Summary: In 2002, twelve-year-old Q begins his studies at Cambridge and makes a friend (sort of maybe definitely). In 2012, the recruitment of an unconventional boffin sparks the birth of the Equipment Retrieval Unit (ERUdites for short). Bright Star 'verse. Outsider POV, so it will probably make sense without reading the rest of the series.

Title may or may not be a reference to The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.

More outsider POV of young!Q, this time with a new character designed by sora_grey. I asked her if she had any ideas for other double-oh agents for my 'verse, and she came up with Kazuya "Blaze" Ishida. I tweaked her version a little and came up with Kaz the ERUdite (Equipment Retrieval Unit personnel).

Sora made the character Scottish, so I tried my best, which is probably pretty terrible. It might even sound like a weird version of Irish? Sorry for the cringe! I did find an English-Scottish translator (oh, the wonders of internet!) but it was a little tooooo much of an accent for most of this story. Also, Kaz has a bit of a foul language problem, among other things. Warning for language, I guess?

Also: Flashbacks galore!

Whishaw!Q is known to the main character of this story as Freddie Lyon or R, although we know him as Danny Drake. He's twelve years old for the 2002 scenes and twenty for the 2010 parts. Kaz is twenty-four and thirty-two, respectively.

If any of you have ideas for stories or characters, I'm always open to suggestions!


The Little Polymath

Chapter 1

2010

Munich, Germany

The dark-haired man pushed his thick glasses up his slightly sore nose and scowled fiercely at the two black-clad men who sat on either side of him in the cramped back seat of the car.

"Would you be so kind as to tell me who you are and why you've kidnapped me?" he asked in a voice that dripped with sarcasm and didn't waver at all despite the gun in his ribs. He repeated the question in German.

The overly-muscled goon on his left gave him a glare through an eye that was already starting to swell. The slender man surveyed it with a small smirk of satisfaction. He had put up quite a fight, but all three kidnappers (two in the back and one driving) had definitely had formal martial arts training (and tasers too!) and had overwhelmed their target, despite his own training.

"Nothing? Playing dumb, are we?" The prisoner made certain that the double meaning of the word was abundantly clear. His head ached from where a brisk knock from behind had momentarily dazed him enough for them to take him down.

The men didn't rise to the bait, nor did they engage in any of the snide quips and disparaging remarks their captive directed at them as they drove up to an empty warehouse and escorted him to a table and chair lit by a single lamp.

"I'm starting to think you've got the wrong man, but I suppose all Asians look the same to you," the prisoner said upon being 'helped' none-too-gently into his seat. "Not your fault, really. It's a social issue."

Another man — not one of the three who'd kidnapped him, but one in a suit — walked into view and stopped in front of him, looking down his long nose at his prisoner.

Only the table separated the two men, one of whom hid a gulp and tried to ignore the nervous sweat sliding down his back.

"Dr. Kazuya Huojin Ishida, born in Glasgow, 12 June 1978 to immigrants. Japanese father, cardiologist, deceased. Chinese mother, accountant, living. One sister, oncologist. Fettes College, high marks. Studied Electrical Engineering, Automation and Robotics at the University of Edinburgh, first class honors. Doctorate earned 2003 at King's College, Cambridge, Computer Engineering and Robotics—"

"Alright, so you have got the right Asian," Kaz cut in with a lazy scoff, leaning back in his chair, arms crossed. "What do ye want?"

"You've come to our attention. You have a highly specialized set of knowledge and skills. Put plainly, we want you to work for us."

"I've already got a job," Kaz pointed out. "A cushy one at that, too, even if everyone's a fool. Anyway, you already know that because that's where you picked me up. An' ye still haven't told me who you are. Aside from being English."

"MI6."

Kaz's eyebrows rose. "Alrigh' then."

"You'll cooperate?"

Kaz pursed his lips and leaned far back in his chair, tipping it back onto two legs. "Nah," he said with a slow blink and hoped he wasn't about to get punched. "Don't fancy it."

"We'll offer you a competitive salary."

"Nah."

