"Onyx and Vampire"

Chapter 7: "Dark Dragon's Deadline"

Disclaimer: Kamen Rider Dragon Knight belongs to the Brothers Wang and Adness Entertainment. Rosario + Vampire belongs to Akihisa Ikeda and VIZ Entertainment. I have no association with either that would allow me creative control or profit; I am simply doing this for my own entertainment and that of the readers.

Author's note: Well, if you've been keeping up with Kamen Rider Dragon Knight, you'll notice that specific details in this story don't quite sync with what's happened in the series proper. Of course, I did say at the beginning that this was A/U for KRDK and R+V, so I'm not that worried. I will be incorporating elements from the canonical KRDK, but this is still its own story and its own canon.

Anyway, this and the next two or three chapters comprise what I call the "Love Is Pain" arc. Why? Because those chapters will be exploring Kurumu's and Moka's feelings for Adam and vice versa juxtaposed with the conflicts in their lives because of their natures. Oh, and for those of you who've been clamoring for your favorite "abominable snowgirl" to make her debut here, I give. She's going to show up here, too, right after Kurumu's and Moka's stalkers/suitors in this arc.

Enjoy. Let's ride!


He stood in a void, watching a brunette girl drift away from him. He ran toward her, but the more he ran, the farther away she drifted. "Sara!"

"I'm sorry, Adam . . . but I can't love someone who'd betray our world," Sara whispered as she disappeared.

"No!" Adam screamed as he attempted to grab her, but she disappeared completely before his hand even reached her. He whirled around and saw the Kamen Riders – Len, Kase, Hunt, Price, and Chance – looking at him reproachfully. "I'm sorry!"

"Sorry isn't good enough, Adam," Kase answered coldly. "You betrayed us for your own selfish desires. Don't come anywhere near us again."

The Riders disappeared, too, leaving Adam alone. He then saw Moka, Kurumu, Yukari, and Gin, and desperately attempted to run to them. "Don't leave, too!"

They said nothing, their cold eyes saying more than their lips ever could as they vanished from his life like mirages. Adam screamed in frustrated anguish and punched the nonexistent ground. "Adam, Adam, Adam," a familiar, hated mocking voice called.

Adam rose to his feet, whirling to face Xaviax. "YOU!" he screamed. "You did this to me! You took away everything good in my life!" He ran at Xaviax, intending to finish him off with his bare hands. Xaviax's response was to revert to his true, inhuman form and telekinetically restrain and choke Adam.

"I didn't take anything from you," Xaviax denied. "I gave you a choice. You made that choice. It was your decision from the beginning. All I did was show you the way."

"You . . . son of . . . a bitch . . ." Adam gasped out.

Xaviax telekinetically threw Adam aside. "You made the choice. Deal with it. Live with the shame. It'll teach you a valuable lesson . . . traitor."


Adam woke up with a gasp and in a cold sweat. "Damn it," he muttered. "Not again."

The fallen Kamen Rider attempted to get through the day normally, but he couldn't think properly; the nightmare of everyone he'd ever cared about abandoning him haunted him too much. As he struggled through the day, something occurred to him.

There really isn't a change of seasons in this world, is there? Adam mused quietly. It's neither hot nor cold . . . just constantly gloomy. It really is different from Ventara or Earth.

"Adam!" Moka called out to him. "Don't space out now! We still have two days until the school newspaper is printed. It's a lot of work, but let's do our best, ok?"

"Sure, Moka," Adam answered, relaxing somewhat. "I was just distracted for a moment."

It had been two days since Kamen Rider Onyx and Moka had defeated and exposed Hitomi Ishigami. They were now working on the edition of the school paper that would detail the extent of Ishigami's crimes against the student body of Yokai Academy. Fighting might have been one thing, but newspaper publishing was very work-intensive and did not leave very much room for errors or delays if one wanted credibility.

"I can't take this . . ." Kurumu groaned. "It's finally Saturday and we're still in here working!"

Yukari giggled. "We're like a mangaka being chased by a deadline – only we don't get paid!"

