A/N: I took quite a long break from Hetalia and writing, but I recently got back into the swing of things. So, here it is after a year and a half, China's first real step into reaching out to these kids! It's quite heavy with dialogue, and this may become normal.

Also, warning: I don't like Austria very much, and you can tell in this chapter.


It was about 8:00 in the morning. A square coffee table in the middle of Ling's room was covered in papers with inky Chinese chicken scratch, red markers, and a chart that listed all of the children in his house. Kiku had pitched in by drawing what he could remember of the children's' faces.

After realizing what he'd been tasked with last night, no matter how otherworldly it was, Ling began to make a battle plan. It was completely necessary.

At least he already knew six of the children's names. Kiku, Aleksandr, Marshall, Louis, Gilbert, and Heinrich. However, he had a suspicion that the ghostly, magic Ball of Enlightenment hadn't been suggesting that just learning their names was going to solve everything by itself. He needed to find out why they were all such problem children and… help them. Somehow.

Of course that part had to be vague.

He hadn't slept all night, hopped up on several gallons of coffee. "It would've been nice to be warned before I found out I'd had 17 children," Ling was mumbling to himself.

"Hmm?" Kiku muttered sleepily from the other side of the table. He was… mostly passed out. The silly child had insisted on trying to stay up with him, though he hadn't lasted long and ended up napping on the floor.

"Nothing," Ling laughed softly, shaking his head.

He was still reviewing his strategy. He'd listed all 17 of the devils, and assuming he hadn't "helped" any of them from their "chaos" yet, he ordered his list out of difficulty he could only imagine having with each child. This was based on how well he knew them in the past, how much he didn't know, the possible complexity of their "problem", and how difficult it would be to get along with them.

Obviously Gilbert was at the top of the list. He was followed by: England, Romano, Hungary, Belarus, Netherlands, Austria, Heinrich, Aleksandr, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium, Spain, Kiku, Louis, and Marshall.

Honestly, he considered Belarus's problem to be entirely dependent on whatever Aleksandr's was. Which may be the same for Heinrich and Gilbert. Also, he wasn't even sure if the Benelux group had any big problems; maybe they'd just showed up and weren't part of the equation. After all, they normally weren't part of the main meetings, and he never really heard about them having issues with other countries. Usually no news was good news.

It was difficult to figure out where to start, even when he had all acquired information laid out in front of him. Though no personal information he had on them as adults would help! But what complex problems could they have when they were this young? What exactly did the damned Ball of Enlightening expect him to fix here?

It was while he was pondering this that he started to hear a pounding noise down the hall. It was followed by some kind of German war chant. …Maybe it would be best if Gilbert stayed in his room for a while. Ling could start on someone else.

Interrupting his thoughts again was Gilbert screeching back and forth with Hungary. So… that was going to have to stop. Ling put himself together―straightening his clothes and tying his hair―before he walked out into the hallway, rattled with sounds of more and more screaming children by the second.

He bellowed into the hall, "LISTEN UP! Anyone who wants breakfast instead of a prison cell is going to shut up and listen to me!"

The hallway quieted… some. Hungary miraculously stopped. But Gilbert was still shouting. "You can't do this to me! I'll invade your country!"

Ling swiftly ignored him and continued, "By all means, keep shouting if you love stale bread. I have plenty of it."

"I freaking LOVE stale bread!" Gilbert shouted.

A moment later, Marshall's and Louis's door opened, revealing Marshall to be grimacing. "I don't like stale bread," he whispered.

"Don't worry about it," Ling told him. "Alright, any other takers? I promise it's not too terrible. If you like rocks, that is."

The only other child who stayed behind was England. That irritable child may have been even more obstinate than Gilbert, except he was pouting and refused to talk instead of jumping on the bed and shouting like a maniac. Even Romano couldn't object… not to food two times in a row.

Maybe it was thanks to the sleepy-eyed early morning, but the heathens were much calmer than last night. Ling brought them all into a living room and sat them in a circle around a low table. That way they could sit on the floor and eat instead of trying to climb onto adult chairs.

