Disclaimer: Vampire Knight belongs to Hino Matsuri.
-x-
THE CASTING CALL
-x-
"What," said Ruka Soen, "Is that?"
She turned to her roommate with a scandalized expression. Rima Touya, the embodiment of utter apathy and thorough ambivalence, followed Ruka's indignant finger to the opposite wall and immediately blanched.
A massive poster, at least four feet high, hung on the bulletin board in the center of campus, all glittering gold letters, golden hair and fluttering eyelashes. Rima stepped cautiously closer, examined the fine print, and slumped with a sigh.
"Time for a regime change," the blonde said firmly.
-x-
"What," said Hanabusa Aidou, "Is that?"
"I had literally the same response," Ruka replied, glancing to her left. Rima had torn the poster off the bulletin immediately, and now held it up between them with one hand in the doorway of the classroom. Aidou had recoiled dramatically when they entered the room, and had only seconds ago mustered up the courage to examine the obscenity more closely.
"They didn't even get my nose right," he whined. Ruka rolled her eyes.
"Hanabusa, the artistic portrayal of your nose is seriously not our main concern right now."
"We passed about two dozen of these on our way here," Rima explained calmly, shaking the large, glossy obstruction as she spoke.
"What do we do?" Shiki yawned, from where he was sprawled across a desk.
"We kill him," Rima replied simply.
"Okay," Ruka mediated calmly, "Maybe that's an overreaction."
"No, I think that's perfectly valid," Aidou said, tapping his chin. "God, he really could've hired someone with a modicum of talent. My cravat is lifeless."
"God, Hanabusa, will you focus?"
"I am focusing!"
"What's going on?" Ichijou popped his head around the poster as he entered the room, books tucked under an elbow. "What's this?"
The golden-haired vampire spun on his heel next to Aidou, took one look at the poster, and burst into uncontrollable peals of laughter.
"Oh, no he didn't."
"Yes," Ruka seethed, "He did."
"This is fantastic."
"All due respect, Vice Dorm President, but the situation at hand should not be taken lightly!"
"What situation?"
The rest of the class was arriving now, gazing curiously at the two girls and the item they held between them, solidly blocking the doorway. Rima obliged the better good and shifted towards the front of the room, lugging Ruka and the poster with her, as the dozen vampires in their class settled around them in a semi-circle. Kain, who had spoken, gazed at it with a resigned expression.
"Kurosu?"
"We kill him," Rima offered.
"You will not," came a growl from the door.
The group collectively moved to look over their shoulders.
Yagari stood in the now vacated doorway, all grizzled and cranky, a stack of books in his hands. The vampires looked at each other, and grudgingly moved to settle themselves around the room, away from the hunter's desk. Rima gracelessly dropped the monstrosity in her hand onto the ground, pinning Yagari with a displeased expression as she took a seat on the tabletop beside Shiki. Ichijou took to leaning on the other side, one hip propped against the tabletop and his shoulders leaning against the adjacent wall. Ruka perched herself on the table opposite, next to Aidou, and Kain, who understood how tables worked, and instead took a seat in a chair.
The vampire hunter nudged the discarded poster with his foot, grumbled, and dropped the stack of books carelessly onto his desk as he bent to pick it up. He pinned its top corners into the blackboard with two well-aimed hunting knives, and turned to impose his presence upon the class.
They stared back at him, not even a little intimidated, with expressions varying in degrees of anxiety, disbelief, and murderous intent.
Yagari set his hat down on the disheveled array of spilled books on his desk, and spoke.
"The Chairman sat in on class last week and realized I wasn't teaching you brats anything," he began.
"Good," Aidou huffed, crossing his arms. "It's about time he realized none of us came here to learn anything."
"I think it's more likely that the Chairman remembered Yagari-sensei isn't certified to teach," Ichijou offered helpfully.
"He's certified to kill us," said Shiki.
"We call that a conflict of interest, Shiki."
"Either way," Yagari grit, glaring daggers at Takuma, "The Chairman has come to the conclusion that, while you've all received education beyond the doctorate level before you arrived, none of you have ever had — what he terms — a genuine school experience."
"Once," said Rima, "I took a lesson at the Aidou estate, and we spent a break drowning an anthill to observe fight-or-flight responses in ectoderms."
"I think his point is made," Yagari replied dryly.
"So this is the plan?" Kain questioned, waving one large hand at the display on the board. Yagari turned to evaluate it.
"It's part of the plan," the black-haired hunter replied pensively. "This year, the school will be having its first cultural festival. This is the centerpiece."
Every previously unconcerned head in the room suddenly looked up, horrified expressions on their faces.
"We're performing it?" Ruka paled. "In front of humans?!"
