AN: This was originally written when SpyxFamily first came out. Like, October of 2019. So there was a LOT of things I didn't know about the series or lore back then, because that lore didn't actually exist yet.
I liked SpyxFamily. It was cute. I had a sudden manic urge to write something set in it.
The idea that it was kind of like Youjo Senki hit me and so this happened as an SI. I never bothered posting it on here because I had stopped working on it fairly quickly. It's not exactly full of literary merit, it was more the fanfiction equivalent of a shitpost. Anyway, I quite literally forgot about it. It's even got an anime now.
The other day, someone looking for fics found it, necroed the thread, and got me working on it again. So I'm posting it here, finally.
It is what it is. Comments welcome.
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x Ice Pie
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This place wasn't so bad. I mean, it was a run down, brutalist building made of bricks and stone, but the rooms were dry and the widows were tight. Mister Erhard, the guy running the orphanage, was an alcoholic, but then again, in this bizzaro eastern europe I found myself in, I'd have been more surprised if he wasn't. He kept us fed, didn't skim much off the top for his booze, and had a fairly sweet relationship with some seamstress woman who lived elsewhere that kept us clothed.
And he wasn't a pedo. Can't understate how great that is.
Not that pedos have been a problem for me, since I was reborn in bizzaro world, but as a tiny little blonde girl, I am aware of the potential threat.
Erhard didn't like me much, though. He was a bit superstitious, and let's be honest here. I was a bit weird as an adult in my past life. With all my memories, in the body of a little girl? Oh yeah. I'm bizarre as fuck. Too mature. I don't cry. I don't need constant help. I don't like playing with the other children. I spend too much time by myself.
Now, you'd think a 'mature' child that can dress, bathe, and feed herself would be a selling point for adoption. You'd be partially right. Although most couples prefer to adopt babies, some couples prefer to risk the chance of getting an already fucked up kid if it means they don't have to lose sleep and change diapers for a year or so. I've been 'adopted' twice, both from previous orphanages.
First couple were child farmers. One of those couples that adopts a shitload of children to get their government dole, then skims off the top to pay their own bills. Now, that's not necessarily the worst thing in the world, no worse than a small, private orphanage, if they at least keep up their end of the bargain. Food, clothes, place to sleep, at least some care. Enough to turn out a survivor if not a socially well-adjusted child.
I took one look at those kids, heard the fear in their voices whenever 'Mama Birgit' turned her hawkish gaze, and was gone before nightfall.
Nope. Nope nope nope. Not my mama.
Had some hope for the second couple. Quite a bit more well to do, actually talked to me a bit before adoption. They didn't have previous kids, probably some sort of fertility problem I'm guessing, not that I got that in depth with my own questions. I was, after all, trying to at least be an acceptably weird little girl. Got taken home, did some settling in stuff. I was cautiously optimistic. Lived with them for a bit over a month. Found out both were cheating on each other. Him moreso than her. Apparently, their failure to have a child naturally caused some pretty intense stress and fights. She blamed him and his 'weak seed'. He blamed her for being a failure as a woman. They needed a child to qualify for some sort of inheritance from a grandfather.
Well, that's not ideal, but it wasn't until some inter family shenanigans I wasn't really privy to happened that I realized it wasn't going to work out. The gist I got was, they were angling for a percentage of the inheritance, not a premade slice. So the other potential heirs, with their 'natural children', managed to have me ruled invalid. Divorce isn't really a common 'thing' around here, but either way, the writing was on the wall as far as I was concerned. Neither had any more then perfunctory interest in me, even at the best of times. Left, lied a bit, ended up in a new orphanage, daunted but not defeated.
Still, while this is arguably the best orphanage I've lived at, I sure don't want to be here until I'm 'of age' and end up a whore somewhere. Did I mention this is bizzaro world eastern europe? And the year is 1984? Oh my god I don't want to be an eastern european whore.
So when Erhard comes in with this tall, lanky blond guy dressed in a dapper grey suit and an upper crust air about him, I paid attention. I mean, I don't actually have any idea how good his suit was, but given how good it looked and how shitty this place really was, the idle thought that 'the money he spent on that suit could buy this place' crossed my mind.
