In Taako’s defence, he never thought he had to run a perception check whilst packing for an adventure. That was his line and he was sticking to it. Even with an actual baby on the battlefield.

“I’m not a baby,” insisted Angus McDonald, fresh out of Taako’s Pocket Spa and smelling of pumpkin spice, for some reason. Also an actual baby. “I am twelve, sir.”

“Horseshit,” said Taako reflexively. “You were eleven, last year.”

“That’s kind of how years work, sir. They pile up.”

“That’s nice,” said Taako. “Keep your baby head down or you won’t be getting any more pile.”

“I’m not a ba–”

“FUCKING DUCK!” Taako shoved him down, moving into the way of some bad guy’s overpowered arcane blast. He shot something from his Umbrastaff, but it didn’t look good for the world’s favourite flipwizard.

Taako fell. Singed to a crisp. Down to negative hit points.

“SIR!” Angus readied his wand and fired off the heaviest-hitting spell he knew, one of Taako’s specials. “Abraca-fuck you!”

Frankly, it was amazing that it took the bad guy down. Angus didn’t have that many levels nor that many spell slots. The heroes of Story and Song would later claim that they had softened the big bad up for him.

But that wasn’t important to Angus right now. He ran to Taako, frantic, and poured a healing potion into his mouth. “Sir! Are you all right, sir?”

“…I canonically cannot die,” murmured Taako. He opened his mismatched eyes and smiled. “There’s my beautiful magic boy…”

“Sir, you nearly died.”

“Key word - nearly. That’s the important part,” he sat up and ruffled Angus’ hair. “Chillax, okay? Taako’s gonna be fine.”

“What the hell were you doing here, kid?” Magnus demanded. “That was fuckin’ dangerous. Never do that again!”

“Ease off, Magnuts. He saved my life. Technically.”

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 2]

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There were certain advantages to living on the moon. For starters, the regular threats couldn’t get to them. Second, Kalen had no idea where any of his favourite targets were. Third…

“There’s a fucking Fantasy Olive Garden on the MOON!”

None of their patchwork family had seen Taako flip out like this about a restaurant. In fact, they’d never seen him excited about anything related to food since -well- since Glamour Springs.

“Fantasy Olive Garden?” said Merle, who missed the drama in Glamour Springs. “Really?”

“Shoosh,” advised Mak’arune. “This is good.”

“It might be the best,” said Angus.

“I didn’t know you were into Fantasy Italian,” said Magnus.

Taako said, “I’m always a slut for pasta.” He was looking at the Fantasy Olive Garden like someone who was looking at paradise. “And those bread sticks… hmmm…”

The rest of the patchwork family looked at each other with speculation in their eyes. They had a plan.

So, too, did Madam Director, who had added the Fantasy Olive Garden to the moon base five seconds after she heard about Taako’s difficulties with food. It took a special kind of genius to know how to use someone’s weaknesses for the greater good.

…the kind of genius it took one hundred years to create…

[AN: One universe at a time, pls. The combo thing means - combos of words. My bad for not saying that. Three stories for the price of one!

1. Saccharine - LA

[AN: LA stands for Little Accidents. A universe in which a WAY younger La’ming and a WAY nastier Sazed manage to create half-Elf Angus. La’ming and Taako raise him and Nono in a loving -if mobile- home with La’ming pretending to be older and Taako pretending to be hetero and married to La’ming. 90% angst]

The fair was under full enough swing that Taako couldn’t give food away. Which meant that Sizzle it Up! was not doing any shows until after a majority of the other food carts had closed for the evening. On the plus side, plenty of time to spend looking around for ideas. On the minus side, he had to keep the kids entertained as well as himself.

In a fairground, that meant the potential for encountering processed sugar and, in the case of tiny little Angus, someone using cow milk instead of any of the perfectly reasonable alternatives. Taako knew he couldn’t go anywhere near a peanut, and as for the rest of their little family of four… staying away from processed sugar was just smart.

“Oh look. Miller Labs. They’re always good for a giggle. They’re doing a food science show.”

