Three days. I was forced to waste three whole goddamn days because of this. Needless to say, I wasn't happy about it at all.
"My liege… I'm still not convinced that this is a—"
A single raised finger and a glare were enough to make Arnwald fall silent and let out a dejected sigh. He was sitting on my couch, along with Morgana, and I had the two of them wear casual clothes. In the forr's case, that was a white shirt and brown knit vest combo right out of the fashion handbook of Judy's dad, while the latter was in a white turtleneck sweater and jeans. At first glance, they looked like a perfectly ordinary middle-aged couple. It took so effort to get them to this point, especially since Arnwald didn't want to trim his sideburns, but by this point, they looked decently normal enough.
It was Friday, after school, and we were ready to welco our 'guests' from the National Family Support Services. The very, very conveniently tid visit by them, as it just happened that Director Savir's whole safekeeping-ploy with the old law book and whatnot was on this very day as well. What a koinkydink, am I right?
Ugh. Putting being facetious aside, this whole thing was about to give stomach ulcers. The entire situation just reeked of Narrative influence, to the point I had no idea where to even begin describing it. The timing itself was just the worst, and not only that, because we were being randomly investigated by the national services instead of the local ones, it was impossible to stop them in their tracks without causing an even bigger ss. Money and influence could make a lot of things happen, but they still had their limits, especially when we only had three days to do sothing about it.
Not only that, the letter they sent explicitly demanded the presence of the entire Dunning family. Emphasis on the word 'entire', aning I was required to stick around and not, say, ss around as a certain Abyssal with a nice mask. The question was, why? What was the nebulous Narrative's ga?
Was this whole situation created just to inconvenience ? To keep occupied? To set up another event sowhere else? Or was I supposed to take it prima facie, and conclude that its only goal was to stop from nabbing the stupid book and rubbing it under Savir's nose? And if so, why? What was the through-line, the end goal?
Did the Narrative set it up because my doing so would interfere with its plot, or was set up like this to keep busy so that I wouldn't get involved earlier? Or maybe it was reverse-psychology? We recognized that it was an obvious trap, so this whole charade existed just to get riled up enough to interfere with the Savir-plot just out of spite. But wait! If the Narrative understood enough to use reverse-psychology on , it should've known that I would realize that it was using reverse-psychology on , so maybe it's actually reverse-reverse-psychology, where it was trying to make doubt my initial conclusion, and…
"Ugh," I groaned, and my sisters walked over to my side.
"Brother? Are you all right?" Penny asked with a concerned look, and I tried to flash a reassuring smile.
"It's nothing, kiddo. I'm just tired."
They weren't convinced.
"You could take a nap," Snowy proposed and patted on the back. "We'll call you when they get here."
"No, that's not it," I said with a shake of my head. "Thanks for the concern, but knowing how things work around here, they would show up the mont I walked up the stairs."
Not to ntion, I was physically unable to take naps, so the whole suggestion was moot, to begin with.
"Hey, L-Leonard?" another voice called out to , this ti from the direction of the guest room.
"Yes?"
Tajana poked her head out and gestured for to co closer. She was wearing casual clothes and bunny slippers, and I had her wear a blonde wig, just in case this was one of those multi-layered plots where the child protective services were used by a third party (say, so Abyssals) to case out our ho looking for her. If nothing else, it would at least sow so confusion.
In any case, she glanced at the senior Knights sitting on the couch and she lowered her voice
"Uuu… So, I just need to stay in my room, right?"
"The guest room, but yes," I confird.
"And if I don't make a noise, I get my own TV?"
"Yes."
"And… and if they sohow know about and they want to see , I tell them I'm a family friend staying over, and if I don't raise any suspicion, I still get my own TV, right?"
"Yes, that was the deal."
"I-I know, I'm just making sure," she huffed and puffed, then muttered, "Why am I only a family friend?"
"Because, as I've already told you, I'm not adopting you."
"That's not what I ant!" she complained, but when Arnwald looked over to see what the commotion was about, she froze up and then sputtered, "I-I'll be g-good!" and shut the door.
…
Seriously, how did this scaredy-cat of a woman end up as a spymaster again?
For the record, that was a rhetorical question. The answer was nepotism. In cases like this, the answer was always nepotism, and in a society still running on pseudo-feudalist aesthetics, it was doubly so.
Anyhow, since they were looking at already, I made my way over to the couch, with my sisters in tow. Unfortunately, looking at Arnwald and Morgana sitting side by side like that once again reminded of all the… well, I wouldn't necessarily call it hardship. Annoyance? No, that's too weak. Absolute pain-in-the-assitude? Yeah, that sounded about right. So yes, I was definitely reminded of the pain-in-the-assitude I suffered over the past three days.
