Ariana blinked the sleepiness out of her eyes. She was still in her room at Prussia's place, and as usual, Robynne's piano echoed around the house. After getting dressed, Ariana inspected the new locks on her window. They looked too secure to be broken by any sort of force. Ariana growled, and fell into her bed, which still had its covers strewn around from when she had woken up. She looked up after a minute, her green eyes clouded by disbelief that this had happened; again.

Questions began to formulate in her mind. Why had Prussia done this again? Was everyone else okay? And most of all, why didn't Prussia take Robynne when he took the other gender swaps?

She tried to answer these questions in vain, until she heard a knock sound on her door. Before she could get up and open the door, Prudence entered the room.

"What do you want?" Ariana questioned.

"I need to take you somewhere," Prudence said with a small smirk.

"'Somewhere'?" Ariana asked. "Where do you mean?"

"Come with me and find out," Prudence sneered.

Prudence roughly grabbed Ariana's wrist, and took her through the door out of her room. They walked through the small circular conversation area Ariana had relied on to talk to the other gender swaps the first time she was here; this time, however, her door never unlocked for anything but Prudence or sometimes even Prussia coming in to taunt her or give her food, so it looked abandoned and empty.

As she was pulled into another room, Ariana wondered if England had gotten home and noticed she was gone yet. "Of course he has," Ariana thought hopefully. "I mean, I'm talking about England here."

Once Prudence had stopped taking Ariana through a seemly endless amount of doors, Ariana could no longer hear the piano, and found herself in a familiar setting; the throne room, the third room she had ever seen in Prussia's house. The room with two large torches standing tall and regal beside a huge throne on a platform towering over nine vacant chairs, where Ariana and her friends had found themselves tied together that fateful day when they'd been kidnapped. She and Prudence were behind the enormous throne. Prudence tacitly directed Ariana to stand on the left of the throne, before going to the right and standing on the opposite side.

When Ariana stood where she had been told to go, she found herself standing beside Francisca, whose long blonde hair was a matted mess and her blue eyes were clouded with worry, much like Ariana's had been earlier. As soon as Ariana stepped over to stand beside her, Francisca turned around to look at her. Her eyes suddenly brightened with relief, and she leaped onto Ariana and gave her a humongous hug. "I'm so glad you're okay!" She cried, burying her face into Ariana's shoulder.

Ariana pushed her off. "Get a hold of yourself!" she ordered.

Francisca moved back and nodded. She stood again, and looked out into the darkness in front of the area the throne faced. They both turned to their left when they heard a door open. One of Prussia's dark-clothed minions came from the door, followed by five figures hidden by the darkness, next another black-clothed man, who directed the figures to the chairs. The room was hazy with darkness, and Ariana couldn't make out who the four figures were. "I hope Prussia didn't capture any more of my friends." Ariana thought with worry. One of Prussia's lackeys lit a match and in turn lit a few torches on the walls of the room. Once the room was being lightly illuminated, Ariana recognized who the five figures who had sat down were.

.

The phone call was urgent, and came in about an hour after England got home.

"Do you know where she has gone?" the voice on the other end questioned. The voice was no other than France's.

"Who?" England asked.

"My dear Francisca, of course!" France cried.

"No," England growled, hanging up. "So France's gender swap has gone missing as well," England thought. "This needs to be solved immediately!"

England tried searching for clues around his house again, searching for anything that might imply where Ariana was. All he found was the blood splattered across the floor near the entrance of his house, which he had already discovered. "Wait a second!" England thought."This happened during the meeting! Weren't some people missing?"

England dialed Germany's number, and the other country picked up the phone. "Yes?" Germany asked.

"Can you tell me who was missing in the meeting we had earlier?" England asked.

"Of course," Germany said. "Just give me a second." England heard pages flipping over the phone, and Germany soon replied, "The only ones missing from the meeting were Italy, Romano, and Prussia."

"Thank you." England hung up. "Well, it's kind of obvious who out of those three probably did it," he thought. "I should find out if any other of the gender swaps are missing."

One by one, he dialed the numbers of the other countries with gender swaps (Avoiding France's number, as he already knew Francisca was gone), and discovered that the other gender swaps were fine. The man got confused. "Why did he just take Ariana and Francisca, and not anybody else?" he asked no one.

.

Ariana stared blankly at the ceiling, allowing the piano music to flow through her mind, but even such calming music could not make her any less troubled. Knowing Prussia was taking more gender swaps like her was just unnerving. What could he possibly want with a bunch of children? She had no clue. A knock suddenly sounded at her door. She didn't even bother getting out of her bed, as the door opened anyway. Prudence was standing there, smirking. "I see you're just as clueless as your little friend," she snickered.

"Francisca isn't my friend," Ariana hissed. "She never was, and never will be."

"Ah, is that the case?" Prudence leaned against the door frame. "She's been trying to convince us that you're her best friend in the entire world."

"Don't lie to me," Ariana growled. "She knows well enough that we hate each other."

"Then I guess the hug she gave you was just for show." Prudence smirked and giggled, while Ariana glared at her, growling.

"She's just a pervert sometimes, that's all," Ariana vindicated. "She knows I dislike her."

