A Curse Upon Thee 3-3

“...well, alright.”

With all the crowing and celebration over and done with, now it was time for the messy part of the job. 

Messy-ish, at least.

The actual fight was pretty harsh enough already, but it was dealing with the wet meat smearing thick grease and coagulated blood across the floor of the warehouse that made the whole thing less of a picnic.

“Okay, that's — yeaaaahhh." Finn kicked aside one of Meathook’s ‘kids’, a sigh leaving his lips as he took a look at the hole in his shirt. What had once been a white dress shirt five minutes ago was now mostly a red and brown rag with a collar and his red tie wasn’t doing all that much better. The gash underneath wasn’t that bad, though.

At least, not as bad as it could be.

…huh. A frown crossed his face, the smile he’d just had sliding off. I’m saying that a lot. And it honestly didn’t make him sound anymore optimistic, on top of that. Maybe I’m just trying not to complain.

He clicked his tongue and stared back down, the slow bleed and scab of the hook-wound already less interesting than everything else. He was tough enough to take at least a few hits like that and, given that he had been on a steady heal from the worst of his wounds from weeks ago, he doubted it would last long enough to be an issue. 

Granted, like most everything else recently, Finn really wasn’t sure why his body was working like that but…

Honestly, if it works, it works. And it was working, so he wasn’t going to kick — look? Eh, whatever — kick a gift horse in the mouth.

“These…”

Finn glanced across the warehouse floor, looking over by the pallets to where Mal was still trying to get a good bit of breath into her lungs. “These…”

She sucked in another breath, both hands on her knees below the frills of her skirt. Purple hair half-stuck to her forehead, her shoulders went up and down as if she’d been running for her life rather than throwing green fire blasts while mostly still. “These Devil things…”

“I hear you.” He offered her a smile as mocking as her usual. “Just sound it out, princess.”

Finn was the recipient of a green-gold stink-eye, Mal leaning on that stupid frilly purple umbrella she’d bought like it made her look scarier. If she knew what a middle-finger was, she’d probably have thrown one too.  "These…" 

She finally got one breath in and used it. "These Devils. They never get easier."

A mouthful of blood and spit left his mouth as Finn stepped forward. "I dunno...."

Making his way over to the decapitated Devil, he let out a sigh as he bent at the waist and got a grip on the Meathook’s overbuilt ankle. The thing flayed and wet and thicker around than his own waist, Finn had to plant his boot on the concrete and pull the thing at it twice before it started sliding.

"...it's been pretty easy."

Even as he said that, he had to move with a grunt because half a ton still dragged like half a goddamn ton. A little bit of Cursed Energy flow made the job easier, though and Finn was on the move with the mass of Devil Flesh behind him as he left the head behind.

Eh, whatever. Shrugging the weight, Finn didn’t even blink as blood splattered up against the red leather of his jacket. I’ll come back for it. As much as the Devil corpse was another workout to add to it all, he wasn’t entirely lying though.

It’d been a whole eleven days since he’d been outside a konbini in Fushimi trying, the Stray Dog Devil’s spine in one hand and recently-offered job in the other. Well, the second was metaphorical, but it had tangible benefits all the same. Honestly, he’d been wondering at first if he’d done something against the law and the answer was… yes?

Kinda? Again, there were a lot of rules and laws he hadn’t really had time to look up or really read into. And without wifi, it just made having to find information so much harder. He was pretty sure hunting without a ‘license’ was illegal or something, though.

…Sort of.

At least in the same way that jaywalking was illegal.

Either way, in those eleven days since, he'd gotten a lot better at this.

Sure, this hunt had been a bit chaotic, but the first five he’d taken on had paid out a good four and a half million yen. And with all that sitting in his wallet — okay, that had pretty much eased up a large chunk of his misgivings, so to speak. As long as he could afford new clothes, he could easily handle being splattered and splashed tiwht various hues of blood and gore. 

Really, when even the garbage devils went for three to four hundred thousand yen…

Four hundred thousand… Making his whole month's salary as a Grade Three from just a shitty little devil he could take down with just one punch… man… 

Finn clicked his tongue. How the hell am I supposed to say no to that?

Everything from the Stray Dog Devil to the Splinter Devil and then, well, one time there was an honest-to-God Umbrella Devil and that had been about as scary as a folding chair.

This ugly bastard dragging behind him bult like a silverback had a baby with a hog, on the other hand? He didn’t need to know all the details on Devils and their hierarchy or whatever to figure that a half-ton monster that could actually speak — badly — and make its own minions would be worth more than a pretty penny.

Three… Maybe four times the low end Devils he’d already dragged in. Easy.

With their rent covered, that left a lot of disposable income. 

For both him and Mal.

