Disclaimer: I don't own any IPs that might appear in the story
The Council of Thirteen
Book Seven: The Second Lord
The Kuran Restoration
Chapter 3: Schooling and a Murder Mystery
Beta:
The nineteen year old, Kuran Yuki, Second Lord of the Council of Thirteen, was in Kaien-san's office in the recently completed Cross Academy. Standing diligently to her right, acting as her shadow was her girlfriend, Yori, and sitting to her left was Kaname-niisan.
"Yori-san, you know you don't need to stand like that, right?" Kaien-san said with a frown, pointing to an empty chair to the side from his position behind his desk.
"I am fine, Kaien-sama." Yori assured the former Hunter and current Headmaster.
"Yori," Yuki said with a tired sigh. "Do I have to order you?"
"Yuki-sama, it would be improper in polite company. We both need to get used to it or it'll foster talk from the aristocracy."
"You worry too much, Yori-san." Kaname-niisan said with a subtle shake of his head. "That a Pureblood would allow their non-Pureblood lovers such liberties is expected. It will not raise as much concern as you believe."
"Even then, Kaname-sama. I would prefer to not cause any problems for Yuki-sama."
Yuki just sighed. "Yori, pull that chair over and sit down. Please."
Yori frowned but clearly realizing she was fighting a losing battle, she did as she told. Once she did, Yuki grabbed one of Yori's hands and kissed it. Yori blushed but did not pull her hand back, not even as Yuki kept hold of her hand and rested their entwined hands in her lap.
"You two are so cute together," Kaien-san said with a pleased smile, one that even Kaname-niisan shared though his was naturally more reserved.
"Thank you," Yuki said with a grin, even as Yori's blush grew even more rosy. "But now that we're all settled shall we get down to discussing what we were here for?"
"Of course," Kaien-san said, nodding as he grew serious and handed folders to both Purebloods. "As previously discussed we have divided the student cohort into a Day Class for non-vampires to be conducted during the day and a nocturnal Night Class for the vampires. Those folders have the details."
Using some telekinesis to help her, so she didn't need to release Yori's hand, Yuki quickly glanced through the documents detailing the measures that Kaien-san had set up to facilitate the unusual arrangement. Time tables, staff, arrangement for sharing facilities between the two classes, etc.
"Everything looks to be in order." Yuki agreed as she passed the documents to Yori to have a look as well. "Kaname-niisan?"
"I agree," her ancestor and adoptive brother said with a nod. "At least on this quick glance. I will need to review it in more detail though, I am sure that there will be some small areas here or there that will require refinement."
"Agreed. Thank you for the hard work, Kaien-san."
"It was no problem," Kaien-san said, waving the praise away. "Though I do have one concern. I still do not think it is wise for you to attend the school as part of the Day Class?"
"It is a must," Yuki insisted. "An authority figure needs to be part of the Day Class and lead the Student Council that will be responsible for maintaining the peace in the Academy. After all, it's why I'm even attending the Academy despite having already graduated from university back in Sanctuary!"
"I agree. But we could've picked someone else to take up the role." Kaien-san said with a frown as he nodded towards Kaname-niisan. "I honestly feel bad that you have been saddled with the responsibility."
"No need to be upset." Yuki assured the man. "I volunteered, besides who else could take the role? Despite being a Pureblood, I hardly command the same level of respect among the vampires that have chosen to attend the Academy as Niisan especially since he directly recruited many of them. He's needed to serve as their leader and keep them in line. Besides, I am more of a fighter than anything else so keeping the peace is right up my alley."
That didn't satisfy Kaien-san and he opened his mouth to continue arguing the issue, but thankfully Kaname-niisan stepped in before he could.
"Kaien-san, whilst I understand your desire to protect Yuki due to your love for our mother, Juri. My sister is stubborn."
"Just like Kaasan was," Yuki added with a teasing smirk.
"Indeed," he continued with a chuckle. "And just like Kaasan, Yuki will not be moved. Besides, what she says has merit."
