Ahahaha it's been over six months i seriously suck.

Major events so far: Mathias got kidnapped by Magyar. Lukas tried to go save him, but got captured instead, while Mathias got saved by other people. Then Mathias went back to save Lukas. Lots of meaningless back and forth. Awkward DenNor scene.

Warnings: chaotic, because this story confuses me. Crappy chapter, because I basically wrote one word a day so this chapter was just kind of all over the place.

Still though, pretty important chapter. It's the beginning of the end.

Chapter Eighteen

It was a day of many tears, even though to be honest, they did not have the time for it.

"Lovino…" Feliciano sobbed, clutching his brother like a lifeline and choking around his tears with broken lines of Italian.

"I hate you. I fucking hate you. Get away from me. Fuck you…" Lovino was no different, although Lukas was not sure how healthy his method of expressing love was.

In the margins, watching this heartfelt display were Gilbert and Emma, both dabbing at their eyes and sniffling.

"What a beautiful scene…" Emma sighed, and Nathan, sitting beside his sister, rolled his eyes as Gilbert blew his nose loudly.

"Wow," Mathias was saying to Ludwig and Kiku, "Thanks for helping us and everything, but I still don't remember you!"

"Tragic," Tim commented, and Alfred laughed obnoxiously, Matthew—just as forgotten as Ludwig and Kiku, only by the entirety of the crowd in the room—hovering nearby.

"Well," said Emil from where he was perched next to Lukas at the corner of the room. "It's very… busy today."

Indeed, Lukas couldn't help but feel that there were a bit too many people in one living room. He doubted this apartment had ever seen such a party, since in the recent years it was apparently constantly passed back and forth amongst people secretly working against the Underworld and unwilling to let one of the major UDW bases in the United States to be left unsupervised.

As the rest of the group chattered on, Lukas felt weariness creep up to him, and he lowered himself carefully into the nearby armchair. He had been carefully treated by Emma, but a slight pain still racked his body every time he decided to move. He felt burdened, not just from the pain, but also with knowledge. Knowledge that the jolly atmosphere in the room was a false and weak cover for the tension that had settled into their very souls, and also the knowledge that—

"Emil Steilsson will die."

Those four words shook him to the core, and when Emil turned a concerned expression to the older brother, Lukas could feel the weight of this knowledge increase.

"If you need some rest—," Emil started, but Lukas swiftly cut in.

"I'm fine."

"Lukas Bondevik…" Gilbert waltzed across the living room towards the two brothers. He had a bottle of beer in his hand, likely stolen from the fridge, and a razor sharp smile accompanied with a glint in his dark red eyes that made him look either mischievous or murderous. Regardless, it was a look that meant that he was up to no good, and Lukas wasn't sure how ready he was to deal with a personality such as Gilbert. "My good friend, Lukas… I heard you had an encounter with the infamous Magyar? How does she fare, if I may ask?"

At the sound of that name, Lukas stiffened, and his hand fisting unconsciously against the leather of the armchair.

"Wonderfully," he replied somewhat coldly.

If Gilbert caught onto Lukas's tone, he didn't show it, though he glimpsed at the bandages peeking out from Lukas's collar. "That's nice to hear. Haven't seen the girl since the civil war."

"The Civil War?"

"Not the American Civil War, dumbass." Gilbert paused to take a gulp of beer. "The civil war of Hell."

"Speaking of civil wars," Nathan popped out of nowhere, cutting into the conversation with no context, thus steering their topic into a strange place, "It's a bit worrying, isn't it? The generals of both sides have shown their hands, they've clashed and killed. It's the Viking against Magyar again, and the Viking's got even less of a chance to win than last time."

"Hold up," said Emma, "The war was never between the Viking and Magyar. It had always been between the Viking and China."

Emil was startled by her sudden appearance, and as the conversation grew, his eyes darted from one speaker to the next.

"China?" Lukas repeated incredulously. Was the Chinese government somehow involved with the Underworld?

"Not the country China," Nathan informed him. "A person called China."

