"Tsukune. It appears as though there's been a change in plans," Miyabi said as he stood from his seat at the far end of the room they were in. "Now, I feel it is only fair to say that my methods are quite a bit different from Akua's, but rest assured, I know precisely what I'm doing." Tsukune only blinked. "This will be the first day of your…special training. Akua taught you how to take on six Ayashi. I will teach you to annihilate six hundred. Akua taught you to detect yoki. I will teach you to manipulate and control it. Akua taught you what battle was. I will teach you how a vampire does battle. Akua taught you that you had potential. I will teach you to reach it. However, it will be a long process, and often painful. I will test every fibre of your being. I will tear you down and destroy you utterly, and then I will teach you to build yourself back up. Make no mistake-the path I show you will not be easily traversed. But it is the path to true power that I offer you. Are you willing to take the first step?"

Tsukune nodded, this time more carefully.

"Excellent. Now, I must admit that I have been remiss-traditionally it is the creator, and only the creator, who trains the fledgeling in the arts of combat and survival. However, given your age and consequent lack of durability, training you personally from the very start would have been a very, very bad idea." Miyabi started moving around the room, twirling the cane in his hand every so often as he paced about the chamber. "Akua trained you to survive. Now, it is my turn, and I must warn you, I'm nowhere near as…gentle as Akua can sometimes be."

Tsukune gulped, but his eyes remained steely and resolute.

"Good. Then let's begin." Tsukune did not see Fujisaki move, but could feel a massive killing intent right next to him. Next thing he knew, he was on the ground, staring up at the ceiling of the chamber. He heard Fujisaki sigh. "Jeez… Note to self, be very specific and very literal next time I have Akua do something for me… Your sister never mentioned anything about your third eye, did she?"

Tsukune got to his feet again. "Third eye?" he asked. "But, Shisho, I only have two eyes."

"No. You're a vampire. You have three eyes," Fujisaki sighed.

"Do you have three eyes, Shisho?" Tsukune asked.

"Okay, let's make it simple and just say that you have three eyes, kid. The two you know about, and the one in the middle of your forehead." Tsukune gave his master a confused look at this, who only sighed and said, "It's a metaphor. I picked it because I thought that would make it easier to visualise. I suppose I was mistaken on that note. Look, kid. The third eye is a fancy way of saying 'yoki detection.' You know what? I have an idea." His master came closer and fastened a blindfold around his eyes. "The human eyes you've been using are inferior-vestigial. They are easily tricked, manipulated, and deceived. And let me say for the record that this was meant to be an evaluation and not a remedial lesson, but I suppose that I should have expected something like this to be the case. Kid, if you keep trusting your vestigial eyes, you'll never survive against the more powerful yokai out there. So to eliminate that issue, for the next week, you will wear this blindfold. You are to rely solely on your third eye. The purpose of this is that you will hopefully learn to trust your third eye over your vestigial ones, and that your third eye can better develop over a week of continuous use than it could over years of only occasional use. Do you understand?"

He nodded. "Hai, Shisho."

Over the next week, Tsukune had to rely solely upon his ability to detect yoki to find and identify people. Using that part of him felt like his head was pounding, if only to conceptually understand how he could sense with perfect clarity every intersection, corner and turn of the floating fortress. Not that his ability to detect people was particularly useful in that regard-one look at the blindfold and most people kept their distance from him. It was fine, though; it wasn't as if Tsukune had friends. The only company that he needed to keep to feel happy was that of his master and of Akua-nee. Certainly, sometimes he looked back on the days when he was human and so had human friends, and he remembered them fondly, but his recollection of those days became hazier and more dreamlike with each passing moment he spent as a vampire. To him, it almost felt as if Aono Tsukune had not begun until he met with his master in the woods. What memories he had of what it had been like before that point were beginning to fade now that two years had passed-he could not even remember the faces or voices of his parents. In their place were recollections of his master's cool, calm voice and Akua-nee's grudgingly kind tones. He was nevertheless content.

