There were countless ways that an influence on Eden's PTA could help the mission. The hard part was getting that influence.
"Loid and Fiona Forger" were not wealthy, or famous, or beholden to any special resource that would benefit the school. Nor should they be, if they wanted to remain inconspicuous. So that control had to come from more subtle ways. The most critical was, of course, a voice in the ear of the members of the PTA that did have those things. It was like any other mission. Build an intelligence network. Let the information come to you. Pull the strings delicately, and only when necessary.
It was unlike any other mission in that pulling the strings began with your contacts giving you gift baskets.
"You're really too kind. You didn't have to bring anything, we just wanted to have you over for lunch," Twilight said, a slightly sheepish smile on his face.
"Forger, my boy, everyone says that," their guest boomed. "And I won't have it. First, I can't stand not being allowed to return hospitality. And second, I couldn't possibly turn down the opportunity to share my wife's chocolate chip cookies with the world."
He leaned over the side of his chair and beamed towards the kitchen, where Nightfall was arranging their gifts on the dessert tray. She gave a forced smile back to the largest grin Twilight had ever seen. They wanted to get influence with a loud voice on the PTA, and you couldn't get much louder than Major Watkins.
People on the PTA listened to Major Watkins. Everyone listened to Major Watkins, for much the same reason that people listen to train whistles. It was a bit surprising that a man like him was so directly involved in his family life, but Watkins seemed to be a man who never did anything at half-measure.
There were more prestigious and influential outgroups to the PTA, usually made up of the richest and most powerful families who didn't like dealing with the riffraff. Desmond's wife had a brunch circle of her own, Twilight knew. But prestige and influence could always be overwhelmed, and there was an obvious person to start with for overwhelming people.
"So you've been in the army your whole life, Major?" Twilight said.
"Sometimes it feels even longer, Dr. Forger," Watkins said. He happily chewed on one of the sandwiches they had left out with the earnestness of a man who enjoys his calories. "Graduated from the officer's academy right before the war started. Field promotions shot me up through the ranks. Ah, the stories I could tell."
"Is it true that they make cadets memorize the number of paving stones on the campus?" Twilight said, knowing the answer was "yes".
"Yes!" Watkins said. "And you had to keep the figure up to date, too. If a new path got laid down overnight, you had better find out before an upperclassman asked you to cite the number. Teaches you to be attentive, focused on changing details. Also teaches you the number of paving stones, of course!"
Twilight was more of the opinion that hazing rituals like that were meant to psychologically break the cadets, but kept that opinion to himself. The important thing was to keep Watkins' mind on happy education-related memories. So he just laughed politely while Nightfall set a tray of mugs on the coffee table before them.
Major Watkins leaned over and took a mug, along with a napkin to place in his lap over his white slacks. He was a man who looked strange in civilian clothing. Either a lifetime of military service had molded his body into the shape of a uniform like a stiff meat jello, or he was the exact sort of superman that generals dreamily fantasized about when they designed new uniforms. He wore a polo shirt and slacks about as well as a walrus would, and only the collective resistance of every seam prevented any one of them from bursting open. Topping off the ensemble was a peaked cap. Not the peaked cap of a uniform, such as might be worn by an army officer, or indeed a police officer, mailman, or milkman. Just a plain brown peaked cap. Twilight didn't even know they made those.
"What brand of coffee is this, Mrs. Forger? This is delicious!" Major Watkins erupted calmly.
"Ostania Sunrise. Butterscotch blend. You can get it at most grocery stores," Nightfall said.
"And so I shall!" Watkins said. He drained the entire mug in one mighty gulp.
Twilight was so enthralled by this display that he only belatedly realized he was beginning to lose control of the conversation. He paused a moment to reassert himself, but was overtaken by Nightfall saying, "So are your children looking forward to exam season, Major?"
"Hah! Who looks forward to it?" Watkins said. "They're prepared, though, Bill and my oldest. I can say that."
Watkins closed his mouth. He was a man who defaulted to a manic grin, so this was probably his attempt at a more serious expression.
"Speaking of which," he said. "I hope you don't mind, but I was hoping to talk some shop today. You're on the Eden PTA, correct?"
"I just started attending meetings. Anya just enrolled, after all," Nightfall said.
"Then I was hoping to get your support on something. You see, a lot of the families have been talking, and a lot of us aren't really satisfied with the current exam schedule," Watkins said.
"Is that so?" Twilight said, taking a sip of coffee. Bingo.
