Chapter 2:

Four acts and a final one. Paths of five people and their separate experiences. Five lives, intertwined with a sixth as intimately as only those bound by fate and destiny could.

Their stories, their experiences, their very essense calls out in a loud call.

Whom shall answer? Whom will learn of them? Whom will feel for them?

For whom shall learn and whom shall understand?

Read, if you will, and know of them and, more importantly, who they were.

Wavering Heart,

Weaping Heart,

Broken And Reforged,

It Mourns No Longer.

Balm Drips And Heals The Wounds,

Wounds That Tore Apart

A Love Unrequited.

When Pride Becomes Arrogance,

When Arrogance Becomes Hubris,

The Curse Is Set,

The Choices Made,

The Beast Triumphant

And Loneliness Lingers

The Past Is Not The Future

The Future Is Not In Stone

Time Flows

The World Shifts

What Once Was Never Comes Again

What Could Have Been Shifts

What Is Right

What Is Wrong

The Impossible Choice

Who Can Claim

To Know The Truth?

When One Insect's Wings

Can Break A Continent,

How Can One Person's Choice

Affect The World?

-First Act-

Kurono Kurumu sighed tiredly as she got ready to start her routine. Sure, she had a succubus' dream job as well as enough worshippers to earn her mother's respect, but she didn't want any of them.

She wanted one man, and one man only.

Her one and only.

The man who was married to another in the other side of the world.

But, she had done what she could and then some. And now she had to pay the price; forever expelled from Japan, sent away from her beloved Tsukune.

There had yet to be a day that she didn't hope he had been there, not a day that she didn't curse Moka, not a day that she didn't wish things had been different.

But, alas, one's wishes are not always possible.

So she worked by showing off her body in a strip club.

Watched by men in the way she only wanted Tsukune to watch her.

Calls and whistles and all she wanted to do was bring out her claws and turn the place into a bloody abattoir. Damn pigs all of them.

But she held in her rage, put on her clothes and steadied herself for yet another show. She would just have to imagine that Tsukune was watching her and all would be fine.

He would watch her with his warm, brown eyes almost hidden by his mop of wild, chestnut hair.

She could just picture him, entering the club, looking at her in awe and desire...

Kurumu blinked.

Then she blinked again.

Then did a double take.

The figure didn't vanish.

There, at the entrance stood Tsukune.

Her one and only, her beloved Tsukune, the man she loved for years.

"TSUKUNE!"

His name on her lips was a warcry and her movements were a charge as she leapt through the air and pounced on the man, smothering him in her chest.

Then, the sense of normalcy, for them anyway, and nostalgic days ended as she smashed her lips on his own and gave him a kiss like nothing he had ever received before.

It was hot and electric and it caused his entire body to inflame in the sheer passion held within the petite body of the blue-haired woman.

No wonder he looked dazed for several moments after, trying to regain his sanity.

But eventually he did and he looked at her before speaking. "Hello Kurumu..."

It was then that the girl noticed that something was wrong. Something was very wrong. She could feel it all over him but now she could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice as well.

So, the scared succubus grabbed her beloved by the arm and made for the backrooms.

Several patrons tried to object, but they were... dissuaded... by the owner and the girl's mother.

Noone fucked with Caro Shade and got to live. Even the most drunk and retarded of them knew better.

In her room, Kurumu thrust Tsukune on a bed and sat next to him.

"Tsukune..." She didn't know how to begin, what to say, how to start the discussion. Fortunately, he did.

"Hey Kurumu... I... I'm sorry for coming so suddenly but... things... things aren't going well... back... back there..."

'No, really?' She thought sarcastically, but she wisely didn't say it. "It's ok Tsukune. You can stay here as long as you want. Forever if you want. I promise to take care of you."

The hurt look in his eyes was back, but at least she knew it wasn't meant for her.

Her poor, poor Destined One... she loved him so... What could have done something like that to him?

Moka would have protected him after all, she had done all that work to have him to herself so it's only natural to protect her investment, right?

But he didn't say. At least not on the first day. He was content to be in the same room as her and listen to her voice as she animatedly told him of her life, the good parts only though.

In the second day however, Kurumu learned the reason.

Her scream of fury and hate would resonate all over the state. Her youki would cause nightmares for months on end. Her visage would remind others of the succubi of myth; demonic.

Moka would from that point on never sleep peacefully in her life again.

So, Kurumu did whatever a woman in love would do in such a case; she held him tight and convinced him that she loved him truly.

That she didn't lie, she didn't want to hurt him, that she just wanted to be with him.

Free from his binding emotions to Moka, her feelings reached him and he felt the sincerety of her emotions.

