Two Faces
By:
Mparker2501
A/N: …Ummmm…Hi folks!… Is it enough to tell you I'm very, very, very, very sorry for the wait? Will that make it all better? ………Yeah, didn't think so. So instead of treating you all to a long story about how tedious and LONG dissertations can be, I figured you all would rather just have a chapter to read instead, so without any more of my prattle… I give you the seventh chapter of the humble fanfiction, Two Faces…
Disclaimer: An author is like a god in their universe, I'm just playing around with them for a little while.
Reader's Key:
'Thoughts'
"Speech"
--o-o-oOo-o-o-- change in the same scene
'Inner thoughts'
"Inner speech"
Chapter Eight
Yuki sighed for what she was sure the hundredth time that day. For the first time in her life, she was happy to be cooped up in her room away from everyone. She had been refreshed when she had originally woken up several hours before, but now she felt rather like she had run a marathon and triathlon consecutively. In other words, she was beat, bone tired, drained, weary, exhausted…and she hadn't done anything more exerting than talk for several hours. Well, not really talk per se, but rather lie as well as she possibly could under the scrutiny of the Chairman, Zero, Kaname, the nurse Ms. Aono, and that strange Night Class girl that was always near Kaname…
Lying had never been her forte, but she felt confident that she hadn't said anything more than she needed to. Of course, she also had the always convenient excuse of "It all happened so fast, I couldn't figure out what was happening…" to fall back on…but the thing that occupied the young Guardian's mind wasn't the fact that she had lied to the some of people she cared the most about. No, what troubled her most was the reason she had lied to them…that strange voice in the back of her mind…the same voice that had been distracting her ever since she had woken up several hours before. It had been fairly quiet through her "interrogation" session with her father and friends, offering only helpful bits that make Yuki's story slightly more believable. But ever since she closed her door behind her…well, it hadn't shut up – it was like being in cafeteria with hundreds of people yelling at the same time, but in this case it was only one voice that kept yelling at her, albeit loud enough to make her ears ring…Yuki had been tuning it out while she changed into her night gown, hoping that a short nap would make her head hurt less.
She knew it was a long shot.
And to be honest, the voice was starting to sound quite miffed at being ignored…and it had no qualms about letting its feelings be known – loudly…
"I am not an it! I am YOU! And the last time I checked, you were a GIRL!" Yuki could almost hear the tantrum that accompanied the statement. She pictured some little shadowy person inside her head stomping its feat and waving its arms around…she almost smiled at the thought of someone living in her head…
"I do live in your head! Why else do you think we are able to talk to each other?" Yuki rolled her eyes and peeled back the blanket on her bed, then turned the lights off before slipping beneath her sheets. "Probably because I just went through a traumatic experience and you are a figment of my overactive imagination," she mumbled as she pulled her blanket up to her shin and rolled over to face the wall. "And I'm really tired…"
'Yes, that's it Cross… just go to sleep. This will be so much easier to explain face to face'
--o-o-oOo-o-o--
Yuki wasn't sure what the oddest aspect of her current situation was: was it the fact that she was lying on her back on some cold stone surface, looking off into a dark that surrounded everything around her except two large wooden doors, or if it was the incredibly odd sense of déjà vu that the whole situation was giving her. For the first time in her young life, she felt like she was truly losing her mind.
All in all, she decided she didn't like the feeling all that much.
She quickly pushed herself up from the cold stones beneath her and into a kneeling position and hugged her herself; her flimsy paper-thin night gown offering her no protection from the cold that seemed to seep from the floor into her bones. Casting her eyes around her she came to three conclusions: 1) she was more than likely dreaming, 2) her imagination was terrible – there was nothing but black in every direction save for the white stones beneath her that led to the two large doors just a few feet away – overall, not very good work by her subconscious, and 3) she had definitely been here before…
Pushing herself fully upright and turning to the doors, she noticed that there seemed to be light seeping out from the space between the bottom of the doors and the ground. 'Wonder what the crazy vampire wants now…' She froze as soon as she finished her thought, her eyes widening and her jaw dropping a few centimeters – just enough for her strangled gasp to issue forth. And in a sudden flash of both insight and memory, she remembered where she was, and what was beyond the doors in front of her…
Yuki Kuran.
Her other self.
'I'm starting to think that I've stumbled into one of the Chairman's mangas…'
With a sigh of resignation, she pushed open the huge doors and stepped inside her other self's domicile. She had been expecting the room to be blinding, with the candles and fire burning brightly, the chandelier hanging from the ceiling aglow, however, she was disappointed to see that only the candles burned, the fire failing in the hearth. She cautiously approached the chairs that were facing the fireplace, the same place where – if her memory was to be believed – hours ago she had learned her seemingly forgotten past. And there, in the same spot as before, was her vampiric self.
