A Curse Upon Thee 2-40

THEN

“Chad!”

The smell of rubber soles on sun-baked asphalt was thick in the air, a seven-year old on the curb with summer sweat plastering blond hair to his forehead as he bawled his eyes out.

Tears mixed with sweat, both cutting tracks through the dust on his face. Blue t-shirt bunched up in one hand, he wiped at his face with it while the other hovered over the fresh scrape across his knee.

Blood welled up against little bits of gravel as another pair of sneakers jumped in front of the crying boy. Red soles stood across blue, a pair of scuffed knees right above them; the boy they belonged to with hair as red as his tee — both bright as a road flare. “Quit cryin’, Chad! You’re fine.”

“Fine?” If any second-grader could sound personally insuslted, this one managed it. “I’m bleeding!”

“...so?”

The redhead crouched low, elbows on his own bandaged knees as he took in the injury like he knew anything about first aid. “That’s hardly any.”

“It is too!” The insult only got deeper. “It is that much!”

“You got loads more inside you!”

Chad only stared, shock overriding offense for a second before he started bawling harder.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” The redhead rolled his eyes as best as he could, sighing loud as one palm slapped the pavement. A rough drag against it forced a scrape, skin tearing open.

“See?”

Chad stopped his sobbing so suddenly his throat fought him, a hiccup finding its way free as he stared at the red smear shining across the other boy’s palm. “What’d you go and do that for?!”

A grin answered him first before words, a tooth missing from that wide smile. “Now we’re both bleedin’!”

“...that’s stupid!” A finger pointed out from Chad, right at the other boy’s face. “That’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done!”

“No, it’s not!”

“Yes, it is!” Chad kept pointing. “You’re stupid!”

“I’m not!”

“You absolutely are!”

Another finger pointed right back at the blond boy. “Well, you’re a big baby!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

Chad was the one who threw the first punch.

The other boy threw the last.

By the end of another scuffle across asphalt, both boys had collected several more scrapes to share among them, as well as enough blood and dirt to ruin both their clothes. Despite it, Chad was barely even sniffing as the other boy grinned and wiped his bloody hand down the side of his shorts.

“I always win!” With a laugh, he stood up and held that same hand out. “C’mon, let’s go get cleaned up.”

Blue eyes narrowed at the hand. “Do you have Purell?”

“…Chad.”

“What?”

“Shut up.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

NOW

“...shut… shut up, Chad?”

Blue eyes slowly blinked open onto an unfamiliar sky, a smear of dark gray up above and nothing not worth looking at. Chad… His skull pounded, a pulse big and slow behind his eyes taking up all the room for worthwhile thoughts and thumping along with the thing in his chest.

It wasn’t a headache. “...ngghhh.”

A headache would have been a blessing almost.

Chad?

The name rattled around in there, bouncing in the space between pulses as his brain tried to get itself going again. Nothing came back as it echoed in the empty spaces, Finn blinking slow again as he tried to put the name where it belonged. …who the hell is Chad?

He took a breath and regretted it almost immediately as his ribs made their complaint heard. Fu-

Soaked bandages pulled tight over his chest, pressed up against places that had been closed and weren’t exactly that anymore; gauze more sponge than anything as it was soaked through in more ways than one.

Finn sucked in a tight hiss of air through gritted teeth, fighting past the pain as he made to roll over. The hell? It only took him another second of that attempt to realize something was pressed up against his chest. 

It wasn’t the baked clay of the once-lake and it definitely wasn’t Storybrooke grass.

No, this was something soft.

Something that shifted against his weight.

Something breathing.

Finn shoved himself backward, hands pushing off wet leather as it found hard ground beneath him. Scrambling for safety, his cursed energy answered with barely a sputter — pathetic and pointless like a dead lighter clicking and failing to catch — as he pushed against pavement like a crab, armored boots screeching against the ground.

For a couple good seconds, all he knew was panic.

Then his back found a wall and he stopped, breathing slowed down to something normal as he half-slumped against something wet and solid; smear slowly blinking out of his eyes.

Mal…

Mal Igna was splayed out on the asphalt a good six feet away where he’d left her, out cold and unresponsive. The perfect little fairy looked like she’d been through a car wash, that purple leather dripped with water and mud and one boot twisted under the other leg at an angle he knew would hurt whenever she woke up. Hair pasted flat to her face, that sick green glow that had been on her hands was nowhere to be seen as her chest rose slowly.

And fell.

And rose again.

…alive. She’s alive. Finn slumped himself fully against the wall at his back, spitting a mouthful of something into the gutter that was more blood than spit and tasted closer to vomit than either of the two. Great, I broke her damn fall.

And, judging by the crick in his neck and twinge in his back, he was suffering for that.

