Author's Notes: This is an AU fic with Mimato, Takari, and Taiora.

This was beta read by MimixIshidax, who I'd like to thank.

Prologue:

Yamato,

Hey, sorry I haven't emailed in a while, I was kind of busy. I've just moved.
But I'm fine. No need to worry.
I'll see you soon.

-Takeru

Yamato "Matt" Ishida frowned at his brother's message. The email just wasn't his little brother's style; Takeru was known for his long, descriptive emails (like they were the next great American novel or something) where he went on and on about every minute detail in his life. So these short sentences and vague almost perfunctory answers were rather disconcerting.
This out of character response worried Matt far more than the silence. It was almost as if it came from a whole other person.

Previously, when he hadn't heard from his brother for nearly two weeks, he had been concerned, so he headed over to his little brother's apartment, only to find it emptied. Concern had become panic, and he was going to call the police when a message from his cell phone informed him of an email from his brother. If Takeru had meant to console his big brother, his message hadn't worked.

Something was most definitely wrong, he thought, biting his lip. Should he still call the police? On one hand, the police would definitely be able to help, but on the other hand besides an out of character email, he really had no evidence that anything remotely awful had happened to his brother. Sure, the apartment vacancy looked bad but Takeru had been talking about moving for over a month…

Besides, if he involved the police, and it turned out Takeru was fine, he'd look paranoid. And he spent too many years fighting against people's image of him as crazy to add paranoid to the list.

"Looks like I'll just have to find him myself." Matt decided, considering it was the most viable option.

Matt frowned once more at the empty apartment before heading down the stairs (the elevator was broken-something Takeru had complained about more than once). Just as he reached the bottom step, a streak of cold suddenly traveled down his spine, and he knew his day was just about to get worse.

About five feet from where he currently stood, there was a woman pacing the floor of the lobby. She had long pale hair, a pretty face and lithe build, and a gaping hole through her chest. Slowly, he reached into his pocket, pulled out his ipod, and put on his headphone. He forced himself into a faux relaxed stance and walked through the lobby, staring straight ahead.

As he was about to reach the door, he saw out of the corner of his eye, the pale woman turn her head to him. His lips formed a thin line and he did his best not to shiver under her gaze; however, she shook her head and turned away from him as he walked out of the building.

He breathed a sigh of relief.

He already had a missing brother on his plate, he didn't have time to deal with a ghost.

"You have to try harder, Takeru."

"I'm doing my best."

"We understand that you're tying, TK, we do. But you have to try just a little harder. Do it for me."

"Fine, Kari."

Mimi Tachikawa had to forcibly suppress the urge to pull out her gorgeous honey hair by the handfuls as she stared at the couple across from her. The handsome, blond man had his arms crossed over his chest and an extremely frustrated expression on his face; the lovely brunette woman had her hands on his shoulders and every once and a while gave them a squeeze of encouragement (though, she was frowning at the same time).

Resting on the table in front of the trio, lay the cause of their mutual annoyance: a mug of O negative blood warmed to body temperature.

Takeru, the blond man, had become the newest addition to Mimi's vampire clan and thus had very little control of his new abilities, in particular his new fangs. Sure, his fangs came out all right when he was hungry (or when his girlfriend, Hikari was doing something stimulating to him) but he could not yet retract or coax them out on his own. So once the new vampire had his fill of blood, Mimi would make him practice control of his incisors.
The plan was to get him to extend and retract his fangs with the smell of blood, before progressing to testing him without the smell of fresh blood to aid him. Unfortunately, Takeru was having a harder time with the test then he should and thus the trio had been stuck doing this for a good portion of the night.

They tried for another hour, before Mimi shook her head and picked up the mug.

Blast. I'd hoped he'd be able to do this by now.

Mimi, as head Vampiress, already had enough on her plate at the moment. There had been rumors of vamps going missing and she was already on edge trying to make sure he wouldn't try to come within twenty feet of her. Add to that a new vampire and his problems…and she just remembered something very important.

"Takeru," she called to the retreating couple, "you emailed your brother right?"

He nodded. "Yeah, it should be fine. Once he knows I'm ok, he won't try to find me."

She hoped that was true.

She already considered Takeru a part of her family and she didn't want to jeopardize that by having to deal with his brother. Hopefully, now that he had been contacted he wouldn't try to hunt his brother down.

Hopefully.

Author's Notes: Please read and review. Constructive critcism is accepted.