"Kuran women can be stubborn indeed," Kaien-san admitted with a sigh and Yori nodded in agreement before she blushed at having done so.
How cute. Yuki giggled as she lifted Yori's hand that she still held onto and kissed it once more.
"I probably should take offense at that," Yuki said with an amused smirk. "But I can't because it's true."
Everyone chuckled at that.
"Zero-san!" Yuki cried out in annoyance at the tall young man with short silver hair, snowy-white skin and lavender eyes that was Kaien-san's adoptive son and a Level D Kuranian. "This exercise is supposed to be about learning to cooperate with your fellow Councillors! Not a chance for you to pick fights!"
"I don't take orders from a vampire!" The man hissed, turning his anti-vampire gun, Bloody Rose, away from one of the other Student Councilor, a lanky Russian armed with a small buckler shield as his Mystic Code, to level it at Yuki instead.
Immediately the rest of the Student Council tensed, readying their weapons and Mystic Codes should they need to intervene.
Yuki herself was at wits' end with the abrasive Level D. Yes, his anger towards their kind was justified since he had been violently turned by a rogue Pureblood that had attacked his family, killing his parents and abducting his twin in the process, but even then his behavior was excessive. Yuki was not Hio Shizuka and she was only trying to help him. He would never be able to work with the other Student Councillors to help preserve the peace in Cross Academy, as was their stated mission, if he could not even collaborate with them.
"I advise you to lower your weapon at once." Yori warned the boy as she used Shadow Step to put herself between him and Yuki, a dozen swords imbued with a variety of elemental energies hovering around her and poised to impale him should the need present itself.
Zero-san's eyes narrowed in anger, in what Yuki imagined was a response to another vampire getting in his way, but a quick glance at the other Councillors around him and their tense, battle ready stances had him lowering the weapon.
It seems he has some sense of self-preservation after all. Yuki thought drily.
"This is a waste of my time anyways," the apprentice Vampire Hunter spat as he holstered his pistol and stalked off, heedless of the wary eyes every one of the dozen or so other magicals in the heavily warded clearing they were using as a training ground were shooting him.
Yuki breathed a sigh of relief as he departed.
"Yuki-sama, is having him on the Council really a good idea?" Yori asked, voicing the sentiment of the other Councillors if the many nods from the others were any indication.
"Unfortunately the Vampire Hunter Association insists on it." Yuki said with a tired shrug. "I've complained to them about his attitude and Kaien-san has advised them to appoint someone else as well, but they are unmoved. It's one of their conditions that he be their on site agent. Otherwise, they will not support the Academy."
"They insist on it being him?" The Russian, Savinkov Tikhon "Tisha" Maximovich-san, that Zero-san had been about to fight with earlier asked. "Or can it be any other Vampire Hunter?"
"They want him in particular." Yuki clarified. "I suspect they chose him because they know he's likely to cause trouble. They can't overtly disapprove of the Academy and the attempt at peaceful co-existence it stands for, not with a Lord of the Thirteen like myself backing it but-"
"But if the project blows up in our faces then they can back away from any future attempts." Tisha-san said with a shake of his head. "Bunch of bloody warmongers."
"To be fair to them, the history of blood that runs between us is deep." Yori offered with a frown. "Zero-san is proof of that. The Pureblood who turned him against his will, Hio Shizuka, only attacked his family in revenge for their slaying of her lover."
"The never ending cycle of vengeance." Tisha-san spat, unimpressed. "I am familiar with it. It was the same back home between the various factions too before Lady Dominique forced everyone to stop."
Yuki nodded. Tisha was from the Carpathians, a region that Sensei had pacified some time ago. Before her intervention, the local factions there had been at each other's throats in an endless cycle of violence just like her kind and the Vampire Hunters were. Thankfully, that had ended. For now.
"Indeed," Yuki nodded, smothering a proud smile that threatened to spread across her face at the thought of her foster mother's success. "I have a question though. Tisha-san, what set Zero-san off this time?"
