He sat on the floor looking out the window, and with all four of his little hands he clutched onto Pancake's fur. The big black dog turned her head, large ears perked for any sign of danger, but when there was none, she simply leaned down and gently licked Kay's face from chin to temple. The little boy gave a half smile to the dog but continued to stare out the window, head resting against the Dog's coarse fur.
From his window he could see out and onto the launch field where ships were always coming and going, their red and white lights blinking against Arcadia's forever dark sky. The artificial sun orbs glowed dimly in the early morning, only just beginning to simulate a sunrise. Pancake and kay had both been born on Arcadia, and around the same time as well. For that reason kay saw pancake more as a sister than a dog, and Pancake saw Kay as more as a pop than a master, but in a good way.
The door gently opened behind them and Kay turned to see Grandma standing in the doorway.
Kay had two grandmas as far as he was concerned. There was grandma Vir and JanJan, since he couldn't yet pronounce Hijan. At this point in his life he had no idea that his real grandma was an egomaniacal crazy person bent on the destruction of the entire universe, but that was certainly a discussion for when he was older.
Grandma Vir didn't look much like a grandma. She stood straight, and though her hair had some silver i nit, it was still mostly blond. She was a fit woman for her age, with warm grey eyes.
She walked over to sit next to him, and he crawled into her lap resting his head on her shoulder.
Pancake rested her head on Martha's knee.
"WHat are you looking at?" She asked, and with one of his lower hands, Kay pointed towards the launch field, with all of its lights rapidly coming and going.
"You miss your mom and dad huh?"
He nodded.
Kay understood more than he could articulate most of the time. Over two years old he was smart for his age. The doctors and child psychologists would say something about percentiles and other things he didn't understand, but he knew enough to know that mom and dad were away, and if they came back they would land in that launch field.
Sunny Kay's mother was intellectually gifted, and Kay's father, despite all his protestations was no slouch either. An abundance of trust can sometimes look like idiocy if you're taken advantage of enough, but you didn't become head of the UNSC/GA fleet without having at least some brain in your head.
Martha felt almost sorry for the boy.
With the saint of Anin as a mother and a intergalactic Admiral for a father, Kay had big shoes to fill, almost too big.
"Want some breakfast?" She asked.
Kay just rested his head against her shoulder again.
He hadn't been all that hungry since his parents left, but the pediatrician had assured Martha that kids don't starve themselves. Eventually he would be hungry enough ot eat.
And that was the case because, while he was not particularly emotionally hungry, he had inherited a balck hole of a stomach from his father, and still ate a waffle and some orange juice when it was set in front of him.
Pancake seemed a bit miffed she didn't get any, so Martha sighed, looked up at the ceiling and dropped a piece on the floor, "Oh no, it seems I have dropped some food."
Pancake ran in to claim it and Kay giggled a little brightening up some from his earlier mood.
Martha was at least happy to see that.
There were plenty of others that had volunteered to raise Kay. David and his husband had offered to take Kay with them since they only had one other child, Maya, despite having three kids made the same offer. Hijab had also argued for the position, but martha had eventually won out over all of them, though she did leave him to play at his cousins houses when she had to work.
She would have agreed to let Hijan take him, but the old Drev was really getting on in years. Old Drev don't tend to get forgetful like old humans, but she was slower and bent, and Martha worried she didn't have the energy. For her own part, Martha liked to think she was young and spry for her age, which wasn't very old in the grand scheme of things, Hijab was much older.
Even Kanan had offered to take Kay for a while. He already took care of so many kids he argued it might be good for Kay to go out and spend time with them. Martha could see the logic and agreed that maybe a few weeks in the bright season would do some good for the boy
He had his life all planned out.
At least until his parents returned.
Because they WOULD return.
She wasn't going to allow if to leak into her head.
A knock at the door startled her a bit. It was just hre and kay today as Jim had to get up early. As the head of agriculture on arcadia,the poor man was tasked with finding a way to grow edible plants on a planet that had no sunlight, so he really did have his work cut out for him.
She rested a hand on her gun and walked over to the door.
When it opened, she found a familiar face standing outside
Kimber stood at the doorway, a defiant little thing as always, though martha had to keep reminding herself that Kimber wasn't a little girl anymore. She was only a year or so away from being a teenager, but luckily hadn't started her annoying preteen phase yet.
She was a handful, but not in the way that most kids her age were.
Kimber had talked her mom into allowing her to get a mohawk, and Martah had made her a matching leather jacket to go along with her new punk look.
She wore a black leather jacket, a bright pink shirt, gray pants and big black combat boots with pink laces.
Her pants had an ungodly amount of pockets which jangled with an untold amount of items.
"Hi grandma!" She ran forward and hugged Martha.
Martha frowned
The girl was getting so tall, soon she would be taller than Martha herself who, despite all her sons beeing of monstrous size, was short.
"Hey you, what are you doing here?"
Kimber tromped into the room with her big boots.
"Can I borrow Kay."
Martha frowned, "You want to borrow your cousin."
"Yeah, please promise I'll take care of him."
Martha frowned, "Does Maya know you're here."
Kimber shrugged, "of course she does, but all my friends are waiting downstairs."
"Uh huh,and what exactly do you need kay for.
"Uh nothing really."