"Stop being babies!" Gin shouted. Having caught the four underclassmen's attention, he continued on in a slightly calmer voice. "A newspaper is the same thing as a manga, with strict adherence to deadlines. The incident with Ishigami's gonna be all over the front page, and that was two days ago! If we don't get the story out immediately, nobody respectable will call us a newspaper."

Adam chuckled. "You take this very seriously, don't you?"

"Yeah, I do," Gin replied. "I'll listen to your damn sob stories after you meet the deadline."

"Then would you please help us out instead of sitting there drinking coffee?!" Moka yelled at him.

Adam smirked. "Well, maybe not as seriously as you should, otherwise you'd be here helping us."

"Is that backtalk I hear coming from you, Adam?" Gin taunted with mock anger.

"He's letting it get to his head just like a manga editor!" Yukari mused aloud.

"You really like manga, don't you?" Adam remarked. "A lot like a friend of mine, you could say."

Suddenly, Adam was embraced enthusiastically by Kurumu, who leaned affectionately on his shoulder. "Well, I don't care what I'm doing so long as I'm with Adam!" she declared.

"Kurumu!" Moka yelled.

"What?" Kurumu asked, pretending there wasn't a problem. Moka simply glared at her, while Adam attempted to remain calm.

"The quarrels are starting again!" Yukari remarked.

"Oh, Moka, Moka," Kurumu teased. "It seems you wanted to steal Adam away from me on his birthday. It's just lucky our unique bond allowed me to sense him being lured into your room and I came to save him! I'll never let you have Adam!" She stuck her tongue out at Moka with this declaration, said declaration troubling Moka more than the tongue.


As Moka and Kurumu argued over Adam, a figure was sitting in the tree outside the club room and snapping photos of Kurumu. "There you are, my love . . ." he murmured. "So cute . . . I can't take just watching you anymore. I need you in my arms now." He chuckled sinisterly.

This had not gone completely undetected, as Adam chanced a look outside and saw something he really didn't like. "What's wrong, Adam?" Moka asked.

"Somebody's watching us," Adam explained.

"Who'd wanna watch us?" Gin inquired.

"Well, I'll scare him off," Adam said. He took his Advent Deck out of his jacket pocket, opened the window, and threw it right at the tree where Kurumu's mysterious watcher was. By the time the deck made it, though, the watcher was already gone. "Slippery bastard. I'll go pick it up." He climbed out the window and went to retrieve his Advent Deck.

While he was gone, the Newspaper Club's advisor – and teacher to the freshmen in that club – Shizuka Nekonome came in with treats. "Is everyone working hard?" she asked cheerily. "I brought snacks for you all!"

"Nekonome-sensei!" Gin exclaimed.

"Well, the work is continuing, isn't it?" Nekonome pried cheerfully. "Oh, why did I even ask? Of course it is!"

"There are a lot of pages and a lot of cuts, but it's going well!" Moka replied.

"Wait, where's Adam?" Nekonome asked. "Isn't he supposed to be with you?"

"He lost his card deck and had to go find it," Yukari replied. "He'll be back soon!"

"Well, eat the snacks and cheer up!" Nekonome suggested.

Just then, Adam came back in. "Raw fish?" He looked at Nekonome with an "are you crazy?" expression.

"It's more delicious that way!" Nekonome replied as though there was no problem at all, which for her might have been true. "Oh, yeah, Kurumu! This letter came in for you. Someone dropped it off in front of the classroom!"

She handed Kurumu an envelope, and Kurumu looked at it, reading the words, "To my beloved Kurumu – Nagare."

Love letter? Who's this . . . and why now? Kurumu wondered. She opened the envelope, only to find a bunch of sexy pictures of herself. A note came with those pictures, saying, "If you don't want these pictures to go public, you'll come to the Monster Tree in the main schoolyard. Come alone, or else."

Kurumu panicked and stuffed the envelope, letter, and pictures inside the club toolbox, hoping to hide them that way. This did not go unnoticed by Adam, who had felt an unnatural stickiness on his Advent Deck when he'd retrieved it. "Kurumu? What's wrong?"

