If Magic Cheats, So Can I (vs. Dom and Sicko)

[David Hunter]

It is a nice, clear evening underneath the lovely London sky. A house, sequestered in between many like it, sits still. With only the cool breeze of spring blowing through the early morning air—at least 2 AM if our compatriot’s phone is to be believed—the streets are alight with many a street posts.

With his opportunity to ‘trip a little light’ outdated and no longer relevant, David Hunter finishes picking the lock on this safe, two-story, white vinyl home. With the lock no longer an issue, David enters quickly. He shuts the door and locks it back up, just as a flashlight crosses the door from the outside.

Say what you will about lamplighters being out of fashion, the cops certainly aren’t.

The lights disappears just as it came.

After exhaling a near-silent breath, David begins to tip-toe across the hall of the downstairs area. Creeping past the parlor to his left, he immediately ascends a set of stairs. He attempts to make as little noise as possible, something proven nigh impossible given his poor choice of converse shoes and blue denim jeans. At least his black shirt with a sword on it isn’t that out of place.

Once the stairs are ascended and David is at the top, he approaches a nearby bedroom door. It’s closed. Because of course it is. Apparently leaving it open isn’t a common thing and David is just weird.

Perfect.

There’s no struggle at all as David opens the door. Lying in a bed, breathing in and out, is the owner of this lovely abode. Her face is turned towards a window, emitting moonlight into the room. Next to the bed, leaning against a wooden nightstand, is his target. David leaves the door open just a crack. He reaches into his right jeans pocket, pulling out a roll of duct tape.

He tip-toes closer to his target—a mere old-school umbrella. More than likely fashioned long before London became its own city, it is not the umbrella itself that is worth kidnapping.

Nay, it is the entity of the umbrella.

Or more specifically, who makes said umbrella do the voodoo it do.

With one swoop of his left hand, David grips the top of the umbrella at its handle. Immediately, a muffled scream can be heard. David pays it no mind, that heartless bastard.

------------------------------------------------------------

Now down the stairs in the hall of this home, the muffling can still be heard. The umbrella, however, now has duct tape wrapped around it, from top to bottom, left to right, from its handle to its tip.

Emitting a slow sigh, David approaches the front door.

Too bad things aren’t as simple as kidnapping an inanimate object that can talk.

The lights in the parlor come on.

David immediately takes the pistol out of his left jeans pocket, pointing it at the woman.

He sees it is a woman of probably 30 or so dressed in a white-faux fur robe. It is covering a bright blue nightgown that falls to the matching pair of white-faux fur slippers.

After seeing who it is, David puts the gun away.

The two remain staring at each other, neither deciding to make a move.

Seriously, there’s like a solid minute before David shrugs and heads to the door.

It is then she speaks.

“Hello David,” the woman says.

David immediately returns to the parlor entranceway. He puts the pistol back in its pocket, spreading his arms wide.

“Mary Poppins!” David exclaims in a poor attempt at a Cockney accent.

The woman—May Poppins apparently—rolls her eyes, a teacup and tea tray now in her hands.

“Honestly, David. Why do all of the Americans I work with introduce themselves with that putrid attempt of an impersonation? Bert was not nearly as bad as Mr. Van Dyke would have led you all to believe,” she says.

Her posh, fair and firm British accent rings through the parlor.

David’s response is to shrug.

“Apologies Miss Poppins,” he says, the accent dropping quickly. “It’s a force of habit more than anything else.”

“Yes, well,” she says, waving it off with her right hand.

She takes a sip of the tea, which David takes advantage of.

“Well, it was nice to see you again Miss P, but I’m gonna split!” he rushes out.

Just as he grips the knob of the front door, he disappears in a cacophony of sparkles. He reappears a second later sitting in the parlor, right in front of Mary.

David holds onto the duct-taped umbrella tighter, it no longer screeching for help, more so in pain than distress.

David shakes his head, smiling despite his unfortunate luck. Which really sucks, now that I think more on it.

“Please, stay focused, Josh,” Mary chastises.

Apologies, Miss Poppins.

