Kidd ducked behind a pile of sorted boxes, heart in his throat as he listened for any hint he'd been spotted.

The teens continued harassing the old man's apprentice, his own entrance thankfully gone unnoticed. He didn't know any of them himself, but he thought he might recognize a few of the voices. The oldest boy was one of the new upstarts if Kidd was connecting the voice to the right person.

Regardless, they were one of the shitheads who'd been getting their reputation for lighting fires when displeased; thankfully the old man's place wasn't exactly flammable, sheet metal and scrapes and not a stick of wood to be found.

Still, could spell trouble if the old man was getting tangled in the city gangs.

He almost felt bad for the apprentice. Almost. Personally he thought the older kid was a prick, emotionless little robot; except Kidd's little toys showed more personality then the older boy.

Well, that wasn't quite right. The boy has shown plenty of expression at Kidd's expense when he'd laughed himself right off his little stool when once, Kidd had been messing with one of the torches while waiting for Boss to show up, and the thing had literally blown up in his face. The kid had taken one look at Kidd and then burst out laughing - some weird breathless donkey bray - and Kidd was still waiting for his eyebrows to grow back, damnit.

He'd still chuckle at Kidd now and then and the day Kidd decided Boss's coin wasn't worth it anymore, he was gonna kick the other boy's ass.

It was the only hint the jerk was human under that welder's mask. At this point, Kidd wondered if it was welded to his ugly face.

An ugly face that was currently repeating itself, telling the little gaggle of arsonists that the boss wasn't there, and to go away.

Kidd slumped against his hiding place - he was about to get to listen to someone else kick the shitbag's ass first, and he was kinda bummed. He hoped the group didn't kill him outright, but maybe Kidd could sweet talk his way into the job for Boss. He was better at finding scrap, but he kinda wanted to know how they got the sheets to stay together like that - so flawlessly. How they build stuff way bigger than he was managing to do.

They could build a ship - he bet. If they wanted to.

He certainly wanted to.

Depending on how the fight went down, maybe Kidd could break it up before they outright killed the other boy. The kid was awful but Kidd wasn't sure he was ready to stand by and listen to him get murdered. If he was careful he could maybe -push- the scraps around enough to spook them off without giving anything away.

He wasn't himself sure why him and the scrap heaps got along so well, but he was also very sure at this point, no one else heard or felt her the way he did, and he wasn't keen on that fact being public knowledge. Most of the time, others just assumed the Heaps was settling - or haunted - when weird stuff happened around Kidd, and who was he to tell them otherwise?

"Look," Boss' apprentice was explaining, sounding on the edge of bored and irritated, the mask giving his voice a dull and hollow sound, "you wanna hang out until he gets back, be my guest. But I ain't the old man, and I dun got nuthin to do with your little spat with him. So I'm going back to work, and you're going to leave me alone, kay?"

Kidd tched. What a dumbass. If shit worked like that, then there wouldn't be gangs in the first place.

Sure enough, the sounds of a scuffle could be heard, and there was a cry of pain.

But it was over way faster than Kidd was expecting, and he glanced back out of his hiding spot...

To carnage.

The apprentice was armed with a length of piping, rusty end peeling back to an impromptu weapon edges covered in gore. What had been a pack of 6 adults (or close enough) was reduced to the one upstart, holding his side as blood poured past his fingers.

Kidd watched in fascinated horror as the last man standing stumbled back, "what the fuck, calm down! wait a minute!" as Kidd's coworker turned to him, adjusting his grip on the pipe,

"I told you, I dun have nothing to do with whatever your peoples beef is with the old man. I ain't a stand in for him; I ain't your punching bag."

"Okay! Okay! Look, I’ll tell Boss to back off, we'll deal with the old man later, we won't involve you! Just.. just stop now. Let me go. You made your point."

"Let you go?"

"... please."

Kidd watched the two stare each other down.

"Let you go?" he asked again, and the older teen nodded, his blood splattered dreads moving stiffly as he did, and Kidd watched carefully, the tension in the air thick.

Kidd was a child, but boss' apprentice was only a handful of years older than him, not even a teenager yet. Combined, they were maybe as old as the young man now kneeling at the doors of the metal shop. Kidd watched in a horrified fascination as the boy turned to one of the other five, a man gasping wetly, face down a few feet away.

"Let you go..." he said again, circling the fallen man, before turning to the one still conscious.

