Tumbl'd 3: Forever TAZ - Chapter 7 - InterNutter - The Adventure Zone (Podcast) [Archive of Our Own]
In this episode: The origin of bb Magnus.
[AN: This happens before the toothbrush incident]
“So-o-o-o… you got a type or what?”
They were on stake-out, with little to talk about any more, so of course the conversation turned to matters of the heart. Avi was very happy with Johaan and wanted to see that kind of happiness spreading around.
“Stop trying to set me up, Burnsides…” Sno peeked through the binoculars. No movement from the guy they were staking out. He was having a quiet night in. Apparently.
“Hey, if anyone deserves some happiness with a special someone, it’s you, buddy.” He added a mock punch. “You’ve been through more than your fair share of shit. You deserve happiness. You deserve love.”
“I can find it on my own. Thanks.”
“At least tell me about your dream date.”
Sno could see him every time she blinked. “Tall. Dark. Nerdy. He’s got this weird laugh and a sorta… skewiff smile. Kind’a awkward, but… honest awkward. The nice guy that doesn’t advertise, you know?”
“Thirty guys at the precinct just lost a bet that you’re a lesbian,” said Avi. “Nerdy types, huh?”
“Yeah. I like me a man with an astonishing grasp of Klingon.”
Avi laughed at that, and the discussion devolved into some areas of nerditry that Avi - a born Jock - was familiar with. But that was the moment that lead, inexorably, inevitably, to one of the most excruciating evenings of Snocoun Ton’s life.
Avi had set her up with a nerd from Miller Labs, a favour he had managed to wrangle after solving some case involving volatile chemicals, smugglers, and a rare species of parrot. Sno had gone along because she thought her partner had somehow found out about a completely different nerd who also worked for Miller Labs.
For a fleeting moment, Sno daydreamed about not having to come clean because the other man in her life had already figured things out for her.
Then Mukaara bowed Lucas fucking Miller into the restaurant seat opposite her and took a seat at a group table with a bunch of other executive assistants. He made sure he had a good view, the rat bastard.
“Wow,” said Sno, glaring at Avi. He was gurning and making positive hand signals through the window like the over-eager puppy he had to have been reincarnated from. “When he said he had someone high up in Miller Labs, I didn’t expect anyone this high up.”
Mukaara, over at the assistants’ table, was watching her over his menu with a devilish gleam in his sky-blue eyes.
“I… thought I’d be getting someone a little further down the totem pole. Like an assistant…”
Lucas Miller spat a little as he talked. “Yes, well. I understand your shock and awe. It’s rare that I meet a lady who’s of the right calibre to date someone like me. I mean. You can’t get much higher in the Miller Labs internal structure without going to my Mom and -haha- that’s my job. Haha.”
“Haha,” echoed Sno, deadpan.
In the window behind Miller, Avi was using his fingers as antennae and attempting a Vulcan salute. He rolled ones for his skill check on the latter. He blatantly mouthed, Talk nerdy nerd stuff.
“But seriously,” said Miller, “I’m a nice guy and -to be humble- one of the top ten geniuses of our time. I’m more than a little particular about the kind of girl that gets my attention.”
Oh shit. Red flag. Abort! Abort! Sno looked to the window for Avi, and only saw the tail end of his scarf as one of the restaurant staff shooed him away from the exterior. Mukaara was talking to a waiter and couldn’t get any of her covert signals.
And worse, she’d paid in advance for the table. She’d better eat here or the deposit would have been spent for nothing.
“What kind of girl might that be?” she cooed, playing nice. Maybe if she played all her cards wrong, she could escape this travesty and never have to contact Miller again.
Miller started waxing lyrical about the women he’d had crushes on since childhood. All of them, Sno noted, owed their existence to cell animation. The few she recognised were all the same type - big-busted, addle-brained, cutesey-wutesy doormats.
Gods, please get me out of here…
*
To think, Mukaara pondered, he had been worried that Sno might start falling for his boss. He should never have been so concerned.
Lucas Miller had a type, and it was generally found printed on a cover for a body pillow. Despite that, he expected any flesh and blood woman to pass a trivia test in order to qualify for his attention.
So far, Sno was passing. When she was allowed to get a word in edgewise.
Mukaara watched the disaster unfold. Lucas had already completely failed to notice Sno’s severe lack of interest in him since three seconds in. Sno’s face was a rictus when she wasn’t desperately mouthing, Help me! in Mukaara’s direction.
Entrees had been survived. The main course arrived with -oh gods- Lucas’ opinion on Elves.
“It’s all well and good saying that terrible things happened in living memory,” he was lecturing, “but Elves live for a million years or more. You guys should take a joke or two.”
“Seven hundred and fifty,” corrected Sno. “Eight hundred if they manage clean living.”
