Archive of Our Own

To this day, Starlight remains convinced Agent Peanut Gallery could have achieved world peace by now if WISE hierarchy had allowed her to pick her own codename. The unsung heroes of the nation chose instead to sacrifice her aesthetic sensibilities at the altar of corporate mediocrity and semantic uniformity at great personal cost for her character development. 

At least she won the debate of artistic licence against Teacher at the behest of her greatest mission partner. Agent Peanut Gallery gracefully resigned from active duty so Agent Moonshine could walk at a sedate pace on four legs while Starlight scratched the back of his ears on the path to state warfare sabotage. 

“So you need your best agent for this mission,” Starlight nods as she skims over whatever Teacher is willing to expose of his migraine-inducing thought process. 

So far, the parameters of the mission unfolds thusly:

•  infiltrate Ostania as A Normal Citizen Woman And A Normal Citizen Dog and A Normal Citizen Child somehow acquired through Normal Citizen Means 
• successfully enroll said child to the most elitist school in the country in spite of her dirty commoner status, her questionable fashion choices, her colorful personality that has once been described as ‘controversial’ by her superiors, and the fact she’s a disgusting traitor to the motherland
• approach the NUP Chairman and most likely candidate for Prime Ministerhood Demetrius Desmond, only son of former Prime Minister and dedicated warmonger Donovan Desmond
• for primary objective: use either Imperial Scholars receptions or close acquaintance of her secondary agent with Mr Desmond’s children, Dorothea Desmond (girl, nine years old, social pariah) or Darius Desmond (boy, six years old, precocious genius, anger issues
• Consider honeypot options if the occasion arises, only with extreme caution. While the efficiency of Starlight’s sexiness has long been attested on the field, Demetrius Desmond is considered such a dead fish in bed his children are widely assumed to have been biologically engineered in a test-tube
• once contact then closeness has been achieved one way or another, politely convince Mr Desmond through the merits of the free market of ideas not to launch them all into war again

Teacher’s mind conveys, in essence: you’re my most troublesome agent, and the competition includes Agent Midnight who once managed to make his own bomb explode by sitting wrong. In spite of my best efforts, I’m surrounded by a criminally unprofessional lack of elegance and yet we must all strive forward. 

Starlight bites into her croissant as she sinks into her uncomfortable chair, a must-have furniture for any spy agency’s interior design. The croissant is delicious, its sweet buttery flavor enhanced by emotional blackmail and strategic psychic maneuvering. Pastries are greater short-term motivations than world peace. Teacher never hesitates to make use of this known weakness in her otherwise impeccable and impenetrable character. 

She says, scowling: “I was referring to Agent Moonshine, obviously.”

According to Teacher, the quality of a spy must be measured by their degree of loyalty, determination, elegance (a mysterious metric only Teacher understands the distribution of), and discretion. Agent Moonshine is very discreet, for a massive white dog with psychic powers. Nobody has ever suspected him of being a spy, and that’s more than most of Teacher’s protegees can say. Nobody ever suspects Starlight of spy crimes either, but they do often check if anyone has escaped from the closest mental health care facility recently, in case the local asylum is missing its whimsiest patient. 

They’re great partners with different strategies to win at this spying business. Starlight has elevated confusion to the rank of mass weaponry. She refined to uncharted heights her aura of airheaded stupidity. She has developed a new spy style based on the exact opposite of discreet which has her targets too busy trying to figure out what her deal is to ever think of figuring out what her deal is. She’s by intent and purpose the most powerful interference radio station of the modern world in the shape of a raccoon in pink and glitter. Teacher has long given up trying to bend her into the shape of a perfectly adaptable WISE agent, and has settled to groom her power of misdirection to its full potential while using her sparingly and cautiously. Her file has been enhanced with huge red warning signs: she’s the asset they unleash when they’re desperate enough to deploy the nukes, at the risk of losing the nukes. 

Agent Moonshine’s strategy is being a good dog on main. It has worked tremendously for the past fifteen years in active service. If Agent Moonshine wasn’t a dog and WISE wasn’t plagued by specist bias, he’d have won over the medal as top agent long ago. 

Teacher readjusts his monocle and nods once to the greatest dog to ever stroll on a walk in a park of a foreign country. Agent Moonshine pushes his wet nose over Starlight’s knee, then proceeds through a temporal epilepsy onset. The visions switch back and forth as Starlight explores different angles of response in her head, and they all end up at the same point with varying degrees of embarrassment. It speaks eloquently of Starlight’s dignity that its most efficient advocate’s favorite food is eaten in the palm of the hand that feeds and also tugs at the leash. 

Flakes of croissant fall over her sweater when she gives Teacher the thumbs up: “Alright, put us in, coach! Those Desmonds guys won’t know what just hit them! We’re going to befriend them so hard, I swear!”

Far from looking relieved or hyped up by her profession of patriotic enthusiasm, Teacher closes his eyes, somehow more exhausted than he did before she opened her mouth.

The thumb up downgrades to a thumb neutral. It’s very sad. That thumb needs some occupation to divert its trajectory towards a depressive episode. From Teacher’s pathologically tidy desk, Starlight borrows a pen that could either be a gift from a foreign nation or trash a supermarket employee slipped in his basket as a reward for reaching one thousand points in customer loyalty. Either way, it would have been tested thrice for sound interference. Starlight checks a fourth time, playing with the weight, feeling the dull sting of the ballpoint in the fat meat of her thenar eminence. 

Take this seriously, young lady. I spent weeks arguing with management that you were our best option in spite of your… reputation. 

“Oooh, did you fistfight a senior executive? You should have invited me, Teach, I could have held your purse and cheered you on!”

If neurological systems had eyebrows, the brain of the world’s most centrist grandpa would be frowning for sure. I do not fistfight. That would be most inelegant. I spoke with poise. I made multiple slides. I was relentless in corporate memos. 

“I’d never wanted to see slides or read corporate memos in my whole life, except those. Please do share, they’ll be invaluable historical documents for my biography.”

Starlight. Do not forget Desmonds are an evil to be contained, not eradicated. 

Starlight looks at the man who took a tool off the garbage and sharpened it to excellence. She puts the pen right in front of her on a desk that has missed its vocation to be some underpaid accountant’s last support instead of carrying the administrative burden of a war-prevention operation. 

Agent Moonshine and Agent Starlight stand up. “I know exactly the kind of devil Desmonds are, sir. Rest assured I won’t waste the efforts you have invested in me. Will that be all?”

Teacher takes a sip of tea. His stream of consciousness transitions from mission briefings to a soothing backlog of savory appreciation, punctuated by sporadic outbursts of be careful, do try not to die too dramatically and make me proud, child. That, too, is a strategy to motivate morale and secure patriotic ties. Starlight catalogues them all nonetheless, for spiritual inventory purposes. 

He puts down his cup. “That’s all.”

Deployment comes swift and immediate. It is accompanied by a wardrobe that screams its owner was destined to a cat lady lifestyle but got accidentally rerouted into widowhood and refused to pick a lane, a fake diploma in the only medical profession where carefully balanced weirdness is a credential to her skills, and a new name. 

Twenty-four hours later, Dr Anya Forger and her very normal dog walk into an orphanage. 

The word orphanage only qualifies semantically in the sense it’s a building that happens to contain a significant number of orphans. By any other metric, practically, economically, morally, spiritually, symbolically, Sankt Maria Institution is a husk of concrete and mortar where human decency goes to retire without a pension.

Starlight shuts off her mind and lets Agent Moonshine take the wheel of their team while one of the most abject human specimens of the city show her around the facility and leer into her dress. Voluntary withdrawal of her best analysis tool in the field is not very professional, admittedly, but it so happens that Starlight still suffers through chronic allergic reactions to unloved children, most likely caused by her own lifelong condition of being an unloved child. Reaching out openly in a crowd is already an arduous exercise Starlight tries to avoid for the sake of her mental stability. Reaching out in a crowd of children in voracious need is just asking to be psychically trampled over before the mission even started for real. 

Agent Moonshine barks once and raises his head up to the ceiling. Starlight aims her mind upward. 

In the room upstairs, a child is spying on her through a crack in rotten floor, trying to determine what kind of agent of evil Starlight is because she’s obviously too good to be real and the other kids are such idiots if they think the pretty rich lady is genuinely interested to fill in the vacancy as their mommy. 

