Title: Invitation For Dinner
Characters: Camula, Kunasaki Kousuke, Darkness
Word Count: 3,000||Status: 1/1
Genre: Angst, Drama||Rated: PG (vampirism, death)
Challenge: Diversity Writing Challenge, D94, randomly generated word must appear every 200 words (sun); Collect the Seven Stars, Camula; YGO All Seasons Non-Flash Bingo, #13, dry; Character Diversity Boot Camp, #25, despair (Kunasaki) ; Include The Word Boot Camp, #8, teeth; Valentine's Day to White Day Advent 2016, day #3, try writing a character you've never written (Kunasaki Kousuke); Word Count Set Boot Camp, #19, 3,000 words
Notes: This is my reason for why we never saw the reporter Kunasaki ever again.
Summary: Kunasaki, not-so-ace reporter, promised Asuka if he found any evidence about her brother, he'd let her know. But he never did. There is a reason behind that. A reason with teeth.
How long since I saw the sun? Kunasaki Kousuke stared at what might've been a window. He couldn't be sure; it stood too high above where he sat for him to get a good look. No daylight managed to find its way inside either.
Five steps to one side and three to the other; he could walk enough to learn that. Just enough room for him to stand and sit, no more. A thick steel collar and chain around his neck kept him from trying for the door.
A plate sat on the stone floor not that far from him, within arm's reach. He'd eaten every scrap of food on there, leaving not even a crumb. He didn't get so much food these days that he'd turn down any of it.
She wanted to make certain he stayed well-fed and healthy. So she could take what she wanted from him.
His neck burned just at the thought of her. He'd never thought he'd be so terrified at the simple concept of a beautiful woman approaching him.
But she wasn't a woman, was she? Not like most women that he'd met. They were human.
She wasn't. His eyes told him that she was human, but his experiences already assured him of the truth: Camula was a vampire. Her pale skin, never once touched by the sun, the sharp teeth that bit into him at least once or twice a week if not more, the unbelievable strength that tossed him around like a small sack of potatoes…
No. Vampire. He could never let himself forget it.
He hadn't wanted to believe at first. Why should he? He wouldn't have minded reporting on the possibility of vampires, just to get a bigger paycheck, but the thought of real vampires living in the world? That one hadn't crossed his mind.
Not until the night he'd met one face to face and found out he'd gotten far too close to a story that no one wanted to be told.
It had been two months since he'd left Duel Academia, determined to clean up his reporting act and find out what really happened to the missing Academia students. He'd thought about going right to the top and asking Principal Samejima. Only if he hadn't told the public in general, then why would he tell a reporter?
So it fell to him to search, to ask questions in probably dangerous locations of very dangerous people, working to try to put it all together in some kind of a sensible fashion.
He didn't have a great deal of luck. Whatever happened to those kids, someone wanted it locked up tight. But he searched. He asked. He probed into places where the sun didn't shine, metaphorically and otherwise.
That was probably what went wrong in the first place. When one stuck fingers into holes where foul things lived, the foul things would bite back and bite hard, probably giving you some kind of infection in the process.
He found a clue. A very small, slim clue, nothing more than a whisper that if he turned up at a particular place with the right sort of bribe ready, then maybe he could get a few answers. No one could promise him that the answers he got would be for the questions he wanted the most. Answers were all he was promised.
So he turned up in a bar, buried deep in the heart of a city in the States. He should've guessed from that alone that something was wrong. Far away from his home ground, where no one would notice if he'd vanished… he'd dealt with that kind of situation before and always got out of it in one piece.
He'd thought this time would be like all of those others. He'd had himself a drink or two waiting for his contact to show up. No one could or would tell him what she would look like and it had been like pulling teeth to get someone to even let him know she was a woman in the first place.
By the time she'd shown up, he'd been more than a little irritated. He wanted to go back to his rented room and get some sleep. He needed time to sort through whatever answers he got. At this rate, he'd only get there when the sun started to rise. If then.
Between one breath and the next she stood next to the table. A waiter appeared behind her to pull the chair out and she sank into it as if it were a throne and she the Queen of the world. She turned a terrifying look on him.
"You are Kunasaki Kousuke?" Her voice thrummed in his veins the first time he heard it. Thinking critically became a thing of the past.
He swallowed. He tried to focus. He didn't do a very good job of it. He did manage to nod and tried harder to think as she put in her drink order. He still wasn't doing a very good job of it.
