Susevfi
A Few Years Ago

Today was the day.

It was a long time coming. Years of wanting. Months of preparation. Meticulous planning and execution, one step at a time. All the good will, all the favours, all the cunning and observation, and it all culminated in this.

He tried not to run. Tried to walk casual. Drew on all the lessons he'd learned, all the wisdom his father had imparted while TTony was pretending not to listen. Hands shoved deep in his pockets. A strolling pace, not a hustling one. Eyes up. Shoulders relaxed. Notice your surroundings. Worst thing you could do when you were up to something was look like you were up to something, and getting all hunched up and floor-staring was totally the wrong thing to do. He tried a little of Dad's bow-legged swagger walk. Felt weird. Probably looked weird. Dial it back.

The corner of his eye spotted movement. He glanced over in that direction; a couple of girls he half recognised from school, looking over at him. He gave them one of those backwards nods, that head tilt thing that Dad always did to show people he'd saw them. One girl blushed, and turned to the other. Both started giggling. A tug of a grin pulled at the corner of TTony's mouth.

Aww, yeah.

The tiny bolster of confidence was enough to carry him back to the tangle of interconnected houses that the Ath-Thu'ban Clan had taken over. Well okay, not clan per se. Not the way that Koine was a clan. Or a... a... what was the name Unclemos used? Kinda sounded like elite a little. Aliit, maybe? Whatever. Not like that, anyway. But it didn't feel right calling it House Ath-Thu'ban either, because it was a group of people, not a stupid building. And family didn't seem right either, no matter how many times Dad did his speech about blood and whatever. It weren't just Mom and Dad and Danny, it weren't just the Uncles, or Gran and Grampam, it was everyone. Family. Friends. Droids. Pets. Those Uncles that you called Uncle even though they weren't really Uncles. Master Cleo. Everyone. Was a whole tribe of people from time to time, and sometimes TTony didn't even know all their names, but they were still part of the Ath-Thu'ban family-adjacent blob. Hyperfamily. More family than family. Whatever.

Either way, he made it back there. Snuck in through the flippy-floppy retro door that hinged open in two halves, the one that opened out onto the kitchen garden. TTony was never really sure if it was called that just because it was next to one of the kitchens, or if it was because it had kitchen stuff in. Like, would it still be a kitchen garden if it had the same stuff in but was over on the other side? Would it still be a kitchen garden if it stayed put but was only flowers and junk? These were life's important questions, but everyone just looked at him weird when he asked them. Everyone but Uncle Atton anyway, he seemed to think the questions were great: but he was spending a lot of time offworld now, doing important Senator business and stuff. It sucked. Super-sucked. And it was why he'd started insisting that people call him TTony after his middle name. Gotta have an Atton on-planet keeping an eye on stuff, you know? Uncle Atton said that if he kept his eyes open, he might get to help out Auntie Em with her spy stuff one day. Uncle Atton said that she was an information breaker and that she sold secrets and stuff; so TTony kept his ears on a swivel - or something like that - like Uncle Atton told him to, and saved up all the juicy secrets so that he could tell them when Uncle Atton got home.

TTony went stealth mode as he ducked into the corridor from the kitchen garden kitchen - their little cluster of linked up houses had way too many kitchens, but Dad said that you needed the right kitchen for the right meal, so whatever - diving into one of the studies as a cleaning droid shuffled past. It was super weird, the way that Home mixed high tech and low tech together. Most of the doors were the swooshy slidey ones, but some of them had handles and hinges; and all the rooms had proper lights and floor heaters and all that stuff, but there were fireplaces and candles and stuff too, and people just used them when they were in the mood. And Dad had a thing called nicknacks, which were supposed to be super rare and super valuable stuff with super tons of super sentimental value and stuff - but to be honest, most of it kinda seemed like junk? - and it was everywhere. Beat up old droids trundling around as well as shiny new ones. That couch and holoprojector in the den where Mom and Dad went for their alone snuggle time that was like, a billion years old, but was from the spaceship they first lived together on or whatever.

His hand shifting a little into one of the deep pockets of his oversized jacket, TTony's hand wrapped around one such nicknack. It had taken all his skills, all his training, and all of Uncle Atton's guidance to even find out about it, and to steal - no, borrow - it was a feat worthy of the history books. But he had it now, and feeling it in his fingers, his muscles started to vibrate with giddiness. Today was the day. But he was missing two important components: the rest of his team.

TTony darted out from cover, scampering around the corner into the segment of the buildings designated for Free Range Child Rearing. Basically it was the part of the superhouse that was far enough away from everything else that TTony and Danny could be as noisy as they wanted without disturbing anyone, but close enough to Mom and Dad that like, they could come sort stuff out quickly if Danny started crying or whatever; because obviously TTony was too cool to have ever been the kind of kid who cried at nightmares or spiders or whatever. Autopilot carried him the rest of the way, past the day room and the play room, past the bedroom with the bunk beds that he and his brother had shared when they were small, past their own little refresher room, and right up to the door of Mandan's room - helpfully labelled with a hand scrawled crayon sign identifying it as exactly that. He triggered the swoosh door and stepped inside, a hushed reverence falling over him as he peered through the blind-closed dimness at the barely moving lump of sibling buried under his bedsheets.

Crouching for just a moment, TTony retrieved a discarded shoe, and hurled it in his brother's direction. "Wake up, assbutt," he hissed, in the kind of misguided whisper that wasn't actually quiet at all. "We're going on an adventure."