On the final day, however, he was moving from the mess hall back to his quarters when a large source of yoki popped into the range of his 'third eye'-that terminology was still quite alien to him conceptually. As it drew closer, however, he was able to sense that there were, in fact, not one, but two sources of energy, one much larger than the other. The larger of the two had an architecture to its inner workings that was somewhat eldritch for him, and so he focused his attention on the rising belligerence of the smaller of the two sources. It was young-perhaps even younger than he himself was-and female; he could tell that immediately. "So, who are you supposed to be?" asked the smaller signature-definitely female, and definitely younger than him.

"Aono Tsukune," he introduced himself.

"Oh, so you're the assassin-in-training that Akua-nee's been working with," said the girl. "Name's Shuzen Kokoa, but you can call me Kokoa-sama."

"That…thing on your shoulder. What is it, exactly?" asked Tsukune, pointing at the larger source of yoki. "Its geometry is…unfamiliar to me."

"It's my Transformer Bat…" she said in confusion. "Why?"

"I was curious as to why such a large source of yoki was travelling on the shoulder of one a fair bit smaller," Tsukune explained.

It should be noted that Tsukune did not wish to taunt Kokoa, and delivered his explanation with all the tact that he could muster. It should also be noted that Tsukune was nine, and for all the progress he had made in combat and as a vampire, his age and relative inexperience with others gave him a unique lack of tact that could either be a gift or a curse. In this case, for example, it was most certainly a curse.

"What did you say?!" she cried, her belligerence transforming into pure killing intent. The geometry of the Transformer Bat unravelled and became something else entirely-a weapon capable of incapacitating him if not slaying him outright. Sensing this, he rolled out of the way and took a combat stance. The killing intent made Kokoa's yoki swell to a level that Tsukune knew was going to be difficult to defeat.

Difficult, however, didn't mean impossible, and with her yoki giving away where she was and what her intentions were at all times, Tsukune came to the realisation of what his master was attempting to impart. His human eyes were restricted to what could be seen in front of him; his third eye, however, could detect what was all around him in every direction. Thus, it became a much simpler task to avoid the ludicrously overly-massive, single-edged, quasi-western zanbato she was swinging around like it actually had a chance of hitting someone who wasn't charging her on horseback.

The problem that began to rear its head was that her slashes became wider and less precise, and then much more quick. Tsukune, even with his speed augmented by his vampirism, could not continue to outrun it. But before the killing blow could be landed-a jumping downward swing-he put up his hands to attempt to catch it, and as the seal on his arm that marked him as the wielder of the odachi he had seen before began to burn, a sickly green light started to form between his arms. He closed his hand around the tsuka reflexively, and the over-large sword clashed against the long, slender, beautiful blade of Masamune.

It was at that moment that a familiar voice said, "Very good, kid. Very good indeed. But that's quite enough of that."

"Shisho?!" he grunted out, reaching out to feel the yoki of the person who had just spoken, which resulted in having his suspicions confirmed-it was his master.

"Stand down, Kokoa," his master ordered.

"Sure. Right after I kill this filthy second-born apprentice of yours…"

Miyabi placed his cane upon Kokoa's shoulder, and his eyes brooked no argument. "Stand. Down."

Kokoa broke away, and the massive sword became that bundle of impossible geometries once again. "This isn't over, Aono!" she called after him.

Tsukune could not respond. He doubled over in pain as voices assailed him from every direction. Voices that called for blood and for death. He could feel the yawning hunger for life, for souls themselves… The pressure they exerted upon his mind was quickly reaching the point where it was unbearable.

And then, all at once, they stopped-the voices, that is. Suddenly the burning in his forearm subsided, and Masamune vanished. His sight came back to him, and he heard his master assuring him. "It's okay, kid. It's fine. She's gone. Stay with me here, kid."

"Shi…sho?" asked Tsukune, noticing the cut upon his master's hand before he had the chance to hide it.

