Yuuki looked up as she heard her name. From the sound of the voice, it had been said a few times before she had responded. She looked into the worried faces in front of her and tried to offer them a reassuring smile that even she could tell fell flat.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. She paused before she continued trying to decide what she wanted to say. "I - I don't actually know what I'm doing," she said deciding that honesty was the best. "I've never been to war before. I have killed, but I don't see that as an achievement to be proud of. Quite frankly, I don't feel qualified to lead you. And if any of you do, I will follow you. If not . . . well, then I'll do the best I can. Would anyone else like to lead?"
The nobles exchanged anxious glances. They had never been to war either and had hoped that she at least had some idea what to do. They wanted to know that they were not being lead to a slaughter, but since they were all clueless as well they could not, in good conscience, take leadership from a pureblood, even one whose eyes and voice begged them to do so.
Yuuki saw their pity and knew that it meant that none of them would do this for her. She nodded and offered them a sad smile. She did appreciate that they—unlike Kaname—seemed to realize how difficult this was for her. That brought her a little joy even if they would not do it for her.
"Ok," she said with a shrug. "I suppose the plan is simple. Kaname asked me to tell you that our goal is to help the others. Since we are not as restricted by distance, we're to hang back and do damage control and try to keep the hunters from killing our fighters. Don't get any closer to the battle than you have to."
"There is one thing I would ask of you," she said reluctantly. "This is by no means an order. You are free to ignore it and nothing will happen. All I request is that if there is a way that you can prevent a death of one of ours without killing a hunter, please do it. If you can't . . . then do what you must. That's all I have to say. Until the time comes, you are free to go be with your families."
She dismissed them at the same time as the other groups dismissed their people and for the next ten minutes or so the room was filled with murmurs and tears as people said good bye to the loved ones that they may never see again. Yuuki and her family remained on the stage, not minding if everyone saw what happened between them but knowing that everyone was too involved in their own goodbyes to care about anyone else's. None of them said goodbye. That would make this too final. Even so, none of them—not even Zero—objected when the headmaster hugged both of his children. They all knew that this might be the last time they were all together and took the chance to memorize each other's faces in case they didn't return from battle.
Kaname tried to catch Yuuki's eye to tell her that he appreciated what she had just done, but she pointedly ignored him. Her rejection hurt and he hoped that when this was over he would have the chance to fix whatever he had done to anger her so. He knew that she would be a prime target in the battle and also knew that there was nothing he could do to prevent it. He could not be in two places at once and that pureblood needed to be dealt with. He tried to convince himself that she had the skills that she needed to survive, but that did little to reassure him. He wanted to take her with him, to keep her by his side and keep her safe, but knew that the hunters would be less dangerous that involving her in a battle of ancients.
No, as helpless as it made him feel, he would have to let her fight this battle alone. There was no other option. What she didn't seem to realize was that forcing her to fight without him was nearly as difficult for him as it was for her. He couldn't stand the thought that she might die because he wasn't there, but—despite what she had said—there was no alternative. He just hoped that the decision he had been forced into, and her reluctance to accept it, would not cost her her life.
It was with that depressing thought that he decided the time had come to begin the battle. With a curt nod to Kaien, he cleared his throat and said," The time has come." He wanted to say more, but nothing he could think of was appropriate. He had no grand speech prepared and could make no promises of victory. They would have causalities. Yuuki didn't think he realized it but he knew that for the people who would lose loved ones that night the victory would be a hollow one. He knew the pain of loss, the debilitating pain of knowing that if only you had been faster, smarter, stronger then they would not have died. He knew.
Even so, he also knew that at times loss was necessary for the greater good. That was what he focused on as he led them to the wall he had erected the day before. He closed his eyes as he felt the army fan out behind him to take their positions. First he would neutralize the weapons, and then he would bring down the wall. For the first time he was glad that he had built a self-destruct sequence into the magic that had been used to create the weapons.
