Author's Note:
A sphygmomanometer is a blood pressure monitor. You know, those things with the Velcro that they wrap around your upper arm and then tighten? The ones in doctors' offices? Those things.
There were no classes for her on Sunday night, like there were for the rest of the night class students. As long as she had to attend the mysterious and elite Cross Academy anyway, Reina thought that she had managed to arrange her schedule quite well. Sunday night and Thursday night were her two main homework nights for her normal school- Sunday for finishing up the homework assigned over the weekend, and Thursday for putting together the homework that had built up over the week. She took those two nights off to make sure that she could stay on top of her studies. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday she would spend both days and nights in class- what she referred to internally as her mid-week hell period. Night class students did not have school on Friday nights, thank goodness. She flat-out refused to spend her Friday nights in that place. As it was, school was not the reason why she was walking the halls of the main building of the Academy at 11:30 on this late Sunday night. She was waiting for the midnight hour.
Sighing as ennui threatened to overtake her, Reina decided to go upstairs and wait in the Headmaster's guest sitting room. There were books up there. The respectable hallways were extremely silent as the brown-haired girl glided softly across them, humming in-key to herself. There were no classes held in this building, day or night; its purposes were primarily administrative. There should not be any vampires wandering hereabout. Yet even so….Reina turned suddenly toward the window as the flicker of a night-owl's wing drew in her senses. There was something vague in the air, something telling which would not tell her because she had not moved close enough to it. Something odd was dogging her senses as she moved up the stairs. Reina had known this uneasy feeling in the past, but it had always been in regards to herself. Now, it was something external….and nearby…. A vampire? Perhaps…. It wasn't as though the Academy had never had security breaches in the past. This was what the role of the Guardians had been designed to prevent.
Reina pushed open the door of the sitting room and immediately spotted one of those very same guardians, sitting at a table with his back turned to her. His gray hair spilled shaggily down the sides of his head, masking piercings on his ears and a very large, ornate tattoo on his neck. He was gripping a book in one hand, while the other was pressed tightly over his mouth, long fingers splaying out messily toward his eyes and across his cheeks. He turned instantly around when she opened the door, seeming about to blurt something out- but then he gauged her identity and fell abruptly back into stony silence, glaring. Reina decided to ignore this less than civil welcome as she coasted over to the bookshelves with her head held high, fingering the volumes along their spines in indecision. She wanted Zero to know that nothing he did was going to drive her out of a place in which she had every right to be. Her family was paying for this Academy, after all- half-price, yes, but still paying good money.
"What are you doing here?"
Reina was surprised at how hoarse his voice sounded. She contemplated this for a moment before replying with determined casualness, "Waiting for the Headmaster."
"So am I," the black-clad boy declared, eyeing her as if to say that whatever business she had with Kaien Cross could perfectly well wait.
"Are you? Well then, if you don't mind, I will wait for him here as well." The brown-haired girl dropped down into a swaybacked armchair and focused her eyes on her chosen book, pursing her lips together as Zero tensed. It was entirely obvious that he really did mind her presence in the room, but Reina ignored him with every ounce of diplomacy that she possessed. What was harder to ignore was the accumulating feeling of a sinister presence somewhere nearby, something wild and heaving and red…. Reina stared down at her book, and Zero at his, but the young girl could potently sense that neither of them was actually reading. As she thought about it more, she began to wonder increasingly about Zero's lack of response. Surely he could sense it too, being a member of the primary vampire-hunting clan of the world. Why was he not reacting? Why was he sitting inside, waiting to see the Headmaster, instead of hunting down the malicious presence like his duties required? Reina bit her lip and stole a glance over at the grey-haired boy every now and again, whose grip on both his book and the tableside was steadily tightening. What on earth was he doing?
Finally, able to stand the sensory pressure no longer, Reina stood up with a loud bang and swept over to the window as her book thudded across the coffee table's surface. She wrenched it open and craned her head out into the night, closing her eyes and trying to get a sense of the location of the presence. It gave her no directions, but it was close, she was certain….it was close.
"What?" Zero had jerked his body up in alarm, and was watching her with narrowed eyes as she scanned the treeline. She gave him an exasperated backward glance.
