Prologue

Preface: this story is inspired.

There was no question about it. This child had gotten his looks from his mother. It was not that he could not say that he did not see himself in the child, it was simply that as the child grew older there was less of himself to be seen. In addition, now he could definitely look at the child and say that he was adorable.

The child was dressed in a soft, dark one-piece that was sewn by his mother which covered his even softer alabaster skin. Right now, Ainz was staring at the two mismatched eyes of the child that not even for a day did anybody in this place consider odd in any way shape or form. One – the left iris – was a rich golden colour that had tinges of deep yellow that resembled a picturesque ripple. The right iris held the same impression but was a deep crimson colour and in the centre of both were feral irises which gave his small face a catlike cuteness.

About nine months ago, the heir to the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick had been born. He was born as any child would be; naturally, small, frail and as a skeleton. He was so fragile and almost non-moving but when one held him close, he could be heard breathing. Soft, quiet and yet somehow measured breaths. Even at that time, it was easy to tell that this child was no regular skeleton as he did fall asleep and all the attributes of the living that he started picking up as he grew older started having a reason.

As time went on, he started to change. First came muscle tissue, blood vessels then internal organs and everything else in between. The process – even though it only took six months – seemed an eternity for Ainz who was worried that some small particle or object might unknowingly make its way into the child's developing viscera and somehow hinder his growth. All those worries ceased about three months ago and had proven Ainz's concerns to be meaningless. Yes, Nazarick's heir was growing up just fine.

Ainz had to admit, however, that as time went on, he found fewer and fewer things about his child's development that would intrigue him, for example's sake, how the lizardmen's children started walking sooner than humans did. Ainz understood the ecology behind it somewhat but there was something intriguing about how things in this world changed his once-human perception more and more. Though to be fair, his son had started taking a few steps every now and then but it was within expected parameters.

No, it was not as if Ainz would perform inhumane experiments on his own son just to satiate his own curiosity, however, with the guardians (well, actually, basically everyone in Nazarick) glorifying every little thing he did – more than they did for Ainz – it made Ainz itch to find something (after his birth) that was actually great about his son.

The child had the power of cuteness that all babies held that urged those around them to want to dote on them while protecting them at the same time. This led Nazarick (with the assistance of an explanation from Demiurge) to believe that he was a natural-born leader, who, despite being unable to speak was already, apparently ordering them around.

And like all things that started in the mind of Demiurge this escalated into something completely unrelated and exponentially harder to find the origin, escape out of and/or contain. This led Albedo to go out of her way to throw multiple celebrations for her son.

All was well and good until you realised that this was the third party of its kind this year alone and had now been canonically dubbed his 'Three-Quarter Super Birthday'. The reason it was called 'super' may have been Ainz's fault because he told her to choose between celebrating his first one hundred days or celebrating this 'Three Quarter' birthday, but that was only because Albedo had organised a 'Quarter Birthday' and a 'Half Birthday'. The result was an exploitable loophole that was just an excuse for her to make it twice as big. Ainz was mostly against the parties because the guardians went out of their way to make sure the events happened even if it meant cutting into their rest time.

No outsiders were invited to these parties, although, during this time Albedo had also been sending out invitations informing them of his first birthday to be held in E-Rantel. Albedo gave three reasons for sending out not only official invitations but sending them this soon; 1) "to give those pests enough time to choose an appropriate gift", 2) to give herself enough time to decorate the entire capitol in preparation for the day and 3) to emphasise the power of Nazarick to the world. The last one made little sense to Ainz as there was nothing left to emphasise; everyone was well aware of their power.

The boy seemed to gain interest in Ainz's red orb as he threw away the toy he had been holding up until now. He was seated on Ainz's desk so when he made an attempt to reach for the orb his reach proved to be a little too ambitious. He fell face-first onto Ainz's ... sternum. This was not enough to make him cry but it was enough to bring his attention to the pearly white ribs. Happy baby noises could be heard as he stuck his fingers between various ribs.

The boy's face turned neutral as Ainz held him to his face.

It's not self-centred to think he's cute, right? I mean he definitely is one of a kind. Mm?

Something on the boy's back grabbed Ainz's attention. At the base of his tiny shoulder blades, small protrusions could be felt. They were definitely too small, straight and narrow to be his shoulder blades so Ainz knew he was not mistaken.

So, Albedo was right, you are growing wings. Now, this is an interesting development, almost worth celebrating.

A knock on the door brought him back before he could start imagining various (humane) experiments to perform before mentally apologising a million times over to his son for being a horrible parent.

Yuri Alpha walked into the room notably without her gauntlets on.

"Ainz-sama." she dipped her head in greeting. "I have come to prepare Momo-chan-sama for tonight's party. Also, some of the regular maids were wondering if Ainz-sama requires assistance in preparing his august person?"

How did it come to this?

There was one thing that Ainz could not get Albedo to change her mind about and that was her naming the child 'Momo'. As a matter of fact, even before Albedo had given birth, she had been displaying various clothing items around Nazarick and asking people; 'What would look good on Momo-chan?' Albedo had clothing for both genders and androgynous items as well. When he was born, however, some genius had called him Momo-chan-sama and it stuck.

As cute as it was Ainz did not find it fitting for the 'glorious' heir apparent of the Great Underground Tomb of Nazarick, as a matter of fact, Ainz now wanted little to do with it especially considering that he had wanted to name him something cool like 'Beelzebub' or 'Asmodeus' which had now been overshadowed by 'Momo-chan'.

