Yes, I am aware that some of you out there hate math.

Forgive me.

I had to do it.

I had to.

If I get death threats I may update with some mathy explanations. (UPDATE: Some summaries of math as footnotes!)

Unless that is, you don't like math OTL

-Megu

Romania pushed off a wall and leaned his chair backwards. His hat was close to falling off, but he didn't seem to care much. His main concern was, as always, pissing off his academic equal at least six times before the end of every meeting. Craning his neck backwards to get as good look at his rival (she really did look much better upside-down, if she even looked remarkable at all), he showed off his two pearly fangs in a devious smirk.

"I really do think vector algebra is the answer to all our problems, don't you agree, Bulgaria?"

"Um…" Bulgaria began, trying to stall for time. It had been a good few years since he last read over vector algebra.

"Leave the poor guy alone and actually help out for once, Glitter-glue. We were doing so well with the Pythagorean theorem before you started up with your vector algebra crap again."

"Must you be so two dimensional in 3-space? I did just mention that vector algebra might be quite useful in our endea-"

Hungary wheeled around. Her fists were curled tightly around one of the many broken pencils lying around the room.

"Why don't I shove a vector up your ass?"

Romania grinned and rolled off his seat into a graceful, masculine pose. He raised his hands in mock surrender.

"Now, now, flower-child, before you can do that you'll need magnitude and direction, both of which I'm afraid you're lacking."

"What I don't lack is fucking pencil!" Hungary snapped.

"But my dear bitch, don't we need that for the problem?"

"Yes. Yes we do. And that problem can be solved by stabbing you in the neck!"

While Czech Republic sprung up from his seat to pry Romania and Hungary away from each other for the 5th time in the meeting, Bulgaria let his head drop to the table with a "thunk." He had to admit that their insults were improving, but there was no point in marveling at that when there was no progress on the current problem whatsoever. From the cool, wooden surface of the table Bulgaria strained his eyes to read the paper on the other end.

The problem looked simple enough. It really only did take up one line on the entire page (Norway's brother would be angry to find out about this waste of paper indeed):

"Find the smallest Euler brick whose space diagonal is an integer value."

Oh, who was he kidding? This was one of those impossible problems that, although easy on the eyes were anything but easy on the mind. Calculus, linear algebra, topography, geometry, and millions of other mathematical topics didn't even hold a candle to the "Twilight Zone" of mathematics.

Bulgaria groaned and pounded his fist against the table twice. The World Academy boasted the most impressive, competitive intermural math Olympiads in the world because it was, well, the World Academy. And who better than to have Romania and Hungary BOTH lead the math club, and what the fuck were they smoking?

It was true that both Romania and Hungary were top notch math students (with the fair exception of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink Russia and China), and could buckle down on any proof, Taylor series, equation, matrix, you name it—and have it solved in half the time it took Bulgaria to sit down and finish reading the same questions.

And somehow, in some way, Bulgaria managed to win the International Mathematics Olympiad in Tokyo in 2003 (perhaps it was all the sushi. Good food certainly did help). And now he had the chance to join the winner's circle with his fellow mathematical nations.

Not that it was worth it, of course. But if he had to pick between free pie (because of course, pi) and baklava (for "phi"-llo dough) and free non-political trips to destinations all over the world and not, the former option seemed by far superior. Speaking of which—

"Oh, lettuce-head? Remember the 1969 IMO, when I brutally drove your ass into your own dirt by winning first place?"

"That's not fair. You switched the second problem on everyone at the last minute."

"It's not my fault you forgot what 'identically zero' means." The flower in Hungary's hair seemed to shrivel at this pointless argument.

"Of course I don't, I've never had the experience of being worthless."

"Is that because you sell yourself to the occult instead?"

"Hey! The occult is a perfectly normal—"

"Normal as in the vector that sticks out like a sore thumb of an xyz-plane?"

"No, normal as in, in, um…"

"Bit your own tongue, Romania?"

"Better that than you biting mi—"

Seeing that their argument had suddenly gotten boring, Bulgaria turned his attention back to the problem and sat up, cracking his back for the sake of comfort. Hungary had indirectly brought up a good point. Their whole group was like a standard deviation, or shall we say, normal distribution curve. On one end stood Romania, and the other end Hungary. Bulgaria and the others were often in between, and no less than a deviation to the Math Club co-presidents.

Now, to go over what an Euler cuboid was. Right. A six-sided rectangular prism with integer diag-

"Why don't you take that back, you Edward Cullen reject?"

"Does this mean you do read pop culture trash like Twilight?"

"I would rather fuck Edward Cull—"

"Excuse me, what did you say?"

Bulgaria waited for the arguing to die down before continuing his train of thought. Where was he? Ah, yes. Integer diagonals. These integer diagonals came in two varieties. The space diagonal and the—

"Face it, Hungary, you just can't win."

"Are you forgetting that we've both won six times?"

"But you see, Hungary, I count in base two, so that would be 110 times versus your sad little six."

"110 in base two and six in base ten are the SAME THING."

"You mean congruent, silly Mangary."

"That's modular algebra, Carrot-top."

"Oh, is it? Then why don't we mold your face into something a little more desirable?"

"Why, you—"

Right as Romania reached his goal of completely ticking off Hungary six times, the click of a door and the quiet entrance of their math teacher signaled the end of another very successful Math Club meeting. Both somewhat satisfied with another fight, the two rivals picked up their things nonchalantly and left before the bell rung. And there slept Bulgaria, the maximum value of the bell curve, sleeping through the alarm like he would any other meeting.

Okay, I'll try to keep these definitions as short as possible for those who want it (sorry this is off the top of my head):

A vector is a line that describes the direction one is going and to what extent (magnitude). Vector algebra deals with the relationships between vectors (I won't go into depth here, but some examples are cross product, dot product, projections, etc.) and is often used in 3-space (the third dimension). A normal vector is a vector that is perpendicular to a plane (a flat sheet) in 3-space. I used xyz-plane because the equation to describe the plane uses the three variables of 3-space (x,y,z) though I think it's technically incorrect ; (Shh.)

Pythagorean theorem: Describes a relationship between the sides of a right triangle, in which the squares of the two perpendicular sides add up the square of the long side aka hypotenuse. Apparently this is really important to the "Euler brick" problem the nations are dealing with.

IMO 1969: The tenth IMO was hosted by Romania, the first country to host this math competition. Hungary won. Romania submitted no problems to the 1969 competition; Hungary submitted this one (with solution): ./~ Still trying to figure it out myself.

"Find the smallest Euler brick whose space diagonal is an integer value.": A currently unsolvable math problem. Wolfram can explain it better than I can. Heh. .

Modular algebra and bases: Bases are different forms of counting to 10. For instance, say you were in a world where we all had two fingers, and that you could count to 10 with just your fingers. 1 would be 1, and 2 would be 10. This is base 2. Similar logic applies for base 3, 4, 5, and so forth. Modular algebra is similar, except it describes numbers in terms of their quotient and remainder if divided by number x (thus, mod x). We have ten fingers. We then, count in base ten. Numbers with the same remainder when divided by another number are in modular algebra congruent to one another.

Standard Deviation/Normal Distribution curve: A bell curve. Majority of people are at the top of the bell, while anomalies fan out on both sides.

Hope that helps a bit! -Megu