This was my entry for the Hetalia minibang challenge on livejournal. There's an art to go with it that I'll link to in my profile by hotbabysitter on lj ad luna-wanabe on deviantart. She's pretty awesome so check her stuff out.

It was originally an 11,000 word one-shot, but I broke it down into 6 chapters and a prologue for your reading convenience. That also means that the story's already finished and I'll be updating once a day. You're welcome.

Characters/Pairings: America/Belarus, France/England, Spain/Romano, Prussia, Switzerland, Liechtenstein. Mentions of Canada, Russia (Belarus-Russia), Monaco, and Italy.

Enjoy.

Alfred F. Jones was a 19 year old engineering student at NYU. He was brilliant at what he did, studying to be a scientist or an astronaut or something along those lines. He also hated his life.

Or more accurately, he was dissatisfied with it. His two closest friends were currently studying in Japan and Poland and he hadn't heard from them in months. His love life was non-existent and the only real human contact he had on a daily basis was his rival at school, Ivan Braginski, his neighbor, Arthur Kirkland, and Arthur's boyfriend/roommate/fiancé/it's-complicated-and-we-don't-like-to-put-a-label-on-it Francis Bonnefoy. It should also be mentioned his family life is in shambles, as it is the reason he wanted to go to California this summer in the first place.

Alfred grew up in an orphanage until he was adopted at the age of 10 by a rich and well meaning, but very strict and inattentive couple, mostly for publicity reasons. He stayed with them until they grew bored of him/didn't want to deal with his rebellion stage and kicked him out when he was 16, so Alfred moved into the run-down apartment next to Arthur and Francis. His adopted parents still foot the bill for his living expenses and send him a handsome allowance every month.

Recently, a young man named Matthew Williams had gotten in contact with Alfred due to the fact that they happened to be biological brothers. This sparked Alfred's interest in his real family and what happened to them, so together with Matthew, mostly over the phone and internet, because he lived in Canada, they managed to find out that their birth parents were probably still alive and living in Los Angeles.

So Alfred decided to set out on a road trip to search for the utopia he'd longed for since childhood.

Arthur Kirkland was a 23 year old out of work writer who was madly in love with a man he hated. A native of England, he moved to America for work, complaining the whole time, ended up losing said work, and never bothered to move back. He despised children of all ages, but couldn't help being affectionate towards the poor lad next door. His favorite hobby was cooking, but he could never make anything edible. Arthur Kirkland, for lack of a better word, was a conundrum.

He and Francis were childhood friends that had hated each other since day one and ended up falling in love at around day 3,652. After one of their numerous fights about what neither really remembers, they decided it would be a brilliant idea to move in together, where the fighting hadn't decreased, but the make-up sex did. When Alfred moved in next door, they ended up inadvertently keeping an eye on him. After all, it was a big, scary world out there.

Arthur was currently out of a job, meaning he had to rely solely on Francis's chef gig at some fancy restaurant down the way. It was enough for both of them to get by comfortably, but Arthur's personality didn't like it one bit.

So when Alfred mentioned going to California, Arthur decided to tag along to make sure the boy didn't do something stupid along the way. If nothing else, maybe Alfred's journey could inspire him to create his own little utopia in the world.

Natalia Alfroskaya was an 18 year old student at NYU, studying nothing in particular and everything they had to offer. She had the unfortunate luck to be madly in love with someone who did not return the sentiment. This person just so happened to be Ivan Braginski, Alfred's most hated rival.

She had followed Ivan to college as soon as she got the chance, caring nothing about her friends or family or if the decision was actually right for her, only basing her future on the fact that she wanted to be wherever he was. Natalia knew Ivan wasn't exactly her biggest fan, running away and screaming whenever she approached him, which Alfred found amusing and actually led to their kinda-sorta friendship, but Natalia always thought that she could wear him down with time.

She was wrong, as Ivan was glad to tell her when he had campus police escort her off campus. Natalia spent the night in jail, and when she emerged, no one, not even her sister, wanted anything to do with her and Ivan got a restraining order. She dropped out the next day.

When she heard that Alfred and Arthur were going to California, Natalia thought that would be a perfect opportunity to escape and maybe discover what her utopia really was all about.