Then there was the issue of the maids not serving him personally as much as they used to because he had been spending more time in Nazarick out of necessity these past few years, but recently he had been spending less and less time in E-Rantel and didn't require the maids to choose his outfits for him anymore.

He only spent time in E-Rantel for his routine walk or to simply get away from the stress or repetitiveness of his daily life now. With most of their side of the continent not only belonging to them but completely at peace the only thing that was becoming more and more demanded was entertainment.

There were not only very few holidays in the Sorcerous Kingdom but also a few plausible things to celebrate if more holidays were introduced. The Order of Justice had two days that Ainz approved for them which were 'Justice Day' and 'Day of Cleansing' and Albedo introduced 'The Heir's Birthday' to the list that brought them to a total of five holidays including the 'Sorcerous Kingdom's Founding Day' and "Remembrance Day", which contrary to its benign-sounding name was a day to remind everyone of the foolish Re-Estize Kingdom that attacked their nation.

Yuri had been convinced to get the orphans to make up songs for the day which led to Remembrance Day being very popular with children. Plays were now being held where various Acting Troupes would always have anyone representing the Re-Estize play the fool and were laughed at by the children, leading it to spread like wildfire on dry grass, making it impossible for parents who were initially here from the time E-Rantel was part of Re-Estize who were raising their children in the Sorcerous Kingdom to be unable to stop them from attending. Merchants even started making a point of always being in the Sorcerous Kingdom during these days.

The Order of Justice's way of life and religion was taught and practised in the orphanage so those children found it hard to believe that Ainz was evil and didn't believe anyone who said so because he provided them with so much.

Once, on his walks, Ainz had found himself outside the orphanage and decided to take a look inside. Every single one of the children – much to the pleasure of Yuri and the discomfort of Ainz – had bowed to him all at once out of pure reverence. They all seemed genuinely happy to see him which had taken Ainz aback. But that small shock, a slight discomfort, was more than welcome compared to how he felt after Demiurge got word of the incident.

Which brought him back to his current situation. Yuri had been appointed – by popular vote – as Momo's au pair which, because it was based on a vote had the homunculus maids vying to one day be Momo's personal maid or to serve him directly; even if it was in rotation, they wouldn't mind. It also meant that the maids were too eager to serve Ainz even more because he was a father and must be exhausted and should not dare lift a finger himself.

"No. The two I have now should suffice." He responded to Yuri who had been kept waiting a little too long.

Well, they are pretty much two too many.

He handed the boy to Yuri but he started to cry reaching out for Ainz.

"How about you bring everything you need to prepare Momo for tonight, while I stay with him?"

"Ainz-sama, for Momo-chan-sama's education and growth I cannot allow that."

"You're right. He shouldn't get used to getting everything he wants." Ainz said dismissively.

"I didn't mean it like that ..."

"Mm? Cixous? Are you alright?" Ainz asked the maid on room duty as she cupped her ears with her hands and fell to her knees. Looking at Increment to help Cixous, he only found her in a similar position. A trickle of blood made its way down her arm, she was taking damage.

But how? There isn't anything here that ... oh? Momo?

"Yuri, bring Momo here."

She handed him back to Ainz without protest.

"Here," Ainz said handing her two vials of purple healing potions "use this on them."

Yuri poured the potions on each of the maids but if they were being healed there was no sign of it.

"Call Lupusregina or Pestoniya here immediately, just in case."

If those potions don't work maybe the Yggdrasil potions will? But, I don't want to waste them if they could also potentially be useless.

"Ha!" Yuri required no explanation as to whom to favour, whomever was closest would suffice.

"Momo-yo! If this is the damage you can inflict at level five, I can only wonder how strong you will really become." Ainz said to a child that was now smiling a toothless grin and very oblivious to the damage that he had just caused. As upsetting as it was that the maids took damage, it was a small price to pay.

A/N:

Hello again. Well, this story is nothing new, the concept has been around for a while and like I said this story is inspired, heavily so too, so I'm going to take a little time to thank and acknowledge the people who unknowingly inspired this new Puppet Strings. (Disclaimer AU elements.)

Henupenko: they wrote (what I'll be calling) a one-shot a few years back called 'The Heir Apparent', it seems abandoned but I liked the idea so much that I had to continue it (so to speak). I encourage you to check it out because this prologue doesn't do that chapter justice and a lot of this story's background exists there.

Sanadan: Dude wrote 'Overlord Fanfic of Fanfics', this really helped me step out of the shell of only relying on canon work to give me ideas and inspiration to write. Thanks, man!

Jade Tatsu and Pervy Sage Chuck: their bold writing style and ability to venture away from what is widely accepted was my final straw to write this baby (ha-ha, humour still broken)

My readers, followers and reviewers: I suppose I have to apologise for what happened to Common King, I know a lot of people were hoping and had faith that I would do it some justice and maybe let it become something good but its epilogue was less than underwhelming, sorry guys. I guess I bit off more than I could chew with that one, the EE side story was very different from canon and I guess that after 13 volumes I piled my own expectations on it hoping it would lead to something similar. Anyway, if anyone wants to fix it, please do! (Or just write your own story and please PM me, I'd like to read it very much.)

And last but not least, to any new readers of my work WELCOME! I'm just someone who loves Overlord, is still learning to write, has some free time, occasional burnout syndromes and wants people to love writing and fanfiction. I upload once weekly (mostly) and am quite adaptive, so please stick around. I plan on making this the best one yet! (^_^)