Bass had searched his entire room to no avail before he finally gave up. Maybe he had forgotten his jacket in his office or maybe he had just somehow lost it. Either way, he was the president of the republic and he had more important things to do than spend his day looking for his lost jacket. He'd just have to stick with a jacketless uniform for the time being.
As soon as he walked into his office, Bass figured out exactly what had happened to the missing clothing article.
There, sitting behind his desk and only visible from the shoulders up, was a certain curly-haired six year-old wearing an incredibly over-sized Militia jacket.
"Baker, go find out if there's anything to eat around here," Connor ordered, seeming to get a kick out of calling Jeremy by his last name. "How do you expect me to get any work done when I'm starving?"
"Yes, sir," Jeremy responded, holding back a laugh. "I'll go see what I can find."
Connor's face lit up and a beaming smile formed on his lips. He liked the power he got from pretending to have his father's job and sitting in the big desk, looking important. It was even better having Jeremy take his orders and call him sir.
Jeremy exchanged an amused look with Bass on his way out the door as Connor's attention turned to his father.
Bass took a few steps further into his office before sitting down across from his son, on the side of his desk he never sat at.
A small smile formed on his lips as he commented, "Hey, I can't seem to find my jacket anywhere. Have you seen it?"
"Nope," Connor responded with an innocent shrug that practically caused the jacket to slip from his shoulder and he had to bring a sleeve-covered hand up to stop it from falling. "But you should take better care of it when you find it."
"You're probably right," Bass agreed, pretending to be oblivious to his son's theft as he decided to humour him. "So, what are my orders for the day?"
Connor's face went serious as he seemed to consider it for a moment before instructing his father, "You're going to stay here and await further instructions. I might need to consult you on something."
"Alright," Bass responded, holding back a laugh at how professional his son was trying to sound.
Just then, Jeremy walked back into the room and set a bowl down on the desk in front of Connor. "Here you go, sir."
The six year-old excitedly reached for the bowl, but had to stop on the way to push the sleeves of his father's coat up far enough to reveal his hands.
As he dug into his food, Jeremy questioned, "Any further orders, sir?"
"Not now," Connor answered between spoonfuls before putting on his professional face again and adding, "But stick around in case I need something else from you later."
As Connor continued to eat his breakfast, Miles walked into the room and Bass quickly turned to give him the best warning look he could muster up.
Miles looked between the contented looking six-year old and Bass while resisting the urge to let out a sigh or groan. He knew that Bass was expecting him to play along, but he didn't have the energy to worry about bruising Connor's ego.
Still, he managed to grumble out a request of, "Do you mind if I talk to your dad outside for a minute, kid?"
Connor looked between them thoughtfully before nodding his head and telling them, "You're dismissed."
"Thanks," Miles muttered out sarcastically as Bass rose to his feet.
Once the pair was outside, Connor focused his attention back to Jeremy as he commented, "I don't think Miles should call me kid. I'm too important to be called a kid, don't you think?"
"Oh, I whole-heartedly agree," Jeremy told him.
"I'm going to have to have a talk with Miles about this later," Connor responded before going back to eating his breakfast.
Miles quickly updated Bass on what was actually going on in the hallway before turning to go back inside the office.
"Hey, wait," Bass told him. "Just let the kid think he's in charge for the day, alright?"
There was a brief silence before Miles agreed, "Fine. I'll let him think he's important, but don't expect me to take become slave to a six-year old."
As he walked back into Bass's office again, Miles commented, "Don't you think that jacket's a little big on you, kid?"
"Don't call me kid," Connor insisted. "Call me President Monroe."
"Don't press your luck," Miles warned. "I don't even call your dad President Monroe."
"Do you want to keep your job, Matheson?" Connor countered with a menacing glare, or as menacing as a glare could really be on his little face.
Miles let out a dry laugh. "Trust me, kid. You don't have the authority to fire me."
Connor glared up at him as he let the spoon fall back into the bowl with a loud clanking noise.
"Don't call me that." He insisted. "I'm the one behind the desk. That means I tell you what to do."
Miles seemed more amused by the threats than anything as he commented, "President for one day and you've already got everything figured out, huh?"
"Being president's not that hard," Connor told him.
"Really?"
"Uh-huh," Connor confirmed. "You just have to tell everyone else what to do."
"Well that's a skill you've definitely mastered by now."
There was a knock on the office door and Bass turned to look over at his son.
"Come in," Connor called out. For some reason they didn't enter at the sound of his voice, so he added, "Hurry up, I don't have all day!"
A soldier walked in and looked between General Monroe, sitting on the wrong side of his desk, and the child that was looking over at him expectantly.
"State your business," Connor told him.
The soldier looked around, but all three adults seemed to be waiting for him to address Monroe's son.
"Sir, we've located a group of rebels. Most of them escaped, but we did manage to capture one that we have reason to believe may have been their leader," the soldier explained, looking straight over at Bass instead of at his son.
"Execute him." Connor instructed immediately.
"Are you sure about that?" Bass asked, turning to look over at his son. "If he's important, he might have some useful information."
Connor nodded his head thoughtfully as he considered the idea.
"Good point," he agreed before turning to look over at the soldier again. "Don't execute him. Lock him up in the dungeon instead. We'll question him later."
The soldier looked between Connor and Bass for a moment, seeming mildly confused. That was probably because there was no dungeon. That was just what Connor called the jail cells.
