DIPS

-

"Are you sure you remember how to use everything?" Riku asked on Friday as they were driving down to Hollow Bastion. He was sitting behind the wheel, dressed comfortably and casually in blue jeans, a plain white T-shirt and a navy DIPS jacket, and he had the car visor flipped down to shield his eyes against the setting sun.

"Not really," Sora answered honestly, and his gaze flickered reflexively to the figure of his brother sitting in the back seat, where the blond was compulsively making faces at Riku as he drove. "But I think I'll be able to figure it out."

Riku smirked, tilting his head to sneak a glance at the brunet beside him. "Maybe it's best if you let me handle it, then. I'd rather not have to deal with Cloud and Leon kicking my ass over broken equipment."

As if on cue, the walkie talkie in the cupholder between them crackled to life. After too many road trips gone awry, the team had learned to carry communication equipment and extra batteries on every trip, partially because cell phone signals were a fickle, fickle thing, but mostly because Cloud and Leon had a tendency to disagree on directions and consequently got lost at least once every trip.

"Where are you?" Leon's voice asked.

"On the same road we've been on for the past three hours," Riku said wryly into the walkie talkie. "Where are you?"

"We stopped for gas," Cloud's voice said, much louder than Leon's, and judging by Leon's undignified yell, Riku guessed the spiky-haired blond hadn't been kind in stealing the walkie talkie. "How do we get back on the highway?"

Riku barely stifled a laugh. "You follow the signs."

"We fucking know that," Cloud growled, followed by a long honk and screeching tires, and Sora imagined the blond irately deciding to turn around in the middle of traffic. It appeared they did not, in fact, fucking know that. "Which one?"

"I told you," Leon's stony voice grumbled. "We go North."

"Twilight Town is South!" Cloud spat. "No way is it North!"

"Then why don't you go South, smartass?"

"Because I can't find the fucking sign!"

Biting his lip, Riku cast Sora an amused glance and spoke into the walkie talkie. "You have to go East before you can go North or South." He paused. "And it's North, by the way. Cloud, you're probably thinking of Hollow Bastion or something."

"What a dumbass," Roxas laughed from the backseat.

"What was that, newbie!?" Cloud snapped.

Sora and Roxas shared a look of horror in the rearview mirror. Had Cloud seriously just heard him?

"Huh?" Giving the walkie talkie a quizzical look, Riku asked, "Did you just call me newbie?"

"I'm talking to the new guy." Sora could practically hear Cloud bristling over the walkie talkie, and he sank into his seat in fear.

"Sora didn't say anything," Riku said in confusion. "We must be picking up somebody else's radio waves."

"Whatever, fine, cover for your little—" Cloud trailed off in a hiss as Leon presumably snatched back the walkie talkie, because Leon quite effectively cut off Cloud with, "Thanks. See you there."

"Sorry," Roxas mumbled once he sure they were done using the walkie talkies. "I didn't think it would pick me up like that."

"Hmm," Sora hummed noncommittally, hoping Riku wouldn't think anything of it. When he looked at his brother in the rearview mirror, he tried to make it clear in his gaze that he didn't hold anything against him.

Riku, however, was apparently freakishly perceptive, because he looked at Sora sideways and raised his eyebrows. "You okay?" he asked.

"Fine!" the brunet chirped immediately.

Riku gave him a look that said he clearly did not believe him, but, thankfully, he didn't pursue the subject any further. Instead, he just nodded and switched on the radio, keeping the volume low so they could hear the walkie talkie if anyone tried to get in contact with them again. In the backseat, Roxas began singing along, and Sora fought the urge to hit his head repeatedly against the window.

It was going to be a long drive.

-

By the time they reached Twilight Town, Sora's back was aching and Roxas had faded away to wherever it was he went when he got bored. The few times Sora had asked about it, Roxas replied with something vague about darkness and a chilling lack of noise. To Sora, it sounded an awful lot like sleep, which made him kind of jealous. It wasn't fair that Roxas got to pass out for the worst bits of the drive while Sora was left incapable of sleeping in cars.

The pain in his back and the pins and needles tingling in his leg were quickly forgotten, however, as the car chugged diligently up the sleepy, sunny hill towards the hotel and Sora caught sight of pale stone walls, overgrown with vines, and the vast shadow of a looming building behind it. He kept his eyes trained on it as they passed by, craning his neck, and reached over to poke Riku's shoulder without looking.

