trans_9 | A Step in the Flight Direction [Closed]

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A Step in the Flight Direction [Closed]

In the City, near one of Sherry's many hiding spots (safe until her parents decided to plug some kind of tracking device into her), a little girl and a little bird boy stood atop of a two-story whitewashed building. There really, logically, wasn't any reason for Sherry to be up here with him. But she knew, she just knew, that if she was down below, calling encouragement, Komali would probably never jump down.

Not that she blamed him, but as someone without wings, it was probably better that she didn't go flinging herself off of buildings. "It really isn't even that far down," she urged.

"I bet you won't even hit the ground."

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Uhuh. Suuuure, Sherry. The Chief nods once.

"You can take it from here, I'm sure," he says to Leon. "Samus left her comm with me."

He feels a little like he's intruding, and he does need to get that back to her anyway.

"Yeah, thanks for keeping an eye on her."

Honestly, though Leon wasn't sure he could take it from here. He looked at Sherry, his hands on his hips.

"What am I going to do with you?"

The Chief makes his exit, though he's in no hurry to catch up with Samus and Komali. This isn't as important as getting the kid's leg looked at.

What? It's the truth! Sherry crossed her arms and turned her face away. It was clear that the little girl, for whatever reason, didn't believe had done anything that warranted punishment.

"I don't know."

Leon let out another breath, then thought for a moment. "C'mon," he told her and waved her along. He head over to where there was a bench, "Have a seat."

Well, despite being on a few words, he didn't sound angry.

Sherry followed long stiffly and sat down on the bench. She smoothed out her hair with one hand, before replacing the old, red band. Sherry sighed deeply and looked up at Leon.

"Listen," he said, sitting down next to her, "when I was about ten, me, my cousin Daniel, and my best friend at the time, JP, were in the back yard just playing around with a nerf football. Anyway, in the course of playing around, the ball kept getting caught in this tree we had back there.

"The first few times it got caught, me and JP took turns climbing the tree to go get it. Finally, Danny kicked it into the tree, and me and JP decided that it was Danny's turn to go get it.

"Danny was a little wuss, though. Still is, really. or was... Anyway, he refused to climb that tree. He always had, but me and JP had had enough and decided that Danny was gonna go get that ball, so we bullied him into finally going up that tree.

"We went up there with him to make sure he didn't chicken out, which he almost did. So we shoved him out onto the branch. I had climbed that tree a thousand times with no problem, so had JP. But we also knew what branches could hold us up, and we knew how to fall so we wouldn't get hurt. Danny didn't know any of that.

"He got most of the way out there, and was doing fine, until he slipped a little, tried to grab a branch to steady himself, but it snapped, he ended up losing his grip and dropped a good... must've been about twelve or so feet. He fractured his ankle when he hit the ground.

"I got grounded for a month for that. I was pissed about that too. Danny kicked the ball up there, and he said he'd go get it. Not my fault he fell. But looking back on it, they were right to have grounded me.

"I should've known better. I did know better. Whenever people do anything for the first time, they're going to make mistakes. I knew how dangerous that was, and I knew he could get hurt doing that, but I made him do it anyway, without any kind of a safety net.

"I know you were trying to help Komali, but you did was a little thoughtless. You should've known he would mess up the first few times he tried to fly, you're too smart not to know that. He did break his leg, and he could've hurt himself a lot worse if he fell straight down since there'd be nothing to break his fall but concrete."

For a moment, Sherry looked like she wanted to say something. After all, she'd fallen, twice, from a distance fairly similar to Komali's and had landed. Though she landed on refuse, Sherry didn't remember it being all that soft and comfortable. So, instead, she was silent for a while, stewing over her father's... parable, or whatever he'd wanted to call it.

She stewed a little longer before answering, "I'm going to guess this means that you're grounding me." Though she clearly did not agree with it in her body language, her tone was fairly neutral. Really, she'd rather she be grounded over something else. Like punching Komali in the eye for losing his nerve in the first place.

"Yes, you are," he confirmed, reaching over to smooth out some of her hair. At this point, he wasn't mad, but he needed to make sure she learned from this. "And you can expect to get a mouthful from your mother about this. And you're going to go down to the medbay to apologize to Samus and Komali-- don't even think about arguing that." Seriously, don't.

"And, next time," he leaned a little closer, like this was some kind of secret, "toss a pile of blankets in front of a ten foot step ladder, and kick him off of that."

Pause.

"I did that to Danny too, before. I was so mean to him."

She nodded, fine, fine. Apologies and more lectures she could handle. Even the grounding she could handle (more time by herself? Perish the thought!), even though it would a bit boring, and she'd have to sneak off to make sure Vega got his class notes.

At least she could study in relative peace, then.

Her mother would probably not be pleased, and Sherry wrinkled her nose at just how long the lecture would be. Maybe she could recite the periodic table in her head if Claire got a little long-winded. "I didn't kick him off, I nudged him off." She put her hands out and pushed the air gently. "His balance is made of crap. But I'll apologize." A pause. "And I'll mean it."

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A Step in the Flight Direction [Closed]

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