Breakfast was another issue. His staff had already prepared the planned breakfast, the idiots they were. Children 5 to 8 years old were not going to eat Chinese food! (Spoiled brats.) He shooed all his helpers out of the kitchen and made about 30 small pancakes in exactly 10 minutes. All by himself. (He expected several of them to have quite an appetite after last night's stale bread dinner.)

Everything seemed to be going okay, aside from sticky fingers and faces he'd have to clean up.

However, Heinrich just sort of stared at his food instead of eating. Ling couldn't read his expression, but he noticed the boy talking to Hungary and Austria sitting nearby.

"Is there something wrong with it?" Austria was asking nervously.

Heinrich silently shook his head, which prompted Hungary to say, "You know it's your own brother's fault that he doesn't get any?"

The boy just gave a (slightly annoyed?) shrug. "Mhh." He was quite listless.

Despite Heinrich's continued silence, she went on, "You know, I bet you could get him to stop raising hell. You're the only one he might listen to. But, listen, you gotta join my side."

Heinrich simply sighed, while Ling put in, "Hey, kid. This isn't a war council."

Hungary crossed her arms dramatically, "Pssh! Everything is a war council when Gil―When Prussia's around!"

Wait. So she knew his name. That was interesting. …Though he did seem to be keen on shouting it to the heavens. So maybe it was nothing. Still, curious, he asked, "Is it?"

She huffed and threw her hands down, "Yes, you saw him! He just… Like, he wants to take over the world. Or something. And everybody else is a loser."

"He's the loser," Austria put in.

"He is not," Heinrich muttered.

"Of course he is."

Ling sighed and butted in again, "While we're talking about him, were any of you friends with Gilbert before?"

Hungary and Austria answered in unison, "No." Meanwhile, Heinrich continued to mutter under his breath.

Ling was having an idea. While he would occasionally see Gilbert and Hungary getting along (as mildly as you could use the definition), he knew Gilbert and Austria flat-out despised each other. So maybe he was friends with Hungary at one point. Possibly. He could've been way off base.

The breakfast probably lasted around an hour and a half. Some of the kids ate quickly, some ate slowly, but it was bickering and inattentiveness that made it take so long.

When it was over, Ling had a plan to keep them occupied. He hadn't stayed up all night for nothing. "Alright, I'm assigning everyone ranks." In other words, making a game that they won't want to be left out of.

"What's that?" Italy asked, raising his hand.

Hungary suddenly looked interested, "Like military ranks?"

Marshall also raised his hand and asked, "Is it like, uhm, being a general?"

Would the children understand that? "Uh… S-Sure. And you know how you get better ranks? By behaving yourselves."

After a brief silence washed over the room, followed by a few groans, Romano was the first to roll his eyes. "That's lame. You just want us clean… or do chores, or something, right?" he pouted.

"No. The only reason you'll be cleaning is if you make a mess. What I was going to say is that if you behave yourselves, you get to play in the game room." Ling could've sworn every child simultaneously stopped squirming to look at him. "And if you're really good, I'll let you go outside and play."

Marshall immediately started pouting. "Huh? We can't go outside?"

Ling sighed dramatically, "No! My house is on a lake, and I can't afford to let you all run around outside and hurt yourselves!" He couldn't possibly watch all of them by himself.

"I'll be fine!"

"Arguing deducts points," Ling warned him, deadpan.

"Points?"

"If you want to go outside, you need 50 points," Ling told him, though he came up with the number arbitrarily. It wasn't as if he would need to present evidence of a point system to small children. "And you can get points by winning a contest!"

Some of the children seemed confused (Heinrich) or unamused (Romano) while the rest were jumping or rocking on their feet. Over the excitable babbling, Ling clapped, "So! You're going to be using paper, glue, and crayons, and whoever makes the best house wins." And the smallest mess.

"We get to draw?" Italy threw his hands up and declared, "This is the best camp ever!"

"But I don't want to draw," Austria complained.

"I'm going to beat you all!" Hungary shouted.

