Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

Operation Strix was over. Not for the final World Peace or Donovan Desmond finally getting a conscience, rather since the NUP was loosing power and in a chain of seemingly unrelated events Desmond was ousted and arrested.

Operation STRIX was over.

Sure Loid was a valuable asset somewhat adjacent to the Berlint elite now, he saw them at the Imperial Scholars' assemblies, listened to their woes in his hospital office, entertained their children in his house. But Ostania's elite was not solely made of Desmonds and Blackbells. And a friendly shrink could only go so far against a man with a thousand faces.

Operation STRIX was over.

Onto the exit strategy — leaving his wife and daughter and the dog that moved slower with age and pressed himself to his side when he came home — something undeniably tragic yet mundane as not to put suspicion on Yor. And Anya- A mugging gone wrong. A car accident. A small fire at the hospital to take lives of a few employeys.

[Redacted. Redline version]

He wasnt ignorant anymore. But what did it matter if he was as powerless as then. He was given a week, to put his affairs in order. More than an average soul gets before death.

Now, back to the exit strategy— Anya paled next to him, hand frozen in a packet of peanuts.

Papa loves Anya. Papa wants world peace. For Anya. Papa is going to leave.

"Plan B." She blurted out. Then she said words that would be gibberish to anyone but the man sitting next to her, pretending (to pretend) to be her loving father. With every next one his heart sank deeper and his insides twisted. "strix. wise. mission. twilight"

He turned to her, slowly. God. Loid Forger was confused and terrified and untimely impressed.

How? How could his nine year old, who couldn't tie her laces herself until a year ago, have known? His mind raced with possibilities, one more terrible than another, she must have gone through his office that time she claimed to visit for another school project and settled on the cushion with a bored pre-teen face. They were encripted documents, how? but then she was very good at languages and played with scripts from her silly cartoons since she was six.

Twilight only saw grey and red. "Who are you?" His voice was without inflection and his gaze turned to stone as he towered over her. "I can be an asset too." She tried to state firmly, unsuccessfully.

"Were you" he started calmly, hoping to win some time and maybe find out it was not too bad, not as he imagined— "playing spies again?"

"No!" She reacted violently, and he wanted to believe her. Anya had been known to lie on occasion, about doing her homework, about putting a worm in a boy's backpack, about staying too late out with Becky-

He hoped he had a little bit more time, naively.

Loid Forger put up a fight in his mind before dying a quick excruciatingly painful death.

"You need to tell me." A vulnurable child on the brink of great distress. Tread carefully, Twilight, easy to crack, easier to break.

She threw herself bravely at the cold blooded killer wearing her father's face as if not caring about the threat he just voiced. Tiny arms around him, face planted into his midsection where his guts internally were trying to rearrange themselves. That child wasn't the smartest at times, but she couldn't be that daft? He lifted his hand to separate the child from him, yet the treacherous thing landed on her (tiny tiny scrawny) shoulder instead — damned muscle memory.

"I just know" She creamed sobbed again,

Twilight lowered himself carefully to her level, not letting go of her shoulder. so tall already compared to the midget he picked up from the foster home years ago. Still tiny, of course, so she was forced to look at his face. "Anya. Look at me." "No." She refused wobbly, chin stubbornly down. "It's ok." He promised with 0% feeling behind the kindness in his voice. Maybe this was salvageable, a ghost tried. He ignored him. "I'm not angry." He forced a concerned furrow to his brows and softness to the corners of his eyes.

"It's just, if you told anyone," he continued concernedly, "something very very bad might happen to your friends. To your- to Yor. To Becky." "Papa needs to know," he whispered in a dead man's voice. "So that bad things don't happen to Anya."

That seemed to pacify her, if only a little. "You know I wouldn't!" she swore like it meant something and started crying again. "Not to Becky, not to unkie, not to Sy-on boy." She fell out of her childish stupor and added, "I know how to keep a secret." Darkly, unbecoming of a starlight bubbly child he'd been raising. What else could she keep, he wondered distantly as his mind was calculated routes.

