Chapter 1.17 - In which Percy resorts to physical violence

Percy

Month 11, Day 3, Tuesday 7:50 a.m.

Percy knew that sometimes he made foolish decisions or became so blinded by his goal that he didn’t realize the consequences accumulating along the sidelines. But he was not an idiot.

And so he didn’t lunge for the satchel of expensive artifacts.

He spun around on his still-shoed foot, just as determined now to escape the thief as he had been to catch him, but before he could take a single step to escape, the man who had been sneaking up behind him unseen punched Percy in the stomach.

Percy folded over the man’s fist, his eyes bulging and his tongue straining out of his open mouth as watery bile spilled over his lips and splattered on the man’s forearm and the ground below. If there had been more in his stomach, that would have come up too.

The man withdrew his fist, shaking off the bile with disgust.

Percy slumped bonelessly to the ground. His vision swam, but the man standing over him was close enough to make out the red and black bandanna with the sloppily embroidered “M” of the Morrows displayed proudly on its side.

The Morrows were one of the local gangs, and Percy had heard the horror stories about how they abused those who didn’t pay for protection—and some of those who did, too.

He’d seen them patrolling—and the way people went out of their way to leave an empty space around them. Several of the shops around where Dad worked paid them protection money, and they had even been putting pressure on Dad to take up that practice as well.

And one particularly stupid Morrow man had pinched Mom’s butt at the morning market and gotten an automatic backhand slap hard enough to bloody his mouth. He had threatened dark retribution but ran away when she lost her temper and tried to attack him in truth.

All the kids had thought this was hilarious, but Percy had noticed how Dad’s mouth grew pinched and worried when he heard the story.

Percy tried to climb to his feet, his limbs trembling and his open mouth working futilely as he gasped for air.

“We can’t have that,” Boris said, his voice approaching from behind.

Percy’s bare foot, slippery with his own blood, failed to take his weight and shot out to the side, sending him collapsing in the other direction.

As he caught himself with his hands, he saw Boris’s foot shooting by out of the corner of his eye.

If Percy hadn’t slipped, it would have hit him in the back of the knee, but instead it slid right past Percy and hit the bandanna-wearing man right in the shin.

Bandanna let out a muffled shout and hopped backward on one leg, hunched over and cradling the injured one in his arms.

Scrambling to get away, Percy slipped again, this time falling onto his stomach as his legs shot out behind him, hitting something that could only have been Boris’s own feet.

Boris’s shout of surprise cut off abruptly as he hit the ground beside Percy. He landed in the narrow space between Percy and the alley wall with a heavy thud that Percy could feel through the ground.

The impact was enough to jostle a sheet of wet ice and snow off of the edge of the roof. The hard-packed and partially frozen mass crashed down onto Boris’s head and shoulders, flattening him to the cobblestones with its sheer weight.

Percy, only a foot away from the site of impact, got pelted with a few icy chunks, but it didn’t even hurt.

He managed to get back to his feet without slipping on his third attempt. He looked around frantically, searching for a way out.

Bandanna was in the alley, between Percy and the exit. He was still clutching his shin, but obviously recovering, if the piercing scowl focused on Percy was any indication.

There was the ladder that Boris had climbed down, but Percy doubted he could make it up in time. He also doubted that, once on the roofs, he could keep his footing on the icy shingles.

Besides, the thief, who was between Percy and the ladder, was looking like he might regain the energy to join in on the fight at any moment.

Beside him, Boris was scrabbling his way free of the mound of ice and slush.

To the other side of the alley lay a half-broken crate.

Percy lunged for it, heaved it up, and swung it wildly at Bandanna. If he could just get past him, onto a major street with plenty of traffic, surely he could escape. Maybe giving information about this hideout and Boris’s name to the coppers would be enough to mitigate the worst of the charges. None of the three seemed to be carrying any unlicensed battle artifacts, which meant they would have to physically catch Percy to harm him.

But Bandanna ducked, and Percy strained to maintain his awkward grip on the wood; he didn’t have the strength or the leverage to handle the weight of the crate competently. Letting the momentum drag him, he hoped to make a complete spin and bring it around again for a second try. But as he was facing back toward the thief, Percy’s fingers slipped and the crate flew out of his hands.

It didn’t even come close to hitting the thief, crashing into the ground to the right of him and breaking apart yet further.

But one of the broken planks bounced away and hit the bottom of the ladder at an angle.

With its legs knocked off balance, the ladder tottered sideways like a man on stilts.

Percy flinched away, staring wide-eyed as it crashed down on Boris, who had just managed to sit up.

The crack of the wood impacting his skull reminded Percy of the time a man had broken open some gourd fruit with a rock in the market.

Boris remained sitting for half a second before collapsing backward, his eyes rolling up into his head. The ladder lay on top of him.

“What the fuck?” Bandanna said, both amazed and suspicious. He turned his gaze from Boris to Percy, narrowing his eyes as if Percy were responsible.

Which, Percy supposed, he was. Technically. But surely it was clear that it had been an accident?

