DISCLAIMER: I do not own nor am I in any way, shape, or form affiliated with Vampire Knight.
Classes had ended early the day after St. Xocolatl's Day so the guardians could perform the monthly dorm inspections. Each student knew that a dorm inspection was a more polite way of saying routine confiscation of drugs, cigarettes, alcohol, photos of the Night Class, belongings of the Night Class, et cetera. None of the students were exactly pleased with these dorm inspections since the guardians had to go through their belongings and search for any sort of secret compartment to find what they were told to confiscate. The students who had nothing to hide complied with the inspections and allowed the guardians to search their room without a fuss, but the ones who had something to hide were less than cooperative. Students who had things to hide always tried to get the disciplinary committee out of their room as quickly as possible.
Rie, Kozakura, and Yuki had been assigned with the task of confiscating things from the girl's dormitory while Zero had to deal with the boy's dormitory. The girls were far more uncooperative than the boy's during these inspections and made their task a lot more difficult than it needed to be. The dorm president did her best to get the residents to cooperate, but only a few listened to her.
The disciplinary committee used laundry carts to collect the items they confiscated and they often had to deal with students digging through them to get whatever was taken from them back. Each student who went through the carts was reported to the headmaster so he could give them either a punishment or lecture at a later date. First offenders generally received a warning while those who had dug through the carts three or more times were given a proper punishment.
It took the prefects over four hours to confiscate everything they could find from the Sun Dormitories. The four congregated to a classroom on the first floor of the school building when they had filled their carts. Zero simply dropped his off than left before anyone could say anything. His cart only carried a few boxes of cigarettes while the carts the girls had held albums upon albums of photos of the Night Class. All that was left for them to do with the items on hand was to compile them into a bag or two and take them to the incinerator to be burned.
"We have to do this quickly," Yuki spoke as they started to put the items into a laundry bag. "We still have to inspect the Moon Dorm before nightfall."
Kozakura noticed that it was already dusk so there was only an hour or two before night fell. If Zero had stayed, they probably would have been able to finish the task with enough time left to inspect the Moon Dormitory, but, as it was, there was no telling how long it would take them to complete their job.
"Why don't you and Kiryu-kun go inspect the Moon Dorm," Kozakura suggested after careful consideration.
"Are you sure," Yuki inquired.
"Yes," the redhead replied. "Rie and I can handle things here."
"Okay," she agreed. "The incinerator is in the basement, just ask the headmaster for the key."
Yuki left once she had finished her sentence, leaving the two friends alone. Kozakura had every intention of asking Rie about who she had given the chocolate to and why she hated vampires, even if she didn't want to answer. There was no way for her to avoid either of the questions since she wouldn't just walk away from the task that had been entrusted to them. The redhead knew that her friend could simply choose not to answer, but she hoped that Rie would tell her.
"So who'd you give the chocolate to," Kozakura asked when she was sure Yuki was out of hearing range.
"Aidou-senpai," Rie replied. "He is the one you like, correct?"
"Oh, uh, yes." The redhead wasn't about to tell her friend that she had guessed incorrectly. She knew that Rie probably had a pretty hard time figuring out who to give the chocolate to. Besides there was always next year for her to either give chocolate to the person she liked herself or for the brunette to get it right.
"Good," the brunette relaxed at the affirmation, no matter how uncertain it sounded.
The two worked in silence for a few minutes as Kozakura wondered how to phrase her next question. She knew that there was no way to avoid being blunt about it, but she felt like it'd be far too much like digging for information on Rie's past. The two had agreed not to ask about each other's pasts since Kozakura had been at the orphanage for as long as she could remember and Rie had no intention of ever revealing hers. Kozakura knew that she still had to try in order to better understand vampires and why her friend had no warm feelings for her own kind.
"Hey, Rie, mind if I ask you something," she spoke up once the brunette had dropped the album into the bag.
"What is it," she inquired as she grabbed another album.
"Why do you hate vampires?"
Rie didn't falter in her actions as the question registered in her mind. "It's not important."
"But there's no reason to," Kozakura told her. "They have those tablets to control their hunger and they don't cause problems for humans."