Yagari shot her a grin laced with evil.
"Yup."
"You've got to be kidding me," Aidou snapped, rising out of his chair. Yagari turned immediately with a matching expression.
"You wanna die?" he snarled back at the blond noble. Aidou sunk back into his chair with a glower, glaring fiercely at the poster.
"Yeah, I didn't think so," Yagari turned back around and began viciously scrawling names onto the chalkboard.
"The Chairman — has decided — this year — is the perfect time— to immerse you freaks — into — the fine arts."
The hunter all but smashed the chalk in his hand onto the board.
"There. Romeolus e Giulietta."
Yagari tapped his finger pertly on the poster he had fixed to the wall. Aidou's face turned purple. Suddenly, there was dark, ominous meaning to the words THE SPECTACLE OF A LIFETIME, emblazoned across the crinkled top of the poster in massive, glittering gold capitals, and sinister foreshadowing evident in the stylized watercolor portrait of Aidou holding a swooning Ruka in his arms, both clad in in heavy period costumes, brightly colored and dead center on the offending display.
"Romeo and Juliet?" Aidou was back on his feet, to the slightly annoyed glances of his classmates, "You — you want us — to read Shakespeare?!"
"Yes," Yagari replied dryly, throwing the remnants of the once-perfect stick of chalk onto the ground. "Won't the Day Class be thrilled?"
Before Aidou could protest any further, Yagari ripped his gun out of its holster and began tapping the board with it.
"Romeolus e Giulietta," he began dryly, "Is the story —"
"I think we know the gist," Rima commented from her perch on Shiki's desk.
"Lovely," Yagari drawled in a voice that suggested he thought it was anything but, "I'll keep it short, then. But first."
With sharp tap that cracked the board, the vampire hunter indicated the list of character names he had been carving into its surface.
"Let's generate a cast list, why don't we?" the black-haired man almost grinned. He pulled another piece of chalk from his desk, intentionally cracked it in half, and began tapping it antagonistically on the board.
"For all intents and purposes, it looks like the leads have already been cast," Yagari smirked, inclining his head towards the poster. "Congratulations, Aidou and Soen. The Chairman has instructed me to inform you that your families will be alerted immediately, so you don't have to worry about them missing your performance."
"Kill me," Aidou said to Ruka. "Kill me right now."
"We need a narrator," Yagari said, scanning his eyes over the crowd, and fixed them on Shiki, who was wallflowering as hard as he could. "Perfect. Narrator."
He picked up one tome from his desk and flung it at Ichijou. Ichijou yelped and caught it on instinct, then immediately threw it frantically onto the table. The script skidded to a halt next to Shiki. The black-haired boy didn't even twitch. Yagari rolled his eyes, and picked up another book. "Alright. I need a stage manager, a set designer, a tech director, head of costumes, and a head of makeup."
His eyes landed on Ichijou. "Stage manager," Yagari told him firmly, and threw the book at him. The golden-haired vampire sighed helplessly.
Yagari scanned the room again, and picked out a chestnut-haired boy hiding in the back.
"Kazuki Kadoma! Tech!"
The heavy tome went sailing in a perfect arc across the room. The entire class ducked; the book crashed in the back wall and crumpled, abandoned, to the floor. Kazuki Kadoma looked at it with unveiled antipathy.
"Komaki Koizumi! Set!"
Another script was sent hurling to the back of the room, in the general direction of a girl with thick, wavy auburn hair. She, like the boy before her, made no effort to catch it, and it flew into a window, cracking the pane. Komaki looked at her script as if were a sewer creature birthed by hell for the sole purpose of ruining her life. A vein in Yagari's temple twitched. Two books scripts went flying, in the general direction of a pair of dark-haired girls in the second row.
"Seiya Tsuga, costumes; Kanae Kotonami, hair and makeup. We'll use you both in the ensemble."
Kanae nudged the script with the tip of her index finger, her nose crinkling in distaste.
"I need a script girl," Yagari decided, tapping his chin. "But I don't want to touch anything any of you have touched. So we'll use Yuuki Kurosu."
Aidou just rolled his eyes.
"The first real speaking part is the Prince of Verona," Yagari said, finally opening the script and scanning it. "We'll have Kuran play the part."
"Kaname-sama won't —"
"Kaname Kuran will do whatever the fuck I tell him to," Yagari snapped, fingering his holster. "Aidou, if you don't sit the fuck down I will shoot you."
The blond made a disgusted sound and crossed his arms petulantly. Yagari made a display of giving a sum total of zero fucks.
"Alright, people. Here's how it goes. The Narrator starts the show with some introductions...some Montagues and Capulets fight, and the Prince comes and tells 'em to stop or he'll have them executed. Very admirable society, this is. We're lacking some absolute authority in this goddamn asylum."