Minmin, pretending to be an adult, also pretended cheer for her babies, Nono and Ango. “Yay,” she said. “Food science.”

The kids were less than enthused. However, the bribe of some spun maple candy and a hot dog in combination with a place to sit seemed to keep them appeased. They would be appeased and sticky in less than ten minutes, Taako guessed. He kept an eye on the kids -all three of them- and watched the show.

This one was a new alchemical wonder. Sugarless sugar, called saccharine, and Miller Labs was so sure of its safety that they were allowing volunteers to come up and taste their saccharine-laced fare.

“I wanna,” piped tiny little Angus.

Taako took the baby boy into his lap. “No you don’t, son-of-mine. You’re a little young to turn into a guinea pig.”

Since he had his hands full with Angus, and Minmin was busy trying to take him back, Nono leaped up, waving a hand in the air and bouncing out of parental reach. “I want to try!”

“…gods damn it…” muttered Taako. Too late, he handed Ango back to his mother and stood, ready to field an errant Elven teen…

…who already had a cake in her mouth.

“Damnit, Nono…” he sighed. “This is not the time or place to be rebellious streaking. Fuck.”

Nono was wincing. “Too sweet,” she complained. “It’s like way, way too sweet… it’s–” no further words came out of her, but there was a torrent of regurgitated cake, dissolved maple sugar, and hotdog.

Taako wasn’t about to sabotage a fellow food show. “Aw, honey,” he said, pitching his voice to carry. “I told you three goes on the Chunderwonder was two too many.” He sampled a cupcake for himself. Eugh. WAY too sweet. “Needs more lemon curd,” he said, and then quickly got outta dodge because -damn- that stuff made him want to hurl, and he’d survived the slop they served at Saint Vingo’s.

He didn’t get as far as that, though, but did find cool relief in a green patch far away from the smells of the fair. Nono fanned him with his wizarding hat and Minmin provided the damn cloth for his brow.

“Are you okay, Daddy?” said tiny little Ango.

“I will be. Eventually,” Taako panted. “Moral of this story, try new foodstuffs with caution. They always test on Humanmen… ooogh…”

The things he did for love.

2. Sunbathing - Monty Pithon

It had been a rougher winter than Varmvale, and therefore the circus that stayed there, was used to. The spring had been weak, for the first month, but now the sun was out with a vengeance and all the cold-blooded species were out, too.

Lulu and Koko, also thawing in the sunshine, found Monty, Mrs Monty, and all the Montlings spread out on a stretch of dark stone and sighing in the sunlight.

“Say, chief, aren’t we late to get on the road?” said Koko with fake enthusiasm.

“Yeah,” said Lulu, who knew that a cold-fogged Monty was a gullible Monty. “We got a circus to put on. Acts to plan. Rubes to bilk…”

“Time to quit sunbathing and start moneymaking,” said Koko, hoping that Monty hadn’t heard that last bit.

Montgomery Pithon was neither impressed nor swayed. “The roads will still be mud, the people know to expect us closer to summer, and I’m not falling for that horseshit again.”

Drat. Koko sighed and settled down on the rock. “Mind if we thaw with you?”

3. Harsh Whisper - Little Domestic

There is but one truth of life on the streets - cold kills. Pass out or try to sleep away from the warmth - any kind of warmth - and you could die. Even in summer’s last hurrah before winter moved in, you could die from the cold.

Lulu had been looking for more clothes to line their little nest-box with. Koko was prone to chills at the best of times, and this coming winter wasn’t looking to be the best. They were lucky they got through the last one with all their fingers and toes intact.

They were not lucky in the fact that the City Watch was clamping down on homeless people camping out in or near the old steam tunnels. The worse news was that more and more places that used to be safe were employing hostile architecture to try and get the homeless to move away - or at least die somewhere out of sight of all the nice, orderly rent-payers in the city.

