Chapter 2
Tsukune emerged from the boys' bathroom, wiping his damp face with a shirt sleeve. The first thing he saw as he lowered his arm was a very red-faced Moka Akashiya and he stepped back, startled.
"How dare you?!" She yelled and started pounding her fists into the taller boy's chest, "You can't just claim someone's identity! It's so disrespectful! Especially to my Tsukune…" she trailed off and collapsed into uncontrollable sobs onto what she did not know was her Tsukune's shirt.
The vampire in question looked down at her quivering figure sadly, and rested a strong hand on the back of her head, stroking her pastel pink hair.
"Oh, Moka. Please try to look underneath my new exterior. I promise you, it's me, Tsukune." Moka either didn't hear him, or chose not to listen to what he was saying, so he tried again.
"I turned into a vampire…instead of a ghoul." At the mention of the word she had hated ever since she could remember, Moka's face whipped upwards to face Tsukune's.
"H-how did you -?" She began, but could not complete her thought.
"Because it's me." He tried to dial down the permanent intensity in his vermillion eyes as he looked at her pleadingly. For the first time since his unexpected arrival, the girl really looked at the vampire in front of her. Slowly, she found she could strip his imposing presence away and, underneath the terrifying gaze, she could see some of the old compassion and gentleness she had first come to recognise in her beloved's eyes.
"Ts-Tsukune?!" She let out an almost inhuman shriek that echoed down the corridors, while Tsukune could only smile at her weakly.
"That's what I've been trying to tell you," his soft voice contrasted with her yell, which was still reverberating around them.
Before Moka could open her mouth to reply, the intercom above their heads fizzed to life: Please would Aono Tsukune report to the Director's office. Immediately.
The young vampire in question gave Moka a resigned smile and shrugged his shoulders. He had been expecting this. The girl reached up and clasped her hands around his neck; but instead of an affectionate goodbye kiss, she pulled his head down to her lips.
"Do not tell any of the others the truth," she hissed, but the next words she spoke more gently, "It would kill them to know that you really are a vampire. That you and I really are meant for each other." She pulled away and her big, soulful eyes seemed to gaze into his very soul.
"They will have to know eventually," he replied solemnly. He was not going to string them on with false hope.
"And they will…This is all just, so sudden. You can tell them after you get used to the new you. Please."
Tsukune nodded solemnly and bent down to give Moka a kiss on the cheek. But she turned away and, while she hurried back to class, the new vampire was left feeling stranded in the hallway.
After I get used to the new me.
Well, that may not take as much time as Moka would like to think. Tsukune sat deep in thought in a cushioned, mahogany chair on the opposite side of the Director's heavy, wooden desk.
Why did she want to keep his new state a secret? Surely she would have wanted the two of them to be 'official' as soon as possible? Or maybe, she simply enjoyed having a secret that only the two of them shared.
"Mr Aono, thank you for coming in so soon," the Director had been watching the new vampire, and his musings, with amusement and the corner of his mouth lifted into a half smile.
"Of course, Director. I knew you would be calling me in as soon as my presence was felt. Or my aura, if you will," the boy was so different to how he had been upon arrival. But then again, that was to be expected with his recent 'awakening'. The confidence that just bordered on arrogance suited him well, maybe more so than he would have thought.
The Director could sense the boy's slight confusion at his unexpected thriving in this new state and the smile underneath those eerie white eyes grew more genuine. The blood that already ran through the young vampire's veins ensured that he would never have turned into a ghoul upon Moka Akashiya's uncouth blood transfusion.
The introduction of another clan of vampire blood to his system merely brought to the surface what had been unknowingly sealed before his birth.
For you see Tsukune Aono, although he may have thought it, was never a human in the first place. Something the Director had marked with great interest. The school head was unable to tell just what type of monster the boy was, as that magic seemed to have been sealed in the generation prior to his own.
And so, the monster headmaster was pleasantly surprised to find out that the boy had been a member of the S-Class all along.
Yes, pleasantly surprised indeed. For this meant that there was a whole other royal vampire family out there that no one had any idea even existed.