"Hey," he said, excitement building in his voice, "Riku! Look!"

"Hmm?"

"It's the haunted mansion!" he exclaimed impatiently. He tugged his sleeve hard enough to accidentally make him jerk the car and quickly released him, eeping quietly in preparation for the glare that never came.

Instead of glaring, Riku just cast him a sidelong glance and smiled, small and tolerant, and flicked his luminous eyes towards the towering mansion in the distance. "It looks amazing."

"I know," he gushed. "I haven't been here in so long. I completely forgot what it looked like."

Riku visibly started. "You've been here?"

"Oh, yeah," Sora said somewhat dismissively, waving it off with an unconcerned hand. "I lived here for a long time."

The silver-haired investigator nodded, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. "Does that mean you know how to get to the hotel?"

Unable to resist a teasing grin, Sora leaned over to peer into his face and asked, "Does that mean you don't?"

Riku merely shrugged, his expression vacant, but Sora strongly suspected he was embarrassed on the inside. "It doesn't mean anything," he insisted.

"Uh huh." Taking a moment to break his concentration from the sheer awesomeness of the mansion that awaited them, Sora surveyed his surroundings and tapped his chin. "It's that way," he decided after a few beats of contemplative silence. He pointed towards a side street that was unfortunately lacking a sign, which the other boy surely would have missed.

Riku frowned down at the directions in the open space between their seats. "That's not what the directions Cid gave us say."

Sora rolled his eyes and snatched up the directions, balling it into a lumpy paper mass and tossing it into the dirty abyss under his seat. "Cid's not from here, now, is he? There's only one hotel in Twilight Town, and it's down that road." He paused for effect. "It's a short cut."

Riku sighed in a way that said he didn't believe him but would try it to either placate him or prove a point, and was willing to face the consequences should they be dreadfully late to reach the rest of the team.

Fortunately, Sora had been right, and they rolled into the parking lot well before Cloud and Leon were even off the highway (or anywhere near the exit, for that matter, thanks to their endless squabbling). In the backseat, Roxas slowly flickered into existence, blinking sleepy blue eyes at Sora in the rearview mirror before they became impossibly, impossibly wide and he sat up bolt straight.

"This is—" He trailed off, almost unwilling to complete the statement, it seemed, and floated through the car to the outside world, glimmering and transparent in the sunshine. He held his hand to his eyes out of habit rather than necessity and gaped at their surroundings.

"We're home," Sora supplied, quietly, and met Roxas's soulful blue gaze when he looked back at him.

Oddly enough, Roxas was smiling.

"It took us long enough," Riku said, mistakenly assuming that Sora had been speaking to him.

Startled, the brunet whirled around to look at him and instantly forced a weak chuckle. "Yeah, seriously. I was gonna go nuts if I had to sit for one more minute." He hesitated. "Hey, do you mind if I, you know, look around for a bit? Just to stretch my legs."

Riku smiled at him understandingly. "Sure," he replied, and they both knew he wasn't really going just to stretch his legs. "I'll carry in our stuff. Take the walkie talkie and I'll let you know when Cloud and Leon get here, okay?"

Sora suddenly felt the urge to hug him. So he did.

Riku was just as surprised by the action as Sora was by the urge, but neither of them commented on it. Instead, they shared a sweet, brief smile, and then Sora waved and went bounding out of the car and down the street to join Roxas.

First stop: sea-salt ice cream.

It was kind of a dumb thing to get excited about, if he thought about it. It was just ice cream, after all – but it was Twilight Town's specialty, and it had a million memories of his home here before they'd been forced to move. Before Roxas… Well.

Speaking of Roxas.

"Are you okay with being here?" Sora asked, turning to look at the transparent figure of his brother, gliding silently at his side. It reminded him of when Roxas had been alive, and he'd always been rolling along on his skateboard, moving so smoothly that it had seemed as though he'd been floating, just as he literally was now.

"It's a bit late for that kind of question," the blond drawled. Almost lazily, he tilted his chin and looked at him from the corner of his eye, a wry smirk playing across his lips. "But yeah. I am. Thanks for asking."

"No problem." Sufficiently relieved and renewed with energy, Sora skipped a step and did a little enthusiastic jump.

He couldn't wait for this mission to really get underway.

