A Live Dog Worth Than a Dead Scar

Lilith and Kid stare blankly at Kid's left arm, well, or lack thereof. Lilith then pulls an arm out of the void using her powers and stares blankly at the arm she accidentally ripped off Kid. 

"I think that's yours" Lilith embarrassed hands her arm to Kid, then concentrates on Kid's left shoulder and realizes that it isn't bleeding.

Kid silently accepted his arm and with a clicking sound and a bit of oil seeping out because of the pressure, the arm was connected again, the metallic noise made Lilith realize why the man wasn't bleeding. Lilith was relatively calm at the sight, but she wasn't prepared for what happened immediately afterward.

"So a mechanical prosthes-" Lilith choked when she finally noticed that the red tattoos on Kid's body were starting to move on their own, like a snake, the tattoos had converged on Kid's prosthesis.

"Hold up, wait a minute... are you a siren? Never heard of a male siren. or maybe I've had too much to drink." Lilith feels clear-headed, despite having over 4 cans of beer.

Kid stays calm again, he was taken by surprise, that's true, but no one is prepared for the unexpected when it comes to Sirens and their powers.

"Maybe..." but confirming Lilith's suspicions, the tattoos begin to glow, even the tattoos that were under the surface of his prosthesis glowed.

"That's so cool, I thought only women could be sirens." Lilith exclaims excitedly, her eyes lock with Kid's and then she closes her eyes and brings her face closer to Kid's.

Lilith then feels something soft touch her mouth, frowning Lilith licks the soft thing, opening her eyes only to see a finger in front of her.

"You stink of alcohol, Lilith." Kid says with a smirk on his face.

"Are you gay?" Lilith retorts frustrated by Kid's action, although she said that about Kid, she starts rubbing her bum against Kid's crotch, waiting for him to react.

"I like to consider myself a level-headed man ahn~" Kid defends himself, but suddenly he lets out a hot sigh and holds Lilith's butt as she starts to rub herself harder.

"That sounds like the excuse a gay person would give" Lilith mutters, pleased to finally see a reaction in the man and feel an erection poking at his ass. But her fun comes to an end when the Kid holds her waist tightly, forcing her to stand still, Lilith could see the red tattoos glowing for a short moment.

She tries to break free of Kid's grip but a sharp pain in her ass stops her.

*PAH!

"Don't test my patience Lilith" Kid spoke with a less than cheerful tone, his frown making it clear that he wasn't comfortable.

"Fine, it's your loss then" Lilith speaks with an annoyed pout, "Anyway, what's your power?"

Kid sighs ally and smiles, then his body flashes, and as if he had 'teleported' he appears on the other side of the room. Lilith slumped on the couch sees all this with wide eyes. "What was that? Is it the same as my PhaseWalk? What's the name of your power?"

"It's called PhaseClock, I can control time" Kid says as he holds out his hand to Lilith, The woman looks confused at the man's hand, Kid rolls his eyes. "My coat, Lilith."

"Ah!" Lilith exclaims in surprise. The woman's tattoos glow and a small portal appears on her side. Placing her hand inside the portal she pulls out Kid's red coat.

"I thought you could only enter an alternative dimension." Kid comments as he puts on his coat, covering his red tattoos much to Lilith's chagrin.

"It's not smart to talk about all your abilities, especially for someone who has been hiding his identity as a siren" Lilith gives the blonde an accusing look.

"I only speak in the presence of my lawyer" Kid raises his hands in surrender.

"Anyway, I was right"

"About what?"

"A man with the power to control the time surely can only be a dirt womanizer, or do you think I didn't see your tattoo glow when I was on top of you?"

"..." Droplets of sweat begin to drip from Kid's forehead. His red tattoos start to glow and Kid suddenly disappears from the scene.

___________________

Feeling the heat and brightness hitting his face Kid woke up dazed, there were some black bags below his eyes, evident he didn't get a good night's sleep, which wasn't a surprise to the blond but he's had worse days.

Getting up Kid takes off his left arm and goes to the shower, the salt cold water falling on his body and invigorating the man. Eating a small breakfast Kid feels ready for another day.

