| IMPORTANT NOTES |

○ This is set between the tenth and eleventh books (Into the Gauntlet and Vespers Rising, respectively) of the 39 Clues, not including the certain flashbacks○

○ I do not own either of the series. The 39 Clues belongs to Rick Riordan and Axis Powers Hetalia belongs to Himaruya Hidekazu ○

The Kabra children used to be as spoiled as rotten milk. They still are, in actuality, but at least they now know how to deal with things without the help of nannies, butlers, or their parents.

"Give it back, Natalie!" Ian screamed at sister as he reached for the article of clothing she held away from him.

Natalie stuck her tongue out at him. "Make me!"

Both of them knew how to settle things like civilized adults.

"Natalie, give me back my jacket right this instant" — Ian raised his voice and put all the more spite into his threat — "or I swear that I'll kill you!"

With this, Natalie made a run for it. But she wasn't afraid. Not of Ian, known to her as her prissy, highly-sophisticated (read: still-thinks-he-lives-in-the-high-class) brother.

Her laughter bounced off the wooden walls of the house and echoed back to her, feeding her laughter even more. It was exhilarating, that moment. She had never felt so alive.

Meanwhile, Ian gave chase and kept on throwing threats and insults at her.

"Natalie Isabel Kabra," her brother called her by her full name, "you come back here!"

Yes. Like civilized adults.

Ian was getting tired. His legs, his lungs, his mind. Yes, he may have exercised his stamina and speed during the Clue Hunt, but he's no Tomas.

And thus he decided: if he wasn't going to beat his sister with fast and powerful legs, he will have to do it with strategy.

As a last resort, he settled on a painful solution to his problem. When he got close enough to Natalie, he timed his jump right and tackled her down to the ground.

Hm.

At first, they were fighting with words. Now came in the fists and nails.

"Gah! Get off me, Ian!" Natalie shrieked, wriggling herself out of her brother's arms.

"Not until you give me back my jacket!" Ian replied. He made sure that his body was securely pinning his sister down beneath him while he grabbed for his jacket.

Oh dear.

"AIYAH! What is going on here?"

The two Kabras still continued to fight even after Yao's high-pitched exclamation. They were on the floor, carefully entwined with each other, biting and punching and scratching and grabbing. Oh, and screaming.

Kiku walked into the scene with a scrunched-up face and massaging both sides of his head. "Is this were all the noise has been coming from?"

At the same time, Lee and Mei arrived.

"What's going on here?" they chorused.

"That's what I said!" China whinnied and threw his floppy, over-sized sleeves into the air in submission.

"Can anyone just please get them to stop fighting?" Kiku complained, his hands now cupping his ears.

Lee raised his hand and said, "I volunteer." He then pulled a red, shiny blow horn out of his sleeve and aimed it like a gun at Ian and Natalie. "Brace yourselves."

Alarmed, Yao and Mei joined Kiku in the act of covering their ears. Lee conjured a pair of earmuffs from his sleeve and placed it on his head.

He asked his siblings if they were ready, and they nodded.

Lee nodded back.

He stepped back a bit and screamed, "FIRE IN THE WHOLE!"

The horn blared. Unprotected eardrums would be left ringing for hours, if not ruptured on the first try.

The rowdy Kabra children were lucky enough to keep their ears intact. They were forced to push themselves away from the other and shield their ears.

Lee's finger was still on the button.

"STOP!" Natalie screamed, trying her best to get herself heard above the loud horn. "PLEASE!"

"ENOUGH!" Ian yelled. "HAVE MERCY!"

It seemed that Lee must have heard them because he immediately stopped. His hand dropped to his side as he wore a small triumphant smile at the edge of his lips.

"Well, that was easy," he claimed and left the scene without another word.

The two Kabras were on their knees, getting a long and agonizing lecture from Yao. Their heads were facing down, unable to look at the enraged country straight in the eye.

"Really, you two!" Yao scolded them. "It's only be two days since you got here and now you cause a huge ruckus like that? I'm very disappointed in you!"

"Please," Ian said in a sour tone and his eye twitching at the ground, "stop using that tone of us as if you're our mother."

Our mother.

The words echoed in his mind. So did her face. Then he thought that his sister might be feeling the same way, too.

But before he could turned to see Natalie's face, he was smacked on the head. With words.

