Early A/N! I'll be using these to reply to anonymous reviews ^^

Blehblehbleh: Sorry mate, but the main pairing is genderbended! HOWEVER. Male!Kiku is a VERY main part and he'll be appearing a lot ^^ also I'll probably stick in some proper yaoi pairings~

"The majority of our known history is correct. I found Sakura in a bamboo forest when she was barely a toddler. I knew straight away she was a country; well, it was fairly obvious, but-"

"Why does she has fox ears?" Italy piped up. Yao sighed, slightly irritated by the interruption.

"When a country is born, they have a shard of evil inside of them. That shard basically manifests itself into what the country sees as a threat. This is then shown as a body part.

"Most countries grow and the evil weakens, eventually disappearing. Most countries do not remember having the... attachment, in the first place. However, if they have a traumatic past experience, or something of the kind, then it stays on." Yao rolled up one of his overly large sleeves to show the others a patch of skin on his arm that was half-covered in green scales

"Mine took the form of a great dragon. Oriental nations, such as myself and Sakura, who have been around for a long time have experienced more hardship and suffering than younger countries, such as, lets say, Sealand.

"Unfortunately, what happened to Sakura was worse than what has happened to a lot of countries." His mind drifted back to when he first discovered the tiny girl.

~Flash*back~

"Aiyaa, that idiot!" The Chinese teen muttered to himself as he stormed through the bamboo forest. He kept muttering curse after curse as he ranted on about that stupid man Rome. Swear to god, if he claimed Helena (Ancient Greece) slept with him one more time, he would-

Yao came to a stumbling halt as he noticed a figure ahead. It was a small one, but... were those fox ears? And tails? Excitedly, Yao rubbed the his clawed, scaled arm. Maybe it was another country, that he could take care of! He'd always loved the idea of being a big brother, being depended on...

He slowly approached the child, not wanting to startle the tiny country, but not wanting to seem like a creepy stalker either.

"Nihao?" he said quietly, having cleared the bamboo and was standing in a clearing, behind the little... girl? She didn't seem to hear him and just stood there. He stepped closer, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder. "Hello? Are you-" as soon as he touched her shoulder,she fell to the side like a bag of bricks. Yao's trained reflexes allowed him to lunge forward and catch her before she hit the ground. He collapsed onto his backside, bringing the small girl into his lap. She was alive, but cold as ice was wasn't breathing well. She had a bruise above her left eye, and under her slightly parted dishevelled kimono, he could see more bruises. The small tails protruding from under the kimono shivered, and her pointed red ears lay flat on her head atop her black hair.

Yao frowned, pulling the folds of her kimono closer together to try to keep her warm- to no avail.

An idea suddenly hit him.

Unbuttoning the neck of his shirt to about three buttons down, then carefully lifted the girl and slipped her inside his shirt, leaving her head above the collar. He did the buttons back up as well as he could with one hand, leaving some of them open. He staggered up and started running home, talking quietly to his new sister.

"You poor thing... don't worry... I'll get us home! Aru..." He looked down at the girl while running. "Please.. don't die..." He murmured. She shivered in response.

Yao reached his house, panting, threw off his shoes and ran upstairs. He grabbed several blankets, then tore back downstairs and practically threw himself on the sofa. He removed the girl from his shirt and held her close to his chest, wrapping the blankets around them both. He noticed that she was thin- almost as if she had been starved.

What had happened to her?

~End*flash*back~

"Sakura was born into a rich family. Back then, humans with demon or animal body parts were not unusual, but were usually the result of demons and humans... well, lets just say 'mating.'" He scratched the small section of scales still present after all these years. "This was not the case for Sakura. However, her family did not know about country representatives, and to put it nicely, all hell broke loose." His expression darkened as he remembered what those... people, had done to his dear sister.

"Her father blamed her mother, and vice versa. In the end, her family split up and were disgraced, as nobles saw half demons as creatures that should be shunned, not accepted. The more common people accepted them, and saw them as normal. Unfortunately, Sakura's mother was a noble. After her breakup from her husband she was left with nothing. She hated her own child. So she tried to kill her."

Shocked gasps emitted from the two other nations. Being nations, they had all endured levels of hardship, but...

"However, to kill a country representative is to kill a country. Which, as you know, is impossible without weapons of great mass destruction. When she found she couldn't kill her daughter with normal means, she left her for dead in the forest."

At this, a particularly hard shiver went through Sakura's small frame at this, and her small hand came up to cling to Heracles' shirt.

"That was when I found her. She had been starved and beaten, but, being a country, she was still alive. I took her home and looked after her for years, until... well, you know what happened."

Veneziano and Heracles nodded, this time staying silent. The question was still on their minds though. Sakura sighed and untangled herself from the Greek, standing up.

"I'll explain about Kiku now."