Phantasmagoria (Prologue: Cheap Motel)

[vanimadin]

And here's the prologue of Phantasmagoria.

Yeaaaah, this project snowballed into something beyond my control you have no idea. I'm pretty sure it'll break my brain in some way before I'm done. XD

But it should be fun, at least! ♥



Title: Phantasmagoria (Prologue: Cheap Motel)
Fandom: Kingdom Hearts/Supernatural
Author: senashenta
Rating: T
Genre: Supernatural, Horror, Adventure
Characters: ...all of them? .__.;;
Disclaimer: Kingdom Hearts characters and concepts belong to Disney and Squarenix. Various Final Fantasy characters and concepts belong to Squarenix. Supernatural characters and concepts belong to WB, etc. This fic belongs to its' author.
Summary: Roxas and Ven are young Hunters, traveling the world, always on the road, tracking down and destroying dangerous supernatural creatures. Now they've come to Destiny Islands, lead there by clues from their brother, Cloud, to find something there that's killing local high school kids. And after Destiny Islands, who knows where they could end up next?

PHANTASMAGORIA
Prologue: Cheap Motel

"Well if walls could talk,
Man, the stories they'd tell,
Holding up the roof on a cheap motel."
-From "Cheap Motel" by Southern Culture on the Skids

It seemed strange to Roxas that even as picturesque a place as Destiny Islands actually had its' share of seedy hotels. Somehow he'd had the idea, based on the scenery, that the Ocean Breeze Motel would be nicer than some of the places he and Ven had stayed in before. Alas, it was not to be: the paint was peeling, the sheets on the beds were a mottled, stained and faded floral print and he had already counted six cockroaches since they'd walked in the door a whole ten minutes before. But it was cheap and no one asked questions about he and his brother's somewhat haggard appearance, so Roxas supposed he couldn't really complain.

"Seven." He announced as he kicked the door closed behind them.

Ven, who had already deposited his bag on the bed and was setting his laptop up on the crooked table by the front window, looked over, brows furrowed in confusion. "Seven what?"

"Cockroaches. Seven cockroaches." Roxas frowned, blue eyes watching the insect scuttle across the tiled floor. He stepped on it, nodded at the quiet crunch, then continued on to dump his duffle bag on the bed that Ven hadn't already claimed. He wasn't fond of bugs. "Six now."

"Probably more." Ven commented idly. "Check the fridge if you want a more accurate count."

"Gross, Ven. Thanks for that mental image." Roxas made a face in response to the grin Ven shot him, then kicked his shoes off and dropped heavily down onto the mattress next to his bag. "I'm fucking exhausted."

"Language, Roxas. What would Mom think?"

"Sorry, sorry. Freaking exhausted."

"Much better. Thank you."

"Yeah, yeah." Roxas lifted his head a little, looking over toward his brother. "What're you doing?"

Ven gestured vaguely toward his computer. "Gotta log everything, remember?"

"Ugh," Roxas' head fell back down onto the bed. "I can't believe you still do that."

"It's important, Roxas! Especially this time." The other blonde was frowning deeply now. In front of him, his laptop binged and the main screen came up, multi-colored motes of light over dusky black. Ven had used that picture for his background for as long as Roxas could remember. Now Ven waved his hand again, trying to impress on his brother the importance of his borderline-obsessive record-keeping. "It's the first time we've seen a real jorogumo."

Rolling his eyes, Roxas adjusted himself on the bed until his head was on the lumpy pillow and flung an arm up over his eyes. It had been years since Ven had started keeping his digital journal of their travels and cases and he always got the most excited about the things they had never encountered before. Roxas sometimes thought he got too excited, all things considered.

Ven started pulling up his files and charts while Roxas closed his eyes and tried to relax.

It had been a long couple of weeks thanks to Ven's precious jorogumo. Just tracking the thing down had taken over a week in itself. It had moved erratically from place to place, household to household, victim to victim—and had been very hard to pinpoint. Four cities, one trashed 1998 sedan and nearly four hundred miles later had landed them in a back alleyway in Dalmasca, facing down a very pissed off spider-lady.

Eight legs, it turned out, were very hard to deal with, even for two relatively experienced, if young, Hunters.

It hadn't helped that neither of them had any clue whatsoever how to take down a jorogumo. They had barely even heard of the things before picking up the trail. So when they finally pinned it down, they had gone in packing all the basics: guns, knives, holy water, silver, salt and iron. In the end a consecrated iron crowbar through the chest had done the trick—the bitch had gone down screaming, melting into an unrecognizable puddle in the space of a few breaths.

