According to the assessment test, Avi managed to wind up on the ‘dumbass’ end of entrants and wound up with the other slow learners in the Academy - the Elves. As far as society was concerned, they were there to fill in some quotas. A few might have been. One was definitely there to prove the entire world wrong.

Her first words to him were, “That’s a violation of uniform code.”

“I never got writ up for it,” he said, taking the last seat, right by her.

“Of course not,” she said. “You’re Human.”

“What?”

Class began, and Avi soon noticed what was happening against literally everyone else in the class. Elves could get write ups for the most minor of infractions, including uniform code, whilst Avi was allowed to skate by without notice. He was always called on first, regardless of whether or not he had his hand raised… and the Elves were always wrong.

It was his first taste of injustice. It would not be his last.

It took a week of written reports, several interviews with the people in charge and, finally, an ‘anonymous’ hidden camera recording released to the media for that teacher to find himself reassigned and a more fair setting to enter the classroom.

By that time, he’d learned his future partner’s name. Snocoun Ton. She was one of the few cadets who worked herself ragged to make it to the top, earning extra points by helping him study, amongst other things.

Rumours whispered that she slept her way to the top of the class, but Avi knew that she’d never had the time. All of her extracurriculars ate every second she had to spare. Though she was valedictorian of her academy class, the higher brass had it that she was ‘on par’ with the average Human in the academy.

“It’s okay,” she said after Avi had finished ranting about the injustice of it all. “I have the time to play the long game.”

She was a hundred and twenty. A fresh-faced young adult by Elven standards. She could afford to spend his entire life working up to the higher echelons of the rank and file.

“Be proud to see you do that,” he said. “I’m in for the ride.”

“That’s career suicide, Burnsides.”

“I never wanted a career,” he said. “I just wanted to help the law be lawful without being an excuse to become a bunch of bullies.”

“That’s a lofty goal for a Humanman,” she noted.

“Aim high or shoot yourself in the foot, Ton.”

She winced. “Don’t… don’t call me that. Please.” She took a deep breath. “I’m not happy with my family name.”

“Shitty family?”

“Nailed it.”

“Okay if I call you ‘Sno’?”

A rare smile took over her usually sour face. “Sno will do. We’re going to get all of the shit. You know that, right?”

Avi grinned. “You know nothing… Ton, Sno.”

“You get away with that once, Burnsides.”

He laughed. “Worth it.”

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 7]

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Every neighbourhood has a bodega, the corner shops, the convenience store. They have many names, including some brands. Seven-eleven, the IGA, quick-e-mart, shop’n’go… The names change, but the concept remains the same. A little place where anyone living there can walk and gather emergency supplies. Be it a loaf of bread, some ingredients, or the little things that one is always running short of at the last instant. They can be pokey little places with only a handful of shelves, or labyrinthine expanses with claustrophobic confines and items no-one who goes there could ever fathom needing[1].

This evening, just after ten PM, Merle was cat-napping at the counter when one of the regulars came in. One of the Elves who lived around the corner and down the street a bit. She made a beeline for the tourist spot, where clothes claiming the bearer loved Neverwinter despite any evidence to the contrary.

Long experience with this neighbourhood had ensured that this particular bodega stocked pants and skirts as well. They were one-size-fits-most atrocities that owed most of their construction to pull cords. There had been many instances in Neverwinter of the hardy perennial street loonie who managed to misplace all of their clothing before having some kind of loud and public wobbler long about three in the morning.

Merle got most of his business from the average naked creature who happened to be tripping balls. You didn’t have to be crazy to choose a pair of those pants, but it certainly helped. Therefore it was slightly odd to see the relatively sane Sea Elf grab two (size med-to-small) and two I (heart) NW shirts (small), stuffing them into her basket before scouring through areas she had never gone into before.

Merle watched through a mixture of the camera feeds and the special mirrors around the shop as she seized two stuffed toys, a misshapen unicorn and some kind of bizarre purple cow-hippo hybrid. A couple of Little Golden books, some terrible off-brand action figures. Then she stopped at some of the pre-packaged foods.

“Hey Merle… you have kids, right?”

“Technically. They’re off with their mom. I don’t get ‘em until the weekend.”

“Six-year-olds don’t need baby food, right?”