A hand dragged down his face, Finn wincing again as he stopped at his nose. Another swipe and his palm came away with a mass of red that was already half-dry in his hand but still spongy to the touch. …ewww. 

He wiped his hand against the ground, the feel of pavement grit on his palm oddly familiar. Finn slowed down, blinking at his blood-streaked palm, a question fighting its way past the fog.

The haze in his head swallowed it back up as a cough burst out of him, airways suddenly free from the mass of blood stopping up his nose. Jeeus…

Thick, industrial, and familiar, the smell rushed up his nostrils; exhaust and cigarette smoke sat atop hot grease and, somewhere not too far, the sweet scent of soy sauce hitting a screaming-hot pan made itself known as his stomach cramped up.

Oh, come on. Finn fought off a groan as rain trickled down, sheet metal ticking off-beat as the drops hit it somewhere over his head.

It was one thing to be half-dead in an alley.

Half-dead and hungry was literally insult to injury if he’d ever heard it.

One arm braced around his ruined ribs, the redhead pushed himself higher up the wall, fingers slipping over tiny wet tiles — small, square and cream-colored. Half of them were an ugly yellowed tint from being right undeneath a vent that had breathed the worst onto them for who knew how long.
Finn ignored the feel of them under his fingers as he stared around him, a shutter streaked with a deep orange rust as it sat pulled low to the ground — the whole surface plastered with peeling and curled notices, each one faded and damp. Somebody’s bicycle leaned crooked against it, a second further along the wall and chained to a drainpipe with blue plastic bear crates stacked four high not too far from it.

A strip of fluorescent flickered above a dinky white box, a vending machine minding its business as it hummed to itself. Rows of cans shone behind little windows of plastic, some of them with price tages Finn could make out without having to look too hard. 

Hot coffee, cold coffee, teas he didn’t know the brand of but he already knew tasted like grass or ass.

110円. Coins only. Money… Finn fought the urge to twitch as he stared at the notation. No, can’t be. That's just a currency thing. Lots of currencies. 

The lies were as loud as he could tell himself but it didn’t do a thing to make them any more believable. Could be anywhere.

He stood there a few seconds longer, the rainwater running off his hair and dripping down the end of his nose. Okay…  It only took him another half second of wetness more before he turned his back on the unconscious fairy girl and started limping for the mouth of the alley. Okay.

Body protesting as he held to the wall for support, he kept moving forward as his ears slowly pushed past the water clogging them up; sounds of the city opening up around him.

The second he breached the end of the alley, a dark suit brushed right past him — a clear umbrella above his head and a leather briefcase under one arm. The man’s eyes came off the pavement and landed on Finn, his pace picking up just a bit without his face ever changing one bit.

Finn’s eyes fell down to himself, shredded and bloody bandages over no shirt staring back at him. …yeah, fair. A woman rushed by on a bike, one hand on the bar and grocery bags in the front basket as she threaded through the drizzle.

Buildings crowded in as Finn blinked up at them. Wha…

Not tall exactly, but stacked even still — narrow spaces jammed shoulder to shoulder, three and four floors high with each floor wearing its own sign as each of them were nailed up the side of the wall. Sagging cables strung themselves between everything, each one sighing under their own weight as all of it pushed his attention and head higher and higher.

Finn only dropped his head as a boxy little white van rolled past the mouth of the alley, the little shoebox of a vehicle beeping as it chugged down the road.
Lights from all those signs above him bled their way into oily puddles around his boots, green and white and red forming a rainbow in all the slick.

焼肉.

Finn squinted through the drizzle, one lightbox hanging almost sideways over the street.

Yakiniku.

His mouth was already open before his eyes slid down to the next one.

木屋町.

Kiya…machi.

Kiyamachi.

The rain kept ticking on the metal behind him as somewhere down the street a party of people was laughing about something, three or four people at once, over the sound of a door opening and shutting.

"...oh, shit."

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Kankōkyaku – 200 GP
Travel to a Japan you’ve never been to.

ROLL: Basic Magecraft - Gradation Air – 100 GP
Tsukihime | Making
The standard four practices of Magecraft: Reinforcement,Gradation Air, Hypnosis and Formalcraft. This is the foundation of the modern systems used by Magi in this day and age. You do not start with any of these - The Mage’s Association is largely uninvolved with events in Misaki, and Atlas is more concerned with Alchemy and Mystic Codes than the modern Magecraft systems. You must purchase each one for 100 points, which makes you adept in thatparticular field - not total mastery, but enough to be a threat against something unprepared for it. Gradation Air is able to create physical objects with magical energy, though these tend to be fragile and extremely temporary.

Grimoire Points: 500