“Speaking of focus, I believe I told you to refer to me as Miss Poppins?” Mary asks, directing her attention to David.

“Really? Was that before or after you left me when I started hanging out with Wuya?” David asks.

“Pish-posh, I wouldn’t call what she does ‘hanging out.’ If I was being honest, it’s more akin to ‘hanging on’,” Mary says.

“That's a nice way of saying molesting. You’re not wrong, however. Point still stands though,” David.

“David, I was brought in as a favor to your father following your step-mother’s death. I was under the impression you needed guidance, and, given how you ended up both then and now, suffice to say I wasn’t wrong. Again,” Mary.

“Hey, just because my dad wanted something doesn’t mean I did. Besides, as fun as your ‘lessons’ were, your nannying could have used some work.”

Mary’s eyes narrow, because obviously, why wouldn’t they?

“Am I being led to believe that you learned nothing whilst you were under my care?” she asks.

“That is what I’m leading you to believe, yes. Full offense, Miss Poppins, but as fun as two years could possibly be, spending them under the pretense of my father’s adventures—especially given my own disdain for them—wasn’t the best. I never saw him because of them, why the hell would I care about spending time with them?”

Mary releases a noise from her closed mouth. Her eyes remain narrowed.

She takes another sip of tea, politely and without noise, because she’s polite and demure and not rude like some people.

When she is done, she places the tea back on the tea plate before setting it on the table in front of her.

“Whether or not my abilities are qualified or not is far from what we’re here to discuss,” she says.

“Of course not, that’d mean somebody would actually get one over on you. Can’t have that,” David retorts.

“You certainly have more gumption than you used to,” Mary.

“Yeah, well, being molested for two years, being forced into the Game against your will, living a life under your father’s falcon's eye, having what was apparently a porcupine alien as a best friend—who knew, and being under the employ of an evil overlord…lizard thing will do that to you,” David.

“We’ll have to catch up another time. Nevertheless, might I ascertain as to why you have Henry taped up and in your grasp?” Mary.

As if called, the umbrella becomes to make some more noise of discomfort.

“Oh, yeah, that. Well, if you must know, my boss wants it for a job. Mostly for trade. Given your position in the Magical Dimension and your position here in the Prime Dimension, he figured making a trade for Henry for what he really wants would be a good idea. Couldn’t tell you why, I’m just getting paid for it,” David says.

“And what would lead you to believe I will simply allow you to do this?” Mary asks.

A dainty, well-trimmed right eyebrow rises up in rebellion.

David shrugs, taking out the pistol from his left pocket. Because I guess he doesn’t care about manners or politeness or not threatening Mary fricken Poppins.

“Quite frankly, you can’t really stop me. Your bit of magic there to teleport me here took more out of you than you want me to believe. Not to mention that you really shouldn’t be using it while here anyway. Ironic, actually. The Magical Dimension puts you at such a high pedestal, yet its biggest influence has placed you here, as an ambassador. A throwaway role merely to keep you out of his way. Sucks, doesn’t it?”

“It is not ideal, no,” Mary says.

“No, it’s not. Nonetheless, you can't stop me without using more magic. This would put you at risk of being caught by the Council or being weakened further to allow me victory. You’re the smartest person I know, Miss Poppins. You’re well aware of how fucked you are.”

“Language,” Mary pipes in.

“Sure, whatever. The point is, I take Henry here to trade it for what I’m actually after. Henry eventually is returned to you via the contract you hold with him. Magic is weird so I won’t get into that, but the jist of it is that you’ll get Henry back and I’ll get what I want,” David says.

“So then why bother with the theatrics? The hostage situation? Why not ask me?” Mary asks.

“Miss Poppins, do you really think either Henry or you or your fellow magical people would allow me to do this freely? I get involved, they get involved here, and suddenly we have the exact thing the Council wanted to avoid when they made your dimension a forbidden one.”

“And yet your plan hinges on going to said dimension.”

“Well, yeah, but by all rights I’m a criminal. Plus, your side won’t let mine know I was there. I’ll be in and out and back again before too long. Nobody’s the wiser except my guys, you, and whoever I meet on your side, which, if we’re being honest, mean absolutely nothing to my side.”