"It's fine, kid. Just another little Shuzen bitch who thinks that because the great Akasha Bloodriver married into their house, they're the destined rulers of all yokai. They're a dime a dozen, I'm afraid." His master said that with unusual vitriol-which, since he had rarely ever spoken vitriolically before, wasn't saying much on its own-and a hint of bitterness. "Their kind are like vermin. Do not give your regard to them lest they get the better of you. You're a Shinso, kid. The ultimate vampire. Don't concern yourself with the posing, preening filth that gives our entire race a bad name."

Tsukune nodded.

"You did well, though, kid. You finally learned to trust your third eye. Not only that, but you gave me the perfect segue into our next lesson."

"What is that, Shisho?" asked Tsukune apprehensively.

Miyabi gave him a smirk and ruffled his lengthening hair. "Worry about it tomorrow, kid. For now, go get some rest. You've earned it."

As soon as Tsukune was out of sight and earshot, Miyabi punched through the wall nearest to him, gritting his teeth in rage. He was, in a word, furious. His plans-the plans he had spent two hundred years slaving over and perfecting in every aspect-were nearly botched because of a meddling Shuzen with a god complex. He had to stop himself from hunting Kokoa down and putting her in her place. He had to stop himself because if he acted rashly or took any risks at this stage in the game, all his plotting and scheming over the past two centuries would have been for naught. His hands were, unfortunately, effectively tied.

He wouldn't let it end like this, though. He wouldn't let some uppity lower-class vampire ruin all that he had worked for for the past several centuries. If he had to take his heir with him everywhere he went, he would. Because the sad truth of the matter was that Tsukune's arrival in his life had forced him to re-evaluate a lot of his plans and goals and priorities, and now his heir figured in most of his plans for the future, such as they were. He was the key-the most important piece on the board-and so it fell to the older of the two to make sure that he survived.

The Shinso Alucard could only hope that he was up to the task.

"Okay, kid, today we're going to try something a little different," said Miyabi as he paced around Tsukune, lighting his cigar as he circled the boy. "Now, there are other ways-quicker ways-to accomplish what we are going to begin to work toward today. Toho Fuhai, for example-one of the Three Great Dark Lords-has an entire ritual built around this. But the fact of the matter is that I am a firm believer in the idea that there are no short cuts on the road to perfection. And so we will do this the hard way, Tsukune, as it was done in ages past. I am going to teach you to control your yoki.

"Now, you did well to call upon the power of Masamune yourself. But Masamune is not your sword. You have only borrowed it." At the sight of Tsukune's confusion, Miyabi elaborated. "I have told you that she-the sword, that is-has had many names over the years. I did not clarify what that means. So I shall do so now. Make sure you're listening, kid, because I won't repeat myself. You either get it, or you don't. In the former case, the sword's power becomes yours to wield. If you don't, then the sword will forever be your mistress, and you will never be free of her. Do you understand?"

Tsukune nodded.

"Good. Now then, remember this: Each name she has borne corresponds to a form she has taken, which in turn corresponds to a wielder she has chosen over the innumerable years that she has existed. She has chosen you, now, and so it falls to you to give her form, and to that form, ascribe a name."

"I think I understand," Tsukune replied. "But how will I give her form-?"

"By gaining control of your yoki," answered Miyabi, blowing out a thick plume of tobacco smoke. "The better your control is, the closer she will come to the form that corresponds to you, as her latest wielder." The boy nodded. "Now, improving one's control over their yoki is never an easy task. Improving their skill? Elementary. Improving your kinesthesia? Child's play. Improving your control over your yoki is an insurmountable task by comparison to any but the most talented yokai. However, by the time I'm done training you, your control over your yoki will be perfect and impeccable-if you manage to survive the experience." The boy swallowed, but nodded again, that iron will glinting in his eyes. "Now, knowing how to reach that level requires knowledge of what you're doing. In human terms, learning to control your body and then your yoki is akin to burning carbohydrates followed by burning the actual fat in your body. You'll notice a theme here: one is significantly harder than the other. Fear not, though, Tsukune. Now's not the time for that. That comes later." With that, he stepped up to Tsukune, took the boy's arm that bore the Holy Lock in his hand, and just held it there. "For now, I just want you to remember these words: I am I. Are you prepared?"

