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A head of fluffy, slightly dirty, blond hair slowly peeked around the corner. He was due for dinner soon, and Miguel would not be pleased if he was late. Still, Andy went slowly, he needed to be careful.
He took a moment to look left. No one towards town. He looked right. No one on the path that way either.
He was in the clear.
Darting out of the door frame of the Research Center, he ran up the path as fast as he could, getting to the rock that jutted out into the pathway.
He pushed his back against the rock, trying to blend in with the cliff side, and paused to catch his breath. He just needed to get to his room before being seen. He was almost to the top.
Taking a deep breath he pushed off the rock and ran the rest of the way to the stairs and up to the church courtyard. Stopping at the last stair, he hunched down. There wasn't any hiding places between here and the dorms. He needed to time it perfectly.
Or…
He paused, taking the time to listen like Logan had taught him on their hunts. He could hear Mort loudly mumbling at the bottom of the cliff, a door slammed shut somewhere in town, probably the main apartment building door, Nemo let out a bark… but no people in the court yard.
A nod to himself and he stood and walked out into the open. He put his hands in his pockets and tried to act normal.
If he had been watching himself, walking with a stiff back, legs kicking out further than they naturally would, head tilted just a little to high, all while pretending to whistle, a trick he had never been able to learn, he would have shaken his head in shame.
As he wasn't watching himself though, he thought he looked natural and not at all suspicious.
"Well hello there dear." came the overly sweet voice of The Minister.
Andy stopped mid step, foot hanging in the air, frozen.
"And what might a boy such as you be doing at this time of evening, hmmm? Why, it's almost dinner time!"
Slowly relaxing his muscles he put his foot down and turned, pasting a large smile on his face.
"Minister!" he shouted. "I didn' hear ya! Whatcha doin' sneakin' up on people? Thats not very Light of ya, scarin' folks like tha."
Matilda chuckled. "I just came out of my house, dear boy. I wasn't sneaking up on anyone. That would be rather dastardly of me wouldn't it? Why a minister shouldn't be sneaky! Now, where are you going so… casually?" she asked with an oily smile that made Andy shudder.
She didn't speak like that around others, but when she knew it was just the two of them, she would let her true self go.
Just a little bit.
She knew no one would believe him, a desert rat that was friends with the criminals Logan and Haru.
She knew, he knew, the truth.
Andy smiled, playing the game. Well, as best as a kid could. "Sorry Minister, I was just headed ta my room ta wash up fer dinner. Miguel doesn' like me bein' late so I gotta go." Logan had told him, when he kicked Andy out of the gang, to not be alone with the minister or any of the church folks, if he could help it.
Sadly, he couldn't help it most of the time.
Outside of Pen and the Minister though, the others weren't bad. Miguel was a bit forceful with his feelings but other than yelling, Andy never felt unsafe.
Dan-bi tried to mother him at first but just let him alone now since he shut that down.
Burgess, well, Andy understood now why Logan always stood up for the man when trying to figure out who was involved in the water plot.
Burgess would never hide water. He almost worshiped the stuff more then the Light.
Pen and Matilda though… Andy didn't trust them one bit. Pen felt like a loose cannon and Matilda, Andy felt like she wanted to eat him alive.
"Well, we wouldn't want Miguel to be angry now, though I'm sure he would forgive you when he finds out you were just talking to me." Matilda said with a smile. "So, Andy, where have you been today? Up to anything… fun?"
"Um…" Andy tried to think of what Matilda wanted to hear but he wasn't sure what she was getting at. "I had lessons this mornin' with Miguel learnin' maths then this afternoon I was learning with The Director. He was showin' me this really neat machine that would read these disks then—"
"Qi? Really, now? I don't know that it's appropriate for a young man, like you, to be learning from the Director. That's not what we want to be teaching young, impressionable minds."
"Wha?" Andy asked, confused.
"I mean," Matilda continued, "There's no telling what that man teaches you. Science is dangerous, after all. Only trained individuals should even think about working with the things he does, much less teach. And in such an uncontrolled environment too, no oversight."
"He don' teach me nothin' dangerous! We went out ta the scrap yard taday, lookin' for them disks! We didn't even dig through the new scrap, just looked through tha stuff tha Mr. Rocky and his crew couldn't use!"
"The scrap yard?!" Matilda exclaimed, hand on her chest.
Andy thought she was overreacting. It's not like they went down to the ruins or even out into the desert!
"That's outrageous. I cannot believe that man. I will be talking with Miguel about your schooling. It is clear that you can not be trusted to learn outside of our control," she cleared her throat, "that is, outside of the church."
"NO! You can't do that!"
"I can and I will, you are our ward after all. Did he let you collect anything from the day's… adventure? You must hand it over at once."
"Huh?"
"Come, now, turn out your pockets. Lets see what that idiot thought it safe for you to keep. Technology isn't a toy, young man."
Matilda had a sickly sweet smile on her face as she held out her hand. Andy sucked in a breath. This was exactly what he was trying to avoid by getting to his room unseen.
Fine, she wanted to see what he had? He'd show her.
Slipping his hand into his left pocket he pulled out an old data disk that Qi said he didn't need and had nothing useful on anyway, a couple of nuts and bolts of different materials, and a sand worm.
He reached over and dumped the lot into the Minister's hand. She scrunched her nose at the slightly slimy worm, how they got the moisture to make slime Andy didn't know, but he didn't care right now either. She turned her hand over and dropped everything to the ground, wiping her hand off on her cape.
She glared at Andy who was laughing while with his right hand he slowly unstoppered the small vial that was holding the little baby queen bumble ant. He knew that Matilda wasn't going to let him get away with just emptying one of his pockets so he wanted to be prepared.
