I'M SORRY! I know I'm a week late with this but just about the World and his wife has had bad colds where I am and I was no exception and life's been throwing a few more obstacles in my way but the next chapter's here, enjoy!

I don't own Hetalia!

Chapter 12 : Loose Ends

King Voss was immediately aware of a problem when his ship was moored dockside as many people on the dock were casting glances at his vessel, some with worry and some with disapproval and he wondered at such a reaction as he stepped down the gangplank in his maroon robes. He had come in search of his sister, who had somehow commandeered a ship without his permission when his back was turned, to follow Prince Alfred of Altheia back to his own kingdom and he realised that he could not see the ship in dock. A servant went to supervise the off-loading of the royal carriage to take him to the castle and, while his entourage waited, Voss spotted the odd glance being thrown in the blonde king's direction and not in a visiting royal kind of way. He was glad when the carriage was ready and they were on their way to the castle.

King Voss was detecting an atmosphere in the castle when he arrived and it was not just because he was unexpected. No one was disrespectful but there was a certain...tone to the way the servants attended to him and he had the feeling that something had happened. Something that involved Erica.

The butler braced himself for another encounter with a Mertorian royal. True, this was only the second one he had met but Princess Erica was hardly a pleasant experience, he could only hope that her brother, the King was a little easier to deal with. Without instructions on how to treat other visiting Mertorian royals in the face of Princess Erica's actions, the butler fell back on his training and greeted the Mertorian King as he would any other visiting royal until King Alex returned and decided what to do.

"Greetings, Your Majesty," the butler bowed. "Welcome to Altheia. I trust your journey was a safe one?" Voss was rather surprised that he was not greeted by any of the royals but the reason became apparent as the butler continued.

"My apologies for being the one to greet you," he said. "King Alex and Prince Jason are currently absent, dealing with a sudden emergency. I do not know when they will return but it should be soon. Perhaps I can show you and your entourage to the royal guest chambers while you await their arrival? I will also arrange for some refreshment to be brought to you, I'm sure you wish to rest after your journey."

"Some rest and refreshment would be most welcome, thank you," King Voss replied. "I hope the emergency is resolved to King Alex's satisfaction. The butler immediately felt sorry for King Voss, he was more amiable than Princess Erica and the poor King had no idea what a huge diplomatic mess his sister had created. He led the way to the royal guest wing with King Voss and his servants following.

As they walked, King Voss wondered if his sister had arrived and where she was. Her ship had not been in the harbour at all and no one, as yet, had mentioned her. He wondered if she had arrived or had her ship been hit by a storm and not made it and he began to worry that it had been the case.

"I'm here, looking for my sister, Princess Erica," he said and he noticed a slight stiffening of the butler's shoulders. "She was coming here on one of our ships but I didn't see it in the harbour. Did she arrive here?" The butler cleared his throat.

"King Alex would be a better person to talk to, Your Majesty," he replied. "He'll explain the situation to you." From that Voss knew his sister had arrived here or, at least, the Altheians had information about her but something was clearly wrong.

What had happened? What had Erica done?

Voss was not completely blind to his sister's...peccadilloes and he partly blamed himself for it. Their mother had died, not long after Erica's birth and then their father died when Erica was just a few years old. Voss was far older, in his early teens at the time, and he had to take the throne and raise Erica and so had to grow up fast himself. Erica had never really known either parent, unlike Voss, and he had compensated for that with giving Erica everything she could want but then realised too late that he had spoilt her rotten. Her manners with others were atrocious and he had to watch her when other royals visited and he had spotted signs of her obsessive behaviour, heard the whispers in the court, questioning his sister's sanity. He stayed close to her when Prince Alfred visited, to keep her reined in when they were together. He wanted this alliance and Prince Alfred, although the perfect gentleman around Erica, had not seemed particularly interested in her but Voss had lived in hope.

Then, a few days after Prince Alfred's departure, Voss had gotten word that one of the ships, ready and provisioned for a journey to take a Mertorian ambassador to the Kingdom of Russ had left and he found that Erica was on board.

He guessed where she was going and immediately ordered another ship to be provisioned while he met with his Chamberlain to talk about him holding the fort while Voss chased his errant sister across the sea.

Something told Voss that there would be diplomatic tangles to work out when King Alex arrived.

Seeing the new Mertorian ship in dock threw the Altheian royals into a panic for a moment. King Alex thought he would have some time to mule over the problems and intricacies of the situation but now he had to think of something immediately.

"How do we explained why we have Princess Erica under house arrest without revealing the Spadians, Dad?" Jason asked as they came through the harbour mouth, looking at the ship. "We can't let anyone see Alfred like …... he is now."