"Nothing!" Kurumu replied in a high voice. Her laughter was similarly high-pitched. "I just remembered I had something really, really important to do, so I gotta go now! Take care of the rest for me, ok?!" She took off before Adam or Moka could get in a word edgewise.

"Kurumu?" uttered a stunned Moka.


When Kurumu made it to the Monster Tree, she heard a young man's voice call, "Hey, I've been waiting for you! Guess you got my note and those pictures, huh? Long time, no see, hmm, Kurumu, my sweet?"

Kurumu looked up at the Monster Tree and saw a seemingly unassuming, slightly pudgy young man in loose clothes with his eyes hidden by his hair sitting up on a thick branch of the tree. "Who are you and what do you think you're doing, calling me out here with those dirty pictures?!" she yelled. Then she remembered . . . she'd hidden those same pictures in the club toolbox – and left them there!

The boy climbed down from the Monster Tree, panting once he'd reached the ground from the effort. "I took really cute pictures of you, didn't I? Well, I liked them."

Kurumu noticed that the boy's skin glistened with what was either slime or sweat, and given that she didn't know his monster form, she couldn't quite tell which it was. It frankly gave her the creeps.

"Don't you remember me?" he asked, straightening up with a smile that did nothing to reassure Kurumu. "I'm Nagare Kanou, remember? It was right after we started school."

Kurumu remembered that encounter with Nagare. "You sure are beautiful, Kurumu! May I take a picture of you?" the admiring boy asked.

"Really? I guess," Kurumu answered coquettishly. "Maybe I am just that beautiful, but wait! Am I more beautiful than Moka Akashiya?"

The flustered Nagare had no clue how to answer. "Umm, you do have bigger breasts than she does!"

Kurumu squealed, happy that she beat Moka in at least one respect. "If you take a really pretty picture of me, I'll let you go out with me!"

"Really?!" Nagare shouted, beyond exuberant at the idea of going out with someone as beautiful as Kurumu.

Back in reality, Nagare was staring expectantly at a stunned Kurumu. "That meeting was fate, and I've been waiting such a long time since then!"

It had finally caught up with her, Kurumu mused silently. Everything she'd done to compete with Moka for the attention of the boys of Yokai Academy before meeting Adam, the ways she had used her looks to string along those boys, many of whom she had no real interest in . . . was finally catching up with her. What was that thing some people called it? Oh, yes: karma.

"Go on a date with me right now, Kurumu, just like you promised," Nagare commanded, "unless you want those pictures to be shown to the entire school!"


Back at the Newspaper Club, Adam stared at the door. "Kurumu hasn't come back yet."

"Who needs her, anyway?" Yukari asked. "We have no use for people who run away from their duties."

That stung Adam more than he'd like to admit. It reminded him of what Hunt had said to him when Adam had finally made his commitment to stopping Xaviax along with the other Ventaran Riders. He aimed a fierce glare at Yukari.

"Care to repeat that?" he asked, his voice low and deadly.

"Adam?" Yukari asked. "I just said . . ."

"I know what you just said," Adam cut her off harshly. "For all we know, something bad happened to Kurumu and us staying here and maligning her isn't going to help anything."

"Adam . . ." Yukari murmured sadly, realizing she'd hit a sore spot with her beloved black knight.

"I wonder what Kurumu really thinks of the Newspaper Club," Moka mused, breaking the silence. "She's here because she likes you, Adam, and she totally hated me from the beginning. Maybe . . . she doesn't think of us as friends, after all."

"Even you, Moka?" Adam asked. "Really? Whatever's going on with Kurumu, we're not going to figure it out by acting like she's still the same selfish girl she was when we first met her. So, let's just wait for her to come back and give her some benefit of the doubt, ok?"

There was silence after that, as Nekonome looked upon the group worriedly. On the one hand, she was happy that Adam was sticking up for his friend, but on the other . . . it seemed that the club wasn't as tightly knit as she'd thought. Perhaps that was the trouble of having a club consisting mostly of girls who were all in love with the same boy . . . and that boy himself being in that club.