At least here, they had a shelter from the wind and a steady supply of half-eaten food via the dumpster and the neighbouring blocks of flats. Lulu was moderately sure she could figure out how to pick the lock and get into the basement before the snows came. That way, she and Koko could huddle in a corner near the furnace and stay nice and toasty during the worst of the winter.

That had been the plan, anyway.

Right up until the instant a huge garbage bag fell on Koko from above with the sound of shattering glass and the sickening thud of one baby twin brother hitting the uncaring concrete of the alleyway floor.

Lulu dropped everything -literally- and ran to her brothers side. She could roll the garbage bag off her brother. He was beat up, cut a little, but still breathing. Okay. Okay. That was fine. That was okay.

“Koko?” she managed in a harsh whisper, lest any noise alert anyone prone to narc. She shook him a little. “Koko?”

His hair was straight. His hair was never perfectly straight. There was always a kink or a curl or straight-up frizz. Lulu couldn’t even remember the last time she’d seen her brother’s hair completely limp.

“Koko…” Lulu wrestled his head and half his body into her lap. “Koko.” Nothing. He was completely limp, just like his hair. And there was a wet patch of blood spreading out through those golden locks and -oh gods- “Koko, don’t die! Koko!”

Panic. Utter panic. Koko was going to die because some asshole dumped garbage on him and they were going to take them both away and she’d never know where he was buried if he even got a burial and they couldn’t take him away, they couldn’t! He was her heart! He was her whole heart and the only reason she even bothered waking up in the morning and Koko! Koko please! Wake up, Koko! KOKO!

There was an adult Elf leaning over them, and that was when Lulu went from ordinary hysterical to full-blown scream-crying and fuck whatever authorities wanted to take them away. She’d scream and scream and scream until the whole world vanished. She’d scream her heart and soul away if it got her Koko back.

The Sea Elf kept murmuring and cooing and gently touching them both in an I-won’t-hurt-you-ever way. She had half a bagel that she picked little mouthfuls off of to offer Lulu and things that stopped the blood and a way of showing Lulu that her dumb baby brother was still alive, just unconscious. She had a better, cleaner place where he could recover and they could both get clean and she could cook them a nice, hot meal and wouldn’t everything be better after a hot chocolate?

There came a point in a cascade of terrible events where just about anything was a step up. If it turned out that this Sea Elf was some kind of horrible, they could bail anyway and be no worse off. In the meantime, there would be a clean place and hot food and new clothes and, once Koko was back to wakefulness, a real bath with real soap and real hot water.

All the same, Lulu refused to let go of Koko and flat-out refused to let him out of her sight. All the way up to a tiny, one-bedroom flat where Koko looked even tinier inside a grownups’ bed. All the way through patching him up and getting him clean and making sure he wasn’t in real danger. All the way through a quick mercy run to the local Bodega -don’t go anywhere! Not that Lulu had any such plans.

All the way through dinosaur chicken nuggets and bubble-and-squeak patties all cooked in the microwave with ketchup on the side.

Koko was awake. Koko was okay. That was all that mattered. Koko passed the weird-ass concussion test, which was better. Koko was also amazingly cool about letting a stranger bathe them and clothe them in identical baggy I (heart) NW tee shirts and ludicrous, one-size-fits-nobody pull-cord pants.

“You sure you’re okay, Koko?” Lulu whispered after the stranger called La’ming tucked them in for the night. “You’re not complaining about anything.”

“Bad food is better than no food,” he whispered right back. “This place is okay. It’s out of the weather and she seems to care enough to want to look after us. Worst comes to the worst, we’re outta here when it gets warm.”

Lulu wrapped herself around her brother. “That’s the dumb baby brother I know,” she cooed. “Always planning for the worst.”

“Geez, make me puke,” Koko mockingly scolded. “Then she’ll call the Fantasy CDC on our asses.”

[TAZ Prompts remaining: 0]

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Magnus was old enough to go out on his own, having absorbed the road rules and following them implicitly, all the way to his destination. Usually, his dads let him go to the Bodega, or to the school, but this was a special occasion.

