Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Knightverse!

Okay, this one was a toughie, even if I hadn't spent the better part of the last year in a Legends of Tomorrow headspace. But here it is, and 'The Bachelor Party' will be up tomorrow!

DISCLAIMER: I don't own Kamen Rider Kiva or any of its characters.

WORD COUNT: 6458

Thursday, November 13th, 2008

Wataru landed on the ground hard, crying out involuntarily as he felt his Kiva armour vanish. Blinking the stars out of his eyes, he saw Dark Kiva standing over him, before reverting back to his brother. Nii-san was breathing heavily, favouring his right leg and clutching his ribs. Wataru instantly regretted kicking him there, and hoped that he hadn't done any serious damage.

He accepted Nii-san's hand and let him pull him up; his other shoulder was throbbing like hell, and he didn't feel like trying to get up on his own. "Look like you win, Nii-san."

"I guess so," Nii-san breathed, wincing, "Oh, that's going to hurt in the morning."

"As opposed to whatever it's doing right now?"

Nii-san smirked dryly. "Ha, ha. I guess I'm just lucky you were pulling your punches."

Wataru smiled. "You were doing the same thing."

It was true. The brothers had been fighting very hard, but neither one was willing to use the more lethal moves in his respective arsenal. This hadn't been a death match; neither wanted to truly hurt the other. The thing they were fighting over wasn't worth that. Others would disagree. So many would kill to become King, but Wataru and Nii-san were not them. Wataru had only tried to take the title to bear the target that came with it, to protect Nii-san.

The two people standing off to the side, slightly separate from each other, approached the brothers. They made quite a contrasting pair; Shima-san, tall and fit in his neat suit, compared to Kaa-san, sickly and waifish in her ragged black dress, cloak, and eyepatch.

Kaa-san smiled and took her sons' hands. "You both fought hard, and you now better understand each other." She was smiling proudly.

Wataru grinned and hugged her. He'd missed his mother's embrace. After a pause, he felt Nii-san joining them.

After they'd had their moment, Shima-san spoke up. "You've done well today, both of you." Nii-san got a strange look on his face, a strained smile with a mix of hurt and pride. Wataru remembered Shima-san telling him that Kaa-san had given Nii-san to him to raise, and that they'd had a falling-out. It would probably be a while before that could be resolved, if at all, though Wataru decided to remain optimistic about it. They'd gotten this far, hadn't they?

Friday, January 30th, 1987

Maya didn't want to do this. For any decent mother, handing her child over to a stranger was torture. But she had to do it. After Otoya's death, she'd had several near-misses with angry Fangires, putting Taiga in danger, until she'd been saved by Otoya's friends, the Wolfen, Merman, and Franken that were the last of their respective Races. "Otoya made us promise to protect his child," the Wolfen, Jirō, had gruffly told her, "And right now, that means protecting you."

It wasn't just their loyalty to Otoya, however. One of her late husband's last acts was to bind them to Castle Doran, which had been bound to those who wielded the power of Kiva, not the Checkmate line. Since the Kivat Race valued familial piety above all else, Kivat-Bat II had declared the oath made between his father and the first King to become Kiva to be broken when Taiga's father had threatened him, and transferred his loyalty to Maya and Otoya. This meant that Jirō and the other two would have had to protect her even if they hadn't chosen to do so of their own free will.

But even with three dedicated bodyguards, Maya couldn't bear to keep putting her firstborn son in danger. The problem lay in the fact that she wasn't sure whom she could trust with him. As far as she knew, every Fangire friend she'd ever had, not that there had been many, was now out to get her, she had no living relatives, and any humans she'd had even remotely cordial relationships with were long dead (at least by human standards). The only one she could think of was Asō Yuri, but she felt that it would just be unfair on both Taiga and her. The other woman was also mourning the man they both loved, and Maya wouldn't force her to care for the child of the woman who'd stolen him away.

It had been Jirō who'd suggested this man. The leader of the Fangire Hunter organisation of which he'd been a member, along with Otoya and Yuri. Maya was worried, wondering if it was really the safest option. Handing her son, the new Fangire King, over to a Fangire Hunter…

Jirō emerged from the small café that apparently served as the Aozora Association's regular meeting place. Maya was waiting outside, cradling Taiga in her arms and trying to ignore the Merman, Ramon, sitting on the bench beside her, swinging his legs like he was even younger than he looked, and Riki, the Franken, who was standing on her other side silently, aside from occasionally cracking his neck. With one hand, she lightly caressed the slight swell in her abdomen that had just appeared over a week ago. It wasn't yet obvious, but it would be, soon. "Did he say no?" she asked when she realised he was exiting alone. Part of her was hopeful that she wouldn't have to hand her baby off to a stranger.

