A Curse Upon Thee 3-10C

…how old is that kid?

He was aiming for sixteen, which sounded about right.

Fifteen was possible, sure, but sixteen seemed to hit the spot a bit better. The bat in his hand definitely seemed like it was school property, the aluminum weapon looking worn in exactly that sort of ‘too many hands have been on me’ type of way that didn’t come with normal use.

The kid stood in front of him in line, Finn looking over the top of his bowl cut as bandage-wrapped fingers adjusted their grip around his bat and fidgeted with the bag on his back.

I get it, man. Almost three years older than him and Finn was already feeling the same sort of itchy boredom, considering the line had barely moved in almost twenty minutes. More than anything, he was starting to get why Devils seemed to like going after municipal buildings so much.

A sigh left him, more eyes in the line and the wider office in general turning back to stare down the blood-red ginger gaijin with hair past his shoulders. Instead of looking anywhere else, Finn kept his eyes straight forward, ignoring the attention aimed at him and also doing his best to ignore both of the flickering fluorescents directly overhead.

Linoleum the color of weak tea stared back at him from underfoot, a laminated sign taped to a support column with four arrows on it — three of them entirely outdated judging by the shadows of tape around it. Somewhere in this office, a photocopier was running and had been running for nearly a whole half-hour nonstop.

…so how many hunters die of boredom before ever even dealing with Devilkind? Finn snorted as he shifted his own weight to the other foot. Gotta be more than zero, right? Hell, he didn’t doubt that at least one had a stroke right here in this room. …shit, what would the Stroke Devil be like?

Shaking his head before he could snort at the word ‘stroke’, Finn thought back to how he even found himself here. A whole half-week ago, Finn had bothered to actually ask Michiko straight up where the line was; specifically what separated him from ‘guy who kills monsters and gets cash’ and started being a real job.

Like a job with taxes.

With a sigh, she had told him all about the ‘exam’ like it was obvious information he was already supposed to know.

Apparently, everyone else did.

The exam to become a ‘registered’ Devil Hunter was apparently something open to any and everyone, from midgets who hadn’t even graduated to old ladies that could hold a knife.

Which was why he was standing in a queue behind a high schooler with a Mizuno. 

And the kid wasn’t alone either.

Sure, there were plenty of grown men in the room, too; more than a couple of guys who looked like they’d worked construction or had a mortgage or been on the wrong end of the law in the last twenty-odd years. But a solid third of the people around Finn were just as old as bat-boy too; some in uniform, some not, but brats all the same.

So they let kids at it too. Nothing too crazy there at least, considering Jujutsu Society had also been full of high-schoolers getting their teeth fed to them by scary things that went bump in the dark. Hell, he’d been one of them too.

Seventeen and shit-scared, and the higher-ups thought that was fine.

Hell, Utahime-sensei told him he’d ‘get over it’.

What is it with older Japanese ladies with scars putting me in situations? If he had a nickel for every time that happened… well, he’d have two whole nickels but it was still kinda weird that it happened twice. Congrats, Japan.

"—eah, no, I’m with the Nail Devil, so it's just, y’know? A finger."

"A whole finger?"

“N-no, I mean, like part of it. Little bit. Like just some scraped skin, y’know?”

"That's cheap, dude."

"It's cheap because it's only the N—"

…huh. The conversations around him were educational all on their own, even as hushed as they were. Contracts were new to him, at least the way this world seemed to have them work with their Devils. Piece of finger to use a power and they’re talking about it like its a phone plan or something.

Not everybody had one of these contracts, either.

He picked that up pretty quick, too, as a good half of the room didn’t seem to have anything like that. No, they seemed to make do with their choice of weapon; whether that was a hatchet, a bat, or an over-sized hammer. It didn’t seem like those without were all that satisfied at their lack of one, though, judging from the dirty looks he could see aimed at those yapping out the ones they had.

So the contract's a nice-to-have. Finn filed that away and settled in for another half-hour of waiting, suddenly thankful Mal wasn’t here.

She’d wanted to come, of course.

More accurately, she’d announced that if he was going to get a license, then obviously, she was going to get one too.

He’d put the kibosh on that one real quick, a firm “You can’t” stopping her in her tracks before she could even get started on buckle one of eighteen.

Mal had, of course, argued herself hoarse but — after he’d let the fae girl burn herself out like grease fire — all Finn had to do was explain that she didn’t even have a semblance of an identity like he did and he wasn’t going to risk her trying to hypnotize her way through the Japanese legal system for something like this.

"I could make them b—"

"Could you? Really?" He cocked his chin down at her hands, the green still a far cry from the once bright toxic green that came with a firestorm above a head. “You could barely glamour yourself into getting a free ice cream last week.”