I picked my toy up where it sat beside me and went to watch the rich man follow Erhard in, seeming to be a bit shocked when the greasy, balding drunk told him to pick the one he wanted.
Really, Erhard? I'm knocking a point off my review for this place, though admittedly, deference to rich people is a thing here. I realize asking for due diligence is an unreasonable expectation in this unreasonable place, but… ahhh, fuck it.
'What a rough place,' the gentleman mused, looking around at the half dozen of us kids playing in the hallway and common room as he entered. 'But the shadier the facility, the higher the chance of these kids having a murky background. It's more convenient if we have less records to change.'
Motherfucker what? He wants untraceable records? That's a big red flag!
'The mission is to create a family. As long as I have a child, I can make it work,' he thought silently to himself, seeming to nod in satisfaction.
What what what? That doesn't sound like a pedo, that sounds like some sort of-
'I wish I could do this on my own,' he continued musing, giving each snot nosed little runt the gimlet eye. 'But not even Westalia's most renown spy can disguise himself as a child.'
Oh.
My.
God.
I didn't have a real good grasp on history, even my own personal history I admit, but I did know the names of the, to me, most important countries around, and kinda a gist on the rest of it. Bizzaro world, bizzaro names. The best example I can think of is Tanya in Youjo Senki, with me as Tanya, with the sole major difference being this is bizzaro 80s cold war instead of bizzaro WW1. Hell, at first I thought this was Youjo Senki, but with a lot of country name drift.
United Albion replaced the UK. Francia is bizzaro France. Westalis is the name of bizzaro West Germany.
We currently live in Ostania, bizzaro East Germany. Basically, after some unholy abomination of WW2, the country got split. They even built a wall between them. However, about ten years ago or so, they tore the wall down and signed a bunch of treaties or something and mostly made nice.
The big difference is that unlike home, West and East didn't unify. In fact, they're pretty prickly to each other.
And this blond James Bond looking motherfucker right here is an honest to god cold war spy.
And me? Continuing with the Tanya theme, besides being tiny and blonde, I also had special powers.
I could read minds.
I stared at the ACTUAL SPY shopping for kids in front of me with eyes about as big around as saucers.
"Oh right, if possible, I'd prefer someone who can read and write," he admitted cheerfully.
Oh my god. Was this happening? This was perfect! This is bizzaro fucking Youjo Senki! But a cold war spy thing instead of WW1 quidditch murder! Thank you, Being X! Or God, or however you wish to be called. Tanya resented you, but you're A-Okay in my books!
"Yeah, I know just the one," Erhard agreed. "Anya!"
He almost had to call me twice, even though I was close by. I was actually trembling I was so excited.
"She's our smartest kid," Erhard explained. "Don't talk much, but… Eh, she's a good kid," he added, looking at me. 'A creepy little brat, really,' he added mentally. 'Hope this guy gets her outta my hair asap.'
'Fuck you, you bald fuck,' I thought right back at him. I can't actually send thoughts, though. Just hear. My regular efforts to train my power probably contributed to him thinking I'm creepy, now that I think about it.
"C'mon, aren't you gonna say hi?" he prompted.
I opened my mouth to say something, but the spy's thoughts interrupted me.
'Eden Academy starts at age six. She's too small, too young.' Out loud, he said, "Um, excuse me, but-"
"Six!" I blurted, standing as tall as I could. "I'm six years old!"
I'm lying through my teeth. I don't know my own birthday, much less how old I am, but I might be brushing five. I mean, physically.
"I don't think," Erhard began, giving me a dubious look, but I overrode him.
"I'm definitely six!" Shut up old man!
I could tell the man wasn't buying it. "Test me!" I demanded. "I can read and write and do math and everything! I'm just short!"
Come on, man, I could be the tiny psychic spy to his James Bond! It's a match made in heaven! Don't take this from me!
"We don't have many books here, but I assure you she's good at reading," Erhard added, helping me out.
You just got that extra star on my yelp review, dude!
"I do have a newspaper," he allowed, pulling it from an inner coat pocket and handing it to me.
"Thank you, Sir," I said politely as I took it from him. I quickly scanned it and found the start of some article about a scuffle between Westalian and Osternian female athletes.