This is becoming overly complicated and confusing.

“Agreed,” Mary says.

With a small sigh, ever regal despite her situation, she nods her head.

“Very well. It appears I have little choice. I expect Henry will not be roughed around with?” she asks.

“Nah. I’ll probably just keep him in a backpack or something. He’ll be fine, more or less,” David says.

“Not exactly reassuring,” Mary says. “But alright. Please, take care of him.”

“Of course. Have a good day, Miss Poppins,” David says.

He bows a bit, being overly dramatic for the sake of being an asshole.

With that final signal of leave, David exits the lovely London home.

---------------------------------------------------

After a day of getting to the right dimension, finding where he needed to go, and meeting his contact, David has finally entered the castle called a school he needs to be.

That was all for the sake of making David look like less of an idiot. Yeah, losing directions twice and completely forgetting the name and description of your partner makes someone look foolish. Who knew?

All the same, back at this castle. Well...

Holy shit this place is huge. Plus the stairs are a bunch of pricks, always changing, rearranging, and always seemingly random.

David’s just happy his partner on this mission is mostly competent.

He’s also a lizard creature, but at least this one wears a suit and tie.

And talks like he fits in.

Like a posh American jerk.

Well, nobody’s perfect.

“Hey Toffee,” David says.

“Yes?” the lizard man asks.

“Know where the hell we’re going?” David asks.

“Bad grammar aside, we’re looking for a large statue of a griffin,” Toffee says.

David responds with a nod. They step onto a passing staircase, descending it further until they reach the first floor.

“Holy shit this place is huge,” David says.

Hey I said that.

“Indeed. And if my eyes haven’t reverted back to dust, I believe I have found our destination,” he says.

Hey, don’t ignore me.

“That’s a griffin?” David asks.

I’m being ignored, aren’t I?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?” Toffee asks.

I hate being ignored.

“Looks more like a phoenix, is all,” David says.

Ugh, fine.

“It’s a griffin. Its talons are longer and its wingspan is wider.”

At the end of the hallway is, indeed, a statue of a griffin. It encompasses the entire space of an alcove in the stone wall.

David looks to Toffee, nodding once.

“Cause the distraction, I’ll nab the target,” the former says.

“You still have the hostage?” the latter asks.

David unzips the backpack on his back, pulling out Henry just enough for him to speak.

“Yes,” he says.

“I hate you both,” Henry says before being returned to his prison of a backpack.

Once it is zipped up, Toffee rushes the opposite way. David approaches the griffin statue. He hides against the wall, leaning in close.

Not long after that, the statue starts to turn. When the turning is complete, an old man in a long, gray robe with a long white beard steps out. He looks left, then right, before stomping forward towards where Toffee went.

Upon David seeing the old man lumber away, he turns the corner, leaping up the stairs of the griffin as they shut themselves back in.

At the top of the stairs, David bursts into the old man’s office, apparently.

This place is also huge. Go figure.

“Wow, this place is also huge. Go figure,” David says.

I miss not-magic people. At least they just responded and didn't take my lines.

Anyway, David approaches a dusty wooden bookshelf to the right of a mahogany desk stacked with papers. At the top of his shelf is an old, folded in, crumpled, nasty old hat.

Bingo.

David looks to his left and right, at all the dust surrounding the shelf and a lot of the contents of the room as a whole.

David kicks the shelf once.

The hat falls into his arms.

Man, sometimes life is just that easy, huh?

It is at that point that the door he entered begins to shake, signalling the griffin's stairs have been activated once again.

Yeah, that’s more like it!

David rushes towards a fireplace. He grabs a pile of what he thinks is sand in a cauldron to its left. He throws it into the fireplace.

“Hogsmeade!” he shouts.

Just as he hops into the fireplace, green flames surround him.

Instead of dying, as some might hope, he instead finds himself falling out of another fireplace.

He reaches his feet, dusting himself off from ash…and dust.

He wipes his brow and swipes the rust off of the old hat.

