LogFAQs > #911683957

One of the kids grabbed the coat without saying anything. They were probably suspicious of taking something from a stranger. And, around here, kids often didn't get things... for free or otherwise. There were a lot who grew up with much worse conditions than he had as a child. A nice coat like this, even if it was a little too big for a kid or a teen, probably seemed like a very strange thing to be offered up as a free token.

"Er, hold on," Kidd held onto it. He reached into the inner pocket and made sure to retrieve his backup gun. Giving that to a child was probably not the best idea. "I might need this later," He said in a joking voice.

The youngster didn't laugh. They backed away with cautious looks on their faces. Then he slipped the coat on and the three of them disappeared into the nearest crowd. They weren't even laughing. The exchange had been too bizarre for those kids to really understand.

Kidd fanned himself while tugging on the collar of his shirt. He still felt warm. Was he getting a fever now too...? He couldn't exactly take his shirt off now, and he regretted wearing a longshirt when he had left for their final day of adventure. Now it seemed like a liability in this heat.

He slipped his backup gun into his belt and glanced around before gathering the strength to keep walking.

The eastern quarter felt very quiet in a way that was very familiar to him. Not quiet in the sense that the streets were empty, or that people weren't talking. Rather, it felt like, everything that happened in the eastern quarter happened behind closed doors, in the shadows, or in a whisper.

There were people all about and yet everything near him felt like a secret.

He couldn't just glance one way and make sense of what was happening by merely looking there.

That was the kind of atmosphere that Kidd had known fairly will even since he was pretty young. It was different than the threat that a monster might jump out and attack him, and he felt strangely calm despite the presence of crime in this city. Hell, here, Kidd knew that almost no one would dare to attack him. He was a local, pretty well liked, and had a reputation as someone they likely wouldn't survive if they went up against.

Covered in blood and bandages, half undressed, with two guns hanging from his belt... he probably looked like a freshly resurrected ghoul. And most of the thugs in this part of town still felt like it'd be too dangerous to try and ambush him even in this state.

Kidd pulled off his hat, examining it, and found the burn marks to be quite unsightly. This thing had taken more than a bit of damage on his journey. He wondered how ugly the markings on his face must look from those same burns...? Wearing the hat probably wasn't helping with the heat and he tried to think of a way to discard it.

Looking around, he found an old man sitting out on the steps outside of his house. Kidd gave him a quiet nod and then kept walking. He held onto the hat in his hands and realized it wouldn't be so easy to get rid of that. Maybe he'd keep it as a trophy to remember this last adventure by. Last...? Well, was he really already having those sorts of thoughts?

Actually, he'd been thinking about it for a while.

And, when he got home, he felt those thoughts crystallize even more completely. It was becoming a very solid idea in Kidd's mind. He felt numb again but this time it was different from before. It was like his heart had stopped in his chest.

Actually, he wasn't sure that Susal would be home when he got back, so it was a bit of a surprise to see her through the window. If you asked him later he would say that he couldn't even remember what she had been doing. But he more clearly remembered her warm embrace and the joy with which she seized him as he came through the door.
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~* and now I only see your dull imposter ~*
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