Lucas didn’t appear to hear her. “So what if the Xenophobia wars were in living memory? That could mean a thousand years ago! They ended four hundred years ago.”
“They ended forty years ago,” corrected Sno. “They started four hundred years ago.”
“They need to let it go.”
“Millions died. Elf kind were almost wiped out.”
“Yes, yes, yes… But it happened so long ago. The damage is repaired. The population is back to normal. Almost beyond normal. There’s no more need to keep crying about it.”
Mukaara flinched. Nope. She wasn’t going to hit him, but it was a close thing.
“Trouble?” said Rinnu.
“Almost. If he keeps talking about the Xenowars, there’s going to be.”
“Yeah?”
“Her mother was one of the last casualties of the Xenowars…”
Winces, hisses, and whistling backwards. Something expensive was doomed to happen.
“What about your opinion on Steampunk?” said Sno rather desperately. A safe way to move things to something Lucas loved to do - deliver his opinion.
Sno’s expression ranged from relief through boredom, to being ten thousand percent done with everything that came out of Lucas’ mouth.
On the plus side, that particular classification would not include -say- his teeth.
On the minus side… poor Sno was suffering for a fancy dinner.
He’d have to make it up for her at a later date. Perhaps a marathon session of bad food and worse television and a good, solid session of Mock That Movie.
[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 6]
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Lucretia had just turned five when the Event happened. She had a few words that she would use when there were no alternatives, but this was not one of them.
“Mom!”
The twins came running, so did Gramma La’ming, who Lucretia secretly called ‘Gramming’ in her occasional playful moments. Not that she said that out loud. She rarely said anything out loud.
Her extended, adopted family were careful to circle around so she could see who was coming even when all her attention was transfixed on the TV, and the news it contained.
Her adopted mother was on the TV. Slowly approaching some house in suburbia and she had her vest on and her hands empty. Lucretia could read the crawler. She could read all of it.
Hostage situation in lower east end, was the main one. There were also words that zipped by like gunman, and drug bust gone wrong, and possible fatalities. The twins knew what was up.
“You need a hug?” offered Koko.
“You need a Sammich?” said Lulu. It was family shorthand for both twins holding her like comforting brackets.
“Sammich,” she nodded. She didn’t close her eyes as the twins squeezed in, keeping her eyes on the screen for any hint of what her mom was doing. Gramming patted her lightly on the head as if to say, I will be right back with what you need.
In a moment, she heard the dryer going and smelled the special hot chocolate. Therefore, in just a few minutes, there would be warm beverages in all hands and a warm blanket tucked around all three of them.
“Aunt Sno knows her suff,” said Lulu. “She’s gonna be okay.”
The words zipping across the screen said, Armed gunman allegedly high on Bad Dreams, a dangerous new drug on the streets of Neverwinter. Lucretia couldn’t listen to any of the words that the people were saying, no matter how clear their speech nor piercing their voices. Her attention was fixed firmly on the scrolling words and the tiny blue figure in uniform, whenever she turned up in the shaking camera’s view.
She was glas of the hot chocolate and the warmth of the blanket when her mom stepped inside the building.
“She’s got this,” repeated Koko between slurping at marshmallows. “She’s got this sewn up…”
“It’s gonna be okay. It’s gonna all be–”
The popping noise sounded clearly above the on-scene commentator. The camera view shattered into a flurry of blurs and incomprehensible movement. The twins had hands over her eyes and over her ears, but it was too late.
Shots had been fired.
Every cop’s kid knew what shots fired could mean.
Lucretia clawed at the twins’ hands, screaming, “No, no, no,” over and over. She was screaming. The twins were screaming. Gramming was screaming. Even Aunt Mak’arune was screaming. They were all so loud that the Pithons came down from upstairs, one of the Montlings in their arms, to see what the ruckus was.
They let Lucretia hold the baby instead of the hot chocolate. Something about a small and helpless being in her arms provided an oasis in a sea of emotions. The TV was showing the house, at an even worse distance than previously. The words, Shots fired! crawled across the screen. Endlessly.
Some more people in uniform rushed in. There was no sign of anyone for too long. Koko’s hair had frizzed right up out of stress and Lulu’s wasn’t far behind. Lucretia knew, without a doubt, that if it wasn’t for the little Montling in her arms, she would be a total wreck.
Then, like a miracle, a blue figure in uniform walked out. There was a human-sized bag on a stretcher, and some other people with blankets around them.
Lucretia paid all her attention to the blue figure with blue hair. “Mommy… mom…”
“She’s okay,” Lulu cheered. “She’s okay, she’s all right!”
Someone - probably Uncle Avi - leaped on her from amongst the wall of uniforms keeping the public at bay, landing in a hug.
Mom gave him a noogie and shoved him away in the way that she always did for Uncle Avi.
