Tom and Alex were prone to craziness. This was a fact almost as irrefutable as the fact that gravity made things fall. People learned to live with it or they distanced themselves from it. But no matter what the reaction to the kooky schemes and odd occurrences almost everyone was amused at one point or another. Even if it was only in hindsight.

Perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if Alex hadn't once been MI6's top agent. Or perhaps it wouldn't have been so bad if someone had thought to have Tom tested for ADHD long before Wolf ever came into the picture. But both of these things played a major role in their day-to-day lives even with Alex a permanent civilian and Tom on the right medications.

There were just some situations that couldn't be avoided when you were growing up with as many secrets as they did. Alex and Tom had pasts that no teenager should have and they weathered it all pretty well. Tom at least still knew how to act as a normal teenager. Alex made a gallant effort and on some days he found himself nearly forgetting he had ever been a spy, but he was ultimately reminded when he caught himself peering over his shoulder or trying to read someone's lips.

It made for some awkward situations from time to time. These situations were certainly not helped by Tom who had suddenly taken to denying rumors about Alex by making up even crazier ones. At least their classmates thought they were crazy. Alex didn't much appreciate Tom spreading a rumor that Alex had an evil twin hell bent on world domination. Even if no one believed it, it was annoying.

Despite all the weirdness surrounding them and their favorite bunch of soldiers, at the end of the day Alex and Tom were still teenagers. They were still growing up and trying to come into their own. It was stressful at times, given their pasts, but for others it was downright amusing. Because as we all know, many of the aches and pains of growing up were funnier for the adults than they ever would be for the kids.

"I can't believe we have to do this," Alex mumbled as he glared at the dark plastic figure he was holding at arm's length. By the look on his face, Tom believed that his friend thought the electronic baby doll was going to suddenly come alive and eat him.

"Everyone has to at some point Alex," Tom reminded him, his own baby doll cradled in the nook of his arm. "It's just another embarrassing part of health class."

They were, of course, talking about their latest health class assignment. Mrs. Wilshoe had suddenly decided that were far too many teen pregnancies in the world and had taken it upon herself to encourage them all to not have children at fifteen years old. The electronic baby simulators had arrived at the school last week in a horrible blue and pink delivery truck.

The class was given their little simulator of joy the following Friday along with a lecture on why you should never shake a baby. Each doll came complete with fake diapers, bottles, and a carrier. Mrs. Wilshoe had also told them that there was a small monitor inside that would record any type of 'neglect'. If such a thing happened they would fail the assignment.

Alex had already decided that this would be an absolutely horrible weekend. The dolls were going to be turned on at five o'clock and wouldn't be deactivated until seven Monday morning. The blond was fully prepared for screaming, burping, and general baby unpleasantness. It looked to him as if he was the only one, but then he was much more of a realist than his classmates. Tom looked excited. Alex wanted to hit him.

"Rider!" Mrs. Wilshoe suddenly snapped and he jumped nearly dropping the baby doll in the process. He managed to catch it by its plastic foot before it hit the ground. The teacher glared at him. "Don't drop the baby!"

Alex grimaced at the near screech and replied, "But it isn't even activated yet."

"I don't care," she told him. "There is more to raising a baby than simply the physical care. There is also the emotional care. Look at how Mr. Harris is holding his child. I want all of you to try to connect with your babies over the weekend so that you can fully understand the physical and emotional lengths young parents go to in raising children."

Most just stared at her as if she had finally lost her mind. Everyone knew that Tom's tender loving care didn't stem from any sort of paternal instinct but from a deep seated need to embrace everything and everyone. Their classmate had sniffed out a personal challenge in this assignment and he'd be damned if he was going to fail. Besides, Tom had recently spent five months babysitting a two-year-old in order to get close to the hot girl who lived next door. Everyone in the classroom was also aware of that, except, it seemed, Mrs. Wilshoe.

"It's a plastic doll," Alex said, feeling the need to argue for some unseemly reason. It was rare for him to ever challenge the teacher but this assignment was quickly approaching ridiculous. He didn't want to 'take care' of a doll as if it were a real baby. He already knew being a teenaged parent sucked. He'd seen those reality shows.

"It's your baby," Mrs. Wilshoe stressed, her eyes narrowing at him as if he had just claimed that he'd forgotten the baby in the car on a hot day.

"It's plastic," he reiterated. "If I promise not have sex until I'm thirty can I be excused from this assignment?" The question startled a round of riotous laughter from his classmates. Alex Rider wasn't known for being a class clown but his rarely seen humor had been known to shock a laugh from teachers and classmates alike. It never ceased to surprise them that the mysterious boy had a sense of humor, however buried it was.

Mrs. Wilshoe was eventually able to sputter out a response looking as if she herself was torn between laughing and throwing him in detention. The bell rang soon enough and everyone quickly made their escape.

Tom met Alex by his locker after school that day. The shorter boy had been carrying his plastic doll with him all day as if he truly was a proud new father. Alex found it annoying but the field hockey girls found it adorable. Such a reaction was exactly what Tom had intended.

