Here we go with another chapter! Sorry to have left off with a cliffhanger last time. I do that sometimes... :)
The first body lunged at her from the left. Reina drew her claws out of her fingers and tore into the chest of her assailant with a single clean swipe. For a moment, nail-tipped hands were grappling with her own; then her way was clear as her attacker's momentum carried him past her. She heard the thud of a body behind her, and she glared up into the faces of the remaining four vampires.
They were impatient. Their red eyes were fixed upon their comrade behind her, waiting for him to rise. "Hanabusa, get up! You're wasting time!" hissed Ruka Souen, pacing a line which ran parallel to Reina. The half-blood girl smirked.
"Wasting time? What, are you going for a new record time for assault and intimidation? Does one of you have a stopwatch?"
"Hanabusa, you idiot, get her!" Ruka snarled, her eyes still fixed upon the unmoving figure on the ground behind Reina . Her loose brown hair blew about her in the wind.
"He won't be getting up," Reina flatly informed the group, pulling her shoulders up out of her instinctive defensive hunch. She didn't turn around to look at the still body behind her. "The rest of you should just turn around and go on back to your little school now. There's no need to make a spectacle out of whatever resentment you have against me."
"We demand that you acknowledge Kaname-sama as your lord and apologize to him immediately for your complete lack of respect!" Ruka exclaimed aggressively. At the same time, Akatsuki Kain stepped forward and called out in an uncharacteristically loud voice, "What have you done to Hanabusa?"
"He'll recover," she declared flippantly. "But I have no qualms about doing the same to you as well." Her right hand rested at her side, still tingling from the poison she had injected into it with her fangs, but she knew that she would be all right. She was unable to be adversely affected by her own poison.
"How dare you attack an aristocrat!" Ruka raged, drawing out her own claws from her perfectly manicured fingers. "You will definitely be expelled for this! We'll have you arrested as well! Once Kaname-sama finds out-"
"Do you have absolutely no sense whatsoever?" Akatsuki Kain demanded in a tone of extreme disbelief, looking at her intensely. "What are you thinking? Did no one ever teach you anything about how to behave as a vampire?"
Reina's eyebrow twitched. "I don't have time to delve into useless embellishments on my character with the lot of you. It's not as though you would understand, anyway. If we're going to fight, let's fight. You're making me late for my next engagement." She glanced cautiously at the other two vampires, who were grouped together on the side and staring at her across the invisible line which divided them. Toya Rima and Shiki Senri had yet to say anything or make any movements. They didn't even look angry. They were watching the action play out with languid expressions and half-lidded eyes, looking like they weren't quite sure how they'd got here in the first place. Were they even going to participate? Reina wondered as she hardened her claws and bared her teeth, shining the redness of her eyes directly at her opponents. In the long run, however, it didn't really matter whether she was now up against two vampires or four. She had to end this before they could attack, before they forced her to give too much away. She took the risk of closing her eyes for a moment, concentrating, reaching deep inside of herself to find the control she needed. She felt the fingers of her mind close around her half-blood aura. An effervescent sensation began to spread across her skin, as if her blood were boiling within her. She carefully kept it restrained, holding it back an inch from the surface. She had to release it at the last possible moment, so that the aristocrats would have no time to observe anything that was happening before they lost the ability to think at all. The time was almost here. When she opened her eyes again, Ruka's claws were two inches from her face.
Reina jumped backward into a lash of fire which knocked her to the ground. Ruka was on top of her instantly, but before her claws could pierce, Reina kicked her off and flipped upright, dodging another jet of flame from the red-haired vampire on her left. Akatsuki Kain strode sideways, warily positioning himself in between his fallen cousin and the dueling females. Ruka swiped at Reina again, and the half-blood girl grabbed the other's wrist and hit her soundly in the face. She heard an angry shout, and then she had to jump backwards again as a fireball flew into the space which she had just occupied, setting the previously lush grass aflame. Reina's skin blistered painfully from the searing impact of the first fireball, which she had not felt until now. Akatsuki Kain was becoming too careless with his powers. Several trees were on fire at the edge of the clearing, and now the clearing itself was beginning to burn from the inside out. It wouldn't be long at all before the rising smoke brought people running, day class and night class alike. She had to end this now, so she could put out the fire and escape without being seen. It was time. As Ruka charged at her for a third attempt, Reina lifted her needle-sharp left hand high into the air and prepared to plunge it down into the side of her own body.
