Disclaimer: I do not own Hetalia.

Warnings: Slash, AU, sub-par writing, wonky plots, appallingly slow updates, and Hitler jokes.

I don't know what I'm doing.

Unbeta'd.

[Chapter 1]

"Turn right." said Hitler in its gender-neutral machine voice. Alfred did not turn right. Alfred did swear and slam the steering wheel with both hands. He wasn't sure why he kept listening to his GPS. Hitler had made it clear that the Third Reich was at hand. It was hell bent on global domination and Alfred might as well be Poland for all it cared. Which was why it had left him stranded in the middle of nowhere. Again.

"Turn right." Hitler reiterated. Alfred groaned and dropped his head to rest on the steering wheel with his hands.

Alfred and Hitler's unusual and slightly abusive relationship had started several months back in the electronics section of EBay's seedier younger cousin. The website was best left nameless, but at the time Alfred had had no idea he was actually purchasing cut-price merchandise from Hell's online equivalent. He'd made the utterly foolish assumption that it was just another online auction. Had he known better, he would've screamed "Get thee behind me, Satan!" when Hitler had shown up in his search. Unfortunately, what he had screamed was "Score! TomTom. $27.95. Come to me, you sweet bastard!"

And then he'd clicked 'Purchase'.

There should have been some sort of warning. And if not about the devil spawn that was now on its way, then at least about the overpriced shipping. A fifteen dollar flat rate? Really?

All that happened was a notice informing him that his purchase should arrive in two to three business days. And lo and behold, two to three business days later a package arrived.

The date had been the twentieth of April.

Adolf Hitler's birthday.

It was a sign.

Alfred missed it like he missed road signs. Which is to say, he never even noticed. He sped by without a second thought.

Alfred was navigationally challenged. Hence the need for a TomTom. Hence the arrival of Hitler.

Hitler had been gently lifted from its packing peanut confinement with the respect and ceremony that Alfred normally reserved for family heirlooms and collector's edition video games. The instruction manual had been abandoned, Alfred preferring to muddle through the set-up process himself. He worked with computers for a living. He could manage a GPS.

On Hitler's first test run, it had insisted that every location Alfred could possibly want to visit was across the street. Alfred, sure that Mrs. Bennett's house was not Disney Land, took his purchase back inside and gave the set-up process another try.

Take two had led him to a seafood restaurant which served the best tuna he'd ever had. Only problem was he'd been trying to buy shoes. The instruction manual had been retrieved from the dilapidated pile of books and comics by his bed. It had nothing insightful to add.

The third try at set-up had wound up being the last. Hitler had locked itself into whatever bizarre settings it wanted and refused to be coaxed into anything else. Similarly, Alfred had wound up locked bumper to bumper with the woman from the taco shop, who'd demanded Alfred pay for what he'd done to her car.

Alfred had shelled out the money for damages and gone on his way, thinking that was the end of it.

But that was not the end of it. That was the start of a drawn out sequence of events that had led to the loss of his girlfriend, job, apartment, and dignity. Then, finally, he had been left on the shoulder of a highway while a gender-neutral machine voice mocked him, delicately crushing his few remaining hopes and dreams.

Forehead on the steering wheel, Alfred dug deep, looking for some shred of optimism that would get him through this latest crisis.

"Turn right." Hitler mocked.

Alfred brutally jabbed Hitler's on/off button and threw in a swear for good measure. Somehow, the thing managed to be smug even as it powered down.

This, Alfred decided, would call for drastic measures. He put his car in gear and started off towards his safe haven.

Alfred might not be able to navigate his way out of a cardboard box, but when placed behind a steering wheel he somehow gained the magical ability to locate the nearest McDonalds. It didn't matter where he'd managed to strand himself, eventually golden arches would appear on the horizon. He was like a goddamn homing pigeon. No, he was cooler than that. He was like a heat seeking missile.

So, after half an hour that seemed to consist of nothing but left turns, Alfred found himself exactly where he wanted to be. Which, apparently, was the driver's seat of his car in a McDonalds parking lot with the lights off, the radio on, and a bag of Big Macs in his lap.

Big Macs made everything better.

Well, not everything. But most things.

For example, they couldn't change the fact that he was currently unemployed. But they helped get him pumped for his upcoming interview.

Alfred had chosen his career based on the assumption that there would always be work for those in the field of computer science. That assumption had paid off his student loans and then left him by the wayside.

His future was now dependent on an interview which would take place in (he glanced at the dashboard clock, it read 8:00 in bright green) roughly thirty-seven hours. Although, now that he was thinking about the interview, it came to his attention that there was a question that desperately needed answering.

Where the hell was he?

Hitler had never led him so far astray that he'd wound up in Canada or Mexico, so it was safe to assume that he was still in the States. What state was an entirely different question. Since asking Hitler would be an exercise in futility, Alfred scarfed down the last of the Big Macs and drove out of the McDonalds lot.

The nearest gas station was only a block away. Alfred pulled up, filled up, and wandered inside.

