The existence of pizza changed everything.
Papa was good at making food, and Mama was too when she actually made the things that Papa told her to, but she always suspected deep in the back of her mind that they were hiding something from her. They always made food that had vegetables in it, and they never made anything like omelet rice unless she asked for it. Becky always ate weird expensive things, and Billy had told her that his favorite food was this kind of meat that you cooked on a metal thing that shot fire and Anya had never even seen anything like that before. And Mama and Papa said that cookies and cake weren't really food even though you ate them like anything else, but all of this only amounted to a lingering suspicion.
But this? This wonderful circle of bread and cheese and delicious sauce and salty meat? This proved that there was a whole world of food that her parents were keeping from her.
"Papa. We have to eat this every day," Anya said, staring in awe at the way her slice glistened in the lamplight.
"You can't. It would be unhealthy," Papa said.
"But it tastes good! How could it be bad?" Anya said.
"We can break down the nutritional content at home later as an educational exercise," Mama said, examining her slice like she expected to find a tripwire in the crust. "For now, eat as much as you want. It's your reward for earning another Stella."
At this point the conversation was interrupted by a confrontation with an armed pirate.
"Yarr! You having a good time, me mateys!?" the pirate asked, waving his cutlass with the hand that he wasn't using to gather up their empty glasses.
"Yes Mr. Pirate," Anya said politely. She had always thought that pirates sailed everywhere on ships. It was interesting to find out that they also pushed carts full of dirty dishes.
"Yarr! That's good to hear!" the pirate said. "Remember that you've got twenty complimentary tokens with your meal. Make sure you try some of the treasure challenges here at Pirate Pizza Palace!"
The pirate rattled his cart off down the aisle of booths. Anya took a quick peek at his thoughts as he left, and wondered why he was worrying so much about paying rent. Surely they didn't make you pay to stay on a pirate ship?
She turned back to her wonderful new discovery in food. Papa picked at the salad he had ordered, while Mama solemnly lowered a cardboard pirate hat onto her head.
Anya chewed thoughtfully. If she couldn't have pizza every day, then maybe they would let her eat lots of pepperoni instead. That would be just as good, she thought. She discarded the crust from her latest slice and grabbed another, and looked up at Mama and Papa.
It was weird that they weren't talking very much. Usually Papa and Mama would talk about boring grown-up stuff, or cool spy stuff while they were pretending to talk about boring grown-up stuff, or her grades. Now they were both too busy thinking at themselves to talk to each other. Mama was thinking about Papa, and spy stuff, and Damien's dad, and Papa, and Papa doing spy stuff, and something called 'calories', but all of that was pretty normal for Mama. The only unusual thing was the way the cardboard hat seemed to have affected her. Every time she stopped thinking about something else, the phrase I'm a pirate would turn up happily in the background.
Anya supposed that Papa usually drove the conversations between them, but Papa wasn't talking tonight. His thoughts were even harder to parse than usual. Not just the usual long words, but the way things kept flicking back and forth across his head, like when she changed the channels on the TV really fast and Mama always told her to stop. He seemed to be really uncertain about something, and he felt the need to reassess his uncertainty a hundred times a minute.
She peeked deeper into his thoughts for a closer look, and backed out almost immediately with a slight headache. It was like turning up the volume on TV static.
"I'm going to go play some games, Papa and Mama," she said, climbing out of the booth.
"Enjoy yourself," Mama said. I'm a pirate.
Anya ran off to find something to play. She had twenty tokens to work with. With any luck, and some lessons she had learned from Mama, she could turn them into that bicycle on the top of the prize wall by the end of the night.
Loid picked at his salad, a sad little thing that had come from the kitchen with the plastic wrap left on it. He still didn't understand children. There were hundreds of fine restaurants in Berlint, dozens that made good pizza, and yet Anya seemed to have made her decision entirely based on which one had the loudest commercial. On one hand, it made a substantially simpler reward for her second Stella than adopting a dog. On the other hand, they had gotten a booth right behind the skeeball machines.
"Anya seems to be quite satisfied," Nightfall said, weighing her second slice of pizza in one hand.
