Constructive criticism and flames are helpful.
Frisk woke up to the sound of a car roaring down the street, closely followed by three high-pitched police sirens in pursuit. She sat up, gazing blankly at the wall in front of her before stretching up, cracking her neck and yawning. Slowly she swung her feet over the edge of the mattress and shuffled her socked feet towards the bathroom.
Sunlight was struggling to stream through the heavy curtains, but still illuminated the crazy number of dust particles in the air of the motel room. The kitchenette counter was a sickly green color, and the shower head sadly only gave out drips of reddish brown rust stained water. The stained, quilted bed sheets, yellowing seventies wallpaper, and smokey smell did nothing to help the dingy atmosphere of the place, and Frisk was dying to leave.
Refreshed, Frisk moved out of the bathroom and started packing the little she had hidden or stowed away. She had wanted to get an early start today, but instead of hitting the sack at eight like she planned, she had watched the news anchors drone on and on about a missing puppy or a celebrity's new affair before heading to bed around eleven thirty. Luckily the car chase outside had woken her up early enough to get in some good distance between here and her destination.
Frisk was headed towards the northern lakes and marshland, after hearing some rumors about the odd disturbances up that way. At first it was nothing strange, a few smaller cats and dogs went missing. Then some of the larger dogs. Then a few children. After Frisk heard that she had to go investigate for herself.
Zipping up her duffle bag and stuffing some last papers in her briefcase, Frisk threw on a black jacket and tied up her messy brown hair before grabbing her bags and lightly jogged down the stairs to the motel desk to check out.
Tossing her leg over the motorcycle, Frisk turned the key in the ignition, and revved the engine. Slipping her full face helmet over her head, she slowly backed out of the parking space and onto the two lane road.
For about seven hours, with an hour break for lunch and a nap and a few pit stops, Frisk drove on the northbound highway, and with each passing minute, the weather got colder and windier, until she didn't feel safe driving faster than twenty miles per hour. She pulled off the road, glancing quickly at the signs lining the sides of the smaller streets, searching for a small mom and pop motel, none of those big brand places. Frisk had learned long ago that not only were these places usually cleaner, but they usually had a small fairly secure server that was hard to trace, and no security cameras except in the office where the money was held. As long as she remembered to keep her head down when facing the camera, she would be fine.
Frisk pulled into a parking lot for "The Heights Motel" and parked her bike at the back of the lot. Just to be absolutely safe, Frisk took a moment sitting on her motorcycle to focus her magic. After concentrating it for a minute, she imagined it encasing her body, creating a full body mask, a glamour to trick the camera just in case she couldn't keep her head lowered.
Opening her eyes, Frisk inspected her face in the rear view mirror on her motorcycle to inspect for holes or mistakes in the spell. Now instead of a young brunette, there was a tall, lean blonde, with one conspicuous beauty mark high on her cheek, straddling the bike. Dismounting the vehicle, Frisk strode over to the entrance, but before she stepped in, she made note of the single security camera pointing from the clerk's side toward the customer and slightly lowered her head so the camera couldn't catch a clear shot of her face. Walking over to the desk, Frisk put on a tight grin, waving slightly at the teenage clerk.
"Hey! How much for one night?"
"Only $85."
"Great. Is the wifi included?"
"Yup." A lull in the conversation made Frisk look around the small office. There were a couple of rickety chairs against the window, and a few abstract paintings hanging on the wall, and light blue walls clashed with the dark orange carpet. Behind the desk, the clerk tapped away on a computer probably older than him, with too many food stains on the keyboard to be considered sanitary.
"Where you headed?" His sudden question snapped Frisk out of her reverie, and she quickly came up with some bogus backstory.
"Oh, wherever. Inherited some wanderlust from my father, so I take road trip every once in awhile."
"Cool." They lapsed back into silence, and this time Frisk turned towards the windows and leaned against the desk. Relaxing now that only the back of her head could be seen by the camera, Frisk let her mind wander once more to other places she had visited. As the ambassador, she had traveled to all sorts of countries trying to convince politicians that monsters were sentient, naturally good beings who happened to wield unimaginable power. Various scientists had wanted to conduct invasive tests on monsters, and some military tacticians had wanted to train them to become mindless killing machines, and it had taken years of talking and negotiation to get most nations to protect monsters equally under the law. Of course, there was no perfect solution to the problem. Though under the law monsters could be average citizens, humans everywhere were wary of the oddly shaped, often intimidating figures that had joined their neighborhoods. Over time most humans forgot about the differences between them and treated monsters as normal people, but there were still some monster-hate groups that liked to stir up some trouble every so often.
The clerk tapped Frisk's arm with her receipt and told her about some of the motel's general rules before giving her the key to room 4a and wishing her a good night. Frisk briskly walked to her bike, grabbed both her duffle bag and briefcase and climbed the stairs to her room. Turning the key in the lock, Frisk quickly closed the door, drew her heavy duty laptop out of the briefcase and set it on the coffee table in the corner. Throwing her duffle bag on the bed, she pulled a chair up to the tabled and started up the laptop. Though its exterior might have seemed ordinary, this was actually a highly advanced PC Alphys had put together just for Frisk. Its lightning fast processor allowed her to run several programs at once, and it was the only laptop Frisk had ever seen that could connect to both the surface internet and the underground's version of the world wide web. On top of this, Alphys had made the laptop basically impossible to trace through any means. After being targeted and attacked multiple times as the ambassador for monsters, Toriel had asked Alphys to protect Frisk from online threats through any means she saw fit. Both her cellphone and her laptop were taken into Alphy's lab where, after weeks of tinkering, both gadgets had come out ten times better than before.
After logging into her account, Frisk quickly hopped on the motel wifi and checked some more news outlets for any new information that might have been released about the missing children. Finding nothing of importance, she shut the laptop and shoved it back into the briefcase before flopping on the bed. The digital clock on the nightstand read seven thirty, but to Frisk it felt like midnight. Lethargically, she slowly kicked off her shoes, set the alarm for five forty five the next morning, and fell asleep on top of the covers.
Only 600 miles to go.
Story also on Archive of Our Own under same title and same username.