"He's not there," Jirō replied, "but I got Master to give me his telephone number. We can call and arrange a meeting instead of just dropping in on him."

Maya nodded, shifting Taiga in her arms as he squirmed. "Very well. Please make the call."

Mere hours later, Maya and her companions were standing in front of a house in one of the nicer residential areas of town. Jirō led the way to the front door and knocked. They didn't have to wait long, as a man in his thirties opened the door seconds later. Shima Mamoru was tall and relatively fit, and dressed in a suit. He looked like any ordinary salaryman you might see on the street, normal and unassuming. Not what one would expect of a Fangire Hunter.

"Jirō," the man breathed, relaxing only slightly, "It's been a while. Please, come in." He ushered them into a large sitting room. Maya sat down on the sofa between Jirō and Riki, while Ramon found a perch on the armrest on Riki's side. Shima himself settled into an armchair in front of them, eyeing Maya significantly. "Are you the woman that Yuri told me about?" he asked her.

Of course Yuri had mentioned her when telling this man about Otoya's death. "Yes," she replied simply, "But how much did she tell you?" For there were certain details that would work in her favour, and others that would work against her.

"She said that you were a Fangire who'd been banished because you'd fallen in love with Otoya, and that he died protecting you from another Fangire." There was a hard, accusatory note in his tone. He was blaming her for the death of one of his soldiers.

Maya straightened up. "He fought against the Fangire King to save my son," she corrected him, "The King was going to kill my innocent child, his own child, to punish me further. Otoya is not… was not the kind of man who would stand by and allow that to happen."

The hard look in Shima's eyes softened a bit as he looked at the infant in her arms, who was more interested in trying to play with her hair than anything else. Then the new Mark on the baby's hand caught his attention, and her words visibly clicked in his mind. "The King was your husband." It was a statement, not a question. "You are the Queen, or rather, the former Queen. Which means your son is the new King, if his father is also dead."

Maya pulled Taiga closer to her chest protectively. "In the past few months, many Fangires have attacked me to get revenge for their King. If I were to keep him with me, I would be risking Taiga's life. They could kill him to take revenge on me."

"Or they could kidnap him," Jirō added, "And raise him to be just as ruthless as the last King, if not more so. It would be better if he was raised someplace where they can't find him." He kept his gaze steady with Shima's, and Maya realised what he was getting at. He was selling the idea of being able to direct how the most powerful Fangire would be raised. She didn't wuite like how easily her son might be turned into a weapon by the humans, but if it kept him safe…

Taiga collapsed into the nearest chair as soon as he entered the room. The two brothers had made their way back to Wataru's house to patch up their wounds. The younger Kivat immediately flew off and soon returned with a First Aid kit, while Wataru began to clumsily clear off the table with one hand. His left arm was apparently still hurting him.

Taiga frowned in concern, remembering how Wataru had been favouring that shoulder in the middle of their fight with that Fangire, after returning from getting tossed down the hill. As soon as he got a chance, Taiga would be taking a look at it himself. He was pretty sure he'd grabbed that arm himself during their duel, and he might have made it worse.

But Wataru, naturally, was paying more attention to the bruises spread around Taiga's throat, courtesy of that Fangire trying to strangle him. "That looks like it hurt."

"It'll heal," Taiga insisted, "You don't have to ignore your own injuries just to take care of mine." His little brother hesitated, but then gingerly sat down on the couch next to him. He needed help getting his shirt off, and Taiga swore when he saw just how badly bruised and swollen the joint was. "I think it's dislocated." He gently prodded it, stopping when Wataru winced. "Do you know how to… put it back in? I had to take a couple First Aid classes through school, but they never covered that."

"Not really," Wataru admitted, "I didn't even go to school. Kaa-san taught me the basics early on, and Kivat took over when she left."

Taiga looked up at him. "You never went to school?"

"No. Maybe I'd get along better with my neighbours if I had, though. I mean, you remember how bad I was with people, and it only got worse when I got older. Maybe if I'd had more friends than just Shizuka…"

"Maybe," Taiga admitted, "But you also had bullies harassing you even without having to face them every day at school." He had turned his attention to folding a sling for Wataru's arm.

