"What's this one about, Mama?"
"It represents man's inhumanity to man."
"Cool!"
Nightfall kept an eye on Anya as she wandered around the art gallery, peering up at each painting in turn with an oddly critical expression. She had developed a whole routine out of it. A few strides toward the painting, a quick turn on her heel, a look up followed by a firm placement of hand upon chin, followed a few moments later by a nod or a critical shake of the head, perhaps accompanied by "Hmm hmm". Then repeat. Sometimes she would field a question to Nightfall, who would interpret the painting for her about as well as one could interpret a slab of canvas overlaid with apparently random colors.
She couldn't exactly remember when or how they had wandered into the modern art section, and couldn't tell how to get out either. Maybe that was part of the art.
"What about this one?" Anya said, pointing up to a canvas covered in bright blue dots overlaid in geometric grids.
Nightfall glanced at the painting. Were she pressed by another agent, she would be forced to admit that she knew almost nothing about modern art. There was a tiny primal part of her brain that even rebelled against the concept, saying that real paintings should look like something. Sunsets and kings and whatnot. But being an agent wasn't about knowing everything, it was about being prepared for anything, which meant building knowledge on the fly, or in this case listening to passing tour guides enough to make stuff up.
"It demonstrates the isolation of nature's role in modern society," she said almost instantly. "The blue dots are the sky, trapped in tiny and artificial spaces."
"Wow," Anya said, studying the painting more closely. She frowned. "Then why is this dot brown?"
"To show how pollution has corrupted even what little of the natural can survive in our modern world."
"Ooooh."
The trick was not to think. Natural behavior was automatic and reflexive, and so a perfect lie had to be as well. You let yourself absorb information subconsciously, so that the lie was already on the tip of your tongue when you needed it. With proper training, you could fool anybody. Or at least an easily distracted six-year-old.
Anya trotted over to the next painting, still under Nightfall's watchful eye. One advantage to her method of art critique was that it left the forebrain free to occupy its time with other things, like wondering when Twilight would be back.
Nightfall knew that her fantasies involving Twilight could be a bit optimistic. Unrealistic, even. Impossible, a tad. She was a tactical thinker by trade, well-trained to consider every possibility instead of just the ones she wanted, which is why she didn't expect to walk into the bedroom every night to see Twilight lying on the bed with a box of chocolates and an engagement ring big enough to hobble a horse. But still, it was disappointing that even after she went out of her way to set up weekly dates for the mission under the guise of reconnaissance, all the reconnaissance wound up getting in the way.
"This one?"
"A reaction to the artist's loss of enthusiasm for life. The color patterns reflect growing despondency," Nightfall said, not even looking at the painting. She had just heard a familiar set of footsteps approaching from behind. She turned, and nodded. "Hello, Loid."
"Papa!" Anya ran over from the current subject of her review. She took her usual as-the-crow-flies approach to navigation, which meant sliding between two trash cans and hopping over a bench to reach him, before skidding to a halt before him. Twilight grabbed her hand to steady her as she decelerated like a derailing train.
"Hello, dears," he said warmly, the perfect picture of the loving father on his day out with his family. "You must have been waiting forever; the line for the bathroom was ridiculous."
"We were fine. I was just telling Anya about all the paintings," Nightfall said. This was technically true. "Though we are still very happy to have you back." Also true.
Twilight sighed. "I'm afraid you won't have me back for very long, though. Work just came up," he said, apparently tired and apologetic. He had a way of tilting his head so his eyebags showed properly, to convey to any random passerby that this was no mere father abandoning his family for his job, but a slave-driven cog in the machine forced to forsake his beloved source of warmth and humanity. You could fake it with some eyeshadow and half a lemon. "A messenger from the hospital just came to find me. One of my patients is having a nervous breakdown, I'm afraid I have to leave early."
"That's okay. Don't let us keep you," Nightfall said. No, it wasn't okay, and she certainly wanted to keep him.
"Thanks for understanding, honey. I'll make it up to the both of you." He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.
Nightfall gradually became aware of a dim ache in the region of her middle-leg.