"I just asked him if he was alright." The brown-eyed blonde said with a shrug. "He was all fidgety. I was thinking he wasn't taking his Blood Pills again."
Yuki winced. That would've set the volatile Level D off. The silver haired boy made it no secret that he despised taking the blood substitute that Kaname-niisan's allies had recently developed. Not that Yuki could blame him. They tasted awful. She was thankful that she had Yori and if need be Niisan to provide her all the blood she needed. Then again, she doubted taste was why he hated taking them. For him, they were a reminder that he was exactly what he hated most in the world: a vampire.
"I hope you didn't ask him that," one of the other Student Councillors, a young magical swordswoman of the Shinmei-ryū (神鳴流, Gods' Cry School) by the name of Hatanaka Miwa-san, chimed in.
"I have more tact than that," Tisha-san said with a roll of his eyes. "But I suppose he took it to mean it that way anyway."
"He probably did," the girl with long straight hair in a traditional cut and the carriage of a yamato nadeshiko said with a shake of her head. "He's too sensitive."
"He is," Yori agreed, clapping her hands together to get everyone's attention. "But we can deal with Zero-san at another time. For now, we have training to do. So let's get back to it everyone!"
"Hai, Vice-President~!" Everyone chorused as they moved to obey Yori's order.
Yuki offered her a smile for that and tilted her head to indicate she had to go.
Yori nodded back, wordlessly telling her that she had things here under control.
Smiling at her girlfriend in thanks, she teleported away to see Kaien-san. She had to file another complaint against Zero-san.
"This is the place?" Yori asked in disbelief as Yuki and her teleported in front of a heavily warded European style castle hidden in the countryside not far outside of the limits of the town of Wakkanai.
"Yes," Yuki confirmed. "This is the home of Shirabuki Sara-dono."
"Is it just me or do our kind have an excessive fascination with our European roots? I mean, we've been living in East Asia for millennia now! We've taken up the names and in many cases the lifestyles even, so why are we still obsessed with European architecture?"
"You forget Yori," Yuki began to explain as they began walking towards the gate of the castle and the cluster of nervous looking Nobles and their retainers standing there. "Many of our leaders still remember their time in Europe and continue to feel a cultural affinity to it even if they've mostly assimilated into the host cultures of our new homelands."
"That makes sense I suppose." Yori hummed thoughtfully.
"Of course it does, Level D." One of the Nobles present spat as he stepped ahead of his peers, glaring daggers at Yori. "Who are you, a lowly former human, to question Yuki-sama's wisdom."
Yuki saw Yori flinch at the hatred being directed towards her and saw red. Acting without thinking, she blurred towards the Noble and picked him up by the throat with her right hand even as her left shot down to impale him.
Fortunately for the fool, Yori reacted quickly and caught Yuki's left arm before she could land the killing blow.
"Yuki-sama! Stop!" She begged.
Yori's pleading voice pulled her out of her red haze and Yuki took a deep breath, dropping the now terrified Noble.
"Consider yourself lucky that Yori intervened." Yuki spat down at the trembling man. "If she had not, you'd be dead."
"Yuki-sama!" Yori hissed warningly.
She was probably right in trying to warn her to stop but Yuki could not live with herself if she did not at least set the matter straight.
"Do my insult my lover ever again." Yuki warned not just the Nobles present but through them, the entire Kuranian aristocracy. "Or do so at your own peril."
The gathered lesser vampires all nodded fearfully.
"Now then," Yuki said, changing the topic as if she hadn't not just issued a dire threat. "Tell me what has happened here?"
"Was that really necessary?" Yori demanded of Yuki as the two of them were allowed to examine Shirabuki-sama's bedroom alone thanks to the latter leveraging her authority as the Second Lord of the Council of Thirteen and a trained mage.
"I will not brook any disrespect towards you, Yori." Yuki said as she kneeled down next to a pile of ashes that presumably had been the room's owner and cast a series of what she recognized as diagnostic spells over it.