Then they cut away to a Porky Pig cartoon.
It was over. Mom was okay.
When Mom came home, she was mobbed by family. Lucretia wrapped herself around her legs, and the twins only added to that burden. Gramming and Aunty Mak’arune all but tackled her in the doorway. There were a lot of tears.
The news, much cut down to a five-minute segment about drug violence in Neverwinter, had everything boiled down to the essentials. It held no horrors for Lucretia. Not any more.
Mom held her on her lap, that night, feeding Lucretia because she wouldn’t let go. Just like it had been for the first couple of days in Mom’s care.
Mom kept holding her, kept kissing her forehead, kept purring, and kept saying, “It’s going to be okay. The Chief has seen to it that I shouldn’t be in that much trouble any more. We’re going to be okay.”
Tomorrow, she might believe it.
Two days after that, she learned that there had been a kid at the scene. A tiny scrap of a boy who had also run afoul of the Foster system and had been found in a literal doghouse after all the news cameras lost interest.
His name was Magnus, and Mom was pulling some strings to have him fostered with Uncles Avi and Johaan.
[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 8]
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Still Tumbl'd, Still TAZ - Chapter 84 - InterNutter - The Adventure Zone (Podcast) [Archive of Our Own]
In this chapter, the baby twins meet little lucretia.
They were having a parents’ day in the park. Merle had custody of his kids for the weekend and La’ming… La’ming was learning to be a decent parent by studying others.
Most of the others here at the play park were nannies who didn’t speak the best of Common and used playtime as an excuse to gossip.
Merle… Merle wasn’t much better, but at least he knew something about parenting. Something - even a bad something - was better than nothing. FOr example - Merle sunbathed while Mookie threw himself around the climbing gym like a dervish and Mavis took turns on the swings or the monkeybars. His parenting involved occasional interjections involving the word "don’t”.
“Don’t wrassle kids below your weight class, Mookie…”
La’ming, using his example, kept an eye on the twins and was ready to bolt straight for them if there was the slightest hint of trouble. She also had all the approved snack foods so they’d have plenty to eat.
Food security was still a big thing for them.
Right now, though, the twins were building a sandcastle with one of the smaller, younger children. One would invariably defend the pile of sand from Mookie and other kids who liked to stomp on sandcastles.
That was when she’d need to step in and mediate. Get all involved parties to talk it out instead of fighting it out. Assuming they didn’t talk it out without prompting.
“First kids always make for an anxious parent,” said Merle, apparently from his coma. “You’re always worried about being a failure. Trust me. Kids aren’t that delicate.”
Yes they are, she thought. “I abandoned my first kid with my parents when I was Seventy-two. These are the first kids I’ve actively tried looking after. That I haven’t given up on.”
“Seventy-two? Isn’t that like… way too young to have a kid?”
“Yeah. Like a Humanman sixteen or something.”
“No blame on that one, then,” said Merle.
“Tell that to my daughter. My parents are assholes.”
There was an extended silence between the two of them. Not absolute silence, since they were seated by a playground, but they were quiet. The kids continued shrieking and yelling at each other as they expended all their energies in assorted games.
“Sorry about that,” said Merle. “I assumed…”
“Many do. I don’t talk about it a lot.”
“She doing okay, now?”
“Yeah. We’re almost on speaking terms.” She twitched as Lulu fell off a swing, but relaxed as she rolled and recovered her feet. She’d intended to do that, the little daredevil. “I know how bad it can get. What I need is… how to not get there. You know?”
He chuckled. “Yeah. I know that one. Their mom and I never got along, and… The last straw was Mookie crying because we were whispering at each other. Can’t wake the baby, y’know? So we fought in whispers so the kids…” he sighed. “Didn’t work. So after we got him settled again, I asked, Would you be happier if I left? And she said ‘yes’ and we tried to handle the divorce like grown-ass people. I send her what I can spare and I live in this little room in the loft to save money and… The kids are the most important part. You do what’s best for them.”
At Seventy-two, that had been leaving her baby with the only people she could rely upon to care for her. Now that she was two hundred and thirty… it meant doing everything in her power to make sure something like that never happened again.
“I can make sure they have what they need,” she said. “I got that covered.”
“See? You’re already doing better than like half of the other assholes out there.”
“I already love them to bits.”
“Now you’re up to seventy percent,” said Merle. “Most parents I get in the Bodega? They treat kids like a chore. Something they gotta do and something they gotta put up with like they’re obligated. Not a lot of love.”
Mookie took a tumble off the high bars, landing sort-of okay, but scraping his leg on something under the sand. He stood up and blood started snaking down his leg.
“Duty calls.” Merle got up and cheered Mookie for not breaking his fool neck, and ran a minor healing spell over the injury. “No battle scars for you, champ. But let’s find that sharp thing so nobody else gets hurt.”