Which had been, on reflection, a little harsh.

"This is discrimination.” That was — of course — the next layer of argument. "Discrimination against fae!"

Finn had just stared at her until she’d harrumphed, the girl dropping to the floor with the egg canister between her knees and refusing to look his way as she muttered various angry sentences.

She'd still been annoyed when he left.

“Next thirty applicants, move forward!”

Oh, thank God.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The process started with a written portion; obvious enough given it was an exam.

A cheap pencil in hand and a half-inch thick packet in front of him, it only took about six questions for Finn to get in the groove of things.

Two and a half weeks of learning the rules from the job and bothering Tendo-san had given him a good baseline, all of it picked up sideways and in pieces and usually after some property damage came with it.

Now all he had to do was put that all on paper.

Claim disputes…  All about who owned a kill when multiple hunters were on the hunt for the same Devil, how it all came down to who engaged it first, and what “engaged” even meant legally.

If, how, and when a hunter can contest a kill after the fact, what counted as interference in a hunt in the first place, how you were intended to function around Public Safety and… huh.

The words property damage liability stared back at him, leaving Finn with a vague worry that he owed someone more than just a fence.

His eyes slid down, slowing just a little bit as he scanned the words ‘disclosure rules on contracts.’ Half a page, boxed, and with a bolded heading with just one question above that in italics: does the applicant hold an active contract with a Devil?

Finn looked at that box for a while as he thought back to the conversation that led him here in the first place… hm.

– – – – – – – –– – – – – – – –

“So, what’s your contract anyway?”

Finn looked up as Tendo-san broke the silence, chopsticks inches from his lips. “...huh?”

“Your Devil.” The fixer was eating dinner with him and Mal, and hadn’t even bothered glancing his way as she continued with her yakisoba. “I know you have a contract. You ever gonna share which one it is?”

He blinked for one long second, the question rolling around in his head as he tried to find an answer to a question he hadn’t prepped for.

“I’ve watched you make fire, almost… what?” She tipped her chopsticks out of her bowl, both aimed squarely at Finn as Mal continued to swallow a mound of beef. “Six times now? You scream out those names half the time too.”

Finn blinked a second time, slow as before. Shit. 

Something else he kept forgetting, this place was different. Back in the Kyoto he knew, the Japan he knew, a guy throwing fire was just someone with an Innate Technique. Here, it mean someone had made a deal with something.

“Lighter Devil.”

Mal’s head came off her plate, eyebrow raised high.

He didn’t even look her way, attention firmly on the staring contest with Michiko as she stared back for a good two seconds longer. “You… the Lighter Devil.”

“Yeah.”

– – – – – – – –– – – – – – – –

Finn looked down at the box, his pen checking the simple ‘yes’ box and then wrote Lighter Devil in careful kanji. 

What’s next?

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

What came next was the physical portion and…

This is kinda sad.

There was probably a better word for it, maybe insulting even. A covered yard behind the building — cracked concrete, a repainted climbing frame, and all sorts of weights and dummies scattered all over — was where they were brought out to do this test.

Running, climbing, carrying; all sorts of stuff was part of it, up to and including dragging a hundred and something kilos of sandbag in the shape of a person twenty meters as fast as you could.

All that and more while a dozen people with clipboards counted.

It wasn’t a problem, though. Not for Finn, because the problem wasn’t passing.

No, the issue was passing without breaking every single record they had for this test. Short. Short. Shorter steps.

A reasonable jog to start had him clear the whole group by three whole body lengths before he forced himself to pull it back, chopping down his stride enough to let a person or two overtake him and stay ahead of him.

All that and not even a drop of reinforcement; just his own legs and nothing else. A half ton off the ground and I gotta pretend a sandbag is heavy.

That was his life, hosting a dummy while huffing and puffing during an exam that a Grade Four could ace with barely any juryoku running through him. And a Grade Four was pretty much just a regular guy with a gym membership.

By the end of it all, walking back out of the building with the new card turning over and over under his fingers, Finn wasn’t surprised he passed.

What did surprise him was the fact they made him wait another hour in a different room with worse chairs before a woman finally called his name — Makuheiru-san — and handed him a card with his photo and name in katakana next to a number and a stamp.

Licensed.

He grinned.

Finally.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Oi! - 100 GP
Pass the Devil Hunter Examination to become a Licensed Devil Hunter.

ROLL: Torashinai — 200 GP

Fate/Stay Night | Making

This totally ordinary shinai comes with a cute yellow tiger accessory. It is completely normal and any feelings of impending, utter doom that surround the blade and its wielder are simply imaginations on behalf of the viewer. If such an aura did exist, it would be quite effective in unbalancing any opponents the wielder might have. But such an idea is obviously foolish.

Grimoire Points: 100