His boots scraped, Finn tugging hard on the corpse. And that was also good news, because Mal found a store that sold hair ribbons she was in love with, and each one of those cost four thousand yen. “Pretty. Pretty. Pretty easy.”

Another huff sounded out loud as the fairy princess forced herself a bit more upright. "You…"

Umbrella tip planted firmly against the floor and both hands on the handle, Mal propped herself back against the wall. ropped against the wall with the umbrella tip planted on the floor and both hands stacked on the handle. “Speak for yourself.”

Finn paused a moment, slowing his own momentum to blink her way. "I was."

Mal glared back at him, eyes flashing. “You know what I mean!”

“I know—” He grinned at her over the corpse. “That you’re sweating through all that lace, princess.”

"You shut up!” Mal pushed off the beam with another huff, swaying for all of a second as she aimed that umbrella at him. “I don’t sweat!”

I… Finn nodded slow, turning back to the dead weight. I’m not gonna fight that one. 

Turning around, he decided to put his other hand to work, all ten fingers wrapped tight around the ankle as he put a bit more reinforcement into the job. C’mon… He was pretty sure he could have lifted the Meathook Devil over his head if he tried, but dragging dead weight across concrete was another hassle because friction was a bitch and a half. 

Soon enough, about twelve feet of dark red was left behind in a smeared trail, Finn glancing up to see Mal not sweating against the wall. Yeah, I don’t sweat either. 

Fighting back a snort, the redhead shook his head and went backl to dragging.

The girl wasn't wrong to be tired, though.

She had a case and Finn knew that she could plead it if she bothered to. Back in the Enchanted Forest, the atmosphere was practically dripping with energy and, even if it wasn’t of the Cursed kind, Finn could still feel the radioactive tingle of fairy tale magic if he bothered to pay attention to it.

No joke, it was downright everywhere and Mal had admitted as much over a konbini burger a few days back, never thinking twice about it; magic in the ground, in the trees, in the water, whatever, and it was all normal to her. A fae just lived off that like normal because they were tied to the environment and just sat around being topped up with the good stuff without even thinking about it.

This place was a different story, though.

Just nothing for her here, almost bone dry without a bit of magic in the air. It also probably didn’t help that she was stuck in the middle of a city instead of nature, too, but that was more Finn’s guess than her own. 

No excess magic around, though, meant that every time Mal tossed one of those toxic green firebolts, it all came right from her own tank; a tank slow to refill on its own. If she wasn’t a demigod on top of being a fairy, the way she claimed, she probably would have passed out or maybe even shriveled up. 

As it stood, though, she was still only an eighteen-year-old demigod which meant that tank wasn’t even two decades deep and she couldn’t do a damn thing to widen that bottom. 

"Are you going to look at me while I speak, or—"

Finn grunted in her direction. "I'm hauling half a ton of pig, Mal."

"Boku is also very tired."

"Stop saying boku and quit playing with that umbrella."

"It's called a parasol because it has dign~ity. Ohohoho!"

Finn bit back a groan at the fake little laugh that she let out, mouth covered with the back of her hand as his eye twitched.

"Anyway. Can we hurry? My animes are on."

Finn stopped dragging for a second, blue eyes landing on her.

"...your what."

"My animes." She said it slower and clearly on purpose, like he was the idiot here. "If we are not back by—"

He made a noise, shaking his head with it until she stopped talking. "Forget everything else. It's just anime."

"...That is what I said."

"No, it's — there's no… it’s already—" He stopped himself, because he could see where this went and the smile on Mal’s face told him she knew where it was going too. "You know what? Fuck you. Forget it. Animes."

"Thank you."

Crazy. He got the ankle again and started pulling. How the hell did she adapt so fast?

He'd been in Kyoto before and he knew this city. Sure, it was a different version of the city, a good two decades older with half the buildings not built and cellphones that weren’t the size of a shoe, yeah.

But he knew it.

Yet, somehow, Mal Igna, from the medieval murder woods of Not-Narnia, had gotten her head straight in about a week.

They'd both had to change clothes, obviously. 

Walking around in a fur-collared cropped red leather jacket with no shirt and amrored boots had gotten him looks from everyone in Sanjo before some kid came up to him calling him a cosplayer.

As soon as he had the extra money, he had put his fantasy clothes aside in the closet and gone for a more normal bit of red leather over a crisp white dress shirt — unbuttoned of course — and black slacks. He’d heard Devil Hunters were supposed to look professional so Finn had decided to go a little more understated than usual, but the red tie and red dress shoes were just a little hint of style he couldn’t help himself to add. 

Mal, on the other hand, had taken one look at the same problem he’d seen and gone the complete opposite direction. Finn blamed television and her animes, because he saw no other reason why she would go with a black corset layered with purple frills and ribbons with impractical boots to top it off, all buckled up high and tall. 