"Obviously, it's not his real name," added Emma. "It's just like 'Magyar', or the 'Prussian', or the 'Magician of the North'."

"But even so, no one ever actually saw China, so it's still basically the Viking verses Magyar."

"Magyar works for China."

"I don't think so." Nathan shook his head. "Magyar doesn't strike me as the type of take orders."

"I have to say, I have to agree with the kid on this one." Gilbert tipped his bottle of beer in Nathan's direction. "Although I'm still pretty sure that Magyar is working for China."

"No one has ever even seen China," Nathan emphasized.

"That's what makes him so dangerous." All five of them jumped. Kiku stood behind Emil, a soft smile on his lips that contrasted starkly with the grim look in his eyes. In all the time Lukas had known him, Kiku had always been frail—a side effect from his time in the labs—and the young man looked exhausted from just standing there. If Lukas wasn't in so much pain, he would have given him his seat.

"China is a phantom," said Kiku, his voice quiet but steely. "No one sees him, and yet he sees everything. His name is not whispered the way Magyar's is, and yet his net is cast wide, and he hears every word. Magyar is fearsome, yes, but fear what you cannot see. Though it's not true that no one has ever seen him before." This smile that tugged at Kiku's lips was almost joking. "He is still a man, after all. I'm sure Magyar had seen him before at some point."

Nathan took this all in with a thoughtful expression, and then asked, "What if China is actually a woman?"

Emma rolled her eyes. "Don't be ridiculous, Nathan."

Kiku chuckled and shook his head. "China is definitely a man, though people have been mistaken before. I've seen him too."

Silence fell. Gilbert, Emma, and Nathan were all staring at Kiku with wide eyes and slack jaws. Their mouths moved, but none of them seemed capable of forming words, and so the silence dragged, with three of Kiku's audience awestruck and the other two confused.

"Wow," Emil finally broke the silence with a very sarcastic exclamation. "I'm sure if I had any idea what you were all talking about, I would be impressed as well."

"Oh right." The rest of the group were abruptly reminded of the two outsiders in their midst. The four exchanged looks, urging each other to go ahead and explain. Ultimately, Kiku lost the four-way staring contest, and with a sigh, he began, "It's a somewhat long and complicated story, so here's a watered-down version: the Underworld started off as a charity program for orphans called Paradizo. Paradizo collected talented orphans from all over the world, training and educating them. Almost everyone in this room was part of that charity program. There were a lot of us, and maybe…"

"It was too much," said Emma sadly. "Too much talent, too much power."

"China was part of the program too, but he was ambitious," continued Kiku. "Long story short, he tried to get more power in Paradizo, but all that caused was a rift, a civil war, and many dead children.

"The sides of the civil war—as Nathan mentioned earlier—were basically the Viking against China. The Viking lost, he was executed, and what was left of Paradizo became the Underworld. That was three years ago."

"But…" Emil's gaze drifted towards another, more boisterous crowd across the room, "Isn't the Viking Mathias?"

Kiku shrugged. "I've never actually met the Viking, so I don't know. It is possible that Mathias is the Viking, though I believe most of the people who can confirm that fact has been hunted down and killed."

Lukas also felt his eyes draw towards Mathias, laughing and chatting loudly beside Alfred and his copilot, expression somewhat lost as he forgot pieces of the conversation, but still clearly enjoying himself. He tried to imagine Mathias in war, a child and a soldier, leading an army of children his age against a faceless foe. He failed.

"What about China? So he's basically the CEO of the Underworld now?"

Kiku was amused. "I guess you can say that."

"I don't think so," Gilbert interrupted however. "Magyar is more like the CEO of the Underworld. She's the one who goes to the fancy meetings and does all the hard work. China is the owner of the company who leaves the work to the others and watches from a distance. That's why no one sees him."

His explanation made sense; Nathan and Emma were humming and nodding along in agreement by the end.

"That," Gilbert stuck a finger in Kiku's direction, making his point in an almost accusing voice, "is why the fact that you've met China is somewhat unbelievable."