-

By some miracle of a clearly higher being, nobody was pissed when Sora returned to the hotel long, long after he was due back. In a moment of sheer stupidity, he'd decided it was a good idea to turn off the walkie talkie while he sat down in an old back alley where he and Roxas had used to spend the bulk of their free time. It was still untouched, pristine, with sheets and curtains hung on the dirty brick walls to lend a sense of 'home' to what would have otherwise seemed like an ordinary alley. The couch, the chair, the endless stack of boxes and crap they'd thought was important or cool enough to keep around – it was all still there.

Hayner, Pence, and Olette were not.

It was to be expected, he supposed. After Roxas had died, Sora's family had moved away almost immediately. Sora had always suspected they'd leaned on each other to get through their grief, rather than reaching out for someone bearing the brunt of it – Sora – to support them.

He wasn't really sure if he thought it was a good decision or not.

Regardless, they hadn't been there, and Sora had eaten his sea-salt ice cream in silence on the old green couch and poked around for a bit until he decided it was time to head to the hotel.

When he walked inside, Yuffie was perched casually on a bench in the lounge by the check-in area, surreptitiously stuffing 'complimentary' pens and mints into her pockets. Roxas smothered a laugh while Sora grinned, coming to a stop in front of her and looking rather amused.

"What'cha doin', Yuffie?"

Surprised, Yuffie jerked so hard that she hit her knee on the bench and yelped.

"Newbie!" she shouted, looking both relieved and annoyed at his presence. "What're you doing here?"

"Huh?" He blinked. "Reporting for duty, I guess. Aren't we leaving soon?"

She gave him a quizzical look and rubbed her knee, swiping the remaining few pens from the jar on the check-in counter with her free hand. "What do you mean? They're already there. I thought you were with him."

He gawked. "What? No! Riku was supposed to—" He abruptly remembered the silenced walkie talkie and cringed. "Uhh, never mind. Is Cid mad at me?"

"Not that I know of." She peered at him suspiciously. "Say, why aren't you with the rest of them?"

"I was exploring," he half-lied. Exploring, he thought, implied a sense of unknown – he hadn't really been exploring, he'd been reminiscing. "Where are they?"

She rolled her eyes like it was obvious. "At the mansion. Duh. We're scoping it out before we do the investigation at nightfall. Tours and all that." Snagging a mint, she unwrapped it and popped it into her mouth, squinting at him. "You'd better get over there before they're done, or Cid's gonna be pissed. And, trust me, you don't want that."

Blanching, Sora nodded fervently and backpedaled towards the door. He felt a sudden, overwhelming chill and realized belatedly that he'd passed straight through Roxas.

"Watch where you're going!" his twin snapped, looking appropriately flustered. Being walked through wasn't any less unpleasant for him, either.

"Sorry," Sora mumbled, equal parts to both Yuffie and Roxas. "I'm – yeah, sorry. I'll hurry."

"Good." Suddenly appearing much cheerier, Yuffie clapped him on the shoulder and winked. "Have fun, newbie!"

He nodded again and flashed her a quick smile before bolting for the door and down the street. Luckily, he knew exactly where he was going. Down the street, through the hole in the wall, into the woods. Probably not the way the rest of the group had taken, but it was the fastest. He remembered that much.

"Say," Roxas said, floating all too serenely at his side as Sora made a mad dash for the mansion. "Didn't we know someone who used to live there?"

He tripped on a bulky tree root and nearly faceplanted in the grass and dirt. "What?"

"Oh, nothing," he hummed. He circled Sora's head impatiently as the brunet regained his balance and took off full force towards the stone walls and ominous iron gates. "We'll find out soon enough, I guess."

Sora grunted a noise of agreement, more distracted by the thought of not getting chewed out by Cid than anything else.

For now.

-

"Goddammit, newbie, where the fuck have you been?" Cid greeted him with a wave of now-familiar swearing as the brunet finally made his way to the front yard. "We've been waiting. Shit. We've already taken the whole tour."

Sora nearly fell to his knees as he approached his boss, instead leaning forward to brace his hands on his thighs, gasping for air and pressing a hand into the painful stitch in his side. Running around through a forest was not as easy as he'd remembered it being. (If he'd ever remembered it being easy.)

"Sorry," he gasped eventually. "I was looking around town. I grew up here."

At that, Cid's expression changed. He'd lit a cigarette a while ago, from the looks of it – the small white stick was barely poking out of his mouth, more ash and smoke than anything else at this point. He pulled it out and exhaled, flicking the ash at Sora's shoes, and frowned. "Well, why the fuck didn't you say so when we told you we were coming here? Do you know anything about this place?"

