"Smoking's bad for you, you know?"
Lily pulled her cigarette out of her mouth and blew out a rolling cloud of acrid mist. She rolled her head to the side to face the boy who'd spoken, bones grinding against bones. She kept meaning to fix her posture. Her neck and back were killing her with how she stood all hunched over, "What's it to you?"
The boy cocked his head and smiled, long black hair falling over his eyes, "Just a concerned classmate. Cigarettes are killer on your lungs."
Lily rolled her eyes and took another drag, "You think I didn't know that? They tell us the same shit every year in health class."
"Probably a good reason for that," the boy said, "They put a lot of good stuff in that class, yeah? Don't text and drive, don't get in cars with strangers, don't do drugs, that kind of thing. Generally good life advice."
Lily sighed. She'd thought she'd found a good spot to smoke without being disturbed. Behind the bleachers on the high school football field was a bit of a stereotypical place for "bad kids" like her to hang out, but it served its purpose well enough. Nobody had found her since the beginning of the school year. Other than this kid.
"Oh my god you're one of those," Lily groaned, "Not gonna tattle on me, are you?"
"Nah," he leaned against one of the bleachers' support posts and gave her a beatific smile, "Was here for something else."
"Uh-huh."
Slatted sunlight filtered in through the gaps in between seats on the bleachers above the two of them. Lily took a few more idle drags from her cigarette. The smoke crawled its way down her throat and her lungs quivered with the heat.
"Eustace Charlemagne Wulfric Lockhart's my name," he boy spoke up to break the silence, smiling and sticking his hand out to shake, "I usually just go by Charlie, though."
"That's one hell of a name."
"I know, right? Some days I wonder if my parents were being deliberately cruel or whether I'd done something to deserve it," Charlie replied, "Probably the latter, if we're being honest."
"Makes sense," Lily sighed again and flopped her hand out for a perfunctory handshake, "Lillian Huang. Just Lily is fine."
"You trying to find a place to hide too?" As much as Charlie had intruded on a place that she'd more or less considered hers at this point, Lily could sympathize with the desire to find someplace to disappear. "Behind the bleachers are as good a place as any."
"Nah, just... taking a look around," Charlie leaned around the bleachers to look at something on the football field. Mildly curious, Lily followed his gaze, trying to figure out what he was seeing. The football team, apparently, running passing drills on the grass.
"Our school's football team is trash if that's what you're looking for," Lily waved her hand to disperse the smoke that she'd exhaled, "The Sharks haven't won a game in years now. Not even a single one. People joke that it's a curse."
"A curse?" Charlie looked back at her. His eyes were an intense shade of light blue. His gaze had an edge to it, sharpened to a point. Lily wasn't in the habit of backing down; she returned his stare with just as much intensity.
"Sure, some star player from a few years ago got killed while driving like an idiot on the way back from a game. Supposed to have laid a curse so that we'd never win a game again. Go Sharks, y'know?" she gave a sardonic reply, still engaged in their impromptu staring contest. Charlie looked away first.
"Alright well, that's all I came to see," Charlie had a particular smile, so wide that it pushed at the corners of his eyes, turning his eyes into little crescent slits, "I'll catch you later, maybe."
"Do you even go to this school?" Lily asked him off-handedly. She'd belatedly realized that she didn't recognize him, and it was halfway through the year already. Pelham Bay High School wasn't that big of a school, so there weren't too many unfamiliar faces at this point.
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"Hm," Charlie pressed a finger into his cheek, "Maybe?"
He walked away. Lily took that as her cue to sit down and continue smoking in peace.
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Charlie walked around the high school's track at a leisurely pace. The football team doing their drills made pleasant background noise as he drifted along. He pulled out his phone, tapped his contact list, and dialed a number.
EVAN COLLIER
+1 206-356-9087
"You find it?" Evan's voice came with a crackle from the other line. No "hello." No pleasantries. Typical Evan.
"Think so," Charlie hummed, narrowing his eyes at the far side of the field, past the football players. Each of them had the school's mascot, a stylized shark, on the back of their jerseys.
A dorsal fin emerged from the grass, as though a shark was somehow swimming through solid earth.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah," Charlie didn't stop walking but kept his eyes glued to the dorsal fin.
The rest of the creature slowly emerged from the ground. A shark's body, but covered in raggedy grey fur, almost like it was wearing a shark costume. Four unnaturally long human legs extended out of the sides of the shark's body along with a thick and veiny pair of human arms. The monster's face was some twist of shark and human. Dark and beady eyes dripped with a steady flow of tears. It stood slightly taller than a person. With its lanky limbs, it pulled itself on top of the football goalposts and surveyed the field below it.
Nobody on the football field noticed the creature, continuing to play as though they weren't being loomed over.
"Well? Can we get an evaluation on it?" A touch of anxiety seeped its way into Evan's voice.
Charlie squinted at the creature.
Shark Mascot Devil — Level 3
"Level three," Charlie said.
"Jesus, can't you just use standard DOA classifications? What's 'level three' supposed to mean in normal-people language?" Charlie could practically hear Evan's eye roll across the phone, "Not everyone is a gaming degenerate, and not everyone has your dumb gaming-based sorcery."
"Man, you're one to talk. I know for a fact you play video games just as much as I do," Charlie flexed his hand, "Figured we would've been working long enough to figure out what my terminology means. Level three means it's chump change. Class E. In normal-people language, that is."
Evan muttered something unintelligible, "Means you can take it out pretty easy, then?"
"Shouldn't be a problem," Charlie picked up a rock off the side of the track. He closed his eyes.
Occult Energy Imbuing Technique — Level 7
A swirl of caustic red energy formed around the rock. The rock was suddenly two or three times as heavy as it had been just a moment before. Runes scrawled their way across the surface, glowing with pulsing force.
As far as Charlie knew, the runes didn't actually mean anything. They were just there for the aesthetics. To make it look cool.
He hefted the rock and closed one eye, taking careful aim at the shark monster. Charlie drew his arm back and threw the rock in a pitcher's throw.
The rock thundered across the football field in a flash of red light. It struck the monster square in the jaw and pierced all the way through, coming out the other side. The monster let out a whimper before falling to the ground. Its corpse began to dissolve into thin grey smoke.
"Bullseye," Charlie said into his phone, "Alright, easy mission. We're done here, yeah?"
"I didn't find anything on my end, so as long as there's nothing left to exorcise in the area around you, then yes."
"Sweet," Charlie hopped over the fence that separated the parking lot from the field, "You think there's a boba place nearby? I've been craving some boba tea recently. Dunno what's gotten into me."
Behind him, three dorsal fins slunk their way out from behind the bleachers.