The story returns! :) Thanks for being patient with me, guys.

Reina procrastinated until the very last second before she had to leave for the Academy that evening. This time, it went beyond her usual desire to avoid the place entirely. She was a little bit afraid as she climbed into her car and pulled back out of her driveway. She knew that there was news waiting for her in the headmaster's office, and that it would be bad news no matter what- her only options were between something bad and something worse. If her blood had had the effect that Kaien Cross had hoped for, she would have to continue this cycle of bleeding out on a regular basis, and would gain another unwanted bond attaching her to the Academy. If it had not worked….she wasn't sure what she would find. The Academy silent, Zero gone, Kaien Cross standing in front of his empty desk with wet and blurred spectacles. She didn't think she could deal with that, and as she drove along the road, she couldn't help but insensibly hope for the pain over the silence.

The Headmaster had asked her to come early, so Reina pulled into the clearing half an hour before classes were due to start. She did not have to change first, since her uniform had been decimated by a fireball, so she headed straight up to the administrative building in her street clothes. There were still groups of Day Class students lingering about, but she did not bother with them. Contrary to the way she had entered last time, Reina practically tiptoed through the doors and paced quietly along the halls, flicking her fingers nervously. When she reached Kaien Cross's office, she stood in front of his door for almost two whole minutes, clenching and unclenching her fists. Finally she raised her hand and knocked, telling herself firmly that she'd done what she could, and whatever happened afterward would simply have to be accepted.

The door swung open, and Kaien Cross was there; he was beaming. Reina's shoulders instantly relaxed. They would not have to face the worst, after all. "It worked?" she inquired.

He nodded, and for a few moments it seemed like his joy was too expansive for words. "It did. It did! It worked! It's going to be all right!" Reina thought that the last statement was going a bit far, but still she stepped forward into the Headmaster's arms and allowed him to hug her. This was the best she could have hoped for, and she could not find it within herself to feel displeased. After a moment, he drew back, hands still on her shoulders. "I can't thank you enough, Reina. All this time- I've been so worried…." He ducked his head and brushed his spectacles back up his nose, smiling vaguely. Reina suddenly felt the urge to comfort him.

"I….I'm glad that….he has more time. And for you…." Mentally, Reina smacked herself. She couldn't have thought of a better comforting statement than that disjointed mess?

Kaien Cross drew a deep breath, and smiled in her direction. "I'm going to let him rest for a few more days so he can get used to the effects of your blood. But I do believe that he should be able to resume a normal life- well, as normal as it can be-"

He cut off suddenly and stared behind her. Reina turned her head halfway to see the diminutive figure of Yuki Cross standing there in the corridor, looking flustered. She was breathing harder than normal, something that only Reina's keen ears could detect. They all stared at each other for a moment, and to Reina's surprise, Yuki spoke first. "Father," she said, tilting her head, "we need to talk. I've just been to see Zero, and….we need to talk."

Reina stepped back from Kaien Cross and gave him a slight nod. From the expression on his daughter's face, it looked like the game was up. She personally thought that he should have told Yuki about Zero from the beginning, and avoided this extra layer of secrecy. But she didn't want to get in the middle of their father-daughter business. "I'm going to head out, then."

"All right," the headmaster said, looking a little bit flustered himself. "I have some business later tonight, but I'll need to meet with you again soon- maybe tomorrow-?"

Reina nodded and breezed out past Yuki, doing her best to keep her expression nonchalant. She wondered how the tiny prefect had found out about Zero. Perhaps he had just come right out and told her. Reina didn't know Zero very well at all, so she could not estimate whether he was the sort of person who would do that or not. Either way, she was grateful to have gotten out of that awkward situation.

Her meeting with the headmaster cut short, Reina wandered along the side of the academic building, wondering how to best kill time before she had to go to class. By the time she had ducked out of sight of the fifth group of giggling night class girls, the library seemed like a better option by far. Reina located a ground floor window, checked inside and out for any nearby human presences, and then slid her claws underneath the latch, pulling the glass pane up with barely a sound. She swung herself up and somersaulted smoothly inside, landing in the middle of a quiet room with bookshelves lining the edges and tables filling the middle.

"Hey!"