Mookie started digging like a dog and making vroom noises while Merle was a little more sedate and cautious. It was a sharp rock, not a piece of glass or a needle, thank the gods.
La’ming toured over to where Koko was helping another kid with their sandcastle. She said, “There’s sometimes sharp things in the sand, so you make sure the littles use their tools so they can play safe.”
Koko said, “You can stop fussing, mom. We’re fine.”
She almost floated all the way back to the bench. Mom. He’d called her Mom.
[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 3]
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Still Tumbl'd, Still TAZ - Chapter 77 - InterNutter - The Adventure Zone (Podcast) [Archive of Our Own]
This chapter contains cuteness, fluff, baby twins in sailor suits, and a really predatory school choir program.
[AN: This is an AU of an AU that Duality and I are calling “Glass Canon”, mainly because Sno would fucking shatter the established canon with the least little twitch of causality.]
Lucas Miller warned, “Don’t touch tha–”
A flash of light. The sensation of falling. A dizzying sensation like being inside-out without being inside out. Then something resembling reality restored itself with dizziness, disorientation, and debilitating nausea.
Snocoun Ton passed out without any realisation of what had gone wrong.
She would realise it as soon as she woke.
*
“I’ve called the four of you here today because of an unexpected event. Our arcane energy detectors found a spike in energy similar to a relic… here on the moon.” Lucretia watched their faces with a stab in her heart. Taako didn’t seem to care. Magnus was instantly alarmed. Merle was wearing his, This shit again, face. Angus was intensely shocked.
“But… every relic that comes to the moon is destroyed. Right?” said Magnus. “I mean, we’ve seen three go down.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes you have.” Better a plausible truth than a definite lie in front of the world’s greatest detective. “That’s why this arcane energy spike is so alarming. I’m afraid it only gets worse. The epicentre of the spike was in the Miller’s moon-base laboratory, which has been left vacant since the incident with the Philosopher’s Stone.”
“Fuck,” summarised Taako, not even looking anywhere but his nails. “That’s some bad beans.”
“Indeed. I need the four of you to get your asses down there and find out what the shit is happening. If you can contain it, do so. I doubt it’s a relic, but… if it seems like it could be one, Mr McDonald, I want you to retreat the hell out of there at all possible speed.”
“Yes’m.”
“I want you to find out who’s responsible for this and, if you can, bring them back to me alive. If you can’t - at least find out what they were doing, why they were doing it, and how they got that idiot idea in the first place.”
*
Sno moaned as she sat up. The world was still spinning as she tried to make sense of what had happened. The globe she had picked up from Miller’s desk was on the floor beside her. Cracked. Dull. Dead.
The lab around her was covered in a fine layer of dust. Everything here had lain undisturbed for quite some time. Not quite as she last recalled. Someone had thrown a sheet over some things, but not all of them. Her body print and the print of the globe were the only signs of recent life.
What did this idiot thing fucking do, Miller? She was still recovering her wits when the door blasted open.
“MAGNUS RUSHES IN!”
She was used to hearing that from a six-year-old boy adopted by her partner, Avi. He used it whenever he raced into anywhere. This speaker, though, was a grown-ass Humanman of thirty-something. Behind him was a smaller, stouter figure of an older Dwarf, and a slighter figure of a Humanman boy.
He looked a hell of a lot like Angus McDonald… but he’d had a daughter, not a son.
Behind all of them was a puzzling figure. Elven… a Sun Elf. Golden hair, dappled skin. It was the prominent front teeth and the gap between them that made everything click for her.
“Koko?”
“How the fuck do you know my childhood eke name?” he demanded.
But… Elves picked their adult names at one hundred. If he was an adult, then Magnus couldn’t be alive and– “Who’s the kid?”
“Hello, ma’am, I’m Angus McDonald,” he said, and offered his hand.
That was the exact moment that she knew everything was fucked up. It only got worse when they dragged her and the globe back to their Director.
The last time she’d seen Lucretia Clark, she had been bade farewell on her latest day at school. Because she was six years old and still combatting her elective muteness. Sno had kissed her adopted daughter on the forehead and gone to work.
This Lucretia was fifty if she was a day. Regal and authoritative, dripping gravitas from every pore.
Sno couldn’t help but start weeping. “Something’s gone very wrong,” she said.
Old Lucretia cocked an eyebrow that stabbed Sno through the heart and said, “Indeed.”
[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 6]
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Avi didn’t worry about waking up in Sno’s apartment. She usually dragged him to her spare bedroom when he’d overdone it the night before. She would even have a decent breakfast and some Gator-aid waiting for him by the time he was done having a shower.
World’s best partner.
He didn’t think anything was out of the ordinary with the extra body products in the shower stall. What got his attention was the extra toothbrush.
