A/N: This is my gift to my readers, merry Christmas guys.
Roxas sat at the register in the dark bookstore. All around him were macabre mementos and pagan books. The stench of coffee clung to him like a leech, due to the machine to his immediate right. Throughout the store, people dressed as if they had sauntered out of a B rated werewolf flick ambled through the shelves, looking at the assortment of tomes.
Roxas paid them little mind. He was busy, hunched over a notebook. The page he was staring at so intently was being altered by the fine tipped pencil in his hand. On the page was a half-drawn creature, gangly, odd shaped arms, a hand with three wispy fingers bound by leather straps. As of yet it didn't have legs or a head, however he knew what they would look like. He had seen the monster in the mirror plenty of times.
A book hit the counter in front of him. Pulling his gaze from the drawing, he looked at the girl who put it down. Lithe, kinda short, asian, grey hair covering an eye that would have been red, had she showed it.
Roxas recognized her from his school, "Hey, Fuu."
She dressed leagues different from the other patrons: beige capris with askew pockets, sleeveless blue jacket, and light blue sneakers.
"Roxas." That was something peculiar about her, she only spoke in short, choppy sentences of up to three words.
He ran her book under the scanner, "$5.59 plus tax." She rummaged through her pockets before handing him the money. Taking her book she left the store, with a glance back at him through the glass window.
Roxas went back to his drawing.
By the time his shft ended and he was permitted to leave, Roxas had finished his illustration and several others, each with notes written off to the sides.
The boy was always on edge when walking back to his apartment, scanning the crowds and allyways for people cloaked in black or creatures of stark white. He twitched when he felt someone behind him. Being the cautious person he was he glanced at a passing window. His eyes widened.
He couldn't see much of the person's reflection, but he saw the most important part: they wore a black hood.
Roxas's mind began to work over time, 'Shit, they found me! How? Who cares, they found me!' His instincts kicked in.
Roxas span around, his foot raised to hit his hooded tailer. The boy's foot collided with their face, sending them face first into the side of the building next to them. The man groaned and pulled something from his pocket. Roxas stomped on his wrist. Something skittered across the ground. He looked at it: a knife. There were no men in the Organization who used knives, jokes about Larxene aside.
Roxas looked at the man, still pinned by his foot. He had a black hood, yes, but it was attached to a hoodie instead of a cloak. This was just a common mugger.
The man struggled under his foot. He pushed harder on his wrist before snapping his other foot into the assailant's nose, rendering him unconcious.
He took the man's hoodie off of him and used it to tie him to a street lamp. Pulling his phone from his pocket, Roxas dialed in a number, "Hello? Yes, I need the police..."
Roxas opened the door to his apartment. It was nothing special, the walls were mostly bare aside from the cabinets in the kitchen, a fridge, sparse furniture, a television in his bedroom, along with a bed and night stand. The simple living conditions made it easy for him to change cities easily if something... undesireable happened.
He trudged toward his bed before falling face first onto the cool matress, welcoming the embrace of sleep.
The next morning, when Roxas walked into work, same dull expression he's had since Xi- she died.
Taking his seat behind the counter, the boy pulled his notebook from his bag and flipped it to the page he had been working on the previous day.
Hours passed as he set to work illustrating the creature in different poses, and writing more notes as well. He had just finished his work on the creature's attack pose when the bell told him a customer had come in. He glanced up. Floating blue cloak. Raven of the Teen Titans.
She hadn't taken three steps when a mob of darkly dressed teens surrounded her. The noise broke Roxas's concentration. He reached under the counter for the baseball bat the owner kept for emergencies. He slammed the wooden bat down, the sound going over the crowd, silenceing them. They looked at Roxas, "This is a bookstore, not a Fallout Boy concert, so either shut up or get out!" The teens shuffled back to what they doing before, sending glares at Roxas. The boy sat back down, returning to his notebook.
Time passed and he finished writing down everything he knew about the creature. He turned to a blank page as Raven came up to the counter. Roxas took the book she held out to him and ran it under the scanner.
"Thank you," she surprised him, "For earlier."
"I was just doing what my boss told me to do." he handed her the book.
Something was different about this boy, Raven could sense it. She handed him her money before leaving the store. She'd be coming back.
Roxas locked the store up for the night and began his trek home, unaware of the person watching him.
The man in the black cloak watched him from a roof across the street. He turned and walked away through a swirling black rift.
"Found you... Number XIII."
A/N: I don't know why, but at some points in writing this I felt like I was writing some noir novel. But, anyway, I'm having some trouble deciding the pairing for this story.
I have it narrowed down to three options: Roxas x Fuu, Roxas x Raven, and Roxas x Mystery girl. The last girl's name would spoil some future chapters.