"Your country, Dr. Ishida—"

Kaz interrupted belligerently. "You're absolute shit at this. Did you know that?"

"What are your terms?"

"I don't want to work with absolute idiots," Kaz drawled, "which means I don't want to work with the likes o' ye."

The other man's face twitched and his hand went to his earpiece, which had one of those spiral wires that disappeared down the collar of his shirt. He scowled.

A buzzing sound filled the silence, only to be cut off as suddenly as it started.

"That your phone?" Kaz asked. "Sounds like they decided they didn't want to hear your ugly voice after all."

"Blaze, stop being an asshole to the idiot and say 'yes.'"

The man in the suit started and dug frantically in his pocket for his mobile, which had seemingly picked up the call and put the caller on speaker without its owner laying hands on it.

Both men stared at the device, which was definitely showing a live call.

"Just say 'yes,' Blaze," the disembodied voice ordered again. It was young, authoritative, and impatient.

Kaz blinked. There was only one person in the entire world who called him that.

"Freddie?" he asked incredulously. He hadn't heard from the kid in years. He'd disappeared into the ether and Kaz had simply assumed that like many an uber-talented genius before him, he'd gone to work for some highly secretive employer like…

Oh.

"Say 'yes' and come work with me."

The chair thunked back onto four legs. "Yes."

"Good," the voice of the boy Kaz knew as Freddie Lyon said (though he'd long had doubts that that was his real name), sounding pleased. "I'll see you on Monday. Don't be late."

Kaz recovered enough from his shock to say, "You know I'm never on time, Freddie."

He could almost see the annoyed expression on the kid's face, even though it had been years since he'd seen him. "Do not be late and make me look bad, Ishida." Kaz could hear the threat in his voice and he knew from painful experience that it was not an idle one.

"Aye-aye, captain," he smirked, saluting the phone lazily.

"Not a captain," Freddie said, and his eyes were definitely rolling on the other end of the line, "I am a doctor now, though, several times over. Please make sure you call me 'R' from now on. I'm not Freddie anymore."

"R, eh? Can I have a letter, too?" Kaz half teased, "How about K? Is that taken yet? I? B?"

"As you Scots like to say, 'Wheesht.'"

Kaz laughed, remembering the first time he'd told the scrawny twelve-year-old to shut up in that manner. The boy's eyes had opened wide in surprise and indignation, but it had succeeded in stopping the flood of chattering…for a time.

"Mr. Smith, please deliver Dr. Ishida to his residence, preferably without any more violence, if at all possible."

You could cut the condescension in his voice with a knife. Kaz winced on Smith's behalf.

"Your name's really Smith?" he asked, snickering. "Are the others Jones, Taylor, and Brown?"

Smith ignored him. "Copy that," he replied to 'R' through gritted teeth. "Sir," he tacked on after a beat.

"And please try not to bollocks this up."

"Now who's being an asshole to the idiot?"

"Good night, Kaz."

Smith the Government Goon ended the call with a more violent jab than necessary.

. . . . .

When Kaz Ishida was seven, he wanted to be Indiana Jones. When he was ten, he wanted to be Bruce Lee. When he was fourteen, Isaac Asimov was his hero.

This last was the reason he decided to study robotics at uni and go on to do graduate work in the field.

Kaz was twenty-four when he met someone who changed his life forever.

. . . . .

2002

Cambridge University, England

The first time he saw him, he thought the kid was someone's younger brother, helping with the moving-in process. That happened a lot; the whole family would come and haul up boxes to the dormitory and unpack them, chattering and bickering all the while.

Usually, the mother would be tearful, asking if her precious baby was absolutely certain he had everything he needed. The father—if he came at all—would be stoically checking the door hinges for sturdiness and the windows to see if they could be opened from without. Younger siblings would either be running about the place like mad little whirlwinds or huffing sullenly because they weren't the center of attention. The student himself would be a tight knot of anticipation and excitement at starting a new chapter of his life.

Of course, all this usually happened at the undergraduate housing buildings, rather than the graduate rooms. By the time students got to the post-baccalaureate stage, their families were blasé about helping them move in and out, and it was usually friends who helped with the heavy lifting instead.

