The Babysitter II: Happy Halloween

News From NASA

Thomas's PoV:

Chocolate fell asleep halfway through the story I was reading him. Smiling, I silently set it down before tucking him in, planting a quick kiss on his forehead and leaving.

I only just closed the door when I was met by the nervous face of Emerald. "I... there's something I wanna tell you about what happened today" he gulped.

"Okay" I replied, "I'm always here to listen"

"W-Well I... you already know that the bad kids had a knife and they hurt Chocolate with it..."

"Yeah?" I nodded, not really liking where this was going.

"Peach had a knife too. That's how she scared them off."

Okay... I didn't know what I had been expecting, but this definitely was not it. "Alright..."

"Please please don't tell her I told you" he begged, gazing up at me pleadingly.

"Don't worry, I won't" I murmured in a reassuring tone as he hugged me tight. "Thank you for telling me, that was really brave of you. You're a good kid."

"Thank you" he whispered, "you're the best!"

I smiled again. How are kids so cute? Especially these kids, 'my' kids...

***

James's PoV

"H-Hey... James?" Thomas's voice shakily called.

"Yeah?" I replied, turning around and he grabbed my wrist, pulling it closer to himself then pressing something into my palm.
I glanced down... it was a pocket knife. And I had a pretty good idea of where it came from.

"Peach" he mumbled, confirming my suspicions. "I.... what do we do?"

I thought for a second, but before I could think up a logical answer, my train of thought was interrupted by the sound of a phone ringing.

Sighing, Thomas picked up his phone to answer. "Sorry, can I call you ba- oh.... uh, no, it's fine..... wait, what?!"

I mouthed 'what?', and Thomas shook his head.

"But I'm sure you're mistaken... it's not.... no, not yet..... just a second, I need to call you back in a minute"

By now curiously was taking over. "What was it?"

He gulped. "NASA"

"But - Choccy isn't-"

"I know!" Thomas exclaimed, "besides, we haven't even formally accepted... they can't just spring a mission on us like that..."

"When?" I asked.

"Tomorrow."

"Tomorrow?!" I exclaimed, as you could probably guess, quite surprised to say the least.
"They can't expect us to... surely!"

"Apparently they can" he muttered. "But I don't know... surely it's too soon!"

"I'm not sure either" I admitted, as Thomas began pacing around.

"especially after tonight... I just don't wanna make another decision I'll regret. What if I make the wrong choice? What if they get hurt..... or - or am I just denying them opportunities?"

"Hey, calm" I murmured, putting my hands on his shoulders to stop him from pacing around. "I'm sure we can go over there tomorrow and just talk things out... we can always just leave if we don't think it's right. But what happened today was not your fault... you couldn't have predicted it"

"But I-" he protested, beginning to panic again.

"No buts. Just breathe... it's gonna be fine, alright?" I ordered as reassuringly as I could, and he quickly nodded, before calling NASA back.

"Okay..." he declared in a slightly nervous voice, "we'll be there. But we think it's too early... yes, we will talk but that's all I can promise you.......... yes I'm fully aware that the plan was for the kids to go on more missions, but that was before their parents got murdered?? Fine. Bye." He hung up. After a second, he added "nice talking to you" sarcastically.

"Don't get worked up about it, okay?"

He sighed, sitting down with a miserable expression on his face. "What are we going to do?"

I sat down next to him, and placed my hand over his. "Well... we'll think of something."