"Huh?" he asked, somewhat breathlessly. He finally convinced himself to stand, slowly willing his breathing to even out, and caught Riku staring at him. He flushed and made a mental note to apologize about the walkie talkie thing later.

"This place," Cid repeated, indicating the mansion behind him with a jerk of his thumb. He did not look happy. "There ain't shit going on here, newbie. Any idiot can tell there's not a damn thing going on."

Sora's heart sank into his shoes. "What? But – what about the case report?"

Grimly, Cid shook his head and ground his teeth. "Sometimes people just make shit up. It sucks. Have you ever heard anything about this place?"

"Well." He hesitated. To be honest, no, he'd never heard a peep out of anyone about the mansion. Sure, it looked old and creepy, but there had never been reports of ghosts or anything. This was his home town, though, and Cid's face looked harsh and sour, like he was ready to uproot them from the case after six whole hours of driving just because of a crummy interview.

That wasn't fair.

He was just about to say yes, quite adamantly, when he happened to look up and glimpse a flicker in a window on the second floor. A curtain fluttering, and a streak of white and yellow. He stared.

"Well, what?" Cid snapped, obviously growing impatient.

"Ummm." Still staring at the window, Sora absently tried to remember who'd lived here before. Who was in that window?

"Sora?" Riku prompted.

His voice was softer yet somehow more urgent than Cid's, and it was enough to make him break his staring contest with the window. Blinking, he looked at Riku, who looked back at him with interest.

"What?" Sora asked.

"What are you looking at?"

"That window." He pointed. "I saw something. I was just trying to think of who I might know that lives here."

And just like that, the energy in the group changed. Cid dropped his cigarette and even Cloud and Leon stood up straighter with interest.

"Which window?" Cid demanded.

Unsure of what exactly the big deal was, Sora pointed again, more clearly, and elaborated, "Second story on the left."

"You had better not be fucking with us, kid," the gruff older man warned.

"Um, no, I'm not. Someone moved in there." He gazed around the group cluelessly, although he was beginning to get an idea of what was going on. He perked in excitement. "Why? Is no one in there? Is the tour over? Did I see a ghost?"

"Like that's anything new," Roxas snorted from his side, and Sora briefly wished that he were corporeal so that he could smack him.

Wordlessly, Cid grabbed Sora by his upper arms and glared, cigarette clenched between his teeth, and puffed smoke slowly into his face as he stared into his eyes. Fidgeting, Sora tried to look away, but Cid's eyes were magnetic. It was intensely uncomfortable, to say the least.

"Okay," Cid said eventually and released him. "I believe you."

Sweet, sweet relief.

"Oh," he replied numbly, blinking at him, and then his brain caught up to him and promptly threw a party. His face lit up and he bounced on his toes a little. "So, we can still investigate?"

Rolling his eyes, Cid took his cigarette and flicked it somewhere into the distant woods beyond the gates. "Whaddaya think it means, newbie? Yes, we can fucking investigate, now we've gotta go back to the hotel and get our shit. And if this place ends up being dead, it's all on your ass, you got me?"

"Wh-what?" Sora blinked in rapid confusion. "But I—"

"No buts," Cid snapped. "Get movin'."

With that, the DIPS leader turned on his heel and stalked off down the path, veering when Sora thought he was going to enter the woods to—a shiny black SUV?

Sora turned a curious expression to Riku and asked, "You guys drove here?"

"Well, yeah." Riku returned the curious expression and one-upped him, turning it into bafflement. "How did you get here?"

He pointed over his shoulder to the forest. "I walked."

Bafflement morphed into downright bewilderment. "Through the woods? It's like a maze in there. I was looking around earlier."

"Heh." Swinging his arms up, he laced his hands behind his head and stuck out his tongue. "Forgot I lived here, did you?"

Riku merely frowned, glancing between Sora and the ominous stretch of woods behind them. "I just didn't think you came here often. You… know about this place, then?"

"Um." Tonguing his bottom lip, Sora squinted at the sky in thought, his gaze drifting away after a few moments to fall upon the intimidating mansion, lingering on the window in which the curtain had fluttered. It was all intensely familiar. He'd known someone here. Who had—

"Never mind," Riku said quickly, and when Sora looked up, the other boy's eyes were trained on his mouth. More specifically, his tongue. Upon realizing he was caught, Riku swiftly looked away, cleared his throat, and tossed his hair. Other than that, he seemed completely unruffled. "Let's just get back to the hotel."

