Aaron sat in the slow moving car, anxiously wondering, what happened to his parents.
He had drifted off into a panicked worry the entire ride, until Netsuko snapped him back to reality.
"Well, we're here!" She said to Aaron.
The house itself was small two story house, much like Aaron's, but it was in a much more spread out neighborhood and there was a great about of overgrowth around it.
If they hadn't parked on it's driveway, Aaron would have thought it was abandoned.
"T-thanks for doing this Mrs Valentine." Stammerd Aaron.
"Oh, it's no problem!" She stated.
"We enjoy the company."
"Ya! Besides, this just gives me an excuse for me to get to know you better!" Added Netsuko with a massive smile across her face.
"Ya, guess it does." Answered Aaron nervously.
They walked up to the front door of the house. And once Mrs. Valentine had opened the front door, Aaron was blasted with the sent of pine trees.
He felt as if he had just walked into a forest.
The house seemed dimly lit, with the major source of light being the windows and the fire roaring underneath their mantel.
"Welcome to our humble abode." Netsuko said.
"Wow!" Said Aaron.
"Well, Aaron you'll be staying upstairs." Began Mrs. Valentine.
"We put an air mattress in our spare room, we cleaned it up as best as we could."
"Thanks a lot." Replied Aaron.
"Here follow me." Added Mrs. Valentine.
Aaron followed the two to a staircase, and after entering a small second floor, they walked further inward to a hallway with three doors.
"Well, here is your room and the bathroom is just down the hall." Mrs. Valentine said as she opened on of the four doors.
As the door opened, Aaron beheld the room itself.
It was plan looking room with a boolshelf, closet and a window, from which the room was lit, while a bed sat in the corner of the room.
"Thanks!" Said Aaron;
"It looks perfect."
"I'm next door." Began Netsuko;
"So, just knock if you need anything."
"Again thanks." Replied Aaron
"It's no problem." Started Mrs. Valentine.
"Dinner is in a few hours, I hope you brought your appetite, we're haveing stew."
"Awsome" replied Aaron, As he collapsed onto the matris and began unloading what he had in his backpack.
"Oh! I can lend you one of my husband's shirts for tonight." Said Mrs. Valentine appon noticing Aaron's situation.
"Oh! I didn't even think about that." Replied Aaron.
"You sure he won't mind?"
"No, he shouldn't mind." Answered Mrs. Valentine.
"But I'll ask him about it when he gets back."
"Speaking of, shouldn't I meet him?" He asked.
"You will." Replied Natsuko.
"He'll be coming home soon enough."
"Don't worry about it Aaron, I think he'd take a liking to you." Said Mrs. Valentine.
"You'll see him at dinner, but please, relax and settle in until then."
"Thanks, I'll try." Answered Aaron, as he slumped back into the air matris.
Aaron sat on the matris flipping through his phone for an hour waiting for Mrs. Valentine to come in and mention something about dinner.
The news had broken about his perents kidnapping and Aaron was looking for any information he could gather up about the situation.
He started scrolling through the public coments on the website, which was mainly a ton of suprised readers and a few jerks who did nothing but mock the law enforcement and victims.
Aaron, was about to click off he noticed one of the comments mentioned something he found extremely intriguing.
"They must have done something crazy to anger "The Hand of God" society."
Read the comment.
""The hand of God?"" Thought Aaron as he continued to read.
"I mean, they only deal with creatures of mythical descent, it's not like these people we anything other than human."
Ended the comment.
"What did they mean by, "they only deal with creatures of mythical descent?" Thought Aaron, as he looked to the replies on the comment.
Before clicking he noticed only one reply was found to be on the comment and it read. "The Hand of God, really! Their just an urban legend, like the illuminati!"
"What!?" Thought Aaron.
"If that's the case, than why have I never heard of them?"
Aaron quickly closed the news tab and opened a new one on his search engine, and quickly typed in "The Hand of God society".
To his surprise several sources came up with results.
However, it wasn't what he had expected, as several websites described them as an underground group that had a misson to eradicate the existence of "mythical beasts".
"Aw come on!" Aaron thought;
"It's not like actual mythical beings exist!"
As he flopped back into the matris and closed all the tabs on his phone.
Aaron turned to his backpack, remembering the large book that he had gotten earlier that day.
"Unless, this book really contains real mythological creatures!" He thought.
However, before he could look, a knock at the door snapped him out of his trance of thoguht.
"Dinner time kids!" Said Mrs. Valentine.
"Thanks mom!" Replied Natsuko as she skipped past Aaron's door.
"Thanks ma'am!" Answered Aaron.