Possibility trees ending with a small body disappearing, not a strand of pink left behind. If she had babbled about it at school, who knew what-

Twilight pondered his options. SSS would have a field day with her. Yuri specifically. WISE would find her too young for recruitment, but not too young for questioning (something shuddered inside him, maybe the last bit of humanity dying). It's better not to know what happened to the children from the missing posters.

[Archived] [Classified]

Into the second year of their marriage when it became clear that the end of the mission was nowhere in sight, he approached Yor with adoption papers and a half-lie about retirement fund the hospital was setting for the employees. The background scene was becoming harsher and bloodier with the new set of players emerging from the shadows, ravenous and ruthless . The near-misses were becoming too close for his taste, and contingency plans needed updating.

"If something happens to me," he explained carefully at her blank look at the stack of papers, "you would receive compensation from my pension. Social help. More, of course, if Anya was with you-"

"Loid-san, how could you say this?" He swallowed, suddenly terrified that he fucked up Anya's chances for when this was all over. "I care for you both, and I amAnya's mother. I will stay with her no matter what! You couldn't stop me."

Then she caught herself and pressed her hands to her mouth, like discovering a grave mistake that couldn't be unmade. "Of course, you're Anya's father and I know we-"

He allowed something warm and almost genuine to slip past his lips at that. "I'm glad to hear it, it's good to know our daughter is so loved." The crease of his smile was rehearsed but the emotion behind it wasn't. "Not that I plan on something happening to me anytime soon, of course!" He slipped back into Loid's jovial disposition. "I still got to see Anya graduate!"

[Redacted] [Redline version]

Loid will never see Anya graduate. She won't graduate at all if this matter leaves Forgers' living room and a whisper of it reaches Berlint streets.

It would have been cuter when she was still a baby, she's sure, when she couldn't pronounce psychiatry without stumbling over her r's. Anya could throw a tantrum and sometimes papa would still marvel at her being so small and Loud at the same time. Now the tears didn't stop and were completely useless — she was a big girl now. And when big girls cried the grown ups didn't hurry to pacify them with peanuts and hugs anymore. They said things like "Oh is it something to cry about?" "Is that a ladylike behaviour?" Except for mama , mama was the best, but she wasn't here. Only Papa. and not for long.

"No one can know, ever." Treason. That was treason.

His fingers gripped her shoulder, pictures of her tiny frame tied to a chair, bright lamp light into her face, in rooms fool of cigarette smoke and smells of urine blood and vomit. Something in him must've given it away — the vile horror — because she shuddered and for the first time that evening looked appropriately terrified of the situation she found herself in.

"No one. Ever. Repeat after me." At this the girl bawled anew, heartbroken only in a way a child whose world was about to fall apart could. "No!" I just wanted you to keep me. [To love me.] "Don't leave please! I know how to be useful!l"

She must have known. She must have tried, for the mission. She was so good and it didn't matter in the end.

Still she had to repeat "No one. Ever." a thousand times over before a stranger wearing her father's face smiled bitterly and whispered. "Good girl, Anya."

[Archived]

A week later Loid Forger tragically passed away during a minor fire at the Berlint Hospital, survived by his wife and daughter.

[Archived] [Redacted] [Redacted]

Her mama was crying so much now, when she thought Anya wasn't looking. Anya didn't have to look to know.

Their home became quiet and disordered. Even Bond was depressed, spending whole days lying next to the couch, waiting for Loid to come home.

[Redacted]

Loid Forger was useless and inconsequential. Still, how dare he die and leave his sister alone with that chihuahua of a girl!? Yuri didn't go to the funeral (a work trip to Septevia) but he knew that his sister bawled her eyes out at the closet casket - right, the fire. It was suspicious — everything about the man married to his sister was, of course, his death no exception — and he dug into the firefighter reports, checked the records of bodies in all the morgues of Berlint, coroner's notes, post-mortem examinations. The only thing he didn't do was dig the grave up to run more tests, well his captain called him an obsessed maniac and ordered to quit it (after slamming a fist in his guts).