"Westalian female athlete, Patrica Schulth, who brought shame on herself and her nation in the Athenian Games, to be expelled from the Westalian athenian team." I gave it some bombast, really trying to impress. "The Albionese born Westalian runner was the cause of a disastrous accident in the 1984 games, tripping up heroic Ostanian athlete Katja Amsel in the 3000m race."
I think my complete ignorance of german actually helped me learn bizzaro german, since I went in with minimal preconceptions. My knowledge of english works to understand Albionese, but there's some words in there that weren't in my lexicon. To go back to the old analogy of english being three midgets in a trenchcoat, pretending to be one language, well, the midgets are the same, but they're wearing different clothes under there, and the trenchcoat has more pockets.
Mister Spy wasn't dismissing me out of hand, but I don't think I had sold him yet.
Hmm. I bet there's a crossword puzzle in here. I flipped through the paper, then asked for a pencil.
I ended up seated in Erhard's own chair, the paper on his desk, with the still unnamed spy leaning over my shoulder as I scanned the clues.
Hmm. One across, eleven letters, the tendency toward a stable equilibrium. Homeostasis. Four down, eleven letters again, 'to turn into vapor.' Evaporation, easy. No wait, that doesn't line up with that. What's this other clue that intersects, uh… ah, disconsolate. That means four is sublimation. Gotcha.
It started great. But this was like, Mensa's fucking crossword puzzle, and I started taking longer.
'Good start, but I guess even a smart child can't be asked to know 'causal closure'. And if that's a C in that space, that makes 32 across 'symplectomorphic map'.
What. Still, if he's going to unwittingly feed me the answers, I'm gonna take advantage.
Also, damn this guy was smart. I bet his education was both tasteful and expensive.
After about fifteen minutes, I had the crossword completed and handed it to him happily.
He was kind of staring at me. 'She actually got it! Where did she learn this stuff?!' He took the newspaper from my slightly shaking hand and marveled at it. 'What terrifying genius! With her, passing the entrance exam should be child's play!'
Abruptly, his head snapped to the side, focusing on Erhard.
"I'll take her!"
Aww yiss…
Again, though, when Erhard actually waved off the idea of paperwork and told him to just take me, he lost that goddamn star in his review. If I end up in a shallow grave somewhere, I'm going to haunt your greasy ass, Erhard.
Before we left, the man introduced himself as Lloyd Forger. Later, I was to discover it was actually spelled Loid, which is weird, but okay. He got my name, Anya, (it's like Tanya, but I don't like heights so fuck being an aerial mage!) and asked me if I had any belongings I needed to get.
The only thing I had, I kept with me always. My toy stuffed animal, Chimera. It was given to me by maybe!Mom, and is the only thing I've managed to keep throughout my adventures in surviving eastern europe's child welfare attempts.
It's pretty clearly a chimera. It has a lion head and body with a snake tail (with the snake head at the end of it so you know it's a snake). That's pure chimera. But instead of the goat head, it's got bat wings, so the overall effect is more like that of a manticore. But I was told it was a chimera, and you don't have to be a genius to see the narrative clue here.
My powers aren't the result of natural mutation.
I was made somewhere.
And if I get involved in spy stuff, I bet I get to eventually figure out who made me.
Chapter 2: Your mission, should you choose to accept it-
I ignored the waving of the children as we left together. I wasn't friends with any of them, and if I had to run away from my new daddy, I'd be looking for an entirely different orphanage again. I kept silent, and obediently followed the gentleman as we left.
"Listen up, little lady," he began.
"Anya has been my name until now," I interjected. "No last name. But I can get used to a new name if I must." I kinda liked Anya, since it was close to Tanya.
"Anya will be fine," he agreed. "And your new last name will be Forger."
I nodded, then put on my brightest, most outgoing child expression. "Hello, Mister! I'm Anya Forger! Are you my new Daddy?"
He smiled at me. "Yes, though I would prefer to be called 'Father.'" 'That seems fairly upper crust,' he thought.
I gave him a crude curtsy, dipping a little, and said, "Of course, Father. It wouldn't do for a family as dignified as ours to be seen as crude and plebian." I suddenly brightened and bounced a little on my feet. "Unless we're pretending to be lower class, right Papa? Huh? Right?"