Ling could already tell what was going to come out of this. About half of them no effort and about half of them too much effort.

He supplied them with a huge stockpile of crayons that he had dumped in a cardboard box, 20 bottles of glue (probably not his brightest idea), and stacks of various paper, cheap and colored. He set them up around the table, told them not to move from their seat unless they were reaching over the box for crayons, and gave them a 30 minute time limit.

Who knew why he'd had all that piled in his basement, but it worked. Hopefully he could repurpose this idea, because he wasn't exactly sure how he was going to keep the children entertained this whole time.

He stayed to monitor them for the first 15 minutes, but wondered what would happen if he left them by themselves during the last half. However…

Ling paced through the halls and found himself fidgeting and picking up little things that he normally wouldn't pay much attention to. Imagining the kids dumping glue in each other's hair, sticking crayons up their nose, crying over paper cuts… Trying to eat crayons… Poking each other in the eye… Stabbing each other with crayons.

He might have come back sooner than he meant to. Thankfully, he didn't return to a bloody crime scene. There seemed to be crayons scattered around the room, inside the ceiling lamp, puddles of glue, and small pieces of ripped paper, but…

"Wow," he muttered to himself. And for some reason all of their projects were lined up neatly. That was… eerie. "What happened in here?" Ling asked, mistified.

When no one answered, except for a few scattered, "Nothing"s or "it wasn't me"s, Kiku chimed in very quietly. "I, eh… helped clean up a little…"

Ling wanted to hug him for being such an adorable helpful, sane child. But he didn't want to crush and/or scare him. Instead, he said, "Wow! Ah… I'm surprised. I expected an earthquake." Moving on, he clapped his hands together, "Alright, stand up, I'm going to look at what everyone made."

He started with Marshall. He was entirely unsurprised to find a drawing of your basic boxy house, but colored to look like the USA's flag. There was a black, fuzzy blob next to it, though. "What is this?" Ling asked.

"My dog," Marshall said, proud of his work. "Bernie."

Bernie. After a moment, Ling muttered, "The Saint Bernard?"

"Yup! And there's her puppies."

"Her?"

"Yup."

Ling paused, not sure if he wanted to laugh or ask if the dog was real. Instead he simply nodded and moved onto his brother's drawing.

At first glance, Louis's was much less scatter-brained. It also reflected his shyness, because Ling had expected him to mimic Marshall's and make a Canadian flag. Instead, it was simply white and red with no special decorations. It was very neat, though.

"It's―It's… uhm… I didn't know what to do," Louis mumbled.

Ling shook his head, "No, it's nice."

Then, as Ling was moving on to the next one, Marshall shouted, "Hey! Wait, whose was better?"

Ling snapped around and gave him a look, "Points deducted! Now sit down and wait patiently." The boy did so sulkingly, grumbling to himself. Little brat.

He sighed and looked at Belarus's next. She didn't say a word to him or otherwise. Her… "house" was a complete mess of lines and various attempts at choosing a color. The house was made up of what he could only imagine were hexagonal shapes. He wondered if it was a reflection of how young she was supposed to be right now, or maybe her mind had a little ADHD going on.

"It is a house of ice," she quipped quietly a while after Ling didn't say anything.

It… definitely did not look like that, but points for creativity. "Ah-hah."

"It is… reflecting rainbows," she added.

Come again? Did she mean light or an actual rainbow? (And how would such a young child think of that?) …He supposed if he squinted at it, the drawing looked rainbow-ish.

Aleksandr's project was more methodical, especially considering the small, torn pieces of paper of varying shades of blue and white glued on top of each other to look like bricks and snow. The background was pitch black, though, which was a bit concerning. It made the picture quite eerie. But it was an igloo nonetheless, and since Aleksandr was bashful over the praise, Ling quickly moved on.

Netherlands' and Luxembourg's creations were mostly simplistic houses, though had more interesting backgrounds with grass, flowers, and even a windmill. Netherlands was much less invested in the competition. Belgium claimed to have made her house out of breakfast items such as a pancake, waffles, and bacon because she was apparently still hungry and "had better food at home."