“Yeah, they all have all their teeth by then. They can chew.”

“Uhuh. So… what should I get like… two of them?”

Merle was dimly aware that she had family in distant areas. “You got some little niblings?”

“No. I found a coupl’a babies in the trash.”

Okay. Maybe it was time to hit the silent alarm. Merle decided to humour her and see if it went into dangerous turf. “Who’d throw away perfectly good babies?”

“Exactly my thoughts,” she said. “Dino-chicken nuggets should be fine, right? Are tater tots a vegetable or should I try these bubble-and-squeak thingies?”

“Never had a kid turn down the nugs,” said Merle. “As for vegetables… it’s hit or miss… most usually go for the mint peas, though. Sweet corn. If they only eat potato, go for the sweet potato. That has more vitamins.”

“I don’t think these ones are too picky.” she got a frozen vegetable medly. Handed over a hundred-dollar bill, and scooted off with her bag of supplies into the night.

Say what you like about the loonies, most of them were generous tippers.

*

Two weeks later, he got to meet them. One was clutching the binicorn plushie from that night. Both wore enormous sunglasses, and had their golden hair up in identical braids.

“Okay,” said La’ming. “You don’t like what I got? Go look for yourselves. I got a budget, so stick to the limits, okay?”

The one without the binicorn had the I (heart) NW shirt. On them, it was almost a dress. Six-year-old Elves were nauseatingly cute.

“Ah,” said Merle. “They’re real. Colour me surprised.” He watched as the twins made a bee-line for the fresh produce, each with a basket and a state of terrifying glee.

“What? You thought I slipped my gourd?” teased La’ming.

“Eh. I might’a supplied the weeds dispensary down a coupl’a block some dodgy dandelions. Accidentally planted ‘em in the Psilocybin mycelium. I got a few complaints.”

“I don’t need ‘lion.”

“Yeah every Elf says that. I don’t need Dreamroot, until my sciatica acts up or I can’t sleep or… y’know. I actually need it.”

“Long as you keep your fumes to yourself, we’re fine,” said La’ming.

“Shit yeah! Real garlic!”

“If you’re gettin’ garlic, I’m gettin’ peppers!”

La’ming journeyed into the back shelves, “Whoop. Better stop it before they have a big fight.”

These two preferred fresh ingredients. Fresher than the stuff-in-a-box she used to eat. Judging by the way the kids were plotting, they knew a lot about cookery and were teaching their adult minder.

Well. Good for them.

It wasn’t every day that people found the families that were best for them.

[1] It can’t be helped, some of these tiny little shops seem to stock gimcrack from other dimensions, like left-handed kerning sponges, or hand-cranked doormouse stuffers. They are the most common source of terribly off-model and off-brand toy merchandise. In some other reality, that’s the way it actually was.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 8]

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The entire Precinct called her Officer Sno. Some within it called her “The Cold Front” when they thought she couldn’t hear them and that was just fine, actually. She didn’t need those assholes getting into her life and discovering things. The only one who knew all of the truth was Avi, and he kept things to himself.

It was Avi who had found the twins again. She’d been concerned about them. Poor little tykes. They’d been dealt a bad hand. Absentee father who was so superstitious that the shrink he was visiting insisted he wasn’t ready to be an adult, let alone a decent parent. Their mother had died of a horrible infection and her sister had perished of allegedly unrelated heart problems not long after.

Following that, it was a series of terrible fostering attempts on the Starlight side of the family, and then… then they’d run away.

Considering that their last accommodations had been a plastic playhouse in the backyard, Sno didn’t blame them. Anything could have happened to them in the year between their last known residence and this latest sighting… in the same apartment building as her partner. Two floors up and across the hallway.

With another familiar name.

La’ming Ton.

Sno’s genetic mother. At least this time, she was an official adult and allegedly putting her life together. Though her finances were stable, they came to her bank account through a convoluted system of anonymised transfers that meant her income was one not entirely smiled upon by society at large. Sno had to calculate La’ming’s age.

If I’m a hundred and forty, she’s two hundred and eleven. Seventy-one years between mother and child. Gamgam and Peepums had always blamed La’ming’s youthful parenthood on her. They’d called it a scandal. Sno had spent eighty years believing that before she asked, What about the two hundred-year-old guy who fathered me?