"Your knowledge of vampires is limited," Rie reminded her. "You don't know how the rest are."
"But I-!"
"Drop it," the brunette interrupted. Her tone clearly said that there was no room for discussion and it would be wise to never bring it up again. Kozakura could do nothing but comply to her friend's wish on the matter.
The minutes ticked away in silence as they put each confiscated item in the two bags. Rie left to get the key from the headmaster when there were only a few more albums left. The brunette sensed a presence inside of the headmaster's office when she arrived and she recognized it as Kaname's. She couldn't allow her fear to stop her from completing her responsibility as a guardian so she raised her hand and tapped the door twice with her knuckles. Rie entered the office when she heard Kaien call her in.
"I need the key to the incinerator," she said as she walked in.
"Ah, yes," the headmaster opened one of his desk's drawers. "Yuki told me you'd be coming."
Kaname observed Rie out of the corner of his eye as the headmaster dug for the key. He could tell from her posture that she was uncomfortable being in the same room as him. The brunet wondered if her fear stemmed from her presence that no one in the Night Class could identify since she didn't feel or smell like either a vampire or a human. He had not allowed her peculiarities to go unchecked and had asked his right-hand men, Aidou and Kain, to keep an eye on her. They had, of course, been told to keep their distance since she'd be able to sense them if they got too close to her if she were a vampire. What they had reported back with the other night had further confirmed his suspicions. Not to mention there had been the smell of an aristocrat's blood in the air the night one of the human students had gotten injured and Yuki had scraped the palm of her hand.
Kaname had enough evidence, albeit some was circumstantial, to transfer the girl into the Night Class. The brunet knew that he could use his position as a pureblood to give her an order and she'd be unable to disobey if she really were a beast in human form, thus giving him something concrete, but he had no intention of doing that. His only reasons for not acting until there was more concrete evidence he had no hand in were she hadn't bitten anyone and, most importantly, she was capable of helping Zero protect the one important to him. If there came a time when she was a danger to humans or she grew unfit to help protect his treasure, he'd take action. Until then, he was content to see how her involvement played out.
"Here it is," Kaien spoke when he found the key among the drawer's clutter.
"Thank you." The blonde held it out for her to take and she approached the desk then grabbed it from his hand. "I'll return it as soon as we're done."
Rie left the room without another word and closed the door behind her. She headed towards the classroom and the tension left her body with each step she took away from the pureblood. The brunette had not liked how Kaname had been studying her, no matter how discreetly he did so she had felt his eyes on her. If Aidou's words the other day had been a hint, she knew that the pureblood had been keeping tabs on her. The only other explanation for the blonde's warning was that he had figured it out and wasn't going to tell Kaname just yet. If that were the case, the brunet wouldn't have studied her so intently during her short time in the headmaster's office. It was more likely that he had only needed evidence to support his hypothesis.
What put Rie on edge more than anything was that Kaname hadn't acted on his suspicions. She remembered learning in her childhood that purebloods left nothing up to chance, especially if they had a goal to accomplish. She was an unexpected piece in his game and there was the possibility she'd ruin his plans, whatever they may be, if left unchecked. If anything, she was like a pawn that needed to be knocked off the chessboard as quickly as possible.
Rie decided that she'd do her best to stay under the radar as she entered the classroom where Kozakura was waiting. The brunette showed her friend the key and they each grabbed a bag then headed to the basement. She unlocked the door that led to the bottom floor of the school and they carefully descended the staircase. Since the school building had been built quite some time ago, there weren't any lights for them to turn on, there were small windows at the top of the walls to let in light instead.
The incinerator was hardly ever used to the girl's knowledge and was only turned on to burn the items the disciplinary committee confiscated from the students. It laid against the back wall of the basement and the two had resorted to dragging the heavy bags across the cement floor. The contraption actually looked far more like a wood stove than an incinerator. There was a box of matches set on a corner table a few feet to the right of the stove.
Rie opened the stove's small metal door and peeked inside. She didn't see any ashes, so that probably meant they were expected to clean it out once the fire died.