That's sweet. Yori admitted, as her heart skipped a beat at the gesture. But-
"It was reckless, Yuki-sama." She chided her lover. "Now all your enemies will know to use me against you."
"I'd be very surprised if they didn't already know the state of our relationship before now," Yuki said dismissively as she stood and expanded her spells to scan the whole room. "Those who did not aren't worth the worry."
Yori sighed. "And your standing among the aristocrats? Won't it be harmed by declaring me your lover? They will be most upset they can't send their children to seduce you now."
Yuki giggled at that. "I'm sure they'll still try. And I think they'll be more worried that since I'm a lesbian that it'll limit the ability for me to have children. You know how obsessed the Nobles are about us Purebloods reproducing."
"They obviously haven't heard of Dom-sama." Yori said with a shake of her head. "Being the same sex as her wives hasn't stopped her from having children."
"Magic can do wondrous things," Yuki agreed with another giggle. "By the way Sensei did teach me the spells-"
Blushing furiously, Yori cut her lover off before she could continue. "Not now!"
"When then?" Yuki asked with a pout. "We're not getting any younger."
"We're nineteen." Yori reminded her. "We've plenty of time to start a family."
"Oh, alright." Yuki said, sounding thoroughly disappointed.
Yori just rolled her eyes. Just because Dom-sama had children young, didn't mean they had to! Look at Sakura-sama and Tomoyo-sama, besides adopting Dom-sama they were childless and were perfectly happy with that fact. Not that Yuki saw things that way!
I wonder how long I can put her off from putting a baby in my belly. Yori thought warily. I hope she can wait a few more years at least. I'd like to be at least in my mid-twenties before I become a mother.
"So did you pick up anything?" Yori asked her lover, pushing aside the other woman's impatience for them to have children.
"I can confirm that Shirabuki-dono is dead." Yuki said with a frown, gesturing to the pile of ash she'd been examining first. "That's her remains alright."
"So she didn't fake her death?" Yori asked, playing Devil's Advocate and forwarding one of the more outlandish theories that the initial Noble investigators had come up with.
"Not unless she's got some way to transfer her consciousness into another body." Yuki said, shaking her head. "Because that ash is definitely hers."
"She wasn't a mage as far as we know." Yori countered. "Did you detect any sign of soul or mind transfer magic?"
"None," Yuki confirmed, looking hesitant for some reason.
"You noticed something?"
"Yes, but take a whiff of the ambient magic yourself first." Yuki said, warily. "I want a second opinion before I draw any conclusions."
Yori nodded and took a deep breath. Whilst she was not much of a magical sensor in the traditional sense. She did have a certain rather unorthodox talent in that area and that was the ability to use her sense of smell to discern magical traces. It wasn't as exact as using a divination spell, the whole school of which Yori had no talent for, but her nose was remarkably sensitive.
And as she filtered the air she'd just taken in through her odd addon to her sense of smell, she almost gagged. The ambient magic reeked of strange, alien magic. It felt woody yet acrid all at once. Wholesome yet stomach churning at the same time. In terms of quantity, the terrible taste was probably only a small fraction of magic that permeated the room but its intensity was such that despite that fact, it overwhelmed everything else.
"Outsider!" Yori managed as she snatched the glass of water Yuki had gotten from somewhere and gulped the liquid down to clear her throat of the unpleasant taste. "The whole place is filled with their magic."
"Yes," Yuki agreed. "It is."
"But why would any of the Outsiders want Shirabuki-sama dead?" Yori asked as she finished and put the glass down on the nearest table. Her nose and throat still stung from the traces of the otherworldly magic but the water had helped immensely.
"Not just kill her," Yuki said, looking over the practically pristine room critically. "Assassinate her."
Yori looked around and nodded. Yuki was right. There were zero signs of a struggle. Outside of Shirabuki-sama's remains themselves, there was no evidence that a death had occurred here at all.
"The maids who reported the death said there were no sounds of a fight either." Yori added, recalling the witness testimonies that they'd read earlier.
