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As soon as Kenta saw the first slide of the PowerPoint load, he felt his stomach drop and did his best to keep his expression free of emotion. When North and Sonic had announced they had a pack presentation to make, dragging over a projector from somewhere that they plugged into Sonic’s laptop, Kenta had assumed it would be about cars. Or something to do with the team. Something he could just tune out for a while until it was over. The kids were all in the guest house, and he figured North and Sonic had decided to use that time to get everyone focused on the upcoming races without the pups there to distract select members of the pack.
Unfortunately for Kenta, it had everything to do with the team and nothing to do with cars.
And everything to do with him as well.
With his pups.
Or, at least, one of them.
A horrible title popped up on screen, proclaiming that they were guessing which of the X-Hunter team members was most likely to be Kenta’s baby daddy. Underneath the title was an adorable picture of Buddy wearing his team t-shirt. The image had been cropped to remove both Kenta and Taro from it, though Taro’s arm and part of his body were still visible since he was holding his younger brother’s hand. And next to that was a group picture of the pack. Question marks were scattered over the slide.
After a brief moment of shock at the complete audacity of the duo to produce such a PowerPoint, Kim whipped around to see his mate’s reaction. Obviously not doing a good enough job at staying as neutral as he thought, unknowingly with a wounded puppy look in his eyes and his slight frown, Kenta felt Kim squeeze his hand before the Alpha asked, worried and in a low tone so said duo could not hear him, “Do you need me to kill them?”
Before he could let Kim jump up to defend him from being what Kim assumed was harassment and not that Kenta was utterly terrified of North and Sonic somehow reasoning it out that Pete was indeed Taro’s biological sire, Sonic clicked to go to the next slide. Kenta’s fears were immediately alleviated. He did not need to worry about his eldest son’s true lineage being revealed and his peaceful life being shattered by whatever bizarre attempt Pete would make at being involved or at how upset Taro would no doubt be to be related to his least favorite pack member.
It was all pictures of Buddy surrounded by X-Hunter cars and gear, captioned ‘Buddy only!’ and North launched into presentation mode, announcing, “This PowerPoint will only be about our guesses for Buddy’s bio dad, because Taro is obviously not any of ours. Only Buddy has clearly-”
“Possibly,” Sonic cheerfully added as a correction.
“-inherited racing genes. Plus, Taro is way too old to be any of ours.”
Chuckles of agreement went throughout the pack. Kenta relaxed, of course not going to remind any of them that Pete was definitely old enough to be Taro’s other father. It didn’t matter what North and Sonic might speculate in their silly presentation. The Omega truly had no idea who the sire of his younger pup was, so any guess was ultimately meaningless, and it would bring them no closer to finding out the truth about he and Pete. He mumbled that it was fine to Kim, and his mate asked if he was sure. When he nodded, Kim reminded him that his offer still stood and then settled in beside him, cracking open a beer.
“Isn’t Lhung old enough?” Babe called out, a teasing smirk on his face.
That earned him a swat from Jeff, his brother-in-law frowning at him. “Taro’s not Lhung’s!”
Finally, Sonic clicked to go to their first actual guess, sparking instant outrage from the pack at the sight of Way’s picture and name on the screen. The outrage died out as a large ‘UNCLE ONLY’ fizzled into view next to Way’s picture, followed by a single bullet point of ‘disqualified for being related to Kenta’ underneath it.
Kenta tried very hard to not think much about that revelation they had all learned. It was strange, being Way’s biological half brother. The only memory of that discovery he cared to dwell on, mostly because Kim sometimes brought it up when they wanted to discuss something funny, was about how his sons’ reactions to it was to ask if that meant they were actually Martin’s cousin now that they were related to the little pup’s stepmother, ignoring Pete’s weak protest that Martin was already their cousin through his adoptive brotherhood with Kenta.
“Honestly, if it weren’t for that, we probably would have guessed he was Taro’s sire?”
Kim took an awkward sip of his drink, one of multiple members of the pack who had assumed that before they found out that Way was Tony’s son and therefore Taro’s biological uncle. A murmur went through the rest of the pack, minus Pete, that they could see that actually. Way practically shot to his feet, voice raised as he insisted, “He is not mine!”
Pete tugged his mate down and started to soothe him. Babe tilted his head and added, “Tony was bad, but I don’t think he’d do something freaky like that.”
It was not something any of them wanted to consider. The next slide came onto screen after a goofy little transition and the sound of a car revving.
Kim booed at the picture of North and Sonic with Buddy standing between them, the three of them all in colorful clothes, the slide simply titled ‘Us!’ Again, there was a single bullet point underneath their names, with just the word fashionable. “Get off the screen!” Kim called over to the two. “There’s no way he’d be yours!”