Her eyes were closed, and the glow from the decaying fire added a healthy cast to her skin – a glow that Yuki knew the sun could never give to vampires. She wondered absently why that was. Her other self was breathing deeply, her head resting against the shoulder of her cushiony chair, apparently asleep. Yuki took the seat she had vacated earlier and waited for her host to wake up. A thought that brought a smile to her face: yes, this section of her mind did belong to her vampiric self, but it was still her mind, how could she be a guest in her own mind? And secondly, why did her alter-ego need to sleep at all?
As soon as Yuki had finished processing that last thought, the vampire sitting across from her started to giggle to herself, but otherwise gave no outward signs of waking up. Yuki raised an eyebrow, 'Please tell me she isn't dreaming…' The still giggling vampire's small chuckles morphed into an all out guffaw, which in turn caused Yuki's other eyebrow to rise to meet its counterpart. 'Yeah…this can't be good…' At that, the vampire's eyes across from her sprung open and she nearly toppled out of her chair in a fit of giggles – which sounded oddly like a thousand little bells tinkling at once – that didn't subside for several minutes.
"Are you finished yet?" Yuki deadpanned.
After a moment, her other self nodded while trying to wipe away her tears with one hand, the other was busy trying to drag her back up into her vacated seat. Her giggles silenced, she turned her amethyst eyes to her "guest", Yuki straightened slightly under her doppelganger's gaze and looked her in the eyes. "Is there a reason why you were laughing just now, or do you just bust out into bursts of giggles at random?"
Her paler self raised her eyebrows, "No, no – it's just that your thoughts are so funny!" At that, she burst out into another fit of giggles, leaving Yuki to hyperventilate over her answer. When it became apparent that Yuki was not about to breath normally by her own choice, her other self got up from her seat – while still giggling slightly to herself – and tried to calm her human self down, which involved poking Yuki in her sides until she snapped out of her panic attack.
"W-what does t-that mean?" Yuki gasped out, her right hand clutching her nightgown above her heart in hopes of slowing its rapid beating. She took a few steadying breaths before staring into her counterpart's dancing eyes, "Can you-"
"-read your mind? Yes, I can, but I normally don't, it takes the fun out of everything – especially important conversations like the one I hoped we could have while your physical body rested." She gave Yuki a small glare, but there was nothing behind it. She gave Yuki a small pat on the shoulder and then returned to her own seat. "If it will make you feel any better, I will refrain from reading your mind while you are here. When you're awake it will be the only way for us to communicate without it looking like you're insane." Yuki nodded absently, her mouth agape and her eyebrows raised so high, her bangs obscured them from view.
"Are you trying to tell me that we can talk to each other just by thinking?" Yuki said while trying to regain some of her composure, or at least make it appear she had eyebrows. Her doppelganger smiled, "To an extent, yes. While you are awake, you need simply think it and I will hear your question. But to me it will be like talking to an empty room – something I have quite a bit of experience doing." She sighed and began to smooth out the non-existent creases in her royal blue dress, seemingly content to let Yuki mull over the information she had just received.
"So – does that mean we can talk to each other whenever we want to?" Yuki said after a moment.
"Yep."
Yuki nodded to herself, thinking about the advantages this connection could provide her with – especially in her classes, she was sure that her more regal self probably knew how to do some forms of algebra...Her musings, however, were cut short when her other self leaned forward and placed her pale hand on Yuki's knee. "Now that the pleasantries are out of the way, I'd like to talk to you about the reason I brought you here -"
"Sorry to interrupt, but I thought that we were able to meet the last time only because Shizuka's bit let some of your power out. She's not here now, so how are we having this conversation?"
Yuki Kuran smiled and shook her head slightly, "I always knew there was a brain between your ears Yuki!" Yuki blushed slightly at the backhanded praise but continued to hold her counterpart's gaze, "Do you remember last time when we met when you opened the doors to get in here, and I altered mother's seal?" Yuki nodded, "By doing those things, we created a connection that will only be severed when the merger is done…I think." The vampire scratched the back of her head and chuckled nervously as her human self stared at her bug-eyed.
She sighed as Yuki tried to form a coherent thought, "I did tell you that nothing like this had ever been done before remember?" She sighed again and gave Yuki an apologetic look, "I thought we would be merged together when the new seal was in place; needless to say, I was wrong." She nodded in the door's direction and gave Yuki's leg a slight squeeze of reassurance, "But that's not to say that this situation is bad either. This way we get to know each other before we both kind of cease to exist and all…" By the look on Yuki's face, her reassurance didn't seem to help much.