There was her toothbrush, the guest toothbrush (sterilised for guest protection), and now there was a third toothbrush. Labeled with ‘his’. Hers had a piece of paper tape with the sharpie’d word ‘hers’, now.
Avi was halfway through brushing his teeth when he noticed it.
Sno was busy doing the post-hangover fry-up to restore Avi’s health points, so he was able to sneak into her bedroom to search for clues. Lucretia was likely to wake up any time soon, so he made sure he put on his pants and at least threw on a shirt before wandering out of the bathroom.
Sno’s place was, as always, display room worthy. There were a few scattered toys on the vestiges of Lucretia’s room, and the fallout from making room for her surrounding a closet or two, but it was otherwise pristine.
Sno used hospital corners when she made her bed, and she made her bed every day. Sno kept everything neat. If there was any traces of anyone else there, he’d have to go looking in her closets and drawers.
That would be a definite breach of trust.
Lucretia was sitting neatly at the table when he joined it. She had laid out some picture cards as a breakfast request. A green apple, a pile of pancakes, a syrup bottle, and some whipped cream and berries.
Avi snagged his serving of fry-up and sat a safe distance away from the kid.
“Good morning,” he said.
Lucretia held up a smiling sun card.
“Looks like you picked a good breakfast,” he said. The eggs and sausage were really hitting the spot. The bacon, especially, was just what he needed. The Gator-aid definitely helped his stinging head. So did the painkillers.
Lucretia nodded.
“Still not liking the mouth-words, huh?”
She shook her head.
“Don’t give her grief about it,” warned Sno, still working on pancakes. Her cooking had improved since Lucretia had come to stay. The twins certainly helped with that, too.
“I wasn’t,” said Avi. “And I’m not going to. Words help, that’s all.”
Lucretia had a homemade card. It had Arya Stark on it and the words, Not today.
“Yeah, I get it,” he said. “Sure nothing new’s scaring you.”
She shook her head.
*
There had to be someone in Sno’s life. She smiled a little more, when she thought nobody was looking. She tended to hum. She was more than a little more amenable when people gave her crap.
It was a stakeout that gave him an opportunity to ask. “So. Any other changes in your life?”
“What brought this on, Burnsides?”
“I saw the extra toothbrush in your bathroom. You’ve been having sleepovers, Sno?”
“We have movie nights and he falls asleep on the couch. It’s still PG.”
“Okay. You got a plan when it gets deeper?”
“Nunya, Burnsides.”
Right. Nunya. Nun’ya business. Avi knew when to butt out. “Have I met him?”
“How do you know they’re a him?”
“His and hers labels on the toothbrushes.”
A moment of thought. “…fuck…”
Avi smirked.
*
Lucretia was talking, at last. She wasn’t exactly the world’s biggest chatterbox, but she hadn’t needed her flash cards in an entire year. That was an epic accomplishment, and therefore occasion for a party.
She was a little nerd, so the games were a little more cerebral than they should be for a six-year-old. The older kids attending didn’t mind, even though they were slightly more cerebral than the stuff they were used to.
Some aspects of it were slightly more cerebral than the adults could handle. Nevertheless, the kids adapted.
Avi was having a good enough time, and so was Magnus, who had no truck at all with the rules. “So I get three attacks, right?” the boy asks.
“Not after you double dash,” said Lucretia.
“Aw beans…”
There was one guy at the party that Avi couldn’t place. Tall dude. Looked vaguely familiar. Avi knew he’d seen him before. The only problem was that he couldn’t place the guy.
He was racking his noggin as Johaan attempted to schmooze. Bards made their money with connections.
“Having trouble, sir?” said Angus, who had once refused to find out who Sno’s mystery dude was.
“I know him. I know I know him… But where?”
“Purple tights, pirate shirt, and an 80′s glam wig,” said Angus. “Picture him wearing those.”
It clicked. The Convention Caper. Of fucking course. That Dark Elf had been cosplaying Jareth from Labyrinth. Sno had been wearing a TARDIS dress because she was undercover as a nerd. The fact that she owned a TARDIS dress had flown past Avi’s notice at the time. She and ‘Jareth’ had spent a lot of time talking…
The click as it all came together was almost audible. He immediately went to Sno. “You’re dating a nerd?”
“I have depths, Burnsides. Deal with it.”
[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 7]
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“I’ll be back late, so you two go stay at Aunty Mak’s, okay?” La’ming kissed each of the twins on their foreheads. “It’s not a school night, so you can stay up late and watch shitty television and eat shittier food if you want.”
Koko rolled his eyes and blew a raspberry.
Lulu elbowed him and said, “Gourmet pizza exists, dingus.”
“If it can have pineapple on it, it’s not gourmet,” grumbled Koko[1].