The time he did that, they made love. The very next day, Kurumu was gone from the club, a single note left behind telling her aunt and mother to not worry about her. That she was fine and with her beloved Destined One at last.

They never questioned it.

-Second Act-

In an isolated village on a snow-covered mountain, Shirayuki Mizore tried to suppress her aura of hate towards the person speaking to her.

The overly-arrogant, hormonal orc just wanted to get a good time and confused her people for a whorehouse.

It took everything she had in terms of self control to not freeze him in a molecular level while still maintaining his consciousness.

She did her best to let the Ayashi down and make it understand that she was way out of its reach and made to turn around, go back to her children. Then a hand touched her shoulder and the one who owned the hand suddenly found himself tossed away by a northern wind.

"Would you leave me alone you overgrown jerk?" She shouted out to the orc, finally having had it.

"Shut up you whore! I will make you mine and you will enjoy it!"

The being made to charge, having already shifted to its true form when another voice, a male, made itself known with arctic fury in his voice. "Get your stuff and leave, scum. You will not touch her again you filthy bastard."

"What did you say you asshole?" Screamed the Ayashi before charging

The voice came again, this time suffused with a power barely contained within the words. "Ancient glaciers, listen to my voice! Your children need you, your people beseech you! Grant me your strength and vanquish the intruder!"

Spikes of ice, wider than the orc's torso and three times as tall rose up from around the charging being all targeting its heart.

The sculpture of ice was painted red in seconds.

Mizore stood shocked to stillness as she tried to comprehend what had happened.

She looked at the new arrival and just shook in place, unable to understand what had happened.

"T-Tsukune?" She ventured a guess and was quite shocked when the man nodded and smiled gently at her.

"Hello Mizore..."

Then a cry of indignation came from the side. "Hey, what am I, chopped liver?"

Mizore found herself smiling at her old friend despite it all. "Hello boobs-for-brains." Some things never change after all.

The excited Yuki-onna dragged them both by the hand to her home and made sure to hide the children with her mother.

Then she began to talk to her school-time crush and her best friend.

She was quite worried at the sorrowful look in his eyes, not to mention the way Kurumu looked at him. Not as she used to, with unbridled lust in her eyes, but with the look of a person feeling another's pain.

She found out a day later and her wrath shook the mountains as she achieved a state only achieved a thousand generations ago, when the Snow People blood flowed as strongly as the vampires of today; her entire body turning into a construct of hard ice and snow, an elemental representation of the ephemeral forces within her. A true Yuki-onna, a descendant of the glaciers themselves. Throughout the village, every Yuki person could feel their very souls resonate with the power held within that single woman.

Moka would never know why the winter was suddenly so chilling, why every second out of her house felt like a pack of wolves biting at her. Why from then on she would form a frostbite with even a bit of cold near her. Why ice and snow seemed to have it out for her, never supporting her weight and causing her to slip with the slightest touch.

In the end, Mizore got her wish; a night with her beloved Tsukune.

Then the night became morning and the morning became noon when Kurumu, bored at being alone, decided to join them.

The room would forever bear the scents of their actions, but Mizore would never have it another way.

Her mother disagreed, but what did she know, wondered Mizore, she hadn't gotten any in decades.

Not that she'd voice that thought, Shirayuki Tsurara could be very like her namesake; a very dangerous spear when angry.

The entire village would wonder how a vampire could have a wizard's power until they felt how the very glaciers around him seemed to react to his presence. Then they would wonder just who that person was to affect Nature merely on presence and will alone?

Their answer was as forthcoming as easily as Tsukune spoke of his situation with Moka; not at all.

But the Snow People's frustration over Tsukune's powers was quickly forgotten before the radiance Mizore seemed to exude ever since being reunited with him. Whoever could make that girl smile like that was worth their respect.

Tsurara would disagree and claim it took him too long.

She would quickly amend upon seeing her daughter's face.

-Third Act-

Sendo Yukari, witch extraordinaire and a genius smiled softly as her students, who were actually her own age, left the classroom. She remembered back when she was at their position and giggled. She had been so innocent back then. Well, maybe not really innocent, but at least she could claim to have been.

She gathered her books and set off to go to her room.

The Exorcist had been kind enough to not load her with his paperwork that day. Probably saving it for later.

She hated the man, she loathed him. But, at the same time she respected him. So she didn't try to prank his guts out.

She probably could too. But she chose not to. After all, he was needed for the Academy. If not for that, she would have been sorely tempted.

Not everyone likes their employer, neither are they always satisfied by their job. And Yukari was amongst them.

Making her way to her quarters, and back to her experiments, she sensed a huge mass of youki coming towards her, her senses as sharp as any Vampire; her link to Nature and Reality substituting for their blood-born powers.

