Rosario+Vampire: Trials of Stolen Youth
The small New Mexico diner was quiet. Most of the roadside ones that were on the side of the highway between towns like this one tended to be that way. They mostly existed just as a point of history at this point. The garage attached to it had probably been shut down for fifty years, and the lack of traffic was slowly strangling the business. Such were the ravages of time.
In a booth near the back of the customer seating a young man looked at the laminated menu. He was a little surprised by the number of businesses that had ads on it that had the date 1999 on them. There was a really good chance that the menu hadn't changed in all that time. Of course there wasn't really anything on it that needed changing.
He felt someone coming up behind him, and shifted his gaze to watch as they came up. It was just the waitress, not anyone for him to worry about. To be curious about, yes, but not worried. He was something, not quite human, and he could feel others that weren't.
The girl was most likely around his age, had smooth reddish skin, and long black hair. Given the area he was in, she was probably Mescalero. He had to wonder what she was, but it wouldn't have been polite to ask about it.
"Are you ready to order, Sir," the girl asked, holding a pen just above her order pad.
"Uh, yeah. Triple stack of pancakes, bacon, and three eggs scrambled. Is there any chance that you have tomato juice, if not then orange juice will be fine," he answered as he looked up.
The girl looked at him strange for a second before she wrote down the order, "Alright, three cakes, pig belly, three chicken fruits smashed, and the blood of tomatoes or oranges. Have it out for you double time."
The young man looked after the girl. That was the strangest thing that he had heard in a long time. Probably one of the best he had heard in a long time too. He was going to have to remember that to tell her when he returned home.
He chuckled as he turned his head. Out of the corner of his eye he caught his reflection in the side of the napkin dispenser. His eyes were carmine with emerald streaks in them. That must have been what the girl found weird enough to stare at. He rolled his eyes as the carmine color faded away to leave just emerald green. He needed to work harder to keep his appearance from slipping without thinking about it.
He looked out the window into the parking lot. At the least the business was doing well enough to keep the pavement in good repair. Not many like it could say that. Of course one day it may be forced to either move closer to a town, or just shut down. Would be a shame either way.
There weren't that many vehicles in the lot. A couple of over the road trucks, two sedans that were a few years old, a beat up pickup, and an utter monstrosity of a Mad Maxian war machine. That was his, and had started out a 1970 Buick Le Sabre hardtop, and now was most likely not really street legal. What was in the trunk and backseat was definitely not legal for sure.
He turned his gaze down to his phone. One thing that surprised him was that they had an actual phone signal. He wouldn't have thought that a place that was twenty miles from the nearest town would have anything, but then again the state had probably funded signal repeaters so that people on the highway wouldn't be in danger if they got stranded. Of course it could have also been some political project to help someone win reelection.
He flicked through some news articles, looking for certain things that stood out to him. Disappearances, bodies showing signs of cannibalism, or military style strikes against armored cars or military equipment transports. He hadn't had any luck in a week or two, which made him think that the rumors of such things happening around that area were either outdated, or misdirection. It was probably time for him to move on from the area.
As he read the girl returned with a glass of tomato juice. He nodded his thanks as he continued reading. There just wasn't anything that gave him any clues to go on. Children kidnapped by family members. MS13 and the Aryan Brotherhood responsible for a major prison riot that left over two hundred dead, good riddance. Fairy Tale cell destroyed by mysterious organization in El Paso. That last one was a little rude, but then again he didn't advertise what he did.
He took a drink and continued flicking through the headlines. Most of it was just celebrity and political brain rot. The weather, and how climate change alarmists had lost another lawsuit as independent research had proven that the current shift in climate patterns wasn't caused by man made pollution, but rather gravitational forces outside the solar system, oh wait, that last part was part of a tabloid, the lawsuit stuff was real though.
Yeah, it was time to move on. Fairy Tale didn't have a presence anywhere in the state. The question was if he went back east through Texas, west into Arizona, even though he wanted to avoid that, or north into Utah. Best thing to do was to start finding a better way to sift through the news to find anything that gave him a clue.
"Aren't you a little young to be reading a bunch of corporate dish rags," the waitress had come back up to check on him while his attention was focused.
"It depends on what a person is looking for. Though, I really can't find what I am looking for," he replied.
"You can't be any older than me. Sixteen, seventeen," she said sitting down in the booth across from him.
"Seventeen. Should you really be sitting down while you are at work?"
The girl shrugged, "My boss really doesn't care. We are a historical business, so the state is paying to keep us in the black. I think it is a waste of money, but it's hard for a rez girl to find work around here. "
"I see. Got a question," he looked up at the girl.
"Name first, then your question," she said crossing her arms over her chest.
"Ok. Tekeshi Aono."
"Nice to meet you Tekeshi, I'm Nalin. If you make any Nalin what jokes, I will stab you in the eye with a straw," she said.