"Okay," he said calmly, and Kidd felt his skin crawl, then the boy was raising his pipe and Kidd ducked back just as the man before yelled for him to stop. The sound of metal on flesh and bone echoed and Kidd held his breath in the silence that fell after.

"Well," said the old man's apprentice, "you better hurry up and go."

Kidd could hear the older man scrambling away, could picture his dark skin and pale hair as he went throwing himself over debris and scrabbling over piles as he fled.

Kidd had seen dead bodies before, but he still wasn't sure he was ready to look at the small massacre left painted across the doorstep of his employer. He was.. well, he supposed he might want to be nicer to the freak, because really, where had that come from! 

He was still there, hunkered down in the rubbish, when the old man did wander back. Kidd heard him swearing up a storm at the bodies left out in the sun. He and the apprentice went inside to argue, voices loud enough to be heard, but words lost, until they were back outside, and Kidd peaked up to see the old man pushing the boy out the door, blood splattered welder's mask taken roughly off his head and leaving blond hair in disarray, "You'll be lucky if I take you back at all after this!"

"That's not far!"

"Neither is having to clean up the mess of feral little killers leaving corpses on my doorstep like overgrown house cats!"

"This isn't my fault, they were here for you!"

"I didn't ask you to do this! Don't you dare turn this on me! You can't kill everyone that looks at you funny or says something you don't like. and I'm tired of dumping bodies because you have a temper!"

The two were staring each other down, and Kidd was unnerved by the fact he could almost feel how angry they both were. Like the air soured with it. And - to Kidd's surprise - the kid backed down, looked away, hunched in on himself.

"Take the day off, cool your head, and let me deal with this. Come back in the morning. And take the kid with you. I don't want him sniffing around today."

Kidd barely had time to register the old man waving in his direction - rude, outing him like that!- before the words registered, and the apprentice was expressing his feelings exactly: "What! Why me?"

Yeah - Kidd could care for himself thank you very much, why'd the old man expect him to go with the psycho killer?

"Just go," the old man growled, shoving him toward Kidd, "keep each other out of trouble."

"I don't need some seeing eye dog, and he dun need a babysitter-"

"I will see you both tomorrow."

Mr. Psycho Killer pulled his bloody leather apron over his head and threw it and his gloves back at the old man before turning heel, storming toward Kidd's hidey. He barely slowed as he stormed past, huffing a 'you heard him' as he stormed past.

Kidd gave the old man one last uncertain look, before skulking after the older boy.

Kidd was small and fast, and even then, he found it a struggle to stay at the boy’s side once they hit the crowds of the city, the older boy slipping through gaps in the flow of bodies as smooth as a dance. He'd almost have thought he boy was trying to lose him, except as they approached a street with food stalls, he slowed down to ask, "you eaten yet today?"

Kidd had not. He's been planning on using the coin from today's haul to get something, except those plans had been decidedly derailed as the bag weight heavy and full still on his shoulder. The boy stopped to look sideways at him, and Kidd got his first real look the other boy..

Kidd realised, he wasn't sure he’d seen the boy without the welder mask. His face was pocketed with ance and burns, almost enough to compete with Kidd and his freckles. Unlike Kidd’s freckles, the other boy would likely grow out of his own day. His hair was just as disheveled in the front as the back, wild uneven bangs hanging over his eyes brushing the cheeks and the tip of his nose.

Like Kidd, he had a near permanent kind of ring around his head from the band of his mask, whereas Kidd's was from his goggles. Despite the wildly different colour in hair, they didn't look too dissimilar actually, though Kidd's skin was far paler. Far too skinny, far too gangly, and for his years over Kidd, the other boy wasn't all that much taller; Kidd had been catching up over the last year whereas it didn't seem his coworker had grown at all.

The boy's head was titled to the side, Kidd assumed to get his bangs to fall away enough for him to look over the prices of the stalls, and standing this close, Kidd could help but smirk at the angry grumble the boy's stomach made at the different smells of food cooking, only for his own to grumble back.

Strangely the boy made no move to any stalls though, instead hanging his head, "what do you want to eat?"

It was low, almost defeated, though why Kidd couldn't have guessed, "Are you serious?"

He shrugged, "why not. My usual lady's not here today."

Kidd grabbed his arm and drug them over to the stall at one end - meat wasn't usually in his budget, but if someone else was paying? "Beef stuffed cabbage rolls!" he piped up to the vendor, who was looking them over suspiciously.