"If the Outsiders were aiming for destabilising Kuranian society they would have chosen a more flashy mode of execution." Yuki mused, pacing the room. "They might want to hamper my plans for our people. The Sapphic Circle have been enemies of the Council of Thirteen for some time."
"Maybe not. About them wanting to be flashy I mean." Yori countered. "I mean, our kind are notoriously political. And our society's peace is tenuous. If they can tip over the apple cart subtly, they might be able to achieve more instability than if they went with something flashy."
"You're right." Yuki agreed. "If they attacked one of our Purebloods openly then they might provide us with an enemy to rally against."
"But that all assumes that destabilising our society is their aim." Yori pointed out. "It might not be. They might have targeted Shirabuki-sama for other reasons."
"Are you suggesting that she might've had some kind of dealings with them?"
"Possibly," Yori nodded. "It's unlikely but it's an avenue we'll need to explore."
"Good point." Yuki agreed. "But I think we can leave it to the Nobles to do that. I think we've exhausted what we can do here for now."
"Do we have any Nobles we trust on the investigation team?" Yori asked, with a raised eyebrow.
"Not yet," Yuki admitted. "But I'll speak to Niisan. He'll arrange for one of our allies to join the team."
"Then let's head back to the Academy." Yori said, nodding her head in acceptance. "I want to go take a bath to wash away the scent of Outsider."
"Maybe I'll join you." Yuki said with a lascivious grin.
"Sure," Yori replied with a blush. "But let's tell the investigators what we've found first. It would be impolite to just leave."
"You and decorum." Yuki said with a good natured roll of her eyes. "Let's do that then. The sooner we get it done, the sooner I can have you crying out my name in ecstasy in the bath."
Yori's blush grew even more intense and she imagined she was probably glowing. She did not however deny anything that her lover said however. It was probably exactly what would happen after all.
Yuki and Yori had just teleported back to their shared dorm room in Cross Academy when there was a knock on the door.
"Yuki-sama," Miwa-san shouted through the oak door. "I sensed you teleporting back. I'm sorry for troubling you when you just got back but there's been a disturbance in the Boys' Dorms."
"Zero-san again?" Yuki asked with a tired sigh.
"Unfortunately."
"Understood. I will be there shortly." Yuki told the swordswoman before turning to Yori. "I'll handle this alone, Yori. You deserve a break, it's been a long day. One of us does."
"Are you sure, Yuki?"
Yuki nodded, pecking Yori on the cheek before teleporting away before her startled girlfriend could respond.
She rematerialized in the secluded room inside the Boys' Dorm that served as its designated teleportation point and was immediately met by Tisha-san.
"What has Zero-san done this time?" Yuki said with a frown as she stepped out of the room with the Russian falling in beside her.
"No idea," Tisha-san confessed. "There was the sound of a major struggle from his room. We tried to investigate but he locked his room. We tried asking him to open it, but received no answer."
"The wards are holding at least," Yuki said with a sigh. "At least we know that he won't be able escape if he does lose control."
"Small favours," Tisha-san said with a shake of his head.
"The mundanes?" Yuki asked as they walked into the main lobby of the Dorm and noticed the lack of a crowd that would be expected considering that there was a commotion afoot.
"The rest of the male Councillors are using their magic to keep everyone in their rooms." Tisha-san informed her as they climbed the stairs to the second floor.
Yuki nodded. "Good job."
They fell into a tense silence for the remaining walk to Zero-san's room, in front of which two more male Councilors were keeping guard.
Yuki nodded to both of them before knocking on the door.
"Zero-san, this is Yuki." She shouted through the door. "Open up."
As she expected, she received no answer but she waited for a minute nonetheless. It was only then that she tapped the door in the specific pattern and with a specific pulse of magic, disabling the wards that kept the room isolated.
As soon as the protections went down, Yuki used her supernatural strength to force the door open, ruining the door as its handle and the entire lock assembly splintered as she did so. Stepping through the splinters created by forcing the door, Yuki found a ruin of a dorm room. More importantly though, it was empty.
