Reposed Rebellions | J-card and Insert | Chapter 3: '93 - A Mother's Musings

[mekachu04]

J-card and Insert (3835 words) by Mekachu04

Additional Tags:

• Vaguely Highschool AU
• Alternative Universe - No Akuma no Mi | Devil Fruit
• USA Western Rural 90's AU
• Victoria Punk is a Datsun 620 - aka 4 hooker lil'Hustler
• Prequel
• secretly smart!Kidd
• Kidd's not an angry boi yet, actually he's kinda a silly little guy
• the four Emperors are basically Cattle barons
• kidd's mom's a sweet lady trying her best
• Rural|Farm|Ranch life
• Aged Down Character: Aged Down!Kidd, Aged Down!Killer, Aged Down!Wire, Aged Down!Heat

Series: Part of Reposed Rebellions

At 13, it was quickly becoming clear that Kidd Eustass was going to live up to that wild 'firey' stereotype that seemed to haunt all red-heads. To begin with, at that age most boys growing up tucked away in the county's back country run wild, hellions by their own rights. Freshly turned teens running amok as they start to try and define themselves as their own people for the first time - testing the rules and how far they can push the limits. Shooting road signs, vandalizing old derelict barns, joyriding tractors on the paved roads. Harassing the big bosses' herds, messing with the tourists at the dude ranch, terrorizing the local dogs in the middle of the night. Get a few of them running together, and stuff starts to get stolen or broken or blown up.... and then there's the wild parties in the national forest. Every kid goes though it, and Captain Smoker's biggest headache is when to look away as part of teenage growing pains, and when to start cracking down before someone gets hurt. Kidd Eustass was quickly running down the docket - ticking off each offense like it was his personal to-do list and he wanted to be the first to do them all before he even hit high school.

Smoker had warned Ms. Eustass Brichtrede that Kidd was spending too much time with the older boys and needed friends his own age. They were a bad influence on him - the local degenerates. Two of them already dropped out of high school, and Smoker didn't have high hopes that Killer was going anywhere with his life either. Too much weed, too much rock music, too much leather and chains and piercings. Too city. Too.... different. Weird. Too.. close. Heat & Wire were attached at the hip these days, never one without the other. And since Victoria left, Killer was never far behind the two. Kidd had admitted to her that Killer wasn't on the bus home most days and he didn't think he was going to classes much anymore.

Most recently, the boys had the brilliant idea of using a homemade potato gun made out of soup cans to shoot down a wasp nest in Heat's back yard, leading to Killer bringing her boy home covered in stings. Killer had not fared much better, and she'd ordered the two boys inside to wash before covering the both of them in calamine lotion. She'd tried not to smile as the two talked over were they'd gone wrong, and how to built a better potato gun next time - like that had been the problem and not the fact they were using it on a venomous flying insect that lived in a hive of hundreds of other venomous flying insects.

Brichtrede had to put her foot down last year with the boys, Killer specifically. She'd known Wire, Heat & Killer longer than her own current husband by this point, and the boys had been there for Kidd nearly his whole life in ways she couldn't. Despite the age gap between them, Killer had become her son's best friend before Kidd could even read. Last year's debacle had shown her while Killer could be trusted to make sure the any trouble her son got involved in didn't end up on his permanent record, he didn't however understand how serious the danger he and the others had put themselves and her son in was to begin with. There was teenage shenanigans, and then there was behavior that would get someone killed.

She would prefer some parental supervision when the boys got into anything involving fire, but she would take it any day over the night she'd picked Killer up from the Sheriff's office after he'd been caught drinking in the park; with the intention of driving her son home afterward. She'd told him in no uncertain terms that it was his one free pass and he would not be getting another one. Killer had make a clear effort after that to be better behaved with Kidd around. He was still a wild child - his father completely checked out as a parent over a decade ago, and now seem to exist as a task assigner and little more - but she knew there was a boy in there just trying his best with no idea how to do that.

Honestly, between the four of them, Killer probably was the only one with any impulse control, and even then it only seemed to pop up when Kidd was involved. And in turn, her son knew just what buttons to push to override that when he wanted to. Thankfully, he was still young enough Brichtrede wasn't too worried just yet.

She was watching them tinker under the hood of Killer's truck, mulling that over. Kidd seemed to be ready to crawl right in while Killer was either content to watch or was actively egging him on; she wasn't sure from here.

"Babe?" She called to her husband from where she watched from his workshop window. He was tinkering himself, and came over to peek out and watch the two boys.

"What is he up too?" her husband muttered, trying to see what Kidd was messing with.

"Please go make sure whatever 'adjustments' our son is making doesn't get our boys blown up later, hmm?"

---