Twilight knew that there were at least a dozen vocal families on the PTA that were experiencing sudden, apparently unrelated inconveniences on the day of the exams. Blackwell Heavy Industries had scheduled a week-long audit. The family of a diplomat had been suddenly scheduled to fly overseas on an urgent mission. Major Watkins himself had his leave rescheduled, after he promised to take his son to an airshow after the exams. And, crucially, Eden was having to rewrite and reprint all the exams anyway, after a pipe had mysteriously burst in a storeroom.
Twilight was still skeptical that an extra week or so of studying would make as much of a difference for Anya as Nightfall thought, but he couldn't deny she had made this look easy. All it had taken her was a couple phone calls to various contacts, some light breaking and entering, and a new pair of water-proof boots.
"We're going to petition the administration to push the exams back. Would you be willing to support us?" Watkins asked.
"We'd be happy to help, Major," Twilight said.
"Splendid! I'll return the favor, just you wait," Watkins said, the grin comfortably settling back in across his face.
And that was the best part, of course. Best to cash in that favor while Watkins was still amenable.
"It's funny you should say that, actually," Twilight said. "I was wondering, since an officer of your rank probably hears a lot of gossip. Have you heard anything about-"
"Papa!"
"Daddy!"
There was a percussive cacophony as two pairs of feet pitter-pattered and gallomped into the room respectively.
Major Watkins' son, Billy, stood in front of the seated adults, one fist clenched in passion while the other clutched a toy gun. He was a boy who only really made sense when you placed him directly next to his father, where it became obvious that he was merely a scaled-down copy of the original with a dash of astigmatism. Placed next to Anya, he looked like something that had killed a team of scientists on its way out of a lab.
"Daddy!" Billy said in a voice at least ten years older than its owner. "What's the penetrative power of a silenced pistol compared to an unsilenced one?!"
"Silenced pistols are stronger, right Papa?!" Anya asked fervently. She brandished her own toy pistol, which might have been a threatening gesture if it weren't hot pink.
Twilight shared a look with Major Watkins. He saw, on that huge face, an expression that he had felt on his own so many times, and which he only now realized must be shared by parents of small children all over the world.
"Well, the mechanism of a suppressor is designed to reduce the speed of the gas exiting the barrel. This necessarily reduces the speed of the projectile," Watkins said, rumbling in strangely professorial tones. "So it is, in effect, less powerful."
"That sounds right to me, Anya," said Twilight. He saw Nightfall give a barely perceptible nod out of the corner of his eye.
"Hah! Told you!" Billy said triumphantly.
Anya trembled with the repressed fury of the unjustly wronged. Her finger twitched on the trigger of her toy gun, sending the dart flying under the couch where it wouldn't be found for weeks. She bolted out of the room. "Okay, but then I get to have a spy helicopter too!"
"Hey, no fair!" Billy roared. "Then I get to have a fighter jet!"
The living room was left quiet and still. Twilight cleared his throat, feeling that he had let the conversation drift out of his control once again.
"No surprise that your daughter came running straight to you for advice, eh Dr. Forger?" Major Watkins said. "What branch were you?"
"What do you mean?" Twilight said.
"What branch of the service?" Watkins said. "You're a military man, if I ever met one."
Twilight sat very still for a moment. Nightfall took a sip of her coffee, while Watkins just smiled encouragingly in front of him. The sound of cars driving by on the street outside was suddenly very loud to him. He fought to keep his breath even as the ice of panic crept down his neck.
"How can you tell?" he said steadily.
Watkins grinned ever wider. "Dr. Forger, no soldier ever leaves boot camp without it leaving its mark on them. Some men can never manage to stay asleep after sunrise. Some find themselves strangely fascinated with the taste of government surplus slop. And in your case? I accidentally opened the door to your bedroom when I was looking for the bathroom earlier, and I have never seen a more perfectly-made bed in my life. It would bring any decent drill instructor to tears. You could cut cheese on the corners of those sheets."
Twilight sat silently for the moment, staring into Watkins' paternal smile as if from the other end of a long hallway, listening to something fizz in the back of his head.
"Well, you're right. I was in the army," Twilight said eventually, plastering a timid smile on his face. "I don't like to talk about it much, because I wasn't exactly the proper age to join."
"Hah! You weren't the first and you won't be the last, unfortunately," Watkins said warmly. "Don't worry, your secret is safe with me. But tell me. How did you go from there to where you are today?"
"Lots of hard work, mainly," Twilight stared down at the half-empty coffee cup in his hands. "I just... saw things during the war that I knew I wanted to stop."
"And so the soldier became a healer. Quite a noble story, you shouldn't be ashamed of it," Watkins said.
"I try not to be, Major," Twilight said.
