A Curse Upon Thee 3-10A

A thousand yen a page… Finn clicked his tongue, eyes firmly on the old man behind the counter as his machine beeped and whirred. You’re joking.

Unfortunately, the konbini owner didn’t seem to believe in jokes.

He also didn’t believe in fair prices either.

This is freakin’ Suujin. Despite two weeks of paying the same amount, the young man still refused to let it go — mostly because it was highway robbery. I mean, come the hell on. It’s like he thinks this is…

A frown tugged at his lips. I dunno, Shijō-Karasuma or something.

The owner watched as the first sheet curled up off the tray, only bothering to move as it dropped on the floor. Business as usual, I guess. It was things like this that had gotten Finn in the habit of standing there and watching his faxes come out line by line, almost bouncing on his feet like he was a toddler moments away from an ‘accident’.

The sole page was slid his way by old wrinkled hands, the man barely even looking at him with the money already in the till. Finn didn’t even bother looking at the zainichi either, eyes firmly on the address at the top of the single sheet before sliding over to Estimated Index.

The funniest part was almost always the witness statements — not funny ‘haha’ but still — and right next to that was whatever set of numbers that Michiko had bothered to pencil in as the payout. Always a lie, though.

Always.

Because as she was always sure to let him know, it depended entirely on the quality of the corpse when he brought it in. Index 2. Higashiyama. Simple enough, an easy kill and barely a five minute drive at best. 

The witness statements, though… "Large." "Many arms."

Finn looked at them for a second longer before he bit back a snort. Yeah, sure.

By the start of the second week of this job, he’d quickly learnt that ‘large’ pretty much meant nothing. Last time he got a report that said something like that, his reinforcement was already blaring the instant he jumped out of the truck.

It only made sense, right?

Enormous had been the official note on the sheet and Finn had been ready for something worth the title. Maybe a mini-gojira or something.

If not that, then at least another Meathook Devil.

But noooo~oooo, all he found was a weird little thing no bigger than he stood, eleven legs on its creepy little bug body. Eleven.

An odd number — literally — but nothing that was all that scary if you had a bat or something on you. Yes, of course, eleven legs on a person-sized bug was scary coming at you in a stairwell but whatever that Devil had been, it wasn’t fast enough for all the stress. I guess if you sell futons for a living, you’re gonna tell the police it’s an enormous Devil.

Finn snorted. Especially if you don’t really have any reference points.

Still, driving twenty minutes for something he literally exorcised with a non-reinforced slap was in itself a slap.

To his face, especially.

Same deal with the ‘teleporter’ one.

Everybody in that whole shōtengai swore up and down — everyone that hadn’t run screaming for their life at least — that the Devil vanished and appeared, the thing gone and then right on top of them.

All it took was Finn showing up and actually looking at the thing for five seconds to realize the damn Devil wasn’t doing anything close to teleporting. Nah, it was just fast.

Turns out that when scared people see something move in between panicked blinks, they lose track of it and their brains fill in the gap with magic.

Finn shook his head remembering it. Everything’s a Cursed Technique when you’re shit-pants scared.

The bulletproof one, though… that was his favorite just for the jokes.

Some cop had emptied six rounds at a Devil inside a konbini, the panicked officer writing down with a shaky hand that the thing hadn’t done more than flinch at the shots; the bullets doing all of nothing. By the time Finn had shown up after the thing, he’d counted four holes in plaster and two more in ceiling tile.

Six for six. When he told Michiko about how that one went down, the fixer had gone real quiet with just an “...ah.”

Not much else to be said there.

Which was exactly why he’d started focusing less on what the sheets said and more what they meant. Anything with numbers in it was worth the ink it was printed on. Anything described with a comparison — the more specific the better — was definitely closer to right.

He just had to ignore vague basic descriptions in place of everything else.

Dealing with them after the descriptions, though… that was the real dealbreaker there.

Because it was so fucking dumb.

Mostly because most of his options for dealing with Devils involved fire, the fastest and safest option available to him at any given moment. Unfortunately, it was far from the neatest option and that was where the big money sat>

When he dropped a charred corpse at the depot, suddenly clipboard-san was shaking his head and giving him a fraction of the expected payout.

“It’s dead either way, I mean…” That was the argument he gave Tendo-san one day, a yen-filled envelope in his hand far lighter than it should have been.

“Mm…”

“Same outcome, Tendo-san.” He sighed and pocketed his payout. “Thing’s not any deader any other way.”

“No benefit in studying charcoal, McHale-san.” A cigarette in her hand, the fixer blew smoke into the air. “Nothing to process or sell there. All you did was pest control.”

“...that’s still pretty good, though. Right?” His shoulders came up, a lazy shrug going with the words. “Still dead.”

“If all you care about is just killing Devils…” The fixer got an odd look in her eye as she glanced over at him. “Well, you can always work for the government.”

“...nah.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

“Huh?”

It happened again.

Same as the dagger, same as the scroll, the bow, the clothes, ID card that saved his bacon; like every other time, Finn found himself staring at another one of the weird little items that was either a Cursed Tool or a half-step away from one. He’d left all his questions about them behind from the moment he’d woken up with the first one on his chest — the locket he still wore under his shirt — and hadn’t even flinched by the time the sword had shown up, just handing the thing over to Emma.

This… thing was no sword, though.

