So for any of you that think Rose might have been a little bit OC and being too nice, this is for you :)

Chapter 10… Surprise

Before I addressed Niki I looked at Klaus and silently asked if this is who he was talking to. He nodded his head yes and then I decided to talk.

"So why did you leave Klaus to die?" everyone looked at me shocked, and Niki just looked at Klaus and screamed "How could you tell her, how could you not be DEAD!" Before he could answer I spoke up again

"He didn't tell me, I overheard you two talking, meaning I already know why you didn't show yourself, but why did you leave Klaus to die, it couldn't just have been because you were scared, I have thought about it more, and there is no way that you would have gone through killing 5 originals,, and coop out on the 6th one, no matter how powerful, because even just after killing one original, I would Die for any one person—besides you—in this room, so there had to be another reason, I just don't know if Klaus was too dumb, or too blind to see it."

"Maybe that's just the difference between you and me, I'm not as honorable" She said

"Well obviously not, but still you had to have another reason." As soon as I said that, I was looking between Niki and Klaus and then it hit me like a brick wall.

"Wow, how could I be so stupid?" I asked myself "He turned you, and you loved him" I said still to myself, but everyone could hear, and Niki looked really nervous, Klaus looked just as confused as everyone else, he really was blind.

"You loved Klaus, But Vladimir was the one that turned you, you didn't know that until you saw him. . You didn't know who to choose, so you just ran away, you couldn't betray either of them. That's it, isn't it?" I asked her, Klaus had a look of realization come over his face as Niki nodded.

"The two things I don't understand is why are you a dog, and why did you decide to change now?" I asked.

"I decided to change now because I finally made my decision, I'm going to kill Vladimir, and as for the dog, that is a very long story that I think you should all sit down for." She said. Everyone sat down but me "I think I'll stand."

"Okay, so I wasn't always human, I used to be just a dog, but one day Vladimir got really hungry, he was in the woods, with no people for miles. I happened to walk by and he bit me, and drained my of blood. Next thing I know I wake up in an abandoned mansion a bed as a human. I don't know if he gave me his blood as some sort of experiment but it didn't matter. I could talk, and I was extremely fast and strong, soon I figured out that not all humans were and that I was a Strigoi. Vladimir used me in ever way possible, I was a blood whore, his blood whore, and if anyone touched me, they died." She shuddered at the memory and Rob put an arm around her, she leaned into him and continued.

"The one thing about me he didn't know was that I could still turn into a dog, and when I was a dog I could walk in the sun. Vladimir though the originals were the only ones that could do that, so when I started to plan my escape I decided it was going to be during the day. He had an army of Strigoi that tended to his every whim, but as long as I left during the day he was the only one that could come after me. Long story short I turned into a dog and escaped, I enrolled in a school, we got attacked, and then I was recruited by him." She said poi9nting to Klaus. "I hated him at first, for killing my friends, but then I started to fall for him, and by the time we were attacking Vladimir, I was in love with him, once I realized who Vladimir was, I had to leave, I couldn't stand to watch Klaus die, and once I left i vowed never to change back into my human form accept once when I compelled a human to go into the forest and pull the stake out of Klaus, and well I guess now.

It looked like she was done with her story so I spoke up "Well it loks like Rob is going to need a bigger bed." I said retreating to my bed.

"That's it, I pour my heart out to you, ask to risk my life to help you and all you care about are the BEDS!" she screamed.

"Maybe that's why your first team was weaker, because they didn't get there sleep." I said calmly, but as I continued my voice got higher and higher until I was screaming. "Or maybe it is because Klaus got incompitant fighters who couldn't keep their feelings to themselves, and who would rather protect the person that made them a FUCKING BLOOD WHORE RATHER THAN THE PERSON THAT YOU LOVED! YOU THOUGHT TELLING US WAS GOING TO FIX EVERYTHING? I'M SORRY, BUT YOU DON'T GET A SECOND CHANCE TO KILL THE PEOPLE THAT ARE GOING TO DO MORE GOOD IN A COUPLE OF MONTHS THAN YOU WILL DO IN YOUR ENTIRE IMMORTAL LIFE! AND IF YOU THINK I AM GOING TO LET YOU GET WITHIN 100 YARDS OF VLADIMIR YOU ARE SADLY MISTAKEN! Now sorry I didn't wait until morning to tell you, I might have cooled off by then but no, you couldn't let me got to BED!" I screamed at her

"You and Rob can have the pull out couch" I whispered right before I walked out of the room and slammed the door shut behind me as I went down to the front desk.

