Disclaimer: I do not own Vampire Hunter D or the Frontier or any items therein; he's the sole creation of two people, Hideyuki Kikuchi and that Amano guy, really cool guys who I'd like to meet.. someday. And I don't own any of the lyrics or lines I happen to randomly post, but I will post the band and song name, book and author...

Read. Be brutal, be kind, be whatever you wish.

The beautiful youth walked into the grassy landscape leading his impressive machine stallion by the reins. The thick, black soil of the farmland stretched out and on in every direction toward the mountains on one side, acres of protein growing in fields. The farmlands curved across the hazy hills back to town on the other like the curving back of a lounging feline. The maize grew tall in the distance, leaving a green after-image behind his eyes when he blinked.

The dhampir was not alone. Miranda, hooded and cloaked, walked alongside him. They followed footprints, ordering the deputies and the sheriff to remain behind with their guns. Miranda had firmly articulated her orders to start setting up a more stringent guard. People must not sleep alone, and those who lived to guard their farms need only post look-outs to ensure that no one was caught off guard. Whether or not the people took her warnings for granted was none of her business - she didn't really care about them, and if she were to be honest, it was because of what had happened to her. In her mind, everything that touched and effected her deserved every ounce of her indifference.

"How long have you been doing this?" she asked suddenly, blinking away the dampness the sunlight was making in her eyes. Her nose was burning now, and she'd been sniffling lightly for the past several hours. She spoke gently but not too kindly.

"Many, many years," was his answer. "Countless years. I don't even remember, really. If I thought about it, maybe I could try to recall." He didn't seem at all bothered by her tone of voice. But then, he continued in a lighter tone, "And you?"

Miranda was even more surprised when she answered him. "Couldn't really start hunting till I got good enough to step outside of town. I paid a man to train me how to fight. I spent a year or two alone on the Frontier... and I learned things most women couldn't learn in a lifetime by staying home, waving sticks at shadows like the rest of those fools. In a way, it was like a dream come true."

D thought about the picture of her, so many years ago, wearing black rather than the virgin white of most pretty, picture-perfect Frontier women. She had a spirit in her that seemed none too bothered by his presence.

She continued in a darker voice. "So I'd say, I've been hunting long enough. I've killed werewolves, pixies, serpent women, Lesser Dragons, and a few bigger ones. See, I had to do all that before going after my true prize, dhampir, because of my legs and my arm."

"I see."

"Is that all you can say?" she snapped angrily, casting him a dark look. "And on top of all that, I've got to keep hunting other things to stay rich enough to buy my medication. As long as I'm still alive, my destiny is to kill that fucker that took my life away!"

The woman looked straight ahead again, her hands tightening slowly into fists. Even the custom, silent semi-hydraulic workings of her cybernetic arm squealed slightly in response to the pressure she was applying. Other than that, her eyes were clear, large, dark circles of hatred and determination that few Hunters could boast about themselves. Her obsidian tresses drifted back from her pale face, and for a moment D saw the dark, tired circles under her eyes and the weariness deep down in the firm set of her mouth.

The young gentleman said nothing. His eyes were full of something that would surprise even Miranda, something called sorrow. It warmed her somehow in a way she just didn't understand. His long strides, graceful as a dancer, stopped slowly; the wind picked up gently, pulling his cloak to the left, tickling the belly of his horse. Then D mounted the horse gracefully, sliding one leg neatly across the saddle and then settling down as if he were born in the saddle of a horse.

Miranda glanced over her shoulder, eyes widening. "What are--"

"We'll never catch him walking. I lost his scent just a moment ago."

"Do you know what it is?"

His mouth tightened slightly. "No." He offered his hand in silent entreaty.

She refused it, of course.

"You should have waited until my horse was repaired, then, but by this time it wouldn't have mattered. So how do you know my monster is with your monster?" And slowly, with tangible reluctance, she slid her foot into the stirrup, hands gripping the saddle horn and butt sliding into place, strangely nervous when the unearthly youth slid back to make room.