He had sailed through his life without any kind of consequence or expectations towards assisting in the daughter he’d made.

Enough about him.

This was about two other babies left without a family. Now in the alleged care of someone who should -according to Gamgam and Peepums- never have one. Sno had to be certain that La’ming wasn’t letting them play with rat poison or keeping them in the bathtub or something.

That was why she was here. Knocking on her mother’s door. Crisp and Severe in the Neverwinter PD uniform.

Thundering footsteps. The door swung wide open.

Two nearly-identical faces, each with mismatched eyes, stared up at her. Clean faces, good. New clothes, better. Screaming blue murder and slamming the door… nope.

The Taaco twins were the ones screaming, “IT’S A RAID! IT’S A RAID! GO! GO! GO! GO!”

What. The. Shit? Sno knocked a little more forcefully.

When La’ming opened the door, she said, “What the hell did you do to those babies?” Then she realised who she was talking to. “Nono?”

“Snocoun,” she said.

Somewhere in the distance, one of the twins yelled, “It’s the Blue Wave! Gittouttahere!”

“You look… You look amazing.”

“This is not a familial visit,” said Sno. “I’m here on CPS business.” The flat had fallen ominously silent. “Those twins are missing minors and it’s my duty to see to it that they’re safely housed in appropriate accommodations.” She didn’t need permission to enter while children were at risk and La’ming didn’t stop her.

The flat was tidy. Clean. Middle-of-the-road thrift furniture, some shabby chic going on. Books and toys appropriate for minors scattered around. Tolerable. The CPS would give this a grudging pass.

Sno knew for a fact that her grandparents had stopped sending private eyes after her mother when La’ming had a decent enough income to afford rent at this flat and a modicum of furniture.

All the fun of it had gone out when they could no longer let Sno find photographs of the dives in which La’ming was staying. Realising that they thrived off of La’ming’s screw ups was Sno’s first piece of detective work.

Working out that La’ming had illegally adopted these kids wasn’t even enough to work up a sweat.

“So,” Sno picked up a copy of The Tubby Little Puppy and paged through it. “Why them?”

“And not you?” said La’ming. “We both remember that phone call a month before your Seventy-first birthday. You know why not you.”

Because an Elf’s Seventies were the most chaotic, disorganised, misunderstood years of their lives. Perhaps worse than the Terrible Twenties, when the lifespan differentials really started to stick out. Seventy was when a young Elf was handled all of the expectation and none of the respect. Treated like children, expected to react like adults, given choices that could reflect on their entire lives…

And her mother had gone into a terribly early Luume and got pregnant by a man who should have known, acted, and done better…

“Just ‘why them’… mother.”

La’ming fussed around in the kitchen, making tea. She had fresh fruit, and honey in a jar instead of a sugar pot. Fresh vegetables in the fridge, too. “They were living in a cardboard box next to the dumpster. That asshole kid in five B had just chucked some garbage bag down and konked out Koko. Lulu was crying, she… she was acting like her world was ending. I remember that feeling. Too well.”

The night she’s left baby Nono at her parents’ place, she’d said, was the worst night of her life. The entire two years of being underage, pregnant, and then a parent had been two years of the worst days of her life… but that day. That day topped them all. The worst of the worst.

“He,” corrected Sno. “They’re both boys.”

“Lulu says different.”

Oh shit… Sno re-evaluated everything, including why certain foster homes had felt it necessary to ‘drive the devil’ out of the twins. It wasn’t just lingering superstition about heterochromia or ‘witch eyes’. It was lingering transphobia whenever Lulu tried to tell anyone who she really was.

No wonder living on the streets was preferable to being in the system.

“The good news is that that counts as extenuating circumstances,” said Sno. “I can force some paperwork through and get you registered as a sympathetic foster house inside of a month.”

“Great. Now all we have to do is talk two scared babies out of Mak’arune’s place. They’ve probably battened down all the hatches by now. What did you even do to them?”

They’s been three when their mother died, and didn’t understand that the dead body she carried them away from would never wake up. They weren’t much older when their aunt had perished, too. Time and time again, she was on duty to take them away from places where they insisted they were doing okay in. Time and time again, she took them away from family.

“It’s my bad luck to have been on duty every single time they’ve had to be taken away from a situation.”