Matilda took a deep, steading breath, "The other one, Andy?" She bit out.
Andy smiled and gently pulled out the queen and held out his hand towards Matilda. He didn't know if anyone else knew, but he had noticed, and he wasn't above using that information now.
The Minister hated ants.
She always made sure to go the long way around places to avoid them. And the other day, when one followed the builder into town, she ran away as soon as she saw it.
The little queen, happy to be out of the glass jar she had been trapped in, saw freedom and tried to run.
She ran right off Andy's palm and into Matilda's.
The scream reverberated off the tall rock overhang and bounced around the town. Andy heard doors flung open and shouts as people tried to figure out where the sound came from. Miguel and Pen flew from the dorms and ran over to their boss, who had her arms waving and flinging around as she continued her high pitched scream.
"GET IT OFF! GET IT OFF!"
"Minister!"
"Matilda! What is it?"
"What's goin' on?" the shouts from the stairs came as Justice and Unsuur came flying into the courtyard along with other folks who had been near.
"WHERE IS IT? KILL IT!" Matilda shouted.
"No! It's just a baby!!" Andy shouted back.
Pen was trying to calm the minister who was still jumping around and flinging her hands.
"What's a baby? Minister! Ya need ta calm down and tell us whats goin' on!" Justice said, hands up, palms out, to try and calm the distraught woman.
Andy saw movement out of the corner of his eye. Slinking past them on the light stone tiles was the little dark queen. He smiled and ducked around to scoop her back up.
"DON'T YOU RUN YOU LITTLE CRETIN!"
Smiling Andy hid the little creature back in his pocket. He felt it wiggle around until it slid back into the glass jar.
She had decided it was safer there, after all.
"I'm not goin' nowhere, I just wanted ta get outta tha way of yer flailin'." Andy said.
Justice had had enough. "ENOUGH. Minister, calm down. Now. Andy, what happened?"
"You're going to ask that criminal?" Miguel said scathingly. "He did something to her, I know it. You should be arresting him, not asking him stupid questions."
A deep breath and Justice turned to Miguel, "Somethin', ain't good enough. You see what happened? No? Then stay quiet. Andy?"
Miguel huffed but stayed quiet this time.
Andy looked around at everyone staring at him waiting for him to answer.
"She asked ta see what I had in my pockets. Said she was gonna stop the Director from teachin' me cause he was lettin' me have dangerous stuff."
"I would never! Safety is very important—" Qi started to say.
"Ok, ok." Justice quieted everyone. "What did ya have that would cause all this?"
"I didn't have nuthin'. Just a few metal bits, an old disk, a worm, an ant... Thats it! I swear!"
"You had an ant in yer pocket? A whole one?" Justice asked, confused.
"You should have had a rock." came Unsuur's comment.
"It was a baby ant." Andy replied to Justice, giving Unsuur a side eye look. He didn't quite understand the deputy, yet.
"Ah. A lil' one. That makes more sense. Minister, you calm enough for yer side?"
Matilda cleared her throat and smoothed down her robe. She glared at everyone around her before smiling. "I apologize, Sheriff. I think there's been a misunderstanding. I was just surprised. There was no harm done."
"Minister! Surly you don't mean—"
"Miguel!" Matilda snapped. "Enough. No harm done. He's just a boy…"
"No harm! What about my lessons!" Andy shouted. "She said she'd stop me going to the Research Center!"
"I assure you, Minister, our lessons are entirely age appropriate." Qi broke in.
"No one is stopping anything." Justice said with a sigh, his head dropping into his hands, fingers rubbing his temple. "If no one is hurt, and nothin' happened, everyone back to yer evenin's." he finally said.
"Andy!" came the booming voice of Owen. "Why don't you come down to the Moon with me? I'll get you some dinner and you can help me with some chores."
"Chores? But… ya got orange jelly?" Andy asked with narrowed eyes.
"I do! And don't worry, the chores are fun ones. I promise." Owen said with a smile, throwing his arm over the boy and leaning over to whisper in his ear, "I have a few new dishes I need a taster for. It'll be hard work but—"
"OK!" Andy shouted jumping around, hand still tightly gripping the glass jar in his pocket.
Owen winked and steered the boy over to the stairs.
"Minister, is there a genuine concern with Andy learning with the Director?" Justice asked as Owen and Andy walked away.
"Technology is dangerous and as the boy's guardian—"
"I understand your… personal feelings towards technology. Lets go to City Hall and hash this out with the Mayor. I was told he was a ward of tha town, not just tha church. She'll have tha paperwork." Justice said, trying to be diplomatic about it. "Unsuur, can ya please finish tha patrol?"
Unsuur nodded before moving off muttering, "If more people befriended rocks, this wouldn't have happened."
Everyone left in the courtyard blinked at the deputy.
Justice sighed, "Alright, lets go. Shoulda known not ta look at the contents of a young boy's pockets. 'Specially tha boy's."
~ Several months and events later ~
"ANDY!" Logan shouted as he pushed the baby scorpster from his arm. He hated it when it was his turn to do laundry. "How many times we gotta tell ya ta clean out yer pockets?!"
"LOGAN! I CAN'T FIND STINGY!" Andy yelled as he came barreling into the laundry room. "Oh, ya found him!"
Andy snatches the baby scorpion from where it was trying to climb Logan's other arm, and runs back out.
"Peach…. ANDY! POCKETS!"
"SORRY LOGAN!"
Logan just threw up his arms and got back to the laundry hoping that the scorpster was the worst of it.
Two coins, a pile of nuts and bolts, an old world battery, a mummified worm, what looked to Logan like weeds from a garden, and, Logan sniffed, yep, that was yakmel shit, later he shook his head.
He hated when it was his turn to do laundry.