One Must Wonder
A Oneshot
Set after episode 2X01 (so slight spoilers up to that point but of course nothing after)
"You don't think that was a little harsh?" Shinya leaned back in his chair, a calm smile on his face. "The Sangu girl did say that he was an idiot. I'm rather inclined to agree."
Kureto glared at his adopted brother, "You're not free from suspicion yourself. And you know Guren- he wouldn't waste his time on that brat if there wasn't something that caught his attention. Yuichiro Hyakuya is not to be underestimated. It's not exactly hard to play the fool."
Shinya merely shrugged mildly and went back to his reading. Kureto scoffed and turned to his paperwork.
Regardless of Hyakuya passing the interrogation, even Kureto had to agree the desperation on his face was real, the Hiragi family would be keeping a close eye on him and the other two who Guren had rushed to cursed gear. Guren was up to something, even if there wasn't any proof that he was colluding with vampires, anything that was unknown was a danger to the family. Kureto was still sure the answer lied within the Hyakuya boy.
A vampire survivor that was not only probably a lab rat but who was under the guardianship of Guren? He should have been watched much sooner than this honestly.
Then there was still whatever happened in that battle… No one had given straight answers yet. But Yuichiro Hyakuya had somehow been put in a coma for days after the event, and the one thing Kureto knew was that the boy hadn't been bitten.
There was a knock on the door, "I have Mr. Hyakuya's background check ready, sir." The secretary came in, an official looking folder hugged to her chest.
"Hmm… What timing." Shinya commented, eliciting a grunt from Kureto. That man was a little to uppity for Kureto's taste.
Kureto grabbed the folder without comment and opened it. It wasn't what he expected.
It wasn't that he had possessed a clear idea on what he'd find on the boy. Surely he'd have top marks in all his subjects, after all he'd flown through his training at an unprecedented speed. The psychological profile was never pretty for anyone in the Moon Demon Company, but he'd have to be someone that Guren could trust. It wasn't farfetched to expect Hyakuya would be exemplary when he was one of the fastest people to make it to cursed gear.
Just to make sure the summery page wasn't all a big typo, he turned to the Academic Proficiency section to look at a copy of the kids work. His jaw didn't drop, he was much to composed for that, but he took the time to mentally re-grade the test. The instructor hadn't docked Hyakuya any points wrongly. The score he was given was clearly right.
Maybe this wasn't recent? After all, if he had done this right after his childhood among the bloodsuckers…
The date proclaimed proudly that it was only a few weeks ago. In fact, it was the same day that Hyakuya had received his cursed gear.
"HOW DO YOU EVEN GET A ZERO ON THIS TEST?!"
Shinya visibly flinched and looked over curiously. It wasn't everyday he saw his adopted brother lose it. He supposed this could be entertaining.
"Can I take a look?" He asked. He saw Kureto hesitate, and Shinya really thought he'd be refused, but apparently the urge to share whatever madness he'd seen was too great because he actually passed it over.
Ah. So Yuichiro was an idiot.
The problem was not only did he scrawl the wrong answers in childish script and phrasing, but Shinya could tell that Yuichiro had put effort into this garbage. It wasn't things that even a snarky teenager would put. The answers usually had some sort of the true topic hidden in them but mashed together in disjointed and nonsensical ways. Characters were sometimes crossed out or badly erased, while other times there'd be some monstrosity of a symbol that it appeared that the kid had probably tried to fix by darkly writing over the flaw but in the end it looked more like an abstract doodle.
"Perhaps he's just bad at writing?" Shinya suggested, flipping through the other copied class work. The poor penmanship persisted as well as the low grades. "I suppose that vampires don't give the best education."
Kureto raised one of his odd eyebrows but eventually nodded. Shinya had a feeling that 'vampire's stunted a human's writing ability' fit better into his worldview 'and this moron has cursed gear'. A few more anti-vampire sentiments and his adopted brother would be right as rain.
Of course, vampire's probably couldn't be blamed when the kid had literally walked out on his teamwork evaluation. Shinya's eyebrows raised at the brief assessment page which described that he and his partner, interestingly enough the Kimizuki kid, had been docked points for getting hit and arguing before a comment saying they'd left. This had left Yuichiro with a negative score.
How could someone even get grades this bad?
Shinya flipped to the kid's psych evaluation. It was a few years old but it's not like it'd be hard to extrapolate. As he expected the kid was about as 'kill all vampires' as you could get, probably more than Kureto. At least Kureto had other things like politics and making sure the family was on top to distract him. Yuichiro had an 'unhealthy obsession' with exterminating bloodsuckers and the doctor couldn't find anything else the boy had been interested in.
Introverted, residual trauma from his family being murdered in front of him, guilt, trouble forming new relationships… Still no surprises.
Then he got to the IQ. The kid's actual IQ was pretty average, but the numbers used to get it were all over the place. Now he wasn't familiar with the WISC test, but there definitely seemed to be something odd when he looked at all of the subset scores.