"Don't tell me you don't sense it too. I won't believe you. There's a malevolent presence out there," she declared, fanning her hand out toward the sky. "It's….hungr-"
All of a sudden, Zero's hand jolted out of thin air and slammed the window down. His angry eyes confronted her as if she had committed some sort of personal offense against him. He glared, and then turned his head to the side as she met his gaze with an unflappable, blank face. "Of course I can sense it; it's being taken care of." He told her harshly, standing his ground in between her and the window. "It's none of your concern. The security of the Academy is the job of the Guardians and the Headmaster. We don't need students getting themselves involved and complicating matters."
This surprised Reina- well, the information did. His attitude was the same as ever. Who exactly was taking care of it, she wondered, if Zero was here and the Headmaster was on his way? She could not imagine either of them sending little Yuki out alone to face some threat while they sat inside. It was on the tip of Reina's tongue to tell him That doesn't seem like you- not pursuing the intruder? She only stopped because she knew that in reality, she was barred from awareness of any of the actual inner workings of Zero's mind, and he from hers. They were enigmas to each other by choice. She brushed past the fabric of his coat and silently re-took her seat in the armchair, picking up her book again even as she heard the midnight bell begin to toll. She might as well let sleeping dogs lie, if he was going to make such a fuss about it. By the time the sun rose on Monday morning, she was going to have more than enough problems of her own.
Zero remained standing, staring silently out the window, very still. A ruckus in the hallway outside alerted them both that the Headmaster was on his way. Despite knowing what was coming, Reina was honestly relieved when he swung his way under the doorframe, breaking the tense atmosphere apart like a child popping a balloon. "Reina! Zero!" he exclaimed affably, giving them both an energetic wave. "Nice to see you two! How was the weeke-"
"I need to speak with you." Zero declared, standing up before she could say anything and practically dragging his adopted guardian out of the room by his arm. Kaien Cross signaled to Reina that he would return shortly. Before they disappeared behind the soundproof oaken doors of the Headmaster's office, she clearly heard Zero snap "Why is that night class student always coming to see you?"
"Now, now, Zero…." The Headmaster returned placatingly. Then there was silence.
The moment the doors closed, Reina rose up and glided back over to the window, throwing the pane up and leaning out into the night once more. Zero Kiryu sure had looked anxious, she thought as she tried once again to pinpoint the source of the malevolent aura. Was the reason that he needed to speak to the Headmaster something to do with it? She knew that it wasn't any of her business, really, but what was it?
Perhaps twenty minutes later, Kaien Cross leaned his blonde head into the sitting room, and Reina abandoned her book and followed him down the hall. "Kiryu is gone. We can proceed." He informed her, glancing around as they began to descend the steps.
The brown-haired girl nodded, fanning her senses out through the building just to make sure. Something was still very wrong. "There's something here. I can sense a malignant presence, and it's very close."
The long-haired man closed his eyes for a fraction of a second. "I know all about it; so please don't worry. Kiryu and I are taking care of it." He said in a slightly more serious voice. Reina felt a bit surprised at this as well. There wasn't a lot that Kaien Cross didn't tell her about the goings-on at the Academy, but he obviously did not want to talk about this. She did not press him because she felt that doing such a thing would be a bit hypocritical- she herself was a naturally reticent person, after all. Still, to be taking care of something like this in such a mysterious manner….
"Don't worry, it won't interfere with our task tonight." The Headmaster told her brightly, offering the startled girl a muffin out of seemingly nowhere. "Have you eaten enough food this evening?"
"I have- yes." She assured him, eyeing the muffin dubiously. The pair of them had reached the lowest public level of the main building. The Headmaster left his muffin sitting on the bottom stairway railing, and unlocked the last door in the hallway. Reina stepped through into a familiar storage closet, large enough to hold all of the odds and ends, knicks and knacks which the Headmaster firmly believed the Academy would one day have a use for. There was a puppet stage, a flock of green plastic exercise balls, a dark red motorcycle, tennis rackets, unused filing cabinets, a giant stuffed carrot which definitely had not been in here last time….
Reina blinked at the carrot while Kaien Cross peered around the hallway outside, then softly closed and locked the door. Deciding that she did not want to ask, the young girl rolled her eyes and followed him to far back whitewashed wall of the closet. He took a thin pass card out of his wide coat pocket, and murmured down to Reina, "Are we alone?"
The half-vampire obligingly spread her senses out through the building once again, searching for the tint of sentient life….that presence was still there, but it seemed further away somehow. Not close enough to have seen them go in here, at any rate. She nodded and stepped to the side of the wall.