"Two orders," the boy added, pulling a coin bag out.

Kidd almost -almost- felt bad the way his face fell when the lady quoted them the price. Almost spoke up, maybe they could share a plate. But he was counting out coins and Kidd kept his mouth shut.

It took him an uncomfortably long time to hand over the coins, the two plates of food steaming away at the vendor's side. Kidd didn't understand the look she gave the two of them at first, didn't understand until she sighed, setting the coins down and pointedly counted them out - they'd short changed her.

The boy was fumbling for the bag, hands shaking for the first time, and the lady turned to Kidd with a sigh. "Can you count?"

"I can count!" the boy defended, but Kidd was starting to think maybe he couldn't, squinting at the assorted coins in his hand in a panic.

Kidd grabbed enough to cover their bill from his open palm and handed it to the lady, taking their food in turn as the boy shoved the other coins in the pouch.

He refused to look at anyone as he followed Kidd to a less crowded side street. "So, Psycho Killer can't count. didn't see that one coming." Kidd joshed him, handing over the plate before sitting down to dig into his meal. He practically moaned over the roll.

"I can count, I just... wait, what'd you call me?"

"Psycho Killer, ya know, like that song?" Kidd talked around a mouthful of food, "Psycho killer, kes kes kay, better run run away?"

He looked at Kidd, clearly confused, "Qu'est-ce que c'est. Not.... kes kes kay."

Kidd shrugged, "Whatever. Still, it ain't wrong. one wrong look at you, and people oughta run away. Or you massacre 'em like you did today."

He didn't say anything to that, picking at his plate a little longer before biting into his own food.

Neither said anything for a moment, just eating.

"I thought you were done for, to be honest," Kidd said finally, sucking his fingers clean, "No way you were gonna be able to take on six guys. Was totally ready to have to help the old man burying you in a ditch somewhere."

"Thanks" he said dryly.

"No! I mean! Just.. look at you! Who'd look at you and think you had it in ya to kill a man. Much less five." He held up his now clean hand for emphasis.

Psycho Killer titled his head again, this time, Kidd could see him squinting at him, studying him - wait. No.... Kidd lowered his pinky slowly, and the boy didn't seem to notice.

"So, what happened with the coins back there?" he asked, dropping his hand completely.

"I'm not stupid, I can count."

"I didn't say you were stupid. And so what if you can't count, sn'ot like I can read"

Psycho Killer wrapped his arms around his legs, propping his chin on his knees. "Some of the older 5 coins..... they feel the same as the quarter piece. I get them mixed up sometimes."

Kidd frowned, puzzling over that. "What? They don't look anything alike. They're not even the same metal."

"But they're the same size. And the older 5 piece. The coin is softer so the edges get worn fast, and," he shrugged, and Kidd could see him toying with the coins. From here, he supposed they did kinda look the same once they got grungy enough.

"Are you blind or something?"

"Of course I'm not blind!"

Except he looked nervous. Kidd kept his mouth shut for once, just watching him.

"I see you just fine! I see .. just fine... it's just... I get headaches when I try to see details on things sometimes.. or colours for some reason. I . I dunno how to explain it. I can see the lady hanging her laundry down there," he gestured down the alley, "but.. it's hard to tell what colour the dress is. Or what's drawn on it. But she's clear as day, same with her kid in the basket."

Kidd looked down the way, her green dress with white flowers. But he didn't see any kid, even if he saw her talking down into the basket. He could believe a child was there... but..

"You see the kid now?"

"Yeah."

Kidd mirrored his pose, thinking. "Can I tell you a secret?"

"Why?"

"Because I don't think people see the way you do. That kid is completely in the basket."

"Yeah, so?"

"So... the basket is in the way - you can't see him."

"Yeah i do.."

"Listen here, Mr. Psycho Killer, no one can see that kid right now. Just you."

"Is that your secret - you think I'm crazy too?"

"Yeah, maybe, but that's nothing to do with -"

"Then don't call me that!"

"Don't ca... what, Psycho Killer?"

"Yeah! That!"

"Would you prefer stick-up-the-ass?"

"Try my fucking name, Kidd."

"I don't know your fucking name, you freak! You never bother to tell me!"

It should have been funny, the baffled look on his face. Kidd could see the wheels turning in his head. The indignant outrage turned quickly to muted embarrassment. "It's Keillan."

"Psycho Killer Keillan."

"Shut up." There was a notable lack of any bite this time around.