He paused and gave me a considering look. 'She understands more than she should, but that could be a very good thing.' He nodded. "Yes, daughter. And don't forget, I have always been your father."
I nodded back. "What is father's name?" I deliberately did not say 'your name'.
"I am Loid Forger. I am a psychiatrist."
I nodded. "Daddy is a mind doctor! He helps people who feel bad!" I went back to my serious tones. "What specialty? Neurophysiology? Forensic? No offense, you don't seem to be comfortable enough with children to be a child psychiatrist."
His lip twitched a little, and I could sense the amusement in him. "I am a clinical psychologist, at the Vivante Klinik Berlint."
I nodded, committing the information to memory, then moved on. "It's been kind of sad since Mother left us." I paused. "Died? Abandoned us?"
"Died will be easiest to fake," he agreed, and we resumed walking. "Although I should be finding a mother for you soon."
I nodded. "I know how to stick to a story, Father." I walked in silence for a bit, then added quietly, "But we need to have a conversation in private. I need to know what you want. And you need to know what I want."
"What I want?" he asked. "I can't just want a family?"
I couldn't help myself, and snorted. "Father, I probably know more about how the adoption process goes than you do. You need me for a purpose, and to pretend otherwise insults both of our intelligence."
'Ah. I had not considered the challenges an intelligent child would provide. This may prove trickier than I thought.' He nodded slightly.
We traveled in silence after that, making our way through the streets of Berlint, the capital of Ostania, by foot and by taxi.
I spent the time listening to his thoughts.
Telepathy is weird. Not at all what entertainment media had prepared me for. For one thing, although I slip up and refer to it as such sometimes, it's not at all like 'reading'. Instead, it's more like, an extra set of ears, that are also antenna. It feels more like I'm hearing broadcasts from other people's minds. Really short ranged broadcasts, too. I might have a total range of a hundred meters or so, and that's stretching it. My actual, function range is more like about a third of that, and can be cut even further if there's too many people nearby, or the person is a static brain.
The clearest and easiest thing for me to pick up on is internal vocal thoughts, like I'm best tuned into the language centers in people's brains. When Loid looked at me and thought, 'This girl will be perfect for my mission,' he was essentially speaking to himself, in his brain. Verbal thoughts like that come in loud and clear, are easy to distinguish, and have the most range. I even get the tone the thought is in, making the emotions fairly clear.
However, purely visual thoughts are harder to distinguish. Action planning thoughts, like someone visualizing slapping me in the face, still come through, but are… fuzzier, for a lack of a better word. Like, my face in that image would be like an unfinished greyscale drawing, and there would be no background. Or if someone was memorizing the details of a painting, I'd get all the bits they focused on, but the surrounding bits quickly fade into bland obscurity. It's still useful information, but it's not like seeing through their eyes. I think the bits that broadcast the best are the details the brain is actually getting, not the impressionistic 'it's there but I'm not really looking at it, so my brain just glosses over it,' sort of thing where the brain just kinda guesses.
Like how we don't actually see during saccades, but our brain fills in the gap with extrapolation. The extrapolation does get broadcast, but it's noticeably fuzzy, and, like, shorter ranged than the actual visual data. It makes getting an accurate impression of another person's visuals almost impossible outside of about fifteen or twenty feet. I have a few theories about why this is, but no proof and nowhere to really start getting proof.
Also, reading memories? Forget it. Unless the person is actually thinking about the memory, going over it in their mind, I can't see it. All I get is surface thoughts. Pure emotions likewise come through badly, or not at all. Maybe because emotions are more of a neurochemical thing, not a neuroimpulse thing?
For that matter, I think I pick up on touch, as well, but only in really really close ranges. Inches at most. Little phantom pinpricks of sensation that mostly don't mean anything, but can transfer sensations. Like, if a kid sprained his finger, and I hold that hand, I get a phantom impression of that pain. As I start pulling my hand away, the sensation gets fainter and fuzzier, down to nothing at all. And if I hold his other hand, I'm too far from the hand generating the pain symptoms, and I get nothing.
Also, I can't seem to influence thoughts or talk directly to another person's mind… maybe. I've spent a lot of time trying to send thoughts and orders to other people, and even animals. Once, for about fifteen minutes before it flew off, a raven I was watching in a tree seemed to be doing what I thought at it to do.