"Stop."
Ruka froze immediately. Reina kept going until the voice repeated itself: "Stop." Then she peered up, red eyes blinking in realization as two additional figures materialized in the clearing. Kaname Kuran was standing quietly at the edge of the clearing, wearing black pants and a loose, dark shirt which was halfway hanging open as though he had not had time to finish buttoning it. The tousled-blonde figure of Takuma Ichijo was beside him, still wearing his night class uniform.
"Kaname-sama!" Ruka gasped as Akatsuki stepped back respectfully. Reina's eyebrow twitched again. Her blood was still boiling. For a moment, she considered simply carrying on with her original plan and putting the lot of them out of commission. However, Kaname would probably not be disabled by the true scent of her blood as the others would, and then she would have to deal with him trying to talk to her, which was many times worse than having fireballs thrown at her. She dropped her hand with a grunt of disgust, glaring at the pureblood. Kaname gazed evenly at his subordinates.
"You attacked Reina-san recklessly, with no thought to the Academy's rules and no regard for your surroundings." He indicated to the clearing, which Reina suddenly realized was no longer burning. Even so, the fire scars formed an ugly swath across the formerly pristine forest scenery, out of which thick black smoke was still rising.
Ruka gazed at the ground. Akatsuki looked away. "We were trying to defend your honor, Kaname-sama. We have been appalled by this girl's repeated disregard for your position and the respect due to you as our pureblood lord. To see a low-born such as this one constantly defying our-"
"Did I ask you to defend my honor? Did I instruct you to act for me?" the dark pureblood demanded with a bite of anger in his voice. "Did you even bother to consult me before acting? Did you think I would be pleased with the outcome? A student has been harshly assaulted who was posing no physical threat to anyone. The peaceful directives of Cross Academy are in shambles. This is unacceptable."
"We apologize, Kaname-sama." Ruka intoned softly. Akatsuki nodded alongside her. Reina rolled her eyes, appalled at how easily they backed down before their little prince. They really did have no wills of their own. Spineless.
"What happened to Aidou?" Kaname asked, giving no indication of accepting their apology. Ruka pointed sharply across the clearing.
"She did something to him. She attacked an aristocrat with no reservations!"
"Did he attack first?" Kaname questioned, and Ruka was silent. "Aidou has always been too impulsive…." He straightened up further. "Are you hurt, Reina-san?"
"Hardly," she scoffed, taking a step back as he turned his attention to her. That was her cue to leave. "But I'm afraid I can't be bothered to stick around for any more lovely explosions of rage on the part of your friends. I'm leaving."
"Please wait a moment," he called after her as she swirled around and began to stalk away toward her car. Reina bared her fangs at the empty building in front of her. Her uniform was in tatters. Her white skirt had become a stiff patch of ugly brown, and the material which covered the left side of her abdomen, where the fireball had hit, had been completely blown away. The underside of her red bra was exposed, as was her naval. Reina could feel the damage to her skin rapidly healing, but at this moment her side still hurt like hell. She refused to turn around, afraid she'd wince or show another sign of weakness. She heard movement behind her, and stiffened instinctively.
"Takuma, please accompany these four back to the Moon dormitory and see that they remain there until I return. They will all be subject to discipline for violating the Academy's rules in such an egregious manner. That includes you two, Rima, Senri. Failure to take action to prevent someone else's malicious behavior is not much different than committing that same behavior yourselves."
"Kaname-sama-"
"Go, Ruka," the pureblood's voice insisted firmly. Reina heard the retreat of reluctant footsteps along the path which led back to the main Academy grounds. She kept her back to Kaname, using all of her subsequent senses to monitor his movement. He waited until they were out of vampire-earshot before he spoke again. "Takuma warned me."
"I know," she snapped, staring straight ahead at her car. "He warned me as well. I just didn't think it would be so soon."
