HetaOni: Time Marches On

Chapter 22: Congratulations

Japan bowed in apology, “Truly, everyone, I am sorry for my actions, and the way I responded to the situation.”

“Ve~ It’s alright Japan,” Italy responded happily, pulling Japan into a much needed hug.

“I-I-Italy!!” Japan stuttered out, “I-I told you before, I need my personal space.”

“Like Italy said, It’s alright. I just want to know what happened aru,” China asked.

Italy smiled and stepped back to give Japan the space he asked for, “Japan is Japan again!”

Japan sighed, finally able to breathe now that Italy had let go, “When we broke that last clock I saw short glimpses of the future. One after another I saw each of you hiding some secret, and that these secrets remained led to our downfall, time and time again, I could do nothing to stop them.”

“But, I don’t think I’m hiding anything,” Italy said, “not anymore at least.”

“That is strange,” Japan thought. Thinking clearly, Italy didn’t look the same as he had in the premonition either; the weight of his secret wasn’t on his shoulders.

“Perhaps, it hasn’t happened yet for some of us,” Spain suggested, “This was a vision of the future after all.”

“I suppose that could be true,” Japan agreed, he was surprised he hadn’t realized that possibility sooner.

“In that case, we’ll take your warning to heart Japan. If there is something we realize we haven’t shared we’ll mention it as soon as possible,” France decided.

Japan nodded in agreement with this plan, “So in my absence, what has happened?” Japan asked, noticing, for starters, all the papers scattered across the table.

“We were just sharing notes. We never finished discussing everything we found before we broke that clock, and between Russia and Italy’s group, we’ve found a lot of loose papers to sort through from the annexe,” Canada explained.

“I see, why are we sorting through these papers though?” Japan asked, they looked like ordinary pages from a book.

“They all appear to be pages torn out of various books, that have information about what we are facing. But it’s a little difficult to figure out what they were about since they are all torn apart,” Canada explained, “Russia also found the blueprints to the mansion... but they appear to be a bit outdated, and it’s missing some of the details.”

America shuffled the papers for a moment while Canada was explaining, “We found this page here that seems to be about this monster that we’ve been fighting, but we can’t read it. Actually Japan, I think you might be able to translate it.”

“Let me take a look,” Japan offered, taking the paper. A rough sketch of a creature similar to the one they were seeing was drawn on the page, “Oh...”

“What is it Japan?” England asked.

“If I had known this was what we were facing, I could have been more help earlier,” Japan admitted.

“What do you mean?” Spain asked, “Do you know what this thing is? What does that page say?”

“It is a revenge seeking monster from my homeland, called an ‘Oni’,” Japan began to explain, “I heard many rumours about them in my younger years, but every town had their own version. They were just folktales!”

“Honestly Japan, I have been to your place before, and I’ve seen these ‘spirits’ or whatever you want to call them, if there was any sort of legend about them, they are probably true,” England sighed. Sometimes it was hard being the only one who could see these sort of things.