Cosmo curled up meekly in his chair at the barracks—called headquarters in a feeble attempt to hide what they really were—and lifted his gaze upward to Jorgen Von Strangle, who was glaring at him with such ferocity and anger that the veins in his neck were popping out.

Just like old times!

"So… did I mess up?" Cosmo ventured a guess. He had only just been sent on his first godparenting assignment in more than… some number bigger than five years… and by only just, it really did feel like it had been just a few seconds ago—

"MESS UP?" Jorgen roared. "Your total time from arrival to failure was seven seconds! You have set a new record for complete and utter imbecility!"

"I set a record?" Cosmo exclaimed, brightening. "Cool!"

BAM! Jorgen blasted Cosmo with his wand staff, burning the little fairy to a crisp.

"…I guess it's not so cool then?" Cosmo said timidly and painfully.

"You do not come up to your new assignment, say 'So I bet you wish for a monster fire-breathing iguana', poof it up before the poor puny child has even a chance to figure out what the fudge is going on, and burn the child to a crisp—in front of his entire class and thus revealing your existence to twenty-four human beings before your godchild even knows who you are!"

Cosmo blinked, scratching his head and shaking the last of the burnt crisps off his body. "That's bad, then?"

"AUGH!" Jorgen screamed in frustration. "How is it possible for anyone to be as utterly devoid of brains as you? I knew I should have just let your license expire! But no, the records don't lie, of all the happiest godchildren in the history of godparenting, Cosmo and Wanda were always at the top of the list, all these records at how much the human children just adored Cosmo and his silliness—silliness that is dangerous and rule-breaking and just plain moronic and a complete impediment to being a successful godparent without Wanda!"

Cosmo blinked again, recoiling a bit back into his chair. "Uh, could you say that again, but with less and smaller words?" he asked, trembling. All he had really gotten from that was that Jorgen thought he was stupid, but that was nothing new. Oh, and Jorgen had said Wanda's name a lot. And Cosmo wished he wouldn't.

"YOU'RE TOO DANGEROUS AND STUPID TO BE A GODPARENT! I AM FORCED TO TEAR UP YOUR LICENSE, AND I WILL TAKE GREAT PLEASURE IN DOING SO!"

"Well, duh, even I could have told you that! I did tell you that!" Cosmo jutted out his chin defiantly, actually smiling a bit in satisfaction, taking full advantage of this rare moment of him knowing something before it had been told to him—apparently knowing it before even Jorgen did. "I'm waaaaaaay too stupid to do this by myself! I can't do anything without… without W-W- …without her." His self-assured defiance faltered dangerously when trying to say her name. Straightening up again and crossing his arms, he added quickly, "I told you that, I told Poof that, and did either of you listen? N—wait a minute! Poofy!"

Jorgen rolled his eyes impatiently. "What does your puny and insignificant son have to do with any of this?"

A quick rush of courage shot through Cosmo's veins, and had he been thinking he would have decided to take advantage of it—but he wasn't thinking, which was just as well, because the sensation made him do something both courageous and stupid anyway. He shot out of his chair and hovered at the level of Jorgen's face, eyes narrowed dangerously but still with a touch of pleading in his voice. "Now listen here, Jorgen Von Yelling Guy! I told Poof that I'd try to godparent again and be a good dad to him so that he doesn't have a lame dad and now he does because I am lame and stupid and now I've failed him too like I've failed everyone else and… and manly tears!" Cosmo noisily sniffled as tears began to well up in his large eyes. Jorgen continued to glare at him, and Cosmo instantly shrunk back. "Meek, scared, puny tears," he corrected, wiping his eyes.

Jorgen's expression softened by a few degrees.

"Cosmo, do not think I am unaware of your suffering. I am making all the allowances for you I can, even though you hardly deserve them. I understand that you're going through a difficult time right now. Your wife is dead, your unborn twins were lost, your only child thinks that you are a loser—"

"You don't have to rub it in!" Cosmo shrieked.

"Oh right. Sorry." Jorgen cleared his throat. "My muscles may be made of steel, but my heart is like a cotton ball. Your plight makes me shed manly tears of my own. So I have given you all the allowances I can." His expression suddenly hardened back to his authoritative rage of before. "But you have used them all up!"

"Please!" Cosmo begged. "Please give me just one more chance! I promise I'll try to be smarter! Just don't make me go back to Poofy like a loser! I'd rather stay here with you for my entire life!"