“Get him, C Dog!” Bandanna cried.

Percy sensed movement behind himself but didn’t move in time to escape the thief’s tackle. They both tumbled to the ground, and the side of Percy’s head bounced off of the stone, his curly hair barely doing anything to cushion the impact.

Stars bloomed in his vision for a moment, and he flailed in panic, somehow managing to twist halfway out of this C Dog’s grip and elbow the man in the neck.

C Dog rolled away from Percy, eyes bulging and mouth opening soundlessly as he clutched at his throat. He glanced between Percy and Bandanna, his face quickly darkening to an unhealthy shade of red, then shook his head in visceral panic and tried to crawl away.

Bandanna rushed forward and kicked Percy in the side before he could get up. The man’s shin hit Percy’s ribcage, his foot acting as a handle to lift and throw Percy to the side.

Percy rolled into the splintered remains of the crate he had accidentally thrown earlier.

Bandanna approached once again. “I’m going to crush your skull,” the man promised. “Just like a melon.”

Percy fumbled for one of the broken planks. He got a grip on one and swung it with all his might just as Bandanna came into range.

The end of the plank caught Bandanna in the calf, which Percy hoped might make the other man stumble or even fall, giving Percy time to get back up and run away.

Unfortunately, Percy wasn’t actually strong enough, or in the right position to leverage his swing, to knock Bandanna off his feet. But the man still froze, the vindictive determination sloughing away from his expression as his eyes widened, and kept widening.

The plank’s impact had felt strange in Percy’s hands, and when he tried to pull back for a second hit, there was resistance.

Bandanna screamed, the sound muffled by his clenched jaw, and fell to a knee. Blood seeped into the fabric of his pant leg and spilled over the nails protruding from the end of the plank.

Bandanna reached for Percy, his thick fingers splayed wide, and Percy flinched and instinctively jerked on the plank again, this time tugging it forward and back in an attempt to cause enough pain to distract the man.

Bandanna fell to the side and screamed again, his hands going to his wound.

Percy shuffled just out of reach and managed to climb back to his feet. He remained still as the world spun around him, blinking the blood out of his eyes.

Then, groaning like an old man and puffing for air with every slow movement, Percy picked up another of the crate’s planks, this one lacking any nails, to use as a cane to stabilize himself as he hobbled away.

But C Dog had recovered from the elbow to the throat. Even though he didn’t look aggressive any longer, Percy didn’t feel like taking the chance of being attacked from behind again as he tried to stagger away. So Percy raised the plank over his head and brought it down.

C Dog flinched into a fetal position, pleading mostly incoherently for Percy to leave and take the stolen goods with him.

Percy ignored him, laboriously raising the plank once again and bringing it down on C Dog’s legs. As long as the man couldn’t chase after him, he would probably be fine. Percy could take the stolen artifacts back to Mr. Schubert and apologize. And hopefully, his savings would be enough to cover the damage to the man’s shop.

The realization that he had lost his chance to buy the Vista 500 for a long while, perhaps forever, made Percy lift the plank and bring it down with a heavy thunk on C Dog’s thigh, this time out of sheer spite.

And it was at this moment that two pairs of copper-nailed boots turned the alley corner with their eponymous clacking.

C Dog gasped in relief at the arrival of the coppers. “Oh, thank the Maiden, you’re here. Save me!” he cried.

Percy brought the plank back to his side, using it to keep himself upright as the exhaustion hit him in full. He recognized both coppers. One was Lieutenant Robards, and the other was his partner, Copper Shelleck, the man who Percy had accidentally accosted when they fell into the canal. Percy’s heart sank. He hoped neither man held a grudge, but he knew that was unlikely.

“They stole from Mr. Schubert,” Percy explained weakly, pointing to the satchel still lying in the middle of the small courtyard.

Copper Shelleck looked around at the three criminals, who had mostly defeated themselves, and then at Percy. He raised his eyebrows. “And so you chased them down and beat them half to death?” he asked dubiously.

“What?” Percy looked at the three criminals lying on the ground, only then realizing how it must look. Boris, lying unconscious in a pile of snow with a growing lump on his forehead. Bandanna, grunting in pain and bleeding from a nailed plank that was still embedded into his calf. And at Percy’s feet, C Dog, who was now trying to crawl away without being noticed.

Author Note: Hey guys. I'm back. :)

I have been rather busy dealing with everything around my father's death, from making endless calls to various businesses, to taking calls from his many, many friends down in Texas. I am not built for all the peopling, so it's been difficult.

But things are kind of settling down there, and I feel like my energy levels are improving. I may still need to miss posting a chapter or two from either of my ongoing books over the next couple months, and if so I will. Also, thanks for all your well wishes.

Secondly, the Typo Hunt for this book, The Catastrophe Collector Book 1: Larva is opening up.

This book contains Chapter 1-30, so it's an option to read quite a ways ahead of where we currently are.

If you're interested, read through the info page, then submit your application. Info Page: https://www.azaleaellis.com/join-the-typo-hunting-team/