"We are." Kaien Cross smiled and slipped the card into an unobtrusive-looking crack in the wall, and the room's glaring lights immediately went out. In another moment, a tiny sliver of light appeared on the wall, which lengthened into a line, then became two, then three…. The yellow lines came together to form a rectangle, which was promptly filled in with light as the doorway, hidden in the wall, slid soundlessly away to reveal a stone passage which descended downwards in a slant. Kaien Cross placed his hand against the entrance.
"It's time," he said in a voice which was neither excited nor afraid. Trying to mimic his placid attitude, Reina followed him down the dimly-lit stairway, taking one last dubious look at the carrot as the door behind them slid closed again.
"Do anything exciting this weekend, Reina?"
"We're preparing for the art show at my school. It's going to be in the middle of this coming week. I'm exhibiting some of my nature paintings." Reina answered, unable to completely keep the manic glint out of her eyes when talking about her paintings. The Headmaster smiled.
"You're a very skilled painter. I really enjoy that painting of the waterfall that you gave me to hang in my office. I show it off every time someone cultured sets foot in there!"
The young girl blushed, hidden by the dimness all around her. "Thank you, sir."
"No need for that, no need for that!" Kaien Cross protested, flailing his hands about in what Reina supposed was meant to be a gesture of denial. "Haven't we known each other as allies for four years now? Even though you're younger than me….but you know," he continued in an entirely different voice, "we have a painting club here at Cross Academy too. One for the day class and one for the night class, actually. Although we've never had an art show…."
"One painting club is more than enough for me." Reina declared, trying to keep her voice as neutral as possible.
"But you could show them your skills!"
"I don't think so."
"But they don't know what they're missing!"
"Then they will never miss what they don't know they're missing," she stated firmly. The Headmaster sighed.
"Tonight being what it is, I won't press you," he declared with a conciliatory smile. Reina nodded, quietly grateful, as the pair of them drew up on a set of double doors at the bottom of the staircase. The doors were thick and pitch-pine black, and Reina could sense that they were inlaid with multiple types of vampire repellants. Beyond these doors, she would be beyond their reach. This thought filled her with comfort and the Headmaster unlocked the right door and held it open for Reina to walk inside.
The lights clicked on as they sensed her movement, and she found herself inside the familiar absolute bottom chamber of the main academy building. The walls were a pale mix of colors- gray, white, and earthy brown- and the floor was drab concrete. As far as she knew, no one but herself and Headmaster Cross had ever been inside this room. From the far side of the chamber came the gurgling sound of a circular fountain, sunken into the stone floor. It was not an ornate fountain. It bore no decoration. Water bubbled up from a stone slab in the center and spilled over into the circular basin which surrounded the headpiece. The glassy-green water had no beautiful light to reflect, only cheap fluorescents. It was really a shame. Reina's mind began to slip into mission mode as she walked further into the room, toward a plastic-padded cot with two moveable armrests attached to either side. She knew the drill. She lifted a short, white gown from the cot and ducked out of sight behind a foldable changing screen. While Headmaster Cross wiped down the cot and prepared the instruments, Reina tugged off her jeans and top and replaced them with the thin gown, which came down to her knees. At least it did not open at the back, like a hospital gown. Folding her clothes up, Reina walked back over to the Headmaster and laid them down upon a nearby table. Kaien Cross was in mission mode as well. The man efficiently helped her onto the cot and propped up the part which supported her back, so that she was in a sitting position. "All right, then," he murmured.