"My liege…" Arnwald began, but when I glared at him, he hastily backpedalled. "I an… Leonard? I'm still not sure we're the right people for this job."
Exhibit A: one of the main sources of my problems. This man and his constant complaints.
"I told you, we don't have any alternatives, and even if we did, it's too late to back out now," I responded with words I felt like I'd spoken about a thousand tis in the last seventy-two hours.
Since this developnt required a full family to be present, for fear that it would lead to even more investigations and more PITAssitude in the future, it ant I needed soone to play the parents, and these two fit the bill to a tee. They were the right age, knew each other well enough to seem natural, and most importantly, they were knowledgeable enough about and my family life to play the role well.
"I understand, it's just that…" Arnwald griped and glanced at the woman sitting by his side. "I don't want to make sis—, I an, Morgana uncomfortable by doing this."
"I'm not uncomfortable," she stated without any reservations. "Not to ntion, it's a request from His Maj— I an, from Leonard, so we must do our best to comply."
"Naturally, but playing a married couple is…" the grown man muttered like an awkward teen, and I could once again feel my stomach cramps.
Why was it that even the most competent people around had the weirdest hangups?
"As far the world is concerned, you are married right now, so put up with it," I said sternly, and it made Arnwald exhale a defeated breath. "Speaking of which, you've got the IDs on you, right?"
"Of course," Morgana answered pronto and presented an old-school paper ID. Mine was plastic, but apparently, these were more 'authentic' for these two's age group. At least according to the guys that forged these, and since they were the experts, I had to rely on them. Considering how real and worn they looked, at least I could be sure it was professional work.
Since things were much more involved this ti, bearing in mind these docunts weren't supposed to fool a casual ID check but governnt workers who dealt with these every day, I didn't rely on the sa black-market guy I used to make Snowy's and Penny's papers. Instead, I outsourced the problem to Moose. Since the Celestial Intelligence Network was already full of experts on espionage, skullduggery, and fake identities (considering they had an entire pipeline for adopting out Celestial kids to assets), I figured they would do a better job… and I was unfortunately very right about that.
I say 'unfortunately' because, once they got wind of the news that Archon Polemon himself was calling upon them, the whole Celestial Hub lit up like a Christmas tree, and they overcompensated by crafting a watertight cover for our Dunning family, including IDs, marriage- and birth-certificates, inserting all of those into the national databases, as well as a full-on cover story for everyone, including employnt-history and backstories… all of which I had to individually review, sign, transport, rehearse, and so on. Hell, between school, attending the Draconic Federation etings Roland insisted upon, and all of these, I barely even had the ti to do my daily Far Sight roll-calls, and I was getting seriously worried about losing the drift of the current events.
That was all the more reason to make sure we could assuage any concerns these civil servants may have had about the Dunning household, so that I could finally start crossing things off my bloody priority list again.
"Morgana Dunning," the knightess spoke as she looked at her ID, and then she snatched the other one out of her temporary husband's hand. "And Arnwald Dunning. They don't have a bad ring to them, do they?"
"They sound…" Arnwald tried to formulate an answer, but the words were stuck in his throat, so Morgana let out a modest chuckle, her eyes clearly showing her amusent.
"I could get used to them."
"Sister Morgana. Please don't tease ," the man grumbled but then clicked his tongue. "I called her 'sister' again, didn't I? This is hard."
"Just relax," Morgana told him as she handed his ID back to him, and then squeezed his hand. "Just pretend we're still trainee Squires, and it's going to be all right."
"I'll try," the man declared with an altogether too serious look on his face, and I was just about to get annoyed again when Penny's voice made everyone tense up.
"Brother! There's a car in the driveway! They're here!"
"You're being too loud," I said and gestured for her to get away from the window. "All right, everyone. Stick to the script, mind your words, and everything will be fine."
The people in the room nodded, so more confidently than others, and after taking a deep breath, I headed over to the front door. I waited for them to ring the doorbell once, but only opened the door after the second ti. I figured this would make it more natural.
On the other side, I found a pair dressed in business casual; a tall and lanky man in his late twenties, and a slightly overweight woman in her mid-to-late forties, by eye. They looked fairly unremarkable, but the look in their eyes said that they weren't just basic placeholders either.
"Good afternoon," the woman greeted in a brisk and authoritative tone and offered a hand. "Rebecca Servause, from the Departnt of Family, Youth, and Children of the National Family Support Services."