La’ming handed over the tea. Had some herself. “Right. So they think you’re going to arrest me.”

“I wish…”

La’ming glared at her.

“…sometimes.”

“Fair enough. We’ve all been through shit. Anyway, talking them down from whatever disaster scenario they’ve leaped to. Koko’s really good at those. Scarily accurate for six.”

Six. Shit. They were twice the age they’d been when their birth mother died. Once again, perspective swirled for her. More than the dizzying realisation that she was twice the age her mother had been when… and there was still that sense of anticipating a disaster from Gamgam and Peepums.

Drinking tea gave the twins time to realise that the usual chaos of Sno’s visits wasn’t happening. Therefore Sno drank tea. In silence, because smalltalk with her mother inevitably ended up in an argument.

Then, after the tea was done and the cups were rinsed, it was downstairs to 2D, where Mak’arune made hats for Etsy and babysat the twins when La’ming was working online.

La’ming had to show the twins that she was okay, she was not being arrested, and that Officer Sno -the ‘Blue Wave’ who washed away their lives- was not going to sweep through and turn the world upside down.

The news that Officer Sno was their sister… that just about worked as enough topsy-turvy for these kids. But that was life. Awkward, complicated, and too weird to believe if it were set into fiction. Messy, too.

La’ming’s higher-paying customers were no longer paying for La’ming’s correspondence courses. That money was going to Lulu’s transition fund. The spell to change her body to match her mind and soul was not cheap, nor were the experts who would be working it.

Like it or not, La’ming Ton was working on being a better mother than she had been a literal lifetime ago. That was why Sno chose to help her out.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 8]

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Work fascinated and enthralled Taako, he could watch other people do it all day. Take this ditch, for instance. It wasn’t actually a ditch. It had no real purpose other than to see what was under the soil beyond (a) dirt, (b) more dirt, and © rocks and roots and shit.

Humanmen called it ‘archeology’. Taako called it, ‘digging up stuff and making up stories about it.’ Frankly, he couldn’t see what the fuss was about. So what if there were ancient Dragons whose bones had turned to stone? Everyone who knew the Old Lore knew that Dragons were the first animate beings in the world, intelligent or no.

It was the same way that everyone should know that, though the Dragons made the world, it was the ancient Elves who shaped it. Though the jury was out on which particular sub-variant of Elves were the original, they all agreed that it was the Elves who made other creatures in their own image. With varying degrees of success.

He’d never tell his Humanman friends this, but… the old legends pretty much universally declared Humanmen as something of a failure, creation-wise.

Ango gasped as a section of packed earth crumbled away to reveal something of a cavern inn the side of the stone. He got out some visual helper apparatus and peered through it. “Oh my gosh…” his boy hadn’t got any better at swearing over the years, “This is quite the find. Sir, do you know what this is?”

Of course he fucking did. This was Elf stuff that Ango was digging up. “Looks like a First Era Cote, li’l man. Elves were the first ones to use magic to shape the world around them.”

Ango was already in there with a light source. “Whoah… this is almost unchanged from the cotes in the farmhouse, sir.”

“No sense throwing away a good design,” breezed Taako. It’s comfortable, easily defensible, and you can keep the whole family close so there’s always someone on watch. Hells, bubbeleh, we invented our meditation techniques so that nobody in the tribe would be in danger at any given time. Lots’a history in the Elven race, we go wa-a-ay back.”

Ango emerged, holding a small object with reverential awe. “They had pottery in the First Era, sir. Or perhaps even earlier. Some of this clay was mixed with charcoal to colour it.”

“Yup,” said Taako, effectively disguising his astonishment that something possibly older than Krav could still exist to the point where a genius boy could detect how it was made. Pretty impressive for a broken piece of pottery. “Elves invented the basics of civilisation, hombre.”

“But… this is First Era. Who or what did they have to defend themselves against?”

“The stone-boned Dragons, of course.”

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 8]

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Lulu never liked it when Koko cried. He[1] always wanted to make people cry if they made his brother cry, they deserved to be crying too. Except this time, Lulu couldn’t work out why Koko was crying.

“Roshi was playin’ Sticks an’ Stones,” said Lulu. “Everyone plays it.”