Jorgen's eyes bulged in horror. "NOOOOOOOOOO! I cannot allow that! We must do something to get you out of my hair…" He looked down at Cosmo's godparenting license, lying on the desk in front of him. "I must have done something equally as drastic to get you this in the first place, but apparently the memory was so traumatic I have blocked it from my mind entirely. How did you pass your godparenting exam?"

"By getting the right amount of answers right," said Cosmo matter-of-factly.

"It must be on record here somewhere…" Jorgen abruptly stood up and made his way to the many rows of file cabinets behind him.

Although they were large and conspicuous, Cosmo hadn't noticed them until Jorgen began digging through them. "File cabinets?" he laughed. "Wow, get with the twentieth century! I haven't seen one of those in ages!"

"It is the twenty-first century," Jorgen grumbled without looking at Cosmo, instead intently flipping through the files. "It has been for fifty-four years now. …Fudgesickles! What is your last name again?"

"Uh… Smith?" Cosmo ventured.

"Uhsmith!" Jorgen quickly made his way to the U's. "You'd think I'd remember that… aha!" He pulled out a large folder and began leafing through the first documents inside. "Mm-hmm, yes, Wanda passed her godparenting exam without a hitch… but where is yours? Oh, right here."

There were a couple of different pieces of paper regarding Cosmo's test, rather than the single sheet for Wanda, and almost all of them were marked up with official-looking—and urgently condemning—red ink. Jorgen glanced through them, set the papers down, and began to rub his temples thoughtfully.

Cosmo waited. And waited. And waited. And—holy cheese, what was he doing and what was taking him so long?

"Found a peanut… found a peanut… found a peanut just now," Cosmo began to sing softly. "Just now I found a peanut, found a peanut just now. Picked it up, picked it up, picked it up just now, just now I picked it up, picked it up just now. Cracked it open, cracked it—"

"Would you kindly SHUT UP?" Jorgen roared.

"Well, I'm bored!" Cosmo countered. "What are you doing?"

"I am thinking! You should try it sometime!"

"Oh, I have, but it's too much work," grinned Cosmo.

He jumped back in fear as Jorgen decisively slammed his fist on his desk. "BINKY!"

Two seconds later, Jorgen's tiny assistant, secretary, and all-around lackey Binky poofed into the room. "Yes, sir?"

"In order to make sure Cosmo is a successful godparent again, we must take drastic measures as we did the last time! And there is only one drastic measure that will work! BRING ME POOF!"

"Uh… yes sir!" said Binky, looking confused but knowing better than to question Jorgen. He poofed out in an instant.

"Does that mean you're done thinking?" Cosmo asked.

Another quick poof showed that Binky was successful. Still looking a bit confused, he had returned in record time with an even more confused-looking Poof.

"What's going on?" Poof asked. Upon seeing Cosmo, his confusion grew even more pronounced. "Dad? What are you doing here? I thought you were going to start your new assignment today!"

"That is exactly why I have summoned you here!" Jorgen bellowed. "Binky, get back to your desk!"

"Uh, yes… sir?"

"NOW!"

Binky vanished in a POOF cloud that said "YES SIR!"

Jorgen turned to Cosmo. "And Cosmo, you wait outside! We need to have an intelligent conversation!"

Cosmo laughed. "Well, that sure leaves me out!"

"OUT!"

Jorgen grabbed Cosmo and drop-kicked him out the door, slamming it shut behind him. Two seconds later, Cosmo could be heard singing softly to himself, "Found a peanut, found a peanut…"

With just Jorgen and Poof left in the room, Poof crossed his arms in slight irritation. "Now do you mind telling me what's going on? It's craft time at the daycare and I need to teach the kids how to make papier-mâché aardvarks!"

"There are far more important matters in the world of fairy godparenting! The most pressing at the moment being your moronic dimwit of a father!"

Poof sighed. "Oh, great. What did he do this time?"

"He set a new record for failure—seven seconds! It's a wonder he even passed his exams in the first place!"

"How did he, then?"

"That is why I have called you here." Jorgen sat down at his desk and pushed Cosmo's earliest documents over to Poof. "As you probably don't know, since you are a lazy bum and have yet to even join the Fairy Academy let alone settle on an occupation, when a fairy is in training to be a fairy godparent they must pass a series of tests with their godchild and a mentor fairy godparent who already has their license. When your father first attempted this test, he failed miserably. Poor Lyman was in the hospital for three years…" Jorgen shook himself out of his tangent and got back to the matter at hand. "That should have been the end of it, but your mother insisted on giving him one more chance, with her as his mentor. It is against regulations for the mentor to be a family member or close friend, and Wanda was pretty much Cosmo's only friend, and they were boyfriend and girlfriend in all but name by that time… but I relented—"

"You relented?" Poof repeated incredulously. "You actually, even just once in your life, relented?"