"Faron Deacon, pleased to et you," the man spoke in a softer voice and didn't offer his hand, probably because it was full of binders and other papers. "May we co in?"
"Leonard Dunning, and sure," I answered and stepped aside. "We've been expecting you."
The pair of civil servants ca inside and I directed them on where to put their shoes and coats before we entered the living room. They seed to be surprised by the number of people present, but after everyone introduced themselves, we all sat down.
"Since I presu you've read the letter my office sent to your residence, I think we can skip the preamble," the woman stated, and her colleague handed her a clipboard. "We'd like to ask you a few questions if it's all right with you."
"Excuse ," Morgana cut in, raising her hand. "The letter didn't include the reason why you would want to visit us."
"It is standard procedure, Mrs. Dunning."
"Just Morgana will do," she cut in again with a friendly smile. "No need to be so formal."
"Yes. Morgana," the woman muttered while she was looking for a pen. "The truth of the matter is, our office received multiple reports about three underaged youth living alone on this lot, without parental supervision." She paused when the male office worker handed her his own pen, and she impatiently tapped it against the clipboard. "I see that's not the case right now."
"It's an easy mistake to make," Morgana continued with a warm smile and glanced at Arnwald. It was his turn to speak up, but the man was too busy staring at her, so she had to elbow him in the side to get him moving.
"Ah, yes," he blurted out, followed by a soft harrumph. "Due to our line of work, we are rarely at ho."
"Your line of work," the woman repeated and turned the pages on her clipboard. "Since it ca up in conversation, can I ask you about your professional history?"
"Until recently, we both worked in the military," Arnwald explained, and while his voice was a little wooden, he was doing well enough. I gave him a secret thumbs up as encouragent.
"Both of you?" the younger man spoke up for the first ti since we sat down.
"Indeed," Morgana confird.
"Is that where you t?"
"We…" Arnwald began, but then he faltered, so Morgana picked up the conversation where he dropped it with an amused chuckle.
"I t Arnwald when we were still kids," she explained.
"Really?" the woman asked half-heartedly as she jotted down a few things. "And you enlisted together."
"At the sa ti," our Sir Eagle emphasized. "We were serving under the sa… erm… officer."
"Didn't that get in the way of your relationship?" the male civil servant pressed on, though he sounded more curious than skeptical of their claim. "I thought the military forbade relationships between people in active service."
"We ended up in different units," Morgana explained hastily.
"We could rarely et each other," Arnwald followed her up, sounding genuinely pensive. "Deployed to different parts of the world."
"It was impossible to consider a relationship under those circumstances," Morgana sighed. "We were in danger every day, and couldn't be sure we could ever et again."
"But you did," the woman stated in a phlegmatic voice, trying to make it sound better by forcing a smile. "And you even had children."
"It just worked out in the long run," Morgana answered, this ti a bit more uncertainly. I couldn't bla her; since these were child protective services by any other na, I was expecting them to ask about us, not to get bogged down in these two's backstory.
"It was hard back then," Sir Eagle reminisced with a forlorn expression. "If only I was bolder…"
"It's all right, Arnwald," Da Gorgon whispered and held his hand. "The past is in the past, not worth dwelling upon."
"I know, I know," he answered, and they stared into each other's eyes with gazes full of warmth and longing and regret and what hell was I even looking at?
I blinked first and then narrowed my eyes. What was the deal with the atmosphere between these two? I an, I knew they had so latent UST, potentially pent-up for decades, but this really wasn't the ti or place for that.
The governnt workers also shared my sentint, as the woman loudly cleared her throat.
"Yes, I understand now. You also said you are no longer working in the military-industrial complex?"
"Erm, no…" Arnwald responded a bit too slowly, hesitant to look away. "We are now working with Constable LLC."
"We're founders," Morgana corrected him.
"Yes, founders," he repeated with a nod. "It's a security company. We're employing ex-soldiers and veterans."
"Really. Fascinating," the female civil servant comnted without aning it and wrote down a few more lines and crossed a few check-boxes. "Did you switch careers for the sake of your family?"
"You could say that," Arnwald answered awkwardly.
"The truth is, even before this, our posts and superiors didn't pose any obstacle to a… relationship."
"Yes. There really isn't… I an, wasn't any reason why we couldn't…"
"Excuse ," I cut in with a hand raised, drawing the attention of our guests. "Are these details really important? I'm sure you're busy, and we also have places to be, so can we discuss that thing you ntioned at the beginning? About the reports and us?"
"Yes, yes," the man of the duo nodded along and produced another piece of paper from his binders before handing it over to his colleague.
