It's been almost two years since Chibi has felt well enough to walk outside of Austria's house unaided. Usually, she's hauled up in Italy's old bed, a fever rendering her unable to move, let alone laugh or smile. She could feel the Occupation inside her, roiling in her stomach. It made it hard to eat, so she was always hungry. The warmth refused to stay in her body with it, so she was always cold, even though her forehead could turn water to steam.

Hungary did her best to wash her and bathe her every day, but the young girl still showed no signs of improving.

Someone in Central Rome contacted Carlino by telegram, letting him in on some juicy information about a planned attack on the S.S. Police. The boy, still rash and passionate, wanted in on the plot, but Feliciano, who now liked to go by the name, Luciano, was against it.

He'd been in the middle of loading up a truck, while wearing the dirty civilian clothes he'd bartered for, when his little brother, limbs still too long for his body, loped up to rope him into joining the plot.

A tanned hand came up, swept his chestnut hair back from his stinging eyes, and came back wet from the salt and water streaming from his pores. He groaned disdainfully after a quick sniff revealed just how bad he smelled, before turning his full attention on his brother.

To Seborga, it was like being suddenly placed under a spotlight and being asked to sing a song he didn't know the words to.

"No. You're not joining" The Italian nation firmly said, "and neither am I." Suspicion bloomed once again in his brother's verdant eyes, but Luciano paid it no heed, continuing, "What we do could get us killed, but what you want to do will kill others. Do you understand what that means?" Using a national name around humans was dangerous, but it was the only way Luciano felt that he could convince his brother that he was serious about his refusal.

Seborga blinked, surprised that his former Fascist brother cared at all about taking lives. "I know what it means. I don't like taking lives either but-"

Luciano shooked his head, spraying the ground with his sweat as he did so, "No, you don't get it. For every one German life we take, they will take twenty more. Isn't what we're doing- helping people – enough? Even if everything goes as planned and all of you manage to plant the bomb without being caught, what about bystanders? Can you handle the guilt of taking an innocent life?"

"That won't happen."

"It could."

"It won't!" Panting heavily, Seborga turned his back on Italy, shouting with his disappointment and frustration painting each word, "If you're too scared to help me, you should have just said so."

"Seborga" Luciano softly pleaded. "Don't do this. You can't die, but this could kill you. Just this once, let the humans fight for themselves." Seborga's back moved farther away, so Luciano grabbed his arm, cursing himself and his poor persuasion skills as he did so. "Wait, I'll go." His brother's eyes lit up. "As long as you stay here." Immediately, the boy opened his mouth to protest, but he was cut off as Luciano quickly added, "This camp needs you here. The children look up to you, and the women feel safe when you're around. It's already been a year, but they don't trust me yet. That's why, you need to stay here and keep them safe."

After he finished packing the truck and camouflaging it, Luciano caught the earliest train to Rome.

The seats on the train were about as comfortable as a bed covered in thumbtacks. A sniff of the seat Luciano was currently sitting in, and the seat he would be sitting in for the next four hours, revealed the pungent smell of mold. It settled in his nostrils and wouldn't come out no matter how hard he tried to sneeze.

The AC kicked on while he was still wet with sweat, transforming him into a sweaty, shivery mess for a good duration of the trip, sweet relief only coming to him when he got off the train to find that Rome was just as swelteringly warm as Milan and Bologna.

The station, with its gum covered columns and crowds a people, was certainly an appropriate meeting place. Apparently, the attack was set to be on the German 11th Company, 3rd Battalion, SS Police Regiment Bozen in Via Rasella. The regiment consisted of Italian traitors who switched sides after the armistice. Apparently, they thought switching sides would better protect their lives. The Italian partisans wanted to prove them wrong.

A familiar voice startled Luciano out of his thoughts, "Do you think we should do the signal here, Luciano?" Spinning on his heel, Italy turned around to find the very brother he'd told to stay put standing right behind him, and wearing a rather smug expression. How could he be so sweet to Wy and Sealand, yet so annoying and obstinate to his own brother?

The regiment would march on a prescribed route through the Piazza di Spagna and into the narrow street of Via Rasella. It was at the intersection of the piazza and the narrow street that the resistance planned to ambush the very force that was made for the sole purpose of intimidating them.

Carlino whistled twice, and one by one, many men, their ragged clothes hanging around their skins and bones, came to meet them. They continued walking through the streets as a large group so as not to attract suspicion.

One man with a small mustache began to offhandedly introduce the others to Luciano and his brother. He gestured to the three men beside him. "This is Aldo, Sergio, and Bruno."

"Ciao."

Pointing behind him, the man continued, "And this is Michele, Giorgio, Franco, Domenico, Mario, Pietro, Carlo, Salvatore, Giovanni, and Vincenzo."

The introduced men inclined their heads in Carlino and Luciano's direction.

"And I'm Angelo." Angelo was apparently the de facto leader of the fourteen-man resistance group, well, sixteen man now.

Luciano didn't want Carlino involved in the bombing, but, in human years at least, Carlino was an adult, and he couldn't be a child forever. If he had to grow up, let him at least know hate when someone who loved him was by his side.

They waited, quiet as the grave, for the regiment to come marching down the street in their damn, spotless uniforms, then, Luciano, dressed as a street cleaner, pushed a cart full of 18 kilograms of TNT and TNT filled iron tubing. He lit the fuse, and the world turned to fire.

Twenty-eight SS policemen died that day.

The resistance members blended in seamlessly with the crowd that gathered. It would only be a few hours before they learned a child, a boy, was killed in the explosion. And it would be a whole day before they wished they'd never even been born.

A/N: 335 Italian prisoners were executed in the Ardeatine caves as a reprisal for the bombing in Via Rasella. The German soldiers, many of whom had never killed before, were given bottles of cognac to drink in order to dull their senses. Those who refused to shoot were physically forced to and those who fainted were abruptly carried away so they could be replaced by their comrades. A Resistance priest, Don Pietro Pappagallo, blessed those about to die until he met their fate himself.