Martha could see that kimber was hiding something, but it was hard to tell what. Then again out of all her family members Kimber was ironically one of the most responsible. Far more responsible than her uncle for sure, and maybe even a little more responsible than her mother. One might argue that Maya didn't have the adventurous streak that her brother did, but that was a lie, out of the two of her kids Adam and Maya were the most difficult to rein in. Though, while Adam was looking for dangerous situations off world, maya preferred doing dangerous things right at home.
Kimber was a lot like her mother.
"I don't know..... You know Kanzna...."
"Kazna wants to hurt him, I know, but Pancake will be with us, and everyone on Arcadia will help if she shows up. We will be in public so, everyone will be armed."
Kimber did have a pont.
Public was probably one of the safest places that Kay could be.
Sofar he had managed to avoid his father's track record of getting perpetually kidnapped.
Martha glanced over at Kay who was just finishing his cereal.
He was wearing a shirt with a cartoon frog on it, and shorts. She had made almost all the clothes that he wore, considering he needed special modifications for his extra set of arms
"Please." Kimber begged.
Martha sighed, "Okay, but make sure to take him back to your house for lunch and let Maya know you have him." She needed to get to work anyway , and if worst came to worse there was always Pancake, who was being almost continually trained as a protection dog specifically for Kay. She was at his side at all times, and....
Well
As it turns out you can give a dog tactical upgrades.
Pancake had things up her proverbial sleeves that no one would ever expect.
"Alright Kay, do you want to go play with Kimber and her friends."
Another thing he had inherited from his father, a very social nature, and he clambered awkwardly down from his chair with a smile to run over and hug his cousin. She grinned at Martha, "Kay gives the best hugs."
That was probably true.
And hopefully would continue when he was older.
The doctors weren't sure but there was a chance that Kay would be almost seven feet tall if not more.
Usually when humans reach that height they tend to be tall and skinny, usually of course there are always outliers, and often it can be caused by tumors . Even when you grow to be big and broad its the same thing, often accompanied by some genetic condition.
Kay was either going to be really short or really tall, there was no in between.
The Drev version of dwarfism, if you could really call it that, ran in Sunny's family, but only the girls seemed to have gotten in, specifically Dzara more than most. At only six feet tall she was shorter than Adam, so none of them really knew how that would translate. Would he be short for a Drev or short for a human, or would he be tall for a human and short for a drev, or heavens forbit he grew to be as big s a Drev which seemed highly unlikely with his more human anatomy.
Kimber took Kay's hand and Pancake trotted after them her tail swaying back and forth as she walked.
"Have fun." martha called from behind them.
"We will!"
"Be Safe!"
"We WILL!" Kimber shouted back pulling kay into the elevator and down the next few stories of the spiral tower to the ground floor.
Her friends were all waiting anxiously.
There were two Drev children, a boy and a girl at least a foot taller than she was. There was the police chief's daughter, and some other scattered here and there.
Including .
Kay jumped up excitedly to go meet his friend: The hybrid Finnari/human, who, to her finnari mother's chagrin turned out to be just as reckless an curious as the average human, which only made raising her that much more difficult. She was about a year older than Kay easy, which was that old, but she loved the attention the older kids gave her and so followed them around constantly and with great interest.
"You got him." One of the Drev said.
Kimber was almost fluent in drev now, and so understood them just fine,
The Drev children were the same with English, though they couldn't speak it all that well. Everyone talked in their own language and everyone understood. Kay was bilingual for the most part,though Ramirez was trying very hard to make that trilingual,and his own father would definitely have liked it if it was quadrilingual.
They would have to see how well that would work out in the future.
Kimber held kay by the hand, and for his part Kay made sure to start up a conversation. No one was entirely sure what he was talking about, as he didn't exactly have a grasp on either the Drev or human languages just yet. Or perhaps he did it was just that he tended to speak too quickly and often tripped over his words continually.
But they all listened and engaged with him in a very polite manner for a group of preteens, and Kay was happy when they asked him to help them with their secret project. As it turns out they had found a small drainage pipe near the River that a few Jeffrey eggs had fallen into and been partially abandoned. None of them had small enough hands to reach through the grate and grab them.
Kay was more than happy to stick his hand down a strange pipe and grab unknown eggs.
So he did, and was rewarded with a cheer by the others.
Kimber put the eggs in a little box and sealed them up.
Truth be told she had no idea if they were going to be viable or not, but she liked the idea of having a jeffrey snake all to herself, so there was no point in not trying.
They stopped by the playground at the school on their way back, and played on the swings and monkey bars with some other kids before lunch. Kay was not very good at the monkeybars, but that was sort of to be expected at his age, though the frustration on his face was evident. Kimber turned his attention to digging a hole in the dirt before he could start crying, and his attention span was easily fooled.
Kimber loved going to school on Arcadia.
She learned a lot of school stuff but mostly.
They had weapons, and Drev martial classes.
Her parents had had to sign a massive release form to let her be involved in those, but she had insisted.
There were more Drev in those classes than there were human for obvious reasons, but Kimber certainly didn't let that fact slow her down/
The other Drev children would have to get a lot taller than her before they could beat her on brute strength alone. All the while Pancake sat with them eyeing their surroundings as she rested her head on her paws ready to jump in to protect any one of the children if they tried anything.
Ironically Arcadia had a very low assault rate. In fact most of their crime statistics were down.
Kind of hard to be a criminal when everyone in the vicinity is prepared to kick your ass if you try anything.
Not necessarily excluding the children either.
Kimber patted her little cousin on the arm. Yes, she liked Arcadia a lot, and saw the school and all of its children as her domain to keep safe. And as far as she was concerned, it would remain that way.