So maybe going for twins had been a bit more impulsive than it ought to have been. It had made sense enough at the time, though, hadn’t it? Given the time and effort it took to build up just the right hot, dense atmosphere to get on with merging and hoping something resulted from the aftermath, well…why not have the extra elements ready and go an extra round?

It was good for the kids to have each other as a companion, right? Even if their fun and games resulted in holes in the walls or the poor mooshi getting tipped in the night for the nth time that week. She couldn’t rightly say she’d ever heard Joker complain about a lick of it, even when he had to watch them and the homestead alone most of the time. But weren’t that the intention? She had to be gone so often and for so long sometimes, making the protokids meant she literally left a couple parts of herself there with him. And someday they’d be grown up enough that the tables could turn and she could take a bit of him out on a journey with her, to speak nothing of the ‘family vacations’ they most assuredly had plans for. RJ and JR just needed to form themselves some proper limbs first.

Kinda made you wonder how a couple little gasbag varmints like them could raise such a ruckus without hands or feet to do it with, but then again, just look at the parents. Neither her nor Joker were likely to let such a thing slow them down, either, if it came down to it.

But one thing about having to travel to such far reaches of the universe on her Protectorate business meant she never quite new what time it was at home until she stepped into her ship’s teleporter and out into the homestead proper, her old flag still waving from the rooftop as fine and proud as the day she’d woken him up planting it there. And well, would you look at that. Local sunset was setting in and it looked like Joker had actually managed to wrangle the kids down for a bit. She couldn’t see anything smoking and the mooshi seemed all upright.

What she could see was that jovial partner of hers all sprawled in a hide-covered chair up on the porch, an arm each draped around the protokid snuggled up to each side. Plumb tuckered out, the lot of them, it seemed.

Least until the kids heard their ma’s boots tapping the stairs, anyway. They popped right back up at that, mirror-image brands spinning her way and faces bright with delight as they leapt off of their pa to scamper over. Pretty sure she heard an ‘oof’ from him at that. She didn’t see him move much while she was playing catchup and doling out the hugs and corona-ruffles, either.

Pa still had to get his turn, though, and as the protokids went scampering off again, rejuvenated by their power nap, she stepped over to his chair. It wasn’t like him to be the quiet type, but that and the slow pulses of his glow told him everything she needed to know. With one hand tugging her bandana out of the way, she put the other to the side of his face and leaned in, touching their brands together. The soft thrum, the comfortable pull of complementary polarization, was all the homecoming she needed. And she didn’t need no SAIL to remind her of that, either.