Elsewhere, Kurumu's date with Nagare had not turned out as she'd thought. No, she'd ended up in a faux photo shoot dressing up in gym clothes and sexy maid outfits. She'd balked at some of his even more risqué ideas, but Nagare had quickly shut her up by threatening to show those pictures to "her precious knight." The worst part of it all was that she was stuck with him while her friends were all working so hard on the school newspaper.

After twelve changes of clothes, Nagare had let her go, and Kurumu was now on her way back to the Newspaper Club. She could have charmed her way out of the situation, but she didn't want to go back to what she'd been before she met Adam. After he'd spared her life, and even defended her against Moka's unsealed persona, she'd fallen in love with him for real . . . and he made her want to be a better person, to be the kind of person he could love.

I wonder if everyone's still working hard on the paper, Kurumu thought. When she got inside the classroom, she saw everyone there staring at her with foreboding expressions. Oh, no . . . I'm gonna get yelled at!

"Welcome back, Kurumu," Adam greeted her. "You're late, but that's fine."

"We're just about to finish work today," Yukari added.

"We've decided to save the rest for tomorrow," Moka interjected, "so you can go if you want, Kurumu."

A stunned Kurumu stood by herself in the classroom. Too late . . . I'm too late . . .

Kurumu had once been completely self-absorbed, caught up in her beauty and her power to make men her slaves using her talents as a succubus. She'd never had a real friend before, and at the time it hadn't mattered to her . . . but Adam had shown her the error of her ways, and now Nagare was her punishment for those ways.

"I have to apologize to them . . ." she murmured. She heard a sinister chuckle, and whirled to see none other than Nagare.

"What's wrong, Kurumu?" he asked. "You had fun today, right? Well, let's have some more fun tomorrow!"

"There is no tomorrow!" Kurumu protested. "This was only supposed to be for today!"

"Please don't take that tone with me, sweet Kurumu," Nagare warned. "Unless you'd like me to show those pictures to Adam. I wonder what he'd have to say about them."

"No!" Kurumu exclaimed. "You told me you wouldn't show those to anyone!"

Nagare bared his teeth in an obscene, inhuman grimace. "Then we'll have some more fun tomorrow, now won't we?! Don't think I'll let you go so easily now that I have you!"

"Not tomorrow! Any day but tomorrow!" Kurumu shouted. She started running. "Stop following me!"

Nagare smirked. In her panic, Kurumu had left him all alone . . . with her friends' half-completed newspaper. "Nice," he murmured evilly.


The next day, the Newspaper Club – sans Kurumu – discovered that their drafts for Monday's paper were missing. "They're gone!" Moka shrieked in horror. "Our drafts . . . everything we worked on yesterday . . . they're gone!"

"That's crazy . . . somebody stole them!?" Gin exclaimed.

"What do we do?" Moka asked. "We can't just start all over again; we'll never finish in time!"

Yukari screamed in horror. "My data was deleted! Everything I stored on my laptop is gone, and so's my backup disk . . . and they even read my diary! And the keyboard's all slimy like there were slugs all over it!"

Adam touched the keyboard and swiped off some of the slime. He stared at it curiously. Just like the slime on my Advent Deck from when I threw it at that guy in the tree.

He looked at Kurumu, noticing a look of panicked realization settling on her face. Whoever this thief was, she knew him somehow, and he was going to get to the bottom of this, one way or another.

"We don't have time to search for the thief right now!" Gin declared. "We'll just have to start over again from scratch! Doesn't matter if there's nothing much on the pages, just get something done!"

"You guys . . ." Kurumu murmured hesitantly, and Adam looked at her expectantly. "I'm sorry to do this to you at a time like this, but I have to skip club today . . ."

"What's going on, Kurumu?" Moka asked. "Are you really just gonna run out on us when there's trouble?! Don't you think about how anyone else feels?!"

