Summary: In which we learn that Q, when young, was a tiny terror, a fact verified by the fact that he was blacklisted by no fewer than seven child psychologists and every school for the gifted in the country. Bright Star 'verse.

Note: Hi! I'm back after (gasp) almost 2 years! I wrote a couple of stories in this 'verse and never got around to posting, so I'm doing it now. This one is a short one…but hopefully entertaining! The complete story is a multi-chapter consisting of mini-stories on the same theme.

Bright Star 'verse note: This story won't make much sense without reading at least a few of my other stories in this 'verse. Basically, Whishaw!Q (Danny Drake in my 'verse) is the son of an ex-007 named Damien Drake (Timothy Dalton's version of 007), and the rest of his family consists of various other secret service members, including Brosnan!007 and Victoria Winslow from RED.

Disclaimer: I asked Dr. Google about things like posh schools for the really, really gifted and child psychology methods. Not an expert, yadda yadda.

Enfant Terrible

Chapter 1

1995

Victoria took a long drag of her cigarette and watched two of the most dangerous men in her acquaintance taking orders from the tiny five-year-old that was Daniel Geoffrey Drake.

"Do you ever," she said, sotto voce, to her companion who was sitting with her in the shade of an apple tree some distance apart from the small dictator and his minions, "Do you ever wonder if Danny's getting…properly socialized? Spending enough time around–"

She trailed off, not wanting to offend papa bear, but making her meaning quite clear without saying the words.

Damien Drake snorted softly into his cup of tea. "Normal people?" he finished knowingly, "Children his age? Yes. I enrolled him in a school for the gifted last year. He had no problem getting in, of course, but they told me he needed to see a child psychologist because he was getting bullied and terrorizing the other children in turns. I've taken him to several of the most prominent specialists in their field. He outsmarts them every time or unsettles them. He quotes their textbooks and journal articles at them, critiques their technique, psychoanalyzes them using their own bloody techniques…"

"Bloody hell."

He nodded at her succinct response. "The school politely asked that he no longer attend their institution. He has also been blacklisted by no fewer than seven psychologists and every other school for the gifted and talented in the country. I considered taking him to the continent or the States, but ultimately decided that it would be the same wherever I enrolled him."

She eyed him over the rim of her glass. "Do you ever think…?"

"Karma?" he drawled, conscious of each gray hair he'd added to his collection since Danny's birth. "Every single day."

The corner of Victoria's lips twitched in amusement. Damien Drake, the former 007, had been exquisitely destructive in his day, and had given MI6 quite a lot of trouble. His successor, Sam Carmichael, had taken up his mantle with aplomb, much to the chagrin of the current M, who looked upon him with a mixture of maternal exasperation and fondness.

"What are you going to do?"

Damien sighed. "Let him learn what he wants to, in addition to the standard curriculum. I've been expecting this anyway, to be honest. I didn't have my hopes up that any school would be able to handle him."

"Let you dump him on them, you mean. How are you going to get him used to people outside the family?"

"The locals view him as the village eccentric, and the children don't bother him, although they aren't overly friendly with him. Something between terrified and fascinated, I suppose. No other child would dream up the sorts of adventures he puts together."

"I suppose they think he's rather insufferably bossy?" inquired Victoria drolly, knowing her nephew quite well, despite how much she loved the little tyrant.

"Of course, and a know-it-all, to top it all off."

"Justified."

"Rather. But it's not an excuse for being unpleasant."

Damien sighed, half in exasperation and half in something more than fond that made his friend chuckle.

"Since neither he nor the other children can stand each others' company for too long, he's started corresponding with various scientists who think he's older than he really is. I think these relationships may eventually bear fruit. At this point, he still lets me look over his letters and make suggestions before we send them off."

"Suggestions?"

"I cross out the parts that make him sound like a pompous arsehole and suggest alternatives. Then he prints out a fresh copy for me to sign for him. His handwriting is still shaky enough to give away his age."

