Brothers and Trials

Uncles

"Found them!" Johnson Andrews called out to his twin brother as he looked in an alleyway. Skipper was comforting Kowalski while Rico was playing with baby Private, showing him what he did for fun and how he learned to count. Apparently, Rico used to stack cans for fun, when he could find them.

"Oh thank god!" The Andrews twins were a couple of bachelors that lived in an old apartment building nearby. They had been out of town on work, but they came as soon as they heard the news about the fire and their brother's family from Skipper and Granny Acorn. The boys had been in the hideout for a week now, but came out each day to wait in the alley, so that no one found their hideout. "Are you boys alright?" They both had brown hair and blue eyes, an Andrews' trait to be sure.

Skipper and Kowalski looked up at their uncles. They had met them a few times, and had even met their mother's brother, Nigel Tux once, but other than that, they still depended on their parents. Skipper took a deep breath. He needed to take care of his brothers. "Yeah, we're fine... Rico's voice is pretty bad though. We don't know if he'll ever recover from it, but at this point we're all just glad we made it out alive." His ice blue eyes were cold, hard, and full of commitment. He was a survivor, born and bred, just like the rest of them, and he wasn't going to leave a man behind, not if he could help it.

"Don't worry, Skipper. We'll take care of you kids."

The four boys were brought to a nearby apartment where their uncles lived. It was a start, that much was for sure, and it was better than the alley way that their uncles thought they lived in, but Skipper had a gut feeling that something would go wrong here too, and a look at Kowalski said it all. Kowalski knew what was going to happen as well. They weren't going to be able to stay there long either...

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