Cliff Nakamura – the Driver, and Lance Nakamura – the Ninja
Try though she might to deny it, Barbie Nakamura wouldn’t have a leg to stand on – she is, unfortunately, one of Scout’s “fried chicken tramps”.
The pregnancy was unexpected, unwanted, and unpleasant, with birth complications leaving Cliff paralyzed at the waist and Barbie bedridden for a month - the second she regained mobility, she ran out, leaving the twins with their grandparents and young uncles.
Their Baachan and Jiichan aren’t exactly thrilled at being left with two more children to raise at their ages (twins are bad luck as it is) – they spend months interrogating every man in a two-town radius to try and find the responsible party, but no one in Teufort thinks to point them toward the badlands.
Come on – Jeremy Gryde has seven siblings and you’re telling me multiples don’t run in that family? (Yes, I know that’s not really how it works, shush)
Cliff, despite his condition, apparently has unlimited energy, and seems determined to be mobile, crawling and climbing wherever he can reach – once he managed to get on his Uncle Gene’s skateboard and built up some decent momentum before Baa-Baa stopped him (much to his dismay).
Lance, meanwhile, seems practically inanimate at times, apparently content to just watch the world. For a while the family was scared there was “something wrong with him too”, but he hasn’t missed a milestone yet – to this day, no one’s sure when he first stood upright, they just walked in and he was up. By now, everyone’s stopped worrying about him being nonverbal and started taking bets on first words (Jii-jii has 5 bucks on a full sentence).
As different and independent as they both are, the twins do share a deep bond – not that that’s always a good thing, as figuring out which one has a problem is complicated when they’re both crying.
Post-abduction-and-rescue, Scout… does not handle taking them on well. He’s trying, of course, but twin toddlers will challenge even the most prepared caretakers, let alone some guy who can count the number of kids he’s held on one hand (all of them his nephews, all instances heavily supervised).
Of all the people stepping up to help with the twins (Engineer helps him set up his room, Patrick watches them like a hawk, Christoph is eager to study their behavior), Scout certainly didn’t anticipate Spy getting so invested – he figures the Frenchie just wants to rub his face in his screwups.
Spy, meanwhile, is internally screaming about being a grandfather and how much the boys remind him of his petit lapin. On one particularly rough night, Armand helps Jeremy break radio silence so sa chere Janice can offer advice and meet her new grandbabies.
After a few disruptive incidents, a rule is established on base that you can’t yell at anyone holding a baby. This rule is just as quickly exploited, and pretty soon asking to hold a baby is basically an admission of guilt.
Just when RED thinks they’ve had enough life-altering family revelations, the circumstances force Spy to expose his own dirty little secret – the week of fallout isn’t fun for anyone, and doesn’t get resolved until OHM’s invasion forces the matter.
Once OHM is ousted (and Chiyoko Nakamura harangues Scout within an inch of his life), their new challenge is figuring out a custody situation that will satisfy everyone. The day is saved when Jeremy’s brother Kevin volunteers to foster the twins with his partner David in Denver - the weekly 8-hour drive is worth the security.
After finishing high school, Cliff begins his crusade to master every vehicle known to man – with some help from Engie and Hedy to make his rigs both accessible and barely street legal, he dabbles in everything from delivery driving to drag racing.
Lance, meanwhile, disappears off the face of the earth the night after graduation – everyone spends months searching for him, except the emphatically unconcerned Cliff. When he returns just as suddenly from his surprise two-year trip to Japan, it’s with a lot of new scars, new skills, and new connections.
The twins were the first of the new generation to join up with TFI (Cliff says he was really first, Lance insistently refuses to comment), taking their troublemaking worldwide as the Driver and the Ninja.
Next up – a mad, magical, red-blooded Russo-American…