"Go and patrol," she told Kozakura. "I can handle this."
"Are you sure," the redhead inquired. "Because I can..."
"I'm sure," Rie cut her friend off. "Besides you need the experience."
Kozakura could see the brunette's point, she did need to get used to patrolling since her training with the headmaster wouldn't last forever. The two also didn't know if Zero and Yuki were patrolling so it was a necessity for one of them to walk the grounds. Burning all the banned items seemed more like a one person job since the stove wasn't all that big and it'd probably be difficult for two people to shove the objects into it simultaneously.
"Okay," Kozakura agreed. "Just be careful."
"Don't worry about me," Rie said. "Remember to be on your guard. There's no telling what will happen tonight, or any night for that matter."
"Right," the redhead replied. "I'll see you in the morning?"
"Of course," the brunette offered her friend a small smile.
Kozakura gave her own smile in return before she walked up the stairs and left the basement. Rie knew it had been for the best to send the redhead out to patrol since she'd most likely be hesitant about destroying the albums. Most of the pictures they had seen were actually quite good, but it was still against the rules to take them, much less have one in your possession. There was also the possibility that, if the pictures weren't destroyed, the students would just search for them until they were back in their ownership so procrastination wasn't something they could afford to do when it came to the photos.
It had been a few hours since Rie had started throwing all of the banned items they had collected into the fire that burned inside the stove. It was during that time she came to wish she had the ability to control fire since it would mean the burning would most likely be finished by now. If she had been born with that power, this particular task probably would have been completed within a few minutes, but, instead, she had been born with telekinesis, a fairly useful ability for battle or running away from an attacker but hardly handy for anything else.
Rie was drawn out of her thoughts when the fire began to dwindle. She focused her power on the small metal door and it creaked open. The brunette realized telekinesis was more helpful with mundane tasks than she originally thought as she threw a few more albums into the flames. She used her ability to close the door once again then watched the blaze slowly consume the scrapbooks, leaving nothing but ash in their wake.
As she watched the flames, she couldn't help but theorize why she had not been granted the ability to manipulate fire. Even if used with good intentions, fire was dangerous and unpredictable. An uncontrolled fire could turn into an inferno and burn everything in its path, it wouldn't stop until everything in its way was in ruins. On the other hand, fire could provide warmth and a source of light. It had also been used by humans to cook food before electricity came into existence. Fire had been an essential element for life for quite some time. Rie supposed that only those who were calm and controlled like the flames that helped with life in the old days, but could also be as alive as an unforgiving inferno would be gifted with that ability.
The more she thought, the more she realized why she had been born with telekinesis. Since telekinesis was the psychic ability to move objects at will, it made sense to her that one had to be unyielding, never conforming to what someone else wanted for them. They had to stand firm in their opinions and do what they thought was best for themself. A person who had been granted that gift would have to have the will to move every opposing force in their path to reach their goal. After thinking it over, Rie came to the conclusion that telekinesis suited her just fine.
The brunette was forced out of her thoughts when the scent of blood wafted into her nostrils. Almost as if by second nature, she used her ability to close the basement door and moved the key to lock it. Rie didn't see anything that she could move to form a blockade to help ensure she wouldn't be able to leave and she could hardly concentrate on finding anything since it felt like she was choking with each breath she took. She knew that she'd have to wait there until her blood lust passed, but she had no idea how long that would be since the amount of blood that was carried by the air was rather large in comparison to anything she'd encountered in the past. Rie could only hope that no one would have to visit the basement since she had a feeling she'd have to stay there until she was sure she'd be able to control herself.
Author's Note: Rie had waited all this time for Senpai to notice her existence and, when he finally did, she was not pleased at all. Everyone else would be pleased when Senpai noticed them, but God forbid Rie be happy with Senpai noticing her. No, this is not confirmation for a Kaname and Rie relationship, it's merely me poking fun at things. Kaname belongs with his chessboard because, even after getting its pieces destroyed, the chessboard stays under Kaname's pillow. It is his security blanket so to speak, not even Yuki can replace that. Now that I've gotten completely random, I'm gonna go. Until next time.
