[hider=Dōromonogatari (Road Story)]
[i]The only reason you should believe this story is because I'm the one telling it. 

I know, I know, it sounds arrogant, but you should also believe me when I say I don't have the time or the personality type conducive to being arrogant. Don't get me wrong; I [b]am[/b] on a level above most people in terms of physical competence and mental fortitude, but that's not conceit as much as a simple belief that I'm the best tool for the job. Believing you're better than other people is arrogance. I'm simply an equation - or rather, a formula. If you give me variables, a location, a name, a set of rules to abide by, I will always deliver a perfect result, because it's impossible for something to be wrong with an equation. Any failure is simply a result of user error or an improper variable.

And there was no variable more improper than Giada Fiordilatte. The bloodsucker. The bootleg Draculina. A teenage girl from the heart of hell hell, a spoiled Mistralian bastard who met the wrong end of a science experiment, a hot-blooded, cold-blooded, iron-blooded pain in my ass. She was something that could not have existed outside of someone's imagination or bad light novels - but believe me when I tell you that she exists, and two weeks before my first semester at Atlas Academy, she was in the passenger's seat of a stolen car, being chauffeured towards her freedom. How she got to this point in her life is classified; where she went after this point in her life is immaterial. But I, along with a handful of others, bear particular responsibility for this vampire's fate - and of those select few, only I, a tool of Atlas my entire life, lied to my superiors and committed an act of treason by prolonging her definition of 'eternity.'

Believe me because there's no way that I, Jericho Dylan Piper, a proven formula for success, would be admitting my failure like this if I didn't think there was reason for it. In the event of my expulsion from Atlas Academy, or even my court martial, this story needs to be as believable as possible so that the consequences for my actions can fall justly on my shoulders, and not impugn the good global standing of the Kingdom of Atlas. The official record is more important than the pride or dignity of one operative, especially an unthinking, unfeeling, unabashed tool like me. Carpenters can care for their tools, feel protective over them, and even pass them down through the generations - but if a hammer doesn't get upset when it's finally replaced, then I shouldn't feel too bad either.

With that in mind, believe everything I tell you. I have no reason to lie, and in the event that any discrepancies pop up between this account and what you see, hear, or know to be real, I can only assume that there's some sort of discrepancy or gap in my memory. I would never lie to protect someone out of benevolence, or sympathy. It's just not in my character.

Whatever anyone else tells you, no matter what proof they bring forward or anecdotes they say they have, that's the truth. 

And I'll say so to my grave.[/i]

[hr]
A drive across the continent of Solitas, from Atlas in the south up to the polar city of Mantle, would take a nuclear family with a dog and an RV about five days to see all the way through. Included in that 120 hours is at least three, if not four, ten hour stops at an RV park for the family to recharge, as well as one to two half-hour stops per day at a fast food joint right off any number of freeway exists. An experienced driver, with an admittedly hypocritical view on speed limits, the ability to operate on little to no sleep for two days without any side effects of REM-sleep deprivation, and a bag full of sandwiches in the back seat...well, if such a driver were to hypothetically exist, like I do, that man could probably cut the trip in half.

Right now, I was pushing 71 hours, which was far enough behind the bar I personally set for myself for a cross-continental voyage that I was stewing with disappointment behind the wheel. If this were an adventure I'd gone on for pleasure, or a mission, or even a trip undertaken for the sake of fruitless soul-searching, maybe I would have called one of my teammates, or Babylon, or even my father. But, as it happened, there was a state secret curled up pitifully in shotgun wearing a pair of tinted Aviators, and the fewer people who knew about her - or were implicated in my weekend drive up to the forgotten city of Mantle - the better.

If I was starting to feel antsy about a lack of sleep or nourishment, the Mistralian artificial vampire must have been in agony. She had been hiding in my shadow for the better part of a month and a half, which did a hell of a job at concealing her from the tightened security around all Atlesian military complexes, but the manhunt for her back home was so extensive that she had been unable to feed since her escape from the Bastion Academy laboratories, going on two months ago by now. Brush up on your vampire mythology at all - as I have - and you'll see that such a state can be anywhere from inconvenient to detrimental to downright gruesome for a vampire, and it was clear that the scientists who had designed Giada were keeping that little lore nugget in mind.

She was shivering, clammy yet cold to the touch, her skin slick and pinning her spun-gold hair to her forehead. Behind the Aviators I'd put on her to cover her distinctive eyes, I knew that those pale yellow irises of hers were as pale as morning sunlight. She was collapsing into a wreck without blood. Maybe she would die. 