"And we need him to give an account of Princess Erica's actions," Alex replied.

"We have Matthew," Jason replied.

"Matthew might not be believed," Alex commented. "Princess Erica will probably claim that Matthew is an imposter, just the way she's hinted since she got here and King Voss might believe his sister. Alfred would be harder to brush aside."

"But he can't be seen," Jason replied. Matthew had heard everything and turned to his uncle.

"Perhaps we can arrange something," he said and went to the railing, throwing a rope ladder down the side and climbing down to the water.

It was dark when the butler came to inform King Voss that King Alex had arrived home and had been informed of his presence and that he would meet with Voss in the morning after resting from his journey. Nothing was mentioned about Princess Erica and there was that undertone again when he asked and it was once again recommended that he talk to King Alex about it.

The next morning, after breakfast, King Voss requested an audience with King Alex which was granted and he was escorted to the King's study where King Alex stood beside the window, looking out but he turned when the door opened.

"Welcome, King Voss," he greeted as they moved toward each other to shake hands. "My apologies for not being here to greet you when you came."

"No apology required, King Alex," Voss replied. "I understand you had an emergency to deal with and my arrival was not anticipated. I trust your emergency is now over and all is well?" Alex's look turned serious.

"Not quite yet," he replied, honestly. "I'm afraid that the emergency involved your sister, Princess Erica." Voss's heart dropped.

"What happened to her?" he asked, frantically. "Is she alright? Is she hurt?" Alex took a deep breath.

"Physically, she's unharmed," he replied. "However, she is currently under house arrest." Voss was completely stunned at what he had just heard.

"W...What?!" he stammered. Alex gave a sigh.

"The emergency involved chasing Princess Erica's ship," he explained. "On which she kidnapped my nephews, Prince Alfred and Prince Matthew, along with another visiting royal dignitary who, I regret to say, she tried to kill." Voss's mind was racing with what King Alex had told him. Kidnapping! Attempted murder! Voss knew his sister was a little ….. determined ….. to have her own way but to go this far!

"There must be some mistake," he replied. "My sister can be difficult to handle (he was willing to admit that much) but I find it hard to believe that she would do something so ….." Voss had no words. "Why would she kill a complete stranger and...Prince Matthew? Prince Alfred's twin? I had heard that he died when he was four years old."

"We were wrong," Alex said. "Prince Matthew was found just shortly before your sister arrived here, it was an unexpected and wonderful moment for us all which made your sister's kidnapping of him and his brother all the more distressing and, as for trying to kill Sir Arthur, she was convinced that she was going to marry Alfred, despite the fact that there is no arrangement in place yet, and that Sir Arthur was getting in the way. She had her men tie him up with a weight attached to his feet and had him thrown overboard. Fortunately, Sir Arthur was able to free himself and find help." Alex kept to the truth as much as possible. King Voss did not need to know that Arthur had gotten free by turning into a merman.

"I wish to see Prince Alfred and Prince Matthew," Voss said, after a moment, not wanting to believe that his sister could do such a thing, like he had not wanted to believe the whispers about Erica's mental stability...or lack thereof. "And then I wish to see my sister." Alex nodded, as if expecting this and he went to the door and opened it to admit Alfred, someone who looked like him, a dark haired man with golden eyes and a blonde man with large eyebrows and green eyes, followed by Prince Jason, into the room.

The day before...

Matthew climbed down the rope ladder on the side of the ship to the ocean and called out, "Arthur! Alfred!" A moment later, Arthur and Alfred surfaced, along with Gilbert and Yao, and swam underneath Matthew.

"What's up, Mattie?" Alfred asked.

"King Voss's ship's in the harbour," Matthew replied. "When he finds out his sister's under arrest, it could be a diplomatic incident. We need you and possibly Arthur to back up our version of events."

"But how?" Alfred exclaimed. "King Voss can't see me like this!"

"Kesese," Gilbert laughed. "Don't worry, Your Majesty. I'll deal with that problem."

They dropped anchor and the four mers climbed back aboard the ship, along with Peter where Gilbert re-transformed Arthur and Alfred and, this time, Yao joined the group. Blankets were brought to cover Alfred, Arthur and Yao before Gilbert and Peter did the transformation after which they were provided with clothes. Alfred and Arthur were already comfortable with walking on legs but Yao needed a little assistance but soon, the entire Royal Pod of Spades were standing together as land-dwellers.