That look of ironclad determination had not left his eyes. Miyabi chuckled at this. 'Resolute to the end, eh, kid?' he wanted to ask, but did not. Instead, he took the Holy Lock in his hand and whispered a few words. Tsukune was hit with a sudden flood of energy that was belligerent, murderous, bloodthirsty. "Remember the words, kid. Just remember who you are, and you'll be fine," Miyabi said blithely. "The first step to control is identity. You must be an unmoved mover. The yoki is your life energy. You must find a harmony with it-a balance of sorts-or it will destroy you and everything you are."

"Shi-Shisho…" Tsukune muttered through the pain of all that vampiric energy flooding through him.

"Now, Toho Fuhai would have merely redirected the yoki through your body using acupuncture. However, artificial modifications like that can only do so much," Miyabi explained. "I, on the other hand, am teaching you to manipulate yoki through the existing network of chakra throughout your body. By the end of this lesson, you will have control of yourself that is an order of magnitude greater than anything that damned yasha could give you. What I have done is unlocked the first seal of the Holy Lock. Unlike anything that Mikogami could give you, the Holy Lock you have worn for the past two years was designed to help you with the task of mastering yourself through limiting how much energy is going through you at any given time."

"Shi…sho…" Tsukune gasped out again.

"Something that I often find helpful for something like this is a set of affirmations. Remember what I told you, kid. Remember the words."

"I…am I… I…am I…" Tsukune began gasping out between breaths.

"Very good," Miyabi said as he sensed the yoki exuding from Tsukune wrap around him and pull tighter against him. "All you need to do is to find your centre. In this case, your centre is your identity. Hold on to that with all your might, and control will come."

The process continued for several hours, but this did not matter to Miyabi. What mattered was that Tsukune's control was growing at an exponential rate. What most people didn't understand about yoki was that it, like a cosmic body, was drawn to the largest concentration of power near it, and so as Tsukune began to assert more and more control, the faster and faster the yoki fell under his command, until, five hours later, Tsukune stood on unsteady legs. His long hair had turned completely silver, his skin was pale as alabaster, and his catlike eyes were blood red. "Welcome back to the world of the living, kid," Miyabi said, standing before his heir. "That much yoki will be difficult to deal with, and so I will work you to its expenditure each day from now on. Every two months, I will unlock another seal on that Holy Lock until you can use your full power without fear of being consumed by it, at which point I will give you a Holy Lock worthy of a full Shinso. Be prepared, kid, because you are about to enter Hell."

And Miyabi was true to his word. Each day, he entered his master's presence, and began to warm up-by fighting him. Every time they fought, however, Miyabi was focused more on whatever he was reading or doing to react, fighting with only one hand and one half his full attention. When his master ended the match, he went over every mistake Tsukune had made-every mistimed counter, every overextended punch-and he did so through corporal punishment, making Tsukune feel a fraction of what an experienced combatant could do with the openings he left to be exploited. After that, he would begin the lesson of the day. The lesson, however, was not about fighting. It was usually things like what he would learn in school, only not at all like that, because the topics they covered would never come up in school. The strengths and weaknesses of each type of pureblood yokai and a few of the more numerous types of Ayashi as well as their languages-Tsukune was good with languages-and cultures. It was less training him that Miyabi was doing, and more teaching him. By the end of the first month they were fluently conversing in the languages of over a dozen different purebred yokai.

The next month, the lessons focused on yoki control. Miyabi taught Tsukune how to tease out and manipulate his yoki, and so many days they held their sessions on the ceiling as opposed to on the floor. This exercise began to evolve into different ways to use yoki until it reached the topic about which Tsukune was most curious-namely, magic.