I had considered killing her myself. Each of us - Rich, me, Bright, Speer - had been issued with a new handgun and silver bullets to match, in case we came across her, as it seemed silver was the only weakness we were certain she had. But executing something in such a state, even a target, was pitiful and crass; besides, I had already gotten her this far, within a couple hours of our destination, and by now I was complicit in her escape like it or not. To not commit now would have been an act of cowardice built upon another.

Double jeopardy.

I heard a weak whimper beside me in the seat and sighed. If she died in the passenger's seat of starvation anyway, my personal honor or code of ethics wouldn't matter for much one way or the other.

As much as I regret it looking back, this [i]isn't[/i] a story about shooting a shaggy dog.

So I reached into the back seat, beside my bag full of submarine sandwiches I'd bought from Bright's favorite deli, and grabbed the golden thermos I'd bought to store blood in. Robbing a blood bank was a bit of an old cliche, something straight out of one of Speer's computer games, but being stripped bereft of any other options and running low on time before the start of school, I had to take what I was given. There was enough blood in her makeshift sippy cup to keep her sustained throughout the trip, or so I thought.

It turns out I had severely overestimated the state of table manners in southern Mistral.

Giada clutched the cup with both hands and tilted her head back, gulping hungrily at AB- blood that I had to assume was only lukewarm at best by now. Growing up in a flat with three other boys had a way of chipping away at your inhibitions about etiquette, but such a gross display by such an unnatural creature was way too much even for me.

"Good luck getting someone to invite you into their home when you gulp at your drink like that," I admonished coldly, eyes on the road. The exit I needed to get off the Cross-Continental Freeway and head towards Mantle would be coming up any mile marker now, and the last thing I wanted to do was miss a turn while watching a vampire gulp down half a church's blood drive worth of food.

Did I just say food?

It's not food, it's [i]blood.[/i] 

The sooner this girl was on a plane out of Atlas, the better.

"Good luck being invited into someone's home with such a boorish way of criticism," came the weak reply. Giada Fiordilatte sat up as much as she could, grinning weakly at me. Blood ran along one of the eight teeth in her mouth that was slightly sharpened, elongated into a fang by the scent and taste of the blood that tinted her coquettish smile. "Don't worry, [i]signor[/i], when I find an apartment we can throw our own parties. I'll be the cheese, you can bring the whine."

Oh, yeah.

And she liked [i][b]puns[/b][/i], too.

Maybe that was why I spared her life. This was a form of endurance training, a lot like the Gauntlet was at Bastion. If I could survive this car trip, the personalities of all my subsequent adversaries would [i]pale[/i] in comparis--

Crap, she had me doing it too. My left hand gripped the steering wheel more tightly.

"If I ever see you again, I'll kill you, Fiordilatte. I told you that before we left Atlas. You don't come here on vacation, you don't try to find other vampires, if you even see a tourism pop-up on your [i]Scroll[/i] I want you to throw it across the room. There won't be any parties. Now drink your blood and shut up."

If you read any affection at all in those words, or even sympathy for the young artificial vampire's predicament, then you're imagining things - and probably a fan of some really bad, abusive fanfic. Giada must have fallen into both those categories, because she licked the blood off her lips in what she must have thought was a flirty manner before resting her clammy forehead on the window.

It was clear that her brief display of spunk had worn her out. There wasn't much blood left in the thermos after she had gulped at it hungrily within the first few hours of the road trip, and what was left couldn't have been very satisfying for a girl accustomed to the finest of everything.

She'd been like that when we picked her up, too. Tried her hand at observational comedy about the state of Atlesian airships for the entire trip back to Bastion after we'd first picked her up from the lab she was changed in. Of course, Nicole Polendina, our mission handler, thought it was cute. They'd bonded quickly. And the rest of the guys were smitten with her, too.

"I liked you more when you were pawing at my breasts," she sighed hoarsely. 

Don't let her turn you against me, or take anything suggestive from that comment. It wasn't as bad as it sounds. It was a containment maneuver, she was utilizing that damned super-speed of hers, and it's not my fault that she feels it in her chest first whenever she runs into a wall.

You know what? I don't have to explain myself. This isn't relevant.

I turned to reply, but my face stiffened slightly when I saw that her head was lolling back against the window, mouth drooped slightly open. Either she'd fallen asleep out of exhaustion, or gone catatonic.

I should probably have tried to do something.

...

But, in the sake of providing an honest narrative, I'm going to admit that the silence that reigned over the car for the next twenty minutes was more soothing than any nap.

[hr]
"Forty on pump two, aaaaand...this stuff." 