-probably looking for some urchin no one would miss to sell to some old pervert, or take away their organs, or maybe scientifists who’d experiment on them until they grow superpowers and kick villains’ butt. It happened in an episode of Spy Wars-

“Boy or girl?” The human stain inquires in the tone of an unmotivated salesman mentally clocking out of his alimentary job at the defect children factory. She has learnt from insiders’ intel that he’s nicknamed Gross Gary. The locals have excellent taste in alliteration and are stunning judges of character for a gang of feral orphans. “How old?”

“Around 6 years old.” 

“Whatever. Just pick whichever you want.”

The boy knocks twice over the indoor plumbing and an aggressively pretty girl materializes in front of Dr Anya Forger at the perfect spot for an ambush, big enough for children to manoeuvre a breaking and entering operation inside her purse but too narrow for an adult to counteract. A normal adult that did not benefit from Teacher’s education, at least. 

The girl beams at her while broadcasting in her head how much she hates Dr Anya Forger on principle alone and her ludicrous hair accessories specifically. 

“Not you, Fiona” Gross Gary grumbles, pushing the girl aside before turning to Starlight. “She’s troublesome.”

“I’m a great child prospect,” Fiona drones out, “and I want to give my drawing to the lady.”

Starlight kneels to inspect the artwork depicting Agent Moonshine in all his big dog glory. Agent Moonshine’s eyes are humid with emotion. That’s a lot of effort to play a prank on her. She’s touched. 

From his tower of command, the ringleader of this circus sends another signal and the three agents of the retrieving cohort are sprung out into action. It’s only thanks to her many years of training and the cheating advantage of psychic prescience that Starlight retains custody of her wallet against the tiny hands of experienced thieves running through the corridor. While Gross Gary raises his fists and yells at them to stop annoying their visitors, Starlight slips her wallet in the pocket of Fiona’s jacket and secures the drawing in her bag under Agent Moonshine’s approving gaze. 

Loid, whose name Starlight has learnt from the minds of the children chanting it adoringly like he’s their cult leader, gasps through his observation post. 

Starlight winks up at him. 

There is a slight bump on the ceiling as he falls on his butt. 

“So?” Gross Gary asks her tits. 

“Hm, I’ll have to think some more about it,” Dr Anya Forger says. “Important decision, wouldn’t you agree?”

Gross Gary shrugs. 

“Indeed,” Dr Anya Forger concours with herself. “Thank you for your time, sir. It was… illuminating. We’ll be back soon!”

Counter-intelligence measures have been planned, positioned and effectively operational by the time Dr Anya Forger and her dog escape the orphanage. No less than four agents are documenting her journey from Berlint’s most devastated district to Berlint’s most middle class district, including the head of the crime organisation himself. Wow, they must really care about that wallet! That, or they’ve already clocked her as an enemy of the nation! 

“Why are a bunch of children following you around?” asks her assistant, leaning against the window of her office and observing from the corner of his eyes Loid and his friends pretending to be bushes in the park of the clinic. 

She’s too far for active surveillance on the brainstorming, but she speculates they’re commiserating between themselves on how to infiltrate the premises to gather proof Dr Anya Forger is making children disappear underneath the cover of a respectable health establishment. 

“No, seriously. You’ve only been here for two days.”

Starlight waves a hand through her hair for emphasis. “I can’t help it, my magnetic personality already has attracted many connoisseurs of superior taste."

George Glooman, aka Agent Sunset, turns grey as ash. His regular constitution steers dangerously close to graveyard dirt on a good day, and stress only drags his skin tone ever further into the tomb. Never has a codename fit so poorly its designated carrier; he really should have been branded Agent Doomsday or something exactly depressing. At least this choice contradicts Starlight’s long held belief that the higher-ups in headquarters have zero sense of humor. 

“Relax, Georgie.” Starlight adjusts her white coat over her dress. “They’re fans of my dog. It’s a pretty cool dog. Moony, won’t you go play with them for a bit? I’d be talking to a bunch of sad people with trust funds, it won’t be very interesting.”

Agent Moonshine paddles out of her office with the grim resignation of a veteran unexpectedly recruited back into active duty to entertain the enthusiastic youth. Right before he leaves, Starlight tucks an unopened bag of peanuts between his collar and his thick, fluffy snow fur. 

“Some kids are allergic to those,” Agent Sunset comments, always rooting for the most dramatic outcome in every decision Starlight makes. 

“Don’t underestimate my partner. He’s a trained healthcare professional. He saved a guy from choking with a heimlich once, you know.”

The fact the man in question had self-induced choking as an emergency protocol is beside the point of the story. Agent Sunset is too fun-intolerant and too tired of her antics to ask further explanations on how exactly a dog could perform a medical maneuver that requires two arms and opposable thumbs. 

The day proceeds onward. Starlight only wishes she could be a kid playing with a big nice fluffy dog in the park and scheming how to destroy a stranger’s reputation instead of rotating through people’s traumatic memories with a patient smile and dodging her new boss’ sexual harassment with a oblivious beam. The choice of her fake career was a stroke of genius on Teacher’s part. Starlight has cultivated to near perfection two talents in her adult life: annoying people and reading minds, which are both uniquely suited for a job description that’s just poking at people’s head and documenting the results on a spiral notebook. The job practically does itself, it’s the exact right amount of middle class hell to raise above the pleb without entering aristocrat territory, and if she succeeds enough at it, she’ll be given on a platter access to the minds of the people WISE want surveilled most in all of Ostania. The reward is infinite with very minimal cost, if you exclude, you know, her own mental health. 

Dr Anya Forger is doing great though. She’s a modern independent woman with a career and a business plan; she has seen worse than rich grown men laying in divans to unpeel the many sticky layers of their unresolved oedipus complexes. When she skips out of her 9 to 5 at the end of the day, it’s with the satisfaction of a job well-done at the service of her fellow countrymen and the pleasure to walk home with her wonderful dog and the child he had trapped under a significant amount of fluffy muscle. 

Starlight whistles and Agent Moonshine method-acts the role of a normal dog with proper manners. Loid is therefore released from containment and his mind is spiralling at full cylinders at what sort of angle he’s going to try out to escape accountability. His comrades have abandoned the battlefield under his orders when they spotted the target exit her evil lair and Agent Moonshine took the creative liberty to gently tackle the spearhead of the movement to the ground before he could escape. He’s on his own against the enemy. 

Starlight strikes out her hand. “I propose a peace treaty.”

Loid raises up teary eyes at her, sniffling like he’s auditioning for the title of greatest actor of his generation. “Madam Doctor Miss, I don’t even know who you are… your dog just came at me out of nowhere! I was so scared!”

Starlight wiggles her fingers. “Sure, sure. My bad. Let’s be friends!”

A wave of suspicion immediately washes over Loid’s inner thoughts. No adults want to be friends with children, least of all children like them, for no reason. Kids who let themselves be fooled end up gone forever, at best a footnote on SSS files nobody ever bothers to investigate. Loid is not stupid. He keeps himself and his friends safe because no one else will. 

“Maybe friendship is a bit too forward this early in our acquaintance," Starlight compromises. “How about business partnership? You look like a very resourceful young man. I could use your enterprising spirit.”

Loid stops pretending to cry, starts pretending he knows what the word enterprising means and stares at her outreached hand like it’s full of worms and has never held peanuts ever. “Why?”

“Well, you see, I find myself in need of a secondary partner for a long-term mission of very high stakes.” Starlight takes back her hand to pat Agent Moonshine’s head. “Agent Doggie is the best, of course, but there are places even the best dogs cannot go.”

The way Loid lights up does something unpleasant to Starlight’s chest. “A mission? So you are a spy! I totally knew it!”

“Why yes, I am! You are very smart and caught me so fast! I absolutely must enroll such a talent in my team for world peace!”

Discontinued patches of that Spy Wars cartoons that Loid has been watching by hiding underneath regular family’s windows flashes through his mind at lightning speed. 

“That’s right, I’m very ob-sir-vent. What kind of mission?” asks Loid, trying his hardest to pretend he’s barely interested while Agent Moonshine nudges at his hand. 

Starlight beams and shakes her finger in front of his face. “Uh, uh, not so fast! Can’t share state secrets to people who are not my friends, can I? I would be a very bad spy if I did.”

“You’re not a very good spy anyway.” Loid clamors, puffing his chest with pride at his superior investigative skills. Clearly, this silly grown up needs the help of a professional. “Fine, maybe we can be friends.”

“Hm, but you did say I was bad at my job and that hurt my feelings, so I don’t know if we can be friends in those conditions…”

“B-but-”

Starlight grins and would have poked his forehead if she didn’t feel his recoil in her bones. “Just kidding! Let’s be great friends, Loid!” 