"I knew she wasn't one-of-a-kind, like so many other people in the world are," Prudence said.

"Of course, she's based after someone else, how could she be anyone different?" Ariana asked.

"She wasn't always like France all her life," Prudence said.

"Oh, are you going to say something like, 'Oh, yes, I've been spying on her for, like, EVER!', and then tell me about her entire life?" Ariana guessed. "No, I'm not interested in that at all."

"Then just what are you interested in?" Prudence asked.

"You," Ariana answered with a smirk. "I don't think you've been overusing the word 'awesome' all your life."

"Me?" Prudence verified. "You sound just like Robynne when you ask that."

"I'm sure she has more questions than I do," Ariana said. "You should go answer those."

"Oh, no, if I wanted to answer her questions, I would already be there," Prudence declined.

"So I'm guessing you won't tell me anything?" Ariana assumed.

As Prudence was about to answer, she was interrupted when the sound of doors opening drowned out her sarcastic tone. Without any sort of good-bye, Prudence slammed shut Ariana's door, and she heard the gender swap running away. "She doesn't want the new swaps to know me," she guessed. "Oh, well; I guess I can listen to their conversation; I don't have anything better to do, anyway."

"Hey, does anyone know where we are?" A boy's voice questioned.

"How am I supposed to know?" A different boy's voice asked.

The first voice didn't respond, and Ariana heard the second voice growl.

"Don't get so worked up about him, Nathanial," a fourth boy voice said, without much authority. "He's just trying to ignore you, I think."

"Just like Iscah, I guess," Nathaniel mumbled. "I don't know where she is, but she will be mine."

"Come on, we need to find out where we are," The first boy voice said.

"Kameron, he can't just boss us around!" Nathaniel complained, ignoring the first boy."I swear, sometimes you are an idiot."

Ariana heard a loud smacking sound followed by a metallic bang. "Sounds like that Nathaniel kid just got hit with a frying pan or something," She thought.

"Okay, fine, Elliot, let's go look around," Nathaniel growled. "Just don't hit me with the frying pan again. I thought only girls do that."

Ariana heard the same smacking and metallic bang again, followed by Nathaniel's shouts. After the room became quiet, Ariana heard footsteps heading toward her door, and saw her doorknob start to rattle.

"It's locked!" Kameron exclaimed. "Now what?"

"There are other rooms," Nathaniel answered plainly. Ariana listened as the boys headed towards another room; she guessed it was Francisca's room, because she heard Kameron exclaim the same thing, heard Nathaniel answer him the same way, and then heard Elliot directing the other two boys to a different, unlocked room. After that, Ariana wasn't sure what was going on; first, she heard metallic clanging, then heard the grand piano music suddenly come to an abrupt stop when many keys were pressed down at once and making a horridly loud sound, and then heard Elliot question, "W-who are you?"

Ariana now knew what the boys had stumbled onto; they had just found Robynne. "If Elliot is who I think he is," Ariana thought, "then I think something interesting is going to happen now."

"I'm…Robynne," She heard the Austria counterpart answer. "Who are you?"

"My name's Elliot," the swap said. "I just got here a little while ago."

"Oh," Robynne said plainly.

Then footsteps sounded, and she heard Prudence's voice from outside her door. "Okay, back into your rooms, everyone," Prudence said to the boys, and then Ariana heard doors opening and closing. Then she heard Robynne mumble something to herself. A couple seconds later, the piano music began again, and Ariana glowered at the floor, annoyed.

.

"Hello, this is Ariana. Leave a message at the beep."

A beep sounded, and Allison hung up. "Why isn't she picking up?" Allison questioned loudly.

America opened her bedroom door. "Who won't pick up?" he asked.

"Ariana," Allison sighed. "I think she's trying to ignore me after that sleepover."

"She probably just has her phone on vibrate or something," America said.

"No, she always has her phone on full volume; she tells me that when I wake her up at midnight by calling her," Allison said.

"Maybe she's at the movies?" America suggested.

"Look, I know she's not at the movies or anything like that, I think something's wrong!" Allison shouted dramatically.

"Hey, calm down, we could always just call England or something," America said.

"Yeah, that's right! I don't have his number, so I didn't try guessing it!" Allison exclaimed. After looking up England's phone number, she dialed in the number.

"What is it, America?" England questioned. "This isn't the time for one of your crank calls!"

"Relax, dude," Allison said. "I just want to know why Ariana isn't picking up her phone."

"I'd like to know the same thing! I think she's been kidnapped by Prussia! Again!"

"What?" Allison shouted.

"I came home from the world meeting, and she was gone!" England explained loudly.

"Look, I'll be right over there, I think I can help!" Allison said. She hung up quickly, and ran out of her room.

"Where're you going?" America asked.

"England's place," Allison replied. "Ariana's gone!"

Here's where we pick up on the actual plot. No, the kidnapping of Ariana and Francisca was not actually the entire plot, just something leading up to the climax. Anyway, sorry for the late chapter, I had writer's block for about two weeks, but now I'm fine, so we go back to pretty frequent updates :D

Once again, Reviews and other things like that really help me get rid of writer's block (Which has been a problem for me lately), so be sure to help with that! :3