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[shootsharp]

MASK OR MENACE, HEROPA; floating in a most peculiar way.

[ The mood of the street changes when it begins to rain with a cheerful summery patter that is nevertheless relentless enough to cause a stir. Umbrellas bloom and raise. Footsteps quicken, and the open-sky mall clears of people as they change their trajectory for cover.

Except for Teddy Flood.

It's been some minutes. Water gathers between the crevices of the bricked ground he stands on, boots fixed in place, and rain strikes off the wide brim of his hat, finding a path to run and coming down at a intermittent trickle down his back. The flare of his jacket only barely protects where his conspicuous revolver hangs at his hip, because he's making no effort to do so. He's making no effort at all, still as a statue. Not even breathing.

His blue eyes seem both blank and focused on some mysterious point in the air, raised up, roughly towards where the city skyline looms up into the patchwork clouds above. He is midstep, one hand raised, his expression relaxed into inscrutable.

Some pause to take in the sight of him, as if judging whether or not this is some kind of street performance. Someone's shoved a five dollar note into his breast pocket. Others snap pictures.

Teddy doesn't notice, watching the sky. ]

MASK OR MENACE, NETWORK; the stars look very different today.

excuse me i seem to have fallen
off the beaten trail you wouldn't
happen to know which direction
lies sweetwater would you

MASK OR MENACE, HEROPA; planet earth is blue and there's nothing i can do.

[ Metal-shod hooves click and plod on wooden planks as Teddy slowly steers his horse across the boardwalk. He cuts a distinct figure amongst the beach-going Floridians, boots dusty, hat unironic, good form in his saddle and an openly carried gun at his hip. The novelty drags some glances his way, and he tips a nod to those nearer without too much in the way of conviction.

Because he is distracted.

A subtle redistribution of his weight in the saddle is enough to stop his horse from his slow meander to a halt as Teddy looks out over glittering blue ocean. After a moment, he swings his way out of his saddle, touching down with the subtle thump of boots on plank, the jingle-jangle of horse tack. Keeping leather reins wrapped over his knuckles, he moves closer to where wooden railing bars off the drop onto the yellow sand that stretches off into the frothy waves. ]

Comments

i don't see dolores anywhere

[shootsharp]

That Teddy is frozen on the spot does not necessarily mean he isn't a little operational. Muscles and bones hold him upright in place, even if he stands a little slack-jawed and stupid while what constitutes for him as a brain whirs and processes whatever rabbity loop its trapped itself within. But all the while, his senses are exposed, taking in everything, affecting response to nothing.

Not until given righteous cause, of course. Like a man laying his paw on his gun.

More offensive than nose flicks or even that voice, recollection lodged somewhere beneath layers of memory, dormant but present. There's time, anyway, a split second when indignation and realisation calcify into grit, and Teddy's bare hand goes for the gloved one making off with his weapon, coming to life.

His reflexes are good, fluid, accurate. Enough to present a challenge, at least. But his vision is full of darkness, this figure he's contending with more shape and shadow than man.

me neither ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

[blackhat]

A split second’s head start is plenty in quarters this close -- the man in black’s caught fast, stiff through the wrist, grip bit down like a wolf on a throat around Teddy’s piece.

He grunts -- pushes and twists -- slow, testing resistance. Doesn’t take more than an initial failure for him to settle into stalemate low between them. Keeping his claim without wasting more energy than it's worth.

“Whole lotta innocent bystanders out for a walk in the rain today, Teddy. Sidewalks all slick and clean.”

Salt rakes coarse in his appeal -- primed for rubbing in raw wounds at a lazy remove. His eyes are marble grey in the gloom, watchful for familiar stirs of weakness. Minimal effort.

“You wanna hold hands, there’ll be plenty of time for that once I’ve seen what we’re working with.”

[shootsharp]

Teddy breaks that close-quarters stare off first -- a glance that tracks after what the man in black points out, that flicker of uncertainty. These innocent bystanders aren't what he pictures -- gentlemen ducking for cover, women clutching their pinafores -- but are strangers who are content to watch the spectacle of two cowboys in a mud crab lock over a shining revolver. Strange though they are, they're still as the man in black says. Bystanding.