But that only happened once, and it might be that the raven and I had similar ideas on what a raven in a tree should be doing.
Any discussion of telepathy would be incomplete without the drawbacks. Well, the media seems to have gotten that bit mostly right. That telepath from Code Geass, the one obsessed with CC. Forget his name. He's just about spot on as far as the drawbacks. You can't turn it off, and you can't unhear it. When I'm around a lot of people, it's like being in a noisy crowd, except you can't plug your ears. It gives me headaches, and it's very, very, VERY difficult to focus on a single mental voice in that crowd. I've always hated being around too many people, even in my first life. Here, it's just about full blown fear of crowds.
I don't like it.
At all.
There seems to be this… static that comes from other people. Like turning on an old analogue radio, and hearing the crackle of random noise coming through the speakers. It's really bad, and fuzzes out anything I might otherwise get, if the person is too far away. So the way I see it, each person more or less seems to have their own wavelength, or actually, a whole cluster of wavelengths for various mental senses, but they're really close together. Like listening to FM radio, and one person is everything from 99.5 to 100.7. The problem is, another person near them might be 98.9 to 100.1, with overlap. And the closer they are, the stronger the signal, but also with the problem that each sub frequency has its own strength. One person at fifty feet away with a mental voice on 101.3 will drown out another person's visual sense at 30 feet, but if the visual person gets closer, down to like, twenty feet, then the signals jumble into indistinguishable noise, at least until one gets closer.
Lastly, some people are just unclear in general. I call them static brains. People who don't seem to think a lot, and exist in more of an act-react sort of mindset. Children, especially, are static brains. Not a lot of coherent thought in most children.
My theory is that I'm literally picking up on electrical signals from nerves, which is why my telepathy seems to be more of a passive reception with limited range and static, and doesn't pick up on things like chemical emotions. I have no proof, but it's a working theory for now. Also, I think a lot of the static is from thoughts my brain can't translate. Like, I get mostly static from someone thinking in french, because I only understand a smattering of french and can't really think in it. And maybe people with bad eyesight produce more staticky visual thoughts.
Loid had a wonderfully clear mental voice. It was really nice to listen to, much more pleasant than anyone in recent memory. The benefits of a logical, organized mind, I suppose.
He didn't think much about the overall mission as we travelled, and instead seemed to be mentally shopping for food and supplies. It was like being near someone constantly talking quietly to themselves.
We got out in front of a rather nice building in a good neighborhood, the kind the upper middle class, or perhaps lower upper class, might live in. Though the building itself was probably older than the blocky, brutal architecture of the orphanage, it had more ornamentation to make it look nicer. I don't know the architectural style, but it seemed like a pretty good place to live, if you liked cities.
I didn't like cities, but they had their uses.
As soon as we entered the building, an old woman greeted us, and they exchanged names.
"Hello, we're the Forgers," Loid said, introducing both of us.
"Oh my, your daughter is adorable," she exclaimed, doing that exaggerated old lady gasp thing.
"Pleased to meet you, Ma'am," I replied, giving another curtsey.
"And so polite, too!"
Loid smiled, pleased with my performance. We continued to the apartment and he let us in.
For a place in the city, the three bedroom one bath apartment was actually really nice. The rooms were large and well appointed, with tasteful furniture in excellent condition. Some of it looks brand new and recently purchased, some of it, like the couch, had some signs of light wear, like it had come from an older place, implying continuity of life.
Nice.
He even had a TV, a positively huge one for the mid-80s. It had to be nearly 30 inches diagonal. More importantly, the apartment had a number of bookcases, already filled with books. I browsed through them briefly as Loid sat down in a chair and loosened his tie.
Sadly, all of the books were reference books and journals. Medicine, law, philosophy, just the sorts of things a well to do doctor would have. To my eye, though, most of them looked too new, with no signs of even the most minor crease in their spine. I'd need to put some wear and tear in them when I got the chance.
And make sure Loid saw me doing it, so I could continue my theme of being a reliable co-conspirator.
But that was for later. It's best not to hit someone with too much stuff all at once.