"The school she goes to, they offer boarding, right, sister?" That day Yor broke his jaw and didn't apologise afterwards.

Thorn Princess saw people sometimes, whose gait and silhouette reminded her of Loid. Her decade-honed instincts were never wrong yet the grieving widow inside her didn't want to examine it too closely. She ignored the whispers and the glances at work So young but already a widow. A child but not her own. Look she's wearing away, poor thing. I heard the social support for widows is pennies. How can she come to work so calm? Her life's in shambles.

For Anya, Yor would do it all. Loid trusted her with his precious daughter and she would do everything to make her grow happy and loved.

His first mission, Twilight kept referencing non-existent schedule of a dead man. Send Anya to school. Make way to the hospital or HQ. Walk Bond in the evening. Cook dinner for Yor and Anya.

The one after that the man purged all ideas of that life from his mind.

He kept himself in form just enough not to break. Eat. Sleep. Reports. Encoded messages. Mission. Mission. [Redacted] [Redacted] Mission. Repeat.

Still the most efficient but not as young as he was 4 years ago. They aged twice as fast as everyone else, one of his dead comrades had joked, having lived so many lives.

"You scum," Yuri roared during their next meeting where his mask was prematurely ripped off. "You dare put on a dead man's face to mock me? Innocent man died because of the likes of you, westalian swine."

What an unexpected blessing Loid's Forger death had been.

That day Twilight committed another act of treason. He already killed Yor's husband. He couldn't take her brother too. (not yet)

[Redacted]

After that Yuri did dig up the grave of his brother-in-law, just in case, finding the corpse not that badly burnt and mostly intact as far as decomposing bodies went — fitting into Loid's profile perfectly.

An honest ostanian man died in a fire born out of old equipment malfunction and a misplaced cleaning rag, and Yuri had to admit he was wrong.

His final exit strategy would be death from bleeding out in the field, from a second of carelessness that he was prone to now. Yuri Briar was still alive after all, and the carelessness only piled up over the years.

Or, more likely, a bullet to the back of his head. An asset that thinks too much is no asset at all.

Once in a while he broke protocol and checked in on two ostanian civilians. One of them, once he didn't have the excuse of family and wife and life partner in the way — was an assassin. That was good, the man concluded after the shock has passed, it meant she had power behind her that wasn't SSS and could protect herself. The other was—

"Anya, let'ssit outside after lunch!" "Okie-dokie!"

Henry Henderson looked at Anya Forger, playing happily with her best friend. Both were on the way to growing up into elegant adults, though the girl had become so much dimmer since the untimely death of her father. She carried her grief with the grace unprecedented of a nine year old.

The second son of the Desmond clan, as always was not far from the pink haired girl. Somehow through the fate's cruel joke they had to become closer, fatherless children left to face the world. Their alliance became less violate and more amicable, the only regret he had was that it came about in such circumstances.

The world wasn't kind to Desmonds, fallen from grace. The news of Donovan Desmond's arrest went through the country like tornado, and sadly Eden didn't prove to be a safe haven. No amount of Tonitrus Bolts could stop children from mimicking their adults. And the adults in Berlint always had something to say about the ex-PM.

Professor Henderson could not have known, what had transpired between two of his young wards to unite them like that. With years they actually made sure to discuss sensitive matters in places where adults didn't dwell often.

"Hey, Sy-On boy," Anya called him in the hall after their extra-classes were over. Other students dispersed, used to and bored of their bickering. Damian already started to gear up the familiar "What do you want, stupid" before the balck ribbon on her wrist caught his gaze and he remembered. Her father. Breaking dress code was not permissible, yet no one begrudged the pink haired girl her one sign of mourning. Even Schlag just sighed sadly when inspecting their things.

