Your task from the client was simple; Kill the target and take care of the kid too. It’s been ten years since then, and you’ve just realized you may have misunderstood “take care of kid too.”
“Good evening, Agent Twilight. The order from HQ is simple. Kill Donovan Desmond using any means.” Handler pauses, then shrewdly stares at Twilight from underneath her sunglasses. “I know you don’t like doing this, but take care of the kids too. Both of them. Even the six-year-old.” Handler looks strangely solemn and Twilight is a little confused. Handler had been so nonchalant about him having to get married and have a kid, so why is she concerned now?
Twilight swallows. “Yes. You won’t be disappointed.” HQ has made him adopt a girl for Operation Strix, so he’s not really that surprised that he has to “take care” of the Desmond brothers. It’s twisted that he’s going to kill their father and then adopt them, but he supposes that’s the life of a spy. The boys deserve a better life than being the son of a war criminal, and while Twilight is still insecure about his lack of parenting experience, he knows he’ll have to do his very best for them. Because, after all, Twilight just wants to have a world in which children won’t cry anymore. (Even if it means murdering their father.)
… Except both thirteen-year-old Demetrius and six-year-old Damian get strangely attached to Loid Forger, and all it took was a few dinners, some headpats, and reassuring them “it’s okay to not be okay”. Demetrius is an Imperial Scholar, but he’s also just a kid who’s been under pressure his entire life. Maybe it really is his fake job as a psychiatrist, but Demetrius opens up to Twilight about how he cries and breaks down every time before an exam, yet he has to stay strong for his family and especially his younger brother. And Damian, well, he’s a brat, but he’s six years old and already neglected by his family, so Twilight gives him a pass. Twilight was worried that his fake-but-not-fake-wife Yor might think it’s too much, but she’s absolutely delighted by the new additions, and his daughter Anya’s happy too. She chases “Sy-on boy” around the house while Demetrius helps Yor with the cooking, and although Twilight still feels slightly guilty about murdering Donovan (and not confessing it to his family), Demetrius and Damian tells him they’re way happier with the Forgers than they were with their biological family, so it all works out in the end. Loid enjoys his cup of tea. And why was Handler so worked up again?
It’s ten years later at Demetrius’ wedding when Handler approaches Twilight, an odd look of shame painted on her face.
“… I wasn’t going to tell you, but I think you misunderstood “take care of the kids too” back then.”
Twilight, better known as Loid Forger, pauses. “What? I know I’m not the perfect father, so should I had passed them onto another agent…?”
Handler exhales. “I can’t sugarcoat it. HQ wanted you to kill them,” she says bluntly.
There’s a curious silence.
“Oh,” Loid Forger says. “Oh.”
Handler waves a hand dismissively. “Don’t worry, it all turned out fine in the end and the boys like you, don’t they? They’re technically not supposed to be alive, but Demetrius is going to work as a diplomat for peace and Damian’s following in his footsteps, so it was better to keep and adopt them after all.”
Loid stares at his family’s joyful faces. Yor’s still as beautiful as she was years ago, Anya and Damian are bickering as always, and Demetrius is practically glowing from happiness.
… His family might have started out as a forgery, but he won’t give them up for anything in the world.
“… I apologize for messing it up all those years ago,” Loid says if only to be polite. He’s supposed to be WISE’s elite spy, yet he misunderstood the most simple of all orders. Really, he’s getting soft.
A smile quirks up on Handler’s lips. “I suppose your fatherly instincts just overcame everything else, eh?”
Loid sighs, a little embarrassed but content. “Yeah.” Then he realises he’s not embarrassed at all. “Yeah.”
Consider a fantasy story where, as often seems to happen in this genre, a young human is pulled from their world into a world of magic and elves and wizards and prophecies.
But this happens just about every other Tuesday in this world because the resident soothsayer is a little trigger-happy and is spouting off prophecies left and right. So there’s been an influx of teenaged humans without adult supervision and the reigning queen had to set up an investigative bureau and a complaints department just to deal with this problem.
So our human protagonist finds themselves in a dark spooky forest, stuck in some kind of ewok-style trap. Along comes a bearded elf (don’t tease him about the beard, he’s trying to make a good impression on the dwarf lady in charge of his department) who looks up at the net, sighs, and out comes the paperwork.