The young vampire brought her outstretched hand back to her lap and looked at her pale bare feet and mentally chastised herself. She had the time to contemplate her demise and assimilation into a new being, her counterpart had known about her past for all of a day – and now she was being told that the quick fix she had originally agreed to wasn't going to be so quick. In all reality, it could very well be several weeks before the two of them were fully one complete being. Of course, Yuki didn't need to know that, she had enough dropped onto her over the last day to be bothered with the knowledge that her world was about to get so much more complicated.
She closed her eyes and grimaced, 'She doesn't deserve this! She shouldn't have to worry about any of this! She should have never had any contact with me and simply lived her life like a normal human…And I should have never put her in this situation to begin with. Now she gets to rethink this decision for however long the merger takes – she gets to realize what it is she agreed to, and what a stupid decision it was.' Her pale alabaster hands clenched in her lap and tears started to slip out from her closed eyelids and trickle down her cheeks. 'I'm the one responsible for all this. If I hadn't been born than none of this would have ever transpired, and mother and father would still be alive. And more importantly, I would never have had to place Yuki in this position.' She sunk her fangs into her bottom lip to keep from sobbing, but she knew it wouldn't work for very long. It never had in the past.
"Why are you crying?"
Her eyes sprung open and her amethyst eyes peered at her blurry human self. Damn the tears. With a shaky voice she replied, "Because we shouldn't be having this conversation; because you should have been free to live your life on your terms; because I should be in this room until your mortal life is over." Yuki's confused face took on one of dawning understanding and she gave her crying self a small smile, "This isn't your fault." The vampire's head jerked back as if she had been slapped. 'She doesn't hate me for this? Why?' Her eyes stung from her streaming tears and she busied herself by trying to brush them away – but she was beaten to it.
By Yuki.
Her human self was kneeling in front of her, her warm hands clutching her own pale ones. Yuki peered up into her amethyst eyes and smiled again, but it was tinged with just a bit of sadness. "Don't beat yourself up about this. If you want to blame anyone for this situation, blame Shizuka and Rido; they were the two who forced us into this corner." Yuki shook her head, her eyes starting to water just a bit, "If it makes you feel better, I don't see you as just another vampire, or an extension of myself. I see you as my sister," Yuki gave her a smirk, "albeit, one who lives in my head and probably smarter than most of the teachers in the school." Yuki giggled at her own remark as her paler half gave her an exasperated look, "and happens to be a vampire who is somehow related to the 'god' of the vampire race." Yuki thought about it for a second and then nodded to herself, "That about sums it up," she gave her vampiric self an imploring look, "so please stop crying?"
And for the first time since she had been relegated to her human half's mind, Yuki Kuran found herself wearing a genuine smile.
"Ok," she nodded and extracted her hands from Yuki's grip before wiping the last of her tears from her cheeks. Her shy smile grew more as Yuki's face split into a huge grin, "See? It isn't so bad is it? I know I might not be the smartest company in the world, but at least I'm someone to talk to, right?"
That got the vampire to chuckle for the second time that night, "You really are more concerned about others than yourself aren't you?" Yuki's grin quickly turned into a sheepish smile, "I just think that others need help more than I do. I have so much: a good life, friends, the Chairman and Zero. I just think that I should help others more than worry about myself, I have everything I could ever want." Her paler self shook her head, "Mother and Father would be so proud of you."
--I--
---o-o-oOo-o-o---
I I
He couldn't feel his left hand, he had several large gashes over his body, all of which were leaking blood faster than he would have liked to contemplate. He heard the sobs and screams from all the people beyond the destroyed train cabin he was sprawled out in, a small patch of dust several feet from him near the corpse of security guard that had tried to slow the monster while he had gotten his guns from the locked vault at the back of the train.
Trains…
He really hated trains. No – hate was probably too weak a word – loathed was more accurate. Was it the small enclosed space he was crammed into that irked him? No. Was it the ludicrous speed the trains maintained as they hurtled along their tracks just a handful of meters below the ground? No. Was it the extravagant food that those rich fools in first class ate that made those like him in coach salivate? Again, no. Those things grated on his nerves sure, but even when combined they did not make him as enraged as the imbecilic fools he was forced to ride in the company of.
Yes, the great Toga Yagari, scourge of vampires and one of the greatest hunters the Association had ever seen, hated people with a passion that was rivaled only by his contempt for his prey. But, having said that, he was not a man to simply sit back and watch them die if he could help it…
(32 Minutes Ago)
Tickets, he refused to sit next to anyone on the off chance that they were not scared shitless at the sight of him and talk the entire trip, check.