"Mama? Mama, you have to tell me if you died," Anya said, poking her knee.
Her brain flickered back to life, taking inventory of what it had missed while occupied with higher matters. Arms, legs, torso, head, major sensory organs, all check. She felt an unfamiliar lump in her balled fist, which suggested that Twilight had used That to tean over and press something into her hand. She shook her head, disturbing a fly that had taken up residence on her eyeball, and reached down and grabbed Anya's hand with her other one absentmindedly.
"Sorry about that, Anya," Nightfall said. Hmm. Why were the shadows cast by the windows suddenly a bit longer? "Mama was just thinking."
"No you weren't."
"What?"
"What?"
They stared at each other for a moment before Nightfall remembered she was dealing with a six-year-old. She just shrugged, and they kept following the exit signs out of the building. There was no point in staying here without Twilight; it would be a waste of agent resources. If she dropped Anya off at home, she could probably catch up to him and help with whatever assignment WISE had given him. Hopefully.
She remembered the item in her hand. With a practiced surreptitious motion, as if she were just checking a ticket stub from her pocket, she looked down to see a note written in Twilight's cramped hand-cipher.
HQ sent me on mission to evaluate possible buyers for car. Will catch up with you later this evening. Original purpose of today's mission remains intact; please continue to chaperone Anya for cultural and intellectual development. Destroy this note by eating.
Nightfall let a scowl cross her frontal lobe, and slipped the note into her pocket so she could savor it later. That damn exploding car again. Well, those were the afternoon plans shot. And so much for showing off her skills as an agent to Twilight, too.
Still. A mission was a mission; if Twilight wanted her to continue the original itinerary she could hardly argue against that. Anya was sorely lacking in exposure to the sort of culture that Eden Academy marinated within; today's crash course was necessary to get her through the interview. And also give her something to say about her mother besides "She makes fun toys when she cooks".
"Anya," Nightfall said, looking down into her curiously blank face. The next obvious step was to talk her into staying out, instead of going home to just wait for Twilight to come back. "Why don't we-"
"Okay."
Hmm. Easier than expected.
Nightfall ran through the rest of the plans for the day in her head as they walked through the museum, flanked occasionally by statues that Anya insisted on individually naming as they passed. The next item they had planned was a rally by the Nationalist party; to put up the appearance as good socially-conscious citizens. That might have to be amended, though. Political rallies, especially those driven by the Nationalists, could get heated and involve confrontations between those participating. Would a mother really come alone with her small child to an event like that?
Nightfall didn't know. It occurred to her that she knew about as much about being a mother as she did about abstract art.
"Mr. Flat-top," Anya said, pointing at a classical sculpture with a rather anachronistic hairstyle. She gasped with a concerned look on her face, then looked up at her. "Mama! Can we go look at the dancing people?"
"Who are the dancing people?" Nightfall said. Probably not the ballet, she thought. It would be too late to get tickets for today, and Anya didn't seem like the tutu-enthusiast sort of little girl.
"The dancing people! Papa was watching the news the other day, it showed the dancing people in the com-mar-shal di-strict," Anya said, handling the last few words like they would break if she dropped them.
Oh, the street performers that the chamber of commerce had hired recently. An appropriate activity for a mother with a small child, that also showed interest in recent civic developments, and more importantly was public enough that they could be recognized for following those civic developments. A perfect pick, she had to admit. "That sounds like a fine idea, Anya. What made you want to see them?"
"I want to see the guy that breathes fire!"
Well, she couldn't blame her. It would be a useful skill to have. "We'll stop by and see if they're performing. Papa might meet us there later." If the tracer in her bag was still working.
The fire-breathing man was, indeed, performing this afternoon. As were the sword man, the knife-juggling man, the rifle-maneuver men, the other sword man, the trained-falcon man, and the inadvisably-dangerous-length-of-chain man. There were, Nightfall was pretty sure, more weapon-men than dancers or clowns. It was possible that they had stepped into a performance driven by the Nationalist party despite her earlier concerns. But the crowd was loving it at any rate, and Anya in particular had a blast when she saw a geyser of flame erupting straight up from a man who had far too much face to possibly do this on a regular basis.