"He escaped?" Tisha-san said incredulously stating the obvious as he surveyed the room full of wrecked furniture, torn books and shattered knicknacks.
"Yes," Yuki observed absently as she ran a finger glowing with a hastily cast diagnostic spell around the windowsill of the broken window. "Slipping through the wards without our notice."
"How?"
"If the cordite residues my spell are anything to go with?" Yuki said, pulling her finger back and wiped it off against her handkerchief. "He shot his way out with Bloody Rose. It seems we underestimated the power of his Mystic Code."
"We'll need to rework those wards, won't we?" Tisha-san said with a groan.
"Yes," Yuki agreed. "But we can worry about that later. For now, we need to find Zero-san before he does something he'll regret. Tisha-san, gather every Student Councillor we can spare and have them go search for him."
"At once, Yuki-sama." Tisha-san said, snapping a quick salute and waving at the two other Councillors that had been previously standing guard outside Zero-san's room to follow him as he rushed off to carry out her order.
Yuki summoned a swarm of her butterfly familiars, the magically conjured insects literally peeling off her skin and flying out the window to go search the Academy's campus. She was about to follow after Tisha-san and search in person as well, when something one of her butterflies noticed caught her attention.
Lying among the wreckage of Zero-san's room was a spilled bottle of Blood Tablets. It wasn't really that out of place considering the state of the room but the sight nevertheless brought a frown to Yuki's face as a worrying idea of what predicament had befallen the Level D formed in her mind.
An idea that solidified into a disturbing certainty as one of her familiars found Zero-san.
Her eyes opened in shock at the almost feral state that he had been reduced to, curled up in the belfry of the school's clocktower and she immediately teleported to his side to assist him.
"Zero-san!" Yuki gasped, teleporting to the clocktower. "Are you al-"
"Stay away!" The boy growled, glaring at her with glowing crimson eyes and flashing his elongated fangs threateningly.
Yuki frowned but stopped closing the distance, wary of setting off the clearly unstable Level D. In addition to the overt vampiric features that he wasn't hiding, or probably was not able to, like he usually did, he was shivering uncontrollably. All sure signs of a vampire being overcome by their thirst for blood.
"You need blo-"
"No, I don't." The boy hissed defiantly.
"Yes, you do!" Yuki insisted, as she summoned a bottle of Blood Tablets from the pocket dimension where she kept a stash of essentials. She might not make use of Blood Tablets but Yori did, sometimes, and what was essential to her lover was essential to her.
"Here," she said, tossing the bottle at the lesser vampire. "Take some of those now before you become a danger to the Academy's humans."
"It won't work," he said, slapping the bottle away. "My body is rejecting the damned pills."
"Don't tell me…"
The Blood Tablets were remarkable and offered their kind, and potentially other breeds of vampires, a substitute for fresh blood. But it was not perfect. From the trials that had been conducted before they had been released, it was known that 1% of vampires couldn't stomach the Tablets. So either they were really unlucky and Zero-san was one of rare few or…
He's falling to Level E and the Tablets are losing their effectiveness on him. Yuki thought with growing horror. Almost as soon as the emotion gripped her though, she shoved it aside. She was a Lord of the Thirteen, she could not let emotion consume her when faced with a problem. Sensei had trained her to be better than that.
Either way, she thought with determination. There's one way I can fix this.
Without hesitation, she raised right arm and quickly ran her left hand across her forearm, breaking her skin with her nails and allowing her blood to flow freely, fighting her regeneration as it sought to seal her wounds.
"Drink," she told Zero-san as she stepped towards him.
"No," he whined pitifully as he jerked his head away from her.
It seemed though that he was no longer in full control of his body for even as his head tried to pull away, his body tried to do the opposite. As a result, he made a strange jerky motion that caused him to crash into the ground.
"Ssh," she whispered to the spasming boy encouragingly even as his motions saw him inch closer to her despite his best efforts to the contrary. "Drink and you'll be fine soon."
"No, I-I don't want to!" He cried, tears flowing freely down his face as he continued to futilely fight against his instincts.
