Hose Kid — v0.2

Current draft

Hose Kid is nine and almost entirely hose. Fifty feet of hunter-green rubber runs from the brass bib to a pistol-grip nozzle braced across his forearm, and the line between records everywhere he has stood. His tee and shorts are plain, dark, and opaque even soaked. Which house the bib belongs to remains deliberately unresolved rather than invented to look complete.

The water does not stop, and that settled everything else for him. He never picks a target; he holds the line and the water takes whoever walks into it, so his afternoon would look the same on an empty street — planted, screaming, certain the next bib is a problem for later. From a lawn away his delight and his courage look identical. He is the easiest kid on 7th Street to soak out.

What changed

• Replaced v0.1's "stage prop" with a nine-year-old White boy, average size.
• Made the hose the silhouette: fifty feet of hunter-green rubber.
• Gave the charter's kink and step-on owners: a six-year-old, a fifteen-year-old.
• Translated the casting sheet's durability shorthand: the easiest kid on the street to soak out.
• Made the run between bibs his one exposure.
• Established delight rather than courage as the reason he stands still, separate from the Super Soaker's and the Wheelchair Catapult's.
• Made the delight unaimed: its object is the water, not a target.
• Rejected a borrowed myth analog; the casting sheet records None.
• Retired v0.1's simulated-or-presentational question.

Why it changed

A tether is a mechanic; it is not yet a kid. v0.1 described fifty feet of Chekhov's gun and never described the boy on the end of it — this revision gives him a body, a route, and a reason to be delighted.

Evidence and playtest marginalia

• docs/seventh-street-charter-v8.md §8: roster table entry, "Tethered to a spigot; the hose is a physical object lying across the map — it kinks, gets stepped on, gets shut off at the spigot. Fifty feet of Chekhov's gun."
• docs/characters/roster-mix-v1.csv row 9: "A gleeful maniac" whose hose "can be kinked by little sibling or stepped on by Big Kid" — rows 12 and 4 make those hands six, that foot fifteen.
• Row 9 budgets "15 ft of movement radius + 20ft of range" against §8's fifty feet; neither is chosen here.
• decisions.md (2026-07-25, Anthony): "refill mechanics are too complex for the game." The ruling names the Soaker's spigot, not this kid.
• §8 also flags him "Prototype early (Stage 1 stretch, §17)," and nothing has been prototyped: sim/ implements a spigot only as the Super Soaker's refill radius (sim/constants.gd), and no hose, kink, or tether. Every number above is a proposal, not a finding.

Rejected or alternate directions

• The spigot as a refill station and the hose as an ammo line.
• A firefighter costume with a numbered rig.
• A quiet, competent kid behind an enormous stream.
• Water pressure as a shared team resource.
• A borrowed myth analog for the sustained stream.
• Fifty feet of hose coiled on his back.
• The kink as slapstick rather than a real interruption.
• The tether as a leash rather than a choice.

Still unresolved

Featured question: does his delight make a reader want to hold the hose, or to take it away and walk him home?

Secondary unknowns:

• his civilian name;
• whose little sibling the six-year-old on the hose is;
• whether the kink, the step-on, and the shutoff are simulated or presentational;
• whether a kid this easy to soak out is fun to command or only to lose;
• whether the refill ruling reaches as far as a permanent tether.