They were bringing out the actual dancers again, possibly in an attempt to wind down the crowd, when a man stepped in front of Anya. She started hopping in place, coming nowhere near high enough to see over his head, before Nightfall lifted her off her feet and placed her on her shoulders.
"Thank you, Mama," she said politely. That was a good sign, they had been working on her pleases and thank-yous for the interview. It was a bit less promising that she promptly grabbed the top of her head and leaned on it, but there was still progress.
"What a lovely daughter you have there," a rumbling voice said from beside her.
Nightfall turned, and looked up at a truly enormous man in an army officer's cap. He put on a big toothy smile, and gave her a friendly salute with the hand he wasn't using to hold onto the leg of the person on his own shoulders. A young man, presumably his teenage son.
"Thank you. My husband and I are very proud of her," Nightfall said. Well, again. Progress was made. It was best to spread the image of the Forger's as an upwardly-mobile young couple as far and wide as possible. "We've been working on her manners with her, since we're hoping to enroll in Eden this year."
"Ah, then we have something in common. My boy Bill here will be starting this year," the huge man said, patting his son's leg. Like Anya, he showed no interest in adult conversation and just kept on watching one of the dancers juggle another one with his legs. "We've already been accepted. He's done the family proud and earned himself a sports scholarship."
"Is that right? That's quite an accomplishment," Nightfall said. Eden did have a campus for upper-classmen, and Bill certainly looked like the sort of young man who could lead any sports team he wanted. Even if he was wearing a propeller beanie for some reason.
"Of course! But it doesn't end there. Why, there's no end to the things my boy can accomplish, He's already told me he wants to earn his first Stella by the end of his first year," the huge man said. He slapped his son on the knee, to get his attention. "But it'll take more than brawn to win that challenge, eh Bill? Eden is a school for the academic as well as athletic elite, and its complex warzone demands what?"
Bill smiled, pushed his glasses up towards his nose, and counted off the five fingers on his other hand. "Intelligence, athleticism, leadership, social grace, and the will to achieve, sir!" he boomed, in a voice nearly as deep as his father's.
"Excellent answer. Tonight we celebrate with ice cream!"
"Hooray!"
They exchanged last pleasantries, and the huge man wandered off with his son still on his shoulders. Anya waved goodbye while Nightfall contemplated what that encounter might mean. If that was the caliber of competition at Eden, they were going to have to seriously concentrate on improving Anya's capabilities if they wanted to succeed.
The show finished with a human pyramid made from all the performers. They left to beat the rush of the crowd dispersing, and Anya expressed disappointment that she hadn't gotten to see the pyramid fall over.
Nightfall figured this day had been a net positive for the mission. Anya didn't exactly seem more cultured now than she had been this morning, but giving her something to talk about was good enough. And making contact with another family attending Eden was an unexpected benefit. If they could build up a network of friendly contacts within the students' families, that would give them a perfect lever of influence within the school. The PTA at a school like Eden probably did everything short of ordering hits on disreputable families.
They turned a corner onto a less-populated side street. Nightfall was vaguely familiar with this area from her survey of the city's map; this road led onto a street bordering an elevated park that would take them straight home. Twilight hadn't caught up to them yet, but he could be out all night, and she wanted to get home to see if they had any files on Eden's sports scholarships, and see if any of them mentioned propeller beanies.
"A purse snatcher! Someone, stop him!"
The voice came from around the corner, along with a furor that suggested alarmed bystanders. She kept her eye out, and it was easy to spot when the thief turned the corner straight at them. Taking the corner way too quick, fading into an obviously faked oh-so-casual stride, and of course there was the bag tucked under one arm. He quickly donned a hat and jacket he had been carrying under one arm, clearly intending to escape by blending back in with the crowd.
Nightfall just kept walking towards him. This wasn't her concern, and trying to catch the thief herself would just risk blowing her cover. Twilight always said that pickpockets and purse snatchers only preyed on vulnerable people, people who let their guard down. The obvious plan was just to keep her head down, ignore him, and let the police help whoever he had stolen that purse from.