"I apologize very deeply for their actions." He came a few steps closer to her. "I do not in any way condone-"
"Look, if there's something you want to say besides all of this meaningless lip-service, you'd better hurry up and say it. In case you haven't noticed, I'm a little distressed and I'd like to leave." Reina shot at him, pivoting on her foot and turning back around to glare at him impatiently.
He watched her quietly from under his thick lashes, his gaze drifting down her shoulder to her exposed arm. "You were going to confuse their senses by saturating the air with the smell of your blood. You changed your aura to that of a half-blood's."
Reina folded her arms. "So?"
"It's an ingenious defense mechanism. So unexpected. One would think it would expose you to danger, but it actually protects you."
The half-blood girl shrugged. "When I draw up my poison, the true scent of my blood causes them to go crazy with thirst and try to attack me. But they also become uncoordinated and unthinking. It's rather easy to defeat them when they're in that state. It's pathetic, really."
Kaname glanced back at the school, then at her again. "The blood of a half-blood….so precious and rare, so full of silent power….and yet you let it flow so carelessly into the dirt."
Reina gazed at him evenly, red moons in her eyes. "My blood. I can do what I want with it. You don't see me going around telling you what to do with your precious blood."
"You cannot save Zero Kiryu. You can only suspend him above the pit of madness. He will become dependent upon your blood to give him more time to hold on, but all that time will only lengthen his torment. Tell me, Reina-san, is it not cruel to let him dangle there?"
Reina felt her claws lengthen again. Ignoring the fact that her bra was showing, she strode over to the pureblood and planted herself right in front of him, chest pounding in indignation. "You are just full of it, aren't you? To listen to you, one would think you had some sort of moral superiority, but you don't really know what the fuck you're talking about. This is not your choice to make for Zero. From what I've heard, a pureblood changed him into a vampire against his will. That wasn't a choice that was hers to make, the presumptuous bitch. And now here you come, another pureblood, trying to do the same thing-making decisions for him because you're higher up in the food chain. Get over yourself! Let him hold on if he wants to hold on! It's his choice. Maybe he still has something to live for. You don't know." Reina jabbed her clawed finger at him and spun around again, striding across the clearing and muttering 'pureblood' and 'bastard' under her breath. Much to her chagrin, the bastard pureblood in question pursued her gracefully across the burned grass.
"Reina-san, wait. I understand your perspective on this matter. I am merely trying to point out the likelihood of events-"
"You can take your damned likelihood right back to where you came from!" the angry girl barked, pointing aggressively in the direction of the Moon dorm. Kaname stepped back, and for a moment Reina dared to hope that he had finally gotten the message.
"May I ask you something?"
"Oh, for the love of- what?" she growled in exasperation.
"What have I done to make you hate me with such great passion?"
Reina wanted to throw something at him. "If you really have to ask that, you're just hopelessly stupid and you can't be helped."
"Do you hate me because of the history between purebloods and half-bloods?" Kaname pressed on, tilting his head to the side. Reina noticed that the sun had cracked the lip of the horizon behind him.
"No, you idiot, I don't hate you for what your ancestors did. I hate you because of what you're doing right now, perpetuating their lifestyles and upholding the structure of the world over which they made themselves kings." Reina gestured harshly to the earth upon which they were standing.
Kaname blinked. "I am merely living within the nature of my destiny. I am different from aristocrats and common vampires. I cannot change the way in which I was born, and I cannot change how I must live. You don't realize this because you are so young, but Reina-san, if you continue to deliberately upset the balance of the night world….things will get ugly."
Reina's face lost all expression. He didn't get it. He did not fucking comprehend. They were talking at each other from two different realities. "Will you open your goddamn eyes?" she hissed in fury. "We're living in a world where people like you get to stand because the majority of the population is kept on its knees; where nobody even tries to give a damn about anything besides their own aspirations and social positions; where every king and queen has their own little empire and they wage undercover wars against each other, burning through resources and trading life like currency. You're at the center of that world! I see what's going on, and let me tell you, things are already ugly!"