"I'm going to need another room please, just one bed" I said handing the clerk my credit card.

She gave me the room key and I went to it. I sat on the bed, and left everything else untouched, I didn't even turn on the lights.

I just sat there and thought about everything that had happened. I don't know how long I was there but at one point the door opened and someone walked in. I didn't bother to see who it was, figuring it was Dimitri or Lissa but the voice that spoke surprised me. "I told you she doesn't like pretty women" Klaus said and I couldn't help but laugh. I just leaned my head on his shoulder and thought about how nice it was to laugh, I hadn't done it in so long.

I finally turned to him and said "I'm sorry."

"What for?" he asked, and I laughed again. "No I'm serious, you have nothing to be sorry for, Niki had no right to do what she did." He told me, and I looked at him "Neither did I, you shouldn't have figured out that way, it wasn't right, I honestly didn't know I was talking out loud." He looked at me questioningly and I realized I hadn't told him what I was talking about yet. "I mean about the part that she loved you, I know that you are with Wendy, and that must have hurt her, and I couldn't forgive myself If I had something to do with ruining that. It's obvious that Niki still loves you, any girl can see it, including Wendy, and I just don't know if Wendy is jealous or insecure, or something, and I don't want to threaten anything that you two might have. Especially since you and Niki can live forever, and Wendy can't" I told him.

"You know, I was supposed to came down here to make you feel better, and you are making me feel better when I didn't even know I felt bad." He said with a chuckle.

"Well this is making me feel better, because I felt horrible for how you found out, because I really do see you as a friend, and I meant what I said, when I said I would die for you, and so I don't like it when I hurt my friends."

We sat there in silence for a while before I said "I guess we should get back now?"I asked. "Not if you don't want to, I don't sleep anyway, I could stand watch and you could sleep here." Klaus told me.

"Oh yeah, I forgot, you don't sleep, so we won't go back, but I'm not going to go to sleep, I just want to talk." And that's what we did, all night, about everything.

He told me the whole story about when him and his other friends went after the originals, and then we did even more planning on how to kill Irvetta.

At around 5 o'clock in the morning (our time) we tried to sneak back in to the room but to no avail. Lissa was sitting right by the door, and it was obvious that she had fallen asleep, but when I walked in she woke right up. She did a silent kind of scream, and ran to give me a hug.

"Oh Rose, I'm so glad you're okay, and I'm so glad I'm your friend, I never want you to yell at me, that was scary." And now I was losing track of how many times someone had made me laugh in the past 24 hours.

"Of course I'm okay Lissa, I just needed to let off some steam so I didn't blow up at anyone I actually cared about."

Even though we were whispering, Dimitri being the good guardian that he is woke up. He walked over to me and took me in his arms, he pushed me to the wall and kissed me like he hadn't gotten to kiss me in months. I'm not saying I didn't like it, I loved it, but it was very unexpected. He finally pulled back and we were both out of breath, when I looked around Lissa and Klaus were gone and that made me smile, that they gave us our privacy. "I'm surprised you didn't come down and try to give me one of your Zen life lessons on anger management." I told him jokingly. "I did, but the receptionist wouldn't tell me what room you were in" he said. But then how did—ohhhhhh, compulsion" I said answering my own question. "Well I'm glad you tried, and I'm even more glad that you didn't succeed." I told him, as I stood on my tippy-toes to give him another kiss.

By now everyone was up, including Niki. "Okay, you have Irvetta to prove yourself, if you prove to be useful, and not just a waste of space then you can come with us, if you just get in our way, or jeopardize our mission in any way I will kill you myself, and put an end to you miserable immortal life. And I still will not let you be the one to kill Vladimir, that will be Klaus." I told her giving him a look that said I remembered our conversation last night, and how much all of this meant to him. Niki just nodded and then went to stand by Rob, looks like he won't be the only single one for long.