"I see that even now the violent spirit of the Apache hasn't been conquered."
"Nah, I am just a raging bitch by nature. So, what is your question," Nalin said with a laugh.
Tekeshi chuckled, "Have you heard of anything weird going on around here? People disappearing, partially eaten human bodies or even animal, or weird robberies. Anything like that?"
The girl looked a little uncomfortable, "Who are you, and why are you asking questions like that?"
"I already gave you my name. As to why, I am hunting a group, that likes to do things that aren't very nice."
"I don't know anything about that. I got to get back to work," she got up and left.
Tekeshi grimaced as he watched her go. He didn't directly ask people often, mostly because they became paranoid. Yokai, especially. The integration of the two worlds was still not complete, and many were afraid of what humans might do if they found out what they were. He thought about going ahead and telling her what he was, show her that he was someone that could be trusted, but he didn't feel that it would be successful.
He went back to looking through the news for the surrounding states. There still wasn't much that could interest him. He noticed loud music approaching the place, but he ignored it. It was some sort of rap, or hip hop, and he really didn't enjoy it. It was probably some punk or something on a road trip.
An obnoxiously green colored SUV pulled into the parking lot fast. It came to a screeching halt, and three young guys piled out. They were yelling at each other excitedly, not really saying anything of consequence. They busted through the door, and just kept being loud.
"HEY, get some service over here,"one of them said as they threw themselves in a booth.
Tekeshi looked up. He was Japanese, and manners were a very important thing to him. People like these always rubbed him the wrong way. He had lived most of his life in Phoenix, Arizona, but that didn't change that he had been raised to value manners.
"HEY, SERVICE, what is so god damn hard about that," they yelled again.
Nalin brought Tekeshi's food and set it in front of him. She took a deep breath, and had a very concerned look on her face. He could tell that she really didn't want to deal with the punks.
'Thank you," he said as she turned to walk over to them.
She didn't reply. She was still wary of him, and he didn't blame her. However he was finding himself wary of the guys she was about to wait on. He was typically a very good judge of character, and he could tell that these three were nothing but trouble.
He started eating. He had a bite of pancake halfway to his mouth, and then stopped. His mind sent him back to a girl's dorm room, an utter mess of flour, and burnt batter. Gray eyes that were scrunched in determination to get it right. Tears started to well up in his eyes.
"LET GO OF ME ASSHOLE," he was brought back to reality hearing Nalin's yell.
He turned his head to see one of the men, a Hispanic looking dude covered with tattoos, holding her in his lap against her will as he tried to unbutton her shirt. Tekeshi stood and crossed the distance in just a few steps. Grabbing her arm, he ripped the girl from the guy's grasp.
"I think it would be best if you left," he said as he blocked the booth's view of Nalin as she got her clothes back in order.
The one that had been holding her stood up, not quite realizing how much bigger Tekeshi was than him until that moment, "Just who the hell do you think you are? Get out of the way, and walk away while you can."
"Not happening. Walk away, and you are going to get to keep your teeth. Push the issue, and that is off the table," Tekeshi backed away with Nalin behind him.
"Apparently you don't know. My old man is the god damn sheriff in this county. You don't get to tell me what to do, unless you want to find yourself buried in a shallow grave in the desert. Give me the squaw, and you get to live," he said looking back at his two friends as they guffawed at his words.
A textbook uppercut was Tekeshi's response. He couldn't stand people who thought that because their family held some degree of power, that they were immune to consequence. His own father was much more important than some petty county sheriff.
The punk's friends grabbed him and drug him out of the diner. Tekeshi led Nalin back over to his booth and let her sit down.
"You ok," he asked.
The girl was shaken, but unhurt, "Thank you. I'm, I'm not hurt. I hate people like them. Worthless pedophile. He's in college, he should know better. Then again, his father isn't much better. They aren't welcome on the rez, but he has connections in Santa Fe, so he can do almost anything he wants. OH MY GOD WATCH OUT!"
A baseball bat shattered over the back of Tekeshi's head. So he had chosen death, that was just fine with Tekeshi.
"You know, I haven't gotten my daily recommended dosage of violence today. Thank you for refilling my prescription," he said as he stood up, unfazed by the blow.
The sheriff's son stepped back and looked at the ruined weapon. It had been made out of solid oak. It was entirely meant for busting skulls, not hitting home runs. He looked back at his friends, and he knew that he couldn't let this asshole walk away. He pulled a switchblade from his back pocket, and just as the button was pressed, and the blade flipped out, a bullet blew open the back of his skull.
Tekeshi stood there with the revolver held out in front of him. Smoke was still curling from the barrel. He already knew as the other two gathered the body and ran out, that he was about to remove the outlaw and disorder from the county.
"Everyone, get behind the bar. Don't come out for any reason until I say so. You will be safe there, trust me," he said as he pushed a stunned Nalin in that direction.