And that was the plan, right up until Anya stole the man's hat as he walked past.
The thief, wired and paranoid, immediately turned back around and pointed an accusatory finger in their direction.
"Hey! That's my hat!"
"You stole a purse. Give it back," Anya demanded defiantly from atop her shoulders. Oh no, she had noticed too. Was this the cartoons again? Was Anya about to get her into a street brawl because she had seen a cat do it on television?
The man took an angry step forward. "I didn't steal anything," he said, voice an angry hiss.
"You did. You're a bad person because you steal from vol-nerable people," Anya said insistently. Great, she had heard Twilight's opinion on the subject and somehow drawn the wrong conclusion from it. What exactly was Nightfall supposed to do here? This was uncharted territory; everything about her training she tried to remember just said "Do not be in this situation". Should she try to get Anya to give the hat back? No, Anya would definitely resist, and then she'd be dealing with a screaming child on top of everything else.
The thief took another step forward and reached for Anya. Nightfall instinctively batted his arm out of the way. "Don't touch my daughter," she said icily.
"I need that hat, lady!" the thief said, making another desperate swipe for it that Nightfall effortlessly deflected. Even with a child on her shoulders, the man was about as likely to get through her as he would be a brick wall.
The thief didn't seem deterred; and the situation looked like it was going to turn ugly fast. He might have even been carrying a weapon, and even an idiot like this could get a lucky hit in at close range. If Nightfall had to defuse this, she would defuse it her own way. The thief glared at her. After a few seconds during which all of his brainpower must have been consumed developing this cunning plan, he tried grabbing the hat again.
Nightfall grabbed the wrist this time. She twisted, pulled, and bent until the man was turned around from her, unable to attack or run away, looking to any bystanders who weren't at the right angle as if he were just casually standing in front of her. So long as they didn't look at his shifting feet or the grimace on his face.
"Right then," she said, low and quiet and fast, directly into the man's ear in guttural tones. "You had a plan, and you obviously have practice with it, so you obviously do this often. You're a young man, you're relatively tall and healthy, your clothes are new. You come from a wealthy or at least middle class background. You don't need to steal to live. So you're doing this because you're in it for thrills or your family kicked you out. Maybe both. You had a smile on your face when you turned that corner carrying an old woman's handbag, so maybe your family kicked you out for being sick in the head and unwilling to work a proper job. You don't seem like the sort of man who got a lot of love from his father."
Quite possibly not a lot of this was true. She hadn't had time to form a proper plan, so all of this was coming out of her mouth from the same origin point as her modern art analysis. But the words, or at least the way she was saying them, or at least the way she was saying them while twisting his arms behind his back, seemed to have taken a grip on the man. He had stopped squirming and now just stood slack in front of her.
"So I've noticed a lot about you, you see. I know your height, weight, face, hair color, eye color, I could take a good guess at your accent. I could take your fingerprints right now if I wanted. But I'm going to release you, and just let you know that if you so much as look at me or anyone around me ever again, the police will find you within a day and your little consequence-free lifestyle will come crashing down forever. Do you understand?"
The thief took a second to register that his neck was not in any sort of hold, and he nodded vaguely. Nightfall released him, and he stumbled forward. He tried to shuffle out of sight, rubbing his forearm and, she was pretty sure, stifling a sob.
"Wait," Nightfall said. The thief froze in mid-stride, foot a half-inch above the ground. "Leave the purse."
Another moment passed with the thief frozen. He put his foot back down on the ground and, as she watched his shoulders tense, Nightfall decided that the last demand might have pushed him a bit too far.
The thief swung around, fist outstretched, and lunged towards her. And then Nightfall watched, as if in slow motion, as he was lifted off the ground, rolled over a green-jacketed shoulder, and slammed back onto the pavement hard enough to send a shockwave across the concrete. The expression on his face didn't even have time to change.
"Are you two alright?" Twilight said, standing back up and taking his hand off the thief's neck.
"Papa!" Anya said happily. "I got you a new hat!"
