This was originally a oneshot that I had written about three quarters of the way before deciding to break it down for the sake of publishing. This story will likely be anywhere from five to ten chapters, alternating a third person limited POV from chapter to chapter between a few characters. Kuro Chou was written with a sense of finality in mind, so sit back and enjoy the show.

Kuro Chou takes place following chapter 85, after the Association Headquarters is destroyed.

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Once Headquarters had all but turned to rubble with the pureblood's fight, the hunters hadn't been the same. They were more on edge, if that were possible, since many of them had taken to living there. Since the threat of war lay stagnant in the air, the hunters had taken it upon themselves to gather and concentrate their skills to the elimination lists, for rouges and E's alike. As the only remaining members of their family whom had any power to put a stop to the war, whom had known about vampire kind, naturally they wanted to keep their families safe from harm.

This, of course, only becoming commonplace after the bloodshed exemplified by the cursed Kiryuu family.

But home was home, and none of them could go back until the war was over. And even then there was always the fear of the "what ifs" lurking over their shoulders. What more could they do than rebuild and continue forward?

Yuuki, having chosen the side of the hunters, for now, as many of them had thought, was tasked with helping. She had nowhere else she was willing to go, and what better place to hold a homeless vampire than within the walls of Headquarters itself? Even half-demolished it was the best location for detainment. Even with most of the weapons gone save for the Bloody Rose and her Artemis Scythe, which Yuuki suspected would be confiscated by the Association anyways, combined with her unwillingness to join her brethren, there would be no real choice for her to stray or escape.

Zero thought otherwise.

As he gazed upon the surface rubble and debris, he couldn't help but think he was grateful for choosing an apartment away from the chain and collar of the Association. Sure, even if he didn't live there he would have to participate in the cleanup, but he got to go home at the end of the day. His eyes flit from structure to structure, quickly drawing up an estimation in cost of damages as he assessed their situation financially, and security wise.

Yuuki was standing in the spot that Kaname had last been seen, staring at the rubble around her as if it would yield the answers to all of the questions reflecting in her earnest gaze. Zero was tempted to leave her there, to further distance himself from her as if she wasn't of consequence like he had been doing for the last year or so, but as he eyed the close crop of her hair, the way her short locks were combed through by dark eyelashes that no longer held any evidence of tears, it was like looking into the past. It was as if their biggest worry, besides their own personal demons, was in keeping the Night class in behavioral order. With a sick, short laugh he realized that all along, their duties at the academy hadn't changed with what faced them now. They were still trying to make the vampires behave. The game had only gotten more widespread, more deadly, the threats and the list of innocents growing far beyond that of a simple castle of sand. The participants were older, perhaps wiser.

Wise enough to know that no matter how the outsides seemed to be, the core components were the same.

The people were the same.

Right?

She still hadn't moved from that spot. The other hunters brushed past her as if she was nothing but dirt beneath their feet. Zero trudged towards Yuuki, grit and stone crumbling beneath his shoes as he navigated his way among the uneven rubble.

"Oi." he murmured, voice stuck low in his throat. "We need to clean. The hunters will want you out of the way."

Receiving no answer, he shifted his weight in a sign of unease. At what? It was only Yuuki. And even though she now looked the same as she did before on the outside, in the time she had gone, something had changed inside of her. The quiet determination that belied her young and ignorant eyes was muted, muddled with the weary depth of understanding that had been forced upon her in his absence. For a few more moments, which was unlike her to hesitate to his words, she continued to think, to stare unseeingly as if she were in the middle of drawing a conclusion. Finally Yuuki turned her weighted gaze to rest upon him, the tired depths growing even more weary with knowledge and age than ever before. It unnerved him, slightly, to see how much Yuuki had changed in his absence. He made a silent promise to protect her, from herself, from himself, and yet when he thought it was best for her to be turned over to the care of Kuran, he had let her go without a second thought. Those second thoughts seemed to only now seep into his mind. Beneath Yuuki's searching, piercing gaze, he could see the graying half-circles smudged along the pallid skin beneath them, out of place on her youthful and usually sunny face. She seemed to be reading him, much like Kuran had before when he had been trying to assess just how much Yuuki had truly meant to him. Oftentimes he looked unimpressed, even judgmental, almost as if he had been measuring the depth of his dedication, his attachment, his-

"We were set up, you know." Yuuki's voice, soft and distinctive as the cool brush of snow white wings against bare flesh. "The death of your family, my lost memories, our meeting." her voice dropped to a haunted whisper, seemingly reading his thoughts to the stage of the world. "Our attachment." The pureblood straightened up, turning to gaze instead at the ruins of the building where several hunters had gone to dig out anyone that had been trapped within the fallen rubble. "It was all meant to happen." she shrugged offhandedly, voice returning to its normal volume, as if the issue didn't matter anymore. "We were nothing but pawns."

At this Zero felt like he was at a loss. The person standing before him was Yuuki, yet she wasn't. Sure, he hadn't been himself either. He'd had to grow up far beyond his childish ideals of adulthood that he thought himself to practice within the walls of the academy. He's had to put on polite smiles of complacency and nuances for the sake of those around him, because that was how the real adult world worked. It was full of lies.

Lies that seeped down to taint the truthfulness of the youth as well. For the truth came naturally, and lies were learned habits.

"We were." he acknowledged, seeing no reason to lie in the given circumstances. The truth of the matter was everywhere―written in her blood, in the ink in his tattoo over the undetectable scars of his bitemark, and in the destruction of Headquarters.

"But that doesn't mean that we have to let it taint what we have." she finished with a small smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. Some things never changed, and her optimism was one of them. "So are you going to help, or are you just going to go skip out and let me do the work by myself again, hm?" This time the smile seemed more genuine. A sort of amusement danced within the show of emotion, mocking at the mention of something that had been so normal so long ago. It was rather vampire-like, or so Zero thought.

"Don't sound so sure that I'm going to ditch you. Or do you really have that little confidence in my reliability." Zero ruffled her short hair, enjoying how easily they threaded through unlike when her hair had been longer. Yuuki gave a tight-lipped smile in return, trying to but not quite succeeding in hiding the outline her fangs molded from beneath her lips.

"I don't question that." Yuuki pulled up her coat in brace of the sudden gust of wind. "Besides, I'm always the one leaving Zero behind."

"Yuuki." an authoritative voice called. Both she and Zero didn't have to look to know that Kaien had found them. "You must be tired." he smiled. "Zero will take you to his apartment and-"

"No." the pair protested in unison. The two shared a glance before Yuuki continued on. "We caused this mess so it's only right that we clean it up. Now that the mother metal is gone she's taken the other weapons with her. Zero and I are the only ones left that can defend if the vampires come back. And besides, I can feel the absence..." Yuuki pressed a hand to her heart with a pained expression. "It's like Artemis has barely any life left within her. And I know you can feel it too that the weapons are no longer ali-"

"I think the chambers inside of the remainder of Headquarters will suffice for now." Zero interrupted, pulling Yuuki along in his stead by the hand. "Like she said, barely anyone has any weapons anymore, so I should be enough to keep watch over her. None of the hunters are willing to go sniffing around the nest of vampires while their defenses are so low." he frowned internally for lumping himself in with those beasts, but continued with an unwilling Yuuki anyways, sending Kaien a worried look that spoke volumes when he answered back in the affirmative with a worry of his own.

For until she had mentioned it, neither of them had noticed that the weapons were dead.

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