With a click, a second bullet appeared with an unfortunately plausible situation, as miniscule as the chance might be of it having ever actually happened.
“You guys donated sperm? What the fuck?”
Apparently, according to the slide, the both of them had once donated to a sperm bank to make some quick money, and they reasoned that perhaps through some kind of mishap, one of their samples was handed over to the Foundation instead of whichever select one Tony had perhaps purchased to create Buddy.
“He is not yours,” Kim refused.
“Lhung-” North protested, wanting backup.
“I really don’t think that happened. Let’s keep going,” the pack head dismissed, only to choke at the third guess.
Kenta wondered if they were going in some kind of order, from least to most likely. Though he wanted to tune it all out, that was impossible, and he also couldn’t help but be sort of curious as to what order they would put the rest of them in. Even if it was totally mortifying to think about. He would much rather believe that his father had put more care into the lengths he’d gone through to fashion himself a second powerful grandson. So, with his face hot, and starting to curl up into Kim’s side, the Omega couldn’t wrench his eyes from the projection.
“ME?!” Jeff practically shrieked, seeing his own name and image pop up, another excellent one where Buddy had a smear of engine oil on his cheek after being shown what the team cars looked like under the hood by his mechanic uncle.
Their explanation was that Jeff was cute and relatively quiet like Buddy, and also had a powerful special ability. They reasoned Tony could have gotten some kind of sample from his superpowered Omega while Jeff was still at the Foundation, and had saved it for his sinister purposes before finally deciding to combine it with Kenta to make another superpower baby, perhaps somehow changing Buddy into an Alpha during the test tube stage to explain how two Omegas had created a Special Alpha like the pup.
Probably not likely. Jeff had been rather young before escaping, and Kenta couldn’t understand why Tony would have chosen to do that when it practically would have guaranteed an Omega pup instead of a desired Alpha one.
He sort of hated that he had to rationalize why North and Sonic’s guesses couldn’t be true. Maybe it would have been better after all if he’d let Kim go throttle North before the presentation could really begin. Then he wouldn’t be forced to consider if Jeff was Buddy’s biological sire.
It only went downhill from there. Babe was the next packmate to jump to his feet in fury as his husband’s picture appeared on the next slide, Charlie beaming as he hefted up Buddy in Alan’s pool. As Babe yelled at his juniors that there was no way his man had fathered a child with anyone other than him, Kenta took in list of reasons and the offered explanation on the slide.
Extra special superpowers, a sunny disposition and puppy-like personality with the occasional scary hints, a love for motorsports… and the suggestion that when Tony’s men had went to get a sample from Jeff they’d accidentally gotten it from the Special Omega’s playmate instead. Kenta frowned. If Tony had known about Charlie’s powers from the start, maybe it really would have been the young Alpha who was selected to have his DNA manipulated into half of Buddy, but Kenta was grateful that his father had not known about that.
“Boo. Buddy isn’t scary,” Kim gave a thumbs down. “Next.”
“Papa is only a papa through Mama!” Babe shouted, and Kenta felt like he was going to end up with a headache by the time the presentation was over, before Charlie and Alan -still reeling from the previous slide- hauled him back down to the couch.
Kim booed even louder as Pete’s slide popped up with a corporate sounding jingle accompanying it that Kenta was mildly sure he’d heard in some commercial of Beyond Group’s. Kenta slid his eyes away to avoid seeing any of the comparisons the two might have made between Pete and Buddy. His sons could not be full-blooded brothers. He did not want them to be.
“Okay, this one is kind of weak but since P’Pete was an Enigma and Tony was a freak about Enigmas, maybe he got a sample before you left and kept it?”
Way again attempted to launch up, but was unsuccessful as Pete easily wrapped his arms around his mate’s waist to keep him down. His strength could not stop Way from shrieking, however, the younger Enigma directing his venom at Sonic, “Nic! Delete that slide! Pete is not Buddy’s sire! Martin is his only child!”
“Unless he has a new revelation to spring on us after all this time,” North coughed out under his breath, referencing Pete’s rather tactless manner of revealing Martin’s existence to all of them while they were captured. Pete held on tighter to his lover. If only he’d let go, Kenta thought wistfully. He and Kim could just leave if Way mauled North and needed the rest of the pack to separate them.
“Kenta’s kids are nothing like my pup! Neither of them could possibly be Pete’s! He wouldn’t keep another one from me either! Last time didn’t count!”
“Martin is the only pup I have, baby, it’s alright.”