Koko sniffled and wiped his face. “Roshi said… don’ play with ‘er no more,” sob, gulp. “She said we’re bad. She wasn’ playing… she said go ‘way forever…”

Lulu helped his brother to his feet, helping him limp home. “It’s just Sticks an’ Stones. Like from everyone. We dodge and laugh. ‘S how it goes.”

“…not funny any more,” pouted Koko. “I wanted to catch bugs and lizards with her.”

Mama found them on their way home. She could see if one or both of them were crying from forty yards away. She probably already had, and that was why she was running for them.

Koko wasn’t bruised or bleeding. Neither was Lulu. Mama had them both in her arms anyway, and the whole world could start to feel okay again.

Then he said it. “Mama, why do people always say we’re evil?”

“What?”

Koko took over. “Roshi said her brother said their mom said we’re demons an’ we’re gonna wreck the whole world.” He wiped his face again. “Sticks an’ Stones was never a game…”

Oh. Oh that was why… Poor Koko. He’d worked it out. Lulu had been pretending for months and Koko had worked it out anyway.

Mama had very sad eyes. Sadder than every day. “No. It was never a game. Oh, my loves…” She held them just a little tighter. Picked them up and took them inside and gave them honey cakes. “My dear boys… I love you so much. I wish I didn’t have to tell you but… some people believe that eyes like yours can make curses happen.”

Mama’s eyes were amberish-brown. Both of them. Lulu and Koko could easily see that they had one green eye each. It was just how they’d always been. Mama and Aunty Ques and their Uncles Ench and Tortie had never feared them. None of their family had had curses happen.

“That’s silly,” said Lulu. “We don’t make anything bad happen to you or Aunt Ques or Uncle Ench or Uncle Tortie.”

“It is silly. It’s very silly, indeed,” said Mama. “People who believe in witch eyes like yours are… far too silly.” she sighed. “Yet they still believe. Your father left us… because he believed.”

Koko’s fingers tightened on Lulu’s tunic. They remembered that night of shouting and slamming doors, but they’d carried on without him and hardly noticed. As far as the twins were concerned, there were not more nights of shouting and slamming doors. And they got to spend seasons with their aunt and uncles.

“We can’t fix it, can we?” said Koko. “They’re gonna be silly all the time and we can’t run away like father did.”

“No,” said Mama. “We’re stuck here.”

Lulu was very quiet as Koko fed him a honey cake and he fed his brother the other one. There was a lot to think about.

“They want us to give ‘em curses,” Lulu said in Us. He let Mama wash their hands and faces. “I think we should show ‘em what real curses look like.”

Would that he could do so, Lulu would become a one-Elf plague on the little village of Tre Llew-Ddion. If they so much as threw one more thing at them, they’d learn that some curses could land quick.

Koko shrivelled up and hid when hostility came at them. He preferred to run away. Lulu, on the other hand, could be four times as bad as anyone wanted to think they were. He stormed through their little world, daring it to challenge them. Aiming magic missiles or other cantrips at anyone who tried to give them trouble.

Unfortunately for Lulu’s aspirations to punish the entire world for being silly, the twins were only six. The grownups around them had far better magics, far stronger abilities, and far quicker reflexes than a pair of little kids.

[1] They’re six. Lulu hasn’t worked out who she is yet.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 6]

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Her babies were off researching very clever stuff over at IPRE, competing with other people in the IPRE for some posting on a two-month mission into the greater beyond. La’ming wished them luck. They needed a good adventure on their own. Her concern was with one of their past misadventures.

One of Lup’s past misadventures named Greg Grimaldis. He was one of the rare few scum-sucking user assholes who had successfully passed all their paranoid inspections to later betray the whole family.

On the surface, it was a simple matter of fifteen dollars. Not only was it the principal of the thing, but it was also one of Lup’s special fifteen dollar bills. The one success she’d needed to fund the thinnest of their college years. It should have gone back to La’ming and Mak’arune, but Greg Grimaldis had left her with a very clever fake.

He was now using the original to fund his entrepreneurial ventures, having dropped out of the IPRE the second he got what he was really after. And here she’d been thinking he was simply out to procure sex. Now she was thinking of ways to get past Grimaldis’ increasingly convoluted security measures.

Fifteen dollars a day, every day, added up to quite the tidy fortune.