Jorgen blanched a bit. "Hey, your mother could be very scary at times."

Poof nodded in understanding. "You're preaching to the choir here."

"Anyway, surprisingly, Cosmo did pass that time. And they got married not too long after that, thank goodness, so we never had to test Cosmo out on his own or with anyone other than Wanda again. The point is, it seems your mother was right. Your father is capable of being at least halfway competent when someone who knows him and knows how his wisp of a mind works is helping him." Jorgen's eyes narrowed. "And right now, that person is you!"

"Me?" Poof squeaked.

"Our only hope of getting Cosmo out of my hair—I mean your hair—I mean Fairy World—I mean, get him back to his job and become a productive member of society again, blah blah blah… he will have to relearn how to do his job, from someone who knows how to get through to him! And since Wanda is no longer with us, that leaves you!"

"You want me to be Dad's mentor?" cried Poof, disbelieving. "For poof's sake, for someone who's always going on about rules and regulations, and you want me—how can I be his mentor when I haven't had any godparent training, let alone a license?"

"Official training, no, but for the first twenty years of your life you were in a sense being mentored by your own parents, by observing them through their assignments. I believe sometimes you were even directly involved in wish-granting, in fact."

Poof nodded, looking away from Jorgen. "That's true…"

"Now then," said Jorgen, "we will give Cosmo another assignment. An easy one. And you will go with him, shadowing him for one month, assisting him and helping him to get his footing back."

"I suppose I don't have a say in this?" Poof muttered.

"NO!" bellowed Jorgen. "Look at it this way," he added, his voice not nearly as menacing, "if you do this, it will get your moronic father out of my—I mean your—hair for good, and we will not have to clean up after his idiotic mistakes—"

"Don't talk about my dad that way!" Poof cried defensively.

"But you know I'm right!"

Poof sighed, his shoulders sagging. He did love his father, and was always offended by others' cruel insults of him. But he hated having to baby him, having to be his own dad's dad. And if this worked… his dad would be back to his old happy, carefree, loveable self again, doing the job he loved, and Poof would be free to pursue his own life without having to worry about taking care of his father. Yes, Jorgen was right.

"Okay, fine," he conceded. Not that there was any point in trying to defy Jorgen, anyway. Especially since Poof wasn't capable as being even half as scary as his mother could be whenever she had wanted something. "What's his assignment?"

"I will go and find one immediately." Jorgen stood up, moved to the door, and opened it… and Cosmo abruptly fell into the room on one side, having clearly been pressing his ear against the door.

"COSMO!" roared Jorgen, back in rage mode. "Were you listening to our confidential conversation?"

Quickly standing up, Cosmo brushed himself up and looked at Jorgen both defiantly and matter-of-factly. "Of course I was! When people are talking about me, I wanna know what they're saying, and believe me, I heard every—" He stopped himself and stared at Poof in surprise. "Poofy! How long have you been here?"

Poof facepalmed.

"You deal with him, I've had enough," Jorgen mumbled to Poof. "I will be back in forty-nine seconds with your assignment!" BAM! In an explosion he was gone.

"Now where was I?" Cosmo wondered. "I found the peanut, picked it up, cracked it open, it was rotten, ate it anyway—"

"Forget about the peanuts, Dad," Poof interrupted. "You can eat some later. Jorgen's getting you a new godchild assignment."

"I hope their parents are peanut vendors!" Cosmo said with a grin.

Poof smiled too. "Poof poof, that would be cool, all the peanuts we could eat—wait a minute, get back on topic!" He shook his head to clear his mind and started over. "Jorgen's getting you a new assignment, and he's ordered me to go with you. So you don't screw up again."

Cosmo paled. "He didn't tell you that I completely and horribly failed my first new godparenting assignment in decades, did he?"

"He did."

Cosmo suddenly burst into tears and flung himself at Poof's feet helplessly—at least as much as he could considering the two fairies were floating in midair. "I'm trying, Poofy, I really am, it's just so hard to be competent! Please don't think I'm lame!"

"I don't think you're lame," Poof reassured his father. "I think you're an idiot, but I don't think you're lame."

"You don't think I'm lame!" Cosmo cried happily. "You're either that nice and forgiving or that deluded and maybe both but either way you're still the best son in the world!"

Poof smiled, opened his mouth to speak, and—

BOOM! Jorgen blasted back in.

"Wow, has it been forty-nine seconds already?" Poof marveled.

