Chapter Forty-Two

I really don’t know what I was expecting… I had a big elaborate plan to explain things to Asahi when he showed up with his cousins. I figured his mother and father would show up, that there would be a long discussion, identification, I had lots of elaborate lies in mind. Oh alright, fine, judge me, you know you want to. But it’s not like I like lying. What am I supposed to do, huh?! Tell humans that I’m secretly a magic assassin girl from another galaxy who is going to use magic medical technology to cure an incurable brain condition? How’s that going to fly exactly?

Right. So judge me all you want, but unless you’ve got something better, this was the best way for me to play it.

The thing is though, none of that mattered. Not one iota. Asahi showed up with his cousins, his head down, like my feet were just the most interesting thing in the world, and he handed me their IDs. “Here you go… for the plane, or bus… whatever you need. Please… please look after them. I know I was never going to have a great future, never the smartest, just smart enough to know I wasn’t that smart. Never really talented… but they should have had futures… if this really works… I’ll owe you for life.”

“Where are your parents, they’re not going to come?” I asked, “Aren’t they looking after these two…” I looked at the pair of listless twin boys, they were dressed in T-shirts… stained ones, but not as badly stained now since they’d been washed recently, and jeans, ripped ones, with a few off color patches added on. Their eyes were almost empty, not quite catatonic… but infantile, I got the feeling that if just anyone took their hands, they’d just walk away with even the sketchiest of strangers.

“My mom, she actually had to work… she couldn’t. She couldn’t.” He repeated those last two words, and I don’t know whether Asahi was trying to convince me or himself that this was the case. My dad… he works nights, he fell asleep as soon as he got home, I couldn’t wake him up. Besides, it’s you.” He raised his head and I caught that desperate, almost worshipful look in his eyes. “Just tell me when to pick them up.”

“It’ll be about two weeks. I’ll let you know when it’s over, if anything goes wrong, which it shouldn’t, but I’ll make sure everything is taken care of. Do they understand that they’re going to be going with me?” I asked, and he looked over his shoulder at the pair.

“As much as they understand anything. Besides, you’re familiar now.” He put his back to me and reached out his hands to rest one on each of their shoulders, “Remember, stay with the pizza lady. And be good. I’ll be back soon.”

They didn’t show even the slightest sign that they understood her. “Just call me if you want an update, but don’t expect anything for a while.” I reminded him, and then… he was gone.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

‘No address, no contact information, no… they didn’t ask for anything. Asahi I understand, but his parents should have thought to ask for something. Wow… that’s… that’s rough.’ I thought, standing at the door and watching him leave.

And then… I turned around and saw their expressions, these two black haired boys, the slight cant to their eyes that was common in this part of the world, that same ‘lost little boy’ look on both their faces. Their bodies were trembling a little, like they were afraid, like they didn’t know what to do without Asahi around to look after them, and I don’t think I’d ever seen anything so sad.

Their eyes grew wet, they didn’t really cry, just… they welled up a little, whatever damage was done to them, I think they knew that they used to be capable of more than they are now. Like they remembered their old lives.

“Alright, so, you’re going to take a little nap first. But you know what, when you wake up, everything will be fine. I promise.” I held out my hands to them, I didn’t ‘take’ their hands, I just walked past, turned around, and held mine out for them to take or not.

Something was still ‘alive’ in there. Or, so I like to think. But maybe I’m just fooling myself, maybe I’m just a sentimental twit for looking into those cowlike, confused eyes and thinking the spark of who they were still burned.

And right then, you know what I thought about?

Something new to me. Something I’d never given a thought to in hundreds of years.

The survivors.

No, not of my many, many assassinations. Not one of those has ever escaped me. But the people on worlds who were suddenly minus a dictator or two. I know some of those worlds got their act together, and the people there got better lives, and some didn’t, and required yet more visits by more of our Agents.

But I never really thought about the lives that we might have saved by getting rid of a handful of brutes, who never knew why things happened as they had, or who was really behind the end of their oppressors.

I smiled at the two, as friendly as I could, thankfully the orangish-red hair and sweet face I’d made my own, not to mention being to their eyes, a young woman in her twenties, all made me easier to trust in their eyes.

Small children seem to naturally be comfortable with young women, like we remind them of their mothers, perhaps? But whatever the reason, they didn’t pull away as I led them to my room. I pointed to the big bed and said, “Nap.”

That word, they clearly understood, and clambered onto the bed the way any child might before lying down and stretching out. Thankfully I’d seen enough anime with wholesome themes to know what they’d expect with their childlike minds.

Story time.

That left only one problem. My favorite animes, they never actually showed the whole story being read… so I didn’t know any stories. So… I made one up on the spot. Cobbled together from the bits and pieces of one I knew. If I’d been a human, perhaps I’d have grown up with childhood stories and could have drawn on one of those, but I wasn’t.

Swappers didn’t tell stories to their children as humans did. Or, if we did, well my own parents did not.

But, I’d do my best, until it was time for ‘Dr. Stone’ to get to work. At least keeping them asleep wouldn’t be a problem. Not for me.