"You're Leonard Dunning, if I rember right," she noted, and when I nodded, she moved on to the girls. "Penelope Dunning, and…" she paused, and then levelled a gaze at snowy, "Neige Inanna-Dunning, right?"
"Y-Yes ma'am," my Abyssal sister responded politely.
"Indeed. This was another thing I wished to inquire about," the woman said and reorganized her papers. "According to internal docuntations, despite already having two children attending high-school, you adopted another, similarly aged child. This is… highly unusual."
A-ha! Gotcha! We were already expecting this, and prepared accordingly!
"We knew Neige's family from our military days," Morgana explained, sticking to the script almost verbatim. "She used to play with Leonard and Penelope since they were young, but unfortunately her birth parents died in a tragic accident."
"She lived with her brother until recently, but then Leonard learned that he abused her as her guardian, and so we did our best to separate them," Arnwald followed her up, though his recounting of the draft we prepared was a tad more wooden. "After the court judged in our favor, we imdiately appealed to adopt her, and we were granted custody."
"We have the court papers, if you'd like to see. Do you need a copy?" I proposed, and I wasn't lying. When I said the guys on the Celestial Hub were overcompensating, I ant it.
"No need. We can procure the relevant docunts ourselves," the man declined our offer, though the woman apparently found this annoying, and sent him a disparaging glance before turning to Snowy.
"Neige? Can I call you Neige?"
"Y-Yes ma'am," she answered a little stiffly.
"Are you treated well here?"
"Of course she is!" Penny answered in her stead, and suddenly hugged her. "She's my sister!"
"I understand, but I was talking to Neige."
Snowy hesitated for a mont, then flashed a genuine smile.
"Yes. I'm happy here."
"Don't you miss your family?"
"I… miss so of the people I used to know, but this is my family," she emphasized. "Even if we aren't related by blood."
"That's good to hear," the woman noted flatly, and after organizing her papers, she moved on. "We should've asked so more basic questions first, but we got sidetracked, so let's start from the top this ti."
What followed were a solid thirty minutes of taking all our identifying information (na, birth date, mother's na, et cetera), common daily stuff (where we attend school, our attendance record, and so on), and even so small talk.
Luckily, we were prepared for everything, including their questions about my latest absence from school, complete with fake hospital records and everything. Once again, the guys at the Hub were frighteningly good at this, but that was kind of expected.
On the other hand, the longer things stretched on, the more restless my temporary 'parents' beca. Luckily, it seed to escape the notice of our guests, or at least so I thought. Things remained more or less as we predicted until the point when Snowy's adoption ca up again, and they took our copy of the totally legit and not-at-all freshly printed court docunts about it.
"Since we're on the topic of adoption, I can't help but wonder," the man cut in, sounding unsure if he should ask, but when I raised a brow, he said, "What about the two of you?"
"You an, Brother and I?" Penny blurted out, sounding alard.
"I don't wish to offend anyone here, but you don't look much alike, or resemble your parents much, so I couldn't help but wonder if there was sothing more to your family."
"What are you insinuating, young man?" Arnwald interrupted, sounding unusually impatient.
"It was just an honest question," the office worker said in a hurry with his palm raised. "You said your work in the military got in the way of raising a family until recently, and you seed to be willing to adopt another child when the opportunity presented itself, so I was wondering if maybe…?"
"You're asking if we're adopted?" I asked, barely stopping myself from laughing out loud. "In front of us? Just like that? Are you the worst social worker or what?"
"There's no need to be rude," the woman spoke up next, between huffs. "We have to docunt these things for the case files. Not to ntion, a lack of family resemblance can be due to other reasons as well."
"Such as?" Morgana asked, sounding genuinely baffled.
"Well, you did talk about how you were deployed separately and rarely t during your military career. Considering your oldest child's age, I presu he was conceived during that ti, which ans the identity of the father could be brought into question basen on—"
"You!" Arnwald suddenly erupted and rose to his feet. "How dare you! We welco you into this house, and you dare slander her like that in front of my face! My Morgana is no loose woman!"
"Sir, please…" the man tried to get a word in, but our Sir Eagle had none of it.
"And you! I had enough with your disrespect! Get out of my sight, this instant!"
"Yeah! Get out!" Penny backed him up, at once, startling the duo even further.
What followed was a short yet rather chaotic argunt where I could barely get a word in, but considering that they managed to piss off both Arnwald and Penny (by insinuating that we weren't 'proper' siblings), I had no choice but to watch the whole situation devolve in record ti.