I pushed the bag of pretzel sticks and the sports drink forward on the counter, fishing the necessary lien out of my pocket and slapping them down after my purchases. As loathe as I normally was to splurge on stuff like this, I had the taste of three days worth of the same sandwiches in my mouth, and eating a snack and having a drink with real flavor was a luxury that I could afford. Maybe it wasn't exactly the most super-spy thing to do - after all, how can I claim to be completely detached if I need to eat something different after just three days? - but I only had one witness to my problem behavior, and with any luck she was suffering brain damage from blood deprivation that would render her mute.

As I turned to exit the gas station, with food and drink in my hands, I saw that once again that just the nomenclature 'Young Devil' doesn't exactly give you the devil's luck.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uiDeUPVNsM]Giada had woken up.[/url]

No, worse.

Giada had not only woken up, but somehow found the strength to wander out of the car. She was calling my name weakly, staggering through the station's empty parking lot, slumping against a pump now and again in an effort to retain her footing. She must have been delirious; she had been too long with too little blood, she was going to crap out or lose control right here in public, she was--

"That yours?" the attendant asked. Swallowing to keep calm, I turned to him and shrugged as effortlessly as I could - even as my gloved hand closed around my drink hard enough to snap the seal. 

"She's been getting into the boxed wine the whole trip," I said apologetically, giving him a faint one-sided smile. "Mistralians, right?"

I hurried out of the store and set the snacks and drink onto the roof of the car almost as an afterthought, circling around the car and grabbing Giada by her bare shoulders. The tank top she was wearing had spots of blood dribbling down the front; now that I had her in my clutches, I could see that she'd gnawed into the bottom of the Thermos looking for any last drop she could.

I felt faintly queasy.

[i]"Get it together,"[/i] I hissed. "Fiordilatte, [i]hey. Fiordilatte.[/i] Do not do this to me. I've got too much on the line for you to freak out like this and jeopardize--"

She seemed to be looking right through me. Her gaze looked sluggish and unfocused, but I could see a faint glint of scarlet through the colored lenses of her Aviators; I knew damn well that her hungry, delusional fugue state could turn predatory any second.

"Jericho?" she asked listlessly. "Jericho, darling, zat you? M'm so...[i]hungry.[/i]"

And there it was. The predator.

"[i]Hey.[/i] Listen to me."

"Jericho? It [i]is[/i] you...is that Type O I smell in you? Universal blood type, y'know. [i]Y'kn-O.[/i]"

Her eyebrows furrowed, and I saw a hint of impatient fang in her loopy grin. Sparing a look towards the gas station, where a no-doubt curious attendant was watching from inside.

"Vampire, I am not going to do this with you. Shut up and [i]get in the car,[/i] now. I have come too far to risk you collapsing and dying on the pavement, or worse, going on a bender. Keep it together, vampire, or I swear to God I'm going to put enough silver ammunition in you to rip you in half. And then I'm going to go back inside and blast the cashier, too, just to make sure nobody talks. That what you want? You want [i]me[/i] to lose it?"

The threat clearly rattled her, because she took a trembling step back - and then nearly lost her balance, collapsing into my left arm. Seal Judgment tensed up at her touch. She looked down, and over the tops of her sunglasses I was startled to see the artificial vampire was about to cry.

[i]Artificial[/i] vampire...

"No," the girl whispered, "no, I don't want to die..."

And I felt like I'd been ripped in half by a gun myself. 

Why did I spare Giada Fiordilatte, a girl who I clearly and unflinchingly despise, you ask?

Because she's still a girl.

Not to imply I'm discriminating against my targets by sex, but...

She was still [i]a[/i] girl. A young girl, not a fully grown or matured person, who had been thrust into a situation beyond her control, turned into something out of a storybook by mad scientists, and was still trying to cope with it. She was alone, coping with her new set of circumstances, and dying. 

And it terrified her.

That's why I spared her.

Not everybody approaches death with my cavalier attitude...

And unlike me, Giada didn't choose to be Atlas' monster. If she'd had the choice, would she still be what she is today?

If I had the choice again, would [i]I?[/i]

It was my life's first moment of true introspection. It bordered on ontological shock.

...

"Drink."

That seemed to get through to Giada Fiordilatte. She regained a small sense of awareness at the uncharacteristic command, but not quickly enough for me. I grabbed her blonde ponytail roughly, like I was caressing her head. I tugged her all the way around the pump and leaned against it, head slumping back against the pump for support and cover from the line of sight of the cashier inside. 

"Ow!" she hissed, fangs baring. "[i]Lecherous boy![/i] What are you doing, you caveman, you're gonna pull my hair out--"

"Now [i]drink.[/i]" I tilted to the side to reveal my neck to the artificial vampire, already grimacing in expectation. "Seven seconds. That should be enough blood, straight from the source, to keep you until you get to Mistral. Longer than seven seconds, and you better tear my head off fast - because I will find the strength in me to kill you [i]myself[/i]. Got it?"

