Disclaimer:I do not own Rosario + Vampire. I do, however, own the specific type of dragon that I am using in this story, my OC (Tsukune's dragon father), as well as the plot elements that I haven't taken from R+V.

It's chapter 7, and it's 50% longer than usual! Enjoy!

Do you like the fight scene at the end? Please let me know so I can decide how to approach such things in the future.

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Gin fumed. Everywhere he went, girls gave him dirty looks, and he'd had to avoid more than a few disgruntled boyfriends. Watching Tsukune from the shadows, he noticed how the two girls seemed to always hang around him. The succubus was obviously infatuated, but the vampire was a more difficult study. She often drank his blood, and he didn't seem to be under any sort of compulsion or obligation, which was strange – normally, no monster would willingly bare their neck to a vampire. That would seem to point to a connection, but the pair of them always acted normally around each other, and even a little awkward and bashful. Not so the succubus, who would throw herself at the boy given the slightest opportunity.

That particular day, the results of the latest tests had been posted. Moka was thirteenth, something that Tsukune found rather amusing, given the 'unlucky' connotations of the number and the obvious fact of her vampirism. He himself had come a way below, in sixty-third. He was reasonably pleased with that result – he'd never been incredibly academic, and his magic was based more on imagination and force of will than intelligence and memorisation of formulae. He was abnormally proficient in certain, specific areas – coordination, tactics, and other such martial skills, as well as a sharp cunning and business sense (in this, he was even better than his father, one of the reasons he had been in on all the man's business meetings) – but overall he'd always thought of himself as fairly average, never being able to intuitively grasp mathematics or sciences the way he had combat and magic.

The name of the student in first place was surprising. Sendou Yukari, an eleven-year-old witch who had been accelerated up through the system due to her genius. Her parents were one of the many youkai who had been involved in deals with his father in the past, and their daughter's proficiency had prompted his father to inquire in more detail, filing the information on her as a possible future asset.

Even as he contemplated this coincidence, the girl in question was in a rather nasty predicament. Her class representative and a few of his cronies had cornered her and started to bully the young witch. Boundary Beings were not popular, as they could easily be seen as a mix of human and youkai. She was no exception, and her age and precocity only made her more of a target. Before he had even noticed, Moka was already standing between the bullies – lizardmen, he noted – and the young witch. They glanced around, deciding that there were too many witnesses, before stalking off. Tsukune ambled over to find Yukari already in the middle of a gushing torrent of thanks.

"Ohh, thank you so so much! You really saved me!"

Moka smiled. "It was nothing. Besides, you shouldn't be picked on like that! Only 11 and already top of the year! You're really cool, Yukari!"

Blushing under her hat, the girl waved her hands in hurried dismissal. "No, you're the one who's cool, Moka! In fact, I… I… I love you, Moka!"

Tsukune nearly choked as the little witch launched herself at his friend, practically squealing in delight. "Every time I saw you in that classroom across the hall, I fell in love with you a little bit more, but after you saved me… my heart was captivated! Please go out with me!"

The pink-haired vampiress was at a complete loss, and no help came from Tsukune, who was still trying to form a coherent chain of thought, so she stammered out "err… um… just as a friend?"

Yukari practically burst with joy as she launched herself at Moka again.

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As the day wore on, Tsukune got closer and closer to losing control. The annoying little girl had been following them all day. Finally, when she started groping Moka in the middle of the hallway, he snapped. A lash of sizzling magical energy snapped out at the girl's hands, scorching her fingers and forcing her to let go.

"YOW! What was that for?!"

Moka frowned. "Tsukune, that wasn't very nice. Besides, what if you'd hit me?"

He snorted. "It's magic, Moka. Mental control. If I don't want to hit you – and I don't – then I won't. Besides, I think it was justified in the circumstances."

The vampiress remained unconvinced, but the witch quickly got angry. "Oh, so you think of yourself as her protector, do you? Trying to keep her from whatever harm you perceive? Of course you'd attack me if I threaten your being with her. Well, I've got news for you! I know you! Aono Tsukune, rather strong, full capabilities unknown but likely to be quite high. However, average mental capabilities make it highly unlikely you'll be able to beat me in a fight. Brains over brawn! I love Moka, and I won't let you drag her down! That's why I'm declaring war on you! MAGIC WAND!"

A grin had stretched wider and wider on his face as the young girl shouted at him. When she pulled her wand on him, he started laughing. She tilted her head curiously. "What's funny?"

Tsukune laughed harder. "Oh, nothing. Other than the fact that you seriously think you could take me in a fight."

Suddenly, his grin vanished. So did the rest of him, nothing more than a momentary blur signalling his movement. Yukari frowned, then screamed when he tapped her on the neck. "You're dead, little witch. I just took your head off."

Spinning on him, she scowled. "Well, fine. Physical combat isn't my forte anyway. I'll kick you from here to the moon at magic!"

Waving her wand, Tsukune felt her cast a spell, and countered without any conscious thought, his long-trained instincts kicking in. The witch scowled deeper. "How did you do that? You shouldn't be able to counter my spells!"