"Do you know what he's doing now?" inquired Nathan.

Kiku shook his head. "I met him years ago, before the end of the war."

"Oh," the young boy looked disappointed, as if it was no longer so impressive since it was before the end of the civil war.

"But honestly…" Lukas spoke for the first time since Kiku joined the conversation. His eyes were still trained on a distant figure across the room, and he seemed a bit disoriented. "How much power can you get from Paradizo? No one has really heard of this organization, and wouldn't a civil war just make it weaker?"

Gilbert was the one to answer with a shrug. "No one knows what China was thinking when he killed the original founders of Paradizo and declared himself supreme dictator. He probably just wanted power."

But Kiku's lips pursed, and Lukas knew that there was something unspoken here, a secret that was yet still painful to reveal. He was curious, and if he was any more cruel—perhaps as cruel as Magyar—he would have tried to dig it out of the Asian. But Lukas was not Magyar, and Lukas was too weary of cruelty, and so he let it slide.

"And now he's gone and disappeared." Lukas leaned forward, feeling his bandages chaff over his wounds. "Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of destroying Paradizo and replacing it with the Underworld?"

"Maybe he decided to retire," suggested Emma.

"Maybe." Though unlikely. "Regardless, he's not our biggest problem right now, is he? If no one has seen or heard from him in years, I'm not bothering to worry myself over him either. Right now, our biggest problem is Magyar, so let's deal with her first."

Gilbert snorted. "You make it sound like we can just walk up to her and put a bullet in her head."

Well, now that Gilbert put it that way, it did sound a little ridiculous. None of them could speak a single word to that woman without being merciless trampled like indignantly helpless ants, and so saying 'let's deal with her' sounds like an absurd understatement. You don't 'deal with' a person like Magyar. You lay down your plans and hope for the best; no point in praying though, because according to Gilbert, she had bribed the gods and fate into submission.

So yes, they needed a plan. If they were going to deal with Magyar, it got to be a good plan. If the legends were to be believed, she could take on the whole world by herself, and survive. It was a good thing she had no ambition to become queen of the universe; if anyone faced her head-on, no one would survive.

Except—why the hell not?

Lukas could feel something taking shape in his mind. Yes, Magyar had incredible power, and there were more things that Lukas could imagine that she could use to destroy each and every one of them, but he had something too, something vital, and now it simply boiled down to who will destroy each other first.

"Alfred," Lukas called, interrupting the increasingly animated conversation occurring on the other side of the living room. The smaller chatters around and between the two of them unconsciously lowered the volume so that communication was actually possible without one of them having to venture all the way across the room. "Does Magyar know that you are helping us yet?"

With the single mention of 'Magyar', all conversations stuttered to a halt, and the room fell into tense silence.

Alfred blinked, caught unawares by the question. "Um. No, no, I don't think so."

That's fortunate. "Do you know where Magyar is right now?"

"I'm… pretty sure she's still in California." Alfred nudged a faint shadow by his side. "Right, Mattie?"

Lukas noticed the copilot—not for the first time, though it certainly felt like it—with a start, and had to blink a few times before the man seemed to completely materialize.

"Yes," said Matthew, his voice barely audible. "She told us to go pick her up in two or three days."

"Yup." Alfred sighed, and said with a hint of a whine, "We're practically her personally pilots now. It's super annoying; she is real shitty company on a plane."

"Alfred," Matthew chided softly, and was ignored.

"Might be the fact that she is Magyar," Lovino pointed out. "What did you honestly expect?" The Italian turned to Lukas, and he was suddenly conscious that this was his first real interaction with Feliciano's allegedly dead older brother.

"Speaking of which," said the elder Vargas, "You are another one of those idiotic shitheads that blew up the Australian lab?"

Lukas did not appreciate being called an 'idiotic shithead', but from what he had seen from Lovino so far, that was simply the way he talked. "Yes, I am."

"Well," announced Lovino to the whole room, "You're an idiot."