This time, Loid does agree to shake her hand. Starlight seizes this opportunity to gently redirect her new partner towards the busy streets, keeping his hand cradled in hers. Agent Moonshine positions himself on Loid’s free side to prevent flight risks. 

“Hey! What are you-”

“We’re sealing this contract with hot chocolate! You can’t discuss mission briefings without a warm drink, that’s illegal work practices. Unless you have strong opinions against hot chocolate? I have heard from rumors and myths that those people do, in fact, exist.”

Loid has no opinions on hot chocolate other than it’s one of those things that happens to other children. Children who are part of a family unit. Children in possession of an adult with a doctorate in caring. Children nourished on a non love-restrictive diet. Children who are not science experiments raised in faraday boxes. 

“Good, uh?” Starlight nods to a fellow late-bloomer in hot chocolate appreciation. 

“It’s okay,” Loid says as if his mouth isn’t covered in traces of the crime and his pupils dilated by the introduction in his barren system of one of the most powerful drugs in the world. 

Starlight leans forward to clean his lips with her napkin, which Loid allows with wary dignity. “So, how old are you by the way?”

“I’m six,” Loid lies without a single hesitation. Teacher would weep tears at the flawless elegance of the delivery. 

“Well, you’re small enough,” Starlight concedes. Chronic lack of sufficient sustenance will indeed achieve that outcome. 

“You have to be six for the mission?”

“Uh uh.”

Loid awaits with a display of weaponized patience rarely seen in eight years old moonlighting as precocious six years olds. 

Agent Moonshine puts his head on Loid’s lap. Starlight flickers through a vision of Loid’s face when he discovers his new room in Dr Anya Forger’s apartment approximately two hours from now, according to the lighting. 

Starlight blinks. “Oh, you want to know about the mission?”

“Yes.”

Starlight props her chin on her hand and smiles. “Don’t worry, it shouldn’t be too hard for a talented young man like yourself. You just have to pretend to be my son and trick rich kids. For world peace.”

The only reason hair salons are not broadly classified as high risk hubs of intelligence gathering is because spy agencies and secret police alike are mostly led by men. 

“Madame Backbell! I require your assistance post-haste! This is an emergency!” Starlight clamors when she slams open the door of the most distinguished establishment of the quarter with one blushing kid in tow and one super soldier dog securing the rear of the formation. 

Less hairdressers might have faltered when confronted to the call of duty in between rounds of perms, but Becky Blackbell has been made of the same material that the stern iron she uses to bully people’s hair into ideological submission. 

“Dr Forger, such a pleasant surprise to receive your esteemed patronage today.” She greets the interlopers upon her smooth sailing business with a firm smile. “What is your emergency?”

Starlight points at Loid’s head. “My son needs a haircut!”

The crimson of Loid’s face reaches new depths of red that should be studied by color theory researchers. “M-Mother!”

The exact wording of her codename has been a topic of fierce debate in the Forger household, a debate Starlight is sorry to admit she lost once again. She has argued ‘Mother’ is too stiff and will cramp her style. Loid has countered that’s what rich kids call their parents and he’s going for a full immersion (like in Spy Wars!). 

The actual reason is that Mom is for real families. 

Becky puts her hand on Loid’s shoulder and pats it once. “My dear boy, my heart weeps for you. Your haircut is structurally unsound and your parental unit is very embarrassing. I can help with at least one of those issues. Do allow me to stage an intervention on your behalf.”

One click of her fingers and two attendants manifest out of the ether to persuade Loid that he really wants to sit on this chair and have his head operated on. Becky runs her business as tight as a surgical block, if surgical blocks could also perform magician shows. Before she knows it, Starlight has her hair psychologically intimidated by Becky’s hairbrush and she’s reading a Vogue magazine from three years ago encrypted with Loid’s file. 

“Cute kid you got here, Anya,” Becky comments. “How come he’s got better manners at eight years old than you at your venerable age?”

“Six,” corrects Starlight, focusing on her reading. “My theory is that I have outgrown respectability and that’s a credit to my character development deserving of public accolade.”

Presumed eight years old. Multiple orphanages. Parents unknown. Leader of a gang of street urchins committing minor felony such as stealing in order not to starve to death. Suspected Westalian origins, a frequent occurrence for children from both sides of the border misplaced in the war. 

Sensible agents would have dropped him immediately and started anew. Starlight likes to believe she has reached a state of enlightenment that transcends common sense

If headquarters inquire, she’ll say it would be such a waste of her investment, time and energy to switch her assets now. Expandability, untraceability, intelligence and obedience were the qualities they were looking for; two and a half on such short notice is acceptable. Burgeoning criminal records can be erased. Ingrained distrust of the law, institutions and adults in general are simply adjustable variables to be adapted for optimal deployment. Starlight had all of those and more, and she ended up being such a great agent, didn’t she? 

If a soul with the bad taste to still be encumbered by a conscience asks, she’ll say Loid has only gotten used to the flat. He has stopped freezing in place every time Agent Moonshine barks and seems no longer convinced he’ll get eaten in his sleep. His bag is only half-filled instead of fully packed and ready to bolt at the slightest threat. He has already bullied his way through one third of the curriculum he needs to catch up on to match his silver-spoon peers through sheer stubbornness, natural talent and zero respect for sleep schedules. Yesterday, his confidence in the stability of their arrangement has grown enough for him to verbally express contempt for the curtains. His smuggling operation aiming to slowly empty out her pantry and redistribute contraband food to his gang has improved greatly through trial and error, to the point it’s no longer excruciating to pretend to be blind, deaf and braindead to his schemes. 

They have just agreed to a literary classification for the bookshelves. It’s a lot of effort to find a compromise between a child ardently arguing in favor of genre sorting and a free spirit who believes books would want to be ordered by the intensity of the emotional response they elicit in the reader. Starlight has no energy left to rehash that debate with a brand new contender who might be an advocate of boring methodology like alphabetization of authorship. Alphabetization is just the place where excel sheets thrive and fun goes to die, and she’ll have none of that in her house. 

If Teacher raises an eyebrow, she won’t say she’s been configured to pick the sharpest knife in the garbage pile at the risk of cutting open her hand. Teacher already knows this. 

Dr Anya Forger snaps the magasin shut. “But you’re right, Becky, my little Loid is a very cute kid, and I’ll bet he’ll be even cuter once your magic is done.”

Becky sighs. “Obviously. I’m a professional. I never make mistakes.”

Professional is a word that has been invented to qualify super-women like Mrs Blackbell who can manage a hair salon, terrorize the neighbour into awed compliance and run the most efficient informant network in Berlint. Every night, at least one Teacher in the world cries in his pillow that he got a Starlight instead of Mrs Blackbell and it’s too late to ask for a switch. If she says she can do it, then it’ll be done. Any suspicious evidence of Loid’s upbringing shall be scorched from the earth, just like every single dead skin cell shall be scorched from Starlight’s scalp. 

The lady parked three seats from Starlight’s torture station looks horrified and fascinated by this blatant capillary abuse. Starlight needs not to reach out for her thoughts; it reads plainly on her face that she’s wondering whether she’s morally obligated to call the police, at the cost of never being admitted again in the fanciest hair salon of the district. That’s social suicide for someone willing to put enough aluminium in her hair that first contact with aliens could in fact very well be received on her head. 

Starlight mouths at the future of human-alien communication: ‘help me’. 

“Even god can’t help you until you learn to use conditioner," Becky mutters into Starlight’s ear before smiling up at her client. “Don’t worry, Janet. I’m using advanced Francian techniques on Dr Forger.”

“Oh,” echoes Janet. “Well, if it’s francian…”

“My hair is fine,” argues Starlight. “Leave foreign countries out of this.”

“Incorrect, darling. Your hair is a crime against humanity, Francia included, and on the top ten items list of why you can’t get a husband.”

“Well, I don’t need a husband,” Starlight says emphatically to Janet, in the hope she might convey this very important message to the aliens. “I’m a modern independent woman. I own a suit and a satchel that I bought myself. I have a dog!”

Janet glances down at the giant dog lounging at Starlight’s feet. Agent Moonshine’s tail waves in the air, unburdened by the shackles of female oppression and the predatory industry of beauty products. 

This is not a convincing argument for Mrs Blackbell, who decides to leave a brief respite on Starlight’s scalp to slap Psych Magazine “How To Drive Your Man Mad (With Desire!)” special edition on her lap. If only it had been “How To Drive Your Man Mad (With Impotent Rage!)”, she might have learnt useful strategies she’d actually look forward to implementing one day. 

