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mekachu04the fighter still remains – Part One
He's ten and he's in love.
Victoria is the divine incarnate, ineffability made flesh, and Kidd would worship at her altar until the oceans dried up and the world ended. His mother thinks he's being ridiculous, but Kidd will hear no blaspheme of the transcendent guardian nymph of Kutzk.
Kidd's world is about to be flipped upside down when the dark underworld Victoria moves about in comes creeping into the quiet life he and his mother have carved out for themselves
title from The Boxer by Simon & Garfunkel
In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out in his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving", but the fighter still remains
He's ten and he's in love.
Victoria is the divine incarnate, ineffability made flesh, and Kidd would worship at her altar until the oceans dried up and the world ended. His mother thinks he's being ridiculous, but Kidd will hear no blaspheme of the transcendent guardian nymph of Kutzk.
Shiruton Doruyanaika is sixteen, and easily the absolute coolest person Kidd has ever met. And she will wave off her entourage of badass renegades to talk to him. To HIM! Some snot nosed kid who spends his afternoons trying to avoid helping out at his mom's bakery.
He knows he's not worthy, but he can't help be beam at the fact that of all the other shitheads on the island, he's the one to get the extra attention. He's the one to get her stories, her fantastical tales of the world outside their island. The places she will go one day, her grand plans for piracy on the high seas.
Her finding the One Piece - Being the next Pirate King.
He dreams of the day he gets to join her crew and sailing far, far away. He's already decided - he's going with her when she does set sail, even if he has to stow away. He'll write his mother once they're too far away to bring him back, let her know of their adventures. She'll understand.
There's a commotion outside in the alleyway.
Kidd is peaking over the window sill where someone has broken into his dad's shed out back. Momma locked it up when he passed, but Kidd's been able to ask the lock to open for him for a few years now. (He doesn't like keeping secrets from his mother but he's pretty sure he shouldn't be able to talk metal like he does and it only happened after he stole some fruit from one of the stands when they went shopping. He didn't say anything because it was so gross, and also, she'd be disappointed in him for thieving. They weren't wealthy, but they weren't so hard up for her to look the other way when he knicked things. But he couldn't explain it, the way it called to him.)
But someone else in in there now, light flickering faintly - maybe nothing more than a single candle. Kidd can't see anyone else lurking, but there's shadows moving in the shed.
He's got a length of pipe in his room from a failed experiment last winter, and he takes it in hand before he's sneaking out his window to investigate.
The locks been jimmied open, but left unlatched, and he asked the hinges to stay quiet as he snuck inside, armed and ready to thrash some trespassers.
He wasn't expecting Victoria to be there under the candle light. And he certainly wasn't expecting her to be in his father's shed with another boy. He felt numb, pipe falling to his side as he looked at her, betrayed, where she was straddling some teenager, sitting on his lap, pinning him to the ground.
"Uilleam?" She looked as surprised to see him so there was at least that. "What are you doing up this late?"
Kidd wasn't sure how he was supposed to answer that. After all, she had broken in to his father's shed. "What's going on?"
She glanced down, before offering him an awkward smile, "Hey Kiddo, why don't you go back to bed, yeah? I'll explain in the morning, okay?"
That's when he really looked at the boy under her, and the scene started to make even less sense. It was more that Victoria had the boy pinned down, both of his hands shackled together under her own hands, her knees pinned his arms to his sides. There were shackles on the boy's ankles too. He was dirty, bloody, barefoot. He wasn't speaking words, just muffled snarls.
Someone had fixed some kind of metal muzzle or mask over his mouth, and it was clearly meant as a punishment, judging by the fresh blood dripping down from under it. It also seemed too small by the way it cut into his cheeks. His dirty blind bangs mostly covered his face, but in his struggle under Victoria they'd fallen away, and the teen was glaring at Kidd with the coldest blue eyes he'd ever seen.
Eyes that promised to murder them both the moment he was free. So much fury, but in a calm frigid way. Fury and fear.
It should of scared Kidd - instead, he set the pipe by the door and knelt down to inspect the muzzle.
"Careful," Victoria warned, and Kidd glanced over to notice then she had some of his dad's tools scattered around. She'd been trying to force the locks off the boy's restraints.
Kidd turned back to the muzzle. It was iron, and it hummed back to him as he investigated it further. He frowned as felt it out, there was something more to the mask. Ignoring Victoria, ignoring the boy and his glares, Kidd turned the teen's head and listened. "Its a branks..." he said with horror once he realized what he was looking at.
Which would explain the blood. Still ignoring the two, Kidd followed the crease of the metal plating, asking it nicely to unlatch itself. He could feel the tumbler pins moving when he prompted them, and then the front plate loosened and clicked free.
No one moved for a long moment, and Kidd carefully pulled the mask to himself, being sure to life it straight away as to not catch or tear anything more as it was removed. Against the plate was a bit piece that had been forced into the teen's mouth, a metal tongue depressor with a dull spike on the back that had torn into his mouth, the bit cutting at the edges of his lips. The mask was indeed too small, fresh cuts and old scars where it had pressed into his cheeks and the length of his nose for far too long.
The murderous aura was gone, the boy working his jaw, licking chapped lips like he was afraid he couldn't and it was just a cruel trick.