"It's okay, it's natural for us vampires to drink blood." Yuki reminded him as she stretched out her bleeding arm towards the poor tortured boy.
"I'm not a vampire!" The stubborn boy said even as he couldn't help himself from leaning forward and starting to close the remaining distance between him and the blood that would be his salvation.
His tongue was stretching unnaturally out of his mouth to lick at it when suddenly he was pulled forcefully back and he let out a beastial howl at being denied.
Yuki for her part just blinked in shock as two of the most prominent, and possibly most powerful, members of the Night Class, Akatsuki Kain-san and Hanabusa Aido-san, manhandled the blood starved Zero-san. Not that she had long to process the sight before Kaname-niisan's broad back blocked them from view and Yori materialized next to her, hastily grabbing her bleeding right arm and casting a healing spell. They were in turn followed by what seemed like the majority of the Night Class.
"Niisan! Don't kill him!" Yuki shouted, reaching out with her free hand to grab the back of her brother's blazer. "He didn't hurt me! I was just trying to help him stave off a fall to Level E."
For a long moment, Kaname-niisan said nothing but thankfully the subtle collection of power that he'd been gathering since he'd teleported in presumably in preparation to destroy Zero-san for hurting her dissipated.
"That was reckless of you, Yuki." He said after taking a deep, calming breath. "When I smelt your blo-"
"W-We thought you'd been injured." Yori finished for him, her voice shaking from the depth of her worry.
"Well, I'm fine." Yuki insisted, rolling her eyes at the overprotectiveness on display by her fellow vampires. The Night Class she could understand, the need to protect Purebloods was deeply ingrained in them by their culture, but surely Niisan and Yori knew that she could take care of herself. That said, she could scold them later. For now, she had a situation to resolve.
Using her powers, she shaped the blood that she'd shed earlier into a dozen or so butterflies and had them fly around the wall that Kaname-niisan was being towards Zero-san and his captors.
"Kain-san, Aido-san, open his mouth for me please."
Both Nobles looked confused but they were trained to never disobey a Pureblood and so dutifully forced Zero-san's mouth open. It was quite a struggle to do so, the Level D fighting them every step of the way, but they managed.
Smiling at that, Yuki ordered the butterflies she'd created from her blood to divebomb down the silver haired boy's throat.
"That's one way to feed a reluctant child I suppose," Niisan joked, in a rare public display of humor. Or was he just insulting Zero-san? Honestly, Yuki couldn't tell.
Though any pondering she might have had on the matter was cut short when Zero-san realized what had happened. As soon as sanity returned to his eyes, something Yuki saw with relief through her gathering familiars, he began to sob in miserable despair.
"No! What have I done!" He shouted between his sobs. "Take it out! Get that blood out of me!"
Every other vampire there looked at him like he was mad. And Yuki could commiserate. Drinking the blood of a Pureblood was considered one of the greatest privileges a Kuranian vampire could ever have. Something that was reserved for lovers and family. Yet here he was desperately wishing he'd not done so? Even though doing so was probably what saved him from devolving into a mindless Level E?
"You might hate me now," Yuki said, setting aside her disbelief at the boy's sheer ungratefulness to be gracious. "But I refuse to allow anyone to become a Level E when I am in a position to do something about it. Becoming a Level E, being reduced to an unthinking, blood crazed beast, is a fate I would not wish even on my most hated enemies."
Done!
And so this particular 'book' enters into the meat of the story. I hope everyone is liking it so far. I know I've reinterpreted Zero's relationships, especially with Yuki, a great deal but considering the changed circumstances of my fic that's unavoidable. I've also introduced a couple of OCs to function as the POVs among Yuki's subordinates on the expanded Student Council (which is an organisation that's a given to be filled by magicals loyal to the Thirteen). Don't know if I'll give them actual POV scenes but they might get'em. Otherwise, I named them mainly just so Yuki would have some names to call when speaking to her Councillors.
That's all I gotta say about this chapter I think. Till the next chapter… viszontlátásra!