She tried again, something different, and Tsukune countered just as effortlessly. He smiled condescendingly down at her. "You are easy to predict. I can feel you as soon as you reach for your youkai to cast, and you have neither the skill nor strength to stop me blocking you. If you really want to fight me, you'll have to train for years, and even then your innate power would be no match for mine. I suggest you focus on technique."

Turning on his heel, he began to stride away. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have work to do at the Newspaper Club."

As he walked away, Yukari stared after him blankly, eyes glistening with tears that she struggled to hold back. Moka looked between the two, torn, but after a moment she went to comfort the little witch. Tsukune snorted to himself. As he headed for the clubroom, he thought he felt someone watching him – a strangely cold presence – but he didn't see anyone there, and dismissed it as a byproduct of his irritation.

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He talked to Kurumu as they worked. It turned out that the young witch was extremely unpopular, not only for her species and know-it-all attitude, but because she played a lot of pranks and generally acted like a spoilt brat. It didn't surprise him, but what did was when his arm started to move of its own accord.

Focusing his attention on it, he found a control spell had attached itself to him without his noticing. He recognized the signature of the magic as being Yukari's, and spent a moment to appreciate the skill she had apparently been hiding, to cast such an invasive spell without his noticing. Of course, it was only a moment, and he broke it with barely a thought when that brief span was over. Ambling to the window, where he had felt the spell's terminus, he calmly reached out and picked up the little witch by her collar, lifting her through the opening and setting her down in front of her.

"I'm trying to do you a favour here, so listen up. If you carry on acting the way you are now, you'll lose any chance of having friends. You'll be alone and isolated, and trust me when I say that isn't something you want."

Yukari looked intrigued at the bitterness in his tone and on his face when he spoke of that, but quickly stopped paying attention as he continued "you need to grow up and stop playing such childish tricks. Your magic is not a plaything to be abused as you will. It is a precious gift that you should treat as such."

Moka came in through the door at that point, to find a scowling witch being lectured by a frowning Tsukune. Donning a frown of her own, she walked up to the pair. "What's going on?"

As the young dragon opened his mouth to speak, Yukari butted in. "This idiot's trying to give me a lecture. Well, you know what I say, Tsukune? I don't care if I'm alone. I always have been."

Moka and Tsukune both responded at once. "You're not the only one-"

"If you think you have it badly-"

Each of them looked at the other. Tsukune motioned for Moka to continue, realizing that the little witch was more likely to listen to her than she was to him. Nodding at him gratefully, the pink-haired vampiress resumed speaking. "You aren't the only one who's been alone, Yukari. I went to a human high school. They all hated me there. I had no friends, for most of my life, until I met Tsukune. He's not as bad as you seem to think – far from it. He's been nothing but kind and supportive, even when I haven't deserved it."

Tsukune snorted. "I hardly think I deserve that much praise. I nearly killed you the first time we met. I tried to leave because I assumed the worst of you. Yet despite all that, you stayed by my side, and even managed to convince me to feed you my blood. I have no idea how you managed it, but you got me to go against everything I was raised to believe. My father would kill the both of us in an instant if he knew I was friends with a vampire, that I willingly shared my blood with you. Even knowing that, I don't regret it, and I don't understand why. Before I came here, I'd never had a friend, and then suddenly I have two in the snap of a finger. Both of you are of the sort my father would look down on, would expect me to kill for even daring to try and associate with me so familiarly, and yet I find that I completely disagree with him. I have no idea when that happened, but it did."

All three of the girls in the room were stunned. Moka was the first to break the silence. "Tsukune… I know you said your father hated vampires… but that much?"

A dark laugh. "Moka, he believes that our race is superior above all others, that we are gods on earth and should be idolized, if not outright worshipped. To him, all other monsters, from the strongest vampire to the lowliest rabbit youkai, are inferior and only fit to serve and die at his command. Humans are almost at the bottom of that list; the only race he hates more than humans are the vampires."

Kurumu swallowed nervously. "Then… what will happen if he finds out about Moka? And why does he hate vampires?"

"If he finds out about her, he will try to kill both her and myself. As for why… a few thousand years ago, a vampire managed to create a charm that shielded him from the effects of water. Using this, he challenged my father, and let himself get backed up against a river. My father thought he had the vampire trapped, and charged. The vampire nearly drowned him, took his eye out and extin… er, took a lot of his power. Father can no longer use magic or any of his racial abilities other than the physical and his youkai is less than a third of what it once was. He… harbours quite a grudge."

As he told the story of his father losing an eye, he glanced at Yukari, remembering just in time that she didn't know what he was and that he wanted to keep it that way. Moka, having already heard the story, listened with polite interest, but Kurumu was a lot more intrigued, and Yukari couldn't disguise her curiosity, although she tried. The succubus spoke up with the first question. "A few thousand years ago? Just how old is your father? Come to that, how old are you if he's that old?"

Tsukune laughed. "Father is… ancient. I don't know how old. I'm fifteen… actually, I'm turning 16 soon. But that's beside the point…"

Yukari butted in. "What were you about to say when you changed your words? Does it have something to do with your youkai species? What are you, anyway?"