"Did you get picked on at school?"

The question had Taiga freezing mid-motion. "At first," he admitted, "Then I got fed up and started fighting back. Got kicked out of one school for that."

May 1992

This first-grader was an oddity to both students and teachers alike. He was a quick learner, yes, and always completed his work on time, but he could get stubborn and rebellious over the strangest of things. On his first day, he was told to remove the glove he was wearing on his left hand, and he refused. Vehemently. In front of the entire class. His guardian had explained to the school that he had a skin condition that meant he had to keep his hand covered, but the damage had been done. His classmates had been quick to spread the story of the fussy kid who made a big deal out of something as simple as taking his glove off. The 'skin condition' explanation didn't help much, and had them treating him like he was diseased and highly contagious, until a couple boys got over their fear and started targeting him at recess.

Another issue was his refusal to eat anything. At first, the teachers were concerned about the possibility of abuse at home, but then it became apparent that he just really found all the food they offered him to be unappetising. Quite a few kids took offense to this attitude, like he thought himself too good to eat the same food as the rest of them.

It had become a common occurrence to see the small group of boys in a crowd near the back corner of the schoolyard, jeering and laughing as they took turns punching and kicking the one at the centre. 'The Freak', as his classmates called him, was refusing to cry in spite of the pain. It would take a few minutes before whichever teacher was on monitor duty to notice and break it up, but he could hold out until then. Until one day they didn't notice.

Yesterday, the bullying had gone so long without teacher intervention that it had only been the sound of the bell ringing that had stopped them. That was when Nobori Taiga got fed up with depending on the teachers to rescue him.

"Maybe the Freak would rather eat dirt!" one boy jeered. Another grinned and scooped a handful of soil out of a pile left over from some recent groundskeeping. Two second-graders picked him up off the ground and held his arms behind his back while the dirt-holder advanced on him.

None of them expected Taiga to suddenly lash out and kick the boy in the stomach. The soil fell to the ground, forgotten, as he gasped for breath and curled in on himself. But Taiga didn't stop there, thrashing around and kicking the two boys holding him in the shins and stomping on their toes. They were surprised to find that he was actually a bit stronger than they were, and let go of him to clutch at their legs. Once he was free, Taiga launched himself at his primary tormentor, yelling and swinging wildly.

By the time the teachers intervened, half the boys were on the ground, some crying openly, with bloody noses and sore spots that would almost certainly become dark bruises. A handful of the other half were trying to pin him down and retaliate. They weren't having an easy time, however, as Taiga was taking several weeks of anger out on their hides.

"The teachers actually allowed that to happen?!" Wataru asked in shock.

Taiga shrugged, finishing the knot on his brother's sling. "I got used to relying on myself. None of the other kids were going to be my friends, anyway."

"You didn't have any other friends? I thought you would have made a few more through school."

"No. Sometimes I'd intervene when another kid was getting picked on, but you were the only one who really responded well. Most were just tormented more, afterwards, because getting helped by me was less than good for their popularity."

Thursday, October 17th, 1996

Taiga was not in a good mood. He'd snuck out of the house after returning from school and getting scolded for fighting again. It wasn't his fault; the other boys had started it, and it wasn't like the teachers would be of any help. What else was he supposed to do? Just lie down and take it?

He heard the sound of boys around his age laughing and jeering, something he found to be all too familiar for his liking. In a mood to punch someone, he followed it over the hill until he found the source. Two boys his age were laughing and teasing another one, who was openly crying on the ground. A shoe was sitting on a branch of the tree they were standing under, and the crying boy was missing one.

"He's already crying!"

"Cry, you little worm! Crybaby!"

One of the bullies, actually tall enough to reach it, grabbed the shoe and started to run off, his friend right on his heels. Unfortunately for them, they were running in Taiga's direction.

"Stop it!" Taiga yelled, charging down the hill.

"Who are you?" the one with the shoe demanded as they both stopped at the sight of him.

"Don't get in the way!" the other one threatened.

Taiga ignored their threats and snatched the shoe before pushing the boy who'd been holding it away. The two of them yelled that they would remember this, but ran away. They were just some cowards who didn't know what to do with someone who wasn't scared of them.

"Here," he said as he held the shoe out to its still-crying owner.