“No more excuses; a child is looking up to you. Moisturize. Buy some conditioner. Exorcise your pores.”

“I’m pretty sure the vast majority of six year olds don't even know what the word moisturize means, Becky.”

“The vast majority of six year olds and you, Dr Forger. Do us all a favor and educate yourself.”

Dr Anya Forger might be a modern independent woman, but the old geezers in charge of entrance at Eden Academy certainly are not. They think modern is an insult to the institution of marriage, and independent should only apply to contractors for ease of job ‘flexibility’. Their first word some billion decades ago must have been ‘conservatism’. They eat modern independent women for breakfast, after their personal cooks processed modern independent women’s gluten-free remains through a blender to limit risks of choking an airway on a piece of feminism.  

Like affordable housing, the necessity for the operation of a spouse is inevitable in this economy. She’ll just have to find a manchild who can wear a suit and knot a tie to manage in addition to her child-child. It’s not like she has never been married for the mission before. And dear Mrs Backbell has gone through such trouble to collect twenty-four suitable prospects of appropriate male desperation for Starlight to shop through. It’s too bad Starlight can’t just marry her instead, the entire mission would be dealt with within two months. 

Actually, that’s a brilliant idea. 

“Won’t you marry me, Mrs Blackbell?” 

Somewhere in the background of the most romantic proposal Berlint has ever hosted, Janet coughs herself sick. Starlight doesn’t let the interruption hinder her argumentation. 

“I’d be a great husband, I promise. I’ll learn to moisturize for real. I’ll work on the conditioner. You can monitor my capillary health from up close. It’ll be such fun!”

“Even if I wasn’t already married, I’d rather die,” Becky professes with affection.

“Aw, but I love you! I’d duel to the death with Bill in a dark alley for you. The way you destroyed my scalp’s nerves today has bewitched me and ruined me for anyone else. You should take responsibility.”

“If you really loved me, Dr Forger, then you’d do me a favor and take Mrs Briar’s son off the marital market. Every breath that poor woman spends here for her monthly coloring is wasted on complaining her son will never marry even though he’s ‘such a lovely young man’.”

Starlight obligingly turns pages up to Mr Briar’s file, encoded in a What Kind Of Wife Are You quiz, and grimaces. Thirty-three years old male, Berlint local, only child, born out of wedlock, no known father. Former chronic over-achiever child that wasted away in his twenties. A criminal record of civil disobedience as a university student, a collection of odd temporary jobs, no career path prospect, a starving bank account kept barely alive through his mom’s donations. Lives alone in bachelor squalor. No known history of romantic entanglement at his respectacle age while most men five years his junior are already married with two kids and a mortgage. His only redeeming quality is owning a dog. 

That life trajectory is oozing alcoholism and anger issues and emotional illiteracy and control freak tendencies. It’s giving massive misogynist, closeted homosexual or serial killer energy. It’s predicting a future as the sourest old man of the neighbourhood throwing empty beer bottles at children that dare trespass on his property. It's outlining a cringe-fest of daddy and mommy issues just waiting to explode in the bridal chamber. It’s the patient zero of the male loneliness epidemic.

Hard pass. 

And that’s even without mentioning that his mom is a clerk of the Foreign Affairs Bureau who secretly moonlights as a SSS officer. 

“Hilarious.” Starlight deadpans. “If you hate me, you should just say so.”

Snorting, Becky leans down to turn the page to her actual recommendation. 

“He is a nice young man though,” Janet feels duty-bound to contribute. “You should consider it!”

Starlight sets aside her rightful wariness for alien interference and pokes at Janet’s mind, wondering how much Mrs Briar paid her to advocate for her son’s pitiful marriage prospects at the slightest occasion. Turns out no financial compensation was ever necessary to keep the entire local housewives brigade at the service of her deluded matchmaking dreams. Melinda Briar was just that terrifying. 

“I’ll take your input into consideration!” Starlight lies with cheerful flair. “Thanks for demonstrating interest in my love life! I appreciate your patronage!”

As if. No offence to the mommy’s boys demographics, but Starlight had no intention of getting anywhere near Damian Briar. Let that specific can of worms be another unwise WISE agent’s legacy. 

Telepaths have to be a community somewhere and not one singular individual that a spy agency called Starlight and a human experimentation facility funded on tax dalcs called Number 007. Nobody would bother to build walls out of thought texture otherwise. Sadly, Starlight has yet to meet a fellow mind-reader, and not for the lack of trying. They have to exist somewhere, if only because she was far from the only apple grown on that tree. She’s just the one who fell furthest. 

But she has met people who guard their minds, who construct fortresses around their brain to keep her kind out. She has reached out to knock at an iron door. She has slipped in through moments of confusion or distress. There have been spies, secret officers, diplomats, priests, ministers; important people who were somewhat aware people like her existed, in theory if not in practice, and worked hard to prevent their power of nuisance. Teacher, for instance, only lets her see the thoughts he selects and keeps his mind sharp, armed and ready to fire. A few keep their mind empty and silent, only static instead of construct. The thought is hidden in meteorology, patience is required to learn the pattern. Some minds are confusing on accident, their stream of consciousness constantly derouted by intrusive thoughts or memories, plagued by debilitating anxiety, psychosis or dementia. 

The point is, Starlight has seen a lot of very oddly designed thought processes over the years. 

It’s the first time she encounters a mind shaped like contemporary artwork. 

Starlight has a mission underlying her presence in this bar. She’s doing recon for her husband-hunting objective with a licence to initiate first contact if the opportunity arises. She’s supposed to be gathering intel on Mr Arthur Allen, the prime target Becky and her agreed on: twenty-nine, a respectable position as a jurist for Davidson Pharmaceuticals, recently divorced and clearly struggling with his new status as a wife-less individual, no children, no criminal record. In summary, a good position that will please the Eden geriatric crowd, a decent bloodline and an interventional window in emotional vulnerability; that’s perfect husband material! How hard can it be to lock down one boring senior executive and save democracy anyway?  

It was a whole organisation to arrange the outing. She had to ask Becky to babysit and convince Agent Moonshine that he couldn’t be back up for her date. Poor Loid, who’s nursing against his will a very embarrassing crush on Becky, wouldn’t stop protestating about the ordeal. Starlight wouldn’t bulge this time. She has found out from the child development books she has been working through that children this young aren’t supposed to be left to their own devices, which astonished the two of them greatly. Obviously, the mission would be jeopardized if Starlight loses custody for child negligence, so Loid will have to suffer this indignity. 

They’re all working on a time-schedule. Now is not the moment to be distracted. 

“Can I get you anything, miss,” says the mouth hosting a mind wired in trap doors and stain-glassed cathedrals and freudian swamps. 

Starlight absent-mindedly wips the drool out of the corner of her lips. So this is what the headspace of the most emotionally repressed man would like if an unscrupulous therapist taught it mindfulness wizardry. This is what it looks like when paranoia has figured how to encrypt its inner corkboard. Starlight feels insane. Someone’s gonna call a manager on her. She’s committing unhinged eye fraud on the staff, and good luck explaining that this is scientific curiosity and pro-active caution instead of sexual harassment. The meat suit powered by such a terrifying brain is attractive, sure, but that’s irrelevant, offensive even. Debauching him behind the counter is the farthest outcome desired. 

What Dr Anya Forger wants is to put this man under a microscope. She wants to gently push him in a hamster wheel and count the rounds until the drop. She wants to write a thesis and publish peer-reviewed articles on the weirdest meanders of his psyche. She wants to hold public conferences on his sexual proclivities decades from now. 

What Starlight wants is to not waste her evening shooting staff members in tuxedos and dealing with body removal in enemy territory. 

The second brightest spy of the agency chirps up. “I’d love a husband, please and thank you!

The bartender’s eyebrow twitches. A hint of a blush appears under his collar. His mind speaks in alien code that’s probably trying to kill Starlight. “I’m afraid we don’t serve that here.”

It is usually one of Starlight’s greatest joys in life to talk to customer service people with her telepathy activated. The gap between the pleasantness their face displays and the vitriol their mind screams is hilarious. And they notice everything their employers think they won’t, so they make her job significantly easier. 

Just in case, customer service headspace fuckery is added to her list of hypotheses as to Why Is This Man Like This. Her other theories include a newly discovered mental disorder worthy of its own subsection in the DSM or the most extraordinary specimen of weaponized counter-intelligence. 

Starlight leans on the counter, chin propped in her palm. “Well, that’s unfortunate. Can I get your advice instead? I’ll pay in currencies or entertainment.”