Jorgen quickly handed a folder to Cosmo. "Here is your new assignment! Report to her as soon as possible! Poof, I will be expecting weekly status updates. And Cosmo…" Jorgen leaned right into Cosmo's face, all the better to bellow "THIS IS YOUR LAST CHANCE!" with such force that Cosmo's facial features were nearly blown off.

"Uh, I'll try my best, just as soon as I rearrange my face," a completely disheveled Cosmo croaked out with great effort.

Seemingly having had far more than enough of Cosmo for one day, Jorgen exploded off again without another word.

"Poofy, could you find out what our assignment is while I look for my other eye?" Cosmo asked, handing the envelope to Poof.

Poof pulled out the data sheet on their newest assignment. "Name, Anna Hoffman. Date of birth, April third, 2044. Current age, ten. Hair, brown. Eyes, brown. Height, four feet. Weight, fifty-six pounds. Place of residence, Reno, Nevada. And her bio, of course." He quickly scanned over the rest of the file. "She seems like your typical unhappy kid in need of a fairy godparent. No siblings, and she lives only with her mother, so that'll make the secrecy easier." He looked back up at Cosmo, who was pushing his face back into shape. "Is your face back to normal yet?"

Cosmo let go of his face. "Is my eye crooked?"

Poof squinted and cocked his head to get a better vantage point. "No, but your left nostril is."

Cosmo pushed on his face again.

"Your other left."

"Oh. Why didn't you say so?" Cosmo pushed the correct side this time. "How's that?"

Poof gave Cosmo a thumbs-up. "Perfect."

"Yay! Lemme see the folder." Cosmo took it from Poof and looked over the picture and information regarding his new goddaughter, a huge grin breaking over his face. "This is gonna be so cool, Poof! You and me together, having fun, causing mayhem, possibly destroying public property—we're gonna have such a great father-son bonding time!"

But then Cosmo caught himself, his grin vanished, his eyes widened with tears, and his lower lip began to quiver. "I… I just wish…" he whispered.

Poof gently took the folder from Cosmo's hands. "I know," he said softly. "You should be doing this with Mama, not with me. But—but we'll make the best of it, right?" Poof made himself smile, and Cosmo gave Poof a weak, apprehensive smile of his own. "And you're right, it is gonna be a lot of fun. You're gonna get your groove back! And along the way, we're gonna make this girl happy. Are you ready to go meet Anna?"

Cosmo sniffled his tears away as his smile grew a little broader. "You bet. Especially if she has peanuts!"

They both lifted their wands, and in a "ANNA AND PEANUTS SEEKING POOF POOF" they were gone.

…

(AN: Author's note explaining stuff at the end of the chapter rather than the beginning? I'm such a sneaky devil.

Anyhoo! What lies before you is the first of a twelve-chapter story that has quite literally eaten me alive these past few months. Ever had a story that just would not leave you alone until you finally just wrote it down? That's this one. It's a continuation of my one-shot "Faults", but I don't think you really need to read it to at least be able to follow this one, as things about the one-shot do eventually get re-explained (often in even greater detail!) here. Remember: you always know more than Anna! And you usually know more than Cosmo, but that's a given. :)

I must again apologize: I still haven't seen much in the way of FOP past season three, nor do I care to, since I'm not too sure if I even count anything after that as canon. (And to the question I know you're all asking, "Then why are you writing a story with Poof as one of the main characters?" my answer is a resounding, "I don't knooooooooow!) Since this fic is so long I bet it contradicts canon at least somewhere. And you know what? I don't really care. I've noticed it's fanon (and perhaps canon) that Cosmo and Wanda's last name is Cosma, and my reaction was pretty much "WTF, no, Cosma is Mama Cosma's first name not last and I came up with the name "Uhsmith" before Poof was even a twinkle in anyone's eye and dammit I'm not changing my ways now!" I'm an old-timer FOP writer, since 2003, I get a senior discount and excuse, right? ;)

Actually, on the note of contradicting canon, this fic even contradicts a few minor details of "Faults". Hell, it's FOP, they contradict their own canon all the time. I'm just following in their footsteps.

So yeah. Twelve chapters of weirdness, randomness, crazy schemes, angst buckets, and family bonding crap await you. I'll try to post a new chapter every few days or so.

Disclaimer: if you couldn't tell by now, I'm not Butch Hartman nor an employee of Nickelodeon in any way, shape, or form. I don't own The Fairly Oddparents. Please don't sue me!

Also, if you're ever so inclined, feel free to check out my DeviantArt page (the link is in my profile). You can see how I imagine Poof and Anna to look, and you can also see how badly I draw Cosmo. ;)

Thanks for reading this far, and I hope you'll stick around!)