After I'd familiarized myself with the apartment and left Chimera on my new bed, I laboriously climbed up into a chair opposite Loid. It ain't easy being tiny.
Loid watched me with mild wariness, wondering if this is when the other shoe was going to drop and I was going to turn out too weird to be acceptable.
Apparently, things had been going too well, and he was getting paranoid.
"Okay," I began. "I don't believe either of us are willing to show all of our cards at the moment, but in the interests of cooperation with each other, here's some information about me."
Loid nodded cautiously.
"I am unusual," I admitted honestly. "I'm too smart for my age. I don't think like a normal child. I've been in three different orphanages and I only barely remember the woman that dropped me off in the first one. I remember her being scared, and telling me she loved me. Since then, I've had to learn how to survive. Have you ever been in an orphanage, Father?"
He nodded, his face softening a little, but his thoughts had a melancholy tone. "I was an orphan as well."
That made sense. I could see his handlers preferring a spy with no attachments.
"Then you know it's not easy. Bigger, meaner kids will take your food and belongings. The caretakers rarely care. It's cold in the winter and hot in the summer. You get sick a lot. People treat you badly."
He was nodding, remembering his own experiences.
"I've been adopted twice," I continued. "The first family was just in it for the money they got for taking care of children. They spent the money on themselves and us kids were left to fend for ourselves. If we acted up, we got beaten. I ran away, and found a different orphanage."
He was a little impressed, and also slightly angered.
"The second family acted like they wanted a daughter to love, but really it was just about some money they wanted from a grandfather, and when it fell apart, I had to run away again. I ended up at the orphanage where you found me."
"I see."
"So what I'm trying to explain here is, I know you want something from me. Everyone wants something, right? I don't have a problem with that. If you want a trained pet, able to repeat lines on command, I can do that. If you want a partner who can act a role? I can do that, too. Honestly, especially given you didn't pay anything for me, you got a really good deal."
Here's where I stood up in my chair and leaned forward, my hands on top of the table.
"Here's the deal. I have things I want, as well." I gave him a challenging stare.
Loid stared back at me, his thoughts running too fast for me to really understand them. Finally, he said, "I'm listening."
I nodded. "Good. I want consideration. Everything has risks, but I want you to at least put forth an effort to keep me safe. I doubt you will tell me anything, but I promise to keep your secrets. Just make sure you tell me everything I need to know to do my part. Most importantly, when you've gotten what you want from me, I don't want to be thrown away."
He straightened a little, and I might have detected a note of approval in his mental 'hmm.'
"If you can't keep me, I'll understand. However, I do not want to go back to an orphanage. I want good caretakers. It doesn't have to be a real family, but I'd prefer someone who can at least keep me fed, housed, and arrange for a good education. A little money here and there, nothing unreasonable. I may be a genius compared to most of the people around me, but I'm still a child, and as hard as I've tried, I cannot make it in the world on my own. Not until I'm older." I gave him a quirk of my lips.
"You want reassurances. That's understandable, and very forward thinking of you," he admitted.
"I realize I have no way of enforcing my demands," I admitted. "Not without compromising secrecy, which would violate my own promise. I'll keep your secrets no matter what." I wanted to be real clear on that part, and hopefully head off any shallow grave bad ends. "But if there's an honorable bone in you, that's my price. I will do what you ask to the best of my abilities, which should be far better than most other children. And in return, you ensure I have a future. Okay?"
Loid smiled at me. 'I hadn't even considered what I would do with her after the mission. Damn headquarters, they didn't give me enough time to plan this out like I want. But her demands are reasonable. If she's as smart and easy to deal with during the entire operation as she is right now, I should be able to find a good home for her myself, even if central doesn't want to foot the bill.'
"We have a deal then, Anya Forger," he said, holding his hand out for a shake in a way that was mostly honest and only minimally condescending.
"We have a deal, Father," I agreed, shaking his hand.
'If nothing else, she'd actually be an incredible early recruit for the spy program," he thought. 'Yes, Anya, that's why I do this. So you, and all the other children, have a future.'
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AN: There's more written, available on that patronage site.
You can also read my works on space battles and sufficient velocity. And for those of you wondering where the lewds went, they're on questionable questing, but you need an account to be able to see it.
Comments welcome!