The boy sniffed and finally looked up at him, looking wary and suspicious at first. Like he was afraid that Taiga would be just as mean to him as the other boys. He reached out slowly to take his shoe back, and when Taiga released it instead of pulling it away, a watery smile appeared on his face.

"Can I have a friend over?"

Shima Mamoru looked up, startled, at the sound of the question. Taiga was standing at the doorway of his home office, looking up at him hopefully. It took Mamoru a couple seconds to register the oddity of the question. "A friend?" Since when did Taiga have any friends?

"I met him a couple days ago. Two kids were picking on him and I chased them off. Then we played together 'til sunset. He's only two years younger than me, and he says he doesn't have any other friends. So, can he come over to play?"

The pleading note in his voice almost made Mamoru give in. He knew Taiga had no friends in school, and that he was desperately lonely. But it was too dangerous for an ordinary human child to be close to Taiga. Mamoru had to be strict with the boy for his own safety, lest he be recognised by a local Fangire and either killed or kidnapped and raised to be the King they wanted.

So it was with a heavy heart that Mamoru shook his head and told him: "I'm afraid I cannot allow that."

It was painful to watch that hope in the young boy's eyes being crushed. "What? Why?!"

"It's complicated. I'm sorry, Taiga."

"Like hell you are!" the boy yelled angrily, "You never let me do anything! I hate you!" And he turned and ran upstairs to his room.

Mamoru sighed. Taiga might have been a Fangire, but he was still just a child, and Mamoru hated having to deny him a normal childhood and being unable to explain the reasons why.

"So that's why I never saw you again," Wataru murmured, "at least until this year."

Taiga sighed. "It took me a while to understand why Shima did what he did – to keep me away from the rest of the Fangires. Not that that worked forever. Bishop found me when I was seventeen, and told me who I really was. I mean, I pretty much always knew I was different, but I'd had no idea that I wasn't even human. He offered me the chance to go from outcast to ruler. Considering my issues with… practically everyone except you, how could I resist?"

Wednesday, February 18th, 2004

"You lied to me!" Taiga couldn't even begin to describe his fury at the betrayal. However strict Shima-san had been, Taiga had trusted him. "You knew all along who I was, what I was!"

Shima then had the gall to look hurt. "Taiga, please, there is a very good reason why-"

"Why you kept me locked away and ignorant?! Why you never told me who my father was, and what that meant?!" He was beginning to feel it, now, the power that had lain dormant inside him for too long. "What were you planning to do with me, anyway?! Taunting my people about having their King under your control? Using me to kill my own kind?!" He shook his head. "Whatever it was, you can just forget it all!" And he began to storm out, hoping to never see that lying human again.

"Taiga, wait!" The human tried to grab him, tried to stop him from leaving and claiming his birthright.

"Get off me!" Taiga was done with letting this human hold him back. He shoved the man to the ground, and would have left it at that, but the power he felt under his skin had risen with his anger.

And it was begging to be used.

Ripping off that damned glove on some instinct, he merely gestured at the human on the ground. Clouds of black smoke appeared, and from them emerged a jet-black snake, a viper, striking the man in the back.

Taiga's eyes widened at the cry of pain. All that with nothing more than a simple gesture! Imagine what else he could learn to do!

He walked out, clamping down on the small part of him that felt guilty for hurting his foster father.

The two brothers were rather surprised when the ringing of a cell phone interrupted their conversation. Wataru awkwardly fished the device out of his pocket with his good hand. "Hello Oh, Megumi-san. Is everything alright?" He paused and listened to the female Fangire Hunter's response. "What? You did?" Taiga noted the surprised look on his brother's face, which then gave way to one of relief. "And you're both okay?" Another long pause. "Thank goodness. It would be terrible if- Wait. When did you start calling him 'Keisuke'?" Now he was wearing a very confused frown. "Megumi-san? Hello? Megumi-san? She hung up." Wataru did so as well, still looking confused.

"What did she say?"

Wataru looked at him seriously. "Bishop is dead," he said quietly, "He was defeated by Nago-san and Megumi-san."

Taiga blinked in shock. His initial reaction was one of disbelief and anger. The humans had killed yet another member of the Checkmate Four! But then he remembered Bishop's recent crimes, and that the older Fangire had killed Mio and had tried to have Taiga and Wataru killed. It would have only been a matter of time before Taiga would have had to fight and kill him, anyway.