He was walking two blocks to where Mr Mukaara lived. The whole mess with processed sugar in mind, Magnus had come up with a plan. He’d written it down and everything.

He found the apartment block, and found the buzzer to ring. Then it was a wait on tenterhooks to see if Mr Mukaara was going to let him in. The front door unlocked, and Magnus zoomed up the stairs to Mr Mukaara’s flat.

The Dark Elf greeted him with, “Hey, squirt. You all good?”

“My dads said I don’t haveta keep apologising for the thing, but I am sorry and I thought of a way to fix it.” He waved the notebook. “We make the secret society.”

“Okay, what’s so cool about a secret society?”

“Not a secret society, the secret society. We share all the secrets so nobody makes any mistakes ever again.” Magnus flipped some pages, proudly displaying a reasonable copy of the ‘no young Elves’ warning label and Magnus’ writing nearby, Shuger makes Elf branes go funy.

“And I help with the spelling?” Mukaara suggested.

“You help with the secrets,” Magnus insisted. “Like… everyone says that young Elves shouldn’t have sugar, but they never say why. That’s how mistakes happen.”

“Oh. So it’s things everyone knows but nobody talks about,” Mukaara was getting it. He gestured the boy in. “Or things everyone thinks everyone knows, but mistakes happen because they don’t know.”

“Exactly,” Magnus made himself comfortable at Mukaara’s table, and showed another page. This one had a drawing of a burger with yellow dots and a picture of Mr Angus McDonald throwing up. The writing said, The McDonald famly is alerjick to sesame str seeds. “I don’t want any mistakes hurting anyone ever again, so I figured, we get the secrets and make sure everyone knows about them.”

“Everyone important,” said Mukaara. “We probably shouldn’t tell the whole world? The McDonalds do some work that makes them enemies. We don’t want enemies knowing this stuff.”

“That’s an important secret,” said Magnus. “It’s gotta go in the book.”

Mukara found a blank page. “You draw, I’ll write.”

“Deal.”

There’s more than one way to protect the people you love. Making certain they’re all safe has many, many facets.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 0]

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Taako had what one might call a happy ending. He had a home, he had a husband who could make him blush on the regular. He had an apprentice. He had his sister back, which was one hundred percent bonus… He had a school, he had fame, he had it all.

Unfortunately, he also had Susan, busybody neighbour and president of the local homeowner’s association. She was on him about everything. Not forming an Elven gang, conforming to gender norms, not dressing like that, perfectly legal additions to his home, the cats, the boy, the friends, the family…

The last straw was the plants.

“This is a gated community,” said Susan. “We have standards we like to maintain, and one of those standards is a perfect lawn.”

“That’s why I’m converting it all to garden beds,” said Taako. “Lawns are wasteful, and garden beds are perfectly allowable according to the terms of accomodation.” He, too, had absorbed chapter and verse. One had to be a pedantic little rules lawyer to get anything approved by the homeowner’s association. Susan was always the outstanding ‘nay’.

Susan didn’t like many things, but she hated weeds more than anything else. Even beyond Ango stimming from time to time. She was still salty about the hundreds of rows of raised gardens that Taako was creating, and especially the strimmer usage on the dot of eight in the morning. Which always seemed to happen after Susan had had a wine and cake night with her cohort of anti-vax soccer moms.

“Yes. Well. I have noticed a few little invaders in your garden. You are aware, aren’t you, that dandelions are an unsightly weed?”

“I’m growing them on purpose, sweetie. They’re for my anxiety.”

Susan sneered and pursed her lips so hard that her face resembles a pickled cat’s ass. “It is not an approved plant,” she insisted.

“Medicinal herbs may be grown, so long as they’re grown in elevated garden beds,” quoted Taako. “I planted them in rows as prescribed, and I think they’re coming along nicely.” He pointed off towards a particular garden bed where happy little dandelions were growing in neat little rows. “Do you want to see my hemp crops? They’re the most luxurious plants in the county, I’m told. Must be all the horseshit I’m getting out of your mouth.”