Kidd chuckled, letting the tension bleed out a little. "You got a family name, Killer Keillan?" Kidd could throw him a bone and drop the psycho, he supposed.

"Nah," he said, smile sad, "they made it pretty clear they didn't want me back."

"Fuck them then." Kidd sneered. He might hold on to his family name with both hands - a couple he can't remember the faces off, but he remembers their scared voices, hiding him at the cost of their own lives - but he's seen enough shitty families since then to know that blood doesn't guarantee shit. From what he's seen, if anything, it was just a handy excuse to exploit someone - do it for the family.

Killer Keillan snorted, but it didn't do much for the sad look.

"I believe you - that you see the kid in the basket. I bet it works for other things too - you see stuff other people can't. Maybe it's why you don't see real good otherwise. Or maybe it's because you don't."

"I think it's the weld flame."

"What?"

"I can see what I weld, but... but I get headaches a lot, working for the old man. The more I stare at the flame, the harder it is to see anything after. Sometimes.. Sometimes I can't see anything for hours. The helmet helps. Like.. the little slits make it not so bright."

"I guess.. I guess staring at those little flames is probably like looking at the sun too long."

Killer Keillan nodded. From here, looking at him, Kidd could see how red and irritated his eyes looked, the whites running over with red blood vessels like little lightning strikes. He looked tired, honestly.

"Sometimes," Kidd hesitated, before spilling his own secret, "all times really, the ... metal on the island sings to me."

"What?"

"I can .... feel? it. The scrap yard. Like a deep hum in my bones. And when I'm upset, it .... comes to me. Some of it. Like the steel and iron."

"Is that how you find all the good stuff? I thought you were awfully lucky."

"The aluminum and stuff, the copper and lead. It doesn't. It's like a quiet little void. I look for the places that don't sing. It won't come when i call it, but it's funny how hard it ignores me. Wood and dirt don't do that. They don't care. I don't even notice them. b=But all the stuff the old man pays the most for - its shines like these little pockets of nothing, where even the singing is lost."

"You... you shouldn't tell people that." the boy said warily, looking around uneasy.

Kidd frowned, feeling hurt by the sudden tone shift to the other kid, "I figured out your secret, I just kinda thought it was fair..."

"I don't think your thing is like mine. I don't think it's like mine at all."

"...Really?" had he made that big of a mistake?

"I ... the ocean around here isn't exactly clean, but... have you ever tried to go swimming before?" he looked uneasy, "In the ocean, not like in the river when it rains."

"I dunno how. I fell in once, playing by the docks. The workers had to fish me out."

"Fish you out, or jump in after ya?"

"... jump in."

"Like you couldn't move? Got really tired even though there wasn't a reason for it?"

"Yea...."

"Dun go around the ocean again, Kidd. She dun like you more."

"Don't go around the ocean." Kidd repeated mockingly, "I'm gonna build my own ship and sail away from this stupid island one day! Gonna sail around the whole world like King Roger did, and find the One Piece." Killer Keillan was shaking his head no the whole time Kidd talked, and Kidd raised his voice in anger, "I'm not staying on Kutzk one day longer than i have too. I'm getting out of here and I ain't never looking back. The ocean will just have to deal with that."

"Pretty sure you ate a devil fruit," Killer Keillan whispered, "That's why the Heaps like you like she does. But it also means the ocean hates you now. And she'll kill you for it, and she won't ever stop trying."

There was something about the way he said that, that had Kidd shutting up. "You can't ever tell nobody about this Kidd - pretend you didn't even tell me. And certainly dun let the old man know."

"Really?"

Killer Keillan nodded, Kidd imagined back at the face he made earlier, bashing the back of a man's skull in as he lay defenseless at his feet. "They'll either enslave you for it, or kill you outright. World government too - they'll take away anything that make you you for the devil fruits."

Kidd, now 8, finds new respect for his sometime coworker, the 12 year old welder's apprentice, both in his strengths and his vulnerabilities.

"Why'd they throw you away then?" the kid asked, trying to make sense of the circuity exposed in the metal soldier's back. "Were you bad at following orders or something?"

"I was very good at following orders," the machine assured him. "The issue lies in humans giving conflicting orders and then getting angry with the fact I cannot follow a contradiction."

'Orders' and 'Programing' were years out of Kidd's skill set right now unfortunately - but he could follow the wiring and make an educated guess what got pulled out of place and what made sense assuming the designer had followed logical lines of design

"What was the contradiction?" he really should try and understand why a killing machine had been scraped instead of reprogrammed before he made it mobile probably.