Reina turned back around and reached the side of her car, fumbling in her non-destroyed skirt pocket in search of her keys. She heard Kaname take a few more steps toward her. "Reina-san- I never asked to be-"
"No! No more!" she shouted in exasperation, finding her keys and unlocking the door. She really felt like throwing her car at him, but then she would be out of a car. "I have nothing to talk about with you, Kaname Kuran, so just go back to the Moon dorm and let your little friends whine to you about how nasty I am. Nobody chooses how they were born, but everything afterward, that's another story. And I really can't stand your arrogant choices- so get out of my face!"
Reina shoved herself inside her car, slammed the door shut, and peeled off down the forest road. This seemed like it was becoming a regular occurrence for her, driving away from Cross Academy in a rage as the morning broke. Why did she keep coming back to this damn school? It was like shooting herself in the foot. The burn marks had disappeared from her flesh, and the last vestiges of pain were fading as Reina whirled through the town and merged back onto the highway. She did not stop at the roadside café for breakfast. She did not turn off at the entrance to her school. The half-blood girl drove directly to her home and cut the engine as she pulled into the drive, staring up at the window to her room. Her father's car had already left for work. If she moved swiftly and climbed up the side of her house and into her bedroom window, her mother would never know that she was home. Fortunately, the layout of her driveway was tilted in such a way that it could not be seen from the living room or the neighbors' houses.
Pausing for a moment, Reina applied her hearing in full force to the block around her, making absolutely certain that no one was watching, before she slipped out of the car and took a flying leap off the ground and onto the base of her house's roof. Silently, she scrabbled along the edge until her clawed hand came to rest upon her bedroom window's frame. Reina had learned to usually leave it cracked open a tiny bit when she was out, in case a situation like this ever arose. Pulling the glass out underneath her, Reina swung into her room and dove directly onto her bedsheets, burying her face into the nest of blankets in which her cat usually slept. For a while, she just lay there, determined to do nothing that would aggravate her pounding headache more. The morning sunlight swept over her skin, illuminating her, but Reina still felt cold. The loss of blood always made her feel cold. Or perhaps she had just always been cold to begin with. Her mother had called her a snowbird baby when she was young. She had told Reina that she had blown into their doorway on a snowstorm one night as an infant. As a child, Reina had liked the idea of herself blowing along in the wind and snow, tumbling suddenly through the door of her parents' old home in the forest like a declaration of fate. Here I am. Of course, this had just been her mother's way of trying to adjust her young daughter to the fact that she had not been born to them; that she was from elsewhere. Reina had finally been told the full story when she was ten. She had blown through her parents' door in the middle of a snowstorm, but she hadn't done it all by herself. A man had carried her there that night, a man whom her parents described to her as "kind," but "clearly in the midst of terrible despair." He had blonde hair, her mother said, not light blonde, but a darker color. He was young, about in his early twenties. He would not introduce himself, and her mother barely managed to coax him in the door. He had a tiny baby girl wrapped up in his arms in a white blanket. They could not tell if she was sleeping, but she never opened her eyes. The man's eyes were wide, wide open, painful fear flashing in each bright iris. "This is my baby- my daughter," he told them while the snow blew past them into the house. "Her name is Reina. She's dying. Her mother is already dead. I need you to- I need a place for her to stay, peacefully, so she can- she can't be with me. I can't give her that. If they find her- please, do you think you could-"
Her mother moved forward to try to get a closer look at the baby. Her father, dumbstruck, offered to call someone, and the stranger rapidly shook his head. "You can't! You mustn't tell anyone about this for at least a day. Otherwise they'll know. And promise me- you must not set foot outside this home for the rest of the night! Do you understand?"
Of course, her parents didn't understand, and they were highly alarmed by the stranger's desperate insistence. At that moment, the wind changed, and he seemed to decide that his time was up. "I'm sorry," he murmured to the baby as the concerned woman pried her out of his hands. "Your mommy and I, we're both so sorry….we didn't know you were going to die. We didn't know there was nothing we could do! We tried to make you….as happy as possible…." With tremendous strength, he pulled the little girl back into his arms and embraced her, folding his body completely around her tiny figure, choking back sobs as silver tears ran down his face. "I know you don't understand me, Reina, but I'm so sorry….I wish I could be there with you- at the end. But I won't let them find you. I promise I won't."
