#hellbent au

/The rain has washed away any remaining scent. We will have to do a visual search./

Vivi blinks and there is no blood, no Arthur, no Lewis. There is only the silent structure of Pepper Paradiso, windows dark and lifeless. She rubs her hands together to rid them of the sudden chill creeping through her limbs, before folding then under Lewis’s borrowed jacked and hugging her chest.

“Ye…” She takes a shaky breath, “Yeah. I figured. The van can’t have been parked too far away though. It would have been pretty hard to walk around all these rocks and cactus in the pitch black even with a lightning storm overhead.”

/ A reasonable assumption. / Mystery is eyeing with something akin to worry, head tilted to one side.

She ignores him, walking past to scan for any sign of the van. Unlike that night, the sky is clear with a half-moon just peeking above the horizon, casting a faint grey light over the flat landscape. A gentle breeze tugs gently at her hair. The body snatcher wouldn’t have come from the westward side of the diner because she’d been looking out that way at the time, talking on the phone with her dad. Surely, she would have noticed its approach between all the lightning strikes.

“You head that way…maybe thirty feet or so. We’re going to search in a grid around the diner,” She points out to the main road adjacent to the diner, tracing it in the air with a finger to what she thinks is thirty feet, “We’ll work our way out from the road, moving in opposite directions away from the diner. Let me know when you find it.”

Mystery nods a confirmation but doesn’t move off immediately, opting to instead watch her with increasing concern. Vivi deliberately turns away from him, moving out from the building and off the concrete, picking her way across the uneven landscape, pulling out her phone for additional light.  Eventually, she hears the click of Mystery’s claws as he begins his search, jumping from rock to rock and disappearing amongst the low desert shrubs. Vivi lets her shoulders slump, all the stress and activity of the past few days finally catching up to her, weighing on her.  She shakes herself and pulls the jacket tight. With her phone’s dim flashlight barely providing enough light to see her own feet, it’s hard to avoid tripping over rocks and dips in the ground. It may look flat, but the desert is full of indents and holes. On the bright side, the rough terrain meant the van was probably closer to the road because there was no way anyone could drive very far across this. 

If the van is even out here at all. 

Doubt curls in her gut. 

What if she’d wrong about this too?

Across the darkened landscape the moon finally makes it fully over the horizon line. A new chill descends as the last of the day’s heat evaporates into the night. Vivi persists, continuing until the diner has faded into an outline. Nothing jumps out at her as being strange. It’s just empty in all directions.

/I have found it./

When Mystery finally calls an end to the search Vivi’s eyes are hurting with the strain of squinting.

“Where?”

Mystery’s telepathic projections don’t have a huge range so he must be nearby. She turns, twisting around to scan the darkness. A flash of white fur catches the moonlight. Mystery nimbly leaps over an outcropping of cactus in her direction, pausing to motion with a paw back the way he’d come.

/This way./

They make their way slowly back in the direction of the highway before turning to walk parallel to the road. A car flashes by, momentarily blinding her and she stops to blink away the bright splotches which briefly overtake her vision. The walk feels doubly long with how tied she’s becoming. 

Finally, Mystery turns back into the desert, following a sloping incline downward into a ditch where she spots a familiar orange rectangle. No wonder no one had found the van yet. Unless you were searching specifically for it, it would be almost impossible to see from either the diner or the highway.

Vivi exhales a long, hard breath of pure relief, hurrying to overtake Mystery.

Slowly, she circles the van, stretching up to shine her phone-light through the front window and into the shadowed interior. The seats of the van appear normal. There is an empty fast food bag and it looks like someone has tipped the glove compartment onto the ground. She peers further in, noting that their camping gear is no longer in neat piles but messy and scattered about. Nothing stands out as human-body shaped. She steps away.

“No dead bodies,” She tells Mystery, watching him finish his own circuit of the van, sniffing, eyes narrow.

/I smell blood. Quite a bit of it. The stench of that abomination is also strong./

“You can smell the body snatcher? Wouldn’t it just smell like Arthur?” Vivi questions even as she begins trying all the van’s doors in the hope that one is unlocked.

/These creatures are unnatural and they always leave behind aberrations. I suppose ‘smell’ is the wrong word. It would be more akin to recognising energy residue. Most spiritual energy does not originate from the physical plane. Thus, it always leaves behind some sort of stain./

Vivi rubs her forehead. She has questions. Of course, she has questions. Anytime Mystery says anything related to the supernatural she is left with only questions. Vivi files the information away for future contemplation, distracted when the van’s back doors open unexpectedly.

