I got reminded about the nb!Gil/Loxmi au, so here is the general laydown
Inspired by the non-binary priests of Inanna (nsfw text in that one) and Balkan Sworn Virgins; the general gist is that people in Skifander can take a vow of honor in the temple of Ashtara and be viewed as a third gender. Mostly it’s done by people who wish to serve the goddess, but occasionally it’s used to take on a kolee-dok-zumil relationship with a mother that’s already taught their allotted plus-one. In those cases, it’s usually done by the parents while the child is still young, and renewed by the child themselves before they start training with real blades.
TDLR; feminine (where pronouns are concerned) but not female.
My headcanon for the “they don’t like twins” thing is that it’s based on Ashtara’s own relationship and struggle for power with her sister (see: Inanna and Ereshkigal), so by assigning Gil a different gender identity, Zantabraxus buys them more time. Now, instead of killing their son early to get him out of they way, they’ve bought time for both their kids to grow to maturity before they’re forced to fight to the death for their inheritance.
You can imagine why Klaus and Loxmi still choose to leave.
An important distinction here is that (because I have twin feels) Zeetha actually knows that they’re leaving. She doesn’t ask where they plan to go, so she has plausible deniability, but she and Loxmi swap headpieces (is there a word for their circlet faces?) so that they can check in on each other and make sure they’re alright. Zeetha explains it away as Loxmi accidentally taking the wrong one; Zantabraxus has her doubts, but doesn’t force the issue. Even though she’s pissed as hell that they left without telling her, she understands why, and why they thought it was necessary. (That doesn’t mean she has to like it, though).
Meanwhile Loxmi is getting a super intense crash course in Romanian and attempting to come to terms with the fact that she’s probably never going to be able to go home ever again, while traveling by foot through the wastelands with meager supplies because their airship crashed. What happens next could vary–they may run into Master Payne’s Circus, for maximum hilarity–but eventually they end up traveling the last leg to Wulfenbach by themselves.
(It’s been a few years since the end of the Other War, not that they know that, and the town’s been rebuilt. Not as well has it would have been with a spark there to design the defenses, but enough to keep it safe).
They come across a very, very large multi-headed snake construct. Loxmi decides to try and kill it with nothing but a spark fugue and a knife. Klaus decides to throw her over his shoulder and book it for the gates as fast as he can. Someone on the wall yells “Blue fire, is that Klaus?” right before the giant snake thing rounds the bend and they get distracted.
Half an hour and one giant snake corpse later, Klaus finds one of the older residents and gets an explanation of what happened to the town (what happened to Europa may or may not have been explained, depending on if they did come across the circus). “But where have you been?” the resident finishes. “And who’s the girl with you?”
“I,” Loxmi says, pulling herself up to her frankly minuscule height, “am Loxmi, sworn warrior of Ashtara, Princess-Chantress of the great city of Skifander.”
“My daughter,” Klaus says tiredly.
(This exact exchange happens again when they meet Barry, word for word, except Barry’s response is “You reproduced? With who???”)
*giggles incessantly at Barry’s response**also at tired Klaus trying to deal with Skifandran Gil*
The political situation would be very interesting! In part it’d depend on when exactly they return. I was assuming at least teenage Gil/Loxmi, which would imply a decade+ after the end of the Other war and time to settle, but I can’t imagine teenage Gil/Loxmi being anything less than an annoyingly tall and skinny weed and you say minuscule height, so… 9-10, maybe? Which would put this… fuck, timelines in Girl Genius, I don’t know. Gil is maybe 3 years older than Agatha, who was 3 when Barry rescued her (…maaaaybe…? If I remember right, and also if wherever I got that from wasn’t pure speculation on the fandom’s part?) which we don’t KNOW but probably wasn’t much after the end of the Other war, so that probably ended when Gil was about 5-6, so let’s assume about 4 years between the Other war ending and Klaus and Loxmi returning.
There would be rebuilding–towns have walls, at least, and other defenses, even if in some cases they’re still working on the buildings. There are definitely still revenants running around, and maybe soldier wasps too. Probably not slavers, just because they’d all have already been swallowed, but possibly a queen or two. There are some places in the continent that you just Don’t Enter if you want to live.
The Wastelands… well, they’re the Wastelands, but even worse. Sparks are simultaneously in a better and a worse state–in some cases, people turn to them as the best/only chance at salvation; in others, people murder them as the cause of all the problems. Which side of the line any given spark falls on depends partly on how well known, liked and trusted they are (and what resources they have) before they break through, and partly on pure chance.
