Chapter Text
Nobody expected most of the students apart from the housewardens would turn into children, thankfully it wasn’t everyone, simply the main ones apart from Ortho meaning Idia was safe and even then Lilia didn’t turn into a child and gladly took care of Silver and Sebek.
Everyone else, not so much.
For Kalim it wasn’t too much, just Jamil, and most were doing okay-ish with their 2 kids to take care of.
However for one certain Housewarden…
“Idia, why are you sitting here in your butt? How about you go help Housewarden Rosehearts?”
Ortho asked, all perky and stuff as he hovered over Idia’s shoulder, who was looking at Leona physically dragging Ruggie who was mid temper tantrum.
“What?! Why- why in twisted would I hep him????”
“Haven’t seen him in forever! I think he’s struggling! He’s one man against 4 children!”
Othro pointed out, which was true, Idia hadn’t seen the usual hall roaming, everywhere-at-once-eyes-everywhere Riddle Rosehearts.
He had taken the biggest load with having the biggest dorm, even at the start Riddle looks stressed at the general idea of having 4 kids to take care of until they turned back, still, being that prissy perfect person he portrayed he could really only agreed.
Though Crewel promised the first potion to turn them back would go straight to him.
Idia got lucky SUPER LUCKY, that Ortho was a robot and couldn’t turn into a child, he did feel kind of bad for Riddle but help????
Idia was more afraid he’d be yelled at, like those memes of mothers on the internet yelling at their teenagers for standing round like a damn idiot not helping!
“I can’t, what he, like, goes all boss battle on me with 1 billion HP? I’m not prepared! I’m not even level 10 against Riddle!”
“Come on! I’ll come! I also want to see the babies!”
“They’re more so bratty toddlers but okay…”
Idia sighed, allowing Ortho to happily drag him away to the Heartslabyul portal, he hoped it wasn’t so bad…
He instantly regretted it once he entered the portal.
The entire place looked… normal, if this was Riddle’s first year.
Everyone looked to be in collars and was running around, looking around frantically before a random person grabbed Ortho’s shoulders and looked at him.
“Hey! Nice to see you! Do haven’t happened to see a baby Ace around here? Right????? He didn’t leave the dorm, right???????”
“Nice to see you too, Mao! Nope, haven’t seen him!”
“Fuckkkkkkkk”
The student, now that Idia knew as Mao, tried to run off again before Ortho grabbed him.
“Wait! Is Ace missing or something?”
“Yes! Very! Look, Housewarden has been taking care of the four babies by himself and he’s been getting no sleep, hence my beautiful necklace.”
Mao referred to the collar, letting out a small huff, before continuing.
“So we said we would watch them so he could sleep, Ace is gone! And Riddle is going absolutely kill us!”
“Well… when does he wake up?”
“That’s the thing! We have no damn clue! Which makes me even more-“
“HES AWAKE!”
Some student interrupted Mao, making his head snap over to the entrance where one of the students came from, looking like his head was about to blow.
“Oh yeah… I’m gonna go, bye!”
Mao pushed past the two and ran out of the portal, along with a few people who did not want to be the one to experience the blow up.
Idia tried to run too but Ortho grabbed his hand too, smiling brightly before dragging him where he stood towards the house.
“Ortho, Ortho, please! Don’t do this to me! I can HEAR the boss music!”
“I said we’d help! We’re helping!”
The sound of chaos was immediate, the sound of crying from both toddlers and full grown teenagers, which it seemed like the teens were the ones to cry first.
“It’s okay, Deuce, it’s okay, PLEASE STOP CRYING!”
One of the students tried to bounce a baby Deuce, who was viciously sobbing trying to climb out of his arms by doing that annoying limp all toddlers had pre-downloaded in their system.
The result of Deuce crying had the other two crying, all seeming to try and climb out of the teens trying to calm them.
It was all overstimulating and made Idia want to never have kids before he spotted Riddle at the top of the stairs, still in pajamas with his hair all messed up, staring down tiredly at the fiasco.
It was rare, Idia was sure Riddle woke up in his dorm outfit in perfect hair and makeup.
Riddle yawns and slowly went down the stairs, rubbing his eye and let out a sigh when Deuce noticed Riddle first and started to kick at the teen until he let go and ran up to Riddle, begging to be picked up.
Riddle leaned down and easily picked Deuce up, bouncing him that made Deuce calm immediately and lay on Riddle’s shoulder.