She wondered who it could have been, to affect the world with their very presence?

An enemy? No, the Exorcist would have seen to it.

An ally? No, she would have known about it.

Who could it be?

Her curiocity got the better of her and Yukari moved closer to the source of power.

The closer she got, the more she was able to understand it.

The power was... peculiar, unique even. Its origin is without connection to Nature or Magic, but whoever had that power somehow had managed to link it. It was crude in a sense, nowhere near the sophistication some of her spells could reach, but it was effective, if a bit direct in application.

It was also unfocused as if driven by will and not intent.

Most peculiar. Most interesting. The genius inside the witch rubbed her hands eagerly at the enigma. She couldn't get her hands on it and break it down.

Noone said that Sendo Yukari was the sanest person alive; when it comes to magic enigmas, she is one of the scariest people around.

When she did come across the source of power, her breath hitched on her throat.

Three out of five stood before her.

Three out of the five of the original group.

The ever-beautiful Kurono Kurumu and the ever-calm Shirayuki Mizore.

And between them, as if they shielded and protected him, emitting power that rivaled the Exorcist, magic at his fingers flowing unaided by a magical focus... was Aono Tsukune, the man she had loved a long time ago. The man she never got to explain just how much he meant for her. The man she knew that by all rights she would never see again.

So, why was he there? There surrounded by Kurumu and Mizore no less?

More importantly, why was that look in his face? That heartbroken look in his once-happy eyes?

What could have gone wrong?

Had something happened to Moka? Had someone hurt her and the old group gathered to save her?

Her worries for the personality confused vampiress were discarded within the day; under the two girls' pressure, Tsukune told Yukari the truth of the matter.

The entire school swore off angering Yukari-sensei any more. Even the Exorcist felt sweat gather on his brow as he tried to contain the magical fury his subordinate was sending out in wave after wave. He managed to do it too, and in fact without letting her berserk power disintegrate any part of the school.

Moka would not realize why all of a sudden no item could stand her touch. It was as if things broke with the slightest touch, as if her strength had grown a billion-fold but also was impossible to control. Touching things as light as a feather became a subconscious routine for her as she tried to not destroy everything around her.

When all was said and done, Yukari was writing her resignation letter and gathering all her magical supplies, even her beginner books.

After all, she had to train Tsukune and for that she needed her beginner's guides.

No sense in having the first vampire with the ability to use magic waste his talents now is there?

And, while Tsukune's magic was rather vulgar, Yukari knew that it was also powerful. While it was crude, it was effective.

She would just have to find a way to best put it to use.

But that would wait until she could at least walk straight; the witch got more than she bargained for when she pulled Tsukune into her bed, only to be joined by a succubus and a yuki-onna later on.

It was a good thing she had placed those silence wards beforehand. A very good thing indeed.

-Final Act-

When the company of four was done with gathering their members, they met Ruby at Mizore's village. The cunning witch had managed to secure amnesty and freedom for all the members, calling in all favours she had available.

It didn't matter to them.

They were together, they were in love and they were happy.

Nothing else was needed.

To their immense surprise, things only got better as time went on.

Kurumu never felt lack of love or affection ever again. Surrounded by her beloved people, she could only vaguely recall a time she was not happy.

Mizore never lost the ability to reproduce and neither did her children; in having awakened the ability to fully transform into the element she called upon, she had revitalized her bloodline and given it life anew.

Yukari never was without material to inspire her genius mind. The mixture of the breeds that came from her new family would make most minds black out with their complexity. She just instead welcomed the challenge.

Ruby, the ever-protective mother of the group never had need to feel anger again. Surrounded by her beloved Tsukune, she was given her heart's desire.

And what of Tsukune you may ask? Well, he too never had need of anything.

The mirror was mended, the glue set and the image repaired.

Though in his heart he always held a special place for his first love, he knew how lucky he was with four stars shining upon him. And, despite always questioning himself on being worthy of those blessings, he was too short on time to really wonder about it. There was no moment after all that he didn't have his loves to take care of or a child to guide.

He was happy.

He was complete.

-Epilogue-

Akashiya Moka was miserable.

It had been eons since she last saw him, her mate, her beloved, the man she hurt so deeply.

It had been so... so long.

Long enough for her to forget about all her friends.

Long enough for her family to fall from their lofty positions.

So long. So unbearably long in this endless solitude. In this consuming loneliness.

But... even through the ages... even through the endless years that had passed... she still remembered him, his scent, his touch, his warmth, the taste of his blood, his voice, his eyes, the shape of his face, his arms wrapped around her.

She still remembered him and she still cursed herself for what she had done to him.