"Yukari, you know it's against the rules to tell anyone. Moka and Kurumu know because they are my friends and I trust them, and I want them to know. You, however, have attacked me, tried to manipulate me with a control spell and tried to break my friendship with Moka. I don't want you knowing my monster form, and I certainly don't trust you."

The little witch's lip quivered, and suddenly she burst into tears and ran from the room. Moka and Kurumu both rounded on Tsukune. "That was horrible! Tsukune, how could you?"

"Do you really think she needs more difficulty in her life right now? She's got enough going on with all the bullies!"

As the pair continued to scold him, Tsukune reflected on the time he'd similarly hurt Moka, and realized that he needed to work on his social awareness. He'd got better, but he still had significant chunks of his father's attitude colouring his words. He sighed, and resolved to try harder in future. A flash of amusement registered as he thought that, despite his father's influence, he was sitting there taking a verbal beating from a vampire and a succubus without arguing back or attacking them, although he was far from calm. He'd succeeded in throwing off at least some of that influence, then. Progress was progress, no matter what size.

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Yukari stormed along a deserted pathway, tears clouding her eyes. That stupid boy, what did he know? Why shouldn't she be told his youkai form? He knew hers, after all, and he'd told Moka and Kurumu. Besides, who was she going to tell?

She stopped dead as that last hit her full force. Who was she going to tell? She really didn't have any friends. Of course, that was all her own fault, looking back on her actions. And everything Tsukune said… even if it had been rather harsh… had been justified. She'd done all those things he said.

A shadow fell across her, and she looked up to find her class representative towering over her with a thin-lipped, sadistic smile on his face. Slowly, his lackeys moved to surround her.

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Moka and Kurumu, once they had finished laying into Tsukune, set off to find Yukari, with a strict injunction to the young dragon to remain where he was. Putting his feet up on a desk, he relaxed idly, until a flash of youkai registered a little way off. Then a few more. He recognized monsters releasing their true forms, and felt the distinctive signature of a lizard. A further probe found Yukari's magic right in the middle. His two friends were still a distance off, and probably hadn't noticed. Sighing, he opened the window and jumped out, wings ripping through the back of his shirt and blazer as he swooped at high speed along the path, much to the astonishment of the students below. He knew there'd be a whole new set of rumours going around after this, but he could hardly stand by and let the little witch be ambushed because he'd forced her to run off.

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Rounding a corner, Moka found Yukari surrounded by lizardmen, getting ready to eat the girl. Her wand lay shattered on the ground nearby. As the leader opened his mouth to strike, she positioned herself between him and the young witch, arms outstretched. She heard Yukari gasp behind her.

"Run! Moka, please run, or you'll be eaten! Forget about me!"

Moka smiled back at her. "It's OK. I'll put myself on the line for you, Yukari. It's alright to ask for help when you can't make it on your own. Be honest… you say you love me, but all you really want is someone to be kind to you. You play those pranks because you want attention."

Yukari was going red, but tried to dismiss it with a wave of her hand. "What are you talking about?! Hurry and get out of here!"

The vampiress shook her head. "I'm not going. I understand, Yukari. You've always been lonely, haven't you? It was tough being all alone, wasn't it? Well, I too have always been alone… that's why I want to help you… and why I'm not going to leave you. One more thing, though – do you know when I stopped being alone? It was when I met Tsukune. I almost ran him over, and attacked him for his blood because I lost control, yet despite that he forgave me, healed me and gave me his blood. He saved me from an ogre – actually, two different ogres - and from Kurumu when she tried to kill me. He saved the other me from giving in to her anger. But most of all… he saved me from being alone. I want the same to happen for you."

One of the lizardmen snarled. "Hey, why are you ignoring us?! What are you blathering about?! Are we some kind of joke to you?"

He lunged, swinging a claw at Moka, only for Yukari to grab his arm and bite it. Growling in anger more than pain, he shook the girl off and went to slice her instead… only for Tsukune to land feet-first on his head with an audible crack. Dropping neatly to the ground as the lizardman collapsed in a heap, he retracted his wings with a grin. "Am I too late to join the party?"

Both Yukari and Moka gaped. The lizardmen howled in anger at the death of their leader, and all charged Tsukune, who snorted. Raising his foot in the air, he paused, waiting until they'd almost reached him, then stomped down. The ground shook, knocking the lizards to their knees. Without pausing, he used the impact to launch him in the air, flipping forward and bringing his other leg down in a full-body axe kick that took out the second lizardman.

Still Tsukune didn't stop. His movement blurred as a spear-hand blow collapsed a windpipe. One lizardman sneaking up from behind had his jaw shattered by an elbow strike, then it was followed up with a roundhouse punch that sent him flying into a tree. A back kick took out a third, then lizards four and five, approaching in flanking positions, were downed by two side-thrust fists.

Within moments, all of their enemies but one were unconscious. The final lizardman realised he was standing alone amid his defeated allies and turned to run. Tsukune let him go. "He should spread the story nicely. With luck, people will realize not to mess with my friends."

Yukari looked at him, wide-eyed. "F… friends?"

Tsukune smiled back at her. The witch's lip quivered, and she dissolved into tears.

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