A/N: It's been a whole week since I've posted one of these! Please accept my sincerest apologies. I've been missing these guys while I was working my way through mountains of accumalated homework, so you can bet I'm coming back to them. School's breaking up soon so hopefully I'll be able to post more often over the next few weeks.

Scotland was outraged. It was an unpleasant feeling; a peculiar mix of anger and shock with a twist of fear. It had been spreading through his body, icy tendrils licking at his chest and brain, since he'd lifted the sheets and peeked under his bed less than ten seconds ago. They were gone. He'd squinted through the darkness, even stuck an arm under in the hopes that he'd feel them hiding somewhere out of sight, but there could be no doubt about it.

Someone had stolen his books.

Now the outrage was being overshadowed by something else. Something rising in his chest, swelling, cresting, rolling, sucking in oxygen to feed its fury. Something that had lain dormant for centuries was raising its head to sniff the air once more. The scent of blood and woad filled Scotland's nostrils; the fiery red of burning buildings and the glint of steel danced before his eyes. The last time he had been in this mood, England had been sent fleeing from Bannockburn with an arrow in... well, let's just say Scotland had always been a very good shot with a bow.

But before a bloodthirsty roar could murder the silence, that exact nation appeared in the doorway, depressingly arrow-less (though he never would tell Scotland if he still had a scar).

"Ye..." he rounded on his younger brother, breathing deeply. He never had been good at anger management. "Did ye... were ye the one..."

"No," said England, not at all fazed by the older nation's seething wrath. "I didn't take your poetry books."

"I DINNAE HAVE ANY POETRY BOOKS! Wait, if ye didnae take 'em then hoo do ye knoo- I mean, not that I-"

"It was Ireland," he said before Scotland could dig himself into an even deeper hole. "Ireland took them. I saw him. He was laughing and talking about how he was going to post them all to South to read at the next world meeting."

"WHAT? He wouldnae... I'LL KILL HIM!"

"That," said England, folding his arms, "would be woefully ineffective. And it would probably start some kind of national emergency. No, if I were you, I'd just incapacitate him and steal the books back. Then you can exact revenge as you see fit."

"Well then..." said Scotland, still trying to suppress the urge to strangle his brother and go on a murderous rampage around Europe, "hoo would ye suggest I do that?"

"Lock him in the cupboard under the stairs. That'll keep him out of the way."

As much as Scotland hated to admit it, that made sense. "Okay then. I'll do that. That wee Irish scunner is goin' doon."

While Scotland was formulating his plan, Northern Ireland was carefully reorganising the United Kingdom's CD collection. Well, okay, so they were mostly Wales's, but he was happy to share. They had been building and adding to this collection for years and had everything from The Beatles to The Chieftains and they were damned if they were going to switch over to this new iTunes thing that America kept enthusing about. Wales spent most of his day with one CD or another in his music player and he never put them back in the right order, or even in the right cases, so it was up to Ireland to reorganise them all. Wales had been going through a major Duffy phase recently and the entire D section was all over the place. So that was why, when England found his brother, he was crouched on the floor surrounded by open CD cases.

He didn't bother to ask; Ireland was always fixing, cleaning or sorting something or other. "Ireland, guess what?"

"Not now, England. I'm putting the D section back to how it was before Wales messed it all up. Wait, did Duran Duran release Big Thing or Liberty first?"

"Big Thing, I think. But listen, I have something to tell you! You're gonna want to hear this."

"Go on, then."

"Wales bought your-"

Ireland held up a finger, interrupting him. "How many albums do The Darkness have?"

"Two. But Ireland, I know first-hand that Wales-"

"-Put David Bowie in the D section?" Ireland finished his sentence for him. "I've told him once, I've told him a thousand times, surnames first! Now I have to move all these down to the B's!"

"Wales just bought your St Patrick's day present!" said England as quickly as he could before Ireland could interrupt again.

Ireland paused in carefully placing a Depeche Mode CD back in its case. "What?"

"He just got back from buying it! He forgot last time, remember, so he's trying to be really organised and buy it early this year. He told me he's hidden it really carefully in his room. But I know how you can get to it."

Ireland still hadn't moved a muscle. "I'm listening."

"If you could get him out of the way, you could search his room until you find it. And I know the perfect place."

"Where?"

"The cupboard under the stairs. Lock him in there and you'll have as long as you need."

A smile tugged at the corners of Ireland's mouth, gradually widening until it stretched his face into a beam that made the sun look like a pessimist. "That's brilliant, England."

"I try. Now go! The sooner he's out of the way the sooner you can have your present!"

