Chapter Text
Kiku was slowly going through the corridor. There was still a lot of time till the meeting actually began, but he always preferred to be earlier. Still, he knew that Ludwig and probably some more were already in the meeting room. The meeting was in a smaller city in China, that’s why he also expected Yao to also be here, even though he often liked to come last minute.
Kiku’s slow pace could be also explained with the fact that he had a feeling that Feliciano would be here soon. He didn’t want his friend to get lost in the building so he hoped that the Italian would notice him and — as he often liked to do — follow him.
Soon enough, he could hear frantic Italian behind him, which means that Feliciano was here, but this time along with his brother Lovino. They were talking about something… quite interesting, as Kiku could figure from the tone and hands gestures. The moment the Italian brothers noticed the Japanese, they quickly ran over to him. Kiku noticed that they both looked kinda nervous, and as long as nervous Feliciano wasn’t such a new sight, nervous Lovino definitely was.
“Japan! Ve, Japan! Buonogiorno, you need to see this!”
The younger brother was speaking quite fast and with a very strong accent, but Kiku still somehow managed to understand him. Something clearly happened, and it definitely was serious. Lovino wouldn’t react like that if it was some kind of joke… unless Arthur was involved, which Kiku actually doubted now. As serious as the situation was, he needed to give one warning.
“Feliciano-kun, please remember that even though we’re having a world meeting here, there is still staff that doesn’t need to know about our status. Please refer to me using my name.”
Even though the speech was barely above whisper, both brothers seemed to hear it perfectly, as they both were now quickly nodding.
“Si, si! But now Ja– Kiku, you need to come with us and see this!”
Before any questions could be asked, Feliciano quickly took Kiku’s hand, to which he slightly flinched, and stormed in a different direction than any main room. The sprinting stopped when they were in front of a small room that not many nations had a chance to see inside.
“Storage? Something happened in storage? Could you please tell me what I’m gonna see when I open this door?”
Feliciano obviously wanted to answer, but it seemed like he just couldn’t find the right words. As Kiku tried to patiently wait for his fellow to explain the situation, Lovino was getting slightly irritated with his speaking problem.
“Oh for Dio’s sake Feliciano! Why can't you just simply say that!?"
"V-ve! You don't need to scream at me!"
Feliciano kept whining while Lovino just sighed. Kiku sent them a questioning look, as he still was worried — and now also curious — of what was in the storage. Lovino upon noticing it, sighed one more time and put his hand on Feliciano's mouth, so he would be quiet.
"So? What is there?"
"This won't be the most pleasant answer. Kiku, there are some people there that we don't know."
"What?"
"What?"
All three nations looked in the direction of the fourth voice. There he stood, Arthur himself. Luckily (or unfortunately?) he was alone. He slowly came closer to the group and decided to stand next to Kiku.
"What is going on here? The meeting's about to start."
"Oh! Iggy, Artie! Ve, you know this magic stuff, don't you? Can you figure out where those people came from?"
"Wha– peop– did you just call me both 'Iggy' and 'Artie' in the same sentence!? Bloody hell, you spend way too much time with Alfred."
"This isn't goddamn time for this Arthur! Just fucking help us getting rid of them or whatever!"
Kiku calmly watched the small argument and he decided to finally open the door. It wasn't locked or anything, so it opened smoothly. While the argument was still going on in the background, Kiku found himself right in front of five people who looked like they were either sleeping or in a coma… or they were just unconscious.
Soon, the arguers peeked inside. There were two girls and three boys. Though no one seemed to recognize them anyhow. Four of them were wearing almost the same school uniform with little differences, the fifth one was wearing casual clothes, like any other day.
Despite everything, Kiku was the first to actually go inside the room and inspect unknown guests. He carefully crouched next to them and for a while just simply observed. Arthur and Italian brothers were now doing the same, just from the standing position and bigger distance, though the Englishman was definitely closer.
Suddenly, one of the strangers — one of the girls — woke up, and she immediately went into a battle stance. It looked like she was also searching for something on her belt, but it wasn't there, as the nations figured out.
"W-where am I? Who are you!?"
She obviously wanted to stay as calm as she could, which she clearly couldn't. When Kiku noticed confused stares of Arthur, Lovino and — slightly less confused — Feliciano, he understood.
She was speaking Japanese. They couldn't understand her.
Though it was understandable, Kiku noticed that it sounded kinda different from his modern language. There was a medium English accent and some words that he only instinctively understood.
It still only added questions, rather than answering them. Why was she and her friends in China? At the world summit place?
It seemed that right now, only Kiku could respond to her in any way. Maybe her Japanese was kinda different but he still would at least try to understand her. The group behind him didn't know any Japanese (except for Feliciano, but still not enough to communicate).