Not to mention, that stupid damn umbrella.

The very first of those outfits had come out of a shop in Shinkyogoku, costing him almost a fourth of one payout by itself. Gothic lolita.

That’s what the shopkeeper had said, and Mal had clapped her hands together the second she’d seen it and dressed up exactly like that every day, spending his hard-earned yen on pastries and sweets and ribbons and more clothes — an annoying, expensive brat if he’d ever seen one.

Hell, a week back, Finn almost had to tackle her to keep the fairy from trying to hex their fixer because the girl had laughed at her outfit. Past the near-total lack of impulse control, though, it was almost insane how fast she’d gotten her head on straight. The complaints about the cramped living space had stopped pretty quickly once she’d bought her first drink from a vending machine and experienced the joys of air conditioning.

Trains still blew her mind every single time she saw one. "Guess living in a fucked-up fantasy world helps with priorities, huh?"

"What?" Gold-green eyes narrowed his way.

"Nothing." Finn shook his head as he hauled the corpse the last few feet out past the broken loading door. "Just talking out loud."

The truck was outside, half-parked on the curb outside the old warehouse, hazard lights blinking a dull orange under a light drizzle that had just started up. A little white kei flatbed sat there with a dent in the driver's door, the imperfection there when he bought it. 

Three years old and used, wheel wells fighting rust and vinyl stuck with the scent of tobacco and wet dog, it had cost him roughly one low-rate Devil.

He hadn't even wanted to spend the money, honest to God. Dropping that much in one go had almost given him a headache but then he considered the annoyance of trying to drag a bleeding Devil corpse home on a train and that headache had vanished real quick.

Another grunt left him as he hefted the mass up onto his shoulder. “Tailgatetailgatetailgate!”

"It's heavy?" For once, Mal did as she was asked and dropped the tailgate before stepping back like the headless corpse might bite her.

Or at least stain her dress.

"It's half a ton."

"You keep saying things like ton or peanut butter or insurance  like boku knows what that m—"

"It's heavy. It's very heavy." With another grunt, Finn swung the whole mass up onto the flatbed in one go, the suspension whining just a little bit as the rear bumper threatened to dip. "That's what it means."

If I have to kill the Money Devil… Clicking his tongue, Finn went back for the head. I’m gonna feel a little bad about it.

Money aside, though, there was another weird thing about all of this. From the truck to the apartment to the bank card — everything stamped and approved without anyone even looking twice — all of it ran on a plastic card in his pocket that Finn had no memory of getting.

It had just been there one day. Like Slaughter Demon had just been right in front of him in the dirt of the Enchanted Forest. The heart locket, too, and the scroll.

And also that stupid bow he'd handed off to Snow. 

Oddly enough, things just showed up on him and there was nothing he could do to stop it from happening… not that he wanted to, honestly. It was apparently just a fact of his life now, filed under a drawer in his head labeled don't kick the gift horse.

The card said he was a person.

It said he could drive. 

And apparently it was magical enough for him to walk into a used car lot run by a guy missing his pinky finger for him to glance at the English text, look up at Finn’s scarred face, before muttering something about gaijin paperwork and tossing over the keys. The local municipal offices treated it the exact same way, accepting his documentation with nothing more than a nod and a smile.

…weird. But he wasn’t going to push and get himself put in a Japanese prison cell.

On the other end of things, Mal cheated her way through her half with some illusions.

At least, when she had the juice and that wasn’t all that often. 

On top of all that, the girl still couldn't read.

It was more than hilarious to watch her chat with a waitress who complimented her outfit only for her to hand over the menu to Finn and have him order for her.

The head of the Meathook Devil was slapped down on the flatbed next to the body with a wet slap of a noise. Tarp pulled over both head and body, Finn started tying the thing down at the corners, working the rope through the tie-down hooks.

"Right." He slapped the side of the car as he reached for the door handle, keys jingling in his hand after pulling them free from his pocket. “She’s expecting us by five, so if you wanna make your animes, we gotta get going."

"Finn."

"And don't touch the radio this time, I mean it, last time y—"

"Finn."

Something in it made him turn around.

He blinked as he spotted Mal, eyes wide as she backed off two steps from the truck. She held both her hands up in front of her, purple-tinged fire flickering weak around her knuckles like she had gas to spare.

"What…” One eyebrow went high. “What is it?”

Mal pointed with her chin, hands too busy.

Finn followed the motion and—What…

Sitting on the flatbed, right next to the tarp he’d just tied down, in a spot that had been completely empty about nine seconds ago was a cylinder of thick glass. About the length of his forearm, it was wide and banded at the top and bottom with some kind of metal banded at the top and bottom in some dull metal.

And inside of it, resting on a thick and soft cushion was… 

An egg.

Finn blinked at it.

"...the fuck?"