"He's certified to kill us," Shiki reminded Ichijou, who shushed him.
"Later, Count Paris — let's see, we'll have you play him, Kain — you come courting. You're one of the richest men around and you wanna marry Juliet."
"Fair," Aidu muttered. Ruka pinched him mercilessly.
"Meanwhile our Romeo is heartbroken over some nameless hussy and Benvolio and Mercutio — fuck it, we'll have Ichijou and Shiki do it —"
"I'm the Narrator," said Shiki.
"I'm the stage manager," said Takuma.
"Shut the fuck up," said Yagari. "You two go get Romeo t'go to some ball, to cheer him up. Then Soen and Aidou, you two meet, realize your families fucking hate each other, fall in love, and it's the balcony scene."
Yagari looked up from his book.
"Get that look off your face, Aidou — Soen, sit down. Friar Lawrence — Touya, you can play a man —"
Rima blinked and didn't really seem to care.
"— Friar Lawrence secretly marries Romeo and Juliet, blah blah blah, and Tybalt — let's see —"
Yagari skimmed the scene, and grinned.
"We'll pull Zero in for this one, that'll be good. Tybalt challenges Romeo to a duel —"
Aidou looked up with an almost excited expression on his face.
"— Romeo says no cause Tybalt's family now, he's Juliet's cousin or whatnot —"
"What?" demanded Aidou, indignant.
"— so Mercutio fights him instead, and gets himself killed —"
"Excellent," said Shiki.
"— and then Romeo goes and kills Tybalt —"
"Excellent, said Aidou.
"— and Prince Escalus exiles him."
"Damn."
"So now Juliet's dad decides to marry her to Paris and if she says no, she's disowned —"
Aidou opened his mouth to make a snarky comment to Kain, and promptly found his face shoved into his desk.
"— so Juliet goes to see Friar Lawrence, and Touya, you sell her some drug to make it seem like she's dead. You send a message to Romeo to tell him about the plan, but he misses it cause somebody screwed up. So Juliet's all fake dead and Romeo shows up and kills Paris."
"Try," Kain told his cousin's face, face still shoved into wood.
"Then Romeo poisons himself —"
"Weak," sniped Aidou, struggling with the prospect of poisoning himself out of love for Ruka.
"— then Juliet wakes up and kills herself —"
Said brunette rolled her eyes and turned away, wrinkling her nose.
"— and the Capulets and the Montagues and his royal majesty show up and all three of 'em are dead."
"That's a great way to end your day," Rima deadpanned.
"Then, Friar, you tell them everything. Then everyone lives happily ever fucking after. Oh, and there are a bunch other people just randomly thrown in there and I'll assign the rest of you. If you don't get a part you're doing backstage work and by damn you will do it whether or not the hell you want to or the safety on my trigger might just slip by some freak twist of fate."
Yagari threw the thick script down onto his desk and canvassed the class with his eyes. Their expressions ranged from disgusted to murderous. The hunter grinned, trying to imagine his old student's face when Zero was told what he was going to be spending his weekends doing for the next three months.
This was going to be good.
-x-
"Escalus?" Kaname replied, looking pensive. Aidou stiffened as Kaname calmly plucked the script from his hands. Going to Kaname had to work. It had to. Appealing to their Supreme Gang Leader's personal dignity would have to save them all, or else.
"Yes, Kaname-sama," Aidou gulped.
The pureblood sat in silence for a moment, before flipping to the first page.
"I am fond of Shakespeare," he said calmly, looking at him with a bemused expression. Aidou's shoulders slumped visibly. His compatriots outside the door leaned back from the peephole, and against the opposite wall.
Rima turned to Ruka, her expression grave. Ruka turned on her heel and marched from Kaname's door, towards the staircase. Rima followed after a short pause, speeding up to walk in step with her roommate.
"What are you planning?" the blonde asked, quizzical.
"Yagari's directing, isn't he?"
"I would assume, yes."
"Good," Ruka smirked. "If we're going down, we're bringing him with us."
-x-
The Chairman pouted at Ruka and Rima, looking thoroughly put off.
"You don't like my suggestion?"
"We don't dislike it, Chairman," Rima said with a pretty smile. "We thought we might have more suitable recommendations."
"I thought Shakespeare would be the most suited to your tastes," Kurosu wheedled, picked at a fray in his shawl, frowning. "I really want you guys to have fun."
"We could," Ruka simpered, twisting a lock of honey-colored hair in her hands. "We're so excited to perform for the Day Class. After all, our presence has often denied them a normal school experience, and school festivals are such an important part of student culture. We all agree that the study of the arts is vital to a well-rounded education. It's just — we'd be so much more invested if we could choose our own show...so we can all feel like an important part of the process. Even those of us who don't have roles."