He should have pushed on with the agenda he had planned. He had a whole interrogation script ready to go to see if Watkins knew anything about the security for the Imperial Scholar meetings. But the wind had gone out of his sails for the day. They had probably gotten the exams pushed back and definitely gotten the promise of a favor from Watkins. That seemed like enough for now. He just let the rest of the visit drift along, chatting amiably with their guest, fielding a couple new questions from Anya and Billy to define the parameters of whatever game they were playing.
It was almost pleasant, in a way. The only thing that gave him any concern was the way Nightfall kept glancing at him whenever Watkins wasn't looking.
Watkins and his son left in the late afternoon, with a vaguely ominous parting promise to take Twilight target shooting some other weekend. Anya sealed herself off in her room, possibly to study, possibly to draw up new field tactics for when she saw Billy again. That left Twilight still sitting on the couch, staring into his now-empty coffee cup.
He should get up, he knew. There was no such thing as idle time in his line work. But something about this afternoon had drained him. He shouldn't have told Major Watkins the truth, he felt that on principle, but he also knew that he had been caught dead to rights and it had seemed like the only safe option at the time. Was it really just the bedsheets? Or was he making mistakes and not even realizing it?
At least he still had the presence of mind not to mention what side of the war he had fought on.
Nightfall sat down beside him, with another mug of coffee.
"You seem tired. I brewed it quadruple-strength," she said, taking the empty mug out of his hands. Twilight nodded gratefully, not even wondering what alchemical process she always used to brew coffee with the consistency of hot tar.
Twilight spent a moment drinking the energizing sludge. After a moment, Nightfall spoke.
"Why did you say you were a soldier? I don't remember that from the cover story," she said, lowering her voice.
"That's because it wasn't in the cover story, Nightfall," Twilight said. A quick mental debate ran through his head, but he was too beaten to go with anything other than simplicity. "It's the truth. I was in the army during the war. On the side of Westalis, of course."
Nightfall stared at him, still and quiet. The expression on her face was even more unreadable than normal. Sometimes he thought he saw annoyance, or determination, or concentration. Here she might as well have had a question mark instead of facial features.
"Why did you tell him, then?"
"What have I always said, Nightfall?" Twilight said. He made his best attempt at a confident smile. "Best way to deceive someone is to make the deception as close to reality as possible."
Nightfall finally stopped studying him. She looked down, avoiding his gaze.
"My name's Fiona, Loid," she said.
"Oh. Right. Sorry," Twilight said.
Fiona kept staring at the coffee cup in her hands."We'll have to incorporate your background into the cover story going forward," she said. "Don't want Major Watkins finding any contradictions."
"Shouldn't be too hard. We established that Loid Forger is hiding his background in our conversation today."
"Hmm," Nightfall said. She began fidgeting, spinning the cup around in her hands. "Perhaps we should incorporate Fiona's backstory into it. Some story about Loid making a dashing rescue of a helpless maiden, and then the two fall in love?"
"Seems out of character. Besides, we already established that Fiona is Loid's second wife to explain Anya's appearance."
"Yes," said Nightfall. "Yes, you're right. Disregard the suggestion."
They returned to silence. Listlessly, Twilight turned on the television, feeling that until he got his focus back he could at least be vaguely productive by seeing if anything noteworthy had happened on the news.
He felt a soft pressure on his thigh, and looked down into the soft black eyes of Bond. "Borf," he said compassionately.
Twilight scratched him behind the ears absentmindedly, to a rhythm that was soon matched by the thumping of his tail. He looked up, mid-scratch, to see Nightfall staring at them. This variation on her usual blank face was one he thought he could parse.
"Alright, Fiona. I've told you one of my secrets, so I'll let you know that I know one of yours," Twilight said, with a smile. "I know you like petting Bond. You don't have to restrain yourself."
Nightfall hesitated for a moment, but then without a word slowly reached over and put her hand on Bond's unoccupied ear. She began scratching, though she didn't let her expression change. Bond didn't seem to mind.
Twilight moved his hand to get deeper behind Bond's ear, and felt his hand brush against Nightfall's. She recoiled instantly, planting her hand back on her thigh and staring at the television as if it were announcing the imminent implosion of the planet. Twilight let himself stop, too. Bond, deciding that they had no further use for him, wandered away to investigate his food bowl.
Twilight got up off the couch. Best to go review reports or something. There was nothing to be gained by just wallowing here with Nightfall.
When he walked back into the living room, an hour later, the cup Nightfall was clutching in her hands was still steaming hot. That was a bit odd, since the kettle had long gone cold.