Roxas and Ven hadn't escaped completely unscathed, though. Scrapes and bruises and Roxas thought he might have cracked a rib when he had been body slammed into the side of a building at one point—but he didn't bother to mention that to his brother. He would only fret, and it wasn't like Roxas couldn't sneak a potion later when Ven was sleeping, anyway. They still had a few left in their supply, after all. He just had to keep a lid on the pain until then.

"Hey, Roxas."

"Mm?"

"You think Cloud's ever seen a jorogumo?"

The sound of typing stopped and even though Roxas didn't look over he could feel his twin's eyes on him. He stifled a sigh, lowered his arm away from his face and stared up at the ceiling. "Who knows? Maybe."

They hadn't heard from Cloud since before the jorogumo hunt and hadn't actually seen him in over six months. It was worrying, but they knew that Cloud had his own jobs, his own hunts, his own priorities. Ven, however, was always commenting on their brother's whereabouts, experiences or knowledge. Ven thought about Cloud a lot—and his thoughts unfortunately leaked down the bond between them into Roxas' mind as well. It was hard to pretend he wasn't concerned for Cloud when residual worry radiated from Ven off-and-on all day long.

Roxas finally looked toward Ven. The other boy was staring down at the keyboard in front of himself absently, fingers poised on the keys but not actually moving. His journal was up on the screen in front of him, his most recent entry partly written and the little cursor blinking as it waited for him to continue.

"You know a couple weeks is nothing, Ven. Sometimes we don't hear from him for a month or two."

"I know." Ven forced a smile and turned back to his laptop. "It just sucks, is all."

Roxas made a vague agreeing noise and tucked one arm back under his head.

At least they had something to keep them occupied for the time being while they waited for Cloud to get in touch with them again. Shortly before they had sniffed out the jorogumo's trail, their brother had sent them some digital files on another possible case—one that had lead them to Destiny Islands. It had gotten derailed temporarily thanks to the whole spider-monster debacle, but with that taken care of in Dalmasca they had hopped the next bus out of the city and made their way to the seaside.

So help me God, we are never taking the bus again.

The thought barely registered before Ven gave a snort and informed him, "you're the one that wrecked the car, remember?"

"Yeah, well," Roxas grumped, "next time we're stealing another one. That bus was shit."

"Roxas."

"Crap, jeez, sorry."

It had been hot, stuffy and overcrowded. The onboard washroom had been out of order and the entire bus had smelled of stale sweat and something sickly sweet that Roxas hadn't been able to identify at the time—and still couldn't. It had almost made him nauseous. Then, of course, there was the kid in the seat behind his that had continually kicked at his seatback for the whole journey—and whose mother had done nothing to stop it.

Ven had kept himself occupied with his computer, and he wasn't one to complain about that sort of thing anyway, but Roxas had thoroughly suffered for the entire ten-hour ride. Getting off at the end of the trip had been more than just a relief, to say the least, and Roxas had never been so glad to swap out modes of transportation—the bus to the ferry that took them out to Destiny Islands—in his entire life.

But Ven was right, he had been the one to crash their (technically stolen) car in the first place. It had been in-between towns as they tracked the jorogumo, he'd been running on three days with no sleep, and he had simply drifted off. The next thing he knew Ven was shouting in his ear and they were rolling headfirst into a conveniently placed oak tree.

It hadn't been that bad of an accident. Neither of them had really been injured. But it had put the sedan out of commission and left them with no choice but to abandon it, haul all of their packs the entire hike to the next town and then find an alternative mode of transit from then on out.

All things considered it was probably a minor miracle they had managed to catch up to the jorogumo at all.

Christ, I'm tired. Roxas stifled a yawn.

"Crash if you want." Ven commented without looking away from the laptop screen, fingers tapping away at the keypad again. "I'm going to finish this up and then go over the files Cloud sent us. We can pick everything up tomorrow once we've both gotten some sleep and something to eat."

Normally, Roxas would have protested. He didn't like resting when his brother was still working—it usually felt wrong to him, unfair, like he was taking the easy way out and putting too much on the other teenager. But he was still running on a week-and-a-bit of nothing more than catnaps off-and-on, he was sore from the beating he'd taken in Dalmasca and Ven was very pointedly sending reassuring feelings his way via their mental link.

So after a moment of hesitation, the blonde finally muttered a vague agreeing noise, untucked his arm from behind his head and rolled onto his side, bundling the lumpy pillow up under his head in as comfortable a position as he could manage.

There was a long silence again, broken only by the taka taka taka of Ven's typing, and then, as if an afterthought:

"…goodnight Ven."

And then, a minute later, an echoed reply:

"Goodnight Roxas."

To Be Continued.

***