"Easy there, easy," I said as I stood between the two groups, but by then, the civil servants already got the mo and got ready to leave. In the anti, Morgana did her best to calm down the furious Arnwald, and once our guests put on their shoes and stepped through the door, I flagged them down and told them, "Sorry about that. Father had to fly ho in a hurry, and he's a bit touchy at the mont."
"It's… okay," the man answered tentatively. "We've seen worse."
"I can imagine," I responded softly, and after a beat, I also added, "By the way, sorry about what I said earlier. You're obviously not the worst social worker ever." I paused for another beat and then pointed at his colleague. "It's you."
"What?" she blurted out, nostrils flaring.
"Oh, and one last thing," I continued while ignoring her reaction. "This is my personal advice, but you miiight just want to drop this whole case. You see, we happen to have so pretty good lawyers, and what you just said a minute ago could sorta potentially totally get you sued for libel. You know? I'm just saying."
And with that, I waved my goodbyes and closed the door behind , followed by a groan and an imdiate switch to Far Sight.
"… told you this would be a waste of ti," the guy stated as he stepped into the car and threw his binders onto the dashboard. "The adoption looked odd on paper, but it makes sense in person. A well-maintained ho, healthy kids, overworked parents, no police record, all docunts in order. Anonymous tips are always like this."
"It's still our job to look into them," the woman answered and fastened her seatbelt.
"Case closed?"
"Let's schedule another surprise visit in two or three weeks," she said as she scribbled sothing at the bottom of the questionnaire on her clipboard. "Just for calling us bad at our job."
"To be fair, what you said was uncalled for."
"I just wanted to see how they'd react. I didn't expect to be kicked out," the woman fud and put her clipboard down, then handed the man's pen back to him.
"What did you expect? It's a military family! I'm surprised they put up with us for as long as they did."
"Fair enough," she answered just as they left our neighbourhood, and I figured that was good enough.
Sighing, I exited Far Sight and returned to the living room, where Arnwald was sitting on the couch again, his face buried in his hands.
"I made a mistake."
"No! You were cool!" Penny insisted, shaking the man's shoulder. "Right? Right?"
She was clearly looking for Snowy's assistance but got it from Morgana instead.
"Indeed, he was." She let out a thoughtful hum, and whispered, "My Morgana?"
The man on the couch shuddered and looked up at her.
"I'm sorry, Sister Morgana! I was worked out, and it slipped out because… because we were talking about our youth…"
Da Gorgon let out a low, throaty, but altogether pleasant chuckle, covering her mouth with her fingers.
"Yes, I do rember you used to call like that when we were young."
"I'm sorry. It was terribly disrespectful."
She paused and crouched down next to Arnwald.
"I didn't hate it back then… and I didn't hate it now either."
"Morgana…" the grown man stared at him with confused yet elated eyes, and in this situation, all I could say was…
"Get a room, you two!" I grumbled as I walked over to them, and they snapped out of it at once and stood at attention.
"My apologies, my liege! Because of my temper, we failed the mission…"
"Nah, it worked out mostly fine," I told him, and absently patted Snowy's head to recharge my energy levels. "I'll have to ask you to play the role again in a couple of weeks though."
"As you command," Morgana declared and saluted, closely followed by Sir Eagle. Then, tid perfectly to break the mont, the door of the guest room in the back opened.
"Can I co out now?" Tajana asked, poking her head out, and seeing us all still clustered around the couch, she asked, "D-Did I miss anything?"
"You wouldn't believe how rude those people were!" Penny fud as she walked over to her side, closely followed by my other sister.
"Very rude," Snowy agreed, and the three of them entered the guest room together. I figured they did so to give these two so breathing room, and I followed suit.
"We don't have alcohol, but we've got so root beer and snacks in the kitchen. Feel free to help yourself to them, and relax a bit."
The senior Knights acknowledged with shallow nods, and I left them to whatever spring-is-in-the-air-isms they were up to and headed upstairs. Once there, I closed the door of my room behind , walked into the middle of the room, and allowed myself three deep breaths.
While things ended up a little shaky by the end, this stupid side-track was successfully resolved, the public services were none the wiser about our fake backgrounds, and it even did sothing to the UST between those two downstairs. It still annoyed to no end that we had to waste three whole days on this, but it was done, so I adopted a zen mindset and shook off all my world troubles like water off the duck's back.
…
It didn't work.
"Oh well," I whispered after the third breath, and activated my Leoforr, donning a familiar white tailcoat, black gloves, and yet another version of my mask. I limbered up my arms and legs, used my fingers to comb my hair back, and then exhaled hard. "All right. Ti to work off so stress."
And then, I disappeared from my room, without anyone being the wiser. As usual.
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