dumbwaystodeviate answered:

Walking past a small crowd of people, Hank should have known that Connor would want to intervene. It was in his nature after all, to help and serve however he could. They pushed their way to the front of the crowd and craned their necks like everyone else was. In the tree they were huddled around sat a cat which let out pitiful miaows.

“She’s been stuck for the last half an hour, crying. Nobody can get her down and the fire services are too busy at the moment.” Someone explained and Hank nodded. He watched as Connor scanned the tree and nodded.



“I can get her down,” he announced and before Hank could pull him back, he was off and climbing with deft ease.



Naturally, the cat saw him approach and got up, tail in the air as she balanced along the branch with ease and hopped up higher. Following her, Connor kept climbing higher, the branches bowing under his weight. Down below, people were calling out to him but his mission was to rescue the cat. They got as high as the could, the cat happily chirruping at him as she avoided his reach. With a few simple jumps, she wound her way past his hand and down the tree.



Stilling in disbelief, Connor watched her and in the process realised how high up he was. Memories of falling came flooding back and he clung to the branch. All preconstructions of his descent shattered into red shards as they hit the ground below.

“Come on down, Connor,” Hank yelled. “That’s an order.”



All Connor could think was “that’s nice. You know where you can put your orders?” but he kept his mouth shut, too worried that if he started speaking, he’d forget to hold on.

People began shouting at him, trying to guide him to put one foot lower, find a branch to step on but it was all for nothing.Not that Connor wouldn’t, it was more that he couldn’t move. He was frozen in place, stress levels getting higher each time he looked down. Squeezing his eyes shut, he shook his head.

In the end, it turned out that while the fire services couldn’t spare anyone to rescue a cat from a tree, they could come to the rescue of a state of the art android stuck in the same place. Shaking his head, Hank opened up his arms and let Connor cling to him in a trembling cuddle when his feet were firmly on the ground again.