Reina relaxed upon the cot while the Headmaster puttered around with his instruments, making sure that everything was in working order. "Right arm?" he asked her, and Reina nodded. She laid her right arm upon the armrest and he adjusted it so that it was parallel to the rest of her body. Holding a tiny marker, Kaien Cross placed a blue stress ball into her palm and sat down in his chair, staring hard at her arm. "Squeeze," he ordered, and Reina did so. A pale blue vein surfaced under her skin in the soft place where her upper and lower arm was connected, and he quickly drew two lines on either side of it. Ripping open a packet, he swabbed this space with cold iodine and then wheeled down to her legs. This was slightly more difficult due to the fact that the spot which he needed to reach was on the underside of her legs, opposite her kneecaps. Reina lifted one leg up at a time, letting him mark the vein and swab the area. Then he wheeled back up to her arm. "Ready?" he asked, and Reina nodded, feeling that fearful-patient mentality creep into her mind, even though she had done this a million times before. It always made her feel meeker than she really was. Kaien Cross knew that she preferred not to talk during this time. He removed an empty, clear bag from his case, which was connected to a long tube. He hung the bag on a hook connected to the cot's edge, and placed the tube safely beside her body. A chart which hung next to her head was removed, and two fingers were placed on her wrist. For several moments, the room was silent as he felt the tap of her pulse against her skin. Then he took out his sphygmomanometer and attached the Velcro cuff around her upper arm. Watching the dial face, he squeezed the valve and inflated the cuff around her arm, placing the head of his stethoscope over the black markings on the crook of her arm. He gradually decreased the pressure, and scribbled on his chart. Hanging it back up, he taped the end portion of the tube to her wrist with clear medical tape, and pulled the plastic covering off the needle. Reina watched him work with languid eyes. Before he poked the needle in between the markings, the man looked at her for a moment, and Reina couldn't gauge what was behind his own eyes….sorrow, or apology, or hope. Maybe all three.
She felt a brief pain which dimmed after a moment, and the tube filled up with red. The Headmaster tore off a piece of gauze and draped it over the place where the needle entered her vein- he always followed professional procedure, even though it did not bother Reina to see the needle stuck in her skin. She had lifted off the gauze and taken a peek one time, and it was nothing to go into convulsions over. The Headmaster attached a little device which looked like a step-counter onto the slowly filling bag, which would tell him how fast her blood was flowing. He then proceeded to remove the prop and lay her down flat, adjusting the armrest accordingly, before circling her body and repeating the procedure on her left leg, sans stethoscope and blood pressure monitor. Reina laid her head back down as she felt the second sting. She was on her way to losing approximately half of the eight or nine pints of blood in her body, as she did every month. For a human, losing this much blood at once would kill them. For Reina, it would make her woozy and tired for a few days, nothing serious enough to stop her from going to school. Her body could replenish itself almost automatically. The only time when she felt real shock was when the blood was actually being drained out of her. She was getting to that point now. It was safest for her to be unconscious during most of this procedure, as she tended to hallucinate severely while the blood loss intensified, but they had to wait until the last minute to anesthetize her so that the chemicals in the anesthesia would not have time to absorb into her bloodstream and mix with the de-coagulant in the bags which collected her blood. If that happened, it would corrupt the whole batch and this all would have been worthless. It was a fine, carefully timed dance of biology which she and the Headmaster were engaging in. He was back now, peering into her face, and Reina gave him a weak smile as the ceiling burst into rainbow colors. At least it was less dreary this way, she thought vaguely. Soon….
Reina lifted her head to peer down at her legs. After he had drained the required blood from her left leg and right arm, he would move on to her right leg. Reina would be unconscious at this point. She heard the gurgling of the fountain, which was filled with a special chemical that would speed up the healing of her vampire body. Kaien Cross would carry her over to the water once she was detached from all this equipment. He would let her sink down to the bottom while he kept vigil over her. One of the things about this body which always frightened her was the fact that she did not need air to live. She turned her head toward the fountain and saw that it was filled with blood.
"Headmaster, now," she spoke into the cavernous room, and Kaien Cross nodded. He vanished from her view and returned a moment later with a partial mask in his hand. The purple mask was also attached to a tube. His face was stretching, his features were spreading out like a smudged painting that had not yet dried. He carefully adjusted some dials on the machine to which the tube was connected, and Reina drew one last breath of real air before he laid the mask carefully against her face. As a vampire, Reina was naturally immune to most chemicals designed to affect humans, but as a human, she could lower this resistance if she needed to. It was some damn psychotropic ability which she did not fully understand.
"Wait," the Headmaster instructed gently, and pressed a button that kept changing colors to Reina's eyes. "Now." She breathed in, breathed again, breathed in again, and the room melted in colors. Before she floated away on the taffy-tasting, cloud-like colors, Reina took one last look at her arm where the needle was. It lay still, spattered in rosy blood.
Well! Hopefully that didn't freak anyone out.
My rendering of this scene is loosely based off of the many times I've donated blood to the Red Cross. Experience-wise, it's pretty accurate, even though I know it isn't medically accurate because Reina is a half-vampire. And no, the Red Cross doesn't knock you out when you donate blood. XD
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