Alex on the other hand had stuffed the doll and the carrier into the janitor's closet just opposite his locker. He would have put them both in the actual locker but it was too small.

"Where's your baby?" Tom asked. Alex jabbed a thumb over his shoulder to indicate the location of his plastic nuisance. Tom immediately scolded him. "Alex! You can't keep a baby in the janitors closet!"

"It's not real Tom," Alex replied in a rather bored and tired tone of voice.

"You shouldn't say that about your child," Tom huffed and then stormed over the janitor's closet to rescue the poor piece of plastic. Alex ignored him.

The ex-spy continued exchanging his books and gathering his homework for that night. By the time he slammed his locker shut and turned around Tom had a carrier in each hand. To Alex, he looked completely ridiculous. Tom was so short that the bottoms of the carriers were actually brushing the tiled floor. The carriers were donations to the school and thus one was a hideous shade of yellow and the other was nearly falling apart. The two plastic babies were wrapped up in small, ratty looking blankets. Alex couldn't help but flashback to primary school when Cindy Hansen forced Tom to play house with her in exchange for not tattling about what they now called the Tadpole Debacle.

It was then that Alex realized the truth behind that old, corny saying: the more things changed, the more they stayed the same. He almost felt guilty for stuffing the plastic doll in the closet. Almost.

"ALEX!"

He ignored the shout and the screaming plastic monster sitting next to him on the couch. It had only been active for a half hour and already it was driving Jack completely insane. Tom had taken his up to the room he now shared with Alex when Wolf was away. His doll was perfectly content to make gurgling noises.

"Why did you have to do this assignment again?" Jack asked. She stomped her way into the living room looking disgruntled and put out. Normally she loved children, even the really small and whiny ones, but Jack wasn't looking forward to have two somewhat crazy teenagers trying to look after two horrible plastic babies. She could see her relaxing weekend leaving her quicker than a deadbeat.

"It's a part of my health class," Alex responded. "I tried to get out of it but Tom kind of blocked me."

"Why must he look at everything like it's some sort of personal challenge?" she asked loudly, trying to be heard over the wailing plastic monster. "Alex! Shut that thing up!"

"I don't know how!" he said just as loudly.

"Then go upstairs and give it to Tom!" she replied. "He shut his up!"

"He's insane," Alex replied.

"I need to talk to you," Jack said deciding that continuing this argument wasn't going to do much of anything.

"Can we talk later?" Alex asked, finally turning to the wailing 'baby' and picking it up. Not that he knew what to do beyond stand there with it in his hands and look at Jack pleadingly. She rolled her eyes and held out her hands for the doll. Pretending it was real, she went through the motions of calming down an hysterical infant and soon enough the thing gurgled and lapsed into silence.

Looking up, she found that Alex was gone. She sighed and resolved to ground him for ditching his homework project on her.

By the next morning, Alex was ready to kill not only Tom but both of the plastic little heathens in their midst. The dolls went off nearly every two hours if they were lucky. The biggest problem was that if one of them went off it would trigger the other one. With Alex and Tom having to share a room and both dolls in the same location, the annoyance was twice as bad.

Not to mention that Alex was pretty sure his plastic child hated him. The thing just did not want to shut up and by sunrise, neither boy had slept more than an hour or two. This was by far the worst assignment Alex had ever had to endure and he was starting to have serious doubts as to if he would pass. He was very close to just removing the batteries and taking a failing grade.

"Alex," Jack said as she shook his shoulder. The teen's head snapped back up from where it had been falling into his cereal. The unpleasant snort that came from him as he came back to awareness went unnoticed. "You have to take care of the baby."

He heard the distant wail of the plastic howler monkey and groaned. He was unused to staying awake this long. It had been awhile since he was a spy and there was no prevailing danger around to keep him from realizing how sleepy he was.

"Why won't it shut up?" he whined, closing his eyes momentarily as if that would make everything quiet again. Tom was sitting across from him, looking just as tired, but with a quiet, inert doll in his lap.

"Maybe it's sick," Tom suggested.

"It's not a real baby," Alex snapped.

"You must have just gotten the one programmed to be fussy," Jack said. "Go take care of it. I've already done enough of your project."

"I don't see why I have to do this," Alex grumbled as he stood up. "I haven't even had sex."

"Keep it that way!" Jack shouted after him as he disappeared from view. He rolled his eyes. Up in his room, the ex-spy just held the screaming thing as he sat on the edge of his bed. Tom had taken the top bed in the bunk bed they had set up in Alex's room. It was brand new but with Tom staying with Wolf for longer than they had thought, it was worth the purchase.

The baby howled for nearly ten minutes before Alex figured he might as well pretend to change the diaper. Going through the motions, he could barely do it right. Whether his ineptitude came from a lack of experience or a lack of sleep was left to be decided. He figured it was a mixture of both. He really did hate this assignment.

Alex went through several baby-care movements including using the fake bottle that came with the doll to fake feed his fake baby. Nothing worked.