“Shhh, shh, calm down a bit, what’s wrong?”
Riddle asked, not even flinching when the other two ran up to him, leaning down to pick up Cater, who was sobbing heavier compared to Trey, who seemed to calm down at but seeing Riddle, hugging his leg, before Riddle curiously looked at the three.
Riddle looks curiously at where Ace was but tried to focus more on the ones with him crying, trying to, and successfully, calm them and in that time Ortho let go of his hand, where Idia decided to leave through one of the doors to get away from the future blow up and hopefully avoid a nice shiny collar with a 100% chance of a ‘fuck you no magic’ debuff.
The Heartslabyul house was weird in the way each door brought you somewhere new, where people got lost very often, making it very easy to loose a child.
Idia mindlessly walked through the doors, before he entered the stairway.
It was kind of like Hogwarts if the stairs wanted to make sure you never got to your destination unless you wanted to take a leap of faith down the seemingly endless way down and hope you end up where you want to go and not some rando’s room.
Idia sighed dramatically at the stairs he had to go up, an forced his way up there before he heard faint crying, at first he thought it was one of the other 3 brats and decided his fate of getting that collar before it got louder and he looked around.
He walked up some more stairs and looked all around before he decided to just open and close a random door over and over until he saw him.
Ace, sobbing hysterically on the floor of what seemed like a storage room that definitely looked terrifying to a child, and once Idia opened that door Ace stood up and ran up to Idia, clutching his pant leg.
“Mo-mon-monsters! There- there- there’s monsters in it!!! I want- I want-”
Ace couldn’t finish his sentence before crying harder and Idia just stared.
Ace was one fat baby.
Okay, it sounded harsh give he was crying about monsters but he couldn’t help but think about how he could NOT carry him all the way with his chronic gamer syndrome.
“Who do you want? You want Taskmaster- Riddle, right?”
Ace shook his head, trying again.
“I want- I want mama! I want mama!”
“Okay… let’s go find her, then.”
Idia said, trying his damn hardest not to groan when he bent down to lift Ace up, which he actually allowed him too, and hugged him close as Idia closed the door and went down the stairs, opening a door and trying his best to retrace where he went and take note of the various maps that didn’t help.
In that time Ace seemed surprisingly calm, though his eyes were fixated on his hair, which did in fact attract every child Idia has ever met which wasn’t exactly helpful up until now because he wasn’t a famous YouTuber with a child fanbase but at least it shut Ace up!
“Ouch!”
Idia pulled his head away when Ace suddenly reached up and grabbed at his hair.
“That’s real hair, you know!”
Ace only giggled in response, like his own was funny, guess Idia was right about assuming some kids were just born bad.
…
Idia was sure time went slower in that labyrinth by the time he got back with how ‘fast’ he seemed to get back but after a bunch of hair pulling and random rooms, he made it back.
Riddle was sitting on the couch, back facing where Idia entered and had all the kids around him, still all red and snot faced, but calmer.
Ortho was sitting next to Riddle, looking happily at the little kids like they were a bunch of snotty brats!
The students tried to dodge the question of where Ace was while Riddle took care of the three, giving him tea, asking him how he was before Riddle shut them up.
“Alright, alright, I’m fine! Now, where in Twisted is-“
“Mama!!!”
Ace shouted out and Riddle looked back to see Ace in Idia’s arms, any tears Ace had lost during the journey came right back.
Riddle stood up, still holding Cater but he had placed Deuce down in replace of Trey, this time placing Cater down to walk to Idia and grabbed Ace.
“Ace, darling! What’s wrong? Why are you crying this time? Why didn’t I see you before?”
Riddle asked, not even minding when Ace stuttered out basically nothing, and turned his slight attention to Idia.
“Hello, Shroud, I didn’t see you come in, I would’ve greeted you otherwise, I apologize that I’m not very presentable currently, but… you know.”
Riddle said, doing the smallest bow that he could do while holding two children.
“Uh… it’s no big deal, not at all.”
“Why did you have Ace? Have you been here a while?”
Riddle asked, looking up at Idia curiously, the students around him, who looked incredibly relieved, suddenly tensed up and looked at Idia with panicked looks.
Great, all of these dummies lives were left up to Idia, he almost wanted to say he found him in the storage room and watch Riddle blow up but he knew he’d get in the crossfire.