"Moka . . ." Adam murmured, feeling like he'd just been stabbed in the heart.

"I have to go!" Kurumu exclaimed painfully, and began to walk out.

"I thought you'd changed, Kurumu!" a distressed Moka yelled. "But in the end you don't think of us as friends or anything, do you?! If that's how it is, then you can leave . . . and just don't come back!"


Kurumu left, anyway, her broken heart doing nothing to slow her down as she made her way to the Monster Tree to see Nagare again. After all, despite what Moka and Yukari and Gin and even Adam might think, she wasn't doing this to be selfish. She was doing it to protect them.

"You came," Nagare mocked from his perch in the tree. "I had a feeling you would, Kurumu." He held up the material he'd stolen from the Newspaper Club, the half-finished paper and backup disk. "This is what you were looking for? I don't understand why you'd bother; it's so boring. I could take better pictures than this! I'd rather just burn this like the trash it is!"

Kurumu's fists tightened as her expression darkened with rage. Nagare saw this and simply laughed.

"What are you going to do?" he asked. "Nothing, that's what! Not unless you want me to burn this stuff! You want to get it back, you do as I say."

"And if you burn it?" Kurumu asked somberly.

"Hmm?" Nagare asked. "You going to defy me?"

"They may mean nothing to you, but they mean everything to the people I care about!" Kurumu declared. "I'm never going to forgive you for putting your filthy hands on them!"

Nagare chuckled. "Screw it. I'm a monster. I don't need this blackmail nonsense." As he spoke, he began to transform, slime leaking from his pores and protrusions growing from either side of his neck.


Back in the Newspaper Club, Adam aimed a hard stare at everyone there. "I'm going to find Kurumu, no matter what any of you have to say about it. Unlike some people, I'm not willing to give up on my friends so easily."

"You can't go!" Moka protested. "If you leave, we'll really miss the deadline! Please, let's just stay here and do what we can . . ."

"Except that isn't enough," Adam retorted. "The Newspaper Club means nothing without all of us here." He looked hard into Gin's questioning stare. "This is something that we all created, and we all have to be together in this, or everything we've worked for means nothing."

Moka looked at Adam nervously. Our relationship should have only deepened on his birthday . . . and yet he defends Kurumu so forcefully. Like . . . like it's her he loves . . .

"Not to mention . . ." Adam pulled his Advent Deck out and showed it to everyone. "The same slime that's on Yukari's keyboard was on this card deck when I went after someone who was spying on us from outside. And Kurumu looked scared when Yukari mentioned it. I've got the feeling she's in more trouble right now than you realize, and if we don't do what we can to get her out of it . . ."

"You guys, look!" Yukari shouted, bringing over the club toolbox while holding an envelope that read, "To my beloved Kurumu."

Adam grimaced when he saw the envelope. He knew now what was going on. He should have connected the dots sooner. Without really thinking about it, he tore out of the classroom, running to find Kurumu before it was too late, before he let down someone else he loved.


Meanwhile, Kurumu was on the run from Nagare, who continued transforming and leaking slime from his body. She'd managed to break away when he groped her breast, but she could feel her strength slipping away quickly, thanks to the poison gas his body was releasing. She found the gym storeroom and slammed the door shut, locking it from the inside for protection.

"So cute!" Nagare mocked. "You think you can hide in there! But there's nowhere you can hide from me!"

To Kurumu's horror, Nagare merely slid under the door, almost literally worming his way through the crack as though his body had no bones whatsoever. "A slug's body can pass through just about anything, even the smallest of cracks! That's what I am!" he declared. "And with this power, I can go anywhere I please, learn anything I want . . ."

Kurumu shuddered in realization. "How many times have you done this sort of thing before?!"

"I lost count," Nagare replied, "but you, my sweet Kurumu, are the best prey I've ever had!"

Just as he reached for Kurumu with his slimy appendages, he heard the outside access being kicked open, revealing Adam in Kamen Rider mode with Moka by his side. "Kurumu!" Kamen Rider Onyx shouted. "We know what happened, and we know you were just trying to protect us! We're not leaving you alone with this bastard!"