“If you wouldn’t mind, please state your name, age, and how you came to this realm.”
“How what now?”
“What was it? Wardrobe? Magic portal? Dragged under the bed by trolls?”
“Um…I just woke up here?” They mumble, confused.
“Alrighty,” the elf flips a few pages. “We’ll just skip to section D then. Any inherent magic? Any strange inheritances received lately?”
“No?” The protagonist leans on the net. “I mean, my former roommate gave me their old David Bowie CD collection, but I don’t think that counts.”
The elf nods once or twice, hard to tell if he’s listening or not, and pencils a few things in. “Alright, we’re almost done with the preliminary stuff, then we can get you out of there and down to the Bureau so we can get you home. Current status of parents or parental figures?”
The protagonist cringes. “Um…not applicable, I guess.”
“Oh dear. And your age again is-?”
“Er…fourteen?”
At this the elf sighs. “Oh no, not another one. Some days I’d like to shake some sense into that soothsayer, really, I would. I swear I am this close to setting myself up as the next evil wizard around here just so I can keep some of these would-be heroes out of trouble.”
He then flings his pencil, sharp as a knife, and down comes the net with Protagonist inside. The elf helps them to their feet and brushes the leaves off their shoulders.
“Alright then, you,” he grumbles, “Lets get you down to the Bureau with the other three prophecy-kids who turned up this week.”
He has so much paperwork to do now.
Inspector Clarek of the Royal Prophecy Complaint Bureau would like a break. He had to find exit portals and dimensional rifts for six kids in one week and half those prophecies didn’t even come true.
At this point, Clarek has snapped and named himself The Dark Lord Keralc. Got the title registered at town hall and everything. He’s taken to kidnapping the Prophecy Kids and undertaking most of their quests himself so they don’t get killed.
He accidentally ended up adopting twelve of them, including Casey there.
fuck it. balance youtuber au because i’ve been thinking about it
(modern au with no magic but still elves/dwarves/etc)
the twins have a joint channel but they post things together as often as they make videos on their own. they do vlogs, story times, and challenge videos both together and not, but do stuff with fashion/makeup together. taako does cooking on his own and lup does chemistry experiments that involve fire more often than not. if someone says they like the twins’ videos it’s a wild card as to what they watch them for, but everyone ends up liking all of their content because who can hate the twins? they have a lot of “annoying influencer” energy but are actually really nice to fans/people in general and donate a lot of their Youtube Money to charities and stuff (all of the ipre does this too because fuck rich people except for them)
magnus’ channel is mostly woodworking/construction projects. he does occasional story times and in every one he’s carving and/or painting a wooden duck. he does vlogs too and half of them are him buying more woodworking stuff (idk shit about it so idk what he’d get lol) and the other half have a part where he sees someone walking a dog and him going to meet them. almost every video includes/mentions julia and people make “magnus talking about julia” compilations bc he loves his wife and talks about her all the time. he’s very positive in general and everyone loves how he’s a human golden retriever
merle’s channel is 99% gardening, 1% collating with the others. he made one joke along the lines of plant fucking and it was not serious at all but his subscribers/followers made into such a big joke that he makes at least one joke per video except for when his kids are in the video, which is when he makes it suuuper educational and fun and wholesome. mookie tries to eat the plants and play with the soil and mavis tells her dad about what she’s learned about biology in school. also he puts “(emotional)” and “(not clickbait)” at the end of video titles randomly despite knowing what they mean
barry’s channel is science-centric (yes he collabs with lup frequently) but about more feilds of science. sometimes he goes on rants about theoretical physics like a madman a la bdg’s unraveled series and sometimes he makes videos titled “making the volcano kitchen experiment but the size of a kiddie pool (emotional).” he also has a series about paranormal activity/cryptids, stuff like “why ghosts should be and are real” and “my top five favorite pieces of bigfoot evidence” and like i said this is a no magic au but he once was asked in a q&a about what he’d do if he was a lich and gave a surprisingly detailed response? people were really confused but intrigued?? did barry invent magic???