She did not intend for it to add up for him for very much longer.

A combination of clever spellwork and superior stealth got her into his offices, and ransacking them for the bill proved fruitless.

“You really think I’d leave it somewhere like a doofus?” he said.

La’ming stood from her former, covert huddle. “Grimaldis.”

“Ton,” he smirked in that oily way she had hated from day one. “Small surprise I’d find you in here. Looking for something… special.”

“You have something that isn’t yours. I’m simply retrieving it for the person you stole it from.”

“Prove its hers and I report her for forgery. She’ll get kicked out of that fancy-schmancy gig they got going. Think she’d love you after that?”

He had to have it on his person. Somewhere. Good thing Taako had taught her how to rob someone blind without them knowing it. La’ming turned on the charm. Smiling seductively. Edging closer.

“Now, now, Mr Grimaldis… can I call you Greg?” she didn’t wait for permission. “Greg… we’re both beings of the world. I’m certain we can come to… some form of understanding.”

He grinned and moved beyond her reach. “Nice try, but you told me to fuck off in no uncertain terms at every given opportunity. I don’t think you’d betray your little wife like that. She is prone to cry.”

Damnit… La’ming sighed. “You should also know that this isn’t over. You’ve angered a very talented family. We’ll get that fifteen dollars away from you one way or another.”

“Any more threats, Mrs Ton, and I might have to call in my boys,” he cooed.

She left while things were still civil.

*

Of all the things she regretted, La’ming regretted not being able to tell the twins about their new brother. He’d been adopted at age seven in another fit of Luume and didn’t seem to mind having two Elven moms doting on his general welfare.

They taught him everything he needed to know.

Low cunning, high strategies, and being able to play the fool at a virtuoso level. Terry was almost as good as the twins and their mothers put together. He’d even counted on his older sister to figure out a way to try and procure it herself.

Sorry, Lulu. The circus needs that fifteen dollars more than you need to destroy it.

La’ming waited, watching what she could from hacks she had made in the Grimaldis Casino security systems. Her twins were very good at this, avoiding many pitfalls along the way. They were so close to taking it with them…

Then everything cut off. A pre-recorded image of Old Blue-Eyes was glaring in her general direction.

“Of course you’re up to something, La’ming Ton,” he said. “Try it again and I’ll destroy everything you ever loved. Starting with Turkey Boy.”

He knew!

“Yeah, I know he’s yours. The interesting thing is going to be whether I fire him or kill him. Guess we’ll see how much a rich man can get away with murder.”

*

Terry kept the bill safe and himself financed all the way to Varmvale, where a neat little cottage rested by a barn made to shelter a moderately-sized traveller’s caravan. The original note was safely hidden and he had an easy way to tell the original from the dupicates that sprang forth once a day.

His step was lighter on the way to that little cottage. His smile wider as he walked up the path towards the pretty little gate and the neat little fence. “Mo-oms… I’m ho-o-ome!" 

Two Elven figures, one blue, and one pale, rushed towards him from their former places in maintaining and keeping their winter home. One was half-Elven, but that didn’t matter when family was on the table. They scooped Terry up in their arms and covered him in kisses and there was more than one pair of eyes that got a little moist. 

"Any trouble?” said the blue one, known to the world as La'Ming Ton, Fushi Mermaid. 

“You were right about the twins turning up,” said Terry, letting Mak'arune Ton add a bobble hat to his ensemble. “Mom, it isn’t that cold. Give over…”

“You need to stay warm, baby. Did they make more trouble for you?" 

"No, your scrying was right on the button. I gave them the wand and they bought it hook, line and sinker. I could tell Lup was gonna be pissed, though." 

"She’ll get over it. How’d they get back into this dimension? I never saw that part." 

"Special belts. Which means we might be in for trouble when they recharge." 

La'ming grinned. "I think they’ll forgive us. Meanwhile, it can help fill out the Bail Fund." 

Terry let himself inside to warm by the fire and started to relax after he handed over the fateful bill. "Grimaldis was a piece of work, though. I almost didn’t make it in.”

“Yeah. We tried to warn your sister, but…” Mak'arune shrugged. “You just can’t warn people sometimes.”