Susan did her Offended Gasp. “How dare you! I’m the president of the Homeowner’s Association! I can have you evicted!”

Taako’s smile grew wider. “Not during an election year.” He waved his wand and the garage opened up to reveal Angus McDonald and half the neighbourhood kids running the Taako For Homeowner Association President office. The slogan was, “A kinder, friendlier neighbourhood.”

“Haven’t been campaigning much, this year,” said Taako. “Too busy regulating lawn depths to make sure folk’ll vote for you. You’re gonna have to hustle if you want to beat the influence of my Diet Buster Brownies that I offered to everyone in the community, last week.” He conjured one on a little paper doily for her. “Want to try one?”

“Those,” she said, “are loaded with gluten.”

“You and I both know none of your family have celiacs, you’re just avoiding gluten ‘cause it’s trendy. Meanwhile, you little homeopathic cake shop down the road couldn’t get an order right if it would save their souls. You nearly poisoned my boy and I five times. We had to learn Purify Food and Drink, over here.”

Susan was reduced to sputtering incoherence.

“Also, if you don’t like a lawn full of fairy pom-poms, then fuck you.”

Taako cut her dead and got back to the garage, where he was manufacturing T-shirts for his campaign.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 1]

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The thing about being a Dwarf with 1999 party points is that one quickly becomes The Guy for party consultations. However, if invited himself, the party quickly goes to Off The Hook without warning. For everyone’s safety, it was better that he helped plan the parties, or procure the party supplies, but never actually attend a party.

The Neverwinter PD let him hold an epic rager every New Years’, SWAT on hand to hose everyone down if things got too heavy, but even that could begin to pall after a while. Every now and again, Merle wanted to be in the party, not just helping to create it.

Which was why he was glad he knew La’ming Ton. As The Guy for party shit, he knew where to get hold of a giant fake cake and a lady willing to jump out of it at the drop of a hat. If it wasn’t La’ming, it was one of her coworkers in the Neverwinter Blue Movie scene. Those kids knew how to party. But it wasn’t just that that warmed his cold and shrivelled heart.

It was the fact that Ransei Somner, one of the aforementioned coworkers, was reaching a milestone and wanted a party. She and La’ming wanted Merle at the party.

“The whole studio’s going to be there,” said Ransei. “So we want something a little bit over the top.”

“You want me to jump out of a cake?” Merle joked. “You gotta admit, it has novelty value, there.”

The girls laughed. “Yeah, nah. Nobody jumping out of a cake. We’d rather eat one, y’know.”

“None of the hard drugs,” said La’ming. “I have a P&T the next evening.”

“Oof. Okay. Shit that’ll have you back to normal by noon at the latest. No lingering tells by three PM? Yeah, I know some stuff. Help us all get the party on without being too down the next day.”

“Of course it wouldn’t be a party without you there, Merle,” said Ransei. “You’re practically one of the family.”

“You got all the permits lined up?”

“Fire brigade, ambulance, riot control, and police,” said La’ming. “Of course I told my daughter you were bummed out and she helped with all the red tape. And I mean all the red tape.”

“You’re like a class five hazard or something, dude.”

“Eh, it’s a curse.” Merle shrugged. “You’re really doing this? For me?”

“Of course. We love you.”

*

It made the news, of course it did. News like a porn star rager, held in a building slated for demolition, and having that Merle Highchurch as a guest, gets around. There were definitely a few people there who came just to say they had been there, that they were in the room where it happened.

Things went off the hook when some asshole put on Cuban Pete and Merle lost all of his sense of restrained. The party, he always insisted, had to come out somewhere. This… just accelerated the process.

A hundred partiers were swept up in his aura. A hundred more caught it like a virus. After that, things were a little blurry and someone woke up naked in the park with a duck in one arm and a traffic cone in the other.

All things considered, they were lucky to get out of it with no property damage.

La’ming Ton only regretted the killer headache the next day, and the fact that she had to turn up to the P&T with a giant ice pack on hand.