lucretia 100% has an art channel, but she also writes prose and poetry in her free time and sometimes reads them for videos. she posts speedpaints of her work (digital and traditional) with her telling her process/inspiration or doing story times as the background audio. she had a period of time where she started writing a whole novel in her spare time (basically the balance story but different characters) and all her videos were her making concept art. her fans loved it and boosted it to the point where it actually got published, so now she’s a best selling author with a seven book series. now she keeps making videos of her concept art for other book ideas (the other arcs) with her infodumping about the characters/plot/etc
davenport doesn’t actually have a channel, but has been in the background of all the others’ videos to the point where he’s treated like a cryptid and has a small fanbase of his own. he’s mostly in merle’s videos (because they’re dating) and magnus’ vlogs (because magnus Loves His Friends) but he’s been in at least a handful of everyone’s videos. he makes a twitter and instantly gets thousands of followers. he tweets the most random shit at the most random times and half of them become memes. people find out he’s a professor at the college the rest of them met at and everyone looses it
kravitz is in a similar position as davenport, but he was convinced to start a channel. he mostly does stuff involving antiques because he collects them, so he does haul videos of what he bought or thrifted and videos of him restoring them as he looks up how old they were and what random shit they were used for and stuff. people make compilations of him getting off topic and going on a tangent about taako then realizing he just rambled for ten minutes and getting flustered. he also plays a handful of classical instruments and makes occasional collabs with lup + barry
despite having completely different channels they’re all friends??? people didn’t know at first but they found out through davenport and kravitz “this one guy who i think is dating taako but i’m not sure and idk his name” showing up in everyone’s videos. from then on they started collabing more often and it’s really fun to see them outside of their element. lup once almost burnt down magnus’ workshop while making a chemistry video with him. taako tried to teach kravitz how to make macaroons (keyword: tried) and kravitz talked about this new antique shop he found the whole time. barry went on and on and on about biology while gardening with merle, who tried to follow along but failed and ended up making fun of all the scientific names for plants
they call themselves the red robes after the main characters in lucretia’s novel (they’re not similar to the characters but there’s seven of them and six youtubers + one davenport)
they once did a big group collab where the twins dressed everyone up in high fashion outfits and lucretia painted a big portrait of all of them. it was very wholesome but also had a lot of lup and taako arguing over what accessory fits who and “no this person should do their hair like this!” and at one point magnus and kravitz just dipped to go play cards and talk about dogs
speaking of wholesome angus has a channel of his own which is mostly booktube with him getting halfway through a mystery novel, predicting the ending, and being 100% correct. he’s done videos with the others and is kinda associated with them but not totally, and is often lovingly referred to as the nephew to the rest of them
killian and carey don’t have a channel but are in the bg of magnus’ videos often. they were referred to as “magnus’ lesbian friends” until they got popular on instagram and became an internet power couple. johann has a small channel and a soundcloud he plays violin on and did one (1) collab with lup and it made him blow up overnight. avi has a semi-popular twitter and is mostly known as johann’s bf. sloane and hurley have a channel about drag racing/cars in general and don’t show their faces and go by the raven and ram
i was trying to think of who’d have a gaming channel and it’s 100% graham, who casually mentions that he’s friends with Pro Wrestler Jess The Beheader
lucas has a science focused channel similar to barry’s where he tries to be educational and ends up being annoying/kind of wrong about it. barry has a mini series called “lucas miller is a bitch here’s why” and it’s him disproving lucas’ theories with a deadpan expression and generally being better at science than him
remember when i said taako and lup have influencer energy despite being nice? yeah, lydia and edward are like that but they’re actually annoying. they have a popular makeup/fashion channel and lup and taako have gotten into slight drama with them over how the wonderland twins have been rude to them and the how the red robe twins are “jealous.” the internet is divided over who likes which pair of twins better
lup learns that greg fucking grimauldis (who the twins knew in high school) has a popular twitter/insta platform and tweets the “i am to collect” speech out of nowhere from everyone’s pov. taako tweets the video he took of him telling her and her immediately going “no fucking way that ASSHOLE is getting away with what he did to me” and opening twitter. it becomes a meme and he pays her back and changes his social media handles to “gregfuckinggrimauldis”
i can’t think of anything else because i don’t know enough about youtube but yeah.