He overheard the kid—he looked all of ten years old—chattering about 'my room' and finally realized that this must be that wunderkind the whole college had been all in a flutter about.

They'd been informed—everyone rooming in the graduate housing complex, that is—that there would be a child genius of some sort joining them that year. Every resident had been sent a letter and an email about it, warning them to behave themselves around the young, impressionable mind.

The reason this twelve-year-old would be living with them rather than with his fellow undergraduates was because they were older and thus more mature…in theory. Some of them even had kids of their own, but those families usually lived in flats or houses separate from university housing.

They'd all been told to make the child feel at home and look after him because he was one of those Great Minds who only came along once in a century and they wanted him to stay at Cambridge and do his Great Things there and bring them prestige.

Kaz planned on staying out of the kid's way. After all, he was terrible with children, and logically, he wouldn't be able to be a bad influence on the kid if he didn't interact with him, right?

He did watch the family with a bit of curiosity from his room a few doors down the hall. It was only natural; it wasn't every day that someone that young started at uni.

He wasn't the only one watching. Some even went and offered to help, but one of the men with the boy thanked them and refused, saying they had enough hands on the job.

There were four men and one woman with the boy. Kaz initially thought that the woman was the mother, but the boy referred to her as 'Aunt Tory.' Two of the men were called 'uncle' and one was 'dad,' which left one who was called only 'Sam.'

He wondered if Sam was the kid's other father. Or maybe he was just a friend.

Well, Kaz reasoned and closed his door, it didn't matter to him in the least if the parents were gay. It wasn't any of his business, was it?

. . .

It was just his luck that the boy was a student in one of the classes Kaz was assigned to teach.

Kaz, running late as usual, had rushed in and started setting up his PowerPoint slides on the projector screen without really looking at his students. He'd been doing this for a while, and could basically run through the lecture without thinking much about it. If that made him a bad teacher, he didn't much care; he was more of a researcher anyway, and was on the last leg of writing his dissertation. He'd defend it at the end of the academic year, and then he'd be off with a 'Dr.' in front of his name. He already had several job offers waiting for him to finish his studies.

He noticed a quarter of the way through the slides that none of his students were paying attention to him. Their focus seemed to be centered on a corner of the room. Closer examination showed that there was a student with a laptop computer on the desk—they weren't as common yet as they later would become—and the student was none other than the boy wonder.

Well. He remembered now that he'd received an email about the boy—Frederick Lyon or something—being in his class and had promptly forgotten about it. If he really belonged here, then he'd be able to keep up. If he didn't, then it wasn't really Kaz's problem, was it? The kid could wait a few more years before trying uni again.

Kaz shrugged off the observation and continued his lecture.

At the end of class, the students crowded around the boy, questioning him. Kaz noticed him starting to get defensive after a while and, sighing ('I hate this job,' he thought), gathered up what authority he could muster and marched into the rabble. His lanky six foot five figure made it easy to scatter students left and right.

"Alright, break it up. Yes, he's young. Yes, he's probably smarter than the rest of you put together. But he's here to learn, same as you. I'm sure he has classes to get to, same as you. So go on and get to them."

He stuck around like a guard dog waiting for everyone to file out and felt that he had been very responsible and had done his duty.

"You didn't have to do that."

He looked down at the boy. "Don't need my bosses saying I should've been more welcoming or some shite."

The boy, pale and rather small for his age with glasses and dark hair that looked like it could use a comb, met his eyes and grinned a little.

Kaz was astounded by the sheer intelligence behind those green eyes. It was practically leaking out of the kid's pores like it couldn't all be contained in his head. Bloody hell.

"Lyon, isn't it? Frederick? Or do you go by Fred or Freddie? Fritz?"

The remarkably sharp eyes brightened. "Freddie," the boy said, sounding like even the act of introducing himself was a novelty. What was he, some sort of alien?

"Right then, Freddie. Where're you headed? I can walk you there." If he was going to be responsible, he was going to do it all the way, damn it.