"Yeah, that's true. I suppose this is another success," Twilight said, watching Anya sprint towards the coin drop machine ("Cap'n Goldbeard's Booty") with her fistful of tokens and a calculating look in her eye.
Twilight drummed his fingers on the table. He supposed the best use of their time right now would be planning. "How much is our bill going to be?" How many days until the Imperial Scholar meet?
"Only around fifty dalcs, I believe," Nightfall said. Five days, not counting today.
Twilight nodded. Right, that was definitely enough planning for now, onto other matters.
He listened to the pandemonium surrounding them, the din of a room full of arcade machines manned by a horde of children hopped up on cheap pizza and soda with free refills. He reflected that there was probably less chance of them being overheard here then at their apartment. The perfect chance to put his new plan into action.
"Say, Fiona," he said, sliding a mischievous glint in his eye with practiced ease. "Are you doing something different with your hair?"
"What?" Nightfall said, adjusting the cardboard hat.
"I meant your shampoo," Twilight said smoothly. "Your hair looks so silky today. Something's really bringing out its color."
Nightfall blinked under the cheap fluorescent lamps. Twilight gave her a warm, winning smile. This was it. Nice and casual, no need to step on the gas straight away. Just like he had done a million times before.
The roar of hyperactive children and poorly maintained machinery continued unabated. Nightfall looked up, took a panning look around at their surroundings, and seemed to draw the same conclusion about their aural camouflage that Twilight had. The only noise that rose out of the din at the moment was the thump-thump-jangle of Anya running back past them with a significantly larger pile of tokens.
"What are you getting at, Loid?" Nightfall said suspiciously.
"Nothing. I just couldn't help noticing," Twilight said. "It smells different, too. What scent is that?"
"It's lilac. I switched to a new brand last week, remember?" Nightfall said. Over her shoulder, Twilight could see Anya already going berserk against the Whack-a-Shark machine with the aid of a stepstool.
"Well it works, whatever it is," Twilight said. "You really do look lovely today."
Nightfall just stared back at him silently, clutching the corner of the table in one hand. Advertisers could have sold space on her expression. Anya stumbled briefly in her assault against the machine, clutching at her head.
Just like Twilight thought. Nightfall had no idea how to respond. She should have expected this if she was going to mess with his head by pretending to love him. Maybe this would convince her to give up this silly game. Maybe it would just force her to reveal her hand. Either way it still felt like a really good idea for some reason. And it was only fair: if she was going to try the honey trap game on him, then he should show her what years of experience at seduction had taught him and see how much she liked it.
There was a long, slow cracking noise as small fractures splintered across the wooden surface. Nightfall casually lifted off the chunk of table in her hand and placed it next to the napkin holder.
"How strange. It appears that termites have gotten into the furniture," she said. She let go of the chunk of table. Twilight wondered how she had managed to imprint finger marks that deep in wood. "Do go on, Loid."
"Well, I think the role of housewife suits you very well, Fiona," Twilight said. "I mean, you used to dress so cold and professional, but-"
"The apron."
"What?" Twilight said.
"The apron. Tell me how good I look when I'm wearing an apron," Nightfall said, both hands flat in front of her, raising herself halfway across the table at him.
Twilight paused to recompose himself. This was a bit like walking up a staircase at night and forgetting where it ended, so your foot came sailing down through a phantom step at the top. Or more precisely, it was like launching an assault on an enemy fortress, only to find the gates wide open and the enemy calmly asking you to please sign the guestbook on your way in.
"Well," Twilight said, getting his balance back. This was getting off script, but he could manage. Just say the first thing that came to mind. "Now that you mention it, you do look adorable in that apron, dear."
"Adorable?"
Wrong move, Twilight knew. He should have gone with "alluring" or just a straightforward "beautiful". Not that it seemed to have moved Nightfall much either way; she just kept intently monitoring his face like it might explode at any second.
"Adorable. Every time I come home and see you cooking dinner, I have to fight the urge to walk up and hug you from behind," Twilight said. Not his best line, but it was a pretty significant escalation and yet still no reaction. Nightfall's pupils had shrunk to pinpoints, but that happened a lot with her.