"Killer?" Victoria asked, gently jostling the still bound hands.
He turned to her, working his mouth, but saying nothing. He looked stunned, unable to understand what Kidd had just done. Victoria sat up, letting go of his hands to wipe the blood from his chin with his shirt collar.
"See, I told you I would fix this," she told him gently, fixing his shirt once she was done cleaning his face off. He was still bleeding in a few places, but he was like a completely different person, calm wide-eyed and meek. He looked up at her with the same reverence that Kidd often did.
At first, it annoyed him; Kidd was Victoria's first partisan and he wasn't about to let some teenager muscle in. But then 'Killer' - as Victoria had called him - turned and looked at Kidd with that same zealous awe in his face. It was too much to take, Kidd looking away first to inspect the cuffs.
"The kid's gonna get these off, just you wait."
And he did. Same with the shackles around his ankles.
Victoria suggested keeping Killer hidden in his shed for the time being, and she'd make her self scarce for the next few days in case someone was watching her to figure out where Killer had gone. Which raised more questions for Kidd, but Victoria was asking a favour of him, so of course he'd do what she asked.
"Killer'll stay put if you tell him too - he's really good about following orders when he's calm." She smiled, patting the dirty blond head like he was a puppy or something. "Stay here," she told Killer, "Uilleam's good people, and he tells you to do something, you do it, okay?"
The teen stared at her for a long moment, before finally nodding.
Victoria left then, kissing Kidd's check with a "thank you" as she passed by, stunning Kidd from arguing with her as all thoughts fluttered right out of his head. Leaving him alone in the shed in the dead of night with a strange, possibly mute, teenager - apparently named Killer of all things - who'd been in shackles and a branks just an hour before.
His face was bleeding a little bit again. Killer just sat cross legged across from Kidd, staring at him intensely. Kidd realized that Victoria's last words had been for him to do what Kidd said, and it appeared he was waiting for orders or something.
Kidd frowned back at him, not entirely sure what he was suppose to do with the teenager. He had no idea how he was supposed to explain this to momma either. She was already not a fan of Victoria, and he was pretty sure she wasn't join to be pleased with the girl leaving other teenagers in her shed. No.. Best not to say anything to her, and wait until Victoria come back.
"You gotta stay here for now, in the shed," Kidd told him, frowning as he looked around. There were some drop cloths and towels, he could maybe fix up somewhere for Killer to sleep, at least for tonight. Killer frowned but didn't move, watching Kidd work. "And, you gotta keep the candle away from the window, Momma can't know you're in here."
It wasn't the best, but Kidd had rigged up what he could under the main workbench, a least something softer than the bare wood floor. "Yeah... You gotta stay here. But I'll get you some blankets when momma's at work tomorrow. So just try and keep quiet. okay?"
Killer nodded that he understood when Kidd turned to look at him, before looking at the little nest Kidd had made for him. The craftsmanship of a ten year old at it's finest. But also, strangle touching. As Killer inspected it, Kidd gathered up the shackles to hide them with some of the miscellaneous metal scrap deeper in the shed.
"I'm gonna have to sneak back inside before momma notices I'm up, but I'll be back in the morning." He explained as he returned to the bench, looking for the last bit of the restraints. He was surprised the find Killer with the branks already in hand, kneeling and bent low on the ground before the bed of towels and rags. Killer was holding the branks out to him, like he was expecting Kidd to take it. No, like he was expecting Kidd to put it back on him.
"I bite." he said, his first words. His voice was rough, tone flat.
"So?" Kidd didn't like what Killer was implying.
Killer looked confused, like he wasn't sure how to explain something so obvious to him. "I bite" he said again, before gesturing the mask back to his face.
Kidd reached out and Killer handed to it over to him; but Kidd was watching his face, not the mask. It was like the teenager had a mask on already, face carefully blank, schooled to hide his actual thoughts on the matter. This wouldn't be the time to argue with him over the metal piece, but Kidd wasn't about to inflict such cruelty back onto him. Kidd studied the bit on the mask, asking it to loosen as he wiggled the metal back and forth. Killer seemed to be watching intently as the weld weakened and then the bit with its spike snapped free. Kidd ran his thumb over the weld seem, it was still rough...
He ditched the bit, taking the front plate over and rooting though his dad's old tools so he could find something to smooth the inside back down. Killer didn't move, not even to blink it seemed, watching him.
If Killer was insistent on wearing the mask, Kidd wasn't going to stop him. But he wasn't going to torture the older boy either. He also loosened the straps that held it in place so it wasn't cutting into his face anymore either, and carefully refitted it.
The blue eyes stared back at him as he adjusted it back onto Killer's face. Finally, Kidd leaned back, shifting his gaze from the metal to the boy under the mask. "That's not to tight is it? It should be loose enough not to hurt anymore."
Killer didn't try to say anything, but he touches the bottom of the mask, contemplative, before finally nodding to Kidd that it was good.
Kidd frowned, looking it over one last time. "I'll bring you something to eat before i got to school in the morning. Are you sure you'll be okay here tonight?"
He had to be, Kidd thought sourly, what else was he going to do until Victoria comes back?
