A/N: Written for sealandangel for the CLAMP Secret Santa 2017.

This fic is 10 chapters long. I'll try to post one every week until I'm finished updating them here.

With shaking hands, Kotori dropped the thin, purple envelope in her lap. Her heartbeat accelerated, and she shifted nervously, jittery, in her wooden chair.

Today, she had received an classified letter. This letter would be the next step for her to conquer.

Slowly, Kotori sliced open the envelope with her fingernails, making wavy dents in the edges in her haste. She pinched the letter and pulled it out. Trying to savor the moment, she unfolded it and inched the pristine, beige paper from the envelope's depths. Her heart jammed in her throat when the curvy, golden postscript came into focus.

She had heard of jobs this upscale. But Kotori had never believed it would be her sent to accomplish it.

The words edges her resolve with certainty.

You have been hereby ordered to kill Queen Hokuto, the esteemed vampire ruler of the vampire nation of the neighboring vampire kingdom. Failure is not an option, the notice relayed. Instructions and details about the country were listed below the main lines, but Kotori's mind wandered away, contemplative.

This letter was her most important mission to date inside enemy territory. After all her hard effort to make a name for herself as a vampire hunter Kotori had finally reached one of the top hunter positions.

Sometimes she was hollow about that realization. She never would have gotten here if her brothers hadn't left her, or refused to come home regularly.

Still, her mastery over the Shinken had elevated her own sense of will. Her vampire kill count was quite high. It was hard to believe, but the fragile, gentle girl she had been had evolved into something so much more while retaining her grace. The royal red seal on the back of the envelope proved that—this was a high-class mission of the greatest station, not the garden variety. She had to be on her toes.

Her mind swam. She dropped the notice on the table. She was thrilled but awed. There were many other hunters out there, so… why her? Should he even question something so apparently well suited to her skills? The higher ups in the hunter association wouldn't pick her without the right credentials.

But to snuff out the queen's life in an assassination attempt… At a peaceful time like this, the higher-ups must believe the time was ripe. The association wanted to delve into their full objective when no one was the wiser to their moves; kill all vampires. The vampire queen herself was the first to mow down and the rest would tumble under that burden.

If she killed Queen Hokuto, every vampire would disappear and no more humans would suffer. Queen Hokuto was flamboyant, proud, and out-spoken. While she hadn't personally attacked humans as far as she knew, she was the reason so many vampires congregated together and felt they were superior.

A treaty between humans and vampires made it less painful as a whole. Still, hunters had to work undercover, and the death toll continued to rise daily in dark alleys, off-the-radar from prying eyes.

"Big brother," she wondered, "what would you do?"

Seishirou wouldn't fear anything, though. Neither would Fuuma after him. So she couldn't, either.

Killing the vampire queen was no laughing matter, however. There were precautions to take. Plans and routes to memorize and hurdles to jump through that ensured the hunter's safety. Any hunter worth their salt didn't jump into the fray without a backup plan.

It was funny. That wasn't who she used to be—someone on top of every action she took. She had not necessarily expected to get into this line of work, but Kotori was well-trained. In fact, her big brothers had praised her when they had heard about it.

It also wasn't fair vampires had taken her brothers from her. She dearly missed her them, but they were in other dimensions. They had been gone for a long time, now. The days blended together without them, and Kotori missed them. She wanted them to spoil her rotten like days that were beginning to fade into the past. To her knowledge, Seishirou was chasing vampire twins, and Fuuma was working for a dimensional witch called Yuuko. They hadn't shared all the details with her but she knew that much. Chasing vampires or working so far away for the rest of their lifespans wouldn't solve anything.

Kotori didn't have the luxury to bypass dimensions or go on a grand adventure. So, she had to make due. Fuuma or Seishirou weren't certified vampire hunters—neither was her family since they were raised religiously—but she had applied after her brothers had left to match them. Luckily, she had been told she had the aptitude and adaptability to handle rough patches in such a high stakes job.

It was one of the things that caught unsuspecting vampires off-guard. Vampires didn't think someone so sweet and innocent could be a balanced killer. She was sometimes called too nice, naïve even, too playful to stay alive. But she let her skills tell the naysayers that they were wrong on all counts

Neither was Kotori the strongest, nor the bravest. She didn't like hurting anyone. But she could do it while she remembered the people she saved and eventually seeing her brothers' smiling faces again. Maybe they would stop playing around in other dimensions if she changed things in this country! Hopefully, leave her more messages instead of sorely infrequent ones. She only had as many letters from each of them as the fingers on one hand.

In any case, she had to protect humanity.

Nodding to herself, she glanced at the Shinken in the corner, sheathed in its scabbard. The cold metal glinted back at in the firelight. Finally, it was time to leave home. But first she would go the Neutral Area and collect supplies. The Neutral Area between the human's domain and the vampire land would be the last stop before her mission. Then, she would have everything to make her journey a success.