"Thank you," Lukas replied coolly.

"But you've got something up your sleeve." He smiled, and Lukas marveled at just how different he was from his soft, bubbly, cheerful brother. Lovino Vargas was sharp edges and blunts words, towering walls casting shadows across his very being; his character seemed obvious the moment you heard him talk, yet he was unfathomable. "You are an idiot, but I am not. You think you've found a way to fight Magyar?"

No, Lovino was most certainly not an idiot. Once again, Lukas wondered: both Feliciano and Lovino were at the Australian labs, one (supposedly) died in an experiment, the other was fundamentally changed by one. If Lovino had a special ability like his brother, he probably had some handicap as well—though so far, Lukas could gleam nothing from him.

Carefully, Lukas rose to his feet. He was exhausted, but the attention of the entire room was on him at the moment, and this was not the time to be dragged down by exhaustion.

"I know Magyar," he began slowly. "I've met her, seen her face, and I know who she is. Of course, I am sure that many of you here have met her as well, but I know something that may or may not help us—if we use it correctly.

"Magyar's real identity—I don't know if it is her real name, but it is the name I know her by—is Elizabeta Héderváry." Lukas heard a sharp intake of breath from his young brother. "She has a fiancé."

Silence. Silence as everyone processed that. Silence as everyone almost simultaneously realized what they had to do, the only thing they could do.

Emil cleared his throat. "She is—was—my homeroom teacher. That is so weird," he added under his breath, and Lukas released a little huff of amusement. "When our class found out she was engaged, we pestered her about it, and—if I remember correctly—her fiancé's name is Roderich Edelstein."

The silence had yet to break. It hovered in the air, quivering, building—and then it crashed down around them as Gilbert threw back his head and laughed.

"To think," he cackled in his characteristic laughter, "I once had sex with that woman!"

"That," Ludwig threw his hands up in exasperated embarrassment, even as Alfred and Mathias wolf-whistled, "is completely irrelevant!"

Flawed and strange though their team was, one cannot criticize them for not being efficient. It took all of six hours for them to track down Roderich Edelstein and dig up all the information they could on the man. By the time Lukas and Emil left the apartment to return to their own, long-neglected home, they can very nearly memorize Edelstein's daily schedule and were holding a folder filled with basic information on Magyar's fiancé.

Lukas had almost forgotten where he had hidden the spare key, and when they entered, the house was foreign. If home was where the heart was, he thought that this little apartment that he had miraculously obtained was as far from home as he could be.

"Mathias should be here," Emil murmured.

Lukas silently agreed. There was a layer of dust over everything, but maybe if Mathias was here, this would feel more like home. He didn't know if it was pathetic or touching or strange, but in the months that Mathias had stayed with them, he became what had defined home. When they walked back from school, they were not walking back to a tiny, somewhat unkempt apartment, but to Mathias. When Mathias disappeared, they turned their back on this place without hesitation, because somehow Mathias was now home and there was no point in staying if home wasn't where home should be.

But Mathias had opted to stay in the 'Base'. Gilbert was not exactly pleased that his former home had become a hub for them Underworld refugees, but then—as Emma pointed out—it technically wasn't his apartment anymore, and the three siblings that had taken over were more than happy to regulate the Base.

"You can't just kick us out like this!" Gilbert had protested.

"You're the one who got yourself kicked out when you got yourself arrested by the Underworld and forced your two friends to go into hiding."

"Ouch," Alfred mouthed to Matthew, who chuckled sympathetically.

And now here they were, at the home-that-was-not-home. It felt like they were trespassing on foreign ground.

"Let's rest," Lukas said. "We'll see them tomorrow."

Emil nodded, and disappeared into his room. Lukas could hear him drawing the blinds close and sneezing when dust erupted in his face.

Lukas entered his own musty room, closing the door gently behind him. A silence as dead and heavy as the stale air settled over him, and he nearly collapsed on his bed, ignoring the dust that puffed up in response.