Both her and Mystery pause and glance at each other. 

Cautiously, she pulls it fully open and peers in. The first thing she notes is Arthur’s keyring, sitting discarded atop a mess of upturned boxes and camping gear. It looks like it had been tossed aside without thought or care. Arthur always took good care of the van’s keys, carrying them on him at all times, so it immediately strikes her as odd. But then, it isn’t only Arthur that they're dealing with.

“Weird,” She mutters, reaching to pick them up.

/Do not touch that./

She freezes, hand hovering. Mystery leaps up into the van, knocking over an open container of cooking utensils which rattle out onto the rocks, clanking off the hard surface. He sniffs the keys, huffing with disgust.

/It is covered in blood. It has a similar scent to that car. Also, I fear I smell Lance’s blood here as well…/ Mystery flicks the keys with his nose so they clatter to the ground at her feet, turning to clamber around the van, snuffling as he goes.

“Lance’s blood…” Vivi repeats, stomach sinking. There’s a lot of dirt -which probably isn’t dirt- covering the pocket knife Arthur has attached to his keys. Blood.

/Hmmm…this does not appear promising./ Mystery pops out of the van again, holding a piece of cloth in his teeth. He jumps free and drops the fabric onto the ground next to the keyring. She bends to pick it up, pinching a corner so she can lift it without touching anything. It’s one of Arthur’s shirts, apricot in colour, and splattered with darkened brown stains. More blood. She thinks she recognises the shirt as the one he had been wearing at the motel.  

/Whoever this second individual is, their smell is all over the van./

Vivi frowns, clenching her fist. “Do you think they’re dead?”

/Most likely./

“…Shit…”

She tosses the shirt back into the van, bending to pick up the keyring, carefully detaching the keys before throwing the pocketknife after the shirt. She slams the doors, breathing heavily, hands resting on the metal. She rides out a sudden wave of nausea threatening her merger lunch. So there had been a third person involved. Probably, this person was someone Arthur knew. Arthur had most likely been an unwilling accessory to the murder of someone he knew. That's not counting being forced to attack his uncle. Poor Arthur. She can’t even imagine what it must have been like. If only she’d got to him faster. If only she’d gone out to help him after Arthur’s fight with Lewis back at the motel. If she’d been with him that morning then she could have stopped him from running off to check his uncle all alone. Instead,  she’d decided to stay and console Lewis first. The wrong decision. She’d failed them both.

/Arthur would not have been able to stop this violence. These parasitic creatures are masters of all forms of manipulation./

“I’m not…I wouldn’t blame Arthur. Never,” She hisses.  Herself on the other hand….

/Neither is it your fault./ Mystery continues as if reading her mind /You could not have known. I should have been the one to act. I suspected foul play long before it was confirmed./

“You’re the family pet. I’m his best friend. I should have done something sooner.” Her voice sounds uncharacteristically hash even to her own ears. She ignores how Mystery grimaces.

“Whatever. Doesn’t matter now. I need to get rid of this evidence or Arthur’s going to get caught up in whatever ongoing investigation spawns when the police realise that whoever owned that other car is missing.” She still doesn’t know who this person is, and she doesn’t particularly care. Arthur would care probably. She didn’t.  Whether they were an employee of Kingsman Mechanics, a friend of Lance’s, some Tempo resident, it didn’t matter. All that mattered now was keeping Arthur as safe as possible with what little ability she had and if that meant destroying evidence then so be it.

She takes a breath, energised now she’s sure of her next move.

“We can’t leave the van here. Luckily, no one’s found it yet but we can’t count on that to continue.” As she speaks, she walks back around to the front seat, key in hand. Mystery follows. “There’s a ton of evidence here. Blood splatters, hair fibres, fingerprints. That’s not including Arthur’s pocketknife as a possible murder weapon.”

/You plan to hide the van./

“No. Not good enough. I don’t want this to come back and bite us later.”

She’s done making bad choices. Vivi starts up the engine and the van jerks rattling like it needs some proper maintenance. Arthur would have never let it get into such a state. She ignores the pang of guilt, driving recklessly over the rocks, dirt and sand and back onto the road. For what she has planned, the van wouldn’t need to be in any sort of drivable condition for much longer

“We’ll burn it,” She elaborates once they are back on the highway.  “That way, even if it is found, no one will be able to tie it to any missing person case resulting from that thing controlling Arthur. In theory anyway...”