If there was one bright point to the day after the night before, it was that Lulu and Koko’s teachers also had comically large ice packs on hand and a wary way of watching her and wondering if she knew what they did last night.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 1]

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“I think we can say the small heater is a winner,” said Koko’s new boy, Kravitz. He was apparently Human, but his species didn’t matter any more since The Big Spell. “The little skulls on my nails look amazing.”

Sno knew differently. Kravitz wasn’t Human. Not any more. Kravitz was an undead soldier for the Raven Queen, who used to be out after Koko’s ass. Which was why she was waiting in the stairwell, just out of Koko’s view. Definitely out of Kravitz’s, since he only had eyes for her adopted baby brother.

“Yeah, I can totes feel the difference,” said Koko. He must have been holding Kravtiz’s hand. “Do you really have to work? There’s this new pasta place that opened up a few blocks down. They serve wine to anyone over thirty…”

A small laugh, “Well, I do like wine,” he allowed. “I’ll take a rain check on the pasta place. Call you when I’m safe?”

“I’d love for you to do that,” cooed Koko.

They spent a few more minutes on pointless smalltalk. Obviously smitten. Then Kravitz finally started descending the stairs.

Sno pounced, blocking off his physical egress, even though she’d seen him tear portals in reality in order to get to the Astral Plane. “Kravitz,” she said. “A word?”

“I… kind of have an appointment,” he hedged.

“You put it off to make goo-goo eyes at Koko, you can put it off to answer one question.”

“Fair,” he said. “One question. Then I have to go.”

“What are your intentions with my baby brother?”

His face was an open book with large print and it said, Oh shit, it’s the Shovel Talk… and his dark face went slightly darker around the cheeks. “Um,” he said. “I know, we didn’t get off to the best start, but… there’s… there’s something extraordinary about Koko. I want… I want to make sure he’s okay. I want to see him happy. I want to make sure he’s got the good life if he deserves. I want… I want the best of everything for him.”

Yeah, he had it bad. It’d likely be more than a few years before he admitted it, though. “Even if that doesn’t include you?”

Sigh. “Yeah. Even if that doesn’t include me.” He touched his eye. stared in confusion at the wetness he found there. “Koko can tell me to fuck off any time he likes, but… he keeps asking me back.”

“He likes you. The last dude he liked… wasn’t nice.” A succinct and completely inaccurate summary of Sazed “that pedophilic bastard” Baker.

“I heard,” said Kravitz. “Nobody deserves someone like that happening to them. If I could, I’d… I’d join the queue.”

Sno stepped aside, letting Kravitz pass. “I know I can’t kill you, but if you hurt Koko, I’ll fucking die trying.”

“Ma’am? I’d rather kill myself than hurt Koko.”

Okay. That was a grudging pass.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 2]

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Koko met the newest addition to the apartment as he was descending the stairs. The little kid was wide eyes under a mop of dark brown hair. “Wooooowww… How’d you get your nails to do that?”

What was not to love about a little kid who introduced himself like that? Koko was ten, this kid was seven. He was way so much more mature than this kid. “It’s nail polish, kiddo. You like?”

“Yeah! They’re so pretty. Can you do that to anyone? Can you do that to me?”

How could he possibly refuse that enthusiasm. “Sure thing, holmes. What colour do you like?”

“There’s more than one?” The little dude was gobsmacked. “How many can I have?”

“Sweetie, you can have the whole rainbow and then some,” he patted Lulu on the shoulder. “You go on and get the stuff. I got me a manicure appointment.”

“I’ll make sure to forget the garlic,” sniped Lulu.

Koko couldn’t flick her a rude gesture, not with a baby present. Therefore, he sang down, “I’ll just leave the chilli sauce out when I cook…”

That argument dismissed, Koko lead the kid up to his flat. “So you’re with the Burnsides’, right? Mag… Maggie…”

“Magnus,” said Magnus. “I’m seven.”

Cute. Koko got into his own supply of polish and set up on the stairs so the kids’ folks could find him. The last thing he needed was Mom getting into trouble because Koko was futzing about with glamour.