"I said take him to the dungeon," Connor repeated in an annoyed tone. "Aren't you listening? You're dismissed."
"But, sir. I don't-"
"You heard the man," Bass interrupted, causing a smug smirk to form on Connor's lips, especially at the word 'man'. "Lock him up in one of the cells."
The soldier nodded his head before turning to walk out of the room.
"We need to get smarter soldiers," Connor muttered as the door shut behind him.
Connor's second real duty of the day came when another soldier returned an hour later with a report on how they had found the rebels and captured the might-be leader.
The soldier handed the report over to Connor, who immediately opened it and skimmed over the pages to check over it. He gave the soldier a small nod.
"Everything seems to be in order," he told him. "You can go."
The soldier left the room and then Connor turned his attention towards Miles.
"File this for me," he ordered as he stretched his little arm out towards Miles.
He had no idea what he was supposed to do with it, so he figured the best idea was to not admit that and instead delegate the task to someone else.
Miles took it from him and looked over it, not trusting the kid's idea of what was and wasn't in order, before setting it on top of a stack of reports in the corner of Bass's desk.
Connor seemed satisfied with that and didn't argue.
Not long after, Tom Neville walked into the office.
"What do you want?" Connor questioned.
Tom looked at Connor and then around the room at the rest of the serious faces before letting out a weak laugh.
"Is something funny, Tom?" Bass questioned in an unimpressed tone.
"With all due respect, sir, this is ridiculous," Tom told him in a derisive tone. "I'm not going to state my business to a child."
He didn't humour his own son's whims, so he sure as hell wasn't about to humour Connor Monroe's.
Connor leaned forward on the desk, pressing his palms against the surface in a way that he had seen his father do to try and intimidate his minions numerous times.
Unfortunately for him, it came off much more humorous than threatening as the ends of the sleeves sat limp and wrinkled on the desk as the jacket slid off of his right shoulder.
"Let me ask you a question, Tom," Connor said, forgetting about the jacket altogether as he stared Neville down. "Do you like your job?"
Tom looked over at Miles in disbelief. He understood why Monroe was going along with it, but he was certain that Matheson must have a little more sense than that.
Unfortunately for him, Miles looked quite pleased with the way things were going. In fact, Miles was just starting to enjoy this whole Connor being in charge thing.
"Sit down and answer the question." Connor demanded. "Do you like your job?"
Tom reluctantly sat down across the desk from him. "Of course I like my job."
"Well then you need to learn to show a little respect to your superiors," Connor told him, taking his plays straight from his father's book before choosing an approach of his own. "I don't like you. I have more important work to deal with and you're wasting my time, so you're going to have to deal with General Matheson instead."
Connor didn't want to look at Tom's face anymore and he figured that having to ask Miles about whatever he'd come in there for was a suitable punishment, since Miles was clearly the more intimidating and unpleasant of the two generals in Connor's mind.
As Tom moved to the table and began to discuss matters with Miles, Connor focused back onto the aforementioned important work. That important work consisted of picking up random papers off of Bass's desk and reading over part of them before setting them down somewhere else, effectively completely destroying any and all semblance of an organizational system.
Once Tom was gone again, Connor seemed to decide that he'd reorganized the desk enough and stopped what he was doing.
He rose from his desk and headed over to the table that he'd watched his father and Miles go over to many times during a particularly rough day. As he walked, the bottom of his father's jacket dragged along the floor, but Connor didn't seem to notice. He frowned when he realized that the table was too high for him to reach.
"Captain Baker, pour me a drink," he instructed.
Jeremy turned his head in Bass's direction, looking to him to be the one to break it to Connor that six year-olds weren't allowed to drink scotch.
Miles was the one who ended up stepping in though as he commented, "You're important now, kid. Far too important to drink something without having someone test first to make sure that nobody slipped anything into your drink."
Connor decided to let the kid comment slide this time as he told him, "You test it."
Miles smirked a little to himself as he walked over to the table and poured himself a drink.
He brought the glass up to his lips, but sniffed it first instead of drinking. It smelled just like any other glass of scotch, but he put on a show for the kid anyways.
"I'm not sure about this, President," Miles told him, deciding to lay things on a little thick for Connor. "It smells a bit off. I think it would be best not to risk it… You know what? I'll get rid of this for you right now, sir."
With that, Miles grabbed the bottle off the table and then walked out of the office with it and the glass in hand. As soon as he was out the doors, he downed the drink and smiled to himself. He'd just managed to make off with Bass's scotch and there was nothing that the other man could do about it.
"Good thing Miles caught that," Jeremy commented in an amused tone once the other man was gone.
Connor nodded his head, thinking that now he had another hero to look up to as well. After all, Miles might have just saved his life. That wasn't something to be taken lightly and Connor knew that he owed him.
"Yeah, good thing," Bass agreed, forcing a grimace onto his lips. "So what do you want us to do now, General?"
"We need to figure out who slipped what into my drink," Connor told him. "I think we should interview everyone in the Militia, just in case."
Bass and Jeremy exchanged looks.
"I'll get right on that, sir," Jeremy assured Connor. "Don't worry. I'll take care of everything. You're far too important to waste your time on something like this."
Connor watched as Jeremy left the room before turning back to his father and telling him, "See? Your job's easy. All you have to do is boss people around."
A/N: Please read and review! There's a good chance that this is going to turn into a series of related one-shots that take place in the same AU world where I'll just post one whenever I get an idea.