Who got up and followed behind the two.
As he reached the bottom of the stairs Aaron saw something that greatly surprised him.
It was a tall muscular man, in a simple T-shirt and jeans.
Dispute his body type screaming "big bearded biker" he had a very clean shaven face, with a very chiseled and shap face, which was complimented by his bright brown hair.
"H-hello" said Aaron.
"Hello" replied the man;
"You must be Aaron."
"Yes, I am sir." He replied.
"Ah, sir! I like your type kid." The man replied.
As he reached his hand out to offer a handshake
"You can call me Clint, or sir."
"No Mr. Valentine here."
"Of course sir." Answered Aaron as he accepted the hand shake.
"Come, sit!" Said Mr. Valentine.
Aaron took a seat at the dark brown wooden table.
What surprised him most was that the entire set seemed almost hand made.
"So, sir." Began Aaron.
"D-did you make this dining set here?"
"Yes I did." Answered Mr. Valentine.
"Wow", said Aaron;
"That's very impressive."
"It's not as hard as you would think." Began Mr. Valentine.
"The hardest part was finding a big enough tree to use."
"See your getting along already!" Interrupted Mrs. Valentine as she placed a bowl of piping hot stew in front of everyone.
"So, Aaron." Sarted Mr. Valentine;
"Since you'll be staying with us, we ought to get to know you better."
"I guess so." Aaron replied.
"So, any hobbies kid?" He started.
"I'm a bit of a bookworm." Began Aaron
"Is that so." Replied Mr. Valentine
"What do you read?" He asked.
"I'm really big into fantasy." Answered Aaron.
"Not the craziest thing I've ever heard." Mr. Valentine stated.
"Ya, I mean, I gotta have something to do outside school.
"Aaron here is a prodigy dad!" Exclamed Netsuko.
"Oh really" Mr. Valentine replied.
"I don't like to talk about it." Stated Aaron.
"Fair enough." Said Mr Valentine
The questions soon turned to conversation over sports and a bit to T.V and movies.
It was a very warm and homey atmosphere that Aaron had missed the whole day.
As dinner came to a close Aaron excused himself and went up to his room.
"You turning in kinda early aren't ya?" Asked Mr. Valentine.
"It's been a rough day, I think I need to." Answerd Aaron.
"Alright then, Good night" said Mrs. Valentine.
"Good night" Replied Aaron.
He strolled back to his room where he saw an oversized white shirt spread across his matris.
He slid off his school uniform and threw on the shirt, which looked like a bed gown on him. And slid into his bed.
He managed to dose off for a few hours but was sprung up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night.
His perents getting kidnapped still haunted him.
He knew him being there wouldn't have changed anything, but he still felt guilty that they were taken instead of him.
"I need to talk to someone about this." He thought to himself.
"Maybe Netsuko? No, I shouldn't wake her up just to talk." He again thought.
"Maybe I should, I don't know!!"
His thoughts were screaming at him, and he had knowone else to talk to.
He swallowed his pride and went to knock at Netsuko's door.
He had bearly gotten to the door when Netsuko opened it.
"Aaron?" She said.
"What's up?"
"H-hey, um Netsuko." He started.
"W-w-would it be ok if I could talk to you about something?"
"Sure" Netsuko said with a yawn.
"Just hop on my bed for now, I need to use the bathroom."
Netsuko's room was covered in posters visible due to a dull light emanating from a lamp on her bedside.
Aaron hopped onto the fit of her bed and waited.
Netsuko came back a few minutes later.
"Alright, so what did you want to talk about?" She said.
"It's about my perents" Aaron began.
"I hope you don't mind"
"It's fine" stated Netsuko
"It's better to vent about your problems anyway."
"Ya, I guess it is." He answered.
It was Aaron told her about the guilt he felt after seeing what had happened and how much of a hard time he had prosessing it. It was a short but meaningful venting session, and Aaron was in tears by the end of it.
Natsuko clutched him by the shoulder and tugged him into an embrace as his tears dripped onto her shirt.
"Thanks, I really needed that." Stated Aaron.
"Your fine." Answered Netsuko.
"And you don't have to thank us for every little thing we do."
"It's not a problem that you are here."
"Ya, that's what you've told me." Said Aaron with tears still trickling down his face.
"You can sleep here if you want." Said Netsuko.
"Thanks, but I think I'm g-" started Aaron;
"I insist" she interrupted.
"Just lay down, you definitely seem like you need some TLC."
"Thanks." Said Aaron as he slowly played down.
Natsuko joined him, as she gave a small embrace to him on the bed.
Aaron fell back to sleep quickly and stayed like that the whole night.