He took a deep breath before he released the spell. I'm sorry, he thought as he released the magic that would end the weapons of the hunters. He hated doing it because it could never be undone. Through that one action he had nullified the sacrifice that she had made so long ago. Yuuki spoke to him earlier of things that were difficult to do, he wondered if she had thought about what had been asked of him that day. It felt like he finally let go of the sliver of memory that had remained of her through the millennia despite the fact that she was gone. This time he really had destroyed her, he could not argue against it.
His sorrow at what he had just done by eradicating the evidence of the sacrifice of his first love lent him the strength he needed to bring down the wall. He gave a harsh laugh at how easy it had been for him to destroy something that had taken so much from him to create. Maybe they were right, he thought with a cruel smile. Maybe I do destroy everything I touch. But at least I am good at destruction. Before the dust had even settled, the vampires were on the move. The battle had begun.
ooOO88OOoo
In the hunter's camp, Kazuye felt the wave of power wash over her as Kaname released his first spell, but she did not know what it had done. She opened her mouth to warn the president that and attack was probably eminent when the sound of an explosion filled the air.
"What was that!?" he demanded rounding on her as though she had been responsible for the noise. His eyes were wide and it was clear to her that he was afraid.
"The war has begun," she said simply. Now that it had come down to it, she wasn't afraid. She was determined that she would kill Kaname Kuran. If he managed to take her with him . . . well, that was an acceptable outcome. At least then she would know that the hunters would have no more control over her.
"Impossible!" he barked his face inches from her own. "There is no way that they can think that they are ready to face us in battle."
"Ready or not, they are coming," she replied. She could feel the first stirrings of magic in the air and could smell that blood had already been shed. "Or rather, they have come. I suggest you prepare your troops."
"Don't tell me what to do!" he snapped his eyes still wide and beginning to show madness. For the first time she realized that he hadn't expected that the vampires would fight back. She laughed grimly as she realized that he had expected them to lie down and die peacefully.
"Just because they are pacifists does not mean that they will not fight," she said smugly. "You trapped them and they had nothing left to lose. This will be a difficult battle." He raised his hand as though he would strike her before he stopped himself and clinched his jaw in an attempt to push down his temper.
"Then, perhaps, you should get out there and do your part," he said in a deathly calm voice. She nodded in response before moving towards the door. Even if she resented the way he had spoken to her, she wanted to go, if only so that she could have a chance to kill the man that had left her in the care of the hunters so long ago. She doubted that he would be difficult to find.
ooOO88OOoo
On the other side of the battlefield there was no need to search for combatants. As soon as the wall had come down, the hunters had sprung into action. Their shock was their weapons did nothing to the vampires allowed many of them to be overpowered in that first instant, but soon they had adapted. They had other weapons, weapons designed to kill ordinary people that they had all carried in case they came up against Kaien or Yagari—though how they had intended to switch weapons before they would have been cut down was something they had not thought through—and it was these they were now using to fight vampires.
They had also brought some cannons to use to bring down the wall and they had repurposed these to help to slow down the vampires. Despite the better training of the hunters, the vampires had the element of surprise on their side and the fact that the news about the weapon malfunctions had not traveled through the entire army yet. And then there was the magic: the random flares of elements that were popping up unexpectedly and blocking them from making a kill. In the chaos and confusion, they could not find the vampires that were responsible for controlling the elements. And on top of all of this, the president was nowhere to be found. They needed guidance. Though all the hunters there had fought Level E's, there was a control and a planning here that they had not been prepared for. This battle was rapidly turning into the bloodbath they had thought it would be, but it was not going the way they had thought that it would.
The vampires, though the battle was going the way they had hoped it would, were no more thrilled with it than the hunters were. They were used to blood, being vampires, but this . . . it was wasteful. The blood coating the ground and their bodies need not have been spilt. There was no point to it other than a senseless quest for revenge. The fact that they regretted the waste did nothing to stop them from performing it. The situation had become kill or be killed and had been initiated by the men whose lives they were now taking. And even the most sensible among them lost all traces of remorse as they watched their friends bleed and, in some cases die, as the battle became more ferocious.