"He's right," Moka agreed. "We need you, Kurumu. This Newspaper Club, it's nothing without all of us together!"

The transformed Nagare turned toward Moka and Onyx. "I was going to make you my next target, Moka! How pleasant that I get to have you and Kurumu at the same time!"

"Not in this life, sicko!" Onyx declared, slotting the Sword Vent card into his Visor. Calling his Black Drag Saber to his hand, Onyx moved to attack Nagare, just as Moka collapsed onto her knees. "Moka! What's wrong?"

"Energy . . . leaving my body . . ." Moka replied weakly.

"Bon appétit!" Nagare shouted, moving towards Moka ominously.

"No, you don't!" Onyx shouted, attacking Nagare with his sword only for Nagare to prove very slippery, indeed, too slippery to effectively attack the way he was doing now.

"Leave them alone!" Kurumu yelled, her nails growing into talons and her wings sprouting. Her demon aura flared as her eyes glowed, and the Monster Tree suddenly began to attack Nagare, its roots grasping for him.

"What the hell?!" Nagare exclaimed.

"I'll never forgive you . . . I'll never forgive you for touching Adam and Moka!" Kurumu screamed, her outrage fueling the Monster Tree's attack on Nagare.

"What is this?!" Nagare asked, horrified. "Is this . . . is this even real?!"

So, Kurumu's anger draws out her true power, Inner Moka remarked from the rosary around Outer Moka's neck. Impressive.

With all her might, Kurumu flew at the now-trapped Nagare and slashed him with her talons. Onyx slotted his Final Vent card, summoning Dragblacker, who coiled around the black-armored Kamen Rider.

"I should have done this from the beginning," he said, rising into the air with ominous slowness. He came down for a flying kick powered by the dark flames Dragblacker breathed out, the kick ramming Nagare through the real Monster Tree. "So the tree that attacked him was just an illusion . . ."

Exactly, Kamen Rider, Inner Moka's voice remarked from the rosary. A succubus's true power lies in casting illusions, and a sufficiently powerful succubus can kill through those illusions alone.

"I got them back!" Kurumu shouted triumphantly, holding up the newspaper drafts and backup disk. "Our newspaper . . . I got it back!"

Gin and Yukari had gotten there just in time to see Adam disengage the Rider armor, an unconscious Nagare that looked surprisingly dry for a slug, and Kurumu holding the newspaper drafts and backup disk. Kurumu looked at them all bashfully.

"May I . . . may I come back to the Newspaper Club?"

"You're always welcome, Kurumu," Adam replied.

"Yeah," Moka agreed. "I know a lot happened and I said some things, but we've got to work together or we'll miss the deadline for sure!"


The next morning, Nekonome entered the classroom to see if the paper was finished. She found everyone fast asleep, completely exhausted from the effort they'd undertaken the previous day and night. She chanced a look at the newspaper draft and saw that it'd been completed.

"Good job," she murmured softly, trying not to disturb the sleeping students. "Now just leave the rest to your sensei . . ."

As she left, she noticed that Adam's hand was holding Moka's hand, and Kurumu's and Yukari's hands were intertwined with Adam's and Moka's hands. She smiled softly. You guys are a lot closer than I thought . . . sleep tight.

Next: Another Vampire and Onyx


End Notes: There you have it; the first part of the "Love Is Pain" arc is complete! As you can guess from the title of the upcoming chapter, Adam is going to be faced with another rival for Moka's affections . . . and this one is a vampire just like Moka! (Or so he claims.) Will Adam and Moka persevere through this latest challenge, or will their relationship crash and burn before it really starts?

And what'll happen when Adam gets yet another suitor . . . one who might be a little more dangerous than she lets on? You guessed it right! It's Mizore Shirayuki, everybody's favorite adorably abominable snowgirl! Thanks to your demands, my beloved readers, she's going to appear here, too! (Granted, sooner than I planned, but I can make it work.)

Enjoy, everybody, and come again for the next ride!