It’s humiliating to be forced to rely solely on non-verbal cues like some medieval peasant, but Teacher does not train idiot spies with only one toolkit. Starlight would never have been allowed to graduate without acquiring a secondary diploma in facial expression meteorology. 

This is the face of a man knowing he should call for security but he’s security.

“Sure, why not,” the bartender decides, shrugging. “This evening is dull and it’s my last shift. I’ll be your clown for cash and embarrassment. What am I supposed to give advice on?”

Starlight claps her hands together. “Thank you, you won’t regret it! I need intel on rich men's social practices.”

The bartender’s jaw clamp shut. It’s a great jaw, objectively. You could use it to grind zest out of lime. Starlight can only assume a rich man killed his entire family in front of his eyes and she just reactivated trauma by crime of nosiness. 

“You look fancy, sir,” she adds. “I can tell you have expertise in that subspecies.”

“Don’t call me sir, I’m a bartender.”

“Precisely! You interact with rich men at their least refined on a regular basis, and survive to tell the tale. I value your input greatly. Don’t hold out on me now.”

His eyes have a soft curvature to cushion the harsh gold of the irises. It’s not enough. Those are eyes that have been designed from the womb for symbolic stabbing purposes. They’re meant to pin people like flies on a drosophila collection. 

“In that case, my advice is simple. Don’t interact.”

“I do love a concise answer, thank you for participating in our survey. Unfortunately, I must admit that a no contact policy would make husband-hunting significantly harder.”

The bartender commits unspeakable acts of violence against the glass he’s pretending to clean. His mind loops have mind loops of their own. It’s gorgeous. It should be put in a museum. It deserves to be pinned on Dr Anya Forger’s office wall. Starlight would commit several felonies to nimble at the texture between her teeth and feel its egg shell crack.

“Good,” he says. “You’re young, pretty and you have a mental disorder. For your own sake, you should not be making unsupervised eye-contact with rich men, least of all marrying one.”

“Aw, you think I’m pretty!”

The glass almost drops. “What, no- I don’t think anything, I’m just factually observing!”

“Factually observing that I’m pretty.”

“I said you had a mental disorder.”

Starlight bats her eyes. “Discernement is a very attractive quality in a man.”

He sputters at her audacity. His airway has a brief but noticeable flailing structural issue. His eyes widen, slightly lessening its lethal lead density. It’s cute. This man embodies shame very aesthetically. It’s like God designed him for the purpose to get flustered by noisy flirtatious strangers, but also to drive Starlight specifically insane. 

The apex predator nurtured at the bosom of WISE’s internal guidelines pounces on his mind and bounces back immediately, her head plagued with a migraine and her ego in shatters. Flustering the subject did not achieve access to his psyche and caused major casualties. 

Meanwhile, the bartender has bravely recovered from the attack. His contemptuous glare is back operating at full capacity. “Forget it. You’re a menace upon society. You’ll get eaten alive by rich men, or you’ll eat them alive. Either way, someone is getting arrested. It’s a shit idea.”

Starlight powers through her self-inflicted mental injury and tilts her head to the side in a way that men often interprets as ‘fuck me’. “Thank you, I made it myself!”

The bartender looks away. “What’s the incentive to marry fast and rich anyway? Do you have that many debts to cover?”

“Oh, you want to hear my tragic backstory? Have we reached this level of intimacy yet? I’m flattered!”

He lets his fingers run across the bronze with brash tenderness. “You’re not special, this bar endures tragic backstories constantly. You might as well be flattered that an ophthalmologist is asking for eyestrain history - what?”

A customer is standing next to Starlight, looking startled at the harshness of the delivery. She’s wearing the kind of expensive dress that broadcasts non-equivocally she’s unused to practicing apologies or patience. Dr Anya Forger’s white dress, on the other hand, signifies a tactful blend of demure elegance, sexual availability, and confidence in her washing machine. It’s meant to stand out in a dark setting and provide a sample of what she might look like in a wedding dress. 

“I. I want to order a pornstar martini?”

The bartender pulls out his Customer Service Smile. His hands start doing the job on their own, pouring, shaking, stirring, sliding cash in a registry. 

“Of course, ma’am, one pornstar martini right away. Would you like some personality to go with it?”

“Why- I. I beg your pardon?"

The bartender slides the glass to her hand, still smiling. “You have it. Here's your boring cocktail. Begone now.”

The woman leaves with her boring cocktail, limping her way back to her group of friends. In a minute, once the shock has passed, she’ll start reenacting the scene in her head and invent fifteen witty retorts she could have come up with if her brain had been functioning at the relevant moment. Or she’ll ask to talk to the manager. 

“So when you said this was your last shift,” Starlight muses while the Customer Service Face washes off the bartender and his usual scowl settles back in, “you meant your last shift. In the sense they’d shoot on sight if you tried to come back.”

The corner of his mouth has a small seizure. If smiles could be measured on a Richter scale, that one would only account up to 0,9 at best. It’s barely noticeable to the untrainted eye. Starlight noticed it. She’s very trained. 

“They can try,” he scoffs. “You vastly overestimate the competence of management if you think they can aim at all. I’m not coming back anyway and I’m a fervent believer of scorched earth policy. Do you want a cocktail? Do not let my last collaboration with this bar be a pornstar martini.”

“Uh, and have you tear apart my beverage choices in front of an audience? No, thank you! Water is fine! Having no personality is my proudest achievement!!”

The bartender pours a glass of water. He adds spun sugar and strawberry garnish on the rim. A straw is pulled from whatever hellish dimensions straws are stored in. Starlight is, reluctantly and against her better judgement, touched by the attention to detail. Once the artwork is ready to be released to the public, she makes the appropriate impressed noises and gestures grabby hands. 

He raises his arm up, putting her prize out of reach, and smirks. An entire lifetime of cupboards built too high for her limb length flashes before her eyes. It’s a clear violence to the rights of short people and shall be held against him in the court of public opinion.  

“Now, that’s just mean, Mr Bartender.”

“Spill,” he orders. “Reason for unwise hasty marriage to a human wasteland. Be exhaustive. Full disclosure. Don’t forget I was promised embarrassment.”

“Why, aren’t you embarrassed enough yet? I need to work harder. I’d hate not to deliver on my promises.”

Her bait remains untaken. “Do you want your fucking water or not?”

“My professor always said not to negotiate with terrorists,” Starlight reminisces fondly. 

“Your professor is incompetent at damage control and should have taught you better. I guess you don’t really need to hydrate then-”

“Eden.”

Any WISE agent with experience on the field knows what a bomb detonating feels like. Starlight has existed in the vicinity in explosions five times already, once recreationally. This is not what happens. The music keeps on turning. Rich people keep on mingling, lubricated and insufferable. Someone is trying to convince the manager to lower the lights and turn this fine establishment into a sin den. From a booth in the back, Arthur Allen is glancing  every once in a while at the woman in white sitting alone at the bar, working up the courage to approach her while his co-workers egg him on. 

Starlight doesn’t dare to reach out to the bartender’s mind. 

He puts the glass in front of her. “What about Eden.”

She pretends to sip at the straw. Water is harder to spike than cocktails but it’s far from impossible. “Eden is the reason! You see, I’ve found myself in possession of this one son, and academicians allegedly have opinions on working mothers lacking in marital accessories. Hence: marriage to a rich man! Aren’t I so clever? You may now compliment my astonishing planning skills.”

“You’re one of the most deranged women I have ever met. Enroll your son elsewhere. It’s not like it's the only school in the country.”

“No, but it’s the best. Also, the uniform is stunning! Ladies love men in uniform, this is a universal fact.”

“And that’s the reason you’re making such a mess of my last shift. The future you envision for your flesh and blood is a twat in uniform.”

Starlight smiles. “An educated twat in uniform!”

The bartender doesn’t. “Rich kids are just rich men on training wheels. Your son will be a miserable educated twat in uniform, if he manages to learn anything at all.”

For a regular commoner child, that would be accurate, but Loid had already survived hell and built a community out of the ashes before WISE Agent Starlight and Agent Moonshine got their claws on him. 

“Aw. You care. That’s so sweet.”

“I do absolutely do not-”

“Excuse me, officer! I would like to report a crime!”

Starlight doesn’t tense. Tension is for less agents who have not tamed their nerves to submission. Tension is for lesser agents who don’t set up bombs recreationally. Her mind tentatively brushes Arthur Allen’s and is swarmed under an avalanche of mortified regret why did I say it’s the worst pick up line ever why do pick up lines exist anyway I hate this I want to disappear in the ground but she’s so pretty and I do need to go back on the saddle so-

She perks up and pretends to pull out a notebook. “Evening, good citizen! I’m ready to receive your statement! Tell me more!”