Luggage, well, what he considered luggage: the clothes on his back and his battered rucksack. Check.
His numerous weapons…yeah, he wished…
He had flashed his ID badge and his concealed weapons license to the man at the ticket counter, but he was informed that no one other than the one security guard on the train was allowed to carry any weapon of any sorts. No exceptions. So, after wading through the sea of people crowding the train platform and dutifully checking every single one of his weapons in with the train's "security guard" – in reality an overweight man in his mid-forties that didn't look like he was capable of stopping a three year old – and being promised by the now heavily sweating man that his newly tagged and documented "items" would be in the train's vault situated in the caboose for the duration of the three hour trip.
Finding his seats just inside the door and flopping into the window seat, he dropped his old faded brown bag onto the seat nearest the aisle, somewhat insulating him from the rest of the cabin. He leaned back in his seat and allowed his shoulder to brace against the pitiful excuse of a "window," he intended to be seeing the inside of his eyelids for the duration of the trip. He absentmindedly pulled out a pack of cigarettes and proceeded to light one up. He inhaled the acrid smoke, filling up as much of his lungs with the cancer causing smog as he could. Heaven…
"Ahem."
He lethargically turned his head to see one of the stewardesses, or whatever you called them on a train, glaring at him over his bag. She wasn't all that tall, maybe 5 foot with the black heels she as currently wearing, and was dressed in a light blue uniform that consisted of a too short skirt and a too tight top. Her hands were at her hips and her make-up caked face was pinched together in a sever scowl. Apparently she did not approve of his smoking, of course, the little signs that were all over the cabin walls said much the same. Not that he was inclined to follow those directions…
He gave her a bored look and rolled his eyes, 'Hehehe, if looks could kill…' He took one drag on his cigarette and blew the smoke at her, 'This should be a fun trip, hope she isn't the girl in charge of the drink cart, be a bad idea to piss her off if that was the case.' He pulled the cig out of his mouth and crumpled it in his gloved had before depositing the half used remains in one of his pockets. The stewardess gave him a self-satisfied smirk and proceeded to ask the business man behind him if he would like anything to drink…
Toga rolled his eyes for the second time in less than a minute, 'Figures, I would have to piss of the drink cart lady.' With a sigh he settled back into his barely padded chair and tilted his cowboy hat down over his eyes and tried to fall asleep, 'It's not as if I really have any money for a drink anyway…damn.'
He barely registered the conductor speaking over the intercom system, and he imagined that the other stewardesses were instructing the other passengers on what to do if the train had a problem, "Most likely panic and scream, that is what most people do in an emergency,' he thought with a morbid mental grin. It wasn't as if he hated people, he just disliked the stupid ones with a passion, which unfortunately applied to just about everyone he had ever met… and also included those he was forced to work with.
The jarring back and forth of the train pulling away from the station shook him out of his reverie. It was one of those things you'd think that mankind would have figured out how to fix after a couple hundred years: make the starting and stopping of the train just a teensy bit smoother, but no, instead man decided to make the interior comfortable and the alcohol accessible. Not that he was complaining mind you…
With a long drawn-out sigh he settled back into his semi-comfortable position and waited for the trip to be over. He didn't sleep. Not because his body wasn't crying out for rest, which it was, but because he simply didn't want to leave his life in the hands of some pathetic, overweight excuse for a security guard. Nope. He'd rather stay awake and watchful under the brim of his hat and keep an eye on things.
And when what was to come was finished, he would be happy that he decided to remain awake.
The time seemed to flit by fairly quickly, which was a blessing he daren't hope for even on the good days, and everything seemed to be quiet… Well, there was one little thing that kept reoccurring about every two or three minutes: individual people or small little groups would parade by his seat toward the rear of the train and then would return blushing and giggling several moments later. Some were older, maybe mid-twenties, but the majority couldn't be over eighteen. And each and every one of them was carrying a magazine of some sort with a reverence he rarely saw even within a church. Simply put, it was a creepy spectacle, but one he was intrigued by.
With another sigh, he hoisted himself up from his seat and switched seats with his faded brown traveling bag so that he was closest to the aisle. He rolled his eyes at what he was about to do, 'I can't believe that I'm about to snoop on a bunch of girls just to see what's so special about a magazine cover.' He shook his head, 'At lease Zero isn't here to see this…' Toga shifted his hat to cover his eye patch, a gesture he found the average person was thankful for: they weren't sure if it was alright to pity him or to shy away from him. For the record, he preferred the later action.