She knows a place that is secluded enough that she would probably be able to get away with setting the van on fire and not draw a ton of attention. A place where she could leave it and not have it immediately discovered. Somewhere that wasn’t so far away meaning it would be possible for her to walk back to the diner with Mystery after she was done.

“Can you cast an illusion big enough to hide the flames?” She is sure she’s acting overly paranoid now but better safe than sorry. Though secluded, the area she’s thinking of is still in view of the road.

/I will have to transform to expand my illusion's range./

“Right.” Vivi glances at Mystery who’s taken his usual position beside her in the front. The concern is still creasing his expression and she quickly refocuses on the road. The last time she had seen Mystery’s kitsune form had been that night. Not a pleasant memory. The sight of Mystery looming over Lewis, all teeth and raw natural fury, glowing bright against an almost black backdrop, had been a constant in the recent spate of nightmares which had spawned from the event. Not that she had slept enough to have many nightmares.

The rest of the trip is silent and, in-between bouts of nervous energy, Vivi can almost pretend she is back with Arthur and Lewis, checking out some new local ghost sighting, laughing and joking. It is a short-lived reprieve as she is quickly turning into the small clearing, sandwiched between rock formations and overlooking a three-meter drop into a small ravine. Supposedly, the area was haunted by some disgruntled cattle rustler, run afoul of the law, chased into the ravine during ye-oldie times.  She feels silly thinking back on how serious she’d taken that investigation. 

“Was any of this stuff anywhere near real?” She asks, driving the van as close the edge as possible.

/ I believe most occurrences of the supernatural, as humans understand it, are merely echoes of past interference./  Mystery scans the cliffs, /If there was any otherworldly influence here, it has long faded./

“I guess that makes sense.” She mutters, distracted as she eyes the vegetation around her. It is sparse, so she doesn’t think it’ll be much of a fire hazard.

“You’ll be able to stop this from spreading and starting any other fires, right?”

Mystery hums to himself and begins to glow. Particles of light cling to his coat like dust motes, fading into the air around him. Unlike that night, the transformation is smooth, air shimmering and flowing over his physical form like water as he expanded to take up more space. Five tails fan out, splitting away from each other, opening like the petals of a flower before swaying languidly from side to side in an almost hypnotic pattern. 

/In this form I can stifle the flames if they become too much or contain the fire within a barrier./

Her breath catches and she nods stiffly, barely hearing him, too focused on how Mystery’s eyes flash bright red when he speaks. Bright, brilliant, red. Her hesitation is spotted and Mystery lowers head and tails, making himself smaller.

/I frighten you?/

Maybe it’s the lack of life-threatening conditions but Mystery's presence is not as dominating as it had been that night. There is less force behind his voice. Less raw anger. Even his tails seam to sag like they are taking on too much weight.

/I am sorr…/

“Save it…” She interrupts what was sure to be another in a long line of empty apologies, “Just… stand a bit over there, okay.”

Mystery seems to deflate further, wilting like a dying plant wanting for rain. The anxiety in her chest loosens ever so slightly.

With only the slightest hint of further hesitation, she begins riffling through the van's camping gear, pulling out a small jerrycan of fuel and dumping it out over the vehicle's interior. Next, she’s digging around for the fire starters and any spare lighter fluid to increase flammability. Out comes the blue zippo lighter with cool snowflake patterning.  She holds it indecisively, flipping it open. The small flame dances, bright in the night-time. Funnily, this will be the first time she uses this lighter. First and last.

This was it. Goodbye van. The van that had been a feature of her friendship with Arthur and Lewis for almost as long as she’d known them.

"Sorry Arthur.”  Another apology for the collection.  

She throws the lighter through the van’s open back doors. The fuel catches and flames spring up, spreading quickly. Soon, long tongues of fire are licking at the windows. A series of small cracks appear in the glass, spiderwebbing out. The heat is intense and she backs away so as not to accidentally burn herself. Sounds of snapping and popping echo in the ravine, the noise trapped by the rocks and cliffs.  Vivi watches the interior of the van blacken, metal reddening and warping. Dark smoke twists upward and disappears into the night.

.

Note: An update in honour of the new MSA: Future :) Enjoy!