Allen deflates in blatant relief. ”Right! A beautiful woman is alone in a bar. That’s a crime, and I felt obligated to intervene!”

“Oh no!” She puts her hand over her open mouth. “That’s awful! You were right to take matters in your own hands, good citizen! Where is this wronged individual?”

“Oh. Well. I meant. I was referring to-”

From a purely objective standpoint, Starlight was only alone if staff members were framed as furniture. 

“I know what you meant, sir,” Dr Anya Forger puts an end to his agony with a kind smile and pats the stool next to hers. 

She turns back to the bartender, her lips ready to mouth out a rich man! supervise me! and finds nothing. 

The next day, Starlight breaks into the manager's office first and interrogates co-workers second. The (former) bartender had been correct in his assessment of bureaucratic incompetence. Starlight has trudged through her fair shares of accounting ledgers and this one is in top tier of the category Most Likely To Be Made Fun Of And Dragged In Court By Annoyed Tax Officers. The only relevant intel she gathers, aside from blatant tax evasion misconduct, are notifications of salary for a temp bartender in the past three months called D. Which is inherently suspicious, but he’s far from the only one. So far, it says more of his former place of employment than it does about his pathological preference for discretion. 

Less so when it turns out no one seems to agree what D stands for, except Dickhead, and no one knows anything useful about him either. 

“Oh, you mean Derrick!”

“Nah, D-man is a Dan.”

“You guys are deluded, that man is clearly a Dominic.”

“Ma’am.” The manager frowns disapprovingly with a lot of confidence for a man who can’t count. “You cannot ask our employees’ private information.”

Starlight immediately bursts into tears. Bursting into tears at will is one of her greatest talents. Her theatrics are so good that she needs to say nothing at all to convince everyone she’s pregnant with the child of a man she doesn’t know the name of or some equally tragic scenario of telenovella. That’s a better explanation than ‘I owe him money, I want to hunt him down for sport’ or ‘I need to eliminate a liability’. 

Their thoughts are not helpful. They truly know nothing. D kept admirably to himself in the duration of his (illegal) contract. 

“Ah! True love!” Becky exclaims over the destruction of Dr Anya Forger’s capillary dignity. “Of course I’ll assist you! I’ll spare no expenses!”

Starlight sighs forlornly. “Sure, Becky. You do that. Someone has to advocate for my love life.”

“So I’m guessing things didn’t go as planned with Mr Allen?”

Things had gone very fine with Mr Allen until it was revealed four days later all the upper management of Davidson Pharmaceutics was involved in a massive scandal of medical misconduct they’d been burying in the sand for months. The whole company was dragged through the mud in the media, the top echelon was dragged to the police station, and the chairman was dragged to a hospital where he died within a few days, poisoned by the medication he’d kept commercializing despite knowing its health risks. 

In summary, Mr Allen has other businesses to attend to than romance. 

Black Circus handiwork. Teacher assesses over tea. No public claim but the modus operandi fits Chimera.”

Of course it fit Chimera, the infamously pettiest assassin of his revolutionary squad. Who else would be so vindictive as to synthesize a concentrated version of a medication and slowly inoculate it to his target for weeks instead of just shooting him and being done with the whole affair? 

Sitting on the other side of the cafe, Starlight feeds Agent Moonshine croquettes under the table. She signs through WISE code: orders?

Don’t get involved. Keep focused on Strix. Find another target for marriage.

That evening, Loid stabs his potatoes fiercely. “I don’t need a father.” 

Starlight sends her daily prayers to the takeout gods that spare her the indignity of having to learn to cook anything edible. “And I don’t need a husband, but we both need better optics. Reputation is everything to a spy. What people think of you is your best tool and your worst liability. We have to make due with the fact Eden places great emphasis on ‘family values’ and proceed accordingly for the mission regardless of personal opinions.”

Loid makes a face, processing all those big words, until he regurgitates it into palatable content for a precocious eight year old boy. Starlight could dumb her phrasing down, but Loid likes it when she talks to him like an adult and it’s good for his education as an insufferable twat in training. 

“So rich people are stupid, so we have to pretend to be stupid too until they like us.”

“Basically!’

That must be what Teacher feels like imparting his knowledge and shaping recruits into WISE’s perfect little ears and hands. Starlight herself has never been allowed to coach anyone. Her methods are deemed too unconventional for the everyday agent and only work because of her telepathy, according to management. 

It’s kind of fun. 

“Can’t you shay my dad ish dead?” asks Loid through his toothbrush. 

Starlight spits in the sink. “Already ahead of you, buddy. Your fake daddy is called Robert and he had great hair. You were very small when he died, so you don’t remember him. I don’t talk about him because I’m very sad. I forged a picture if you want to see what he looks like. Doesn’t change the fact I’m a single mother and that’s icky.”

Loid lights up. He lights up at the slightest mention of a spy-related activity. “Forged? Like in-”

“Like in Spy Wars, but boring. Tedious work. I’ll show you one day.” Starlight messes with his hair. Becky’s minions have done a wonderful job to turn this kid Starlight picked off a dumpster into believable material as a moderately spoiled young master. “Brush harder, soldier, don’t think I didn’t notice you skipped half your mouth. Rich kids have impeccable dental hygiene. That’s how you spot them even when they’re under cover as normal people.”

His Spy Wars tool kit, ridiculously expensive for what’s essentially for a glorified pile of junk, contains a plastic detective ‘coat’ with poorly hidden ‘secret’ pockets, a black tissue mask, a magnifying glass, a fake gun, a ’spy’ notebook with an invisible ink pen and a UV light that only works every once in a while, and a pair of talkie walkie. The talkie walkie is the only valuable accessory in the whole set. Loid has never loved anything more in his entire life. Starlight was delighted to send the note of her professional expenses to headquarters. She’s certain they were equally delighted to receive it. 

“Dads are mean,” Loid confesses to his talkie walkie under the covers of his bed half an hour after he’d been tucked to sleep. “It could com-pra-mize the mission. Over.”

Sitting on her own bed, Starlight puts down her book, and makes a conscious effort not to look into Loid’s mind to visualize his point of references for unadvisable paternal figures. She puts her hand on Agent Moonshine’s back, presses her talkie walkie close to her mouth, then pushes the button. 

“Not all dads are mean.” Allegedly. “We’ll get you a really stupid one who’s nice. And if he’s not nice, I’ll take him back to the dad store and annoy the manager until I get a refund. Over.”

“What if he doesn’t want to leave? Over.”

Starlight would shoot her husband in the back of the head or poison his coffee, depending on her mood of the day, and the emergency cleanup crews would have a lot to complain about at brunch the next morning. Becky would scowl and wreck her hairline some more. Teacher would frown and drink tea. It would be a very instructive Sunday for everyone involved. 

“I can be very convincing, I’m sure you have noticed. Don’t worry, I won’t let anyone harm you. You’re my partner, and partners protect each other. Go to sleep now. Good spies need rest. Over.”

Like every night, Loid repeats to himself: this won’t last. This won’t last. This won’t last. This won’t last. This won’t last. 

Like every night, Starlight pretends she can’t feel her ribcage tighten up and attempt murder by asphyxiation on her heart. 

“My step-dad shouldn’t be too stupid,” Loid decides while they’re performing recon rounds in the park the next morning. Agent Moonshine is being ‘led’ by a leash that’s basically theater prop to satisfy municipal rules of procedure. “Just a little. And good-looking!”

“Interesting feedback! Why good-looking?”

“Cause you need to look good together. It’ll be sus-pi-cious if he’s ugly.”

Starlight bites back a smile at the naivety of a child who hasn’t figured out how the absurdities of patriarchy work yet. “It really wouldn’t, but I’ll be sure to convey your requirements to the step-dad manufacturer. Anything else?”

“Resilience to chronic traumatic exposure seems like a necessary baseline.”

Emergency protocols installed inside Starlight’s brain before she knew what the words emergency and protocol meant kick in. It evaluates available weaponry. It establishes guidelines for exit strategies. It calculates long-term consequences for public altercations. It checks Agent Moonshine’s margin of manoeuvrability. It weighs the pros and cons of taking the child unit with her. 

Smiling, her hand clutching Loid’s shoulder like a vice, she twists backward. “Mr Bartender! What a funny coincidence!”