"You told me that you saw them both, while one was attacking the child. If they are together, it would make sense - if that man was a true Noble."

They were in motion, but the euphoria didn't stop. They were going as fast as D dared to, even though the horse could have borne five people if it had the room. To D, it just seemed more polite to keep a slower speed.

"Is this as fast as this thing can go? No wonder I was doomed," Miranda snipped, sneering.

Much to her chagrin, D wordlessly kicked the horse into a sudden burst of speed that sent her pressing against his chest in an embarrassing second of surprise. Before she could tell him just how much of an asshole he was, she caught sight of something black among the green of the trees and farmland.

D spied it too, and without adieu Miranda leaned forward, her hands clinging at the cold mane in front of her. She pressed her body as tight as she could without allowing the saddle horn to jam her in the stomach. Her heart raced as they drew near, and slowly she sensed movement in the saddle behind her. One lean, muscular leg slowly drew itself up, boot on the saddle, and then D was gone, as if he just disappeared into nothing.

Just then, he reappeared. The shadow-cloaked monstrosity gave a howl of challenge as D reappeared in mid-air, cloak open like wings, and the sword seemed to become a thing of light as his strength powered the sword to fulfill its destruction.

"Leave him, he's mine!" she shouted as D reappeared, and three strikes later, the black demon appeared to miraculously avoided each and every one, writhing in mid-leap and landing in a roll, shadowy limbs reaching for the tall stalks of corn as if to embrace them. Regardless, she leapt from the now furiously bucking stallion, crying, "He's mine, dammit!"

D turned half-way to acknowledge her. She charged into the green blindly, which was, admittedly, a foolish thing to do. But the monster was justly terrified of the both of them, and the advantage was hers.

It darted like a cat out of her grasp, and she could have sworn to hear it laughing, could swear the smell of its rank breath was breathed right in her direction for its own sadistic enjoyment. She tried so hard not to imagine how the parts of that girl looked inside of its belly, the stomach which was sheathed in a coarse layer of armor-like muscle. As she straightened into fighting stance, she saw it for the first time in the full light of day. It was taller than she was, and its eyes were completely unaccounted for, and it was featureless save for the large mouth with rows of dark, blood-stained teeth like those of a shark's extended into a demonic clown-like grin.

And then, surprisingly, it spoke. "My Master said you would come. And now you've fallen right where he wants you."

"What?" Miranda's eyes widened, and for a moment she couldn't feel the ground beneath her until she started to fall - directly into a large hole that had appeared in the soil under her boots. Before she could register much else, she was horrified as the name that fell from her lips was none other than D's. Before she fell, she barely had time to reach out, snatching fistful of corn leaves and disappearing into the darkness below.

Her cry brought him running. An entire section of maize fell to his sword to clear the path, and he lunged toward the black demon to take its heart out with one, swift stroke before it too plunged into the newly formed, perfectly circular hole in the earth.

"That's interesting," he murmured.

"You wanna go down the spooky dark hole?" said a voice coming from the vicinity of his left hand. "Go after the cranky old broad?"

D didn't believe that was particularly funny. "It's quite a hiding place, out in the middle of a corn field."

With that, after hitching his horse somewhere nearby to an apple tree, he stepped quietly and fell into the hole.

Forever, darkness. Forever, silence, except her own cloak fluttering in the blackness. She stuffed the leaves into her belt, and suddenly, due to her own inertia changing, she realized she was slowing down. Somehow she wasn't afraid she was going to die, because if the "Master" wanted her, it had better be alive because the Nobility was like that.

And yet, even as she slowed down to a snail's pace and turned herself to stand on solid ground, she felt a fear more potent than anything she'd felt before. In her travels, she had taken great pains to avoid the Nobility whenever she could. As the huntress told the dhampir, they were not her realm of expertise. The fear tugged away a layer of her courage, but she steeled herself and opened her eyes to the light that was slowly filling this deep chamber.