They began with the very basics of the Mystic Arts-primal magic, or, as it was more commonly known, sorcery. As Miyabi explained it, sorcery stemmed from dragons, as it was how they experienced the Mystic Arts. Sorcery revolved around controlling and manipulating the four primal elements-water, earth, fire and air. But Miyabi wasn't satisfied with his heir only learning the basic primal elements; he did not stop pushing Tsukune until the fire he brought to life with the force of his will burned bright blue, until he could tease metal from a stone, could turn water into ice, and create lightning out of air. Soon, their fights began to involve magic, but still, to every move Tsukune tried, Miyabi had a counter. Not to mention, corporal punishment was a lot more painful when it involved electrocution.

On the bright side, however, whenever Kokoa came after him with lethal intent, magic seemed to solve the situation rather quickly. It helped when he could anticipate her every move and could counter it with a disproportionate response.

The next form of magic they learned was demonic-the Dark Arts. This would be the magic that Shinso like him excelled at, and true to predictions, he took to it rather quickly. He learned how to walk into a shadow at one end of a room and then walk out of a shadow on the other side of the room, or in another room entirely. This added an entirely new dimension to their fights, even as Tsukune adjusted to the speed, strength and agility that having the first seal of his Holy Lock undone granted him. Of course, the room they practised in was dim and hardly lit, so learning that shadow-walking technique did wonders for his mobility.

One day, something happened that Miyabi didn't expect-the first ball of sickly green flame went right by his head, and he had to cock it to avoid getting hit with a faceful of soul-devouring fire. "Well, kid, I'm impressed. Wytchfyre isn't easy to conjure."

"Really?" Tsukune asked. "I just used dark magic to fuel the blue fire instead of primal, and it turned green and stuff."

Miyabi sighed; it was sometimes quite easy to forget that his heir was all of nine years old. "Kid, what you just used is called wytchfyre, and it's one of the few spells that can actually kill a vampire outright. Don't feel bad-I was in no danger from it-but know this: first, I'm impressed with your progress. Second, I would encourage you to use that sparingly. Wytchfyre is the type of spell that ends a duel to the death, not a spell to be used in a training match."

"Hai, Shisho," Tsukune replied.

One thing Tsukune could not understand, however, was the sword that had bound herself to him; he had only been able to draw her once, and that was in the fight against Kokoa. Whenever he tried to draw the sword after that, however-secretly so that his master wouldn't find out-he had failed miserably.

It was like this that Miyabi found Tsukune one day, in the fourth month of their training. He had just had another part of the Holy Lock removed, but try as he might, he could not get the black markings on his arm to glow that sickly green colour again, nor could he summon the sword whom he knew slept within him.

"What's got you up in arms, kid?" Miyabi asked finally, causing Tsukune to frown. Miyabi took this as a good thing-the kid really got the point of constant vigilance, and with his third eye open, there were very few things that could sneak up on him. One of those was, of course, himself, but that required he do a few things that might cause his heir to ask some very awkward questions the answers to which he was not yet ready to hear.

Tsukune slumped. He had been discovered. "Shisho…" he began. "I can't summon Masamune again…like I did against Kokoa."

Miyabi laughed.

Tsukune whirled about in alarm. His master chuckled or smirked-he didn't laugh!

"Of course you can't summon her! She'll protect you if your life's in danger, but you haven't reached your upper limit of yoki control. Masamune isn't your sword. Until you give her the unique form that is exemplary of her bond to you, you'll never be able to summon her at will. She's the ultimate demonic sword! Of course she wouldn't just materialise on command for someone who hasn't proven worthy of drawing her at will."

"So, you're saying that if I perfect my yoki control, I'll be able to wield her whenever I want?" the nine-year-old asked with childlike excitement.

"You know what? Sure, kid. Knock yourself out." A thought occurred to Miyabi that perhaps he just wasn't good with kids.