“Don’t worry about me, okay. I’m fine. It’s just a really long session at the studio.” She spared a word for Makarune. “Don’t let them cook anything extravagant, okay? They should be kids. It’s burgers and popcorn kids crave, not pate du foi gras or whatever.”
“You try to cook a decent Pappardelle one time…” grumbled Koko.
“Don’t let ‘em run through your budget,” La’ming whispered. “Common, everyday ingredients, only.”
Makarune saluted. “I honestly don’t mind having a couple of little gourmet chefs in my kitchen. Go. Do your thing. It’ll be fine.”
It wasn’t.
Most of the day went well, but all it took to ruin a good day was a slick patch on a polished floor and a bad fall.
The twins didn’t know about any of this until the next morning, when they checked their emails.
It was a simple, brief message from a ran.som@gmail.com and it said, Got your mom. Email back 4 deets.
The screaming happened exactly five seconds after the message sank in. The twins ran for Makarune. They ran for Angus, on the top floor. They raised fifteen colours of stink and nobody could get a word in edgewise between the two of them. Not that either of them were making much in the way of sense.
The words ‘ransom letter’ and ‘mom’ surfaced a lot, but since the twins were talking over each other the entire time, it took a few moments to unriddle.
By then, Makarune had dosed them with the special sedative apple pancakes and hot chocolate. The emergency meeting of friends of the family had to happen on the rooftop garden, since it was most of the apartment block by then.
Avi was there with Johaan, hand in hand. The Pithons were there, as were the McDonalds. Then there was Makarune desperately trying to keep the twins at least on something resembling an even keel. So far, the Pithons were assisting by wrapping the twins up in their tails, Avi was attempting to coach them through some breathing and memory exercises, Johaan was playing Calm Emotion, and the McDonalds were analysing the shit out of the email.
“What kind of kidnapper sends a CC?” wondered Agatha.
“Or uses Gmail?” pondered Angus.
“Whaddathey want from us?” Koko snivelled. He had his hands wrapped around a big mug that almost dripped marshmallows and cream. “We’re kids. We don’t got shit…”
Lulu wiped her face. “I been savin’ up my pocket money, an’… I got… almos’ twenny dollars?”
Agatha elbowed Angus, pointing to something on the screen. Angus peered at it, lifting his glasses up. He said, “Oh, shit.”
Koko started out-and-out bawling again. “It’s the curse! It’s the cur-hur-hurse… I hurt our mo-o-o-om…”
Lulu wrapped herself around him. “We’re not bad luck, doofus. Our stupid father didn’t know anything about anything. We’re not cursed.”
“Indeed you’re not,” said Angus. “This isn’t a ransom email. It’s an email from someone who’s name concatenates into ‘ransom’. Specifically, ran dot som.”
“I think it might be from one of your mom’s… co-workers. Ransei Somner.” Also known as Hornee D’Lite to a select crowd. “I’ve emailed her back. Your mom took a tumble and broke her arm. She’s in recovery and I have the ward details.
Koko gulped down the hot chocolate. Lulu did the same. Together, they said, “Is she okay?”
*
La’ming surfaced from a cloud of dandelion extract. Her left arm really hurt. “Ma’am… There’s a large crowd of people here to see you. They say they’re your family.”
She looked over to Ransei. The large, thickset tiefling said, “I only emailed your kids,” and shrugged.
“Wanna see m’ babies,” La’ming slurred, deep in the valley of the dandelions. “They’ll be worried about me…”
The nurse pulled aside the curtain enough so that La’ming could see the entire fucking crowd of worried residents from her apartment block.
“Heeeeyyyy,” she crooned. “Th’ gang’s all here… Where’s my babies?”
Twin golden streaks shrieked, “Mom!” and then she was covered in family. Not so skinny, any more, but still so small and so light and very, very wet.
“Din’ wanna make y’ cry, m’ poor babies…” It was very important to kiss them. She couldn’t kiss them enough. “It’s okay… they got me onna good stuff.”
“Ease up,” said Ransei. “Careful of her left arm.”
“Is this your family, ma’am?”
La’ming squinted at the mob. “Yeah, they is m’ fam’ly. We all ‘dopted eachother…”
Ransei introduced herself to the family as a ‘co-worker’. She had had the foresight to get into some street-passable clothes before climbing into the ambulance with La’ming.
Those who recognised her as Hornee D’Lite kept that knowledge to themselves.
She was a thickset, russet-coloured tiefling with an enormous set of horns. Everything about her was thick.
“You didn’t tell me your babies were this cute,” she cooed. “Hey, there li’l darlin’s. I work with your momma. Can I cuddle you?”
Lulu looked to La’ming, who slurred, “Rans issa ver’ gen’l frien’…”
She was also, the twins discovered, soft and warm and the kind of comfort they needed at that exact moment.
The assembled crowd of well-wishers decided to wait until La’ming was sober before telling her about the upset, that morning.