This seemed to have started a trend around the next side of the table. Though just as bashful as Aleksandr, France's was easily the most well-drawn, and a gingerbread house at that. Spain had constructed a log-cabin looking house made completely of churros. ("You have to eat it to get inside.") And finally, shockingly, Italy and Romano had teamed up and made a… clustered food house. The walls were pizza, the roof was a plate of pasta, the windows were tomatoes, and the sun was a cheese pizza with a bite taken out of it.

Kiku's drawing was a recreation of Ling's own house. (Now that he'd thought about it, he was surprised no one else had tried that.) He took the moment to embarrass Kiku by ruffling his head before he moved onto the last three.

Austria's was… Well, a box with a door. He hadn't been kidding about not wanting to draw. Was he going to have an attitude too or was he just lazy?

Heinrich's drawing looked the most realistic. If not particularly creative. But it was Hungary's creation that had stood out the entire time.

It wasn't a flat drawing. It was pieces of soggy paper glued together into a sticky castle. She had ripped a brown piece of paper into a door shape and lined cubes on the top of the "building." If he hadn't gotten back on time, he might've thought she'd cheated.

"Okay," Ling said, standing in the middle of the room. "I want to say that I liked everyone's picture." Appreciated the effort was more accurate, but you had to say that to children. With one exception. "Except for Austria's, because he didn't even try."

"Hey!" Austria whined, almost under his breath.

"You don't try, you don't get points. You should've taken notes from Hungary."

Austria pouted and crossed his arms while Hungary cheered, "Yes! Does that mean I win?"

"At the very least, you get 100 points for effort!"

"Does that mean I can go outside?!"

"Yes, it does."

Hungary's victory caused some grumbling along the table, including some whining about wanting to go outside, too. Ling told them, "I still need to calculate points for the rest of you. Some of you may get to go outside later, so learn to be patient! Understood?"

He was met with mostly grumbling, so he just sighed to himself and dismissed it. "Okay, Hungary, you come with me. Everyone else, be on your best behavior. I'm going to have someone come watch you while we go outside."

"I wanna go too!" Marshall whined. He was echoed by Italy, Spain, and Belgium.

"I said wait! Anyone who complains will get more points deducted!" Ling gestured to his eyes and back at the children before he left the room with Hungary. (Hopefully the suit he put in charge of them could handle it.)

It was sunnier out than yesterday―or maybe it was just that it was dark and misty last night.

Either way, Hungary found a new burst of energy and bound away from Ling as soon as they stepped out onto his round-the-house porch. Ling kept a hawk's eye on her, though, as she jumped off of the porch and started to run the circumference of the lake.

When he caught up to her, she was knee-deep in dirt, twigs, and rocks. Ling gave her a withering look she didn't pay attention to and crossed his arms. "What in the―What is this?"

"It's gonna be my fort," she said. "I'm gonna make a slingshot, too."

He had a feeling she didn't know how to make a slingshot… …Or maybe she did. "Absolutely not!"

"I'm not going to use it in the house!" she promised. "I'm just gonna use it to hit Gilbert through the window." Then she paused. "Uh. I mean―Pr-Prussia."

"Uh-huh. Why don't you…"

In an odd moment of realization, Ling was starting to realize he had quite the "hard-ass" approach. Ling began to imagine Hungary throwing rocks at him after he pissed her off and then they would never get anywhere. So, to level with her―literally―he kneeled down to the ground and started to help her with her dirt and twigs fort.

It was kind of ridiculous, but it seemed to pleasantly surprise her. It was a bit of a stark contrast to her rebellion attempts yesterday. "You know how to build forts?"

"I know how to build more than forts." Ling said this as he pointed at his own tower of a house. (Maybe he was fibbing. Just a little.)

Hungary's eyes went wide, "No way."

"Yes way. Who do you think I am?"

"Hmmmm." Looking a bit impressed, she went back to constructing a small area of dirt wall with twigs and grass strands. "Maybe you're not bad, after all."