They decided to wait until dark before going ashore and Alex would plead the need to rest so they could buy time to get their plan to circumvent any fallout from this situation together. Alex also took the opportunity to have tentative talks, with Matthew interpreting, with Yao for a treaty with Spades in order to keep in touch with Alfred and Matthew. By the time, they were ready to leave the ship for the castle, there was a framework for the first diplomatic alliance between a mer and land-dweller kingdom.

They left the ship, coming ashore and heading for the castle, bringing Princess Erica with them and she was placed under house arrest in her assigned chambers. She had been very vocal on the trip to the shore, saying how she was treated was an act of war, especially the way she was treated by Freaks! She shut up when she was temporarily deafened by a screech from Yao, not that he knew what Erica was saying. He just could not stand the sound of her voice.

Once Erica was safely put away for the night, the joint royal families of Altheia and Spades settled in the King's Study and put their heads together to deal with the diplomatic mess Princess Erica's actions had caused.

King Voss faced the new men in the room, recognising Prince Alfred immediately and guessing that the look-a-like was the newly found Prince Matthew. One resembled King Alex so Voss guessed that this was Prince Jason but he wondered which of the other two men was the aforementioned Sir Arthur.

"Allow me to introduce everyone," Alex said, indicating to each as he said their names, while Matthew translated for Arthur and Yao. "Prince Alfred you know, this is Prince Matthew." He indicated to Matthew before moving on to Jason. "This is my son, Crowned Prince Jason and this is Sir Arthur and Sir Yao of Spades." He looked at the others. "Everyone, this is King Voss of Mertoris." Everyone bowed to each other, politely.

"Please excuse this," Alex said when he saw Matthew muttering to Arthur and Yao in a strange language. "Sir Arthur and Sir Yao don't speak our language and need Matthew as a translator." Voss nodded in acceptance.

"That's fine," he replied. "I need to know what Sir Arthur has to say any way. I also must speak to my sister, to find out how she managed to get here in the first place. The ship she took was a diplomatic vessel and all royal and diplomatic vessels require written royal permission to leave harbour."

"Do you mean this?" Alex produced a parchment from his desk that had been found on board Princess Erica's ship and showed it to King Voss who read it with disbelieving eyes. It was, indeed, royal permission for a ship to leave harbour but he did not remember signing this. He looked down at his signature and frowned.

"This isn't my signature," he said, looking closely at the scrawl. "It's a good likeness but some of the loops are not right, They slope too far to the right." He pulled a piece of parchment across to him, took a quill and put his signature on it to show King Alex the difference and King Alex could see that someone had made an attempt to imitate the signature but, side by side with the real one, the difference was obvious.

"Tell me everything that has happened since Erica arrived here," Voss said. "Then take me to see Erica."

Voss was given an abridged account of what had happened, how Alfred's ship had sunk on his return journey to Altheia and how Arthur had saved Alfred and ended up swept ashore, a day later, then followed by Matthew, looking for him and how they discovered that Matthew was Alfred's previously-thought-to-be-dead twin brother.

Then they talked about Erica's arrival and everything that had happened afterwards, not actually telling Voss about the snide insults about Arthur or the hints about Matthew being an imposter but Voss got the impression that the Altheians were not very impressed with her behaviour. Alex and Alfred did, however, tell Voss of Erica's belief that the marriage alliance was 'a done deal', constantly talking about 'The Wedding' and became very angry when told that it might not happen due to recent changes and had blamed Matthew and Arthur for 'trying to take Alfred away from her'. Voss internally groaned. If this account was true, Erica had probably ruined any chance of an alliance with Altheia but he would hear Erica's side of the story before making any decisions.

They went along to the rooms that Erica was confined to and this was going to be the defining moment. Would Voss believe his sister and continue to indulge her or would he finally realised what his sister had actually become? The guards outside her door unlocked it and King Voss was allowed in.

The room was a wreck. Mirrors were smashed, paintings had been destroyed, furniture had been thrown over, chairs broken and curtains had been pulled from their rails. The windows had also been damaged, cracked and broken.

The bed had not survived either. The sheets had been ripped and the pillows destroyed, the feathers flying all over the room. Food that had been delivered to her had been thrown against the walls and, through the door to the en-suite, things had been thrown across the floor and broken shards of the washing bowl and jug were mixed in with the mess. The whole chamber looked like it had been hit by a hurricane.

Voss groaned. Many a time, Erica had destroyed her room because something had not gone her way and usually wanted some poor servant punished for some small thing Erica decided was wrong in her own mind and built up into the vilest crime. Voss would simply move the servant to a different part of the castle without punishment and Erica was never the wiser.