Peering out of his left eye he craned his neck to follow a woman in her mid-twenties march down the aisle towards the rear of the train, her chest pushed out and her head back. A normal male would have had his eyes glued to her face which was heart shaped and lovely, or perhaps her very well endowed chest, or maybe even her long shapely legs, but no, Toga Yagari's gaze was fixed on the magazine that the woman had clutched in her left hand. What he saw made his lone blue eye widen and then immediately narrow: the smiling face on the magazine's cover was deathly pale and had semi-long blond hair. His mouth was quirked in a small grin and his eyebrows were raised as if he found something amusing.
He was a vampire.
Toga growled under his breath, "Damn, this has not been my week has it?" He shook his head, "Of all the trains in all the world, why did I end up on this one?" His right arm came up and pushed his hat over both his eyes again as he tried to calm himself, 'Ok, even if he is a Level-E, there is no way he'd be stupid enough to try anything on a crowded train.' He settled back into his aisle seat, 'I doubt he even knows I'm on this train anyway, hell, this line goes through several major areas so it's not all that unreasonable for him to be going somewhere else alone the line.'
But even as he tried to delude himself into believing that this was all one big coincidence, his gut – the one tool he always relied on – was telling him something else entirely: it was no coincidence.
That was when the screams started from the rear of the train.
"What the hell?"
"Oh my God!"
"Nobody panic!"
"Tell them to stop the train!"
"Help us! Help us!"
"AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
Three quick gunshots and then, mayhem. The train continued to speed on through the countryside towards the first stop, nearly an hour and a half away, all the while the people inside it went mad from fear. As soon as the screams had started and the first heads had whipped around to try and discern the source of the screaming, Toga was out of his seat and nearly through the rear door that connected to the other car. He was still three cars away from the caboose, where all of his weapons were… 'Shit! This cannot be happening!'
In all his years with the Association, he had never heard of anything like this. It was too stupid even for a Level-E to attempt: killing in broad daylight and in such a way that the world was sure to hear about it. 'Nothing is this stupid!' he thought to himself as he pushed the rising passengers back into their seats, and those that were fully upright he practically threw out of his path, 'Why would any vampire do this? Is he suicidal?'
He reached the final door separating the last car from the rest of the train – and luckily the rest of the passengers – put his hand to the latch and stopped. He desperately tried to such in as much air as his lungs could hold in an attempt to regain his breath after his mad dash through the gauntlet of people, but it seemed his years of smoking were not about to make things any easier. He continued to suck in air as he listened to the people screaming on the other side of the door – the people in the car he now stood in had dutifully ran away like cowards at the first sound of violence – the people who he knew he had almost zero chance of saving. They were begging and pleading for their lives, and those that weren't seemed to be alternating between screaming and crying.
He head butted the door and cursed, "Damn it!"
The noise from the other side of the door immediately stopped.
He barely had the time duck, with a muttered "Shit!" under his breath, before the metal door in front of him was torn off its hinges and hurled at his head. Falling to one knee and springing back only just saved his head again as a pale hand plowed through the floor of the car and into the undercarriage of the train. Yagari hurriedly stood up and quickly pried the headrest off of one of the chairs and threw it at the now motionless vampire standing in the wrecked doorway to the final compartment. The vampire didn't even try to dodge, instead he simply gave a hoarse laugh as he batted the missile away from himself, his mad shining red eyes never leaving Toga.
Then, with an eerie smile the vampire spoke, his voice a silky hiss, "Is that really the best you are able to come up with?" He cocked his ivory head to the side and treated Toga to a toothy smile, "The Great Toga Yagari!" he shook his head, "I'm not impressed."
'Yeah, I didn't think this was just bad luck. This bastard wanted to be on this train with me.' Toga quickly took in his now quiet surroundings. The vampire in front of him was completely slathered in human blood – it looked like he had been trying to imitate Jackson Pollock and failed, badly. Toga wasn't even able to discern what the original colors of his clothes were anymore, the now dark clothes just stuck to his body. His slicked back hair might have been called blonde at one point in time, but with the blood covering it, the hair looked more like a dark bronze. His hands were now stuffed in his blood soaked pockets and he was smirking lazily at Toga, completely uncaring of the carnage behind and around him.
Behind the vampire…Toga had to actually fight back a shudder – something he never thought he would ever do after working for the Association for as long as he had. The scene was hellish, to put it mildly: the entire passenger car was painted in blood. Headless torsos and crushed heads littered the floor and more than a few bodies appeared to be disemboweled – most likely while the poor soul had been alive. Toga counted only two survivors: the stupid rent-a-cop, and a petite raven haired girl what appeared to be the stewardess from earlier, her serving cart flipped over her masking her wounds from the eye. The seats themselves were reduced to small bits of plastic and foam, with the added contents of several bags thrown around for good measure. The necks of the few unmutilated bodies were torn open and the corpses scarred faces appeared to be even paler than their relatively new death warranted.
