Chapter Text
Rosy light from the setting sun paints Ronaldo’s office in shades of red and gold as the hunter returns. Smiling at his small round companion, he shuts the door behind them and casually slings his broad red gaucho hat onto the deadly weapon-turned-hat stand from Draluc’s castle.
“You must be tired, John!”
“Nuu,” the sweet armadillo responds, fastidiously putting away his little clutch purse.
“Man, you played a great game. Too bad Draluc couldn’t come watch,” Ronaldo adds, a little smugly. Sure, Draluc has decades of history and some kind of weird blood bond with John, but Ronaldo’s the one who gets to spend time with John in the daylight hours. Suck it, vampire.
“Nuuu…” John nods sadly, ears drooping. Shit.
“H-hey,” Ronaldo says, dropping to his knees to sling an arm around John, “maybe I can record a video at the next game, yeah? Then we can all watch together!”
“Nu!” John agrees, happily waving his short arms with enthusiasm. Ronaldo sits back and watches as John scampers over to the room where Draluc still sleeps in his coffin, no doubt eager for Draluc to wake so he can tell the vampire all about his day.
Really, it was an almost perfect day. John woke Ronaldo up early in the afternoon and they stopped to buy lunch before continuing on to the field. As usual, John’s fan club was out in full force, loudly cheering on the world’s cutest mammal while John scored goal after goal. John’s team won, and the armadillo squeaked with pleasure as he was tossed into the air by his victorious team mates.
The mood only turned sour on their way home. The damn protestors had gathered again, signs and slogans full of poisonous anti-vampire rhetoric.
“It’s a difficult situation,” Handa had said last week when the two discussed the growing movement currently causing unrest in Yokohama. “Lots of humans are injured or even killed by vampires every year.”
“Yeah, but that’s just the bad ones!” Ronaldo argued back with a vehemence he was surprised by. Handa shrugged, morose.
“Some people think there’s no such thing as a good one.”
And indeed, Ronaldo picked up John and tucked the armadillo into his chest, hiding the signs that said just that from John’s gaze.
NO VAMPS! PRESERVE HUMANITY!!
SAVE SHIN-YOKOHAMA FROM THE SUCKERS
FIGHT THE BITE!
THE ONLY GOOD VAMPIRE IS A DEAD VAMPIRE
Unfortunately, Ronaldo couldn’t prevent John from overhearing their chants. John mewled in distress as they shouted, waving their signs and stomping their feet.
“FIGHT THE BITE! SHOW THEM THE LIGHT! FIGHT THE BITE!” They called, over and over, men and women of all ages but mostly older. Ronaldo glared at them as he passed, jaw twitching as he longed to shout back at them.
But he had John to think about.
Still, Ronaldo kept his gaze fixed on the angry protestors, wary of any approaching him and John. It was just before they rounded the corner that John realized one of the protestors was staring back at him, with something like recognition in her eyes. That in itself wouldn’t have been a concern. After all, Ronaldo was a prominent figure in Shin-Yokohama, and the author of several best-selling autobiographies!
No, what gave Ronaldo the creeps was that the woman was smiling, in a manner that seemed sort of triumphant. Kind of cruel.
Ronaldo walked faster, after that.
Now, Ronaldo shakes his head, eager to rid it of such uncomfortable thoughts. Who cares what those weirdos get up to, anyways? Their fervor will burn out before long, and they’ll go back to harassing town councils and coupon-cutting.
So assured, Ronaldo gets up to scrounge around in the kitchen for snacks. If he eats that packet of cookies and disposes of the evidence quickly, he won’t have to hear the usual nagging about spoiling his appetite for “breakfast,” as they usually term the meal Draluc makes them upon waking.
Then, a flying projectile smacks into Ronaldo’s back with all the force of a cement basketball.
“Gwack!” Ronaldo sputters, splayed out face down on the floor, nose aching terribly from where it met the floorboards at full speed. “What the fuck?!”
“NU!”
Ronaldo turns his aching head to investigate the weight still perched on his aching back.
“John?! What the fu- What the he- What in cookie’s name are you doing?!”
(Draluc had scolded Ronaldo about using inappropriate language around John. Though he still wasn’t sure how it was even possible to tell whether any of the armadillo’s “nuu’s” were curses, Ronaldo has been doing his best.)
“Nu, nu, nu, nuuu nu nu nuu!” John wails hysterically, alternating between slapping his paws on Ronaldo and gesturing wildly in the direction of Draluc’s room.
“Something Draluc did?” Ronaldo guesses, gently pushing John off of himself and standing. Concern is rising in his chest, fast and potent, and he rests a hand on the gun secured at his hip. Ronaldo has never seen John so distressed.
As he crosses the room towards Draluc’s door, still left propped open from John’s rush, the last beams of daylight thin and disappear altogether. Draluc should be waking any minute. He’s punctual like that.
But no noise comes from the dark room. No sound of a creaking lid, no dramatic yawns, no yelps of “sand!” as Draluc overestimates his ability to stretch and falls to ash.
Ronaldo pushes the door open all the way and flicks on the light.
And he sees…
Nothing.
No coffin, and certainly no Draluc.
But that doesn’t make sense. Ronaldo saw Draluc slip into his coffin just before dawn. The sun was rising when Ronaldo himself went to bed. How could Draluc have left during the day? Why has he taken his coffin with him? Is he angry with Ronaldo? Shit, is this about the lobster? It’s not his fault he doesn’t like lobster! How was he supposed to know that Draluc had died twenty times preparing the damn thing!
However, as Ronaldo’s frantic mind catches up to his racing heart, a new, horrible possibility occurs to him.
What if Draluc hasn’t left?
What if he’s been…
Taken?