Her parents had no idea what was going on, but they didn't have much choice in the unfolding of these events. A moment later, the man herded them back into the house and handed them his daughter one final time. "Please take care of her," he begged in a whisper so low that it sounded like a moan. "Make sure she's comfortable, and- talk to her, she likes to be talked to. Don't forget, her name is Reina. Keep her inside the house until this snowstorm ends. Stay with her, and….please, just let her die in peace." With that, the man stumbled away into the whirling darkness, deaf to her parents' cries to come back and explain himself. He vanished without a trace. In the years afterward, her parents would recall how perfectly flawless his skin was; how sharp his fingers were; and how he never shivered in the snow, despite the fact that his coat was torn up the sides in ragged strips. They would remember this and tell all of this to ten-year-old Reina as a curiosity. But they would never once suspect that he had been a vampire, because vampires did not exist.
Of course, Reina did not die. But it seemed, within the first few weeks of living with her new family, that she was going to. Her baffled parents followed the stranger's demand and did not leave the house until the next morning. Afterward, no matter how many doctor's visits they brought her to or how much nutrition-enriched supplements they gave her to drink, she simply seemed to be fading away. She did not drink anything willingly, and did not even seem to be hungry. She almost never responded to sensory stimuli, although she would occasionally open her eyes when talked to. It seemed like a cruel trick of fate to her poor parents, who had been trying for so long to conceive a child of their own, only to be told that they were infertile. Now the child that they had received was not going to last. Reina simply did not seem interested in living- no crying, no eating, no babbling, no laughter or clapping. Her body was always cold. One night, in the pediatrics emergency ward of the hospital, her heartbeat flatlined and her breathing stopped. Her parents pressed up against the incubator to say goodbye, barely able to touch her tiny hands amid the mass of tubes protruding from her frail body. As the monitor hummed on and ragged tears fell, the defeat of death seemed to settle over the room, heavy and constricting. Her mother remembered that there had been a tiny red flower placed atop the incubator by one of the nurses, and that it had been the brightest thing in the room. It seemed to grow even brighter as the skin of the infant beneath it paled and grew ashen- overwhelmingly, unbearably red.
Then Reina's brown eyes leaped open and she began to cry. Her face flushed and grew blotchy with color, and she kicked her little legs up and down indignantly against the coldness of the tubes. She screamed bright screams of energy and passion, and her open mouth was redder than the flower above it. For a long moment, no one in the room could do anything but stare.
It was a miracle, her parents said. Reina was glad to know that they thought of her survival in such terms. When she was first told this story, she had initially been concerned that her parents would not have wanted her so badly if they had known that their diagnosis of chronic infertility was incorrect, that in less than two years time, her mother would give birth to a healthy baby girl of her very own. But her parents had said it was all for the best, and that they would not have changed anything that had happened. They firmly believed that it was important for children to grow up with siblings around them, so that they could be properly socialized and learn to share and care for one another. In keeping with the precedent of names ending with A, they named the new baby Elisa, and moved out of their old home in the forest to a neighborhood with other houses and children around them. Reina often wondered whether the man who had left her at that house had ever returned to the place, only to find them gone. But there had never been any indication that anyone might be searching for her out there, and there was no way to contact him and tell him that his daughter had not died, after all. The question that bothered Reina the most, second only to the mysterious cause of her mother's death, was why he had been so convinced that his child was going to die in the first place. Aside from that, there were hundreds more. Who was he? Where had he come from? Who had her mother been? Why had her father been desperate enough to entrust his daughter to complete strangers? And what had he been so terrified of when he had arrived on her parents' doorstep that frozen night?
She could wonder all she wanted, but in the end, the truth had never become available to her. Devoid of answers, she had lived for twelve years of her life as a normal human girl, in a rather normal human way. She had gone to school and learned to read and made friends and got into fights and built tree forts with her sister in the backyard. She had travelled to summer camp and learned to ride horses and watched her mother fill the house with arts and crafts and discovered that her favorite food was chicken donburi. She had never had any indication that she was anything other than a regular human child. Although her mysterious past had bothered her a bit, she had been happy. And then-
The door to her bedroom swung open, and Reina quickly looked up, pulling herself out of her reverie. The light brown head of her younger sister poked into her room, reaching for a hair bow on the bedside table. She started to see Reina herself lying across the bed. "Reina! What are you doing here? Why aren't you at school?" she whispered, sliding in the room so their mother would not hear them talking.