Thank God. She seemed more reasonable than he'd feared. "…So, tell me, what did Prussia do to deserve to get hit with a slingshot?"

After a hesitation, Hungary sighed dramatically. "He started a war with me," she snarled. "But I'm gonna end it."

Ling scoffed. "Silly girl, wars never end."

"They do when you have a slingshot."

"Alright, alright. What is the war about?" he asked, resisting yet another sigh.

After glancing at him unsurely, she shrugged. "I don't know, I haven't asked him today. Yesterday it was because he wanted all the candy in your house."

"No, I mean…" Candy? There was no way this thing was about candy. "Why did you start fighting in the first place?"

"Oh. Well." She glanced up at his house (surely she didn't have his room memorized?), and then back at Ling warily. "You have to promise not to tell him."

"Erm… okay."

"Promise."

"Okay, okay, I promise."

She put her hands on her hips, and said, "He started picking on Austria."

That figured.

"And everyone knows Austria can't fight for himself."

Keeping a snicker out of his voice, Ling asked, "So… Are we talking about Austria the country or Austria the… person?"

She blinked at him, as if she didn't understand the question. At first. Then she frowned. "Oh. Well… Er, him the person, I guess."

"Right. You see how that's confusing?"

"Well… I guess…" But the stubborn child dodged that and continued, "Anyway, I was pretty much the only person who could stand up to him―Prussia. And now he's saying I'm not a girl."

All of this was just a childish version of their regular history together. Out of order, but still. "I'll tell you what," Ling said, thoughtful. "Let's set up a meeting. There'll be no screaming, no climbing things, and no slingshots. And Austria won't there, so he doesn't have to be involved."

Hungary was definitely giving him a dubious look. "You mean like a peace treaty? With Prussia? No way that's going to work."

"We could try."

"He doesn't care about rules. He'll probably start screaming and cilmb out the window or something."

"He'll pay for it," Ling assured her. "Look, you know he's got to be going crazy up in that room right now, right?"

This was going to be a challenge. Making the long trip back up to his house after assigning someone to watch Hungary, Ling couldn't help his imagining Gilbert sneaking out of the window―like she'd suggested―or some random crevice, to escape and wreak havoc over his house.

He was a little surprised it hadn't happened. Ling opened the door to find Gilbert hanging over the bed, upside-down. His entire face was red. With a pause, Ling asked, "What are you doing now?"

Gilbert puffed out air and then growled. "Damn it! I'm tryin' to see how long I can hold my breath!"

"Upside down?"

"Yeah, so? What do you want?" Gilbert suddenly sat forward… and then fell off the side from a rush of dizziness.

Ling didn't attempt to help him. Dumb kid. He shut the door before he did anything else. "Listen closely, Gilbert Schwarzfurst. I come to negotiate a peace treaty!"

Gilbert's head popped up from beside the bed. Even cross-eyed, he argued, "No way! I don't want any peace treaty with you."

"It's for Hungary."

"N… What?!" Gilbert pointed aggressively at him, "No way! She's trying to sabotage me!"

"She agreed to meet with you," Ling told him, crossing his arms. "She doesn't want to fight. You were the one who started everything.

Jumping on top of the bed, Gilbert growled at him and declared, "No way, it was all Austria's fault! He's a total weiner!"

That... was not completely inaccurate. Ling was starting to think they should just send Austria home. "I could make it so you don't even have to look at Austria. You two just have to come to terms."

"Pssh. What kind of terms?"

"That depends."

Unsurprisingly, Gilbert brushed him off and sat on the bed. By God, he looked like he was pouting now. Ling gave a long sigh. The only way to deal with children was to bribe them, he swore. "There's chocolate in your future if you go and try your best not to scream and try to start a fight."

Gilbert opened one eye at him, with distrust, but interest. "What kind of chocolate?"

There was only one right answer to this question. "Only the most awesome chocolate that anyone ever created. And if you want it, you better listen to me."

"Hungary."

"Prussia."

The two children were having a sort of stare-down you would see from dogs meeting each other for the first time.