And then the hunters unleashed the cannons. Where with the swords and guns it took a well placed wound to end a vampire—either through the removal of a head or the heart—the cannons required much less precision. It was by these that the night class suffered the first of their casualties. Despite the instructions to hang back from the battle, Rima had move right in—staying near Shiki and Takuma. She had just bounced her lightning from a couple of hunter swords, taking down two men with one stroke, when she heard the first explosion and saw the cannon ball coming.
It was headed for Takuma. The only thought that went through Rima's head—despite the hurt that she still felt for what had happened between them—was that she could not watch him die. There was no time for her to stop it and there was no time to warn him so she did the only thing that she could think of and tried to knock them both to safety. She had thought that she would be fast enough, but she was wrong. She felt her eyes go wide at the searing pain in her chest and looked down in surprise to see the gaping wound. She could feel her blood flowing freely from the gaping wound where her heart had once been. Strangely, now that she saw the wound it didn't hurt. It didn't hurt, but she did feel strangely cold.
She vaguely heard someone calling her name loudly and felt her body lifted and cradled against a warmer one. She also felt as shaking hands were pressed to her chest in a vain attempt to stop the bleeding. She forced her eyes open—strangely she didn't remember closing them—and saw two crying Takumas looking at her. Cobwebs were already beginning to creep into her peripherals—cobwebs that were rapidly fading to blackness.
"Take care of him," she whispered with a small smile on her face. Before Takuma could answer her body went limp in his arms. Though her blue eyes continued to stare up into his face there was no life there.
"I will Rima," he replied tears choking his words and making them incomprehensible. Not that it mattered. She couldn't hear them anymore anyway. He held her for a moment and took the time to close her eyes and wipe the trickle of blood from the corner of her mouth. If he ignored the hole in her chest she almost looked like she was sleeping. He sat there with her until she turned to dust in his arms.
Then he stood and returned to the battle. Even though her death to secure his life was something that forever changed him, to the rest of the world it had only taken a few seconds. Despite the brevity of the exchange, the Takuma Ichigo who returned to the battlefield was different. The war was now more real to him and the mild-tempered noble was out for blood to attempt to ease his pain at her loss. In his rage and pain it never occurred to him that in his attempt to avenge his friend he was taking the friends and brothers and lovers of others. And even if it had, he would not have cared.
ooOO88OOoo
First off, I am so sorry about that. I hadn't intended to kill of any of the main characters, but it happened and after it came up, I couldn't seem to write around it (that's actually why this took so long I was trying to find a way to NOT kill her). Anyway, I hope you can forgive me.
And if you didn't abandon it when I killed her, I would like to thank you for reading to the end of this chapter and thank those of you who have added this story to your alerts of favorites.
And a special thank you to:
Akira 91: And I will try to make it into a happy ending. But I will make no promises. I didn't intend to kill off Rima until it happened. But I will do my best to make things turn out at least ok in the end. I do not want the entire end to be a tragedy . . . I'm a bit to attached to this story to end it that way.
Sapphire Kuran: I'm glad that you enjoyed that. I thought that it would be good to see why she is being such a brat about this. And she's about to grow up quickly. . . I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of the battle.
Anne Fatalism Dilettante: Yep the final battle has arrived. I hope the first chapter of it lived up to expectations :) and thank you . . . I just wish that I could make it happen a bit faster :/
Yue Matsunoki: Yep . . . and . . . I'm rather ashamed of myself at the moment. . . . I am sorry for the fact that she decided that she had to die :'( I did not mean for that to happen.
anon: I hope the newest chapter was worth the wait . . . and everything will turn out alright . . . probably. :/
piplup225: Thank you so much! I hope that the newest chapter lived up to your expectations :)
Kashim Kururugi: No problem at all. You made me think about it so I figured that others might as well and that I should probably address it. And mini vacations are great. I get one next week :) I hope you enjoyed the first part of this battle and Kaname vs Kazuye will come up in the next chapter . . . at least the first part of it. I am glad that you think I have done a good job so far and hope that you still think so after you read this chapter . . .
Well, that's all for now folks. I hope you enjoyed it. I would LOVE to know what you thought of this chapter so feel free to leave me a review if you have the time and/or inclination (even if it is just to tell me that I am a horrible person . . . )
Stickdonkeys