"Thank you for your assistance, Loid," Nightfall said, ignoring the parts of her brain that were calling in an immediate swoon from most of her body. "The man was a purse snatcher. Anya confronted him, and he seemed to take issue with her. We'll have to give his information to the police."
"I see," Twilight said, looking down at the man's stunned, sprawled body. "We'll have to talk about this at home, Anya. You can't keep yelling at strangers because you think they did something wrong."
"Even if they did do something wrong?"
"Yes. Well, wait, no." Twilight froze for an instant as he ran some quick mental calculations behind the scenes. "Sometimes. That's one of the things we'll have to talk about. For now, we might as well return the purse to whoever lost it. Did anybody see who it belonged to?"
"Somebody might have, yes," Nightfall said, looking around her. Anya stealing the man's hat hadn't drawn much attention on this quiet side-street, and she had tried to keep her own attempt at deflection low-key, but slamming a man into the pavement had a way of drawing onlookers in from farther away. Twilight was attracting his own attention as a street performer, and the way he had frozen again suggested he didn't quite know how to handle that.
"Candy!" Anya said happily, taking the reward the elderly woman offered her.
"Be sure to thank the nice lady," Twilight said.
Twilight put on a pair of glasses and studied Anya as she sat placidly on the couch before him. That was an old trick he had taught Nightfall; a prop that changed the way you saw or interacted with the world helped you assume a new character. In this case, an interviewer for a prestigious school.
"Alright. What do you do on your holidays, Anya?" he said.
"We go to the opera, or the museum, or the street perfumers," Anya said dutifully.
"Performers. But yes, that's it. If anyone asks that, just remember today." Twilight glanced back down at his notepad with a smile. "Okay, next question then. What do you do when you see a friend doing something bad?"
"I twist his arm and tell him his papa doesn't love him."
The smile slid from Twilight's face as if afraid something was going to happen to it. He turned, and gave Nightfall an expression that wearily demanded explanation.
"I had to improvise," she said, turning her head away from him.
"And then if they keep doing it I pick them up and throw them at the ground," Anya continued. Twilight stiffened even further, his shoulders now forming a shallow V.
"Could you just forget you ever saw that?" he said dejectedly, leaning back in his chair.
"But it was so cool!" Anya said gleefully, hopping off her seat. She mimed grabbing someone from behind. "I know everything about you," she said, getting the tone of voice right even if her grip was all wrong. She then picked up her invisible assailant and dropped him back to the ground with her usual grace, bumping the coffee table as she pinned her victim to the floor. "Kapow!"
"Just don't take the wrong lesson from it, Anya," Nightfall said, walking into the living room. She put the tray of drinks she had been preparing down on the table, and Anya abandoned her struggle to grab her mug of cocoa. Privately, Nightfall would have to admit that the way Twilight had dispatched their attacker had in fact been super cool, though she would never say that to his face.
Anya performed better than they expected on the rest of the interview questions. She could give at least the shape of the right answer when she was focusing, even if her grammar could leave something to be desired. Her academic answers could be sloppy, too. That was to be expected, since Nightfall had neglected to actually push her towards studying what with one thing and another. But Anya was obviously trying, and that was good, right?
Nightfall sipped the last dregs of her coffee, black, just like Twilight's. No, maybe trying wasn't good enough. She thought back on the other Eden parent she had met earlier today, and the way he had been pushing his son. That was a family that had everything together, and that was the sort of family they would be directly competing with for academic honors. It wouldn't be enough just to try. They would all have to be the best.
But she hadn't been doing her best herself, Nightfall realized. She hadn't pushed Anya to study, she had been busy worrying about Twilight instead. How could she call herself a proper agent when even a random purse snatcher had driven her to flashy, uncoordinated techniques? She needed to focus. That was the plan, after all. A perfect agent to win Twilight.
Anya dozed off in front of the TV, watching her cartoons after Twilight had finished drilling her on interview questions. Nightfall carried her off to bed, swearing to do for Anya what Twilight had done for her. She would train her, and drive her towards perfection.