up from the ground. Byzantium gained a large sword cut on his cheek.
No matter how much Germany tried to deter the Empire from reaching me, Byzantium wouldn't leave me alone. Now my strength was all gone, and I couldn't lift an arm to parry his strike in time. Byzantium's fist hit the side of my face, and I crumpled to the ground.
Ears ringing and face burning, I was hoisted up into the air by a hand gripping my my throat. I choked and tried to prise the hand off, but Byzantium wasn't harmed in the slightest. He squeezed tighter and tighter, stars starting to dance in the corners of my eyes and my vision fading fast.
As I started to black out, I saw a pair of pale grey eyes shining at me through the dark. They looked... familiar, like I had seen them somewhere before in the past. My early memories were fuzzy and blank, I had lost them ever since Germany rescued me from my village. This meant that I had no recollection of my former life up until the time Germany brought me to this camp.
Those eyes started to shine, brighter, brighter, searing through the darkness, harder, harder, until I silently screamed from the headache. Just as the grey eyes were two glowing supernovas, they exploded and I heard myself scream accompanied by a thunderous boom.
Now I was back in the present. But the landscape around me looked quite different.
I stood in a small, smoking crater with sizzling strands of blazing grey-white energy snaking around me. Byzantium lay in front of me, with slashing whips of scars across his face. I... did that?
I blinked, and everything seemed to come into clearer focus, the shades of colour more vibrant, each detail of the battlefield more intricate. Byzantium hoisted himself to his feet, and glared at the energy emanating from me.
"I see you've activated your energy reserves, youngling." He wiped a trail of blood running down his face. "I guess I won't let you go so easily now."
I readied myself and managed to block his axe with my dagger - it wasn't a dagger anymore. Somehow my energy had fused into the flimsy dagger and elongated it into a glowing spear, almost as long as three quarters of my body. This weapon was double-sided, as narrow spade-like blades were tipped on either side of the handle. The cheap material of the dagger had been transformed into cloudy, glimmering crystal, shining with the same colour as my energy. The whole dagger had been turned into a crystal spear.
Shimmering, resplendent crystal.
I saw my eyes reflected in Byzantium's crazed ones. They had been transformed from a normal, dull grey to a glowing, white-grey with even brighter white-ish stripes branching out from my black-pearl pupils.
Glowing, resplendent white and grey, in perfect harmony with my s/c skin and h/c hair.
I struck again and again, beating back Byzantium's attacks with the help of Germany and my energy-magic.
The tables had turned... now Byzantium was the one heaving and bleeding heavily. Germany knocked him down with a hard kick behind Byzantium's knees, and raised his sword, about to finish off the wicked Empire once and for all. But before he could bring the sword down, Byzantium pulled out a tiny black crystal and crushed it between his fingers.
Black lightning surged around him and he vanished.
Germany let out a frustrated growl as his sword struck empty, bloodstained ground instead of Byzantium's chest.
All around us, Byzantine soldiers disappeared, leaving the faintest trace of flashing black lightning curling in the air before snuffing out. The sounds of battle had also decreased from outside the eastern training grounds, meaning that all the enemies had been spirited away by that weird black lightning.
I was so physically drained from the battle I was about to dramatically faint and hit the ground. I was going to follow that path, Germany ruined it by scooping me up into his arms before I keeled over.
"You shouldn't have helped me, I was perfectly fine on my own." He started to grumble. I scoffed weakly and smacked his shoulder.
"As if. Byzan-shithead was beating the living daylights out of you. I'm the savior."
"Says the semi-conscious girl being carried by a Countryhuman," Germany countered.
We squabbled like small children for the rest of the way to the medical wing. I almost didn't notice the faint blush that was spreading across Germany's cheeks that was growing the longer he held me to his chest.
———
I sat alone in a corner of the crowded, busy medical wing, clumsily sterilizing and wrapping my wounds with bandages. Plasters had ran out, so I had to content myself with dripping alcohol onto my small cuts and scratches, which stung like crazy. I was pretty sure that a particularly large cut on the side of my cheek would leave a scar, but I didn't care much. The scar would just be another addition to my already hideous face.
My glittery crystal spear was carelessly chucked onto the floor in front of me. I hadn't bothered to check whether it was going to shrink back into a pen, but it was worth a try since I had nothing else better to do. I picked up the spear by its handle and tentatively squeezed the handle. It was what made the old dagger shrink back into the mock pen, I didn't expect it to work for a magical, glittery spear. To my surprise, it shrunk back into pen size, but it kept its cloudy crystal colour and was more vaguely shaped like a sharp fountain pen with no lid. I shoved it into my pocket.
Germany had been fussed over by so many generals and officers and dumbasses once we stepped into the wing, so I forced him to put me down and let him go into the center of attention. I completely lost interest in him when I saw Catherine Meyers pushing in front of people to give Germany bandages and alcohol.
Angling myself so I faced the window beside me, I stared out it and looked at the ruined camp. It was a calm feeling after a battle that I was familiar with, and I reveled in it before any idiot could snap me out of the feeling. It didn't last long.
This idiot was Germany.
He had somehow escaped from the chaos and drama and sat next to me. I scrunched my brow at him and asked,
"Don't you have fans to greet? They're over there." I pointed with my middle finger at the officers and Catherine.
"No, Y/n. Besides, you're the only person that hasn't managed to bandage your wounds properly. I'm staying here until you take care of yourself correctly." Germany crossed his arms and we had a staring contest.
Not surprisingly, I failed.
Forlornly glaring at the white-tiled floor, I undid each bandage and deliberately, slowly rewrapped it. Germany watched the whole process, stone-faced.
Once I was done, he spoke.
"You know now that you're magical, right?"
"Wow, I never knew."
"Cut the sarcasm. I've updated a few other Countries on your case - the ones that are going to be at Britain's territory."
I paused in staring out the window, disbelievingly looked at him, and spluttered out:
"Wha- holy- why would you do that? You know I'm perfectly fine in staying in the shadows and you go out of your way to put a spotlight on me-"
"This is a serious matter Y/n. Byzantium has seen firsthand what you are capable of, and he's gone back to the East to tell the other Apex about you."
He fixed me with his spectacled eyes.
"You're not safe here anymore - we're moving you further west to help protect you."
I slowly nodded. Germany sighed and said,
"Well.. I guess you're coming to Britain's place with me today."
———————
Sup I guess
I swear with every chapter it gets more harder to write but I'm hellbent on making the y/n X Germany ship sail and not sink.
More ships shall be constructed in the next chapter, stay tuned
Thnx for reading, see you in the next chapter.
~opalico🎉
{EDIT: I checked the book abt 1 hr after I published this chapter, we're nearing 100 views guyssssssss I feel so happy. Thnx for making this fanfic possible, love u allllll}