He finally settled on "What." because her father had been a good man, at least. His was under lock waiting for prosecution. His whole family cast in the shadow of that disgrace.

She didn't say it'd be fine. She didn't offer him her hand. What she said instead, was "I will punch anyone who bullies you, Sy-On boy." If Damian was older or in better spirits, he might have chosen his words better. At this time he was a pre-teen boy and had to just splutter, indignant. "Dummy, you'll get a Tonitrus for that! They'll finally kick you out!"

Thankfully Anya was feeling very generous that day and deigned his outburst with her trademark shit eating grin. Plan Friendship was back on — for world peace. Even if the world only went as far as Eden grounds.

[Archived]

The head of Emporium Science Lab, where groundbreaking ostanian innovations in biochemistry, chemical engineering and molecular radiology were born every day, died of anaphylactic shock to what everyone thought was a mild allergen.

These things were bound to happen, and that's why even a mild allergy should be regarded seriously — at any time the immune system could escalate from small threat to a lethal eventuality.

[Archived] [Clearance level not sufficient]

[Archived]

Handler chews him out. "I shouldn't need to clean up your mess this far in the game, should I?" She crossed her arms and glared from beneath her hat rim. Twilight didn't comment on the admonishment, fixed on the documents sitting innocently on the desk. The string of letters and numbers. He knew that designation — it haunted him, the same way a dead man's soul did. Handler pushed the nondescript folder towards him. "Take this. Information only I can't have you gallivanting around on some revenge spree. And start cleaning up after yourself."

She wouldn't mention certain pink haired children and black haired women, that was distasteful in and on itself and more importantly would push him further into the corner. And Agent Twilight still had duty towards his country before being fully backed into it.

[Redacted] [Classified]

"Anya," he sighed, "what about calculus homework?" She didn't turn from Bondman rerun to answer him, just shrugged her shoulders. "Anya." Loid Forger (or what was left of him) tried again. He knew what this was about. They had 4 days left and she was acting suspiciously down. Attracting unneeded attention. "You still need to go to school, you know." He pressed, even if that sounded hollow. "What's the point?" She asked bleakly, still without turning around. "It was all pretend anyway." She wanted to say something else but froze up, her tiny shoulders tense.

The conditioning was brutal and unfair on someone so young, but he had to ensure she would never slip up, whatever secrets she kept in that pink head Twilight hoped, selfishly, that with the oncoming trauma she would bury this week under the pile of grief, forever erasing the monster that wore her father's face from her memories and only keeping the man that cooked her breakfast and recorded cartoons that she missed.

He came to the TV and turned it off, then kneeled next to his not his his daughter.

"You still have a future. You have to grow up well."

"I don't wanna talk about that."

He wanted to press. To explain that the same forces that pushed them together now were pushing them apart. That he could take her far far away to the land where it snowed ten months of the year, and she would never have a normal life, nor childhood, and they would be hunted by police and undercover agents of at least three countries at any given time. ... most of all, that he wasn't abandoning her because she wasn't enough or because he wanted to.

Still he kept all of it to himself, and shared the painful silence with the child he had no right to claim as his.

"You really don't care about us at all." She whispered, broken and final.

Maybe he was giving her the wrong affirmations, all this time. Good to keep safe, but would there be anyone left to keep?

Dr Authen was found dead by his wife in the kitchen of their house. His passing was ruled to be of natural causes.

Rigor mortis was not kind to the man, his face a grimace of rage or maybe horror.

Handler pondered the mess of internal politics that WISE had become and the task at hand. She could send someone else — they'd get caught and endanger the status quo while failing all the same. She could send him and hope he wouldn't fuck it up on a personal vendetta. Fucking kids these days.

He finally comes into contact with the target, months and days after the mission has ended.

The assassination attempts on Desmond are getting bolder. The objective is to keep him alive no matter what, his death right now is not profitable neither to us nor to the ruling party. There are SSS guards stationed there, including Yuri Briar. Make sure he doesn't recognise you.

