1936: Spanish Civil War [New Zealand, Spain]

[Spain]

Usually, enthusiasm was contagious, particularly since Antonio was a usually excitable individual and Will was speaking with such passion and energy. However, he remembered the shock and the surprise he had gotten when he caught the ball, only to look up and get tackled ruthlessly. By an Englishman at that. But battered pride aside, it was not as if he had an affinity to the sport at all, but he had grown attached to football a lot sooner. But nonetheless, judging from Will’s build, perhaps it would not be so bad to play with him…. So long as he did not get flattened by another rather large, muscular man. “Well, I could,” he said thoughfully, Arthur could prove to be deceivingly aggressive, though Francis was probably no better, but it could be all right.

When Will had finished gushing about rugby, the Spaniard laughed in amusement and nodded. “Arthur sure has a lot of time on his hands, don’t you think?” he said, “it was like he was so bored, that he had to come up with these things to pass the time, pretty cool, if I say so!” What the Spaniard left out, and what he had wanted to say, was that he had wished that the Englishmen had spent more time coming up with leisurely sports as oppose to making looting his ships a favorite pastime. But it was not as if Antonio had any residual dislike of the man for what he had done, after all, by-gones were by-gones. “I guess I’ll give it a try again sometime, when this war is over,” Antonio added, a dreamy look in his eyes as he smiled, “and I’ll have to visit your home. It’s been a while since I’ve been over in Asia.”

Looking down at Will, he smiled as he sat up and ran a hand through his hair, though still wearing a slightly embarrassed smile. “Oh did you?” Antonio said, “though I hate to say this, this civil war thing has started to become a more regular thing here unfortunately. It’s pretty depressing to see my own people fight, even though there is a lot of differences between the people… but I thought that the whole autonomy thing would work, you know? Besides, it would be bad if you had snuck out here and ended up injured.” Then with that, he leaned against the coach that they had ducked behind. Yes, it was true that the Catalans had never liked being incorporated into the kingdom, but as far as he knew, they were originally allowed to do whatever they wanted so long as they respected the decrees of the Castillian crown.

Then with that, Antonio decided to switch the topic, there was no need to sit and mull over something that one had no control over. “So you are building your own household? Sounds like fun! Though it’s quite a bit of work,” the Spaniard said with a chuckle, leaning on his hands as he stretched his legs. “It’s fun to do, though well, you love like a family and you also fight like one, though well, yeah,” he said, trailing off, the sudden memory of his brother and his tendency to say spiteful things about the last time they lived together caused him to become hesitant, though he started to chuckle at the thought of it. Oh, did they fight. Even though it was a rough point in time in the Spaniard’s life, he could not help but admit that he missed the noise.

With that thought, he looked out the window, though there was unrest outdoors, he was starting to debate on whether they should take a break on the cleaning in spite of the fact that they had only managed to sort through the bookshelf.

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- I decided that I would go for the whole fade out of the first conversation so that we would not be having two conversations at the same time. XD;
- Sorry, this was suppose to go up on Sunday, but yeah. I'll make sure to respond in a more timely manner next time.

[New Zealand]

"Well actually, I think he got all of us into sport so it would make our relationships with each other stronger, and so we would have so much fun rebellion would be the last thing on our minds. I know a rugby ball was fascinating to me since I’d never seen a ball shaped like an egg before." Will was fairly sure this was why Arthur taught them different sports. Once he had a rugby ball put in his hands back in the 19th Century any thoughts of acting up were the last things on his mind.

"Yeah! Do come and visit when things have settled down again! It'll be fun!" Will loved it when people visited his country. It was nice to be able to show people what his home is like, and sometimes they liked his country so much that they wanted to live there rather than live in their own country! That was all right with him too. New New Zealanders were always welcome.

He listened to Antonio talk a little more about the troubles in his country, and nodded at his last statement. It would look rather bad if he got injured here, and he wondered what Arthur's reaction would have been if he had been injured, and Arthur found out. A vision of Arthur being furious with Antonio popped into Will's head fairly quickly, and he found the change of subject quite welcome.

"Yeah, I guess it is kind of like a household, and I'm like the oldest sibling who takes care of everyone." Will said. "And since Samoa became one of my siblings things haven't been easy. My bosses don't seem to know how to handle Samoa's people at times and Samoa and I don’t always get along. When we do get along she teaches me some of her language. All of us use our own languages when Arthur isn't around since he doesn't like us using them. He finds it confusing when we’re speaking different languages. We understand each other, but he doesn't understand us."

Will loved the fact that he and his household (as Antonio described it) could understand each other's languages and have some understanding of each other's cultures as well. Perhaps that's why the five of them got on so well too! Will personally didn't try to stop the others from speaking their own languages, and tried not to mess with their cultures too much. He wished the same could be said for his bosses.

"Hey, when your household had more nations in it did they keep their own languages too?"

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* There were two incidents when Samoa was New Zealand’s colony where things didn’t go so well. The first one was in 1918 when a ship from New Zealand accidentally brought the strain of influenza affecting the world to Samoa causing a number of deaths. The second one was in 1929 when a non-violent protest group was holding a peaceful celebratory parade for someone who’d returned from exile. One police gunner fired over the heads of the crowd to try to disperse the parade, but other officers panicked and fired into the crowd killing 8 people. A police officer was also killed that day, now known as Black Saturday.
* Sorry I took so long! Ended up researching a little Samoan history to try to understand the relationship between NZ and Samoa at the time.