Leaving his temporary dwelling the man goes to search for Lilith but doesn't find the woman there, he goes to the redhead's companions but they aren't in Fyrestone either.

"Hmm... I guess Zed must know where they are" Kid then goes to Zed's house, the man was doing his job as a butcher. Well, that's what Kid saw in the man, Zed was almost always cutting up bodies or dissecting bodies instead of diagnosing the residents and helping with any ailments the poor residents of Fyrestone might have.

"Beautiful day, how's it going Zed?" Waving to the aspiring doctor, Kid approaches the man in the lab coat.

"Hm, day" Zed replies briefly, busy with the corpse in front of him. "What do you need? If it's for your little friends they left a few hours ago."

"Know exactly where they went?" Kid tilts his head, wondering why they went without him.

"They went after a way to get into the mines. Maybe you haven't been told yet but Nine-Toes is just a small-time henchman, the real boss is Sledge, his base is in the abandoned mines" Zed explained without taking his eyes off his work, as he picked up a sinister tool next to him "I sent them to talk to a friend of mine, if there is any way in, Shep Sanders knows about it. He was Dahl's foreman until they pulled out and left him here."

"I see." Kid strokes his chin, "Well, I guess Lilith won't mind if I use her video game"

Before the blond could go do a whole bunch of nothing, Zed with what looked like a wry smile advised. "You know, there's a bounty board right next to my house, you could take a look there."

Kid stops and thinks a bit and ends up going to the reward board, maybe some resident needs help. Although Kid doesn't consider himself a good-hearted person, doing good never hurts anyone.

Checking the board Kid sees a request from T.K Baha, The old man probably needed help with something urgent as he was paying $2,210.

Kid also picked up another mission from a woman named Patricia Tannis, she was paying $5,454 just to find some data records.

"This is Patricia Tannis, calling for anyone with two brain cells to rub together. I hid five of my Data Records in the Arid Badlands, but now I've decided I want them back. Listen to each one, and your ECHO device will record them. Once you have all five recordings, upload them to the bounty board." Pausing the recording left on the bounty board, Kid realized that he had to search the entire Arid Badlands, which intimidated the man, but as he didn't have much to do and the pay was quite large, he accepted.

Getting on his motorcycle, Kid first goes to T.K Baha's house to check on the man. He arrives again at the crossroads leading to the man's house and his eyes see some bandits hiding on top of a hill.

Pulling out his revolver Kid takes aim at them, the thugs seemed to have seen his movements and start flashing their butts at him, mocking the fact that he is trying to hit someone on a speeding motorcycle with their targets several meters away.

A smile of contempt appears on Kid's face and the man just pulls the trigger, 120 years of experience was in that bullet, and to the horror of the snipers the bullet hit one of them, luckily for the hit, bullet bounced off his shield, saving his life.

Kid starts laughing as he sees the bandits start to run away like chickens. One of them tries to fight back but Kid just dries the barrel of his revolver on the man until he is lying on the ground, possibly dead.

Without further hindrance Kid manages to reach old T.K's house, the man was as usual sitting in his chair.

"Yo! I heard you were in need of help" Kid catches the old man's eye with his hands raised, he genuinely didn't like having shotguns pointed at him.

The old man recognizes Kid's voice and speaks cheerfully "Glad you could stop by! I haven't gotten any visitors since my wife died. I think you're actually my best friend! Well, friend, I've got another job for someone with your talents."

"I used to be a go-getter like you... till a skag named Scar bit my leg off. I stabbed him in the eye, but it didn't kill him! I had another go after Dr. Zed whipped up a replacement leg, but Scar got that one, too! Pulled the thing clean off, and I was barely able to drag myself home. Say, do you mind getting my leg back from Scar? If you kill him while you're at it, I got a special gift for you!" T.K Baha swings his amputated leg in front of Kid to prove what he is saying.

Kid whistles as he sees the damage that has been done "I could say that I know how you feel, but I can't tell you exactly what it's like to have a limb torn off, My arm off when I was still a baby, apparently my arm had grown inside my sister. so, it had to be amputated. "

"Damn, that's a story to tell, and how's your sister?"

"Dead"

"Oh!"