King Alex, Jason and the Spadian royal pod looked at the destruction in horrified fascination, that this tiny wisp of a land-dweller could wreck so much damage. Even Yao, who had no experience of land-dwellers was shocked at the devastation and had the feeling that this was not typical of how land-dwellers treated belongings. Arthur, of course, was less shocked. He knew, first hand, the lengths Princess Erica would go to when she wanted her own way. After all, if she was willing to commit murder...

Erica stood in the middle of it all, panting as if she had just thrown everything around before they came in and was about to throw a figurine to the floor when she looked up at the door and saw her brother in the opening.

"VOSS!" she cried, dropping the ornament and it breaking any way. "Thank goodness you came. These people have been vile to me! They've broken the marriage contract and locked me up in here without food. (Voss looked at the food that was splattered across the walls). You can't let them treat me like this! You should declare war on them right now!" The fact that Erica had been locked in her rooms, rather than the dungeons, had not escaped Voss, proving that, despite her alleged crimes, Erica had been treated far better than she deserved, if guilty which he rather suspected she was. There was also the fact that Mertoris could not win a war against Altheia, the kingdom was too strong and had too many allies, to say nothing of the kingdom represented by Sir Arthur.

"Erica, why did you even come here?" Voss demanded. "I didn't give permission so how did you get the ship to leave harbour?" Erica, who had been expecting her brother to just give her what she wanted, was shocked to find herself being questioned about her misdemeanours.

"Erica!" Voss snapped when she did not answer. "I ask you a question!"

"The ship had permission," she insisted. "I had a document that you signed..."

"You mean the one with my forged signature on it!" he snapped, again. "You really need to do better than that. You took the ship that was ready for the royal ambassador to Russ and made a completely illegal trip. And I thought I had made it clear! Prince Alfred's visit with us was to explore the possibility of a marriage treaty. There is no marriage treaty yet so they have broken nothing and, if what they have said is true, you have potentially begun a war with possibly three kingdoms. That's more than any kingdom can stand, what were you thinking?" Erica felt the whole world, including her brother was against her and that she had done nothing wrong, making her spoilt rage rise to the fore.

"I HAD TO MAKE PRINCE ALFRED SEE SENSE!" she screamed at the top of her lungs when Alex, Jason, Alfred, Matthew, Arthur and Yao watched her essentially hang herself. "THAT FAKE BROTHER OF HIS AND THAT ABOMINATION WERE STEALING HIM AWAY FROM ME. THAT ARTHUR PERSON IS A FISH! THAT'S HOW HE SURVIVED AT THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN!"

"So you did kidnap Prince Alfred and Matthew and tried to kill Sir Arthur!" Voss gasped. Erica had really done it this time. Kidnapping two royal princes was an act that could start a war if Voss could not find a way to pacify King Alex, to say nothing of attempting to murder a royal dignitary. And this business about Sir Arthur being a fish?! It seems Voss should have listened to the court whispers about his sister's sanity.

"HE'S BEWITCHED ALFRED!" she continued to scream and become hysterical. "TURNED ALFRED AGAINST ME! I WILL KILL THAT FREAK!" She picked up a broken shard of pottery from the floor and dove at Arthur, brandishing the shard like a dagger, only to be stopped by her own brother who slapped her cheek. Hard! Erica dropped the shard in shock and put her hand to her cheek and could not believe that her brother had hit her. Voss felt that he had no choice, she had been so far gone in her rage that she was willing to try and commit murder, right in front of everyone. Voss had to face the possibility that Erica had gone mad.

"Brother, how could you?" she asked with a shocked whisper.

"You have gone insane, Erica!" Voss declared. "And your insanity will bring Mertoris to ruin. Fish people! You almost started a war over Fish People! You need help, Erica. I should have seen it sooner then I wouldn't be dealing with the diplomatic incident that you've caused." He indicated to Arthur. "Fish people are a myth, does Sir Arthur look like he has a fish tail to you? He's as human as you and me."

"He had a tail!" Erica insisted. "He came back and attacked the ship with an army of fish people. He turned Alfred into the same as him, he's infectious!"

"Alfred doesn't have a tail either," Voss pointed out.

"Alfred did have a tail," Erica snapped. "They must have changed back somehow."

"Will you listen to yourself?" Voss demanded. "You have no proof and nothing but insane ramblings. And where is this 'Fish Army' that supposedly attacked your ship? You need help, Erica."

"Ask the crew!" Erica snapped. "And then be prepared to apologised to me. You'll see I am not insane and telling the truth and you'll have to grovel to me." She looked extremely smug. Voss sighed.

"I'm as mad as you for agreeing to this," he replied. "All right! I'll go and talk to the crew."

The Altheian and Spadian royals just looked at each other.

Uh-huh!

Till next week,

Hasta la Pasta!