Yagari imagined that Hell looked much like this, with the addition of flames of course.
'I am so screwed right now, aren't I?'
The vampire simply stood there, hands still in pockets, with his victims' blood dripping off his form an ever expanding pool around his feet. His head slowly lolled to the side and he fixed Yagari with a red stained smile, "your move hunter."
Toga took a deep breath as his eyes darted around the small enclosed space, 'I don't stand a chance going through him. His speed and strength give him the edge…I really should have kept at least one gun on me.' His eyes zeroed in on the steel door at the far end of the decimated train car in front of him, 'I need to get there. Only one problem: a deranged blood sucking leech in front of me.' His eyes whipped to the headrest to his left and then to the streaking landscape outside the window, 'This isn't gonna work, is it?'
With one fluid motion Yagari tore the headrest from the seat and proceeded to rush the now thoroughly amused vampire, who simply batted him aside and into the side of the car. "Pathetic. Is this what you humans are capable of without your precious weapons?" The laughter suddenly stopped and morphed into a sneer as the vampire crouched, "when I'm done with you, I'll have the rest of the train for dessert!" With that remark, the vampire launched himself at Toga, nail lengthening into claws extended and fangs bared in a ferocious snarl.
Yagari waited until the very last moment before he brought the headrest up in front of his chest, and allowing the vampire's claws to ram right into the center of it. Yagari twisted the headrest as quickly as he could to the left, forcing the vampire to veer off course and slam face first into the glass window, causing cracks to spider out from the impact point. However, the vampire's fangs didn't veer far enough from their intended target; instead of plunging into Yagari's throat as planned, they instead serrated his left shoulder, tearing off a fairly large patch of skin and staining Yagari's already battered clothes crimson. Amazingly though, his hat didn't even so much as shift on his head.
Letting go of the headrest and spinning around behind the vampire, Yagari plowed into the vampire's back, pushing him furthermore into the glass. Hurriedly jumping back, Yagari proceeded to kick the vampire between the shoulder blades several times in quick succession, not allowing the vampire to recover enough to retaliate, each time breaking the glass more and more until finally the glass shattered and the vampire fell head first out of the train into the dark landscape whipping by the train. With a ragged sigh Yagari collapsed to the ground, the adrenalin in his system slowly bleeding away. He wiped his sweaty brow with the sleeve of his coat and repositioned his eye patch so it didn't bite into his flesh so much, careful to not move his injured shoulder too much.
Pushing himself off of the ground, Yagari calmly walked over to one of the numerous corpses and ripped a blue sleeve off of what appeared to be at one time a business man. He then produced a blue bottle from one of the numerous inside pockets of his coat and dumped the contents onto his wounded shoulder, hissing in pain. 'At least the damned thing is semi-clean now.' Next he wrapped it around his shoulder and tightly knotted it, careful to position the knot so that it didn't interfere with his movements too much.
With his wound at least covered, Yagari calmly walked into the hellish scene that was the last car. The rent-a-cop was now moaning but appeared to still be unconscious, however, the stewardess apparently has succumbed to her wounds. Her breathing had stopped. Squatting down, Yagari flipped her cart over to see how bad her wounds had been. He shuddered, no one deserved to die like that: with all their organs spewing from their body and their legs snapped and sticking in different and impossible directions. 'Rest in peace lady, the bastard's paid for his crime in full.' Out of respect for the dead, Yagari placed the upturned cart back over her lower body.
Standing back up, he wandered over to the now slightly-awake-but-still-incoherent rent-a-cop and shook him a little more roughly then was necessary, after all it was this idiot that had made him check in every single weapon he had…
"Hey, idiot," Yagari began in a low growl, "which of the several hundred keys on your belt opens the damned safe?" When all he got was a gurgle and some jumble of words that sounded suspiciously like 'oh my god, this isn't happening' only with much more fear and disbelief behind them, Yagari shook the fat slob even harder. "Which damned key is it?" this time his voice was much louder and even more irate, but it seemed to do the job.
The overweight, slightly graying man turned his head towards Yagari and looked at him with bleary, unfocussed brown eyes, "Uh – the o-one with the red dot on the handle…" Yagari roughly hauled the pathetic excuse of a man to his feat and slapped him, literally, out of his stupor. "Ok idiot," Yagari said as he yanked the keychain off the man's belt, "now make yourself useful and go up front, reassure the mob of half-wits you encounter on your way, and tell the driver or whoever is in charge that he needs to radio ahead for some help."