It definitely wasn’t a locket either.

He turned the thing over one more time, looking at the round surface not much bigger than the size of his palm. This a runic circle or something? It looked like one, the kind of witchy — or is it wicca — thing that looked like a really really well-done dreamcatcher, with all the little sockets set around its face and thin lines running between them like tracks on a circuit board.

“Ooooh!”

All of a sudden, the plate was gone from his hands.

“Hey!” 

Blue eyes snapped up to see Mal standing there over the table, the egg ignored in her room as she stared down at the weird little item. “What is this?”

“That’s what I was trying to figure ou—” He made a grab only for Mal to twist her whole body away, the little thing held up to her face and under the ceiling light. “Mal, I was looking at it.”

“You were looking at it.”

“That’s what I said.”

“Hmm.” She turned it over one more time. “You were doing it wrong, though. Weren’t you?”

The hell is she-? How do you- His eye twitched as Finn stopped for a second, rubbing at it for two longer before he let out a sigh. “Okay, then… fine, what is it?”

“...well, that… I don’t know.”

"So give it—"

Another grab had her dance away with a giggle, her thumb sliding across one of the grooves on the thing. “There is craft in this.” The giggle slid away into another hum, Mal still looking over it with all the attention of a watchmaker. “Whoever… whatever made this worked through the metal, not onto it. That is a difficult thing, very much so…”
And just like that, she was gone; voice a distant mutter as she went off to her room.

Finn stood there in the middle of his own apartment, hands empty and mouth half-open. Alright.

Mal spent the next three days fiddling with the thing, her little experiments mostly consisting of her sitting on the floor with the plate in her lap as she pressed on it in between commercials and after her shows. Green and purple flared on her fingers as she did everything from poking and prodding and — at one point — putting it in her mouth.

By day three, she came at him with something new.

“It fits!”

Finn blinked back at her as she spun around to show him her back, the clips along the edge of it going through fabric and sitting at the small of her spine atop her dress. “Uh…huh.”

As interesting as that was, it was hard not to laugh at the way she kept turning around and around trying to see it over her own shoulder like a dog chasing its tail. Either way, she looked just as happy with herself. “It fits, Finn!”

Good for her.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Michiko was showing up a lot more too.

No more phone call or fax at the start with an envelope at the end. Ever since the depot, she’d been around just whenever because, in her own words, somebody had to make sure he and Mal knew what they were doing.

He didn’t spent too much time wondering why a fixer was following her clients around a prefecture. She knew the game and, honestly, he really didn’t.

More than anything, having someone who could fill in the blanks — and he did mean that literally sometimes — was always something good.

The criticism after the fact, not so much.

"You went through a wall."

“Come on, Tendo-san…” Finn’s shoulders went up and down. "Is it my fault the Devil went through the wall?"

"Yes. Because you put it through the wall."

"Okay, that's…” He'd tipped a hand. "Look, it had to go somewhere."

"It had to go through a noodle shop?"

And all that conversation would continue until the sun went down, the three of them standing at a counter somewhere with Mal ordering more than anyone thought she could eat and still finishing it anyway.

Even Tendo-san was confused, honestly wondering where the girl put it.

The other guy started showing up not too long after that.

The first time Finn had spotted him, the twenty-something with a scar to match his fixer’s standing against the car with his arms crossed, he had to wonder who the hell he was for a long moment.

“Kurose.” Tendo-san had been kind to introduce the both of them with a nod. “McHale-san.”

“Yo, bro!”

The dark-haired man had looked at him for about a second and a half, Michiko needing to nudge him with an elbow before he bothered responding. “...hello.”

…okay. Blue eyes blinked at the brush-off, before Finn glanced over at Tendo-san to ask the obvious. “So, he your assistant or what?”

Michiko was normally a very unflappable woman — not too serious, but a real office lady with how straightforward and focused she was — but that didn’t seem to be the case today as she straightened off the car door like someone had slapped her on the ass. “N-no. He’s my… associate.”

The man in the matching black suit just nodded, Kyoto-ben coating his words thick with an accent that Finn couldn’t miss. “I’m an associate.”

Finn blinked at the both of them, even as Tendo parroted the man.

“He’s an associate.”

“Yeah, no, I heard you.”

He did hear.

He just wasn’t sure why he was supposed to care.

But as the days went along and the Kurose guy kept showing up more and more, Finn found himself with a reason to care.

Namely… this guy’s a jerk.

As far as Finn could tell, he got annoyed at Finn standing within about six feet of him for any length of time. The redhead even bothered spending a whole day trying to work out if he’d ever met the guy, insulted his mother or whatever else, but his brain came up with nothing.

…guy’s probably just an asshole.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

M is for Multi-Million - 200 GP
Make double digit millions of yen.

ROLL: DRESS GRID [MP] VARIATION — 200 GP

Final Fantasy X | Magitek

A template garment grid, from another time, another age – it would seem that this was designed such that anyone could easily come to understand the workings of dress spheres. You could call it a “learner’s garment grid” – as it can teach the abilities of spheres placed inside to whoever wields it.

Naturally, you’ll have to find or craft the spheres by yourself – but it might be handy just to pass this around and help your companions grow their repertoire. That being said, it is quite slow...so it might be best to utilize this as training wheels than a full teaching program.

Grimoire Points: 100