Kurosu contemplated her words, and brightened.
"Well, then, if you don't mind me asking, what does the Night Class recommend for their exhibition at the festival?"
Ruka's eyes glinted.
"We would love to do a musical."
-x-
Yagari stormed into class the next evening, a fresh stack of papers in his arms, menace emanating from every pore in his body. He slammed the pile mercilessly onto his desk, the force of his fury causing a crack to appear on the surface of the varnished wood.
"You thought you could screw me," he seethed, eyes narrowed and glaring at the silent class. "Well, congratu-fucking-lations."
He picked up half the pile and walked towards the Night Class, throwing them down in sets of three on their tables.
"Here," Yagari snarled, "Are your librettos for The Phantom of the Opera."
"My God," said Aidou.
Yagari turned back to the board, picking up a stub of chalk and commencing the task of re-scrawling a list of names at the front of the room. Rima winced sharply as the chalk screeched its way noisily down the surface of the blackboard.
"The poster can't be changed," he grit from clenched teeth, "So, Aidou, Phantom. Soen, Christine."
"I can't sing!" Aidou protested, looking at his libretto in horror.
"You will do it," Yagari whirled around, "Or I will, I swear I will kill you."
Aidou just stared at the hunter in incredulous disbelief.
"Christine Daae is an orphaned ballet girl at the Opera Populaire," Yagari spat as he carved the name into the board. "She is taught to sing by the mysterious Phantom of the Opera, who is in love with her. She becomes an instant success. The Opera's diva, Carlotta, is jealous of her. The Opera's patron, Raoul, wants to marry her. Everyone in Paris just absolutely adores her. Because she is just such a fucking special snowflake."
He threw the chalk to the ground, and crushed it under his boot. The class stared blankly at the names on the board.
Phantom — Hanabusa Aidou/Kazuki Kadoma
Christine Daae — Ruka Soen/Seiya Tsuga
Vicomte Raoul de Chagny — Akatsuki Kain/Takuma Ichijou
Meg Giry — Rima Touya
Madame Giry — Komaki Koizumi
Carlotta Giudicelli — Kanae Kotonami
Firmin — Zero Kiryuu
Andre —Senri Shiki
Joseph Buquet - Kazuki Kadoma
Ubaldo Piangi — Takuma Ichijou
"When the Phantom discovered that Christine has agreed to marry Raoul, some serious shit goes down," Yagari told them, calmed by the horrified expressions on their faces. "We'll have pyrotechnics. We'll have a fog machine. We'll have a full tech crew and an actual chandelier to destroy. Fun, yes?"
"Where are we getting the money for this?" Aidou demanded.
"The Chairman's very excited about his project."
"That," said Ichijou, "Is the most serious miscast of the managers I have ever seen."
"I," said Rima, "Look nothing like Komaki."
"Are those understudies?" Ruka pointed at the doubled names. "We have understudies for a school play?"
Kain frowned. "Should we return our Shakespeare scripts?"
"Ah," Yagari's grin grew almost maniacal in size. "Well, no. You see, the Chairman and I had a serious heart-to-heart yesterday, when he informed me of your appeal. And we decided it would be the most...academically beneficial for you to perform both a piece of classical theater, as well as a contemporary piece, to...suitably demonstrate your grasp of the art form."
Ruka blanched.
"To —?"
"Yes, dear," the hunter smirked. "We're doing them both."
Shiki's forehead hit his desk with a resounding crack. Rima shot Ruka a panicked look.
"Rehearsal starts tomorrow," said Yagari with a menacing grin. "Shakespeare rehearsals on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and Phantom on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays."
"You can't be serious," said Kain.
"There's no way we can pull together two productions simultaneously," Ichijou protested.
"There's no way," said Shiki, "I am doing this."
"Oh, doing it alright," Yagari sneered. "We're all jumping off this cliff, kids. This is going to be so much fun."
-x-
"Phantom?" Kaname examined the libretto, looking intrigued. Aidou's heart sunk into his stomach. Gingerly, he set the pages down on Kaname's coffee table.
"Yes, Kaname-sama," Aidou replied in a small voice.
The pureblood picked it up, examining it carefully.
"They...didn't cast me in this?"
He sounded almost disappointed. Aidou gave up on life entirely, and plopped lifelessly down onto the carpet in front of Kaname. Rima turned to Ruka, her expression explaining in no uncertain terms what she thought of the situation.
"We're doomed."
A/N: Thanks to whitecrippledwings for reminding me this existed.
If you're a RuKain fan, check out my multichapter fic, One Week!