"You say that like other kids his age can write scientific papers that actually get published."

Damien fixed her with a patented Drake Look. "I never compare him to other children his age anymore if I can help it. Those days, my dear, are far in the distant past," he finished loftily with the air of one who had given up planning and instead went with wherever his whirlwind of a child took him.

Good point. She shook her head, and took another drag of her cigarette. She nodded at the two men playing with their nephew in the garden in front of them. "They're spoiling him rotten," she observed cooly.

"As though I have the power to stop them." Damien rolled his eyes. "And don't point fingers; you do it too."

"Do I?" she asked, looking far too innocent and incredulous to be believed.

Damien ignored her and watched his charges to ensure that the child was not taking too much advantage of his uncles.

"Agent Lambda, look sharp!" Danny barked into his headset to Sam Carmichael, aka Agent 007 of MI6 and also apparently Agent Lamda on this particular day for the purposes of their game. "Count Tofana is about to launch the missile! Get him while he's monologuing!"

'Count Tofana,' aka Stuart Thomas, formerly Agent 005 of MI6, obligingly pretended to make the preparations to push the blinking red button on the elaborate setup in front of him in the most grandiose manner he could muster and cleared his throat to begin his Very Evil Monologue. He looked perfect for the part with his pale skin, regrowing hair, and prominent black eyepatch; he was between rounds of chemo and radiation again and was finally feeling strong enough for a full day of play.

"Roger that, Vertex." 'Agent Lambda' crouched behind Damien Drake's carefully-tended rose bushes and dramatically aimed his very fake gun (Damien Drake had one rule that was never broken: Real weapons must never, ever, ever be used in play) at the droning Tofana, only for his nemesis to suddenly lunge and grab 'Vertex,' aka Danny, to use him as a hostage.

"Ha-HA!"

Vertex gasped in outrage and promptly began to scold Count Tofana for acting against his orders as the Great Mastermind, even as his short legs dangled comically in the air.

"But I'm the bad guy. I don't have to follow the rules! Especially if it's the good guys' rules! Mwahaha!"

With that last maniacal laugh, the dastardly Count Tofana began to diabolically and horribly tickle Vertex until he squealed and giggled helplessly. Agent Lambda turned double agent and joined in the fun, engaging their captive in careful roughhousing.

"You can't tell me that I spoil him as badly as those two," Victoria commented dryly.

"No one spoils him as badly as those two," Damien said. "They're the worst offenders. But don't think you're off the hook. That case of poisons you brought him last month was ridiculous. Why couldn't it be a chemistry set like any other child?"

"Because," she told him smugly, "Danny is not any other child, is he?"

"I caught him trying to see if he could taste the difference between arsenic and cyanide." At her horrified expression, he clarified, "Miniscule amounts. He said he was following the methodology of the ancients. He said he already knew the chemical structures and how they ought to taste and wanted to see for himself. He calculated the harmful doses of each one for his body weight and made sure the samples were below that threshold." As though that made it any better.

Victoria recovered admirably. "Children's chemistry set for Christmas, then?"

"Perhaps not, on consideration. He'd find a way to make explosives out of it."

"Toaster bomb?" she asked humorously, referencing the first time she'd met the boy genius. (Headline: Two-year-old makes bomb out of toaster!)

"Toaster bomb," Damien confirmed wearily. "Among other things."

"Don't tell me it's not worth it."

A soft smile flitted across the expressive lips. "He's worth it."

. . . . .

Notes:

Aliases Agent Lambda, Count Tofana, and Vertex: Lambda is the eleventh letter of the Greek alphabet. Tofana is from Aqua Tofana, an arsenic-based poison from the 1600s associated with a woman named Giulia Tofana. The vertex is a geometric term used for the point where curves, lines, or edges meet. I think it works as something a math nerd would come up with for the spymaster in charge of all operations.