The slide stayed up until Way calmed down, North waiting impatiently, having something else to say before they moved on. “Okay, we originally were going to go in order from least to most likely, but we have to go to our most likely option next to explain the rest of the slides!”
Those who had not yet been shown exchanged looks before all staring at who no doubt was their most likely option. Babe sat there obliviously, having no clue who was possibly going to be put up next when he was the only viable option.
“Our most likely option!”
“WHAT?!” Babe exclaimed as his picture went up, to the surprise of no one else. “I don’t top! The kid isn’t mine!”
“You don’t need to top to give a DNA sample, Phi.”
To Kenta’s dismay, he did agree with all their points that out of anyone in the pack, if Tony were really to have gotten some kind of sample from them, it would have been Babe. Purposefully. After all, and as the slide reminded them all, Tony had been obsessed with Babe and the idea of Babe producing a child. And, as the slide pointed out, it would have been quite easy for Tony to send out an Alpha to hook up with Babe for a night and collect some kind of sample.
Buddy was also showing a growing interest in motorcycles and other motorbikes, something that only Babe had a strong love for in their pack. Everyone else was into cars or was just along for the ride with their car-obsessed mate.
Charlie offered up a weak protest, but none of them could disagree that Babe, out of the limited options, was truly the top one. If the Foundation had sourced Buddy’s other DNA from the X-Hunter crew and not from anywhere else.
“Okay, so the next two options are all dependent on Tony’s guys somehow screwing up and seducing a guy other than Babe by accident.”
Winner and Dean were pictured together on the next slide. Perhaps North and Sonic had struggled to find a photograph where Winner was by himself.
“Is that a picture of the photo Buddy took for the pack wall?” Kim asked.
“There’s really no picture of just me with that kid?” Winner wondered aloud, seeing that his slide was the first without Buddy actually on it.
“How on Earth could someone mistake Winner for Babe?” Way grumbled. When he got a look from Alan, he added, “He was on a completely different team back then! And looks nothing like Babe!”
“North, why did you include me on this? There’s no way I’m Buddy’s dad!” Dean whined. “How would he be a Special if he was mine or Win’s?”
“Through his freaky experiments, probably! Anyway-” North made a motion to Sonic to keep going so he wouldn’t be further pressed on their explanations.
Silence fell over the room as the next slide popped up with Alan on it, and they were all forced to consider the shockingly likely scenario of one of Tony’s men going after Babe and mistaking Alan for him instead. While Winner was on a different team and Dean was young and just a trainee at the time, the both of them Betas, Alan was still active then and could have been celebrating good results of his own and been mistaken for the target Alpha driver. Kenta could not bring himself to look over at Alan or Jeff. He did not want to think about how it might affect his standing in the pack if it turned out that somehow that were true.
Alan broke the silence that had followed such a devastating blow to everyone, “Now, now, the kid isn’t mine. I love all my nephews, but they are not-”
“Please don’t include Martin in this.”
“My kid isn’t yours either, P’Alan!”
As Alan tried to placate Babe and Way, Kim gestured with his beer towards the slide. “Is it finally over?”
“We have one more bonus slide!”
“Who?”
“You, P’Kim!” the two both cheered.
Kim smiled as his picture appeared with a big shiny ‘Bonus!’ hovering above his name. It briefly faltered. “Hey, I’ve got tons of pictures of Buddy and I. Why did you crop Kenta and Taro out of that one? That was a great picture!”
He was ignored. “We thought long and hard about how this could be possible… considering P’Kim was racing internationally at the time and was nowhere near Thailand.”
“But we figured it out!”
They reasoned that Tony had been trying to get some high quality DNA from Korea but somehow got Kim’s instead.
Grinning, Kim nodded along to the explanation. “This one is true, actually,” he insisted. “And it happened twice,” he added, smirking, “-Taro is also mine, of course. It’s crazy that it happened both times.”
Finally, the terrible presentation with its not so terrible ending was over. Kenta was ready to head back to the add-on for the night in case North and Sonic decided to try prying into any other unknown aspects of his life for pack entertainment, but he and Kim couldn’t escape yet. Although Babe had laughed along with everyone else during Kim’s declaration, the star driver had not forgiven his friends for the slides of himself and Charlie. He went over to punch North in the arm, telling him, “Buddy is not mine- and he’s certainly not Charlie’s! Delete this stupid PowerPoint!”
“No way! We worked so hard on it!”
“Yeah, P’Babe, it took us days to come up with all that.”
“Delete it!” Babe tried to grab North, and managed to get the Omega’s arm, which he twisted until Sonic finally deleted the PowerPoint and Alan had forced himself between them to scold them both. As the chaos died down, Kenta pulled up Kim and the two of them slipped out.