The shove put Fin face down in the runoff behind the market stalls.
The muck took him to the ears while three boys he grew up with laughed themselves hoarse.
’Ugh, these three, honestly,’ he thought, spitting runoff off his lips before it found his mouth. The day started at four in the morning, but the day always had to end with him face first in the dirt.
The one who shoved him stood over him, thumbing a trainee pin on his chest that arrived in the mail with an E-rank letter this spring.
The three comedians overhead caught rank letters too, two E-ranks and a D between them. He taught two of them to ride bikes once, back when nobody had a rank to hide behind.
"Look at that, he’s staying down," their boss said, making the other two lose it with laughing.
"Get up loser, we’re being nice," one of them called, but nobody meant a word of it.
’Pfft, fair world huh,’ he thought, pushing onto his elbows while the runoff crawled down his collar. Hunters said everyone got a chance, but he’d been keeping score since he was fifteen.
Four years ago his parents died, leaving him a little sister and a rent book.
The packing line at the food plant kept them both fed while keeping his hands cracked open in exchange.
Twelve hours of that line ended an hour ago, and the walk home was supposed to be simple alone time.
’Fairness is a bedtime story the strong tell their kids,’ he thought.
He thought about swinging at an E-rank while getting his knees under him, but even he wasn’t that dumb. A normal guy trying to take on a hunter was like trying to fight a truck barehanded.
Their laughter followed him the length of the market while he put one foot in front of the other.
Home was forty minutes east through streets that ran on one word, power.
A screen above the pharmacy looped raid highlights, an S-rank team carving a boss open while an anchor screamed.
A bounty ticker scrolled under the clip, making him think about numbers without meaning to.
’Two hundred grand a head split six ways, damn, hunters sure are rich,’ he thought, walking on before dreaming of a dream long gone.
The anchor cut from the raid to gossip about an S-rank dating somebody famous this month.
Two streets later a gate plaza sat fenced in guild banners, hunters in matched jackets signing things through the mesh.
Kids filled a corner lot playing hunters and monsters, and every kid on the lot fought to be the hunter. The game came with rank letters, F to SSS, and not one kid out there would settle for less than an S.
He gave them the whole sidewalk while one little monster took the loss personally.
Above the talent sat the sponsors, or so every channel swore between raids.
Sponsors were gods who picked a hunter they liked and lent power at a price, and every name in the top hundred carried one.
’My whole life watching those channels, and not one god has ever returned my calls,’ he thought, sighing.
An awakening clinic ad washed the next corner gold, and he passed under it without lifting his head. He tested at fourteen, nothing happened, and the case stayed closed since.
He cut down the shortcut behind the loading docks with tonight’s plans playing in his mind.
’I need to make dinner, then help Jolly with her homework and hopefully get some sleep for once.’
His shortcut was always empty at this hour, just him and the loading docks.
Then light spilled out of a blue tear that opened at the end of the alley.
’Crap, is that what I think it is?’ He thought, stepping back as dread washed over his chest.
Screaming started on the next street, then got closer with every second. People appeared at the mouth of the alley running for their lives, and one look at their faces told him everything.
’Run you idiot, run,’ he thought, his legs finally listening.
He sprinted with the crowd, but halfway down the block, one thought cut through the panic. Jolly’s school route went straight through this district.
He stopped and turned around.
He needed to check if the alley behind him was empty and make sure those monsters weren’t heading toward her school.
It was the dumbest decision of his life.
The monster stepping out of the blue light was an orc, two meters of green muscle, tusks jutting from its jaw and crude plate strapped over its chest.
An E-rank monster, one that needed five rookies to take it down, and he was just a normal guy with cracked knuckles.
’Stay calm, it hasn’t seen me yet,’ he thought, pressing flat against the wall. ’It will pass, just stay still and...’
The monster stopped mid-stride.
Its head swiveled toward him with a wet click of vertebrae, yellow eyes fixing onto his face.
He stopped breathing.
The cleaver came without warning, swinging in a wide brutal chop that caught him across the ribs.
The impact smashed him into the bricks, snapping bones and driving all the breath from his lungs.
Warm blood pooled in his mouth before he could even register the agony tearing through his torso.
The orc leaned in close, yellow tusks dripping spit onto his collar, grinding the jagged blade deeper into his flesh.
He slumped forward against the brute, his vision swimming in red while the world narrowed down to his failing heartbeat.
’Is this it?’ He thought, his fingers going limp against the creature’s thick wrist. ’I haven’t even cleared the rent book yet...’
Rage came late, but when it arrived it brought a whole list of names.
The orc first, then those three idiots from the market, then every famous hunter whose clips played on giant screens while districts like his bled in silence.
The world spent his whole life preaching fairness while grinding his face into the dirt, and tonight the dirt finally took him.
Underneath all that anger, buried under the blood and cursing, one person kept his mind from going numb.
Jolly.
She was only twelve years old, still stuck at her after-school class while monsters poured out of an open gate.
Who was going to walk her out of that district? Who was going to tell her why her big brother never came home?
’I just wanted to protect my little sister, was that really too much to ask?’
His vision went dark at the edges, the cold crawling in from the wound and taking the alley apart piece by piece.
At the very bottom of the dark, something reached in.
A woman’s voice drifted through the void, sounding warm and amused, like someone watching an entertaining show from the front row.
"You cursed quite a lot for a dying man, little spark," the voice said, way too pleased with itself.
"A man dying in pain and only one thought on his mind, his little sister. That is something rare."
He couldn’t have answered if he wanted to, floating in the dark without a tongue or teeth.
"I’ve been looking for a spark, but every promising one was taken already. Well, almost every one at least."
"So, do you want to make a deal, young soul?"