My Face is GRACED with Dirty Black Converse

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"................. Do you have to keep following me?"

The boy, who refused to tell me his name, spun on his heels and stared at me. We were standing in another junction in the labyrinth. The cavern we stood in glowed softly under the green light of mushrooms. The cavern was damp and covered in a soft layer of moss and water dripped from the rocks overhead. We had entered this place through a service tunnel to our right. Another entrance, similar to the service tunnel behind us, was positioned next to it.

I shrugged, glancing at the entrance to our left. "We are going the same way."

The boy extended his hand towards the four pathways ahead of us. "Which way are you going down?"

I shrugged again and readjusted my praetor cloak. I glanced again at the entrance of the left tunnel behind us, feeling as though we were being watched. "That's none of your business."

The boy squinted. "If you follow me down the same way again, I'll hurt you."

I smirked. "Sure."

The boy went down the pathway to the right and I followed him. He spun around and drew his black sword. "ENOUGH! Leave me alone!"

I sighed and rested on the stone wall nearby. "Dude. We are both lost. We've fought like four sets of monster together already, I've saved you three times already, can't you just trust me?"

The boy slapped his forehead and dramatically pulled his hand down over his face in frustration. "I don't care if you can't handle yourself down here. I don't care if you get where you need to go. I don't care about YOU. All I want is to find Justice and her crew. Your wearing purple, I assume you are on the same team. We can see each other at her base camp or whatever. Since you seem to CARE so much about where I'm going."

The disappointment I felt when he mentioned Justice and how he wanted to find her weighed heavy on my chest. "You did not just say you wanted to find Justice..........."

The boy gripped his sword tighter. "So? You are a part of Justice's crew, right...."

The two of us stared at each other, neither making a move. My instincts, honed by Lupa, were telling me to prepare myself for conflict. However, despite my urge to attack first, I restrained myself. I took a deep breath and took a few steps back, trying to de-escalate the situation.

The boy, with his black sword still pointed at me, began walking backwards towards the pathway he had chosen.

I could have let him go, faced him at a later date, but something told me not to. I thought back to when we were first met. I had stumbled along on a ritual this boy and a number of ghost were performing. The boy had a desperate look in his eyes as he chanted in a ancient tongue to a Happy Meal box from McDonald's placed in a empty pit shaped like a coffin. I didn't understand anything he or the ghost were saying, except a single name.

Bianca Di Angelo.

Ghost.

Ritual.

Ancient chants.

Happy Meals.

Trying to find Justice.

I pieced each of the hints together while the two of us stared at each other. The boy had began turning towards the pathway, but I stopped him.

"Justice won't be able to bring her back." I finally said.

The boy stopped, his back still facing me. "What did you say?"

I pulled my coin and played with it in my hand. "Justice and Luke said they could bring her back from the dead. You don't seem like the trusting type of person, so you tried to do it alone. You failed. Now your desperate, so your hoping to strike a deal with Justice for your sisters life in exchange for your services." I flipped the coin and caught it, it landed on heads. "She can't help you, but I can."

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