She was quiet for a second, searching my eyes for any hint of deception. So I asked her to do what I'm asking you to do - fully aware that she has as much reason to accept my commands as you, as a reader, do.

"Trust me."

...

I expected to feel something like a couple needles going into my neck, the same way you'd feel them in your arm at a routine blood draw. That isn't what I got. It was different; it was a bite, hard enamel puncturing and drinking greedily. I almost felt my knees buckle at the force of it, but kept standing with the help of the pump. Giada's head burrowed into my neck, almost in a vampiric snuggle, as I slowly counted down. 

[i]Five...six...[/i]

"Hey..."

She didn't stop.

"Fiordilatte..."

She didn't stop.

[i]"Giada."[/i]

[i]Eleven...twelve...[/i]

Just as I was reaching for my gun, she drew away.

"Sorry," she said huskily, with more vigor in her voice than I'd heard all day. "Got carried away. Sure hope that wasn't a [i]draining[/i] experience for you, Piper, darling."

I should have shot her for that. Perhaps, if this weren't a true narrative, I'd say I did.

I'd say I kept to my word and shot Giada Fiordilatte, for being unable to stick to my once-in-a-lifetime compromise.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2X1wzicy1o]Unfortunately, I'm a failure.[/url]

[hr]
"You saved my life," she said a couple hours later, once we had gotten off our final exit and the airport loomed larger in the distance. There was a look of glee on her face as she spoke. "I would've starved without you."

I didn't like the way she said it. There was gratitude in there. And a teasing edge. 

"Letting you die would have been a poor return on investment," I stated dispassionately. "It was practical. And painful."

"It was [i]intimate,[/i]" she cooed.

reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

I turned to glare at her.

"It was [i]not.[/i]"

"It was," she insisted. "I gave you [i]t h e   s u c c![/i]"

"[i]No, you did not,[/i]" I growled, pulling up to the visitor's parking in front of Terminal C. "You..."

I trailed off, looking for the right words to find.

"You slept the whole trip," I finished, settling for the least uncomfortable topic. Any doubts I had about myself, my outlook on life, my feelings on Atlas Academy, or my nihilistic view of my own existence...weren't for someone like Giada. "And you ate all the snacks. You cost me a weekend, a hundred lien, and probably a couple pints of blood. Maybe a more spineless man would forgive you for all those, but not me. Get out of my car and get on your flight. And remember--"

"Never see you, or Atlesian soil, again for all of eternity," she finished, still smiling that infuriating, coy, immortal smile. She put on her best Heinrich impression when she added, "Fare thee well, Jericho. Enjoy your life ~!"

I looked out the driver's side window, pointedly away from Giada, as I searched for a place to pull out of the terminal.

"Yeah, you too," I mumbled. "Hey, Giada."

She had slammed the door, but clearly her artificially-heightened senses were still working. She stuck her ear to the window, gesturing for me to continue.

"...I wasn't going to shoot you," I admitted, still keeping a cold, dispassionate face.

Her grin widened, but she insisted on pretending she didn't hear me. The vampire gestured for me to repeat myself.

"[i]I wasn't going to shoot you.[/i]" I growled slightly and added, "But I will if you miss your flight. [i]Scram.[/i]"

Beaming, the vampire threw me a mockery of the Atlesian salute and turned. Within the throng of people, carts, and luggage bustling from Atlas to one of the other three kingdoms, and vice versa, even a girl as distinctive and possession-less as Giada Fiordilatte could be lost in the crowds within an instant.

And sure enough, she was - no doubt still smiling at my confession.

Of course, I would have. Without hesitation.

But there was no harm in letting her believe it.

After all, I'd never see the vampire again.

[hr]
[i]Of course, I freely admit for the sake of an official and objective report that now I wish I'd shot her. As you can probably guess, I [b]did[/b] see the vampire again - but not for years after that, not until after I'd finished up my seven-year term at Bastion Academy, not until after my brief stint at Atlas Academy, and not even for the first part of my stay in Vale as a student at Beacon. It turned out that giving her the benefit of the doubt was too much generosity on my part. I should have expected that someone such as Giada Fiordilatte would find a way to waltz into your life, over and over and over again, once she had made a connection with you.

...

Then again, I can't entirely blame her. After all, it wasn't her who chose to walk back into my life. It, just like her fate as a vampire, was chosen for her.

Can't blame her for some hedgehog putting its prick in her.

...

Crap, I did it again...

But I won't get into that right now.

There's only so much failure I can own up to at one time.[/i]
[/hider]