She almost jumped back out the window at the unexpected voice. From the other side of a bookshelf, a very bright figure dressed all in white and topped with a golden mop of hair advanced toward her. She recognized the face of Takuma Ichijo, the vampire who had tried to 'save' her last night. She gave him an annoyed glare. "What?"

"I wasn't expecting to find you in here. I was just about to go to the administrative building and try to head you off," he said smoothly, coming a few more steps closer. She noticed that he held a wide white box in his arms.

Reina raised her eyebrow. "And why would you be doing that?" she asked sardonically. "Is there another attack planned for tonight?"

"Goodness, no! No one in the Night Class would dare do something like that right after Kaname told them not to!" Takuma shook his head, running a hand through his gossamer hair. "He was furious, you know. It was really scary. He actually suspended everyone involved in that incident from school for a few days. Even Aido, after he recovered. He's just fine now." Takuma said in a reassuring tone, although Reina had not asked about Aido and did not particularly care how he was. On the other hand, the news that she would not have to put up with Kaname Kuran's little fan club for a few days made her want to grin, although she restrained herself.

"So what do you want, then?"

Takuma hefted the box into his other arm. "Well, I was hoping to catch you before you got to class today and give you this." He put the box down on the table, and Reina eyed it suspiciously. He laughed, continuing his bizarrely friendly conversation. "Don't worry, Reina-san. I've already said that I mean you no harm. It's just this, see?" He lifted the lid off, and Reina took in the sight of a pristine white uniform, perfectly folded and nestled amongst white tissue paper. She looked at it, then looked at Takuma. The silence in the library stretched out to uncomfortable lengths.

"….And why are you giving me a Night Class uniform?"

"Well, I know that your other one was destroyed by Akatsuki yesterday, so…."

"Where the heck did you get this from, anyway? They don't sell them in the student store. My first one just-" Reina closed her mouth tightly and glowered at the blithely smiling boy in front of her. She had been about to say that her first uniform had just showed up at her house in the middle of the night, in a box quite like this one, and her father had tripped over it the next morning when he'd gone out to get the newspaper. But a story like that would inform Takuma that she had a house and a father, neither of which would make her position any safer. The less these people knew about her daytime life, the better.

Takuma rubbed the back of his head, for the first time seeming a little flustered. "I think they're custom-made, quite exclusive….and I'm not entirely sure where they come from. To be honest, I didn't buy it. Kaname did, but he was worried that you wouldn't wear it if you knew it was from him, so he told me to pretend that it was my gift. But, um, I forgot to ask him where he'd got it from…." He laughed a little at himself, and Reina stared hard at the uniform, her suspicions flaring within her. The bell rang above their heads, signifying that they had ten minutes left to get to class. Takuma pushed the box across the table toward her, smiling again. "Anyway, I hope you have better luck in this uniform than you had in your last one, Reina-san. I really am glad you weren't hurt last night. I kept thinking that I was probably too late, that I should have acted sooner….but then we got there and you were still standing, and I was relieved."

Reina could detect the sincerity in his voice. He really doesn't act like a vampire, she thought in perplexity. Showing his emotions, smiling all the time, being honest, of all things…. Awkwardly, she shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans and grumbled out "I don't need your help. But I know that you were trying to….help. So….yeah. Well. Have a good night."

"You too, Reina-san," the blonde boy said. And he offered her his hand.

Reina's first instinctual thought was to turn away and pretend she didn't see the hand. However, she hesitated for a split-second too long to make that possible. Very slowly, as if her arm contained grinding gears, she reached over the table and let her palm touch his. She allowed him to do the shaking, and when it was over she felt immensely relieved. But stranger still was the fact that for the first time in her history of facing vampires, she found herself unable to summon even a trace of malice into her eyes or her mind.

Now flustered herself, Reina hoisted the box over her shoulder and nearly ran out of the library, making a quick beeline into the ladies' room on the ground floor. Still in a state of confusion, she held up the newly pressed uniform and inspected it carefully, although she had no idea what she was looking for. A part of her was all for destroying the white fabric on principle of knowing who it had come from, but she figured that such an act would be a bit juvenile, as justified as it might be. She had no doubt that Kaname Kuran was up to something- buying her a uniform, of all things!- but she could not attribute any nefarious motives to Takuma. Takuma, who was the pureblood's right hand, she reminded herself as she changed into the perfectly cut fabric and headed out to class.