"G-got it," the blubbering man gasped out.
Yagari wasn't about to delude himself by actually thinking the useless imbecile would actually be able to accomplish the task, but he also knew that the rent-a-cop would be utterly useless – and most likely dead – if the two of them stayed in the same room for any length of time. So as the small fleshy mountain passed out of the car, Yagari allowed himself to mumble under his breath something that sounded suspiciously like "should've let 'em die," if anyone had been there to hear him…
With an exasperated shake of his head and a quick check of his impromptu bandage, Yagari returned to the task at hand: getting his things back. He idly flipped through the assortment of keys looking for his source of salvation; most of them had some sort of abbreviated code etched into their respective handles, but a few had handwritten descriptions on masking tape wrapped around the handle – most likely so that the rent-a-cop would know what key he actually needed to use. In the background he could hear the opening of the next car's door, 'Good, the idiot is moving. Slowly, sure, but what else can you expect from a civilian?'
Casually flipping through a few more keys, Yagari spotted his deliverance: a normal brass key with a red dot on its handle. 'Finally!' He quickly shuffled to the vault door, inserted the key and opened the door. He nearly cried in happiness at the sight that greeted him: resting on several black felt shelves were his numerous guns. On the top shelf were his four handguns: the Sig P226 and the Smith and Wesson 500. Next to those were his two survival knives, which had the advantage of being both useful in combat and in also when he found himself in the middle of a forest chasing after a target, which happened more than he cared to admit. Below those beloved items were his heavy hitters: his old M4 carbine and his tried and true pump action shotgun. He grabbed his knives and was about to put them back into their sheaths when a cold hand grabbed the back of his neck…
"DIE YOU DAMNED HUMAN!"
The first thoughts that flicked through his mind right before his head met the side of the car was a slightly bemused, 'Well, I guess it wasn't the rent-a-cop that opened the door.' The impact snapped his head sharply to the side and made his already mangled shoulder throb in agony. He scrambled to his feet only to be met with a designer leather foot to his stomach, causing him to double over gasping for air. He pulled his hands up to protect his face just in time to meet a left hook to his temple, one which would have probably ended his life a bit earlier than he would have liked.
He quickly ducked under the vampire's next swing and rolled to his right, losing his hat in the process. He scrambled back up to his feet and threw himself at his assailant, tackling him to the ground before throwing a few punches of his own to the vampire's face. The rewarding sound of the jaw breaking was music to his ears, 'I didn't think this would be over that fast.' The vampire snarled and spat blood into Yagari's face before swinging his cold fist into Yagari's side and knocking him off his attacker and back onto his back. The vampire propped himself up with an elbow and brought his other forearm down into Toga's stomach, again driving the air from his lungs and causing him to curl up into himself in an attempt to regain his breath.
The vampire stood and held his broken jaw in his left hand while his right lowered to grip Toga's white shirt and throw him into the far corner of the car opposite the door causing his head to spin. The vampire stumbled over to Toga, and kicked him several times in the side which caused him to arch his back in pain. He fell back onto his back and half glared, half sneered at the vampire that towered above him. He couldn't see anything beyond the vampire and he couldn't hear anything over the combination of wind rushing in trough the shattered windows and the blood pounding in his ears, but Toga did know one thing: he wasn't going to go down without one last insult.
"I'll be sure to say hello to the Devil when I get to Hell. Maybe a friend will be able to send you to see me in the not-so-distant future you blood sucking leech!" he wheezed out between his bleeding lips.
The vampire might not have been able to snarl properly because of the broken jaw, but it didn't take a genius to understand what he meant to say, "DIE YOU BASTARD!" He pulled back his right arm above his head and brought it down in a wide ark.
Toga Yagari closed his eyes. 'I'm not gonna have my last sight on this earth be a blood sucking vampire. Good luck Cross…'
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
The three shots rang out louder than normal in the enclosed car which caused Toga to wince in pain yet again, but the bullets did have the effect of flipping the vampire off to Yagari's left side. He blinked several times and lifted his head up to see the stunned rent-a-cop standing in the doorway, his gun smoking. Yagari forced himself up into a sitting position when he heard the roar from the wounded vampire.
What happened next seemed to be in slow motion.
The vampire pushed himself off the ground and threw himself at the rent-a-cop and plowed him into the ground. Yagari, reacting on years of training and field experience scrambled up and lunged over to the open safe, his thoughts consumed by one thought: 'Please God let the guns still be loaded!' His legs gave out just in front of the shelves and in the background he heard the distinct sucking sound of a chest being opened. He spun around to face his assailant and grasped behind his back for any of his weapons, feeling a handel in his hand, he whipped his arm in front of him and fired.
