Deadly Secrets

15.

America's POV:

Once I had managed to recover from my laughing fit, I turned to Louisiana, who looked to be in the process of making dinner and getting things to the dining room table.

"Hey, Lou, how far would you say you guys are from having dinner ready?" I asked her.

"Well I would be farther along, but Ten forgot to tell us you were on your way back until you were almost halfway here. I'd say it'll be a half hour or more."

"That's actually perfect," I told her, "we need time for us to get cleaned up. I wasn't expecting that storm to hit so fast."

"We were getting kinda worried about you guys," New Hampshire chimed in, "Iowa came into the living room a few minutes before the storm hit and told us it'd be a big one, didn't think it'd be this big 'til it actually hit."

"Yeah," I said, I had been wondering if Iowa had been able to sense the storm, "alright well, we all need to get cleaned up sooo, lets do this, Provinces, some of the states will show you to the showers attached to their rooms so that the adults can shower in the guest room showers." There were no complaints and a few of my children went to lead their cousins to their bathrooms while I led the rest of our family to the guest bathrooms on the fourth floor, leaving Dixie to take the first shower in our shared bathroom. "You guys will have to take turns, so don't take too long, okay?" There were nods and quiet"okay"'s in response as they walked off to get ready. Scotty and Ireland patted me on the back as they walked past me while my brothers gave me hugs, I tried not to tense up too much but I think Canada noticed, he gave me a worried smile as he then walked by. My father ignored me completely, though I'm not surprised, I just walked back down to the first floor to clean up the mud and water mess that we had no doubt tracked inside.

I spent somewhere between five to ten minutes wiping up all the mud and water off of the tile kitchen floor while some of my children worked in the kitchen making enough food for 78 people. Once I finished, I decided that my kids could handle dinner on their own just fine and opted to call NATO, my son, well, my adopted son, I raised him and he calls me mom sometimes so that's good enough for me, even if some of the other countries seem to like to dispute it even though it isn't really any of their business.

I walked up to my room, took my phone out of my inside jacket pocket, and pressed his contact and waited for him to pick up the phone it buzzed for a while, I started to think that he might not pick up but after the fifth buzz his voice came over the phone.

"Hey mom," His voice sounds off, like something is bothering him.

"Hey, sweetie, is something wrong? You sound like something is bothering you."

"Uh, well when I was walking home from this place that I was giving a lecture at I nearly got jumped by a group of Phobos members."

"Nearly?"

"Yeah, I remembered what Russia said about his... encounter with them, and I saw them coming before they could get too close."

"So you're not hurt?"

"No, I'm fine, but we, the other organizations and I, uh, are trying to arrange to move to other groups because I'm not sure if I was followed back to our apartment or not, these guys could look like regular civilians so it's hard to tell. ASEAN has already arranged to fly to meet Indonesia and his group, EU is going to Italy, and UN is on the phone with Belgium."

"Have you arranged to join another group yet?"

"Uh, well, no. I have been looking through the assignment papers that have who went where but most of the groups are kinda big and we shouldn't have too many people in a group. I'm still looking but I might end up just holing up somewhere in Eastern Europe or someplace like that. "