She didn't know how deep she was, but on looking up, she could see that the hole above had vanished. So, she continued forward, because that was the only way she could go.

Her sword never left her hand. She walked in the dim light, and the cavern seemed about nine feet high and ten feet wide. It was full of foul-smelling moisture, and there was a breeze caressing her face that seemed to take the edge off the foulness.

The corridor opened and sloped upward. Coughing softly, she emerged into a large, brightly lit chamber full of candles and torches and devices, she surmised, primarily for music; instruments laying open in their cases on chairs, music sheets piled on a table against the wall, and a few ornaments and brass covered in layers of grime and dust; abandoned, like metal soldiers strewn across war-torn battlefields, bodies wrecked in a tragic sacrifice no scribe had recorded. Ordinarily this sort of place would have been a wonderland for her musician's spirit, but that part of her had been buried beneath the coarse stone of a hunter. She merely sneered at the set-up and turned to face the wall with a painting on it.

It was a young man with beautiful, waxen-blonde hair that seemed spun from gold. He was dressed in a Noble's finery, but he looked mostly unhappy judging from the firm set of his jaw and his slightly rouged lips set in a coarse line. His eyes were a brilliant violet, as if blue was too good for him.

When Miranda turned again, she was somehow unsurprised to see a figure standing in another doorway she hadn't noticed yet. The aura of the Nobility hung around him thickly, and it made her skin crawl.

The man with black hair said, "So I see Argent has brought you." He motioned vaguely to the repulsive demon beside him.

Miranda's head began to ache as she laid eyes on the pair that stood before her. Her throat burned, feeling as though someone had lodged a thorn in it. Panting softly, she raised her sword at eye level and said, "I got no quarrel with you, Nobility scum. I just want that little cockbite - you understand the concept of vengeance, don't you?"

"Vengeance is not a creed to live by, certainly not for a woman such as yourself." The dark-haired man smiled sorrowfully. Then his mouth turned cruel, his prominent fangs as sharp as daggers. "Did you enjoy my gift...?"

Miranda's free hand went to her belt. The pacifier, that weird, extremely odd gift, was still there, and even though she didn't take it out she could see it in her mind... and suddenly she was holding it in her human hands, both human hands, in the dimly lit nursery of her husband's home. Her cheek tingled with the alien memory of soft baby skin against hers and the soft noise of a baby talking to himself.

"What?" Her eyes flickered back and forth between the monster, the vampire, the ceiling and then to her black leather-clad, cybernetic fingers, staring at the pacifier in it. The familiarity horrified her. "What did you do..." Lips barely formed the words. "...with my son?"

The vampire's lips maintained that infuriating cruelness that filled Miranda with her own bloodlust - to see his head roll on the floor, to see the blood of the damned paint the walls a pristine red. He said nothing else, his face suddenly contorting with pain before backing away, holding a hand up to his throat toward a collar wound around his neck.

Miranda didn't notice this. She merely snarled, pupils enlarging and turning a faint red - evidence that her eyes, too, had received the same sort of enhancement treatment as the rest of her body. "You... you bastard, what did you do with Chase?"

She lunged forward, faster than an a lightning strike, but not even half as fast as the speed of a Noble. She was faster than an average human for sure, but most monsters made by Noble hands were capable of speeds unheard of to those unfamiliar with them.

However, it was not the metal claw of the vampire that met the steel of her sword. The black demon that the Noble had called Argent intercepted her half-way, and with ungodly strength, cast her aside into a stand of stacked chairs, knocking them and whatever else nearby into a chaotic pile of bent plastic and metal.

"You'll have to excuse me. I am afraid I must leave you with Argent, who I am sure will show you a good time. He missed you so much, he said he couldn't stand another moment without you," the voice floated from nearby, growing fainter. "One thing you never knew about Argent - he is one of the rare True Demons of this world... a challenge even for your dhampir friend."

Pain burrowed into her nerves, but it was a very distant thing like the voice of the strange Noble who was fleeing from her. She rose to her feet, leaving only a split-second before a blazing white line flashed between herself and Argent, the fiery object burying itself in the demon's forehead.