"Anyway, before I forget. I'll only survive the winter if I can plant my crops soon enough, but I'm out of Bladeflower Seeds. I haven't been able to restock since I closed up Skag Gully. I used to get my seeds from the caves there while I was hunting skag. Their vomit must make for amazing fertilizer. Blasted smelly piss mongers apparently are good for something. If you're willing to risk your life and personal hygiene to give a blind man a hand, I'll reward you."

Hearing T.K's last request, the blond thought it was a bad idea to come here, for the few times he faced skags, those things looked like they shit out of their mouth for how stinky their vomit was, and here is T.K asking him to catch that disgusting thing. "Do you at least have some equipment I can use to catch their vomit? Or are you seriously thinking of making me catch it with my bare hands?"

"Sure I have, here, take these things here." T.K gives a small shovel along with a plastic bag to Kid, and the blond just stares in a daze. Resigned Kid just walks over to Skag Gully again.

...

Arriving at the site Kid gets off his bike and leaves it near the entrance to the site, following the path on foot, Kid first goes to the skag who had stolen T.K.'s prosthesis.

*Groan!!! *Bang... *Bang *Bang

Pointing his gun backward, Kid fires without seeing and hits three skags who try to jump on him. The bodies of the skags fall to the ground with a thud and no longer move, Kid only glances at the bodies with his currently glowing eyes.

Kid moves forward until he sees a small ECHO recorder on a table, the ECHO is very small. Kid had already read the ECHO manual and knew that this was a recorder, they are used to record messages and store the audio, the recorders could later be played back by other people by putting it in their ECHO device.

Excited, Kid takes the recorder puts it on his ECHO and presses play.

["%7¨&$*?°7%&(¨$#=7&++_" ???]

Kid quickly pauses the recording and throws it away, it had probably been corrupted or caught water. Putting this to the back of his mind, Kid makes his way to the peak of Skag Gully, T.K said that was where he had faced the fearsome Scar.

After killing several skags along the way, Kid finally makes it to the top of the site, he spots a giant skag lying down, and seeing no other skags nearby Kid could only assume this was Scar.

Kid grabs a fragmentation grenade from his ECHO. Pulling the pin, Kid launches them into the air. The grenade landed close to Scar, and the poor animal is woken up with a sharp pain as one of its legs is evaporated with the blast.

Kid is impressed with the toughness of the animal's flesh, being hit by a fragmentation grenade was no joke. Not wanting the animal to give him too much trouble Kid pulls out another grenade and throws it at the roaring skag, the grenade lands inside the animal's mouth and causes it to give a small scream before falling to the ground.

"Easy, maybe T.K was just really unlucky to face something like that or didn't have any grenades." Kid comments as he sees the fallen body of the beast, approaching Kid checks the scene and finds a prosthetic foot on the ground, kneeling down Kid picks up the prosthetic but covers his nose as he smells the stinky odor.

Suddenly a hard impact throws Kid rolling across the floor, Luckily his shield had protected Kid's body and he suffered no injuries. Rising to his feet and brushing the sand off his clothes Kid looks down at his assailant, only to see Scar still alive.

[Shield: |0%| DR: |1.7s|]

"Hard to fall? Bad luck Scar, I have another grenade with me." Pulling the pin on his last grenade Kid waits 4 seconds before throwing, The grenade lands near the limp animal, Scar tries to run away but receives another wound, having his stomach explode, and his entrails begin to fall to the ground.

Kid pulls out his Sudden Passion and takes a few shots at the animal's head, wanting to put Scar out of his misery.

"Grr!"

[BI: |86%| Condition: bleeding - poisoned - sick - dying]

Kid grunted as he felt his back being hurt, rolling away Kid turns around and sees a skag with its claws dripping blood.

*Bang!

The animal had its head blown off before it could do anything else, unfortunately, it seemed there wasn't just him and several skags came out of holes in the walls. In a few seconds, Kid was facing over a dozen skags.

Kid's eyes sweep over Scar but it seems the animal has finally died, turning his eyes back to the various skags trying to surround him, Kid looks down at T.K's prosthetic in his hand and goes into deep thought. The blond then put into practice the best tactic against large crowds of enemies...

He ran.