"I could ask you the same thing. And you were going to grab my hair tie, weren't you?" Reina smirked up at her sister. Elisa grimaced down at her.
"I was- that's not the point! I'm here because I'm sick. I'm just about to leave for a doctor's visit with Mom. Does she know you're here?"
"No. I just got in." Reina shook her head, her brown hair dragging messily across the bedcovers. "I don't want to deal with school today. I just got attacked by a bunch of vampires at the other school. I'm not in a good mood."
"No way! I thought Cross Academy was supposed to be a peaceful place!" Elisa protested, closing the door and coming to sit beside her sister on the bed. Her hair was a lighter color than Reina's, and not as thick. Her face was differently-shaped as well. No one who didn't know them would have guessed that they were sisters. Elisa was pretty in her own right, but she had long ago come to terms with her older sister's gorgeous appearance, especially once she'd found out the reason behind it.
Reina grunted and rolled onto her back. "'Supposed to be,' is the key phrase there, Elis. You can legislate all you want, but you can't make something happen if people don't have the will to obey." She didn't understand what Elisa was staring at until she realized that she had not yet changed out of her charred school uniform. "Oh, and I also got hit by a fireball. Damn expensive uniform is completely ruined."
Elisa shook her head in slow disbelief. "No one has school days like you do, Rei. No one."
"Well, I should hope not. That would mean the misfortune was spreading."
"Are you okay?" Her sister's fragile finger brushed up against the perfect skin exposed beneath the burned cloth.
"Yeah, it hurt like hell at the time, but I'm fine now. I finished healing over in the car. I would have left sooner, but that bastard Kuran held me up."
Elisa snorted at the name. "I find it hard to believe that anyone could be as terrible as you describe him. I kind of want to meet this guy."
"You shouldn't." Reina declared. "You'd wind up wanting to punch him. Presumptuous idiot…." She paused because she did not want to get into the entire story of what Kaname had said to her. She had not yet mentioned Zero to her family. Removed from the vampire world as they were, she wasn't sure how to explain to them the terrible curse that Zero was under, and the even more terrible fate that awaited him if she refused to shed more of her blood on Cross Academy grounds. She wasn't sure if they would be all right with it. They loved her. They had never even met Zero.
"Elisa, are you coming?" she heard her mother call faintly from downstairs.
Her sister straightened up on the bed. "I won't tell Mom you're here. Rest before you have to go back there, okay?"
"I will," she murmured, giving the younger girl a fang-toothed smile. "Take the hairbow."
"Oooooh, thanks! See you later!" Elisa grabbed the bow off the dresser and dashed out of the room before their mother could become suspicious. Alone in her sun-bathed room once more, Reina listened to the thumping of her sister's footsteps on the stairs. She didn't seem very sick, but then, Reina was not one to judge others for skipping school. She heard the quiet bump of the door closing, and then the house was silent. Reina stood up and closed her window completely before falling back onto the bed and re-burying her face in the blanket nest. Her thoughts became blurry as she drifted off to sleep.
She had been given twelve years in which to be normal. But on unlucky number thirteen, everything had changed….
I hope that was all right! I thought it was about time to delve into a little of Reina's background as a character. I tried to do it in an interesting way. :)
I want to put a question out there for anyone who might know the answer. Since I've been reading manga and watching anime for awhile, I've pretty much got the whole honorifics thing down (-san, -sama, -kun, -chan, and whatnot.) But one thing that I still don't understand is the issue of using 'first names' versus 'family names.' Is it polite in Japanese culture to call a person by their family name, and what sort of relationship would have to be established between two people in order for them to address each other by their first names? I was a bit confused in some of the scenes when I wasn't sure if Kaname should be calling the night class by their first or family names.
Finally, please review! I don't have that many reviews yet, so I'm kind of a sad panda...but reviews will make me feel more confident!