His verbal comprehension was consistently low. Shinya shouldn't have been surprised when apparently some of that subsection was based in social situations or general knowledge. None of that would be something that Yuichiro had experience with a few years ago. His vocabulary wasn't bad though.
The other categories skyrocketed and bottomed out all over the place. He was good at matrix reasoning but horrendous at digit span. He got a perfect on symbol search but his coding was low.
Shinya gave up on making sense of it. He wasn't a psychologist and the kid did get a normal proper score. Maybe the varied subset scores were normal?
He sorted out all the psych stuff and tossed it to Kureto, "Looking at this, I highly doubt that he'd ever consider working with vamps. If you beg to differ then be my guest,"
Kureto might have grunted something that sounded suspiciously like "they wouldn't want him," but surely that was just Shinya's imagination. As it was, Shinya was quite surprised that he hadn't demanded the entire file back yet.
Next he looked at the basic history section and got more of why the kid had been put on suspension right before Guren had him start training for the Moon Demon Company. Apparently, Yuichiro didn't have any self preservation because he defied orders to fight a Horseman of John by himself. Looking closely at his record, insubordination to go fight something was a pretty common occurrence.
He found an observational record detailing the kid's suspension. It was the funniest thing he'd read all year.
"What are you laughing about?" Kureto looked over,
"The surveillance officer seems to have a unique writing style." Shinya shook his head, "And this is plain ridiculous. A comedy of errors as it were. Not only is this kid lucky to be alive but his biggest obstacle was making a friend. A single friend."
"…well we don't want our soldiers to be a bunch of lone wolves."
"Yes," he nodded, "but Yuichiro wasn't exactly the one to join the pack in this case. In fact, I have a theory."
"A theory?" Kureto didn't sound receptive but oh well. Kureto never was.
"About Guren's plan."
Shinya could see the suspicion blazing in his adopted brother's eyes. Now here was the interest, here was the fire. "I'm listening, Shinya."
"It's quite obvious when you look at all the paperwork. Yuichiro Hyakuya is an idiot. He wasn't prepared for his cursed gear and it was only luck he survived. Afterwards he was sent immediately into active duty. He wasn't given any training, just thrown outside the walls when his record shows that he is impulsive and will attack any monster he sees."
"Don't be tiresome Shinya, get to the point." Kureto grunted,
"Fine… Guren wants the kid dead."
Kureto stared back at his adopted brother, trying to think it through. He hadn't seen all of the files yet, so he'd have to reserve final judgment but… "Why would he want that?"
Shinya shrugged, "Perhaps Guren took him in originally because he thought that he'd been a Hyakuya lab rat and then maybe it turned out he wasn't. Maybe Yuichiro just wasn't useful anymore? He could have finally annoyed Guren enough that he snapped? I don't have a clue. But no one sends in an asset this woefully unprepared if they don't want them to fail."
"I'm sure Guren could come up with a more effective method of making Hyakuya disappear." Unfortunately, that was his best argument. This was too drawn out, too risky, to fit a man like Guren's reputation.
This meant he'd actually have to consider this as a possibility.
Shinya himself considered this a moment before giving a thoughtful smile, "True, but still- one must wonder…"
One must wonder indeed.
A/N: Ok, I had this idea pretty soon after I saw the new episode and really started thinking about it. I mean, poor Yu, Yoichi, and Kimizuki! That scene guys... that scene. And all because their backgrounds weren't in yet because Guren had rushed them through to get their cursed gear. So yeah, things got stabbity stabbity BECAUSE SOMEONE DIDN'T DO PAPERWORK YET. So, because they Hiragis would still be suspicious of them I figured that they'd call for a rushed background check of some sort. Then I thought about what's actually on paper for Yu. What, with his grades and suspension- and the fact that Mitsuba called Yu and idiot. I thought it'd get some pretty funny reactions from people who are literally suspecting him for being a vampire spy or a threat.
My problem- I don't know anything about the Hiragis. I haven't read the manga and the little screentime they got barely shows anything. So I'm gonna admit right now, I should not have written this. If I still wanted to try this idea I should have waited a few weeks until the show gave me a good grasp on everyone's characterization and mannerisms. But... plot bunnies. Their evil and illogical. So I really went and looked up Kureto and Shinya's names off the wiki and read the brief personality section. Nothing else, cause I didn't want spoilers. So really, I should not have written this, but oh well- it was fun anyways.
That being said, on where the fic went...? I don't actually think Guren was trying to kill Yu off. And I don't actually think Yu's an idiot just... unobservant with a bit of hyper focus. For example, he was quite intelligent when he got Guren to agree to help him get Mika by using 'hey, we're both lab rats and therefore VALUEBLE to you'. That's smart. Him taking until he's called up by her family to register Shinoa's last name? That's obliviousness. I love these characters so much!
Anyways, thank you so much for reading- and reviewing if you have the time- I know I'm psyched about the new season! I can't wait to see what happens next. So much was set up last episode that I honestly just wanna talk about it for a while. Who knows, maybe I didn't get the Hiragis to OOC. Idk. But thanks again!