It is then that he notices the litany of robed people, pointing sticks at him.

Sticks very similar to the one that witch in Phoenix had all those months ago.

Up front is the white-bearded, gray-robed old fuck. He doesn’t have a wand pointing at him. He just has this smug-ass look that makes me want to punch him in between the eyes.

“Now that you’ve had your fun, my boy, I’d like to ask you return that hat in your hands,” the old fuck says.

David does no such thing.

Instead, he puts it on his head.

Because rules are for squares.

“Well hello there. I don’t believe we’ve had the pleasure of meeting,” a voice says...

...from on top of his head.

David takes it back, rules are for those who don’t want to fuck with magic.

“So this hat speaks, yeah?” David asks.

The old fuck nods his head.

The hat retorts.

“Yes, I do speak, but only to my wearer. For what it’s worth, your plan is fairly bulletproof. The only thing that might go wrong is that they wouldn’t accept that old bugger Henry,” the hat says.

This is creepy, and not in the good kind of way.

“This was a mistake,” David mutters.

“I would have to agree,” the old fuck says in even more British posh tones. “So, if you would be so kind as to return the hat?”

David shakes his head, trying to get it back together.

“I do not believe that I will. You see, I come from a different dimension than you. The Prime Dimension, in fact.”

A lot of the stick-wielding wizards and witches look at their fellow stick-wielders. They mutter to each other, obviously confused.

All but the old fuck, who narrows his eyes.

“Might I ask why you are here?” he asks.

“I’m here for the hat,” David says.

“Solid plan, truly,” the hat says sarcastically.

“Shut it,” David looks up at its brim, hovering over his eyes.

“Why do you want the sorting hat?” the old guy asks.

“My boss wants it. Don’t worry, we’ll return it before it’s even gone. Time and dimension shit. You probably know what that’s like. Or not, I dunno. You seem like a wise old, Gandalf kinda guy,” David says.

“I like you, Strange Man From Another Dimension,” the hat says.

David shudders at the hat’s words. He focuses back at the old fuck, who remains standing tall. His eyes remain on David, never moving an inch.

Creepy.

David unzips the backpack he’s wearing, reaching in for his captive.

“However, to show that this is in good faith and not a complete hostage situation, thieving thing, I have brought a trade,” he says.

He takes out Henry, the handle now wrapped in duct tape, because quite frankly, Henry's kind of an asshole.

To the crowd of stick-wielders, it’s just a black umbrella.

To the old fuck, it’s a silent source of somberness.

All of awesome alliteration.

David rips the tape off of Henry’s handle.

“Blimey, David! An umbrella’s got ta’ breathe!” it says.

The crowd of stick-wielders gasp.

Really, it’s like they’ve never seen magic before.

“You’re an umbrella, Henry. You don’t breathe,” David says.

“It’s the thought that counts,” Henry says.

“Umbrella has a point,” the hat says.

David rips the hat from atop his head.

“Okay! I can only take one sentient inanimate object at a time, thank you,” he says.

The old fuck clears his throat.

“Yes?” David asks.

“You’re going to give me the umbrella from Miss Poppins in exchange for temporary use of our sorting hat, yes?” the old fuck asks.

“Yes,” David says.

“And when you are done with the sorting hat, it will be returned to the point at which it was stolen, yes?”

“Yes.”

“And upon your finishing of your task, you will be leaving our dimension and returning to your own, upon which none of us will remember this ever happening?”

“Yes.”

The old fuck nods.

“Lower your wands,” he says.

David tosses Henry towards the old guy, who catches it in his right hand. David shoves the hat into his backpack, zipping it back up once he is secure.

“If that will be all, I’ll be getting my ass outta here. Is that cool?” he asks.

“Yes, that would be an excellent idea,” the old fuck says.

“Byyye!”

David sprints out of the place called Hogsmeade, leaving a whole bunch of stick-wielders in his wake, with a lot of them confused.

Temporarily, anyway.

Magic is weird. And dumb.

Let’s agree to never come back here again, yes?

“Agreed,” the hat says, albeit muffled from inside David’s bag.