"So you're saying there is nothing you can do about a temporary seal?" Tsukune voiced his dismay to the school's Director, new venom providing the undertone for his hissed words. The eerie-eyed "man" shook his head with mock sorrow, only serving to heighten the foreign emotions tumbling within Tsukune's vampiric heart at the moment.
How dare this man challenge him, an S-Class Super-Monster?
Woah there, Tsukune, he mentally scolded to himself, shocked at the arrogant train his thoughts had so easily boarded, what the hell are you thinking? You have no right to be so arrogant. Reason One: it is extremely unbecoming and not in your nature, and Reason Two: you have only just become a vampire. It's not like you're Dracula himself or something!
The Director simply watched the boy as he wrestled with the tendencies of his new character with an amused, but not unkind, grin on his face. This was indeed going to be an extremely interesting turn of events, one that he may even be curious enough to take part in himself. The boy's parents would certainly have to be looked into. Judging by the immense amount of Youki the boy was giving off on his first day as a supernatural being, the headmaster was forced to reconsider his initial classification of Tsukune Aono. This young one's demonic aura surpassed that of an ordinary S-Class vampire.
The white-pupiled monster realised with a surprised blink that Aono's aura was denser, and even more fear-invoking than that of one of his fellow dark lord's. The one and only Issa Shuzen, the vampire that also happened to be Moka Akashiya's father. But how on earth could that be possible?
Just who is this boy?
Koji Aono heaved a world-weary sigh, something he seemed to be getting into the habit of lately. He glared at his watch with a deep seething contempt, something that anyone who knew the man would have thought him incapable of feeling, so bright and sunny was his usual demeanour. His son was no different.
Koji's friends from work would often comment on how the apple didn't fall far from the tree when they saw father and son in each other's company. Another thing that was a popular topic of conversation in the office was how Koji was the only one anyone had ever met who could make anti-aging products work.
When this particular subject came up, Mr Aono would laugh good-naturedly and then swiftly steer the water-cooler chats into a not even remotely similar direction.
"The man looks as if he's in his late-twenties, and yet he has a teenaged son!"
"Yeah! Surely he must be nearer to forty than thirty!"
The chats always re-navigated themselves when Koji had left, their participants believing that he couldn't hear them. He was seven doors down the corridor after all, and they always kept their voices low.
Koji could hear them loud and clear though. He always could.
Even with this damn seal.
He scowled at his watch again, baring his teeth at it in a vicious, but silent, snarl. The seal that prevented Koji Aono from accessing his true abilities ticked away contentedly, as if its creator had not made a misery out of this seemingly normal human man's life.
Well, he thought to himself, I suppose I did deserve it. But still, that bitch witch died decades ago, so WHY DOES IT STILL WORK?
Even more unfair, Koji had felt on numerous occasions, was that it somehow managed to suppress his son's true nature as well. He slammed his fist onto his desk, earning a strange look from an intern who happened to walk past his office door at the wrong moment.
That remains unforgivable! He bit on the inside of his cheek in frustration, so hard that he actually drew blood.
The sealed man froze for a moment, at the all too familiar tang of the liquid on his tongue, but then relaxed and closed his eyes in contentment. It had been so long, and, even if the thick substance belonged to him, it was still delicious.
He mentally cursed the witch that had sealed his true self away as he swallowed the small trickle of blood that had excited the inside of his mouth, but then felt guilty on a few moments later.
He wouldn't have met his lovely wife if it wasn't for the 'bitch witch' as he had so eloquently put it. And, he doubted the fact that the human woman would have married him if she had known what he was. Or who he was.
Koji Aono has been known by many names, all of them capable of striking fear into the hearts of humans and monsters alike. It was pitiful that the most powerful vampire to ever exist had been defeated and sealed for an agonising few centuries by a mere water witch. Her seal was as dynamic as the fluid that had birthed her, and changed continuously to suit each culture the man lived through.
Irony took a physical form in the fact that the name that she had known him by had been Koji's favourite. A small smirk broke through the anger he was wallowing in as he whispered it, the old language rolling off his tongue with ease:
"Dracula."