According to the available maps, he was on the Illinois side of Indiana. A map of each made it into his possession, later to be stuffed into the glove compartment. He also bought a slushy and some Hershey bars to chase down the Big Macs. The clerk gave him change and hotel options.

Hitler had pulled him off course, no surprise there. He could kiss stretch breaks goodbye if he wanted to keep his appointment. Tomorrow was going to be one never-ending desert of pavement. But at least there was still a chance he could make it, unlike previous misadventures.

Alfred made up a plan of action. Find a hotel. Sleep. Get up early. Drive. Drive. Drive some more.

First order of business was the hotel.

The safe thing to do would be to use the cheap gas station map to navigate to one of the suggested hotels. But reading in a moving vehicle would give him headaches. Not to mention that having the overhead light on would make it hard to see the road. Pulling over every so often to get his bearings would be annoying.

He worried his lip for a while before finally coming to a decision.

Alfred reached towards the on/off button of his GPS. He'd give Hitler another chance.

Hitler had lost contact with satellites, or the Internet, or magic ponies, or whatever it was that let it know where the roads were. Its display showed nothing but a loading screen. Every so often the screen would flicker and Hitler would say "Recalculating" in a promising sort of way, but nothing else happened.

Alfred really needed to stop giving Hitler more chances.

It was part of his new plan for getting his life back in order. He'd cut ties with Hitler. He'd kick ass in his upcoming interview. He'd get a steady job. He'd get a new apartment. He'd fill his apartment with the belongings he'd left at his parents' after he got kicked out of his last apartment. He'd find someone, court them, and have a loving relationship. And come hell or high water, he'd live happily ever after.

Everything would be normal, and under control, and perfect.

It was a good plan. The fact that it had not worked the last four times did not make it any less of a good plan. There was nothing wrong with his plan. That it kept failing was due to some outside variable that Alfred hadn't managed to ascertain yet.

Personally, he liked to think it was karma.

The Universe was punishing him for some horrible action he'd performed, not that he had any idea what that was. So until he figured out his error and made an effort to fix it, he was stuck in an Infinite Loop of Great Failure.

Since this realization, Alfred had made it his mission to accumulate as much positive karma as possible, no matter how far out of the way he had to go to earn it. If he obtained enough of it, maybe he could dig his way out of the hole he was stuck in sans earth shattering revelation.

He was convinced that with enough good deeds The Universe would let him get back to business as usual.

Or at least let him lose Hitler. His personal hell would be so much more bearable without Hitler.

Please?

"Recalculating." said his tormentor.

Alfred wondered if throwing Hitler out the window doing sixty would be enough to kill it.

Probably not.

Coming to terms with the fact that the day of Hitler's destruction was not at hand, Alfred decided that now was as good a time as any for some jams. The classical station that had been leaking out of his speakers for the last ten miles or so wasn't doing it for him.

It was hard to find stations out here, but at least the radio was working. Unlike a certain GPS that would remain nameless.

Looking at you, Hitler.

How sad was it that twenty year old technology was being outperformed by, like, hundred year old technology?

Alfred switched out classical for classic rock. Rock was more his speed. Station quality was horrible though.

Fingers tapping to the static-y beat, Alfred kept his course. He had no idea where he was going, but he figured that sooner or later something would turn up and point him in the right direction. Road signs, or an off-ramp, or something.

It wound up being sooner rather than later.

It was also securely in the 'something' category.

In the movies, whenever things are happening in cars the radio plays songs that are eerily pertinent to the situation at hand. When the hitchhiker appeared, still a shadow in the distance, the radio was playing 'Electric Avenue', which was more or less completely unrelated to anything occurring at the time. Alfred wasn't even sure if the song was classic rock like the station advertised.

He slowed as Eddy Grant went into the chorus yet again. It was decision making time.

A childhood filled with late-night horror flicks had taught him that picking up hitchhikers was asking to be cut up into very small bits and left in the middle of a forest. A dalliance in culture studies during college had taught him that not everyone you picked up on the side of the road was automatically a psycho. Alfred was desperate enough for positive karma that he'd trust one semester of education over years of mass media brainwashing.

"I'd better get a fuck-ton of points for this, Universe." Alfred murmured to himself as he pulled over onto the shoulder.

His car rolled to a stop, road crunching under the wheels, and lit up the hitchhiker with streams of watery gold. He looked relatively young. Alfred only managed a brief glimpse of blonde hair and mussed clothing before the skinny figure began to move. The stranger scrambled through the headlights, flinging gravel as he went, and stopped outside of Alfred's passenger side door.

He slammed something against the widow. It looked vaguely like those IDs that agents flashed in crime dramas. Alfred had always wondered about those things. How did you know they were real? What if someone just got one of those black leather flippy things and inserted a knock-off badge and a fake photo ID? What were those black leather flippy things anyway? Where did you get them? And wouldn't the badge keep the flippy thing from closing properly?

But all of that was irrelevant, because the stranger's next action was to press a gun to the glass and make a muffled demand that Alfred open the door.

Well fuck.

"Recalculating." said Hitler.

[End Chapter]

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