"You're at… world summit place. I'm Kiku Honda. What's your name, miss?"
"Huh? What Regios is this…? I'm… Nina Antalk."
"Hm? Regios? You're in China right now. Are these your friends?"
Kiku was answering as calmly as he could. It looked like Nina could actually panic at any moment and she clearly didn't know why she was here. If she didn't realize that her friends were here with her earlier, she definitely did now.
The girl tried to somehow wake up her comrades, and Kiku decided not to say anything to her for now. Arthur walked up to him and didn't even try to hide his confused face.
"So? What did you two talk about?"
Arthur asked, crossing his arms. He wasn't irritated or anything like that, just confused. It was the same with Feliciano and Lovino, though the second one looked kinda angry… like always anyways.
"She doesn't know where she is, I suppose the rest of them don't either. Perhaps they ended here by accident?"
"How do you just end up in an international, guarded building 'by accident'!?"
This time it was Lovino speaking. Even though he is kinda loud now, he's still quieter than usual. He was busy calming down his brother after all, or at least trying to. But Feliciano needed to add something himself,
“Even if they’re here by accident and they shouldn’t be here, we should still help them! Hm, I know! I can give them some pasta if they’re hungry!”
“As much as I would like to oppose that idea, I think food would be good now. We honestly don’t know how long they have been there. A drink would be nice too. Kiku, you could ask them… well not now when they’re distressed, but later, if they want something like that or if they’ll go somewhere else."
Everyone surprisingly agreed with Arthur, so they just decided to wait for their 'guests' to settle things down and acknowledge their surroundings.
On the other hand, Nina finally managed to wake everyone up and I would be lying if I said that they weren't confused. Meanwhile, Harley looked almost as if he had a heart attack. His friends, whom he saw just literally die , were here with him, in one piece and pretty alive.
He felt tears prick into his eyes, but he hardly stopped himself from crying.Nina, Layfon, Felli and Sharnid most likely were still confused and didn’t notice him yet. But Harley felt probably even more confused . They were somewhere and no one seemed to recognize this place. Just a moment ago he was in the one and only Aurora and saw his fellas die by contaminoids.
Harley wanted to just hug his friends now. Oh, how he wanted to just hug them. Honestly anyone would do. He wanted but… there were more important matters at hand. Like figuring out where they were, why and how .
Then realization hit him.
His wish.
He had wished to go back to times when everything was normal.
Oh, oh god.
How was he supposed to just tell them ‘Hey, I kinda wished for us to go back in time but I have no idea where we are or when we are.’ Yeah, that’s idiotic as hell, even Sharnid wouldn’t do that. Despite that, he decided to join his group to at least hear their thoughts. Maybe they already figured something out? Harley rubbed his eyes and took some steps closer to the team and heard Nina already speaking.
"Alright, so we're somewhere called 'China', I guess. And there are some people outside this room and they speak weirdly, or at least one of them does. To be honest, the rest of them seemed like they didn't even understand me.”
Well that didn’t explain much.
Wait, didn’t he wish to go back in time to times when Regios weren’t necessary? What is ‘China’? Wait another second, what people outside!?
“Huh? What people? Did they say something else?”
“I have no idea who they are. Don’t get me wrong but they are a little… weird. Weird speech, clothes, behavior. This one with black hair, his name is Kiku I think, makes me feel like a goddamn child ! He looks to be in his 20s but behaves as if he would be in his damn 60s !”
"Hey Nina, there's no need to be furious about this! They surely know this place better than us anyways, maybe they know how we could get home?"
Sharnid tried his best to calm Nina down. Meanwhile, Layfon noticed that Felli was pretty quiet, which she always is but– ah, she was using her Nen'i. And that only meant she was either looking for something helpful, someone, or anything that could somehow help them. Nina looked angry, that’s kinda understandable. Sharnid was joking around trying to calm everyone down, well knowing this made their leader even more angry. And Harley looked… distressed for some reason.
"Hey, Harley, everything's alright?"
"O-oh Layfon, yes! I'm just wondering why, uh… you all don't have your DITEs..."
Layfon was clearly surprised when he noticed that it's true, and Harley was partly really wondering about it. Before the brunette could ask anyone about it, they heard a knocking on the door.
"I see you are all awake. We were thinking if you would want anything to eat maybe? Then we could think together how to get you back home."
It was apparently Kiku, who said that. They thought for a moment and since they didn't really have any other choice, they decided to go with him. They left the room and were now following Kiku and another person with brown hair and in blue clothes, and two more people behind them, one with blond hair and other also with brown. This whole situation couldn't get any worse…