The bartender’s civilian outfit makes him look either like an aristocrat slumming down with the commoners or a commoner trying to climb the social ladder to aristocracy through stylistic gaslight. The color palette is a dove grey that has shifted into its old age to plain dust, beige to maroon gradient fuckery with zero fun pattern allowed and a dark blue loose tie to add one lone spark of daring. Great tweed cap though. That’s the one fashion statement Starlight can enthusiastically endorse. 

Other accessories include: a resting bitch face, a dog that doesn’t abide by municipal rules of procedure, and a mind deserving of its own interpretive panel written in very, very small font. 

“Not a coincidence, Dr Forger,” he says her name like he can’t believe any medical institution with ethical boundaries would grant her full licence to conduct her business under the purview of public health services. He would be technically correct. “I’ve heard you’ve been looking for me.”

Starlight gasps. “Mr Bartender! Did you stalk me?” 

It takes visible effort for that jaw to unclench. “You left your business card to the manager.”

“That poor man. He looked like he needed an attentive ear to cry to and a divan to lie on. Even if he decides not to seek help, my business card has healing properties of its own. Would you like one? My professional instinct is telling me you could use some portable therapy with low emotional stakes.”

The bartender pretends not to have heard her deranged rant. “And you spread outrageous rumors about me.”

“Did I? I don’t recall saying anything untoward! Do share so I can properly atone, what kind of rumors? 

His blush is magnificent. Perhaps a neutral color palette is for the best after all. “None I would be willing to recount in front of a child!”

Right on cue, Loid tugs at the hem of her dress. “Mother, you know this mister?”

“Very well, if gossip is to be believed!” Starlight tilts her head towards the playground. “Why don’t you go play with the other children while the gentleman, myself and our respective dogs have a boring adult discussion? Be nice. Have fun. Do not incite sedition against the state amongst the youth demographics. No, I’m not telling what that means, it’ll give you ideas I don’t want to have to explain to a SSS officer later. Go on already!”

Agent Moonshines takes that as an encouragement to initiate contact on the dog front with a careful, moderate woof befitting of his station. The bartender’s German shepherd responds with an excess of youthful excitement that Agent Moonshine might have managed to match some fifteen years ago, but is now wholly unequipped to handle. 

“Max,” the bartender hisses as he catches the back of his dog’s collar. “Chill.”

Loid makes use of the confusion to look up at her, gesturing through advanced eyebrow gymnastics that he really should stay. 

Starlight responds in kind that he really should not. 

Loid ends up pulling a big smile that would get any grandma’s fingers itching to squeeze his face like a fresh bun. “Okay! Thanks! I’m very excited to insist separation to the state with my new friends! See you soon!”

In his rush to proceed according to plan, he bumps into the bartender. “Sorry! It was nice to meet you, Mister Bartender!”

The bartender watches Dr Anya Forger’s child run to the playground and hide under the toboggan before he pulls Loid’s talkie walkie out of his coat. “... Did your son just put a surveillance device in my pocket?”

It would seem so! And he turned it on so he could hear their conversation too. To think Headquarters assessed Starlight had nothing relevant to teach the recruits. They’ve all been sitting on her incredible potential as a role-model for spy aspirants. 

“I’m sorry about this! This is so unprofessional. He’s still in training, you see. Next time, I promise you won’t notice.”

The bartender looks at the talkie walkie. He looks at the playground. He looks at Dr Anya Forger. 

He says: “it has a cartoon sticker.”

“Indeed, that’s Bondman!” Starlight confirms. “From Spy Wars? I’m sorry I could not provide more adequate surveillance devices than child cartoon merchandising.”

He bursts out laughing. 

The Richter scale of smiles would never be enough to properly document the phenomenon. This is a seismic event of unprecedented proportions. The topography of his face might be forever altered. Even Max looks startled. Starlight’s hand clamps helplessly, reaching out for an absent camera like a ghost limb aching. 

“You’re so weird,” the bartender says, smiling. “What is wrong with you?”

“That’s still up for debate.” Starlight’s mouth is on autopilot. “My co-workers say it’s a lovely coping mechanism I should consider to patent.”

“What, so there could be more of you?” He shakes his head, sounding, out of all illegal emotions, fond. “Your co-workers are endangering public health.”

“Feel free to reach out to the appropriate ministry to express your concerns.” Starlight’s hand stretches out. She lets her aggressively whimsy persona take a step back and the tired mom perks up instead. “May I? My hooligan son is actually very attached to his ‘spy gear’. Please don’t take it personally, he’s just… concerned about this whole marriage business. Any man I talk to is treated like a national security threat.”

The bartender looks unbothered to be treated like a national security threat. He gives her back her ill-used property and glances at the nearest bench. “Let’s sit down. We look stupid standing around.”

Sitting is a liability. Sitting reduces manoeuvrability. Sitting is for people who are not constantly looking for exit strategies. Within twenty seconds, Starlight’s emergency protocol has come up with eleven excuses as to why Dr Anya Forger won’t transfer to a secondary location two meters removed, most of them polite and reasonable in civilized society. 

But Starlight is first and foremost a spy. Spies sit on park benches, it’s actually one of their favorite pastimes. Their job is to slip in the cracks of the mundane and blend in like they’ve always been there. Spies routinely stare at their emergency protocols in the eye and say: down, boy. We’re method-acting normalcy today. Not Starlight, usually, but today she can make an effort. 

Also.

Anya wants to sit. 

Anya wants to sit on a bench with a stranger, and not think about world peace for five minutes. 

So she does. D sits next to her. He’s got impeccable posture. Dr Anya Forger does not. From an outsider perspective, they must seem very strangely paired together. Agent Moonshine sits next to her. Max runs circles around them until his human pulls a squishy toy from his inner pocket and throws it as far as he can, which is pretty far. Agent Moonshine looks at Max sprint away at unwarranted velocity with the indulgence of the elderly. Starlight doesn’t think she has ever seen anyone so excited to do anything in her entire life. On the playground, Lois has been surrounded by six children of various ages. He’s either convincing the crowd to role play spy wars, converting middle class children to communism and recruiting on a joint operation to tackle the man who might seduce his mother to the ground. 

“Smoke?” asks the bartender, pulling out his cigarettes. 

“Peanut?” escalades Starlight, pulling out her emergency stash. 

“... Sure. I propose a cultural exchange.”

“That seems reasonable. I accept.”

They eat peanuts and inflict damage to their lung capacity for stress relief. A comfortable silence settles in. Starlight can’t remember the last time she’s been in a comfortable silence that also hosted another human being. Silences are either meant to be filled in or to facilitate listening to thoughts. They’re not meant to accompany sitting down and doing nothing. 

She lets it linger. It’s a really nice cigarette. 

Max returns like a boomerang with ADHD. The circle continues. 

“That’s an interesting kid you’ve got,” the bartender comments.

“He’s a lovely menace upon society,” Starlight concurs. “I’m still unsure if it’s genetics or external factors. Are you still convinced he’d be wasted in Eden?”

“Fervently, but I can see his … potential to thrive in a hostile environment.”

Starlight studies the lines of longing on his face like it’s lost media recently discovered when she stumbled upon a crack in the ground by complete happenstance. “You actually like children, Mr Bartender.”

The bartender takes a peanut from the bag. “You sound surprised. I’ll have you know I’m great with kids. I was actually planning to become a teacher, at some point.”

“Really.”

“Really. It didn’t work out that way, obviously.”

She tries to picture the scene, Mr Bartender in his tuxedo, lecturing children to conduct themselves in orderly fashion.  Mr Bartender under his tweed cap, navigating swarms of sarcastic teenagers and coming out with his ego mostly intact. Mr Bartender coaching Loid on how the best psychologically destroy rich kids through the talkie-walkie. 

“Go on, you can laugh.”

“Mr Bartender, you should know better by now. I’m not known for holding myself back from mockery when I believe it’s warranted. Which brings me to… a belated apology. I’m sorry about the rumors. It was a misunderstanding, I had no such intentions, but I should have been more cautious. I do not like to let debts be unpaid and you vanished before you could pay your due.”

He turns his head to look at her, and says: “Liar.”

Starlight blinks. The word echoes in her skull. Liar. Liar. Liar. “I. What?”

“It wasn’t a misunderstanding. You did it on purpose.”

“Those are grave accusations, Mr Bartender-”

“It’s the truth.”

“You can’t know that-”

“But I do.”

Interestingly, their semblance of peaceful interaction doesn’t get blasted away by the prospect of conflict. Instead, the atmosphere curves without breaking. Rage takes a cup of tea. Starlight’s composure is unsettled on a molecular level. 

