Silent and still, Bean came out to her front porch. She gathered up a few things and shut off the porch light but a floodlight that was still on in the barn caught her eye. The dark fields were silent and felt vaguely threatening to Bean. So, she stepped back into the house and emerged with the devolution gun, prepared to face the man she thought was just a vagrant. If he was there. Bean stalked towards the barn, devolution gun in hand as shadows loomed all around her.

She reached the barn and noted a hard pool of light from a mounted floodlight loom away into the inky darkness. She hit a metal switch near the barn door and the light snapped off, with darkness quickly swarming in its absence. She briskly walked back towards her house, but slowed, stopped and turned. In the darkness by the barn, there was a crunching and maybe a shape, deep in the dark.

"Hey!" called out Bean. "Who's there?" She leveled the shotgun at the darkness and stepped back. It was a quiet but definite crunch. She could definitely make out a shape. It was a man coming towards her. "Stop right there. Stop!"

Luigi had been unconscious in the ditch behind the field by the waterway and Bean's shouting had awoken him with a start. Yet, he didn't feel like his mind was in his head. He was sweating and pasty, totally disoriented. He knew well enough that something was wrong with him, but he was a God. How could anything hurt him like this? In a flash of panic, he parted the field and saw Bean backing away from a barn, the dark hulking figure of a man pursuing her slowly but steadily. Luigi's hand went to his holster but his gun had fallen out and he scrambled in the ditch for it.

Bean backed up, her devolution gained level, but the main the darkness still came toward her. ""You stop right there, you stop!" she demanded and fire dhe rgun into the air. The man paused but continued toward her. When she backed upa gain, she tripped on a root. From a second story bedroom in the farmhouse, a boy's hand smacked the glass and watched Bean on the ground, fumbling for the gun. She was in trouble. To the boy, the dark man advanced towards her menacingly.

At the last moment, Luigi ran into the light and with a shout, stepped directly between them, raising his Poltergust at the dark man, stopping the being in his tracks. Luigi felt so odd, so broken to be away from the comfort of the ocld waters of the ditch and the waterway. He felt do hesitant being so much closer to the field. It never felt like this coming back from sea.

Luigi had the gun leveld and his face set, but the porch light on the man's face. Yet it was not Waluigi, instead, it was an autistic man in his thirties filthy from walking through the fields. There was a greasy sign around his neck: 'PLEASE HELP ME FOOD $ GOD BLESS YOU". Reading it, Luigi lowered his gun, his face melting.

"Hey, hey, I'm going to get you some food," Bean told the man, but he scampered off into the fields, leaving his sign behind. "Great…" The boy watching from the window receded into the darkness of his bedroom, aware that any possible danger had passed. Bean picke dup the sign and stood up. "You forgot your greasy hobo sign!" With that said, she turned to Luigi. "All right, what are you?" Luigi turned away from her quickly, but he doubled over and crumpled to a heap on the grass. "Hey, look at, hey!" she shouted at him when she approached him. It was no use. She had to drag him onto the porch under the light. "Hey, up here, at the light!" she told him, but there was no response, so she slapped him. Hard. His eyes snapped open and he saw her face. She felt his head, checked his eyes and noted that they were cherry red and veined, swollen beneath the lids.

"My head… splitting apart," he told her, practically totally gone. "Time eventualities, he said…"

"How long since you inhaled?"

"Inhaled?"

"Inhaled, or whatever the kids call it nowadays."

"I don't know."

"Wow," she signed, leaned back on her haunches and looked at him, deep in thought. She wondered what to do as Luigi lay prone, shaking and sweating.

"Thirsty," gasped Luigi. "I can't feel my legs."

"You're withdrawing from a paranormal barbiturate," said Bean. "It's a quick punch but it's this bad a day in, without care you might not make it through the night." She looked at his shoes, beneath the caked mud, they were made of fine leather. Her eyes lingered on his gun and turned cold. She stood quickly without a word and vanished into the house. Luigi lay still, his breath shallow and he turned his head, his mind hazy.

"Thirsty… thirsty," he gasped. Soft footsteps approached and he noticed bare feet padding towards him through the front door. A young boy, about six years old, named Peasley looked Luigi over. His eyes also lingered on the Poltergust but then he knelt and his small hands felt Luigi's seaty face. He pushed a straw to Luigi's face and the kaptain's hands clasped around a plastic cup with a cartoon tiger and he started to drink.

"Peasley!" said Bean with a sharpness in her voice. "Come here, monkey." Without a word, Peasley went back in the house, leaving his cup with Luigi. Bean tried to pick up Peasley, but he defiantly dodged her hands.

"Who's that man?" asked Peasley.

"Just a vagrant, baby."

"No he's not."

"Oh yeah?"

"His shoes are too shiny."

"Well aren't you a smart monkey?"

Without another word, Peasley got into bed and turned to Bean. "Is he sick?" he asked.

"Yup."

"Will he get better?"

"Yup?"

"Promise?"

"Go to sleep," she soflty told him. "Okay. Night, baby boy." She kissed him on the forehead.

"Good night, Bean," he said and she lingered over him for a sad moment and then left.

Across the darkened waterway, the lights of Bean's farm house likely seemed distant and insignificant. Bean rolled up a small stake bed truck up on the soft shoulder. She sat a second and then climbed out, roughly pulling Luigi out of the flatbed and onto the dirt. She tried to avoid looking at him as she closed up the flatbed, but he grabbed at her ankle. She pried his hand off and noticed Peasley's cup in the dirt beside him.

She took the cup with an anger she didn't know she had and strode back to the truck, dropping off Peasley's cup in the passenger seat. She looked in the rear view mirror and realized she was about to leave the man to die. She looked down at Peasley's cup for a long moment and swore at herself. She picked him up and threw him back into the flatbed.

She got out, lit a gas lamp and threaded a hose from a tank of water around the cot she ahd wound up dumping Luigi on. "Drink it," she told him. "Water. Drink it all night. More than you think you want." She move dthe metal bucket next to the cot and adjusted the blanekts she had thrown off. "In the morning, we're going to talk."

The last thing Bean did was handcuff his wrist to the cot and take his gun. On her way out she put it on a bench beside the door and turns out the floodlight.