Omega tends to agree with Terzo. He’s level-headed, and he’s got a good sense for what works and what doesn’t. If Terzo’s got an idea, Omega’ll support him. Rarely will Omega object to any of Terzo’s plans, even if he has some misgivings.

When Terzo had announced that he was taking his child with them on tour, Omega actually spoke out in disagreement.

A tour is no place for a growing child. They should be going to school and mass, making friends, and getting in trouble with Sister Imperator and Papa Nihil for being too rowdy. Instead, they’re stuck with their dad and a group of ghouls while they’re away from the safety and routine of the Abbey.

It’s a pretty bad idea overall.

Omega trusts the rest of the band, technically. They can and do get on his nerves, but he knows they’re all dependable. He just wouldn’t consider them (and himself, really) as the best role models. It was fine when they’d only have to babysit for a few hours at a time. Now they’re basically most of what the kit knows.

It was already a nightmare when they’d learned how to climb things in the Abbey from Pebble, but now they’re picking up all sorts of habits that make them as ghoulish as they are human. Omega’s caught them napping away, curled into a ball the same way that Mist does when she dozes. They’ve started copying Air’s chirps, Alpha’s growls, and Mist’s vocalizations. They don’t have the horns for it, but they nuzzle people like they do anyway.

Omega feels a bit of dread at how quickly the kid picks up these small ghoulish traits, but Terzo doesn’t care in the slightest. He thinks it’s cute.

Omega remains wholly unconvinced up until the moment he catches sight of them watching a ritual. It’s the first show of the tour; the energy’s high, the crowd’s incandescent, and Terzo is absolutely brilliant. Omega’s angled in just the right way and the lights are barely bright enough to illuminate them, but he still manages to see them.

They’re in the clothes they wear during mass, face painted just like Terzo’s; a tiny Emeritus watching the legacy they’ll inherit. What gets to Omega is their focus, the way those eyes zero in on Terzo even as they sing and dance along to songs they’ve heard a million times over.

It’s hard to say that it’s an awful idea when he gets to see their love and excitement every night, when Terzo hides a smile against the side of their head when the show’s over, when he hears them humming the songs to themself during downtime.

How could Omega say that it’s an awful thing when he can see the child’s excitement night after night?

It’s not awful, not at all.

There aren’t many moments when Terzo can’t watch over them—he won’t repeat the sins of his own childhood, and he’d rather be the one parenting his own child. When he can’t, he’ll entrust their safety to the ghouls.

They do a good enough job of it. The kit treats them like family, and they return the favor. Abbey ghouls are more than used to the concept of communal child-rearing.

Very rarely are there moments where they screw anything up.

Regrettably, those moments do happen.

The ritual’s in the evening and Terzo’s with Phil doing some important interview. The child was passed over to Omega and he’d done his absolute best to keep them focused on one of the lessons they had to work through.

He’d passed the kit off to Alpha when Mist came around to ask him for some help setting things up. It was all fine until Alpha had to break the news that he somehow managed to lose the kit. In a matter of moments, they split up, putting aside any obligations to find them before Terzo gets back.

“For the love of all that’s unholy…” Omega mutters to himself. He’s been checking ever nook, cranny, and annoying spot a persistent enough child could wedge themself into. It’s been dud after dud after dud, which is completely demoralizing. “Where could you have gone?”

Worst case scenario: they’ve run out of the venue entirely or they’ve climbed where they shouldn’t. Omega tries not to dwell on it. He also wonders if Terzo will agree to get them chipped.