Reina spent most of first period wondering what was happening in the administrative building between the headmaster and his daughter. Her thoughts occasionally drifted to Zero, and then drifted away again. She felt uncomfortable in her new uniform, although it was by all accounts no different than her last one. Her only satisfaction was in looking down to the front row and seeing five empty spaces where her attackers would normally be sitting. School would be much more relaxing without them here, which was just what she needed at a time like this.

At the end of the class, Reina hung out warily in the back as the other students filed out. She didn't want to walk past Kaname in case he tried to talk to her again, or even worse, made some sort of comment about the uniform. However, her uneasiness was assuaged after a moment; the pureblood leaned down and spoke into the ear of his only remaining follower, and a moment later, Kaname and Takuma had stood up and quickly exited the classroom. Delighted, Reina strode out the door and noted the silence of the grounds down below. All of the other students were heading for their second period classes, but she no longer had a class to attend. A strange feeling of solitude took over the half-blood girl, and she wandered contentedly down the stairs and out of the building, coming to rest on the rim of the fountain beside the gardens. She was in a strangely approachable mood, probably because of her conversation with that damn Takuma. It was a good thing that there was no one around to approach her, or she might have actually considered talking to them. The running of the fountain filled up her senses, and Reina thought of the underground fountain with the colored water in which she rested every month, gaining her strength back after bleeding out. She wondered what the world would look like from the bottom of this fountain, clear waves and swan wings outstretched over the basin. She was almost tempted to roll into the water and find out, but the fact that she had on a brand new uniform was enough to convince her pragmatic mind to stay on the ledge, even if it had been given by him. She wondered once again whom he'd commissioned to make these uniforms. Perhaps the headmaster would know.

"Hey!"

It was the second 'hey!' that had caused her to jump that night. This time Reina almost fell into the water. She straightened up, furiously telling herself that she needed to keep better track of what was going on around her. There was someone on the opposite side of the sheen of water flowing down from the swan's stone beak. Although the water masked his figure, the raw aggression in his tone revealed his identity. "Hey what, Zero Kiryu?"

He moved around the side of the fountain, scowling deeply. "You're not supposed to be- oh. It's you." There was a flustered pause as both vampires stared at each other. Then Zero sighed and dropped his gun hand. "You're still not going back to your class?"

"Not tonight, not tomorrow, not ever. And I wasn't doing anything out here," Reina insisted, annoyed that her peace had been disturbed.

Zero's mouth hardened into a thin line. "I thought I sensed an unfamiliar presence on the grounds. You haven't seen anyone you don't know, have you?"

Reina shook her head, frowning slightly herself. Come to think of it, she had detected a sort of oddness in the air before, but she had assumed that it was Zero, his vampiric presence still not fully ingrained in her mind. "I know that Kaname Kuran has banned some of his lackeys from school for a few days. It's possible that one of them might have snuck back into campus, but I think we would recognize their presence since we've felt it before."

"Why would Kuran do that?" the silver-haired boy demanded, whipping his head around to stare in the direction of the Moon dorm. He was evidently completely uninformed of the events of the past 24 hours. Reina could imagine that he'd probably spent them unconscious in his bed, slowly coming back from the brink. She thought about lying in order to avoid uncomfortable explanations, but she figured that Zero would find out soon enough, anyway. He was still a Guardian, after all.

"They attacked me last night as I was heading back to my car. Dunno what the hell they were planning to do- they never got that far. Long story short, we beat each other up a bit and then Kuran showed up and sent them back to the Moon dorm. Taku- Ichijo-san told me tonight that they'd been suspended," the brown-haired girl relayed, rolling her eyes. The fountain gurgled behind her.

Zero scrutinized her closely for a moment. "Why would they attack you? They don't know, do they-"

"No, they don't," Reina replied shortly. "It has nothing to do with that. We just don't get along, that's all. And hey- aren't you supposed to be resting?"

The guardian shrugged, coming a step closer to the fountain. "I'm better now."

There was another still silence as the two vampires reclined feet apart, each thinking of the many implications of that statement. If Reina shut out all her linear thoughts, she could feel the flow of her blood in this strange boy's veins. The sensation freaked her out, and she did the best she could to push it away from her mind. She nodded. "Mmmm-hmmm. The headmaster told me. It's good that you're….stable."