He had thought that silence would be bliss, especially when he had spent so much time with the chaotic crowd at the Base. It was only now, in the solitude of his room, did he realize how awful silence was, because silence meant that for the first time since he kissed Mathias in California, he could think.

Think about the kiss. The burning touches.

Think about before the kiss. The knives. The sound of his brother's name spoken almost lovingly by a cruel voice.

He checked his phone, which was on the verge of dying despite him having charged it on the plane. No new messages. Or at least, none that were unwelcomed.

None that marked the end of the countdown.

Roderich Edelstein was not a complete fool. He may have grown up in a privileged family, but that did not make him naïve to the dark side of the world. He knew that Elizabeta was not merely a middle school teacher—even with the many recent school shootings, normal teachers did not keep a gun in every purse—and the fact that she had gone to California for unknown reasons for an indefinite period of time was really starting to rub at him the wrong way.

Though admittedly, some of her behaviors did not just rub at him the wrong way, it also seemed to have rubbed off on him.

In the past, he would have thought that his newly-found paranoia was cancerous, but in the past two days, it was probably the only thing that had prevented him from getting murdered in his bed. There were people following him, trailing him, watching him, and if he hadn't picked up on Elizabeta's paranoid ways, he would likely have never noticed.

Still, didn't mean that he enjoyed being paranoid.

And sometimes, paranoia did not mean that he was preventing something from happening to him, only that he was delaying it.

And if he had to be completely honest, Roderich Edelstein—careful, courteous Roderich Edelstein—was just a bit curious.

After all, the worse thing that could come out of this situation was a slow and painful death.

His days were numbered, but no one knew. No one will know until the final day came—even though he himself didn't know exactly when this countdown will end. All he knew was that the end will come with a message.

The message came the next day.

Too soon, he thought, but there was nothing he could do about it. He no longer had any control over his own life. All he can do now is make sure that he was as unimportant as he could be. After all, they were on the verge of war, and he refused to be a hindrance.

Just because he was already condemned did not mean that they could not win this battle. One dead soldier was hardly a nuisance to a gathering army.

"I don't want the two of them involved," said Vash, pointing at Emil and Lukas the day before the kidnapping as they were planning the abduction. He had disappeared with Lilli after Mathias went to retrieve Lukas from California, and now he was back, along with his sister, apparently after finding their own apartment. "He's too young and he's injured."

Emil looked like he was about to protest, but one look at his brother's weary face, he closed his mouth. No one else spoke.

"Magyar is still in California," said the former Prison guard. "If this information is accurate, he seems like a perfectly normal guy. Just use the standard kidnapping procedure; should be easy."

And it was.

The fact that they had a 'standard kidnapping procedure' was admittedly a little sad, but it didn't change the fact that it worked perfectly. The reason why it was standard was because it should encounter no big problems during the kidnapping.

And this was the exact case for Roderich Edelstein. The kidnapping was so standard it was almost boring.

They infiltrated the man's home, raided his fridge, waited, then got ready when they received the signal indicating that their target was approaching. The most exciting thing that happened was the moment Edelstein stepped into his house, he had sighed and said, "Whatever you need to do, please finish it quickly. I have work tomorrow."

Vash materialized behind Edelstein and kicked the door shut. Gilbert stepped out of his hiding place, a piece of cloth in one hand.

The albino grinned. "Sorry, sir, you might not be able to make it tomorrow."

Edelstein sighed. "Very well. I suppose I can call in sick." Then he eyed the rag in Gilbert's hand with mild interest. "Is that soaked in chloroform?"

"Yes." Gilbert blinked, somewhat bewildered, then caught his mistake. "I mean—no. No, just a hankie."

"I see." Except Edelstein then decided to ignore everything after "I mean". "I'm assuming you want to kidnap me."

"You've got a problem with that?"

"A bit, yes," admitted Edelstein. "I'd like to know why."

"You're Elizabeta Héderváry's fiancé, aren't you?" Behind him, Vash leaned back on the door and crossed his arms.

"Yes, that would be me."After a moment of thought, he concluded, "You want me for some ransom."