I will miss that, however.

----------------------------------

A phone camera with absolutely shitty quality turns on. We see David Hunter lying down on a park bench, lit up only by the lamppost above him. The old hat is atop his ahead while the backpack is in his lap.

With a soft release of breath, David begins to speak.

"You know...if it's not one thing with these people it's another. First I spoke monologues upon monologues that were apparently boring while my opponents did the same thing which were apparently not?

Then I decided to take a page out of Sicko's book and fuck everybody's shit up, but now that I did it, it's because I'm being a child? Because daddy doesn't love me? Because I lost my title?

I mean, he's not wrong about the last part, and my dad can go rot in hell, but the point stands that if I do something, no matter what, it's automatically considered passe or old hat...or dumb. But if somebody does that exact same thing, it's alright.

Double standards are a bitch.

Kinda like Sicko, actually. The guy runs around and destroys multiple wrestlers, yet I'm the one probably getting fined. I rule the roost of the Underground for all these months, yet this big guy comes in and wins one match, and he thinks he's some hot shit?

I don't mean to disrespect the almighty Sicko, but I do find it interesting that for all his talk, he only managed to beat me once. Technically we're even. Technically we've both pinned each other.

Technically I cost him the main event at the last Trauma, something he was just kinda given because he just so happened to hold the title at the time.

And isn't it funny that for all of his talk of how I only main evented a few shows, the moment Kyle or Grimm or Stormm or Seromine or whoever top talent this place thinks is worth promoting manage to be busy--like they always are--it's always me that takes the spot. Sicko thinks he's a big deal because he won the Underground title once and main evented this last Trauma.

Honestly, where does he get off?"

David sits up, taking the hat off and setting it to his right.

"First he thinks I'm being boring. Then he thinks I'm being a child. Now he thinks I'm not as big as I think I am. Bitch I'm the whole goddamn division. While guys like Muscles, Tyler, Cory, Razor--god rest his soul, and yes, even Holden, were holding down things, boom, here comes David Hunter to take the throne. All of a sudden Sicko comes in and claims the crown. He thinks he's the best thing this company has and is dominant enough to beat anybody. That's cute. Fine, perfectly okay, but cute.

Congratulations you son of a bitch, you beat me. You have the title.

But so did Muscles. So did Tyler.

Look where they are now. What the hell makes you think you're any different from those schmucks? Just because you're bigger? Just because you're more dominant? Just because you're now the one with the gold? God, you've built yourself up as this unbeatable threat while forgetting that you've been beat. You are nothing, Sicko. I won't go so far as to say you got lucky, but one win does not make a champion. You have to prove you deserve to hold that crown, especially in a division like this.

So you can go off and claim that I'm a child, that's fine. You're forty something, you're old, you hate everybody younger than you.

You can go off and claim I'm not the main event, said as if I'm not, once again, in the main event. That's fine, you're not exactly a big deal here anyway. You have to prove you are, something you've yet to do.

And you can go off and claim that Holden and I are wrong. That's fine, go for it, it's not the first or last time I've been called that.

What you fail to understand, Sicko, is that you are not this big, bad, old creature. Not to me.

I've already gotten past the part where others haven't. I've seen through you. I've seen past the scary clown creature you portray yourself as. You're nothing but an old man trying to reclaim something that you never had to begin with. That's why you came back now. That's why you came back and decided to take out anybody you can, all while attacking them from behind. Am I any better? No, but I'm honest about it. I don't try and hide behind false words and fancy phrases because you're too good to say what you really feel.

To me, Sicko, you're nothing but the guy keeping my crown warm. And when we meet again for the monarchy, you'll realize that it wasn't me who got lucky, oh no. I've proven I deserve to rule this kingdom. As for you?

You don't even deserve to be in this business."

David stops for a few moments, looking for the phone camera.

"Oh shit, it's a dog. Hey doggy! Black, mangy thing, looks so cute."

The dog rushes towards him, tackling David and sending the camera to the grass.

"Ow, shit! Bad doggy! Bad doggy!"

This is about all we can see for the next two hours until the phone's camera dies.