Interestingly, the machine did not answer immediately. Almost like it was thinking how to explain.

Defective then. It happened sometime with Machine Learning. Treat them human too much and they learn that behavior. For all militaries did to eliminate humanity in the ranks - machines had started to replace even that aspect.

"You must understand," the machine said finally, "That of my core programing, one of my most basic functions, is to protect my human Commanding Officer. It is written into my processors as my first order, above all else."

Kidd nodded that he understood so far. It made sense; Protect the Squishy one giving the orders.

"Did you not do that or something?"

"Quite the opposite. I was given a direct order by /his/ commanding officer and it conflicted with my first order. The top man in my chain of command told me to execute my CO and I did not follow it. I should not be I allowed to disobey a direct order from any human officer above me. Yet I did."

Kidd hadn't reconnected any wiring yet - he'd need to soder it in place to correctly fix it, but he didn't have the tools on hand. Still, as the looked at how to replace some of the metal pieces that had broken or bent far out of shape, he could rig a temp fix, he was sure. "So somebody ordered you to kill your human and didn't. What happen to him? The human officer guy?"

"Since I have been scraped and discarded, I do not believe he is still alive. He was not loyal to the new family, so I see little chance of him being spared unless the was able to sneak off the Island."

For a machine- he seemed awfully sad about that idea. "Was he a good man? Your human?"

"Good is Relative. All men believe themselves good" the machine said - but almost gently, instead of a biting retort. "But Officer Ceannand was a just man and he was patient and fair. He did not have many Soldier Models- mostly young humans under his command. But we were all his Soldier Boys, and he treated us all, machine or man, with dignity."

"Can you move your arm yet?" Kidd asked, turning the bolt tighter around the wire ends.

The Soldier Unit was able to raise his left arm a bit. It wasn't smooth, but it worked. "Do you find it wise to repair me? I am defective after all."

"Part of me just wants to know if I can," Kidd admitted, "But there's also the fact you're still... functioning. Still, processing and talking. In that sense, you're still alive and it would suck to be stuck in the trash like you were and just be waiting until a connection finally rusted away and let you die. I can't leave you to that."

"I am a machine. I am not alive so it is not correct to call it death."

"Humans are just electrical pulses too. But we just got squishy pants that are harder to replace."

"And when your electrical pulses stop- you cannot be reanimated. Humans and machine differ quite alot in that regard."

Kidd was quiet before shifting his attention to the machine's knee structure "Maybe, I just wanted to rebuild a kickass Robot Friend."

"While an interesting objective, I am afraid the last part in unobtainable. I am a machine. I can not be a friend to you. I can be programed to care for you. To protect you. But it is a Program. Nothing more."

"How'd I do that? Change your programing?

"On it's code level, I do not know. I am not allowed to know."

"What's the other way? You said code level"

"My chain of command would need to change my commanding officer to you."

"Fat chance with that."

"Indeed." The whirl of machinery humming away filled the quite, before the Solider Unit spoke again, "My last Chief Officer was not bright. He only needed to verbally assign me to someone, and it would of nullified my contradictory orders."

Kidd forced a bolt through two plates to haphazardly hold them together as a temporary fix, "Wait -what?"

"Officer Ceannand was my CO. When Boss Brathadair assassinated Boss Athanir he became the head of the house, and therefor his orders overrode all other humans. He became my highest authority. His order were above Ceannard's - including my assignment. To have forced me to follow his orders to execute Ceannand, he had only to assign me to anyone else."

Kidd looked at him ruefully, "Would you have explained that to him if he let you?"

"Of course not. Brathadair is an idiot and even if he is my Chief of Command now, he wont be for long. His officers do not support him and he will be upsurged. And as much as I can hope for anything - I do believe it will be soon."

Kidd laughed outright at that, motioning it to stand. The machine was almost surprised when it could." You am very skilled. Remarkably so."

"I just tinker," Kidd shrugged as the machine took a few steps to re-calibrate for its new weaknesses and adjust its balance. "So who's your commanding officer now?"

"I cannot definitively prove Ceannard is deceased so it remains him until further notice. I would then belong to his Commanding Officer - and so on. I still belong to the Family," it stressed, "If by chance they issue me a directive, I still must follow. You and in very Real danger, having repaired Me"

Original 4 pages. Scanned: 2025.04.30