Hiya! I'm back with another story...It's just something that sparked my curiosity while writting the last story. Anyway, hope you'll enjoy this short story.

Picking Locks

"Hahaue, what are you doing?" Young Wolfram asked, tilting his head to one side. He had walked past Lady Celi on his way to play sword fight with little big brother and had been standing behind his mother for the past few seconds, curious as to why she was being so quiet when she'd usually make an entrance and what was she doing with that piece of thin wire.

"Ah, Wolfie! Hahaue was just trying to get this door open." Startled out of her intense concentration, the demon queen spun around with a guilty look and whispered quietly to her youngest son.

Frowning at the key hole hidden behind the blond woman's frame, the young boy piped up. "Why doesn't Hahaue use the key? Is it lost? Did Uncle Stoffel hide it from Hahaue? Wolf can get the key from Aniue."

Dropping the wire to the floor, Ceceili Von Spitzberg knelt to wrap her arms around the innocent, sheltered child. "Thank you so much, Wolfie baby. But Hahaue wants to try a new way of opening doors without keys… There's a new invention inside that your Aniue must not know about."

The word 'invention' triggered to his mind immediately a certain person that his brave Aniue had often told him to be wary of. "Wouldn't Aniue and Gunter-kyo try to hide before Anissina-san catches them? Is Hahaue trying to open the door with majutsu? Wolf can burn the lock for Hahaue…Is Hahaue trying to save them from being guinea pigs?"

"Yes, Hahaue is trying to save them but you must not burn the lock or else Anissina will know who did it and use you for her experiments instead. So this is going to be a secret between the both of us, alright?" She held out her little finger to him while fumbling with something in her luxurious hair with the other. "Wolfie darling, can you get the thinnest hairpin out for Hahaue?"

Nodding, the boy hooked pinkies with his mother prior to detaching the hairpin for her. "Can Wolf try too? Wolf wants to save Aniue from Anissina-san also." He stated a matter of factly, feeling a spur of braveness and courage in his little body at the thought of protecting his personal pulshie knitter. At the same time, he wondered if this was what his little big brother felt when he went on adventures with his father.

Smiling, Celi handed the pin to him and carried him closer towards the key hole to allow him a more comfortable access instead of having to tip toe.

With his tongue between his teeth, Wolfram scrunched up his face in concentration only to have his mother gently tap his forehead. A silent reminder to avoid growing up looking stern and scary like his Aniue. Clearing his forehead, he lightly slotted the pin in and with a swift twist, resulted in the lock being unlatched.

"That's my Wolfie!" The demon queen squealed, hugging the beaming boy to her chest before setting him down on his feet when he squirmed. "I'll have to get you present for being such a big help to me. What would you like?"

"Hahaue, can Wolf have this hairpin?" He asked, holding up the pin as though it was some priceless object.

"Of course, darling. Is that all you want? Come here then. I'll hide it in your hair so that no one can see it."

"Like a secret hidden weapon?" He enquired, big green eyes glancing sideways at his mother who deftly slid the pin into his equally blond locks.

"Yes, just like a secret weapon. Now, why don't you run along? I'm sure that Conrart have been waiting quite some time for you. I'll see you at dinner tonight, alright?" Lady Celi said, pushing him on the back gently after giving him a light kiss on the head.

Laughing, he dashed down the hallway to find his little big brother waiting patiently for him in the courtyard with two wooden swords and that smile that was on his face as often as frowns were on his Aniue's forehead.

If Conrart noticed a hairpin sitting amidst his little brother's hair throughout the day, he definitely kept his silence. If Gwendal wondered why his brat of a baby brother was looking so smug at dinner every time those green eyes that were almost a copy of his mother's settled on him or why the treasury door was reported unlock or why his mother seemed to whip up yet another accessory, he definitely did not say anything either.

Decades later, when the twenty seventh Maou, Yuuri Shibuya kicked his fiancé out of his bedroom and locked the door behind him for what would be the first in the months to come, Wolfram Von Bielefield smirked to himself as he reached up to pull out his 'secret weapon'. So determined was he to slip back under his wimp of a fiancé's quilt that he was unaware of his elder brothers watching side by side from the shadows.

"Seems like you owe me a dozen pulshies, Gwen." Conrart chuckled softly, clasping the eldest of the three on the shoulder once their baby brother had closed the door behind him. " I told you he still hid it in his hair."

Thank you for spending a fragment of your time to read this ;p