"I memorized the campus, thanks. I've already calculated the most efficient routes to each location, adjusting for factors such as weather and crowd density peak times."

Bloody hell.

"Right, then. If you need anything, we're sort of neighbors," Kaz said. "I'm in 229."

"Yes. I know."

Right.

And because they were both socially awkward, they stood there for a few moments trying to gauge if the conversation was over or not.

"I'd better get to the lab," Kaz finally said. "I'm probably running late."

"Don't you know?"

"I'm usually running late," Kaz shrugged, not particularly bothered about it. "I generally assume I'm behind and no harm done if I'm not."

The boy was looking at him as though he didn't understand the meaning of late, what with his accelerated education.

"Well, have fun in your classes, lad."

"Thanks."

. . .

A couple of weeks later, Kaz was tinkering in the lab when he realized with a start that he was not alone.

"How did you get in here?" he angrily asked the boy, who was poking at some of the equipment. "You're not authorized to be here. This lab is locked unless you have the key."

So maybe he was a little harsh and accusatory, but he tended to be a bit protective of his research. He wasn't alone in this—most people were.

Freddie snorted softly, not looking up from his examination of the tangle of wires Kaz had pulled out of prototype version 12.5. "A key, sure, or a set of lock picks," he said with a shrug as if he hadn't just broken into Kaz's bloody lab, "You need better security. What are you doing?"

He came over to where Kaz was doing a bit of programming.

Kaz eyed him doubtfully. His work was extremely advanced, and he didn't need to add babysitting to his list of tasks, thank you.

He needn't have worried. The quick green eyes scanned the lines of code like they were written in plain English.

"Why did you do it that way?" Freddie asked, pointing at a part that had given Kaz quite a bit of trouble. "Wouldn't it be cleaner to…"

And that was the start of their first collaboration.

. . . . .

2010

MI6 HQ, London, UK

He was waiting for him, arms crossed and lips pursed in what was evidently supposed to be a look of disapproval, although his excitement at seeing Kaz again after all these years was obvious.

Kaz suddenly felt bad that he hadn't bothered to keep in touch with the kid, but communication and people relations weren't exactly his strong points.

The kid – no longer a child – looked pretty much the same, but taller and lankier and sharper, and his outfit was business-casual (if one considered maroon plaid trousers and a goldenrod jumper to be business-casual instead of an eyesore) rather than the hoodie and jeans Kas was accustomed to seeing on twelve-year-old Freddie. He was all grown up, and that made Kaz feel old.

"I told you not to be late, Kaz."

"Nice to see you, too. Still as scrawny as ever, kid."

"Not a kid." Freddie — or rather, R — smirked triumphantly. "I'm twenty now."

"Nah, you'll always be a little shit of a twelve-year-old to me."

And because he missed his twerp of a sidekick, Kaz gave him a big hug that was returned enthusiastically.

"You're doing alright for yourself, then, lad?"

"See for yourself," R said with a smug smile and led the way.

. . . . .


Notes:

Kaz's birthday, 12 June, was the day You Only Live Twice came out, an homage to the Bond movie set in Japan, which has absolutely nothing to do with this story.

Kaz's name: Sora suggested a character named Kazuya "Blaze" Ishida, with the nickname coming from the "fire" meaning of the Japanese name Kazuya. I couldn't find a good source for this (the internet is a fickle beast; my searches came up with "peaceful one" as the usual meaning of the kanji for the name), so I'm giving him the nickname for another reason to play it safe. I gave him the middle name of Huojin (meaning "fire metal" in Chinese, again, according to the internet) to supplement this. One of those names has to be right! If you have any input on this, please let me know because inquiring minds wish to know!

Fettes - the school Bond attended according to Ian Fleming. Basically the Scottish equivalent of Eton.

Note to Sora: Kaz turned out to be a little brash and kinda…not socially-domesticated. He's a bit rude and not what you'd call politically correct sometimes. *insert 'I don't know' emoji* He's a Good Guy though. I didn't use everything you gave me, but I hope you like this version of him! He still likes spicy food and gunpowder green tea!