Challenge #01032-B300: Cursed Blessing
"Maybe we all have little magics, the kind that you don’t realize you have. Just tiny things that make your life slightly better but are completely unnoticed on the outside."
http://akai-kaede.tumblr.com/post/132171243204 -- Anon Guest
They call it the Quirk. It's nothing big. Sometimes, people notice. Sometimes, it remains ignored by all but that special someone who loves everything about you.
And it's only recently that it's become common knowledge. My co-worker at the Bargain Barn? Freaking hated having to make coffee. They despised coffee to the point of wanting it out of reality altogether, but they made the best brew ever.
Everyone agreed. Nobody could make the break room coffee machine sit up and beg like Donovan. And yet, all they ever did was the same shit in the instructions. Insert puck, activate the jug, set it and forget it.
Best goddamn coffee I ever tasted.
Friend of mine on the interwebs does perfect first drafts. I shit you not. It's like the Muses all whisper in their ear and they just type whatever they hear. It's magic. But it's low-class magic.
Some people have taken to using it for profit. My bad. I was in on it.
Me? I find things.
It's a knack, okay? A Quirk. I set my mind to find something, and I do. It's not always quick. Shit, one time I chased down a song for ten freaking years. Then some asshole invents Shazam one fucking day too late.
Thanks, guy. You could have made my life easier back when. Oh well.
Anyway, I can only find small things. My upmost weight limit is one kilo. So, no. I can not find Jimmy Hoffa. Not all at once, anyway.
I teamed up with a few people, thanks to my blog, Weird Like Me. Don't google it. Someone else has taken over the URL. There's a synesthete who can instantly smell a lie. A person who always gets the green lights when they need them. A dude who can sound like anyone on the planet so much they can fool computers. And so on.
We were poor. We were pissed off. We had crippling student loans.
And we robbed a bank. Sort of.
Well. I found a way to take the money without involving any loss of life or an alarm or anything for at least two days. Public holidays. Gotta love them.
And now the government is testing everyone for the Quirk. It's amazing how fast they figured it out. Especially figuring out how we all work.
And they're really good at working out how to use the Quirks to an advantage. Me and my team? Um. Well. We don't go to prison if we co-operate and help them. I'm one of the keystones, because of my Finding. I Find so often than I'm lost. They literally have a keeper on my ass to make sure I don't go foggy and wander off.
It's kind of hellish. I wish I'd never tried to Find a way to help me and my friends. Ex-friends.
If they take you and test you for the Quirk? Try and be unreliable as fuck. Trust me. You'll thank me later.
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