One hardly would recognise the gaunt bearded man as the friendly shrink in the gloomy prison guard uniform.

I don't care what you do. He reeled back at the fury and promise of painful death in her voice. Donovan Desmond is staying alive until further orders. Is. That. Clear?

The machinations that put Donovan Desmond into jail failed to have him executed running into blood and money barriers. The investigation was drowning in bureaucracy and bribes, his life for now backed up by the interests of both nations. The man who ended the war couldn't be executed on accusations of treason.

That could've been a ploy, of course To take Desmond away from the public eye. To make him non responsible for whatever the party was plotting. To make way for his second in command. It didn't matter to Twilight, not one bit.

"Thorn Princess, a new client is waiting. He's under extreme surveillance and guard. Take care."

She never had a personal interest in killing someone, before.

Melinda knocked on the Forgers's door one night, a surprised Anya opening the door to find the woman distraught and paranoid.

Loid would've concluded that she needed immediate hospitalisation and a dose of sedatives, too bad he had died a few months ago.

"Are you here for Mama? She's working late today."

"I am, yes."

She came in with her duffel bag in tow, looking around the humble apartment. She'd never been inside. Never had reason to. "Why do you have a travel bag? Are you going somewhere? Does Sy- Damian know?"

Melinda's thoughts grew heavy and face darkened. Damian. He must've taken the arrest hard, her poor baby. Jeeves reported that his grades haven't suffered and he was eating all his meals, but more than that she knew nothing.

The girl, who was fatherless now because of her, looked with her large soulful eyes. "It will be ok, you know."

"Pardon me, dear?" "Mom will come soon and you can talk then." "Ah, this. Of course."

Their house was still in the state of mourning. Bond came up to sniff Melinda, and almost immediately patted off. The TV on — Yor was just a little bit worried about the electricity bill, but didn't have the heart to turn it off.

Loid was always busy making something in the kitchen or watching the news, listening to the radio or lecturing Anya on her calculus homework. The silence was suffocating.

Yor came home an hour later, groceries in hand. She'd got just a bit better at cooking, and Anya had to learn some, she mastered the porridge and the sandwiches and the eggs, kindly taught by Mrs Sigmund. They would survive. So she made up dinner, with Melinda sitting in the living room unmoving from the couch.

"Anya, time for bed." "Yes, mama."

When they were left alone, her friend admitted to a terrible awful thing her husband must have done, and left, leaving Yor confused and heartbroken and enraged.

There's an SSS officer among the guards, of course, on his third day without sleep. They got a leak about another assassination attempt against Desmond and tripled the security. That man would face death only by the judge's decision. Anything else and they risked protests breaking out.

"Sister...?" His hand trembles as he points his gun at the intruder in the corridor. Everyone else has gone to the alam gone off, a distraction no doubt.

"Move aside, Yuri." The intruder says sofly in his sister's voice. She only has two weird knives for weapons and identical red red eyes. The pieces fall into a crumpled tower at his feet. His beautiful kind self sacrificing sister there... to kill someone.

"I can't let you in," he states with determination, clinging to one purpose still left. He is protecting Ostania, isn't he?

She looks over her brother, a man she knew nothing of — the gun, the green uniform. But she still has a job to do. "That man has betrayed our country." He has done so much more, the bloodlust supplies.

The siblings, at a standstill, don't know yet that Donovan Desmond is no longer in his cell.

Once it is clear that the distraction has worked and they're not being followed, Twilight presses his gun to the back of ex-PM, ex-NUP leader, ex-Project Apple instigator, subject 001 head.

"You move wrong, I kill you."

"Ah, you did seem familiar." The man replies calmly, seemingly unbothered by his situation. Curious, if anything. "Loid Forger, right."

The gun pressed to his skull doesn't waver one bit.

"Or should I say agent Twilight? We have much to discuss, don't we."

[Classified] [Clearance level not sufficient]