Twilight knew that trying to gauge Nightfall's reactions by her expression was obviously a dead end, but he had hoped for some sort of obvious reaction in her responses. She wasn't acting coy, or beguiling, like she thought she was in the final stages of a well-played seduction gambit. She was just letting herself soak in his attention. It was almost like she was in love with him.
Twilight froze. Under the table, he could feel one of Nightfall's feet brushing up against his ankle.
An employee walked by and dropped two cups of tokens on their table. "Yarr. Don't forget that parents of young pirates can play games too," he said flatly.
"Yes, what a great idea!" Twilight said, springing to his feet and out of the booth. "Fiona, I think I should go play some of the fun games they have here!"
"I'll come play too," Nightfall said, smoothly standing up beside him.
"Okay! Okay, great!" Twilight said, slightly hoarse. "We're going to go play some fun games out in the open!"
"Whatever, dude," the pirate said, walking away.
They walked over towards the arcade area together, while Twilight tried to remember how his arms were supposed to work. He chanced a look back at Nightfall's face. It was still characteristically blank. Just like it had been for the entire mission. Just like it had been thirty seconds ago.
What did all of this mean, then?
In the distance, Anya was looking over the short ribbon of tickets she had gotten from the Whack-a-Shark machine with frustration. Twilight saw her look around the rest of the room, before her gaze settled on one of the pirate-clad employees. Her lips moved as she scanned the room, and stopped. Then, with newfound enthusiasm, she bolted towards the High Seas Pinball machine next to the door to the employee lounge.
1. Agents of WISE were supposed to avoid emotional compromise.
2. Agents of WISE were likewise supposed to be expertly skilled in every physical way, regardless of scenario.
3. Agents of WISE who failed in one respect would be likely to fail in others
Twilight was aware of the logic uniting these premises in much the same way that an ant on the surface of a grapefruit is aware of a general sense of roundness. He felt he could, in a more stable environment, develop these ideas further, perhaps collect more intelligence before attempting to make connections. But that could wait. Like an ant suddenly aware of the wealth of sugar available just beneath the yellow surface, Twilight had thrilled himself with his conclusion:
4. Therefore, if Nightfall loses to me in skeeball, that means she's in love with me.
"Let's play a few games, Fiona. It'll be fun," Twilight said, feeding a token into the machine, just below the sticker that said "Blackbeard's Cannonball".
"Sure," Nightfall said, stepping up to the machine next to his and directly into his trap.
Twilight loosened up his arm as the score ticker on the machine rolled over to zero and ten balls rolled down the delivery slot. This was a perfect setup. It was a simple game that demanded nothing but precise manual dexterity. The highest-scoring hole gave 100 points, so once she got a grip on the relative weights and angles involved, there was no reason Nightfall shouldn't be able to score a perfect thousand. Unless, of course, she were in love with him.
Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding. Ding.
"Another job well done," Nightfall said coolly, looking up at her perfect score as the machine vomited tickets into a pile next to her.
Twilight nodded, keeping his face as straight as Nightfall's as he rolled his last ball for his own perfect game. "Let's play again," he said. You couldn't prove anything with one experiment.
It was not the most rigorous test in the world. It was not the most accurate test in the world. It was not, he would be forced to admit, a test. But it was something. It was skeeball.
But, five games in, Twilight had to admit it wasn't returning promising results. Nightfall just kept bowling perfect games, and the piles of tickets beside them were becoming obstructive. It was discouraging. Had Twilight been obsessing all this time over something that was just in his head? He could have sworn that he had noticed strange things from her. Why, there was that other day when the alarm hadn't gone off and Nightfall had woken him up...
The ball slipped from Twilight's hand at the wrong angle. It sailed the wrong way up the ramp and into the top-middle hole instead of the one in the corner. 50 points.
Twilight paused. Then, he decided to change the nature of the experiment.
He let his mind go blank and rolled again. 100 points. Then he thought about the time he had caught her coming home from walking Bond singing Anya's "Doggy Woggy Bow Wow" song. 30 points.