"Hostage is good enough."

"West," Gilbert called. "You can come out now."

Ludwig, who had been hiding diligently, sighed as he came out. "I'm pretty sure we're not supposed to be chatting with him."

Behind the large blonde stepped out Nathan, who was there for no other reason than the fun and the fact that Tim deemed it necessary for him to gain some 'field experience'. "Is this where we tell him to come nicely so we won't knock him out but then knock him out anyway?"

"I don't mind going nicely," stated Edelstein mildly.

Vash grunted. "Yeah, let's just go."

So they just left.

The four escorted Edelstein out into the car, where Tim was waiting in the driver's seat. Nathan blindfolded their hostage.

Gilbert tossed the cloth in his hand down.

"I was kind of looking forward to using that," he said sadly.

"I heard chloroform can actually have detrimental effects on the kidney and liver if used in high amounts," Edelstein replied.

The rest of the ride was silent.

They escorted Edelstein—still blindfolded—to the Base, where the rest of the gang loitered. Mathias appeared to be having a singing contest with Feliciano and failing horribly, partly because Lovino was the judge and he was biased and partly because Mathias was simply an awful singer.

Gilbert thought that this was one of the few times when that short-term memory was useful: Mathias had been sulking on the couch when they left, since he had not been allowed onto the mission.

Lukas and Emil were not there either. They were informed yesterday that they were to play no part in the kidnapping, and so had left early, not bothering to stay for a dinner of instant noodles and the briefing afterwards. Now it was past noon and though it was strange that they hadn't turned up yet—it was Sunday after all, it wasn't like they had school, if they were even still going—Gilbert was sure that they'd show up. Mathias was here after all.

Lilli had helped Edelstein out of the blindfold, sat him down on the sofa, and was now offering him a cup of water. Most of the rest of the people were ignoring their captive, though not necessarily on purpose.

There was a rather large group of people gathered around a single laptop where a discussion about what sort of bargain they should strike with Magyar was going on over Skype with Alfred and his copilot, and—to Gilbert's pleasant surprise—Antonio and Francis.

"Yo!" Gilbert bounded excitedly towards the discussion, pushing through the people to greet his two friends. "Tony! Franny!"

"Gilby!" the two exclaimed, their voices crackling slightly over the bad connection.

But just as they were on the verge of a tear-filled reunion party over Skype, there was a knock on the door. A timid yet frantic and nervous knocking that, despite not being the loudest sound in the room, swept the occupants of the Base into momentary silence. As one, including the ones on the laptop screen, they all glanced towards the door, though Lilli was the only one who reacted to open it.

Lukas and Emil, thought Gilbert, just as the door swung open.

He was only partly correct.

Emil stood there, small frame shaking, face drained and pale, eyes blown wide and frightened, his ugly, twisted arm clutched to his chest as if it was a detached object and not a part of his own body.

Mathias's eyes lit up the moment they landed on the young boy, and he ran up to greet him. "Emil! Where's Lukas?"

Emil did not react to Mathias's enthusiastic welcome. Instead, he shuddered, and his thin shoulders caved in a little.

"I can't find him," he whispered.

Mathias blinked. "Who?"

"Lukas." Those horrified, dark violet eyes seemed to stare at nothing; the emptiness seemed to penetrate the apartment. "He disappeared this morning and I've been looking for him all day and I didn't tell anyone because all of you were already too busy and—"

"Emil." Mathias cut off the increasingly hysterical rant by clutching Emil's shoulders. "Emil, what are you talking about?"

For a moment, Emil looked confused, which Gilbert understood. He thought that despite his shaken demeanor, he had been perfectly clear. But this was Mathias, and who knew how Mathias understood things?

"Lukas." Emil's voice cracked. "Lukas is gone. All I could find is this."

And now it was obvious that there was something clenched into the fist of his crippled arm.

A flower.

"Coincidence," Gilbert breathed, because it wasn't. Because he would recognize that flower anywhere.

It was, after all, her flower.

Magyar.

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