"I've heard that you wish information about Duel Academia," she said. There was a hint of an accent to her words, but he couldn't place it, aside from not being Japanese. Both of them spoke English at the moment. He spent enough time in the States researching his stories – there was always so much scandal there anyway! - that he spoke it quite nearly as fluently as Japanese. But he still couldn't pick out where she came from.
As it dawned on him that she'd said something, he nodded quickly, and she smiled, an expression as brilliant as the sun.
Also, did she have too many teeth? He couldn't be bothered to count, but the smile showed more than he cared to think about. Just as well that he wasn't thinking at all, not in any serious fashion. He hadn't even bothered to get his recorder out. What would it matter, when she kept looking at him like that? He wouldn't forget a single word that she said.
When she said nothing else, he scrambled for more words of his own. He wanted her to think well of him, perhaps to even want to talk to him about matters that had nothing at all to do with his investigation. Such as where she was from and perhaps even what her name was.
"Is there anything that you can tell me?" He offered up his best smile and hoped it would be good enough. "I'm sure someone like you must know a great deal."
The side of her mouth quirked. He liked that smile so much better than her other one.
"You're quite the flatterer." Her lips twitched again. "I'm sure you've made an effort to be so."
Again he nodded. He knew he didn't react like this to most of his informants, but he'd never met one like her before. He couldn't keep his mind on his business.
He did try, though. "Thank you. But I need to get this information."
Again she smiled and again it was like the sun coming up after a week of rain. He sank into that expression, soaking it up like balm.
"There's no need to rush. I have all night. So do you."
He thought he wanted to disagree, but only for a moment, until she turned one of those sun-brilliant smiles upon him again, the ones that seemed to have too many teeth and those teeth were too sharp and he couldn't string together more than a few words without being distracted by how beautiful and amazing she was.
He almost missed it when she spoke again, too caught up in admiring her.
"You may call me Camula. I will tell you what you wish to know soon enough. Not here, though."
A small part of him mentally clicked into place at that. Yes. She wanted to go somewhere else, where they'd be unable to be overheard by people who couldn't be trusted. He knew there were those who didn't want the information of where the missing kids were at to be known. Could they be around here? Had he been followed? Had she been followed?
His thoughts skimmed and danced around without coming to any sort of conclusion. He watched her drink once the cup was brought to her and wondered what it was. He'd ordered just a simple drink himself; he didn't want to risk getting drunk and forgetting where his rented place was or what he was supposed to be doing around here. It had happened before.
She set the cup down and gazed at him thoughtfully. Something about all of this amused her, or kept her smiling at least. He wondered what it was, but the thought flicked away in a matter of moments.
"Come."
As soon as she said that, he was on his feet and followed her out of the bar and into the dark streets. She said nothing more but he followed her without hesitation or fear. The eyes of everyone around them seemed to slide away, as if they didn't even see him or her.
Something about that, combined with the cold slap of late night/early morning air – they'd been set to meet at midnight and he couldn't recall how much time they'd just sat there at the table – sparked a few thoughts in his mind. Nothing very coherent, but just wondering what was so strange about either of them.
She led him to a hotel, not the one that he patronized, but one with a glimmering bright artificial sun as a symbol, and with quite a few people going in and out, despite the hour.
The room she led him to wasn't the penthouse, but it didn't seem to lack any of the amazing features. It did have some very comfortable ones that they both put a good use to, and Kunasaki had absolutely no regrets as he yawned and curled up underneath a blanket.
She still hadn't told him anything and he was about to bring the subject up again when her fingers pinned him down to the bed and words choked in his throat. She hovered over him, eyes sun-bright and scarlet fire and then there were teeth and he knew there'd been too many of them and they were inside of him, biting his neck, and it wasn't a cute little love-bite, either, he could feel blood pouring down…
He stopped thinking for a while after that. There wasn't anything to think about, other than pain and terror.
When he finally woke again, he found himself spread out not in a warm and comfortable bed, but in a small stone cell, chains keeping him in place.
"Hey! Let me out of here! What's going on!?" He found his voice far quicker than he had since he'd seen Camula and shouted with every ounce of his strength.
No matter how hard he yelled, though, he didn't get an answer. For all the reaction he got, there might well have not have been anyone else in the entire world. His voice rang back against the stone walls until he couldn't speak at all.
He didn't know how long it took for him to sink back and try to rest. He didn't really want to do anything but get out of here.
A slow check of himself showed that he didn't have anything he'd brought with him. Nothing to record on, not his wallet or anything. Whatever was going on, he had nothing to identify himself with or to make any record with.
To a reporter, that was one step short of a death sentence in and of itself. If it couldn't be marked down somehow, if it couldn't be noted, then did it really exist?