"What?" the demon murmured, and something like blood but not quite dripped from the wound. "Interesting technique. Using simple plants as weapons..."

The dagger made of now wood slid from the wound, falling to the floor as a blood-stained leaf. Miranda clenched her teeth. She hadn't expected the move to work to begin with, but it was still a scathing disappointment. But the skill had been a good one for those rare, terrible occasions when she had lost all of her weapons. But such a tactic would do no good underground if she used all the corn leaves in one battle.

"You little shit," she hissed, coughing again so suddenly that she bent double.

This was when the demon lunged for her again, laughing and apparently heedless of her plight. Miranda's vision blurred as she tasted something like bile and blood just before she straightened in time; a black mass collided with her head on, knocking her through a pair of doors into another room. They tumbled, grappling with each other, until the thing captured her arm between its teeth. She closed her fist around another leaf, eyes widening as the teeth scraped away leather, fake skin, revealing the hard, impenetrable alloy that made up her cybernetic exterior. That, too, had cost a few hundred thousand dollars. She fought against the creature's weight, feeling its hot breath panting through those teeth as it struggled to swallow her entire arm up to the elbow. Miranda, snarling and screaming angrily with every curse word she knew, finally kicked it away - and a horrible tearing sound filled this empty room, echoing into the next few seconds.

Bleeding blood and who-knew-what-else, she rose. She looked strangely unappealing with her arm expelling an ungodly gush of fluids that once pumped through her system unhindered. But Miranda merely smiled. Sheathing her sword as if nothing in the world could bother her. With her remaining, right hand, she pulled something else from her belt - a small, cylindrical object.

She pressed its button, backing away through the door before turning away. Argent the Demon screamed once before an earsplitting explosion swallowed the rest; meaty wet splats punctuated as the rumbling drifted off into silence again.

"I put a tiny, effective bomb in case that sort of thing happened," she said to the demon whose ears were scattered now across the room through the wall behind her back. "And unfortunately for you, it detonated."

She slowly sat down on the dusty floor, clutching at her bleeding arm. The huntress laughed softly, wheezing somewhere inside of her chest. Full, dark lips curled upwards, and for the first time in awhile she truly smiled. "I win."

"I think we're too late," said D's left hand. "This doesn't look healthy."

The music room had been smashed to pieces on one side. Some of the instruments had taken damage, and the scent of blood, thick and hot, burned its way into his senses, driving his eyes into a faint red frenzy.

Miranda was sitting on the floor beside a doorway, beyond which the remains of an exploded demon were scattered wall to wall. Somewhere in the mess, he saw the glint of metal... and he walked past her in silence, bending to scoop up the object. Her arm - which was in pretty good shape, considering it had a bomb attached and it had detonated - hung limply from the hunter's fingers.

Then he turned and walked back out into the darkened music room, kneeling in front of Miranda and taking her into his arms. She seemed weightless to him, as if she were a pillow rather than a human partially made of metal. D could not sense the Noble; additionally, for some reason, it had taken him twice as long to get down through that corn-field hole.

He walked on in silence. Somewhere along the way, something stopped the blood flow from her arm as though shutting off a valve. Miranda was still breathing, but the most unsettling fact was the wheezing she emitted with every breath.

"There's a way out just across the way here, D," said a voice, slightly muffled. "I don't know how you're going to attach her arm back to the rest of her, but hey, whatever floats your boat."

After climbing a large stairway, passing through several doors, the hunter finally stopped as he came to a series of bedrooms in a corridor. They had reached ground level once again, and the windows showed that it was well into the night. He selected the best, most defensible room with one window and a sturdy door that could keep out a werewolf.

In the darkness, he sat her down on a chair, brought a table to her left side, and measured his options... and hers, as well. "This could take some real work," he mumbled, pressing his left hand against her chest.

"She's got some kind of respiratory infection, too," the parasite replied. "I wouldn't dally if I were you."