"You disrespectful child!" Yao spat at Ian. "Well, I expect nothing less from Arthur, that filthy Brit!"

Ian's hands were placed on his legs as he was kneeling down. Now they're being bruised from his fingers gripping them tightly in silent anger.

"All you pompous, tea-drinking, scone-scoffing, first-world Englishmen think you can do whatever you want!" Yao carried on.

Shut up! Ian was screaming in his mind. Probably inside his pants, his legs must be bleeding from the deep excavation his fingers are making. Just SHUT UP!

Right next to him, Natalie could tell that he's holding the urge to lunge out and wring out the long lectures from the Chinese man.

"And now," Yao continued, "when I'm giving you a proper scolding, you complain and tell me that I sound like your mother. How rude! Well, it's a good thing your real mother disowned you, because if I were her, I'd do the same!"

It was quick.

Ian bolted up and out of his sitting position and threw a punch at Yao. But the Chinese man evaded the attack and skillfully countered it. Natalie was too busy processing what had happened and was only able to react when Ian was already tumbling across the corridor and had crashed into the opposite wall.

Natalie scrambled to her feet and ran to her brother. "IAN!" she screamed.

"Hmp." While leaving the Kabras to attend to themselves, Yao brushed himself off and began to walk away. "Pathetic Brits."

"A-ah...ow...OUCH!"

"Stop fidgeting!" Mei told Ian off as she pressed the cotton all the more down on the cut on his head. "Be a man, will you?"

Natalie couldn't help but snicker. Ian whipped his head at her and glared her down, silencing her, but Mei immediately turned his head back at her and continued to treat him.

"Meimei." Lee appeared at the open doorway, calling out Taiwan's nickname. "How is he?"

"Why don't you ask him?" Mei told him coolly and pointed her thumb at a flabbergasted Ian.

Lee stared and raised a brow at him. "Well, are you?"

"Huh?" Ian blurted out, causing his sister to giggle. This time when he glared her down she only kept on laughing at him. He ignored her and properly answered the question given to him. "Ah, yes. I'm fine now. Thank you for asking."

Lee's face was nonchalant, as usual, and he tilted his head as he looked at Ian. "Hm, okay," he mumbled before turning on his heel and leaving the room. "Just checking."

As soon as she was sure that Lee was gone, Natalie perked up and started bombing Mei with questions.

"Ms. Wang — "

"Oh, please Natalie. Don't." Mei gave her a wide smile. "You can call me jiejie."

Natalie wore a confused face. "'Jiejie'?"

"It's simple Chinese for 'older sister'," Ian to pointed out to his sister.

Mei nodded. "Yes. If you're going to stay with us for a longer while, you might as well refer to everyone in this house the proper way."

"Yeah," Ian sighed and rolled his eyes. "We wouldn't want to get another lecture from that old man again."

At that moment, Ian and Natalie froze in place. They expected Mei to scold them for referring to their host like that, but she just giggled then burst into a fit of laughter.

"What?" Natalie squeaked.

"You're not mad?" Ian asked Mei.

"Why would I be mad?" the Taiwanese girl said as her laughter died down and she wiped a tear from her eye. "We always call him that! It's perfectly normal. Plus, it's true."

Her confession put identical smiles on the Kabra children's faces.

"Oh, but just to be on the safe side..." She leaned in a bit closer and lowered her voice as if she were about to tell them the most vital secret in the world. "Don't tell that to his face." Now, her voice turned back into its normal volume. "He goes all fākuáng with his wok! Completely berserk! Swinging the thing here and there!" She held her arms up in the air and whipped the pink, floppy sleeves of her dress back and forth to imitate Yao's mad actions. She even made funny faces and sounds to accompany them.

Ian and Natalie laughed at her the whole while. It was pure and hearty, probably the most real kind of laughing they did in their entire lives.

Just then, Mei's phone started ringing. She read the message sent to her and stood up.

"Is something wrong...um...jiejie?" Natalie asked her, blushing at her use of the new word.

"You two should get dressed; your outfits to be changed into and your trolleys filed with all your necessities are in the sitting room." She made her way to the door. "I'll go get them for you. Just stay here, okay?"

Both children nodded.

"Wait!" Natalie cried out just as Mei was about to leave.

The Taiwanese girl turned her head and asked, "What is it, Natalie?"

"If you don't mind me asking..." Natalie trailed off, and was supplemented by her brother.