Shuzen Gyokuro couldn't understand it. A secondborn vampire was now amongst their ranks, and yet Fujisaki Miyabi, who, although they often disagreed on certain points, cared as much about the future of the vampire race as she did, had claimed him as his heir-was training the brat to succeed him. Not only that, but the brat had claimed for himself the single most powerful, albeit alien, weapon that Fairy Tale had at its disposal, and then gone on to hold his own against Kokoa, who, although she was a failure of a daughter, was still her daughter, and a natural-born vampire to boot.

Admittedly, Gyokuro had had a metaphorical bone to pick with the brat from the very beginning, on the grounds that he had become one of their number without her foreknowledge or her approval. She had sent Akua and the new one on that mission specifically because she counted on the S-class yokai to destroy the brat, and Akua to return to home base, unharmed. But apparently, Fujisaki knew something she didn't, because the brat had not only survived, but very nearly killed that werewolf. She hated that Fujisaki seemed to know something she didn't-seemed to know a great deal that she didn't-on the grounds that she had found herself on increasingly thin ice with the Masked King, the one who really ran the show, and didn't want to lose the opportunity to do something that would surpass the storied accomplishments of Akasha Bloodriver, her eternal rival.

So yes, perhaps trying to off one of their newest and quickly becoming greatest assets was a foolish, unprofessional idea. But with every hour the brat spent alive, she felt as though her power base in Fairy Tale was disintegrating, bit by bit and piece by piece. At this rate, she might as well try to marry Kokoa off to the brat, if only so that she could keep her head above water. But that was a last resort; she did not want to stain the illustrious Shuzen bloodline with the ichor of a secondborn mongrel.

There was one thing, however, that was immediately evident to her: whatever Fujisaki was planning-and he was planning something-it involved Aono Tsukune. He was the key to all of it, which made him a very dangerous, albeit large, target. He was an element she would have to deal with at some point. She merely needed an opening…

...Well, that and a plan. Yeah, a plan would be nice.

Akua didn't make a habit of taking walks the way Alucard did. She found the exercise to be somewhat boring and repetitive, and she did not take solace in being alone amidst one's surroundings as he did. But Akua thought this to be a special case. Tsukune had gone to his 'special training,' which she quickly gathered was just a program meant to groom him as her grandfather's successor, and so Akua had been struck with the strange inclination to find out what kind of hole her precious ototo's absence had left on the people who had professed to care about him.

Of course, she was aware that no-one cared for him save herself-and, perhaps, her grandfather-because no-one could care for him the way she and her grandfather did. But still, it was a disappointing experience to walk through the neighbourhood he had lived in as a human, only to find that the 'Have You Seen This Child' posters that had used to be there were now fading pitifully into the background of the entire neighbourhood. It was like the fervour had died down, and everyone had gone back to their daily lives. His so-called 'family' hadn't even left, either. They just…it wasn't accurate to say 'moved on' so much as 'pretended it didn't happen.' It saddened her to think that the young boy that she had become so attached to over the past two years was so insignificant to these people that the only thing that remained to prove he had ever existed as a human being were the half-hearted signs posted on the telephone poles.

Moka was now well and truly out of her grasp, but with Tsukune, she had a chance-a chance to make right that which she had made wrong with Akasha Bloodriver's daughter…a chance to do what she couldn't do for Jasmine. She would see to it that this second chance was not squandered. Tsukune may be Alucard's heir, but he was her ototo first and foremost, and she would protect him, come what may.

That night, there was a chain of fires all over the neighbourhood in which Tsukune had once called home. Despite the best efforts of the firefighters, a full half of the houses fell to the swath of destruction that these fires caused, and dozens of people died in the conflagration. In the midst of it all, like the eye of a hurricane, there stood one house-the house belonging to the Aono family. In fact, it was almost supernatural in how very much undamaged by the fires it was while surrounded by destruction. The only clue that the police had as to who committed the massive arson were sightings of a pale Chinese girl who dressed in a black Inverness coat who had walked by the houses, and then vanished entirely.

Akua didn't usually take walks, but this would be a night to remember.