When everyone was out of the way he walked to his car. He opened the trunk. It was a mishmash of different weapons. Machine guns, select fire rifles, shotguns, sidearms, and just where the hell did he get a morning star? He picked the odd weapon out up and looked at it questioningly, then threw it off to the side. He pulled a M240 from the jumble, and a couple of large, green, metal boxes with hinged lids.
It took only a half hour for them to arrive. Tekeshi was simply leaned back against the building. He counted around thirty men. Not a huge force, but it wasn't small, not that it mattered. The outcome was decided no matter what.
"Ok men, he has a gun, give it to him," a Hispanic man, also covered in tattoos, gave the order, to a bunch of Hispanic dudes covered in tattoos.
Tekeshi suddenly got the impression that the elections that were being held around there, weren't entirely honest. He had been in conflict with cartels and gangs in his life, and they looked exactly like they belonged to a cartel.
The gunfire that opened up on him, was frightening to everyone that was behind the bar. They didn't think that there was anyway that anyone could survive that. It sounded like a full scale war was going on outside, and with the way bullets were tearing up the wall above the level of the bar, they believed that it was a full scale war.
After a moment the fire died out as the sheriff and his deputies ran dry on ammunition. They were dumbfounded by what they saw. Tekeshi hadn't even moved, not even with the bullets that were hitting him. It was like they were passing through him, except there was an almost cartoonish area behind him that had no bullet holes.
Tekeshi shook his head as he went through the process of loading the machine gun, making sure that the men could see him. They hurried to reload their own weapons, but they weren't able to beat him. He leveled the machine gun in their direction. He then pulled the trigger.
The New Mexico State Police arrived within three hours of the gunfight. The sight they saw was, terrifying. They found the patrons and staff hidden behind the bar, barring the shooter, and the teenage waitress. Everyone there was safe and sound. Every member of the Sheriff's Department, had been annihilated. The bodies were only identifiable by dogtags, and name tags. A note had been left on the hood of the sheriff's car.
"You don't know who I am. That is how it needs to stay. The girl is safe, and she isn't going to be harmed, in fact she is going to be in a much better situation.
I don't know how the entire county's sheriff department came to be made up of cartel members, but you might want to ask the governor. They might be able to reveal something, given that the sheriff's phone showed over three thousand calls between them just this year. Have a nice day, and I hope that this helps cut out the cancer."
Fifty miles away, near Las Cruces, the war machine Buick pulled to a stop at a gas station. The shaken Nalin sat in the passenger seat, not sure what to make of the driver.
"Who are you? How, nothing should have been able to survive that. You don't even have a speck of dust on your shirt," she blurted out.
"First, tell me what kind of monster, or creature, or whatever the Apache call what you are," he said, as he turned off the ignition.
"How did you, ho..., I'm a skinwalker," she said as she looked down at her feet.
"Hm, I thought that was a Navajo thing," Tekehsi said as he turned his head to look at her.
"The Apache and the Navajo share a lot of common culture. Your turn, answer me."
"I am, how is the best way to say this. I was born a vampire, and due to events, I became a demigod. I think everyone on earth actually saw that happen," he said as he reached over to the glovebox.
"No way, you're him? You don't look, how did you do that," as she spoke Tekeshi let his appearance change.
Rather than the black haired teen, now he sat there with long platinum hair. She could see that his eyes was a really deep red, and his facial features were more oriental.
"This is what I typically look like now. Really recognizable. I tend to disguise myself as much as possible. Now, you're a dropout aren't you," he asked as he pulled a pen and some paper from the glovebox.
"How did you know that? Don't tell me you are psychic too. I might as well just flash my tits, cause next you are going to say that you have better x-ray vision than superman," Nalin threw her hands up.
"I don't, I'm not, and I am taken. So please keep your shirt on. I haven't seen my, you know nevermind, just keep your shirt on. I take it you are also a runaway, given that you were working somewhere that really didn't care that much. I also saw a bed in the back through some of the bullet holes, and there weren't enough cars to account for you. Before you ask, I am actually a genius, not that it means much most of the time."
Nalin was just able to sit there in stunned silence.
"When I leave, call this number. The person who answers will be my father. He runs a school in Japan. The purpose of it is to teach monsters to live in peace with humans. I know that you know how to do that already, but, it is a safe place, relatively. Tell him that you met me, and that you need help, and safety. My family is good people. They will make sure you are taken care of, and can actually get an education without worrying about money. It may be a bit of an adjustment learning the language, but I think you will do alright," Tekeshi let his appearance shift again.
This time, his face remained the same. His eyes returned the the green and red stripes. His hair shortened to rest at his shoulder, and turned brown, with silver and pink streaks throughout it. The sight, felt comforting to the girl, who sat for a few moments before speaking.
"I... I don't know what to say," she finally said after a moment.
"Thank you is all you need to say. I'll see you again at some point. I will be back there someday soon."