For pushing him away, hurting him when nothing else had managed to.

She had hurt him and she didn't even stop to consider his feelings, his emotions, his pain.

It had been so long that her Outer personality had dissolved away with the rosary, a rosary that had turned to dust.

Only her Inner self remained and the ghost that once was her Outer self. Nothing more.

She still wanted him, needed him back, still thought that it had all been a lie, a bad dream she would wake up from. But it was the truth.

She had held his heart in her hands. Given to her with a smile. And she had crushed it. Instead of cherishing it like the priceless gift it had been, she had tossed it to the trash.

She was despiccable.

Akashiya Moka didn't even dare think of the word pride any more.

She only wept and apologized, forever trying to apologize for the harm she had brought to him.

It had been so long.

Long enough for the curses that had once haunted her to go away; the winter no longer snapped at her, her nightmares no longer tortured her as if given form and foreign will, items no longer crumbled in her touch.

But the pain in her heart, the greatest curse of them all, still remained.

She was so pathetic, so despiccable.

She wanted to die. She wanted to just rot off and die.

But if she died, she might have to see him again, her mate. And how could she look at him again, like that? After what he had done? After being strong of heart to refuse immortality?

What had she done instead? Tortured him in the worst way possible.

She hated herself.

She despised herself.

She wanted to die, but couldn't bear to, fearing the chance of seeing him again.

But... she was so tired... so exhausted... so hollow...

She wanted to sleep...

Rest...

Dream of the time that once could have been...

Darkness around her, insurmountable, impenetrable darkness.

In the darkness she walked, in a land more dead than any her weathered eyes had seen before.

In a land so desolate that the worst lands she had seen before seemed like heaven.

Ahead of her, a light.

Ahead of her, motion.

Ahead of her, others.

Her steps took her there without conscious thought.

There, in the light she saw many figures, all dancing and talking and being together as one.

In the light, a paradise.

But she dare not approach; she recognized them.

Snow people with brown eyes. Succubi and Incubi with chestnut hair. Witches and warlocks with spiky messes of brown and black.

Eyes and hair and looks and scents so much like him.

She knew what she was seeing.

That which once was, what once she could have been a part of.

In the center she saw four figures enjoying the company of others.

A violet-haired woman of untold beauty, Kurono Kurumu, and she looked happier than ever.

A blue-haired woman of noble stature, Shirayuki Mizore, and joy was in her every action.

A rose-eyed woman of radiating kindness, Toujou Ruby, and there was her lilting laugh in the air.

A black-haired woman of an illuminating mind, Sendo Yukari, and the genius giggled with the others.

Her... friends... no, that was too much honor for one as pathetic and despiccable as her. They were people she once called friends yet never really realized what that meant.

Another tear fell from her eyes, down the aged face and on the darkness below.

It was no tear of sadness, but of happiness.

For the first time since her betrayal, Akashiya Moka cried a tear of happiness, not for herself but for others.

For the others that had succeeded in their lives.

For the first time in her life, Akashiya Moka put aside her sadness and misery and let the joy of others suffuse her.

She turned to walk away, satisfied in having seen their happiness.

"Where are you going, Moka-san? A book usually has an epilogue you know..."

That voice!

She would know it anywhere, any time!

His voice!

Tsukune.

Her mate.

She turned to look at him, unable to contain at least that desire of herself.

His hand reached at her and his fingers touched not aged skin, but vibrant and young. Her hair no longer was grey and worn, but shined like newly polished silver.

His arms wrapped around her, both sides of her she realized when she felt her other self relax into the embrace, and she knew she had found what she had always looked for.

Akashiya Moka, in making her peace, had found her home. In accepting her actions and their concequences had gained her forgiveness. In truly becoming proud, she had become happy.

Another face joined the gathering in the light and none objected.

A/N: And this is it for the second chapter, the more in-depth look into the female protagonists' world.

I hope you liked this chapter and enjoyed reading it. I also hope you felt the ideals and emotions I tried to pass into it, but then again, such fics are up to the reader and you may come to a different conclusion than me.

Please, read and review, and let me know of your opinion, as always they are greatly appreciated.

Also, the introduction may be a bit much, but I rather liked it. What about you? Prefer it over my usual intros? Also, the poems are made to be separate, I just didn't know which one to choose. Fun, that part about writing; you can't control your inspiration, merely hope to gain the blessing. I hope I gained enough to be able to write something of worth.

Until my next work.

Today, on this 9/6/2012, I, Soulblazer87, do hereby leave this site, possibly forever.

I shall not update this, or any other story.

I shall leave them on, however. Should you desire to follow my stories, do so in my new site of residence: www dot yourfanfiction dot com.