There’s no Wulfenbach empire, of course, but honestly I think we’d at least have a number of smaller empires (there’s no way some sparks won’t decide that broken Europa is ripe for the taking, and nevermind their own town being just as broken), and also an Alliance. Barry doesn’t want to rule anything, and a lot of people are more that slightly leery of being ruled by Mechanicsburg, but Mechanicsburg is probably the strongest and safest place around anymore with only a few challengers (Sturmhalten, to start with), and Barry… well, he’s the only hero left. People will turn to him, and he might refuse to rule but he probably won’t refuse to coordinate negotiation and cooperation and trying to help all of Europa work together to get back on its feet, and that’s going to end up working out fairly similarly in a lot of ways.
(Not to the same extent–Barry won’t go conquering everyone who doesn’t want in what he and he alone refuses to call the Heterodyne Alliance, so there are exceptions and the Alliance doesn’t go as far as Klaus’s Empire did. But nonetheless, quite a few similarities, even if the Alliance does also tend to be a bit… stranger, in some things. That’s what happens when you get disproportionate Mechanicsburg influence in a system of government.)
Agatha… well. She’s the heir to Mechanicsburg, and unless Barry cooperates with the Castle and gets married (or has kids without getting married) she’s the only one. She is the most precious thing Mechanicsburg has or, at least for those with human lifetimes, probably ever will, and she is guarded fiercely. Suffocated a little bit too, maybe, especially by the standards of a spark who wants to just go out and DO THINGS. But as long as she doesn’t leave the walls of Mechanicsburg she’s mostly allowed to do what she wants, and she’s also taught extremely well–all sorts of science, and how to defend herself, and how to rule. And responsibility. Barry is very sure to personally teach her responsibility and morality. This does absolutely nothing to discourage her determination to get out of (safe, already taken care of) Mechanicsburg and go do something to help everyone who isn’t safe and taken care of yet.
So basically Loxmi and Agatha are going to go be heroes, and we dearly hope that Barry has accepted the jagers enough by now to send some with Agatha to help because no force on Earth or in space is going to stop those two from trying. If Barry (and Klaus) is very lucky and clever he might delay them a few years by offering to give them heroing lessons if they stick around long enough. Otherwise, the jagers are going to be regularly hauling back a pair of sulking kids who then yell at Barry and/or Klaus about how that town NEEDED their help!
…Not sure when or how exactly that whole “voice of the Other” thing is going to come out, but it will, and it’ll be awkward. Probably Barry knows enough to figure out what’s going on and can fill in everyone else though.
Age wise I was thinking Loxmi’d be somewhere between 10 and 13; I didn’t realize I’d forgotten to put that in the post, my bad.
I’m not certain that Agatha’s life would be that simple? Based on the ridiculous levels of paranoia we see Barry having in canon, I’m not convinced he wouldn’t dump a locketed Agatha off at the Clays and just straight up pretend she didn’t exist until he’d cleaned Europa out of revenants and Geisterdamen. Of course with Mechanicsburg he’d have people to yell at him about his choices, so that might even it out a bit… but I’m still fairly certain he’d have Agatha be enough of a secret that most of Europa doesn’t know about her.
Even if Agatha’s still a secret at this point, would she be kept in hiding for long once Klaus got back with his own kid? Like obviously she’s the Heterodyne and not just the heir to a minor barony, but now Barry knows he’s got an ally, and one who wants stability and safety for the same reasons as he does. So she’d be maybe 7-10, if Loxmi is 10-13? Which is still a ridiculously young breakthrough age if Barry takes her locket off then.
(And of course, once the Heterodyne has gone public, that’s when the Sturmvorauses get involved. Hi Tarvek! Who won’t have had Castle Wulfenbach to make his childhood even slightly better, poor thing.)
I know that Tarvek gets involved at some point, because he and Gil are rival frenemies in every universe, but I’m really tempted to have it be later in the timeline. I honestly can’t see Barry announcing her to the world at large until she’s educated, of age, and ready to take Mechanicsburg off his hands. Sorta like with canon Klaus and Gil, except Agatha has a support system and people who show her love and affection.
…because I want Loxmi to try and sneak A onto the train to Paris when she goes off to university, because when she gets announced Voltaire won’t let her in. Now is the perfect opportunity! (Barry is not pleased) (Klaus isn’t either but he finds it funnier)
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