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 8]

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Still Tumbl'd, Still TAZ - Chapter 37 - InterNutter - The Adventure Zone (Podcast) [Archive of Our Own]

In this chapter - the moments when they had their adoption acknowledged.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 5]

Still Tumbl'd, Still TAZ - Chapter 36 - InterNutter - The Adventure Zone (Podcast) [Archive of Our Own]

In this chapter, revenge is the sweetest gift a family can give.

Taako had taken the flier off of the dweeb because it was more or less a professional exchange. He, too, had been handing out fliers for Monty Pithon’s Amazing Circus and they both promised to see what the other’s flier was about. You know, the usual horseshit.

Except this dude actually turned up. In the actual midway while he was doing the lunch rush and turning it into an instructional show at the same time. Lup was down with the local crud, so he had to go solo this time.

“And that’s the chicken bouillabaisse,” he smoothed, ladling out small portions of it to the audience thanks to one of the circus brats. Anyone who actually worked in the pandemonium of the circus would stop by for whatever they wanted, but the people watching him had to add an offering to the box before they got theirs.

Bluejeans dude added a silver to the pot and, after taking a few bites, called the kid with the box back to add a couple of gold. Nice guy. This meant, of course, that Taako had to go to whatever his shindig was. Scouting forum for something called Ip Re.

He was only a hundred and sixteen. Barely an adult by Elven standards, so he showed it to his moms and sickened sister. A little of his legendary ginger garlic chicken soup saw her over the crud enough to come and attend with him.

My gods… it’s full of nerds…

Lup was still a little under the weather despite his soup, and he needed to boost her spirits. So he kept up the acerbic comments in her ear about the nerds, geeks, and dweebs that took turns up on the podium. Interesting stuff. This super-nerd called Hallwinter insisted that there was more than one planar system, and was busy devising a method of departing one planar system to investigate another.

Lup was coming up with some interesting questions about it and jotting them down. Taako kept his questions in his head. The ones that Lup didn’t think of, anyway.

There was a queue of people who wanted to ask nerdy questions. Some of them also bought books thick enough to be fucking weapons.

As they approached the desk where Professor Hallwinter was signing and answering queries, it was none other than Bluejeans man himself! He leaned over to his sister and said, “Nerd alert,” a little too loudly.

It was classic. He looked over their way, did a double-take, took off his glasses and cleaned them, and looked again.

Then it was their turn.

“He– Yo– Wha– I– There’s two of you? I mean, we were looking for a cook for the eventual mission, but… twins would solve a lot of the bond engine issues. Hi. Sildar Hallwinter. Professor.”

Lup had recovered her edge. Taako could tell by the way she launched right into their Bit without turning a hair. “Wow. So… you think all Elves look alike, then?”

“That’s a bit speciesist,” said Taako. “And listen to him presuming we’re twins.”

“We are totally different people,” said Lup. “Next thing you know, he won’t be able to tell us apart despite the obvious differences.”

He was stammering so fast that it almost made a word. “Ah-er-ab-u-da-er-ih-tha-oh-de-ur…” He was turning so red it was a miracle he didn’t bust a vessel somewhere.

Lup burst out laughing, and Taako followed. “We’re pulling your leg, professor. Of fucking course we’re twins. Hi. Call me Lup. And this is my dumb baby brother…”

“Taako,” said Taako. “From Tre Llew-Ddion.”

It was a half-hour of interesting questions, followed by being loaded up with offers to further their education at the Institute of Planar Research and Exploration. The very young Professor Hallwinter thought they could gain some diplomas - after a few catch-up courses that they’d obviously sail through.

In spite of all evidence to the contrary, he thought they were both very brilliant and would be shining stars at the Institute. “Now I know he’s trying to sell something,” Taako joked on their way back to camp. “You and I both know I’m as dumb as a bag of rocks.”

“Let’s humour him,” said Lup. “If nothing else, we can be cooks and get a proper education.” She had her wicked smirk back, too. “Besides, he looks like he’d be fun to play with.”

“Play gentle,” Taako advised. “Humanmen are kind’a fragile.”

If he only knew then what he’d know in less than a century…

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 7]

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Still Tumbl'd, Still TAZ - Chapter 32 - InterNutter - The Adventure Zone (Podcast) [Archive of Our Own]

Trying to be a decent adult is hard.

[TAZ Prompts Remaining: 8]