[1] Opinions expressed by characters are not necessarily that of the author.
[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 10]
[Be sure to visit internutter (dot) org for details on how to support this artist]
They promised to stay in touch, and they didn’t. Avi did remember to keep an eye out on the papers for her mention, but… there wasn’t any. There were a small amount of Elven police officers in the NWPD, and it seemed like all twelve of them were taking turns being a figure on the front page.
The closer they were to looking Human, Avi noted, the more prominent they were likely to be. Sno, with her blueish skin tone and seemingly unnaturally red hair, wasn’t going to be in the papers unless she did something spectacular.
Which was kind of horrible, when you got down to it. Sno had to be one of the most driven officers in the NWPD, and they were likely wasting it all with her being a meter maid. Something like that.
Fellow officers called him an Elf Lover, and taunted him about it. Started more than a few fights that Avi refused to finish. They also tended to abuse the fact that he knew Elvish whenever an Elf was wont to panic in their native tongue.
Then Tre Llew-Ddion happened.
A small ghetto of Elven treehouses struck with a dismal disease that wiped out most of its population. The entire place had been conceived as an ideal community for Elves so that they could be separate yet equal. There were schools and meadows and a minimum model of what the Humans thought an Elven civilisation should look like.
It was too crowded and a fungal infestation from improper irrigation was just the nail on the coffin. Hundreds of Elves died. The survivors were almost universally the criminally young. Babes in arms, toddlers, and very small children. Everyone over the age of seventy had perished.
The Neverwinter City Watch were reassigned to the case files of all those young Elves. Which was where Avi met Sno once more.
She was in full uniform. She’d all been in full uniform before, but this was full uniform with a point to prove. Every crease was knife-sharp. Everything obeyed every single letter of regulations, including the way she sat and the way she wrote. She even had her uniform hat on, something that most officers doffed within seconds of being in the office.
She also had a mountain of paperwork that she was methodically working through like anyone would work through any odious task.
She looked like she’d never smiled in her life.
He tried to lighten her up. “Hey, maybe you could adopt one or two.”
She looked up and shook her head. “Not allowed. We’re here to see to their safe rehabilitation with family or foster homes.”
Avi tried again. “Okay. Then how about a few brews after you knock off to lighten that mood?”
This time, it was a pained yet patient glare. “I’ve been racking it on this shit since day one, Burnsides. There’s no time. These kids need help.”
Wow. That was her first empathic moment since their illicit rooftop beers back at the academy. Avi took half of her inbox and took a station in a neighbouring desk. “Okay, then. So I’ll help, then.”
*
Patrons to the Starlight Hotel had complained about their things going missing. Small items that wouldn’t easily be missed. Small items that turned up at an all-night pawn shop within three blocks of the hotel. Obviously, it was an inside job.
The manager, one Fritaada Starlight, captured Sno’s attention. She asked about his family and got introduced to Leverpalt, his wife, and their four kids, Mem and Coco, the older twins, and the infant ones, Trip and Tort.
Realisation dawned when Sno said, “What about Lulu and Koko Taaco? The twins added to your care?”
“They… ran away,” Leverpalt lied. Blatantly.
Sno kept her nat twenty insight check to herself. As did Avi. They continued with their alleged investigation into the small thefts, but the instant they were alone… she buttonholed Avi. “Listen. They’re going to be watching me like dire hawks, but they’ll think you don’t give a shit. Don’t let them think otherwise and find those twins. Make sure they’re okay.”
Sno never forgot a case file. She did her utmost to check, annually, on any of the hundreds of kids she’d seen into other homes. She was especially paranoid about those who remained in the system. The Taaco twins had effectively dropped off her radar despite being in family care. She was upset and obsessed at the same time.
He found evidence that the Starlights were cashing the cheques meant to go towards the Taaco twins’ care, but there was no evidence of those twins in the Starlights’ penthouse suite. One room for the older Starlight twins. One infants’ room for the others. No hint of little Taacitos.
He found them in a basement maintenance closet that had been refitted to be their bedroom. Two cots almost too small to let them sleep comfortably. A bucket for a bathroom and only an exterior lock. No windows, little circulation and, by the looks of things, little in the way of food.
Avi called it in as a clear case of neglect and Sno carried them out of there and into the flashes of some avid press.
She finally made the papers, half-obscured by two adorable, nearly-identical faces and the NWPD blanket wrapped around them both.
*
Avi knew he was allowed to be reckless with the bike the Watch gave him, sidecar and all. So long as he drove, he could pull whatever idiot stunts he liked. And he frequently did.
Sno preferred it that way. She could - off the record - egg him on to some stunts that inevitably needed a little magical assist to survive. Featherfall came in very handy when it came to hot pursuit of a criminal.