[Spain]

"Hm," Antonio said in amusement. It was amusing that someone would get into a sport just for those reasons, but then again, who was he to judge? After all the one track-mindedness he had all these years, it was not like he was unfamiliar with the sentiments. That and he was not going to comment about Arthurs administrative skills. Though he hated to admit to the fact that the Englishman was much better than him in managing his family, er, colonies, it was hard to do so when all of the fruits of the labor was right before him. That is, to a certain extent, not that he was going to mention any certain brash, energetic nations that were making a quick rise to the international stage.

But then again, it looked like even others, as capable as they appeared, also had their own issues.

“So you are kind of like the older brother now,” he said, clearly impressed as he grinned, “sounds like a lot of fun, sometimes you have to have that pesky younger sibling to keep things entertaining… kind of like my own family!” Then with that, he threw his arms out as if to indicate the size of the Spanish Empire. “Oh… he doesn’t like it when you speak your native tongues?” the Spaniard said inquisitively, his head cocked to the side as he frowned slightly, “that’s a shame granted, it’s sometimes useful when everyone speaks the same language.” Then with that, he laughed, though a sense of hypocrisy colored his words. But the image of Arthur getting flustered at the fact that he was the only one not able to follow any of the conversations left him feeling somewhat satisfied. After all, when he was still colonizing new territories, he at least made an effort to communicate with other colonies, though with limited success.

"Hey, when your household had more nations in it did they keep their own languages too?"

When New Zealand asked the question, he stopped for a moment and looked thoughtfully as he stroked his chin, leaning his weight onto one arm. “That’s a good question,” he said as he looked at Will, “for administrative stuff, Spanish was used, the natives that lived in the places that we colonized were pretty intent on keeping their own language, you know?” He could think of a few places where it was a struggle to get them to learn Spanish. It was easier for the colonies in the New World to adopt Spanish since there was no other way for people to communicate, but where people spoke multiple languages naturally, such as in the Italian states and the Lower Countries, it was a less likely that they would keep the language. “But I think it’s obvious now that all of the places in Latin America speak Spanish, except for Brazil, but that’s another issue,” he said with a face.

Just then, there was another low rumble as color drained from Antonio's face. But the Spaniard just smiled weakly as he rested against the couch. "Seems like it'll never end, does it? I'm sorry again that you have to see me like this and see my country like this..." he said with mild embarrassment.

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Notes:
- No problem! I actually apologize -- I let this fall because my work schedule had been really crazy and now I am trying to reestablish some sort of a routine. Please forgive me.

[New Zealand]

Will noticed Antonio's amusement, and was glad he found the idea of him being fascinated with a rugby ball funny. It also hid the other reason why he loved rugby: the fact that rugby is like a battle and the stakes are high. Your pride and reputation are on the line, and you have to rely on your strength, skill, passion, and aggression to win. Sometimes there's even fighting and bloodshed on the field but no one dies, and a hard match is a good match.

He had to admit that Antonio's enthusiasm regarding family was infectious, and his values seemed to line up with his own. Granted they had different starts in life: Will living in isolation until a few centuries ago, and Antonio being surrounded by the sea and other nations, but having a family seemed to be important to both of them.

"Yeah, I guess I am the older brother now! That must make Arthur the older big bro now, but I’d still just call him big bro.” Even though he was getting to an age where he wanted his independence more, Will still had a lot of respect for Arthur and still called him his big bro. ”I scared away anyone who tried to be my big bro before Arthur, but I didn’t do it on purpose. It just happened. And it’s not that he doesn’t like us speaking our own languages, he just doesn’t understand them. People get scared of what they don’t understand and some of my people tried to make everyone stop using Maori. It didn’t work, and Maori is still spoken but not as widely as it was before. As for me and my brothers, we all have similarities between our native languages that make it a bit easier for us to understand, like they all started as one language, and then they changed when everyone moved to different places!”

He listened as Antonio explained how his own language was used for communication, but the people otherwise kept their own languages. It sounded much the same as how English was the main language people used both locally and internationally.

“The way your household uses Spanish is the same way English is used in my country. I’d love it if Maori was used more by my people, but it’s not a global language like English. Only I and the Cook Islands speak it.”

Will heard another rumble like something had been attacked or bombed, and heard Antonio apologising yet again for things he couldn’t control. He could also hear the sounds of fighting getting closer to the house, and wondered if there’d be a chance of the fighters trying to get into the house. He knew what he was in for when he followed his people to Spain, and although he didn’t know how long this war would last he did know one thing: there’d be a good chance of a fight. Will had been raised as a warrior before he became a colony, and loving a good fight was in his blood, so to speak.

”No worries, mate!” Will got up off of the floor, picked up a broom that’d been laid aside, and twirled it expertly like it was a taiaha and stopped in a defensive stance. ”If that fighting gets any closer and spills into here I’ll do my best to kick them out!”

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Ack, sorry I took so long with this. D: *whaps muse* Don't die on me like that again! B|