"Right!" He leapt to his feet and started for the door, then cast a guilty glance back at the unsorted CDs lying on the floor and stopped. He fought a brutal internal battle with himself, rocking backwards and forwards between the door and the CDs, then dropped back to his knees. "Two minutes. Let me just finish putting these away."

While Ireland was organising CDs as fast as his fingers and his alphabet-singing skills would let him, Wales was sitting on his bed with his CD player turned up to full volume. "You've got me begging you for mercy," he sang along with the music, rocking backwards and forwards in time to the beat. "Why won't you release me?" Time for a high note - he hit it perfectly, just like he always did. He wasn't known as The Land of Song for nothing, after all.

"Wales?"

"Now you think that I would be something on the side..."

"Wales!"

"But you've got to understand that I need a man who can take my hand, yes I do..."

"WALES!"

He jumped, stabbed at the pause button, heard his finger crack and, shaking it violently, turned to see England standing in the doorway. "Um... yes?"

"I don't want to alarm you, but we have an emergency."

"An emergency?" Wales was still out of breath and his finger was throbbing. He wasn't in much of a state to cope with national emergencies. A pang of worry started up in his chest. "What's wrong? Is it Ireland? Scotland? Are they okay?"

"They're fine... for now. But I have advance warning that something terrible is going to happen in the next few hours."

Wales bit back a swear word. It was Welsh and England wouldn't have understood it, but he didn't like swearing unless it was absolutely necessary. Besides, he'd used up his entire swearing quota for the month when his rugby team lost to South Africa. "What's going to happen? Is it terrorists? Is it South again? Is someone invading? Tell me!"

"It's worse than that. Much worse."

Wales gulped. "Tell me. I can take it." He may be small, but he was strong. If his people were going to die, if he was going to be hurt and his country destroyed, he needed to be prepared.

England took a deep breath and appeared to steel himself. "...It's Scotland. He's planning to make haggis for dinner tonight."

Something icy threatened to stop Wales's heart. This was much worse than anything he could've expected. He grasped at the bedpost to keep his balance, desperately trying to force oxygen back into his lungs. "No... please... anything but haggis..."

"Wales! Pull yourself together! I have a plan!"

Wales paused in his convulsing on the bed. "What?"

"If you can lock him in the cupboard under the stairs in the next ten minutes, he won't be able to make it!"

"That's genius!" He pulled himself back into a sitting position and stared eagerly at England.

"Go, then! Quickly! I'll hide the ingredients and you figure out a way to get him into that cupboard!"

"Yes sir!" Wales saluted, then leapt to his feet and ran from the room.

Ten minutes later, after much promising, threatening, lying and manoeuvring, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland found themselves standing in the hallway just outside the cupboard under the stairs.

"It's really not that bad," said Ireland, switching on the light to show the cluttered but relatively clean space inside. "No spiders or anything. I'd do it myself, but I know how good you are at finding things."

"I don't know," said Wales, pretending to think about this. "You're the best at that, Ireland. Maybe we should let Scotland do it? He is the bravest, after all." He turned big, dewy eyes up to his older brother, trying to look as young and innocent as possible.

"Nae," Scotland said, folding his arms. "Ye goo in, Ireland. Wales is right, ye knoo hoo ter find things best."

"I'll go in if Wales goes in too."

"I'm not going in without Scotland."

"Fine, why dinnae we all just goo in?"

"Sounds good to me," said Ireland. I'll get out quick and shut the door on Wales, then that present is mine!

And so it was that they all stepped into the cupboard under the stairs as one, and so it was that England, who had been waiting just around the corner, strolled past, shut the door and casually turned the key in the lock.

"Hey!" came a heavily accented voice from behind the wooden door. The handle shook but refused to turn. "The wee scunner's locked us in!"

"What? No!"

"England! Let us out!"

"Fat chance," said England through the keyhole. "The EU's coming over for a meeting in half an hour and I'm not letting you screw this up for me. You can stay in there until I let you out."

"We wilnae do anythin'! Ye never trust us!"

"That's because last time I let you out during a meeting you started the Korean War."

"That wasnae our fault!"

"Yeah, just because someone couldn't take it when South Korea said he invented the telephone-"

"HE DIDNAE INVENT THE BLOODY TELEPHONE!"

"Calm down! He said he invented the microphone as well and I didn't punch out his brother!"

England sighed and wandered away to prepare for the meeting, leaving his brothers locked securely in the cupboard. World peace would endure as long as they kept falling for that same trick every time it was his turn to host a meeting. They'd have forgotten this by then - all he had to do was present the same scheme slightly differently; worked every time. When was the next meeting here again? Right, next month. He had a good feeling that this trick would work just as well the twenty-fourth time he'd used it as it had the twenty-third.

A/N: Insert begging for reviews here. I am way too attached to those things...