Innocent. And Theodore's not willing to watch anyone die today, not by a bullet gone wild or something more sinister, but nor is he about to give up his weapon.

That grip between them is sure and strong and joined by a second that comes to close its jaws around the gun and twist it from the man in black's grasp, baring his teeth briefly. "You look like a guilty son of a bitch to me," is shoved across the table, but Teddy isn't raising his gun.

[blackhat]

Leather creaks, ligament rolls over bone, and the man in black has to put more work into getting his fingers back unbroken than he did getting ‘em in there in the first place. He raises his hand once he has it free, palm turned out, sore knuckles flexed in plain sight.

“Keep it, then,” he surrenders, and takes a step back. “Won’t be the first blanks you’ve fired.”

A flick of his wrist sees some of the tingling out of his fingertips, brows bunched up in the face of accusation, squint prying for a closer read. “And they sure as hell won’t be the last.”

[shootsharp]

"You want a man's gun," Teddy says, "then you ask politely or first ensure he ain't breathing."

At least, when they put him together, there is a certain lack of cartoon in his manner, unlike some of Teddy's contemporaries. His tone is edged but mild, and he doesn't need to raise his arm with drama of gesture if the man before him required killing. Teddy's gaze briefly takes in where the man in black works the strain out of his hand, and when his gaze returns somewhere beneath the shadowed brim of his hat, there's that faint confusion.

Rain continues at its dull patter. "The hell're you talking about?" he says, even as memories stitch themselves together. A tall and dark figure, standing over Dolores. He'd stopped seeing after he saw her, which is equal measure the affect she has on him as well as the knowledge he shot her villain some several times.

Teddy might not put his faith in a lot of things, but his revolver and the bullets it carries is among them. Now, he only just suppresses the urge to glance down at it.

[blackhat]

“Mmhm.” Passive agreement with that ultimatum sounds a lot like condescension in the drizzle; the man in black sniffs, left hand at his hip.

“Jism,” is the answer, of course, deadpan delivery at Teddy’s expense. There’s no venom in it -- no heat; he could be pointing out something stuck in his perfect robot teeth for all the difference it makes to his engagement. His smile is barely there, crooked, self-satisfaction sodden with resignation. He’s the only one liable to see the real humor.

“It’s a metaphor, Theodore. Don’t worry yourself.”

He drops his right hand back down to his side, unguarded. Apathetic, even.

“Keep inviting people on the street to stop you breathing and you’ll figure it out soon enough.”

[shootsharp]

Teddy has the kind of face that is used to sometimes being accused of stupidity and the many forms such remarks can take. Recognition of inside jokes doesn't change his expression, though his head tips the other way, casting new cinematic hat shadow angles even in the grey haze of rain. He notes the use of his name in measured silence, eyes narrowing, making note of the man in black's dropped hand. Empty.

"We might not be properly introduced, but we ain't strangers," he says, in a way that doesn't suggest that they are therefore friends. "I saw you. I shot you down."

He hasn't put his gun back.

[blackhat]

"For all the good it did either of us."

Here they stand in a world alien to them both, Dolores nowhere to be seen.

"You ever put a knife so deep inside somebody you -- " he gestures, vague, over his own middle, black leather glossy damp, "feel the tip scratch the back of the sternum?"

There’s a speculative edge to his squint, too intent through the piddle. Teddy hasn’t put his gun back.

"You can feel it in your teeth."

[shootsharp]

Teddy's expression is nuanced in its change as the man in black speaks. Gestures. A wintry edge in direct gaze. The man in black's provoked this out of him before; a quiet hostility, a coiling of tension.

Her hands had shivered, her face waxy and pale while vitality leaked out from that puncture driven through her torso. He'd held her the whole ride to the shoreline in spite of the fact that she was as good a rider as he is. Better, even. And in her last moments, she'd said a lot of things he didn't fully comprehend, but stayed quiet all the same, for the sake of every last word.

It was awfully romantic.

There isn't a lot of romance in Teddy's next action, which is the only action one can take with a self-confessed murderer. Gun low, aimed true for the man in black's torso, he fires once, and again. The dispersed crowd and those just getting on with their day flinches and recoils as a unit at the thunder-loud muzzle blast.