Blank mind again. 100 points. The note she had put in his lunch the other day saying "Work hard, stay safe". 40 points. Blank mind. 100 points. That card game Anya liked to play with her. 20 points. Blank mind. 100 points. The way she pouted if she didn't get to write reports for the mission. 40 points. An attempt at a blank mind, but then he remembered the time he had told her about his past as a soldier. Missed shot, zero points.
"Getting tired?" Nightfall said, looking over from her latest perfect game.
"Something like that," Twilight said. This couldn't be right. Nothing about this made sense. "Here, let me play ten or twenty more games."
"Mama! Papa!"
Twilight and Nightfall turned around. One of the pirates rolled up to them with a child-sized bicycle. Anya traipsed up alongside it, doing some sort of dance-wiggle of triumph with a bush-sized bundle of tickets lofted above her head.
"I'm the best! Look what I won!" Anya said giddily.
"How did you possibly earn that many tickets, Anya?" Twilight said. He looked around, trying to see if there were any crying children around who might have recently been told that their fathers didn't love them.
"Your daughter identified a, uh, 'flaw' in one of the pinball machines," the pirate said. "It gave way too many tickets if you banged the side. Who knew? Not us. We'll get it fixed but she can keep the prize."
"I'm the winner!"
"Yes, you are," the pirate said, snatching the tickets from Anya. "Thank you for coming to Pirate Pizza Palace. Please walk the plank on your way out. Goodbye."
Twilight and Nightfall exchanged their own tickets on their way out. Twilight had earned about enough for a toy cutlass, which he donated to Anya fully realizing that he would have to step over it on the living room floor for the next month. Nightfall got a foam pirate hat, which she wore out of the building.
They headed home, with Twilight rolling Anya's prize for her. She started babbling happily about all the things she was going to do once she learned to ride it. Twilight thought she was being a bit overly confident, partly because she seemed to assume that you could use a bike to travel to most of Ostania and several neighboring planets, partly because her legs were still too short to reach the pedals.
He let the monologue wash over him, lost as he was in his own thoughts. This needed to stop. The Imperial Scholar meet was only a few days away, and he needed to be as focused as possible.
He had wanted to get answers from Nightfall tonight, but had instead realized that he needed them from himself more. And he wasn't good at worrying about relationships. He needed professional help.
Franky's hideouts weren't nearly as clever as the cigarette stand. He occupied them by brute force alone. There were multiple locations, changed semifrequently, all reinforced by multiple layers of security. Perhaps his most understated skill as a member of the intelligence underground was his ability to convince a landlord to let him install a half-dozen layers of security doors in their basement.
Of course, the security doors didn't mean much if you just used the entrance Franky did. Twilight opened up the janitor's closet, pressed a switch hidden behind a shelf to disable a silent alarm, then popped open a loose panel in back of the closet and was at Franky's front door within twenty seconds. Twilight adjusted his hat, and knocked six times, in three sets of two rapid taps each.
A quiet moment passed, and he heard a voice from inside. "Who is it?"
"It's Loid." Twilight didn't know if anyone else knew the proper way to knock, but Franky always asked anyway.
"Go away. I'm not babysitting tonight. I have to inventory what remains of my dignity." Franky said from inside.
"I don't want you to babysit tonight, Franky. I'm not here on business," Twilight said.
"Oh yeah? Then why are you here?"
"I want to have a long and personal discussion about my feelings."
At least thirty seconds passed without any response. Then, there was a long series of clicks, sliding noises, and electronic whines from behind the door before it finally opened. Franky's broccoli head stuck out at him and gave him a long, surveying look. His eyes, pinpoints behind the lenses of his glasses, scanned him from head to toe and back again several times.
"I have to say, I have never seen a disguise as good as yours, man," Franky said doubtfully.
"I'm the real deal, Franky," Twilight said. "I just want to talk. It's about my wife."
Franky stared at him again. Perhaps he was waiting for the inevitable "Ha! Fooled you!", or perhaps for Twilight to snarl, molt his skin, and fly away on insectoid wings. Neither came to pass.
"Okay," Franky said, opening the door. "But you have to understand that it's incredibly strange for you of all people to come to me and whine to me about your love life."
"I know," Twilight said. He held up the brown paper bag in his hand, letting the bottles inside clink against each other. "That's why I'm going to get you drunk first."