The gold of his eyes is no longer iron cold; it burns like a furnace. It’s the sort of material that would be used to fabricate a bullet destined to destroy a planet. Teacher would lecture her on strategic retreat, emotional contingencies and basic caution, Starlight, the bare minimum, but Teacher is not here and Starlight is, and she’s still that impulsive brat to the core. Surging with her teeth out to his gorgeous, terrifying death trap of a mind is a movement of pure instinctual survival. Her hungry mouth is full of it, molten lava and starlight matter, and she chokes over existential heat until she can’t breathe-

Truth coughs itself out of her throat. “Why are you here?”

The vision leaks into her brain, courtesy of Agent Moonshine’s timely prescience: he’s standing in her kitchen, judging her condiment inventory system. He’s wearing an apron. It’s Bondman themed. 

The gold fever has abated. Her future husband is decidedly staring at some random tree, refusing to make eye-contact. “Well, I’ve recently lost my source of income, as you know, and I’ve heard… There's an opening. A vacancy. For a…” His voice is barely audible. “Full-time in-house spouse operative."

Starlight tugs at the sleeve of his coat. “Mr Bartender. Hey. Look at me. Mr Bartender.”

That tree has to be hiding a revolution in the botanic field considering the level of attention it’s receiving in the middle of a marriage proposal. “What.”

“Are you proposing? To me?”

“I’m answering a job advert no one else will.”

Starlight laughs as if a sleeper agent she was unaware of activated out of nowhere in her diaphragm. “You said I’m a menace to society. You said I’m a liar. You said I have, I quote, a mental disorder, and you’re wrong, by the way. I have several.”

The tip of his cap gets lowered down. “Yes, well. I’ll have you know discernment is a very attractive quality in a man.”

Putting him under a microscope would never suffice to satisfy her fascination. She’d have to put him in a zoo and design top to bottom the enclosure herself. She’s embarking upon a life-long study that will redefine her career path. 

In the meantime, she’s contractually obligated to escalate the situation and grab his tie until he’s forced to look at her. “I don’t believe you, Mr Bartender. I think you’re playing with my feelings. I think you’re just practicing your lines to win the competition for some new TV show called Proposal Most Likely To Get Rejected.”

“That’s a shit name for a TV show.”

“That’s a shit proposal, to be fair. You literally prefaced it by referring to your potential fiancée as the most deranged woman you have ever met in your life.”

“Shut up.” He hisses, mortified. “I have qualifications for this post.”

Starlight doesn’t release her vicious hold on his collar. She can practically feel the heat radiating from his face. It might be one of the intense moments of her life even though she sets up bombs recreationally and lies for a living. 

“Oh, qualifications? Exciting! I do love a man with qualifications! What are those, previous engagements that ended up in nasty divorces?”

“You’re. Very close. Physically.”

She beams. “That’s just normal spousal distance. You might as well get used to it now.”

“Fine,” he says, gritting his teeth while the capillaries on his face explode. “I’ve never been married, but I’m a dedicated housekeeper, I’m a good tutor, I’m not rich but I can pretend to be, and I already know you’re unhinged.”

Excellent reasoning altogether, aside from the fact she’s far from her most unhinged state. Starlight does need a break. She has spent a lifetime drunk on adrenaline, spite and other people’s tears, and she has never requested a break. She looks at Agent Moonshine, begging for his expert opinion. Agent Moonshine woffs, empathically, that this is an incredibly bad idea. It is. She’d be inviting inside her operation center the one person she has no cheat scope over, like an idiot, when there are hundreds of simple, easy to manage men to pick from in Berlint alone. 

But the prediction lingers and it’s hindering her visual field. The scotoma is ruining her hindsight, shaped in the form of the bartender lecturing her on proper dishware care while she calls him dear, darling, my best husband unit just to piss him off and watch him self-combust over breakfast eggs right before Loid stumbles to the table in his pyjamas. She imagines him tutoring Loid on Euclidean divisions, obscure grammar rules and snobbish behavior until Loid inevitably warms up to the weird adult rooting for him to crush the competition. She pictures clear as day the negotiation on the home decoration and bed-sharing treaties. 

Then she thinks about the sex. 

Starlight is not shy about sex. Starlight couldn’t be shy about sex if she tried. Freud had to make folk lay on divans for decades to discover a glimpse of what Starlight is subjected to all the time since early childhood. To a telepath, sexual fantasies are either background noise to be ignored or leveraged against the target. Everyone has them, everything is ashamed of them, and if Starlight had to be embarrassed by procuration, she’d never talk to another human being ever again. She’s had to learn to feel very casually about knowing her banker has intense fantasies about horses or that Teacher thinks very expressively about hand holding. She’d had to learn to feel very casually about the thoughts some people have about her specifically and weaponize interest to her advantage. 

All of that to say Starlight has been on her fair share of honeypot missions, but it would be the first time she does so without knowing in intricate details the kinks of the target. 

It’s fine. She can do it. She should do it. For world peace. The amount of sexual repression this man has stored in him is a health hazard to himself and the rest of the population. She’d be doing a public service to ride him until he weeps, certainly. They’d have to get her a medal. Not to mention reproductive habits are a crucial element of her extended study. 

Starlight glances at his mouth. 

The bartender flinches and promptly extracts himself for her grip. 

“Morevor! I expect no intimate contact on your part outside of PR optics. This is a purely transactional agreement. No need for ‘normal’ spousal distance or any feelings involved.”

Oh.

Well then. 

That’s convenient. Starlight is therefore unencumbered by having to learn how to have sex like regular people, and god forbid, communicate about it. 

She puts her hands on her thighs as a sign of good faith. “Duly noted. Let’s imagine I’m taking your application seriously. What’s in it for you?”

Her future husband strengthens up, clearly preferring to be back into his comfort zone of professional distance and numbered lists. “Celibate men are suspicious to the state, my mother will stop pestering me to get married already, and I’m now emotionally invested in helping to get your son into Eden. Out of personal vindication.”

Starlight puts three peanuts in her mouth. “Would you care to expand on the vindictiveness facteur?”

“Not really, but if I must. The short story is, I really wanted to enroll into Eden when I was a kid. I was obsessed about it, really. I thought if I worked hard enough, they would have to accept me. I wasted my childhood studying days and nights, and I tried so hard to behave like them. To be like them. But I failed. I had far better scores, but I failed. There was an unbreachable ceiling. I took offense. I’m still offended. I still want to take a hammer to that fucking ceiling and that crystallzed my entire personality into a spite-based motivational system. End of story.”

Max hovers a few meters from them with his toy in mouth, looking uncertain and confused. Starlight can only assume this is an unprecedented amount of emotional disclosure for the most repressed man in Berlint. Even his dog doesn't know what to do with that. 

Anya makes unthreatening eye contact, and lays her hand open. Max flickers through several mental states: incredulity, indignation, wariness, curiosity, temptation. Temptation wins. Anya is granted custody of one (1) dog toy covered in drool. She pulls out her handkerchief to clean it up before returning it to her future husband and patting Max’ head. The bartender seems astonished that she's the kind of person who routinely carries embroidered handkerchiefs. That’s because he has no children (yet) and has never met Teacher, who lovingly nurses extreme opinions on the sanctities of portable textile. 

“Very well! I accept your proposal! We’ll make a Forger out of you one day, Mr Bartender. As soon as you’re willing to sign the paperwork, in fact.”

He takes a double take. “Wait, I’m supposed to take your name? That’s unconventional.”

“True, but this is an unconventional marriage and my name is already on multiple engraved  medical plaques. It would be a waste of time to have them redone. They’re very golden.” Starlight points out, offering her hand for a professional, feeling-free handshake. “Think of this marital arrangement as… entering a witness protection program!” 

“I haven’t done anything wrong to warrant that level of concern, but sure. Whatever. I can be Damian Forger.”

Starlight’s brain comes to a halt in the middle of the highway “.... Damian?”

Oh. Oh. Oh no. She didn’t think about that D. She didn’t think about that D.

The file she once made publicly fun of and called a template for inceldom superposes itself with every information she has collected of Mr Bartender. Temporary odd jobs, check. No previous marriages, check. Complicated student history, check. Control freak childhood, check. Nosy mother, check. Dog owner, check. Emotional constipation, check. 

Agent Moonshine huffs, radiating I Told You So energy. 

That’s the Damian. The Damian whose mom works for SSS police. 

Her husband-to-be shakes her hand and seals her fate as the clownest spy of the agency. “Damian. Damian Briar. Nice to meet you. I hope we have a great marriage together, Dr Forger, and that we won’t murder one another before our nasty divorce.”