"Now that I am, I want you to answer my question," Zero stated, coming to sit down on the fountain's ledge, leaving at least two yards between them. "Why?"

"Oh, for goodness sakes!" Reina huffed, brushing a lock of hair out of her eyes. "I don't understand why you have to ask that. Look, I may be as prickly as a pear cactus, but I like to think that I'm not evil. And allowing someone to lose their sanity in such a horrible way when I have the power to prevent it is evil."

There was another brief silence. "So you feel sorry for me," Zero stated flatly, clenching his fist.

"A little," Reina admitted, unwilling to give him a patronizing answer. "I know how it feels to turn into a vampire against your will- and let's just say I appreciate that you've had it rough. Anyway, you're not the enemy."

"Who is the enemy?" the gray-haired boy asked bluntly.

Without pausing, Reina pointed a sharp finger up at the looming academic building. "Them."

"You don't like them," Zero murmured, "but they're your own kind-"

"They are not my kind. We've been over this, damnit. Purebloods and aristocrats are here, and I'm over here," Reina snapped, waving her arms in different directions. "We're completely different."

"But your blood is the same-"

"No, no, no. Our blood has different abilities. And while they go around sucking the life out of humans, I don't drink blood at all. So it's not the same."

"You don't drink blood?" Zero asked, surprised. "Then how do you sustain yourself?"

"I eat food," Reina said as though this should have been the most obvious thing in the world. "I mean, I could drink blood if I wanted to, I suppose. But I don't need to. I don't really need a lot of food, either. My energy just kind of keeps on running, who knows where it comes from. Kaien Cross says that my body operates like a perpetual motion machine."

"And do you sleep?" the guardian inquired, frowning as though studying an unfamiliar text.

Reina shrugged. "Barely. I don't really need to. Honestly, I eat and sleep a lot more than is strictly necessary for me, because I like having interesting dreams and food tastes good. But in terms of sustaining myself, my physiology operates on a freakin' bizarre equation. Very little food plus very little sleep somehow equals power." Suddenly aware that she might have said too much, Reina dropped her eyes and re-directed her focus to the thing that had been disturbing her earlier. "Ah, and speaking of vampirism….from what I saw earlier, I think your little prefect friend is on to you."

"I know. I let her find out." Zero paused for a moment, then shook his head. "I couldn't lie to Yuki. She's been my friend ever since….since I came here." Reina nodded, quietly wondering what her own human friends' reactions would be if they ever discovered the truth about her. The silver-haired boy tilted his head and bit his lip, the first hint of a fang showing below his mouth. "Why, what did she say?"

"She didn't say much of anything to me. I was just talking to the headmaster, and then she showed up behind me and said that she'd just been to see you and she needed to talk to him. I don't know if they're still talking." Reina indicated toward the administrative building just as the bell rang to signify the end of the second class period of the night. From inside the academic hall, white-clad vampires began to flit about the railings and stairways, making their way to the places where they would spend their hour-long break. Zero stood up, and Reina reached for her bookbag silently.

"Maybe I'd better go and….but-" Zero glanced between the administrative and academic buildings agitatedly, and this time Reina could tell what was bothering him. There was a definite strange presence in the air, something completely separate from Zero himself. Stranger still, the presence felt homogenous, but it did not seem to be centered in on one location. Reina's eyes darted around suspiciously, and her fingers plucked at her uniform as she and Zero held still beside the gurgling fountain, trying to track the location of the presence. The vampire boy hissed, and all of a sudden she heard a high-pitched laugh behind her and whirled around.

Despite her rational thoughts to the contrary, Reina had always been a firm believer in first impressions. She almost never forgot an initial meeting, and she tended to pay extra close attention to people upon first encountering them. Aside from that, she had learned over the years that instinct could be a better judge of character than reputation. For these reasons, it took her less than five seconds to determine that the lithe, gray-haired girl with the congenial smile and the freshly-pressed Night Class uniform who was strolling along the sidewalk parallel to them was the equivalent of some very, very unfortunate news indeed.

Ah, and the plot thickens...

I hope that was all right! I was kind of worried that this chapter would be boring, since it's basically just a set of conversations that I needed to happen. The next chapter will have more action/intrigue! :)