“Uh… yeah, yeah, we got here a bit before you left and one of the teens gave me him to try and calm him down a bit… obviously didn’t work, haha.”
Idia giggle nervously, but Riddle was probably too tired to catch that lie of his and only nodded, softly talking to Ace, who tried his best to be as physically close as possible to Riddle, and sat back down.
Ortho beckoned Idia to come to the couch with him and Idia reluctantly sat down with Ortho and looked at the other kids, almost immediately regretting calling Ace a fat baby.
Trey was by far the biggest, with Deuce becoming a close second, sure, cute, but it was already impressive with how Riddle easily carried two with ease and Idia felt like he’d die holding Ace alone and he wasn’t even the biggest one!
Though with how muscular Deuce and Trey was, the idea they were fat babies made more sense than Ace or Cater being big.
All of them looked like Velcro babies, which most of Heartslabyul was a Velcro class to Riddle but it really amplified here, Ace and Deuce were the one who physically were pressing themselves against Riddle while Trey and Cater laid on Riddle’s lap, Cater even appeared to be drooling a bit all over Riddle’s robe.
Idia felt even more bad for Riddle compared to hi idea version, he watched enough commentary channels to see what it was like having a bunch of kids to take care of that didn’t want to leave you the hell alone.
“So, having a pretty tough time I see.”
“Yeah.”
Riddle said, nodding, his eyes going to the Heartslabyul students who actually had the balls to stay here.
“I would’ve loved it if I had some help around here but nope, guess the housewarden will do everything, even the things I didn’t sign up for…”
Riddle directed at the students, who all looked away like Riddle would blow up but Riddle stayed seated, gently patting Ace and Deuce’s lower back.
“Well, that’s great news because we’re here to help out!”
“Wait-wait, Ortho, maybe you shou-“
“Really? I mean, it’s okay with them, they are pretty much okay just being by my side 24/7 but I can’t DO anything… whatever, it’s fine, it’s fine.”
Riddle shook his head and waved his hand mindlessly before it went back to patting him, like he decided against asking for help after the shit he faced when he took what Idia assumed was not even a 2 hour long nap.
“No no! We can help! We could probably even stay here! After all Clover’s room is free, right?”
Ortho said, looking back at Idia with a smile that screamed ‘stay with me here’.
“I- I suppose so… but I don’t want to hook you up in my mess… or Crowley’s dumb mess…”
Riddle seethed, he looked like he was about to blow up and cook Crowley on a stick when he was done with this.
“But we can stay! Can’t we, brother?”
Ortho asked and Idia wasn’t sure whose hands were on his shoulders, like they were trying to appear nice but it felt like they would snap his neck off if he dared say no.
“Um… yeah, yeah totally, I can- I can… stay… sure…”
Once Idia said that the stiff hands immediately calmed down and even gave him a small massage before letting go.
Crisis averted.
“Oh- well, I mean if you are willing to stay and help a bit, I don’t mind, but I’m not forcing you or anything. Could one of you show them to Trey’s room, please?”
Riddle said and one of the students immediately raised their hands and walked away, telling the to follow.
This one actually knew the house and easily made their way to Trey’s room, which was almost right next to Riddle’s and paused, staring at Idia.
“Housewarden Shroud.”
“Uh, hi?”
“You are being forced to be here and help, by me and the other 150 plus people here who don’t want Riddle to eat us in our sleep, you’re staying here.”
“Didn’t he say that-“
“YOU’RE STAYING HERE!”
“Okay, okay! I’ll stay here! Damn…”
“Great! Enjoy your stay!”
The student smiled and opened Trey’s rooms, it was pretty spacious, definitely enough to build a mini charging station for Ortho in the corner or something and Idia could live there for what? A week, 2 at most? Until Crewel found a cure for them.
Maybe could bring some video games- wait, no, that was a bit too much with 4 sticky kids running around, but his phone, tablet, and maybe his laptop could be here.
“Great… thanks, Ortho, I’m so glad you brought me here…”
“No problem! I’m glad to help push you towards more people! Maybe afterwards you’ll get laid!”
“Don’t say that!”
“Well, there is a high percentage of men being found more attractive when they get along with kids, especially their own! Plus, you like Riddle!”
“Ortho?”
“Mhm?”
“Shut down.”
Idia let out a breath of air when Ortho went to sleep and collapsed in the bed, smelled sweet.
What the fuck did he get himself into?
What did ORTHO get himself into????