"Where are going?" Ian asked.

Mei just shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know. Kiku just texted me that order and said that he'll be waiting for us outside in the car."

"We're going back," Natalie said softly. She felt like fainting.

"I can't believe it," Ian spoke hoarsely. He felt like an old man.

The both of them sat in next to each other in the silver Honda CR-V 2011 as Kiku handled the wheel, Mei sitting shotgun, and Lee all stoic in the back cramped amongst all their luggage. His siblings tried to tell him to just sit with the Kabras, but Natalie kept on easing away from him and Ian never stopped giving him strange looks. He simply thought that he was burdening them.

Seoul, South Korea.

The words came out so easily out of Mei's mouth when she told them where their flight from Beijing was going, but it was oh-so-difficult for Ian and Natalie to swallow them. They were shoved down their dry throats and forced to digest the feeling of guilt and nostalgia. The different tastes of the past.

"Why? Why, why..." Ian and Natalie kept muttering throughout the whole trip to the airport.

Mei really felt for them.

"Hey, you two," she told them somewhere about ten minutes into the trip, "there's no need to get all flustered about this. It'll be fine."

Fine? You're not the one to go back to the place where you almost killed two of your cousins and your uncle! Ian wanted to scream in her pretty face, but he couldn't. There was a lot of concern in her voice, and a lot more of it on her face.

It was unexpected, but Mei was starting to become a good friend and ally to Ian and Natalie. They didn't want to let her down after how she could make them happy, so they stopped muttering and were silent until they got to Korea.

In a certain high-standard music company in Seoul, Im Yong Soo was pacing back and forth as he kept receiving an hanging up on his phone.

"If she won't put in on herself, then force it on her!" Another call. "No, pink wouldn't suit him. The only man I know who can pull off a black shirt under a pink cardigan is Cho Kyuhyun, and don't even argue with me!" And another. "Just give him his banana milk. That'll calm him down."

Suddenly, Yong Soo felt someone tapping him on the shoulder and he turned to find out it was his brother Lee, stoic and prudent.

"Ni hao, Yong Soo," Lee greeted him nonchalantly, holding up a hand with horns (as if the boy was rocking out at a concert).

"LEE~!" Yong Soo quickly forgot about the people he was talking to (or should I say yelling at) on the other line, and threw his arms around his sibling. He pulled Lee into a bone-crushing hug and was cuddling him like a big stuffed animal. "Thank God, you're here! My employees are giving me a serious headache again!"

"Tch, he didn't even bother to look at us," Mei said bitterly as she walked the Kabra children over to her brothers.

Kiku trailed behind, a satchel bouncing off his back as he ran after Mei. A professional camera was hanging around his neck, which really wasn't giving his aching back any slack at all.

"Hey, hey, look who it is!" Yong Soo beamed at Ian and Natalie and stretched his arms out wide as a sign of welcome. "How are you two?"

The Kabras gave him skeptical looks. "Do we...know you?"

Just then, Lee bonked Yong Soo hard on the head.

"OW! What was that for?"

"Báichī," Lee swore. "Idiot. Don't you blow our cover. And stop acting like you're happy to see them. They put some serious hurt on your mountains, remember?"

"Ah, yeah." Yong Soo regained his composure, but was still massaging the new bump on his head. "But really, I'm happy to see them."

Lee glared at his brother, then merely shook his head and sighed heavily. "Your strange thoughts completely elude my careful comprehension."

"Come again?"

"Yong Soo!"

Another hit. This time, Mei did it.

"Focus on the kids for a while, will ya?"

"Okay, okay! Geez!"

Yong Soo straightened his tie, brushed himself off, and slicked his dark hair back. He spoke in the most professional way he could, like how he presents himself to the board of the company.

"Ian and Natalie Kabra, I am Im Yong Soo." He briefly bowed to them, then he came back up with a sneaky sneer. "I am the head of this music company, which you will be working in for the next eight days."

[ Author's Note ] Simple recall: Mei = Taiwan, Lee = Hong Kong.

MY GOD. How long has it been? I don't know...four, maybe five months? I'm really sorry if I let the story hang, but here it is! The latest chapter!

Oh, if anyone notices the little cameos of certain KPOP stars I included in this chapter. And to those who can guess the music company where the bunch is at gets a free cookie~!

Now if you excuse me, I have to go and kill myself then make up my mind about it.