He heaved a heavy sigh. "It's just as well," he declared softly, "He made himself an enemy of mine as soon as he confessed to killing Mio."

Now it was Wataru's turn to look shocked. "What?! Mio-san?!"

Taiga realised that he'd never told Wataru about the truth of her death. "He told me that he'd attacked her when she landed at the bottom of that cliff, before you got to her. She would have survived if he hadn't." He huffed. "He sounded so… proud of himself. Like he was expecting me to reward him for killing Mio and framing you. I don't understand how he could think I'd be anything but furious with him, but that's why he decided I was 'unfit' to be King. That's why he resurrected all those Fangires and set them on us both. That Fangire that nearly killed us must have been the last one he raised, given how powerful he was." He suddenly remembered something Wataru had said. "By the way, what did you mean when you said that you and your father had defeated that one before? Didn't your father die a long time ago?"

Wataru nodded. "Right after Mio-san died, I was approached by one of Tou-san's old friends. He said that I probably needed to talk to my father, after what had happened. He took me to these strange doors and pushed me through them, and I found myself in 1986. I'd travelled through time."

"Time-travel," Taiga gasped, "You went through the Time Doors in Castle Doran!"

"While I was there, I found out that my parent s were being targeted by another Fangire because they were in love. You would have been too young to remember this, but he was holding you hostage, and threatened to kill you if Kaa-san ever saw Tou-san again. I helped them rescue you, and Tou-san and I fought and killed that Fangire together. But Tou-san must have died soon after that. He used the power of Dark Kiva, which is supposed to be lethal for pure humans."

Taiga nodded. "It is. It's remarkable that he even lived long enough to put up a fight against any Fangire, let alone one that was so powerful. Was that Fangire as strong back then as he was today, or did Bishop perhaps do something to boost his powers?"

Wataru shook his head. "He was just as powerful back then, which isn't very surprising, considering who he was." For some reason, he was no longer looking Taiga in the eye, instead choosing to gaze at the floor.

Taiga leaned forward. "Who was he?"

His little brother hesitated before answering, keeping his eyes fixed on his shoes. "That Fangire… was the King at the time. He was your father, Nii-san."

It took Taiga several seconds to find his voice. "My father…" That couldn't be true. His father couldn't have possibly been that raging, roaring monster that had tried so hard to kill him. His father would never have threatened the life of his own son, no matter the circumstances. Bishop had said…

Right. Bishop.

"What was he like?"

The older Fangire looked up from his work. "What was who like, King?"

"My father, the King before me. I only know that he was killed by Fangire Hunters when I was very young."

Bishop set his work to the side and turned in his seat to face Taiga properly. "He was a great man, and a great King," he declared, "He let nothing stand between him and his goals. No one defied him." There was a deep reverence in his tone, like the one he'd had when he'd first told Taiga of who he was, but stronger.

Taiga thought about Bishop's words. His father must have been great, indeed, to inspire such loyalty. He would have a lot to live up to. He decided then and there to take up the challenge, to be the great successor his father would have wanted.

Looking back on that made Bishop's acts of late make more sense. He'd idolised a King who hadn't let anything stand in his way – not even the life of his own son. The previous King, had he been in Taiga's position, would have killed Mio himself and then done the same to Wataru. So of course Bishop would have taken offense to Taiga doing the exact opposite.

Which left Taiga with a rather disturbing question: what kind of King was he supposed to be? He'd spent five years trying to live up to the stories about his father, but did he really want to be that kind of ruler? That kind of person? His idol had fallen quite far, in his eyes, and only in the past couple of minutes.

Hell, everything Bishop had told him was being called into question, now. The past few days had taught Taiga a lot, although it had left him with a lot of unanswered questions, as well.

One of those lessons was that humans were not to be underestimated. They were still on a lower rung of the food chain, but one had lost his life saving Taiga. Shima-san had gone out of his way to raise him, however rocky their relationship still was. Two humans had killed Bishop. One of them had killed Rook. And Wataru and his human father had killed the previous King.

Taiga himself had seen that they were capable of great scientific feats, having spent so much of his time trying to stop them. And what was it about some humans that had so many Fangires falling in love with them? Mio had remarked that there were quite a lot of those. How many other hybrids like Wataru were out there?