The vampire had just finished ripping the rent-a-cop's chest wide open and was beginning to stand back up and turn back to his original prey when Toga fired, adding six new holes to the pale body: three in the chest, two in the head and a single shot in the right shoulder.
The vampire dropped like a sack of bricks and quickly dissolved into a fine grey dust.
Yagari allowed himself to sigh in relief and drop his arm and the handgun to the ground at his side. He leaned his head back against the bottom shelf and closed his eyes, the pain from all of his gashes starting to register in his mind. He opened his eyes and tilted his head to the side and gazed upon his battered hat with sardonic smile on his face, 'how does that thing keep surviving these things in better condition than I do?'
He let his head slump backwards and resigned himself to wait until the train stopped and – hopefully – the idiots who called themselves policemen arrived on the scene and who would no doubt hassle him more than was truly necessary.
He couldn't help himself, he cracked a smile.
'I hate trains.'
--I--
---o-o-oOo-o-o---
I I
The room was dark, lit only by the dull glow of an almost dead fire which cast inky black shadows out into the room, only adding to the darkness. The room might have been considered elegant several hundred years ago, what with the high backed chairs and the rich oak furniture, however, the very feel of the room seemed to say "stay away or suffer the consequences". It was a room few ever had the privilege to enter, and those that did found themselves never wanting to return. It was a dark room, just like the lone figure who occupied it.
He sat, stiff backed, in the closest chair to the fire. His dark clothes seemed to soak up any light in the room and only served to enhance the aura of darkness that the room was permeated with. In one hand he held a wine goblet half filled with a red liquid, while his other arm sat on the hand of the chair, its white marble color a sharp contrast against the chair's dark color. He made no movements save for the occasional sip from his goblet, but other than that, he remained still.
The phone next to his arm hadn't rung yet, but he knew one way or another it would soon. Either the gambit had succeeded, or it had not. Either way, a portion of his plan had been accomplished.
Now all he had to do was wait for the call…
--I--
---o-o-oOo-o-o---
I I
She bit her lower lip in trepidation, her white teeth striking against her red lipstick. She was hot all of a sudden, a mixture of fear and anxiety that went right along with her ignorance in regards to the entire plan. She didn't like being out of the loop, nor did she enjoy losing a valuable pawn, but that at least had been postponed for the moment it seemed. It needed to be dealt with, but now it would need to be handled with even more care.
She was going up against something that made even her collaborator proceed with caution, and seeing that this phase was his plan, she knew very little as to what the next part was. All she knew was the endgame and what it meant for her…
She fanned herself as she made the call.
--I--
---o-o-oOo-o-o---
I I
He picked up the ringing phone with his unnaturally pale hand and brought it to his slightly pointed ear, "Yes?"
"We just received word. He's failed."
He gave a slight pause and then the static of his breath, "Proceed with the rest of the plan."
"Are you sure about this?"
"Yes, I am. Just continue as planned and we will both have our goals met."
She sighed, "Alright."
Click. The line went dead.
He replaced the phone in its cradle and sipped the last of his glass's contents before he slowly rose to his feet and strode to the fireplace. He stared into the dying embers and smirked, "Now the pieces are in place and the game can truly begin."
He smiled.
He threw the glass into the fire and strode out of the room to finalize a few last minute details. After all, he had a Pureblood to rescue didn't he?
--I--
---o-o-oOo-o-o---
I I
I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent rewriter. -- James Michener
AN: Ok, before you all start harping on me about the whole 'it's almost been a year without an update' thing, let me say this: I rewrote this chapter seven different times trying to craft it to my liking. As it says on my Bio page, I will not post anything until it is something I think is worthy of being posted. End of discussion. Now that we have taken care of that little problem, I would like to thank those of you who have been patiently waiting for this update. I don't know when the next chapter will be up, but I will say this much, things are going to get a lot more exciting from here on out. If you're not a fan of cursing, then I apologize for this chapter and the ones that will follow this. My thought is this: Yagari is a fighter, and a very experienced one at that. As Tim O'Brien wrote: Send guys to war, they come home talking dirty. Sorry if you do not agree/approve. (If you haven't noticed, I kinda like Yagari as a character…) More of the rest of the cast next time, I promise!
I know some of you don't want to, but I'd really appreciate it if you reviewed this chapter and gave me some ideas about how to make this better, I know I'm not that greatest writer, but I would like to get a little better and all the help I can get does help. Believe me. Oh, and any flames will be used to roast marshmallows.
There's the review button, you know what to do!
No, seriously, please hit it.
You can just leave your impression of the story so far, I'm not that picky!
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Please?