"I will kill him," Roxas promised solemnly from his side.

After shooting his twin a look that clearly said no you will fucking not, Sora dutifully put his tongue back inside his mouth and plastered a grin on his face. "Okay! Wanna take the shortcut with me?"

Riku glanced between Sora and the SUV. "Shortcut?" he echoed distrustfully.

"Aw, c'mon!" Sora pouted. "It'll be fun." He waggled his eyebrows and nudged the taller boy in the side, wheedling, "I'll show you my secret hideout!"

"I will kill you," Roxas amended with a venomous glare.

Sora ignored him in favor of looking at Riku expectantly, but alas, after one earth-shattering moment where Riku looked like he was actually going to accept, he merely shook his head and thought better of it. "As much as I'd like to, I'd rather not get in trouble with Cid," the investigator said reasonably and pointed to where the old man was leaning half his body out of a rolled-down window, cussing unintelligibly and waving for them to presumably hurry the fuck up.

"Oh." Sora deflated and turned slightly red. "Ehehe, good point. Let's go."

Riku nodded in response, and they both piled into the back of the black SUV together, where Cloud was already seated, brooding next to the window and sporting a bloody nose.

"What happened to you?" Sora gasped as he climbed in next to him and buckled his seatbelt.

Unexpected cackling burst from the driver's seat, and Sora and Riku's heads swiveled in tandem to face Cid. The old man was grinning as he jerked his thumb in Leon's direction, who was sitting in the front passenger's seat, as he explained, "These two ladies were bitching about shotgun, so I called Bastard Rules, and Leon socked that spiky son of a bitch right in the fucking face."

"Bastard Rules?" Sora asked innocently.

Cid gave him a 'what the fuck, are you serious?' look. "Bastard Rules," he repeated. "What the fuck are you goin' on about back there, newbie? Everybody knows Bastard Rules. And Riku, you siddown and buckle up, I don't wanna be fuckin' responsible if we get in an accident and you fly through the damn windshield 'cause you're tryin' to look cool back there. Jesus." He continued swearing under his breath as he started the car, putting it into gear, and it was then that Sora noticed something was missing.

Roxas.

"Erm," he said, feeling his heartbeat thud heavily in his chest, and suddenly wished he weren't squished between Cloud and Riku in the middle seat. He craned his neck, trying to peer out the window for any transparent sign of his brother with no luck.

Did he disappear without telling me? he wondered, fretting, and then quickly admonished himself for worrying about his perfectly capable (although deceased) brother when they were in their freaking home town. Of course he might want to explore a little more. It was only natural.

"Newbie," Cid barked, surprising the brunet and sending him jumping half-into Riku's lap.

"WHAT?" he squeaked.

Once again, Cid graced him with a look that most definitely had the word 'fuck' somewhere in the title, along with some dubious questions about his sanity, and said, "How does it feel to be back?"

"Oh." Blinking at the sudden bout of—was that actually niceness? Yes, he thought it was—Sora was so caught off guard that it took him a few extra seconds to process the question. "Um. Oh! Yes!" Smiling, he nodded rapidly, "It feels really good."

Cid just stared at him and slowly shook his head as he started the car and pulled down the road to the hotel. "I tell ya, newbie, the more I talk to you, the more I fuckin' regret it. Everybody shut up until we get back and I'll buy dinner."

Simultaneously, Cloud and Leon turned in their seats to glare at Sora, and he sank down in his seat, blushing. He hadn't been planning on saying anything. Really.

Regardless, the two technicians kept their icy glares pinned on the small brunet the whole way back, broken only by Riku calmly flipping them off, the look in his eyes informing them that if they kept looking at Sora that way, he would hurt them.

And really, Sora wished Roxas had been there for that, because then maybe he finally would have liked him.

-

A/N: HOLY UPDATES, BATMAN! Has it really been two years? Yes. The lovely Kagome1514 was helping me resurrect this, but I believe school got in the way of our emails for a while. Hopefully she'll still be willing to help me along, and will not hurt me for uploading this chapter without her permission. I found it on my computer and got so excited that I just couldn't contain myself and I had to go post it IMMEDIATELY.

Anyway, point: THIS STORY IS NOT DEAD! Please review and make it sparkly so I will update it more.