The longer he stayed in there, the more he began to wonder if he existed. What could exist at all, without someone to notice it? Did the sun or moon exist if no one watched them rise or set? Did the wind exist, if no one was there to feel it blow against them? Did the ocean, if no one stood to watch the waves crash on a beach?
I'm too hungry. He could barely string proper words together, and he'd always known when he got too hungry, his mind started drifting off on tangents that didn't always make a great deal of sense.
Just when his throat burned to the point he thought he might well die, a door opened and he could hear footsteps coming toward him, crisp and firm and he didn't think they were those of a woman.
A young man, probably not much more than a teenager, came into view. He carried with him a small cup and a thick pottery pitcher and stared down at Kunasaki with a hint of distaste.
"I don't see why she can't take care of her own food," he muttered before he poured water into the cup and shoved it towards him. "Here. You should be able to get it from there. No, I'm not going to unchain you. Hurry it up."
Kunasaki scrambled for the water, finding his chains did reach enough, and tried to drain the cup dry in moments. The stranger shook his head. "Don't do that."
The water tasted better than the sun would've felt. Kunasaki didn't care about anything else just then. He just wanted to quench that thirst.
Aside from 'absolutely delicious' there was another taste to the water, one he couldn't name at all. A hint of copper, nothing more, and he thought it improved the flavor. Though that could've been just how much he'd really wanted some water.
He threw himself back and stared at the young man there. "So who're you?" He felt much more himself like this.
The other stared down at him, a small hint of a smile on his lips, one that betokened shadows and disaster, danger and fear. Power glowed in the eyes behind his mask, like a small star or sun, but nothing that would ever help someone else.
"Darkness. I won't be here often. You belong to Camula and it's her job to take care of you, not mine. But I will tell you this: you're here because of your own idiocy. You shouldn't have gone looking for the missing students." He bared his teeth and it wasn't in a smile. "Now you're going to be missing too."
Kunasaki threw himself forward, or as close as he could. He also kind of felt like throwing up, with that ice-cold water in his stomach. But he ignored that for now.
"Where are they? What's going on? What is she?" He couldn't bring herself to say his name, not yet.
"You haven't guessed?" Darkness grinned down at him. "She's a vampire."
He didn't stay long after that, nor did he come back again. The few times that Camula fed him, she brought it herself. There wasn't anything like conversation, either. The chains kept him from attacking her, and every time she came, she not only fed him, but fed herself as well.
Somewhere along the way, he stopped even bothering to fight back. Not only did he get nowhere with it, thanks to the bonds and the constant drain on his blood, but locked up here, underground, away from freedom and light and sun and hope, he saw no reason to even bother. No one knew where he was. No one cared where he was.
The only people who knew and cared for any reason at all were the people who kept him down here in the first place. Camula only cared because he was a good source of blood for her. She didn't talk to him at all, only brought a tray of food once every other day or so – at least he guessed it was that often – and battened onto his neck and drank her fill before leaving him alone in the dark.
The longer he stayed down here, the less he moved, the less he thought, and the less he cared about anything at all. The missing students had probably met this same fate. The only difference between them and him was… well… they had people who cared about them. They had people who missed them.
He didn't. All he had were articles that would never be written and people who would never get answers that he'd promised them.
Sorry, Tenjoin-kun, he thought, leaning his head up against the wall, thinking of that girl full of hope and a sun-flare smile. Standing up wasn't even a possibility anymore.
He didn't look up when Camula entered. He didn't think he even heard her. But then she tilted his head to the side and he caught a glimpse of her hungry features before she sank her fangs into his neck without a single word.
He was just a meal to her. One that had given himself over to her because he'd poked his head in where it didn't belong and this was what he got for it.
He closed his eyes. Her fangs remained in him. They both knew this was the end. She'd have to find another source of blood.
That was fine with him. Maybe on the other side, he'd see the sun again. Was it warm, like he remembered it being? That couldn't change, could it? Maybe he'd meet some of the lost students. Maybe he'd meet Tenjoin-kun's brother.
He would tell him hello from her if he did.
Camula rose up and patted her lips dry before ordering her bats to dispose of the body. Nothing more she could take from that empty husk.
Soon it would be time to approach Duel Academia. She could choose a proper consort then. He'd been little more than a toy to occupy herself until the time came.
Satisfied, she strolled off to begin her evening, putting all thoughts of Kunasaki Kousuke out of her mind for good.
The End
Notes: Kunasaki gets off easy here. In Hell's Ice, it's Hell Kaiser that deals with him.