Magnus opted for the entire rainbow, followed by silver, rainbow confetti, and holographic shimmer for the last three of his ten. It all took a while and Magnus was over the moon about it. Johaan Burnsides found them just as Koko was finishing up Magnus’ final pinkie.

“Oh, so here’s where you went.”

“Hey, Mr Burnsides. Your kid liked my nails, so…”

Magnus held up his hands. “I’m a rainbow!”

“Oh, that’s adorable. You wanna maybe show me how to do all that?” Johaan asked. “I get the feeling we’re gonna be doing this a lot.”

Koko smiled. “Well, I’m gonna need to replace the supplies, so… you know… a little pocket money wouldn’t hurt…”

“Twenty bucks and I throw in a gig for your mom’s birthday.”

“Sold!”

Mom found him, hours later, giving careful instructions to the Burnsides, including hints and tips, about how to do nails. Magnus studiously colouring Avi’s nails NWPD Blue, whilst Koko was doing a more complicated finish for Johaan’s digits.

“Prettying up the world?” she said.

“One finger at a time, mom.” Koko had to grin. “What can I say? I’m a genius.”

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 0]

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Canon

There was an impossibly small boy writing in a notebook. The pencil seemed to be moving too fast for a child of his apparent age. Officer Snocoun Ton boggled at the boy. He was smaller than some dolls she had seen for sale in the fancier parts of Rockport.

He looked up from his work, noticed her, and waved. “Hello, ma’am. Are you the officer sent by the Rockport Militia?”

Sarcasm bubbled out of her. “No, I’m a serial child molester and now you’ve told me everything I need to know to abduct you.”

His smile was relentless. “That’s a pretty good goof, ma’am, but that uniform is too old to be a rented costume, and too well-kept for that as well…” he spent the next twenty minutes detailing every last tell that showed how she really was a Rockport officer and not -for example- someone attempting to impersonate one.

“Okay. I get it. You’re a genius. Why can a literal child help the Rockport Militia?”

“I have a fascination with crime, puzzles, and mysteries, ma’am. I’ve run out of the normal ones, so I’ve taken to reading the Watch Blotters and… well… I think I have something that might help find and apprehend the serial murderer known as Cheerful Charlie.”

Sno was tempted enough to peer at the notebook over this child’s shoulder, and found weird little sigils within. “That’s… scribble,” she said.

“It looks like that to the untrained eye, ma’am, but this is a form of code. I’m only three, so writing is a little complicated, so I used this code to write things faster. It’s a variant of Elscrypt, and each of these symbols is a whole word. I cut my time down even further by cutting out unnecessary bulk words.”

“Uhuh,” she said, doubting this in its entirety. It wouldn’t be above the Chief to send her out after a crank witness. “And what does this Elscrypt tell you about Cheerful Charle?”

“Well, ma’am, he only seems to have a random attack pattern because he strikes in the streets. I’ve plotted all the confirmed murders on a map and they all happen between two districts. The Crumbledowns, and the Meat-packing factories.” He turned the pages towards a map with a number of red ink dots.

Sno felt a chill. Seeing it like that… It looked really obvious.

“I posit, ma’am, that Cheerful Charlie strikes on their way to and from their place of employ. I’ve outlined the likely travel routes in green.”

Holy shit.

“And you want how much for this?”

“Oh, I don’t want money,” he said. “I just want to help the constabulary apprehend this offender.”

Glass Canon

It didn’t take a genius to see that Snocoun Ton, misplaced Elf from a different dimension, was not a happy camper on the moon. The Sno he was used to ordinarily had her pointed ears drooping downwards, but this Sno had hers almost all the way down and more often back than not.

She was separated from her family, from her home, from people she loved and from people who loved her. She was worried about everyone she knew, and surrounded by bizarre doppelgangers that just threw everything into sharper and deeper contrast.

There was little he could do to be concrete help. What she needed was something a little boy could not provide - a way home. What he could provide was company - however strange it was to her. Or some form of… bonding activity.