Ling had sat them down across from a table, in a room near the center of the house so there were no windows. He shut all the doors and sat at the table between them to begin the negotiations. Hopefully he could keep the barking to a minimum.

There was an unusual silence that was making him uncomfortable. "Why don't you start with your terms for the peace treaty?" Ling suggested.

"No more trying to beat up Austria," Hungary said, probably too soon.

"That guy is asking to get beat up!" Gilbert argued.

Hungary growled, "Do you want a peace treaty or not?"

"I want chocolate!"

Ling shouted over both of them, "Alright, alright!" Leave it to children to turn it upside down immediately. "Obviously Austria is the main problem. So how about you two just don't talk to each other when he's around?"

"That's not gonna work!" Gilbert insisted. "What if he looks at me? I have to beat him up if he looks at me."

"Just ignore him. He'll hate that."

"That's no fun."

"What did he ever do to you?" Hungary huffed.

Ling only glanced back and forth between them as they continued to bicker.

Gilbert threw his hands up, "Gah! Why are you even friends with him? He's got a stick in his butt."

"Why do you care if I'm friends with him?"

"You can't be friends with me if you're friends with him!"

Stalling, confused with his choice of words, Hungary blinked at him. "Huh―Wh… Wait, why not?"

"Because he's weird, he only likes playing music, he thinks everyone is dumb, he only likes you because you're pretty, he's a weakling―"

Gilbert suddenly flinched when Hungary slammed her hands on the table, "WAIT."

"Uhm…" Gilbert stared at her. Crazy lady. "Wh-What?"

"What did you say?"

"I-I… Pssh. I―I didn't say anything."

Ling had no words. He noticed Gilbert wasn't blushing, but he did look like he might break out in a cold sweat.

"Yes you did."

"No I didn't."

"Yes you did, you said I'm pretty and you still want to be friends." Her tone had changed completely, like it was so amusing that it took her out of her funky mood.

"I did not say either of those things!" he denied vehemently.

"You're weird," she told him.

"You're weird."

"Gilbert, if you never say I'm not a girl, ever again, and stop picking fights with Austria, then I'll be friends with you again."

"I―I didn't say I wanted that." He sat there with his arms crossed like the petulant child he was. For about a minute. Then he may have relented a bit. "What if I only pick fights if you're not there?"

"Gilbert."

"Give me a break!"

"Ugh. Okay, fine. But no punching. You're like a gorilla."

"Tch. Fine."

"Fine."

They sat across from each other with their arms crossed. Ling stared at the center of the table, waiting for something else to happen.

Then suddenly he exclaimed, "That's it?!"

He made both of them flinch. And look at him like he was the crazy one. "What's it?" Hungary asked.

"You―I thought―but… Both of you were…" He found himself making weird hand gestures that were supposed to depict a battle to the death.

No, he told himself. Don't fight it! Ling shook the unnecessary thoughts out of his head and corrected himself. "Ah, never mind. Th-This is great. Perfect. Ah… I just have one more thing I need to talk about―Hungary."

"Uh… Yeah?"

"Your name." When she hedged and gave him a distrustful look, he told her, "My goal is to have everyone get along. As much as we can. And friends know each other's names, right?"

"Since when are we friends?"

Ling's eye twitched, "Agh, throw me a bone, dammit!"

She chewed on it for a moment. "Okay. Maybe I'll tell you if you don't tell anyone else."

It was something. "Only if you agree to tell them in your own time."

"But why?" she whined. "What if we go to war? It's a weakness!"

"No one's going to war," Ling told her. "Just because people from our home countries fight, does that mean we have to hate each other?"

"Well… no…"

She was a very stubborn child. But after some silence and deep thoughts, as deep as a child younger than 10 could get. she finally gave in. She finally told Ling, "My name is… Erzsébet Juhasz."


A/N: Just for the record, I'm not shipping Prussia and Hungary in this story, even in an innocent childish way. Saying Hungary was pretty was just a matter of fact. :P

I do not own Hetalia.