All in all, at the rate things were going, humanity would become a force to be reckoned with (or rather, more so). It was possible that treating them as nothing more than a source of food would be unwise, that perhaps getting on their good side would be a smarter move. But that was even possible? The Fangire Race had been hunting humans for millennia; that wasn't a history that could just be forgotten. Taiga himself had killed humans, and not just for food…

The woman tried to scream, but her attacker's hand was pressed firmly over her mouth, muffling her cried for help. "Shh, darling," he crooned, "Just relax. This'll be much easier if you just-"

He was stopped mid-sentence by the pain of two giant, spectral fangs jabbing into either side of his neck. His would-be rape victim watched, horrified, as all colour drained from his body until he was just a transparent husk. She screamed as he fell, dead, at her feet.

Near the entrance of the alley, a young man sighed in relief, the strange weakness that had been bothering him for months finally vanishing thanks to the Life Energy that he'd taken from the man. He briefly smirked humourlessly. "At least I can use this as a way to clean some scum off the face of this planet." Then he walked towards the woman, the glow in his eyes and the markings on his face fading away. "Are you alright?" he asked her, "You aren't hurt, are you?"

But the reaction he received was not what he'd expected. Instead of thanking him, or answering his question, she opened her mouth and started screaming. "MONSTER! MONSTER! SOMEBODY HELP! HEE-"

Her screams were cut off by his hand clutching her throat. "You ungrateful bitch," he snarled angrily, "I saved you, and this is how you repay me?!" His facial markings and glowing eyes returned, and he summoned two more translucent fangs and drained her Life Energy as well, dropping her in disgust when he was finished.

A tall thin man walked up to him, perfectly calm, as if that display hadn't bothered him in the slightest. "Now do you understand what I have been trying to tell you, King-sama?"

Taiga glared hatefully at what was left of the dead woman. "Yes. You were right. Humans are ungrateful and worthless, and are good for nothing but feeding on."

"Yes. Perhaps now you will not wait so long between feedings. Your young age was the only thing that kept you alive as long as it did."

"Of course. I won't let such silly sentiments hold me back any longer."

Taiga was drawn out of his memories by the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Wataru stood and opened the door, admitting two of the Fangire Hunters whom Wataru called his friends. The male was leaning rather heavily on the female. "Nago-san! Megumi-san!"

He stepped back to let them in, but the pair stopped short upon seeing Taiga. "What is he doing here?" Nago Keisuke demanded.

Taiga expected his little brother to stumble through an explanation, but instead he squared his shoulders and looked his friend in the eye. "Nii-san is here because I brought him here. Before you fought Bishop, he sent an army of Fangires to kill the two of us, so we had to fight them off together." His tone gained a slight pleading note. "Please, don't turn this into a fight."

Taiga remembered the pain on Wataru's face whenever he was asked to choose between his loyalties. Wataru was just as much human as he was Fangire, something that Taiga hadn't properly taken into account before. For his brother's sake, he'd keep the peace today. "I won't start anything if they don't," he promised.

The two humans looked at him in surprise. He got the feeling that they hadn't expected him to be willing to do anything besides fight and kill. But eventually they both nodded, and Asō Megumi led Nago over to a chair so that he could sit.

To say the tension was awkward would be an understatement. Two Fangire Hunters on one side, the Fangire King on the other, and poor Wataru stuck in the middle of it all.

"Why did Bishop want you dead?" Asō finally asked Taiga, "I thought he took orders from you."

Taiga sighed in frustration, still sore from the all-too-recent betrayal. "He used to. But he has – had his own idea of what the King should be like. He decided all on his own that Mio and Wataru would bring me nothing but trouble, so he killed Mio and framed Wataru so well that even Wataru himself believed he was guilty."

"What?!" both Nago and Asō cried in disbelief.

"And then he expected me to be grateful for that! For killing my fiancée and framing my little brother!" He slumped in his chair. "He decided that because I… disapproved of his actions, that I was unfit to be King, and should be killed."

"How… I don't understand how anyone could think like that," Asō murmured, "Even a Fangire."

Taiga leveled her a small glare. "Bishop idolised my father, and I just recently learned that he was willing to kill me just to punish my mother. It seems family ties were irrelevant to him, and Bishop wanted me to be the exact same kind of King as my father. …But… I can't. I can't throw my own family away like that."

He blinked, suddenly remembering that these two were humans, and Fangire Hunters to boot, and here he was, opening up and letting them in on his thoughts and feelings about the whole situation! Quickly, he put on the blank, detached expression he reserved for strangers.