Sno - his Sno - took more than a little time to warm up to anyone. She seemed to treat time here on the moon as an unnecessary distraction. What he needed to do was help her find it necessary.

Sno was always devoted to her work.

So. He had some plans. Bonding over Steamwork Fiction - or as she called it, Steampunk - or bonding over solving a mystery. He could help with either, so he prepared both.

He found a couple of volumes of Fantasy Jules Verne, and a file of arcane activity in recent months. Clutching both of these prizes, he took them to where Sno was sunning herself in the quad. She looked close to tears.

“May I intrude, ma’am?”

She opened her eyes, stared at him, and shrugged. “I know you know me as… a different kind of Angus, but… I know a different kind of you. I thought… maybe these could help… if not help you feel better, then at least help distract you from the stuff that’s making you sad.”

She upgraded from depressed to melancholic. It was a slim sort of progress, but at least it was progress.

Three Gremlins

Angus was pretty darn good at hiding. It came from being small. He was almost due to turn seven, which meant that Nono was seven and a half. She shot up like any Beach Elf in an environment of love and care. Therefore, she looked to be in her early teens at a stretch, and late tweens for sure.

It was bad enough that she couldn’t act her age, what made it worse was that she had decided to use Taako’s show to search for her birth mother. It had been months, and there wasn’t any sign of her.

This was definitely a case he could take on. Therefore, between shows, he got Nono to tell him everything she knew about her mother. Most of it was hearsay from her grandparents, who disapproved of her, but there had to be some truths in the vile rumours they were wont to believe.

He had a few pieces of information he could attempt to confirm. One: Minmin Ton was seventy-eight years of age. If she were living and working with Humanmen, then she could easily be pretending to be one hundred and one. Taako had said, more than once, that he had pulled a similar ruse when he was underage. Some were even fooled.

Minmin Ton had a sketchy reputation ever since Nono’s conception was confirmed. The rumours were so varied and so disgusting that Angus discounted them all.

Interestingly, it was Taako’s drunken horror stories that were most informative. Whilst he couldn’t give the exact address where Minmin might live, as most of them were gentrified by now, he could give the shape of the area where she might be. In Rockport, they were called the Crumbledowns, in Goldcliff, they were called the Shanties. In one distant city, its name forgotten by Taako, they were called the Shades. Here in Neverwinter, they were called the Shambles.

Every town had them. They were the areas where the flotsam of the city tended to wash up. Because the rents were cheap. Because the landlords didn’t ask questions. Because the entire place was full of folk who were scraping to get by. Because bigger criminals called the lesser criminals who lived there ‘scum’ and ‘villains’. Because birds of a feather flocked together. Because the miserable loved company.

Places like that didn’t have citizens. They had denizens. They grew gangs like reefs grew moray eels, sharks, and octopi. It was a dangerous place. Even the little fish had sharp, sharp teeth.

Angus didn’t dress fancy to go in there. Neither did Nono. They knew damn well that, in a place like that, nobody would pay any attention at all to two more grubby kids in their braies and tunics, so that was what they wore.

Roaming through the Shambles, they found her. Walking the streets in a skirt made out of something gauzy and starfish pasties on her breasts. She had a distinctive chain around her waist and an equally distinctive amulet around her neck. Earning money with the only thing she could sell. Working a job that she clearly hated.

She recognised Nono in an instant. Looked to Angus in brief horror, and then to his ears in relief.

She said, “What happened to Gamgam and Peepums?”

Nono said, “They were assholes,  so I ran off. I’m in a better home, now.”

“Here?”

“No… With a travelling show. The dude’s nice.” Considering Taako’s stories, Nono knew what was up with Minmin’s work. “Come on and at least meet him. He might be able to help.”

Minmin shrugged. “Eh. I can’t make rent today anyhow.” She threw on a cloak she had hidden in a junk pile. “I’ll tell my story and you can tell yours.”

“Deal,” said Nono.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 2]

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