Then came the Clarke family case. Two parents expired of the Neverwinter Summer Flu - it had been bad that year - in combination with an outbreak of the same mould that had seen to the end of Tre Llew-Ddion. They had remained where they died while their three-year-old daughter continued to eke out an existence using available cash, and then her parents’ credit card. Her name was Lucretia and she was almost terrifyingly clever.
She was also electively mute and had selected Sno as the one person in the world she felt safe with.
Avi kept his distance as they sat in the lounge and waited for someone higher up the chain to come and attempt communication. Lucretia stayed bundled up in Sno’s big, winter coat and wouldn’t come out. She communicated exclusively through a series of nods, head-shakes, and pointing.
“I don’t know what to do,” Sno whispered as Lucretia apparently slumbered on her lap. “Why the hell did she pick me?”
Avi shrugged. “Guess she likes you. Somebody has to, right?”
That earned half a smile and a snort. She’d had to grow a tough, tough shell to make it to where she was in Precinct 42. Especially since their commander kept giving her the shittiest beats he could. “Thanks.”
“So… I can fill out all the forms you’d need for emergency foster care status,” he offered.
“They’re gonna wanna know the last time I had luume’irma and who was involved,” she sighed. That was two years ago, and Avi had known about the Off Switch. “There’s all kinds of invasive questions on the Elven forms.”
He got them anyway. Yikes. Those were nasty. When was the last Luume, how regular was the cycle, precise dates of the last ten, if applicable. Who was involved in every instance. Was there sexual intercourse and did any family result…
Things that nobody needed to know.
Sno, like her mother, had gone through early Luume in the company of her grandparents at age seventy and had since gone through… eight of them. Regular as clockwork to the day. Rough as guts, too, since they put her through the wringer for forty-eight hours of metabolic hell.
After the last one, there was a memo in her file about being allowed time off and chemical sedation for the duration. Avi only knew this much because she’d bitched about some asshole laws people were looking at that may well have criminalised luume’irma.
He spared her as many details of the form as he could. CPS could try something in eight years or less when her next Luume was due to flare up, but… perhaps things might have changed by then. He could only hope.
“What do Humanman babies like her usually eat?” Sno worried. “Are they on solids, yet? Do I still give her milk?”
Avi snorted. “She’s got teeth, she can chew.” He remembered some words he’d heard a neighbour saying as she trooped the Taaco twins towards the bodega. “Never had a kid turn down the nugs,” though when she’d said it, she was complaining. “Some kids are lactose intolerant, though. Ask her what she likes to drink when she wakes up. I think they have juice boxes down in the kiddie room. I could get a sampler. And there’s always water.”
Sno took a deep breath. “My mom wasn’t ready for me when I was born. She left me with her parents and it took me years to learn that they’re some–” she stopped herself just in time. “You’ve met them.”
“Unfortunately,” agreed Avi.
“So I’ve got that as a starter kit. I know what CPS fffff–fudging hates, what their standards are for foster care. I know the schedule they’ll expect for improvement… but I got no idea how to start on that steep slope. I need help, Burnsides…”
“Well,” he said, ticking some checkboxes. “You know what not to do thanks to your grandparents. You know the lowest bar thanks to CPS. You know redemption is possible, thanks to your mom. Considering some of the places we had to let off with a warning? I think you’ll be fine.”
Lucretia Clarke stirred and stretched in Sno’s arms, causing her purr to kick up a notch. Sno carefully arranged some flashcards on the table. People, mostly, but there were other things. One card had a toilet on it and the word ‘bathroom’. Nothing was left to chance.
The larger portion of the flashcards were in a stack, should Lucretia ever decide to interact with them.
“Hi again,” Sno cooed. “Get enough sleep?”
Nod.
“I need to know if there’s anyone we can look up,” she said. “Anyone you’d like to stay with.” The cards had ‘grandmother’, ‘grandfather’, ‘aunt’, ‘uncle’, ‘cousin’, and ‘friend’ on them.
Lucretia very delicately picked up the ‘friend’ card and tapped it meaningfully on Sno’s badge. She wedged it partially under there, just to make the meaning clear.
The look she gave Avi was clear to anyone. It said, Help! and conveyed more than a modicum of, I’m out of my depth, here.
Avi had been the one studying early childcare in the hopes of being a dad, one day. He and Johaan had been talking optimistically about children. “Okay,” he said. “She wants to stay with you, she gets to stay with you. I can help with the fine details, but for now… do you have any relatives with a criminal record who could harm a small child?”
“Gramgram and Peepums don’t count,” said Sno. She was smiling. That was a joke. “Mom’s been cleared of that kind of wrongdoing, and the twins are too young. So… no.”
She was going to be fine. Avi could tell. Solid determination to do better than everything she knew had to be a clear indicator that she was going to be fine.
[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 11]
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