"Ugh!" he grunted his patience coming to an end. He'd just take the fail. Taking off the little shirt he made quick work of removing the battery cover and then ripping out the batteries. The silence was sudden and nearly as loud as the baby howls had been. He had never in his life appreciated silence as much as he did now.

"Alex! Did you kill your baby?"

"Shut up, Tom!"

When K-Unit finally made it back into the country it was a Sunday afternoon. Eagle was looking forward to spending the rest of the night with Jack and Alex, eating a real meal and watching the telly. Wolf just wanted to get the kid and go home to sleep. Their last mission had been exhausting and everyone had been injured in some way. Puma had done well but it hadn't been the same as having Snake there.

When they were together, the four of them were unbeatable. They could read each other's minds, predict one another's next move, and ultimately work as one fluid body. They were good; they were close. It was hard to leave one of their own behind.

Entering the house, Wolf was very aware of the dull quiet that permeated through the air. It confused him momentarily. Jack had assured them not twenty minutes ago that both boys were home and yet there was no loud chatter, no mysterious thumps, and no sounds of gunfire coming from a video game. He was half inclined to pull out his gun for, surely, nothing good could have happened to keep the house this quiet.

Both soldiers walked cautiously into the house and moved towards the living room, half expecting Scorpia agents to come barreling out of closets and from behind corners. Complete and utter relief flooded through them when they saw Snake on the couch, his booted feet on the coffee table, crossed at the ankles, and the telly turned to a soap opera but with the sound so low the man had to lip read in order to know what was happening. His hands were in the pocket of his old, army green hoodie.

The soldier's burns were healing nicely but he still looked in a bad way. Wolf doubted the man's face would ever look the same. In one of the reclining chairs was Alex, asleep, and with his limbs going every direction. He looked exhausted.

"What's going on?" Eagle asked quietly and Snake looked up from his show only just noticing they were there. He smiled and quickly stood to give each of them a quick hug of welcome.

"He and Tom had a really...long project this weekend," Snake told them, smirking just slightly. Wolf grunted, not caring and quickly dropped into the other arm chair, reclining so far he was nearly laying flat. Eagle was a little more curious but was unable to continue prying when Jack came into the room. She gave a remarkably quiet squeal and enveloped him in a hug. This was the best part of coming home and he would have stayed like that for awhile had it not been for the sudden howl of an infant.

Both Eagle's and Wolf's head snapped around towards the stairs where Tom appeared, holding a screaming plastic doll at arm's length and looking ready to cry.

"I tried," he said loudly, and Eagle could hear him hold back a sob. The teen looked just as exhausted as Alex who rolled over to try to block out the screams. "I thought I could but I couldn't! It just won't stop." The short teen managed to hand the doll to Jack before he turned and fell over the arm of the chair into Wolf's lap.

"Oof!" the soldier grunted. Tom ignored his guardian's obvious discomfort and wriggled around until he was smashed in between Wolf's side and the arm of the chair.

"What is going on?" Eagle asked, also raising his voice to be heard over the toy. He was almost afraid to ask but was too curious not to.

"It's for their health class," Jack told them as she went about calming the thing. "They were both given a baby simulator to take care of for the weekend."

"Where's Alex's?" Wolf asked.

"He killed it," Jack said and then proceeded to stifle her laughter at the two men's faces. "I'm kidding. He pulled the battery out." By this time she had managed to mostly quiet the doll which had allowed Alex to fall back asleep.

"Rough time of it?" Wolf asked jokingly, using his shoulder to bump Tom.

"I'm never having sex again," the boy mumbled in reply. Wolf's eyes widened and then narrowed.

"Again?" he growled.

"I mean I'm never having it all," Tom backtracked realizing he may have said way too much. "I'm a virgin. I promise!"

"Uh, huh," Wolf replied. "If you ever come back with a real baby, I'll make you take care of it by yourself."

"Nuh."

The conversation was never broached again. Wolf didn't last more than an hour with Tom's school project before he kidnapped it and pulled the batteries out. He was tired and sore. He needed quiet. He did, however, explain to the bemused teacher what had happened. He then proceeded to inform her that she was never to assign such a noisy assignment again. And that was an order, not a suggestion.

Break

"Alex, I need to talk to you," Jack said, poking the teen in his shoulder as he continued to nap on the chair.

"Mm," was the only reply she got.

"Alex, wake up," she persisted. "It's important." The teen didn't move and she eventually just gave up and left him where he was. Upstairs in their bedroom, Eagle was already laying in bed and trying not to fall asleep too early.

"Did you tell him?" he asked.

"Not yet," she replied. "It was a crazy weekend."

"You need to tell him," he said.

"I will," Jack told him. "I'll tell him tomorrow. Promise."

"I can tell him," he offered knowing that it probably wouldn't be easy on her.

"He's my kid. I'll tell him," was her firm and ultimately final reply. He didn't say anything more on the matter. He was worried of course, how could he not be? This was a serious problem. If they couldn't get rid of it and him, their lives could come crumbling around them.

He'd think of something.