"We are still going as plan, today we will leave, and check all major cities starting from the biggest to the smallest, the reason we aren't going in order that they are placed is because I would rather waste time resting and driving then searching cities that she probably isn't going to be in. Even though she can survive sunlight, I can guarantee the battle will be at night, just like with Rosalie, because she is going to want all of the help she can get, so we will stay on this schedule, searching and practicing and driving while it is dark, and sleeping while it is light.

Everyone nodded and I knew that despite my explosion last night I still had everyone's trust, and I was more in control than ever because they all saw how much I cared for all of them, and how mean I could be if they wronged me."

We got in the cars and the first two cities were a bust. It was about midnight when we got to the third city, and when we did Klaus and I both felt something.

"Hey guys, I think she is here." I told them all, and they all immediately got more alert. We started checking out all of the hotels and houses and condos along the shore, and as we were walking I looked out to the sea and there she was, with an army of Strigoi, all standing ON the water.

At first look she was beautiful, blonde hair the color of the sand, and the dark tanned skin of someone who spends hours a day in the sun, she had blue eyes the color of the sky during twilight, obviously everything besides the hair was a mask, but she looked like the definition of water.

But when you looked closer you could see the coldness and the cruelty in her eyes, but the thing that scared me the most was the power that I saw there. It was more power than I could have ever imagined and it scared me to think that she was only the second most powerful original, third if you counted Klaus, I could tell right now that this battle was going to be hard.

No one moved for quite some time, finally she spoke up, and even though she was so far away her voice made it sound like she was right next to you. "Didn't you learn your lesson last time little brother, it isn't going to work, we are all more prepared." She said "Well so is he" I said, before he could say anything, and when I did she seemed to notice us for the first time, although I knew that wasn't true, she had sized us all up before we even went into that last hotel. "Oh, you brought me more people to kill, how delightful." She said with a laugh.

I started to run towards her, but I noticed that I was sinking in the water, she was only keeping her team afloat. She was laughing as she watched me try to run in the water, and since I was moving so fast in less than a second, I yelled Mia's name, and by the time I would have been knee deep I was now walking on the water, well running. She immediately stopped laughing, and by the time she could register what was happening I was right in front of her and used all of my momentum from my running to throw into my punch that sent her flying about 50 feet backwards.

As soon as that happened I was surrounded, but they were all focusing on me, so much so that none of them noticed all of my friends coming up behind them.

I vaguely noticed some humans that still happened to be up starring at the people moving at inhuman speed, fighting on top of the Dead Sea. I also noticed that Niki was doing pretty good, she was taking on three Strigoi right now and she was holding her own. But I got my head back into the battle, and unlike with Rosalie, Irvetta wasn't afraid to fight, despite her little fall.

She was currently fighting Dimitri, and I had no doubt that he would win, but he wasn't fighting just her, he was also fighting other Strigoi. I was hoping that this would be a good time for Christian to go head to head with Irvetta but when I looked at him he was also fighting Strigoi, lots of them, like 10. I looked around and I was scared, we might actually lose this one, and it's only the second one. But then I saw Mia and she was just standing there, none of the Strigoi were anywhere near her, they were all just watching them, kind of like I was. All she was doing was moving her lips, and what started out slow became faster and faster, but Dimitri was in real trouble, we all were, so I had to interrupt "MIA, IRVETTA, NOW!"She looked up from what she was doing and then looked over to Dimitri and then back at me. She nodded, and as soon as she moved her feet, the Strigoi that looked like they were under some kind of spell went after her, and I had to make sure that they didn't.

Once she got to Dimitri, within seconds the other Strigoi Dimitri was fighting were gone, and then it was just Dimitri, Irvetta, and Mia.

The water that was under them began to rise, and I wasn't sure if it was Mia or Irvetta doing this, but the higher it got the more I thought it was Irvetta's attempt to get them separated from the rest of the group.

With my moments distraction I didn't notice other figures in the water moving towards us, and more Strigoi going down. By the time one got close enough for me to see them I saw what they were, mermaids.