"The one thing I know for sure is that I won't become him. I know you have no reason to trust me, but I ask that you trust that I won't do anything to hurt my brother. And since he seems hellbent on protecting human lives…"

"You'll help us?" Nago finished incredulously.

"Sort of. In the past few months, you and your group have killed more Fangires than all the other Fangire Hunters in the world in the past decade. Two of them were members of the Checkmate Four, easily two of the most powerful Fangires in existence. There are two ways I could respond to that. One would be to try and wipe out your entire organisation, setting the humans and Fangires to full-scale war. The second would be… trying to play nice."

"And how would the rest of your people react to that?" Nago asked skeptically.

"They would be furious. The local Fangires tend to consume human Life Energy as often as they want because they can. There are no restrictions. I've heard that other communities around the world have their own laws and practices, restricting the number of humans killed over a certain length of time and placing limits on who they're allowed to kill – bad people that society wouldn't miss. In those communities, many of the Fangires you've fought would be considered criminals in those places. And I've heard there's even…" He paused as an idea came to mind.

"What is it?" Wataru asked after his brother was silent for several seconds.

"I've heard there are Fangires in America who don't live by the rule against falling in love with humans. They all travel there from all over the world to escape persecution. From what I understand, there have been attempts to punish them, but they would all rally together, and they always came out the victors. Eventually, it was decided that, since they mostly kept to themselves, they weren't worth the risk."

Asō frowned. "Are there really that many of them?"

"I have no idea how many, but Mio once said that there was a whole list of human-lovers right here in Tokyo. Now I'm thinking that they might be useful allies. Especially if the other Fangires decide to administer some vigilante 'justice' against them, and they need help protecting themselves and the humans they love." He looked up at the two humans. "What I want to know is: are you two willing to work with me?"

The two of them looked at each other. "I'm really not comfortable about this," Asō admitted. "My mother was a Fangire Hunter, and I grew up being told that all Fangires were monsters. It's not like I can just start working with them so easily. But…" she looked over at Wataru. "You're really going to be working alongside your brother on this?"

Wataru nodded. "Yes. I did already promise to try to be a bridge between the humans and the Fangires. This could be the start of that."

Asō nodded back. "Well, since we're already dedicated to saving lives, I'm willing to work with you both on that."

Wataru grinned. "Really? That's great! What about you, Nago-san?"

Nago seemed to be the hard sell. He'd been gazing assessingly at Taiga for most of the conversation. "I don't like this," he said bluntly, "I don't know if I can trust a Fangire."

Asō nudged him. "Keisuke…"

"But I'm going to help you, Wataru. Someone has to watch your back in this."

Taiga scowled at his mistrust, but a pleading look from Wataru convinced him to hold his tongue. He wasn't all too trusting of the humans, either, but this was a start. Peaceful relations between humans and Fangires would not be easy to create and maintain, but this could be the first step.

THE END

Just a little sneak peek of 'The Bachelor Party':

"You gonna spend any time outside the hotel room, or are you gonna lock yourselves in for the entire trip?" Kengo-san asked with a big grin on his face, his eyebrows waggling and his speech slurring a bit.

Nago-san glared at him before snatching the shot glass out of his hand and shoving it towards the nearest bartender. "This guy's only having water for the rest of the night." He then turned back to Wataru, completely ignoring Kengo-san's complaints. "We were thinking about taking a tour up to one of the volcanoes, and Megumi wants to try to learn how to surf. And we'll probably wind up doing something involving dolphins."

Wataru grinned. "Dolphins sound fun. After all the crazy stuff that's been happening this year, you two could use a break."

"I think we all could. I'll admit, I'm kind of looking forward to trying out surfing. It's been a while since I've done something that isn't bounty hunting or Fangire hunting. What about you, anything you want to try?"

"Well, I'm not sure. I mean…" He frowned as he looked around Nago-san and saw an empty bar stool on his other side. "Wait, where did Kengo-san go?"

Nago-san twisted around and also saw that their friend had wandered off. "Let's just hope he went to the bathroom. That's the best-case scenario." He paused. "Though, considering who we're talking about…" The two of them exchanged a look before getting up and starting to search the crowd. Both knew that Shima-san and Megumi-san would have their heads if any one of them got in trouble the night before the wedding.