Cross Academy

Sora, finished with his morning rounds, was currently on the roof of the school building, happy to enjoy the altitude and also the solitude. Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t exactly prefer being alone, and he would not have minded company, but… people like him, who were fundamentally introverted, needed the occasional opportunity to take a break away from the constant noise of humanity. And, well, vampires too. They were just as irritating, in his opinion, but the idioms were not made so easily for them. Now, though, he was feeling about as refreshed as he had in a while, and the only reason he chose not to go rejoin everyone else was because he saw no need.

He would have hated to be a noble. Though he preferred nighttime or rain, the sun on his face was not a sensation he desired to lack. Where once there had been two vampires in the entire school who could tolerate the sun, there were now four, with the addition of Sachiko and Rosenkreuz’s new bodyguard. Well, new only in the sense that he was just now appearing—it was evident from their behaviors that they knew each other quite well. He wondered, of course. A predatory mind was by nature a curious one, but he did not ask. He would not. Even criminals and people who had done atrocious things deserved the opportunity to keep their private affairs private.

Besides that, he didn’t really want anything more to do with the guy than Rosenkreuz wanted to do with him, which was to say nothing at all. He couldn’t muster lingering hatred, because hatred was a weakness, but he didn’t like him much, either. There just weren’t really any feelings there to be had. Mutual disregard, if one were feeling poetic about it.

Yamazaki was still in the infirmary, but they said the worst had passed, that she’d be fine. Ironic, that with all the interacting she’d done with vampires, it was humans who put her in the hospital for this long. One species could be just as dangerous as the other; they simply had different methods. Vampires could do a lot more alone, but humans had a proclivity for working in groups that their night-inclined counterparts had never really mastered. Equality, democracies… these were not things that the vampiric mind easily grasped, mired in hierarchy and tradition as it was. Vampires had stronger bodies, but he was almost certain humans had stronger spirits.

Fujiwara had both. He wondered if she knew that. Was it something he should tell her? He didn’t know. Lifting an arm, he draped it over his eyes and rolled over onto his back. Morning sunshine wasn’t bad at all, actually. He always felt cold—this warmed him, like metal left out to heat. It wasn’t his, but he could borrow it for a little while. Sora was a little sleepy, likely an aftereffect of the blood Asuka had taken from him yesterday, but he didn’t mind. He could easily shake off the feeling if he needed to, and it would leave on its own, probably within a couple of hours from now. With his rounds done and nothing else in particular to do at the moment, he chose to savor the small blessings of summer. He didn’t much like the season, as a rule, but it wasn’t stupidly hot yet.

He didn’t fall asleep, and only a fool would assume that he’d let down his guard. Sora never let down his guard—he was probably incapable of ever fully relaxing at this point. But he did ease a little, he muscles of his face smoothing until the mask he wore so often seemed a little… softer. He didn’t really understand it, but lately… he’d been happier than he’d had cause to be in perhaps ever. He wasn’t happy, exactly, but he was as close as he ever got, and something about that was simply strange. He could go back to questioning it later. Right now he just wanted to savor it.

A small disturbance had Sora immediately alert, but he eased again when he observed Fujiwara’s owl. “I swear I see more of you than Midori,” he observed, though there was an uncharacteristic note of amusement in the observation. There was a reason for this, of course: Midori was usually with Kaede for protection. Sachiko’s familiar wasn’t all that combative, so it was better for his to be with the human girl who might need protection until he or his cousin could reach her side. Things like this were always on the forefront of his mind—he supposed it must be a desperate version of what being an older brother felt like, or an uncle or something. He wasn’t sure he liked it, the anxiety, but watching her grow and change was… interesting. Rewarding, in a way.

Removing his arm from over his eyes, he ran his fingers absently through his hair. Stubbornly, his bangs fell back into his face anyway. He stared for a long while at the sky. Hed always had what he thought was an affinity for it—his shapeshifted form was that of a large bird after all. He’d thought it a strange, rather fitting coincidence, given his name. But after what he’d discovered about himself recently, he was no longer so sure that was the case. Maybe they’d been even more accurate and named him for emptiness, for the void.

“I probably should be,” he admitted without guilt, “but I don’t like it. I know most of the shit they’re teaching anyway, and the way people defer to purebloods around here makes me fucking sick.” He wrinkled his nose as if to prove the point, and shook his head, which probably looked a bit odd given his prone position, so he sat up instead, dangling both legs over the side of the roof. A fall that distance wouldn’t hurt him in the slightest, and he wasn’t afraid of heights anyway, so doing this didn’t bother him.

“She recovered okay?” There was no need to elaborate on who ‘she’ was. Sora was quite certain that Fujiwara was plenty strong enough to be fine now, but he felt… compelled to ask anyway, just to know for sure. Blinking a few times, he determined that his body had recovered from the blood loss—he’d doubled his usual pill intake yesterday to compensate, which meant he’d actually had a normal dose for once. He’d never seen the point in using the things unless he needed them, and generally required fewer than his peers. Still, there was something to be said for them—the extra energy wasn’t unwelcome.

Just to double-check, he called the electricity to his hands, watching it arc between his fingers with a deceptive delicacy. It was beautiful in its own way, lightning, but that way was quite deadly indeed. Not that it would hurt him, of course, but he did not mistake the fact that he held death in his hands. Unlike some other elements, however, it could be moderated, voltage adjusted to disable or knock out rather than kill, as he’d done to the human hunters that attacked them. Rosenkreuz had simply killed them, which he supposed was one way to do things, but seemed a bit much for a bunch of humans that wouldn’t have stood a chance against even one of them, but whatever. They had attacked with deadly intent, he wasn’t going to mourn them.

Satisfied that everything was working as it should, he let the lightning die out and leaned back on his hands. If the owl had something to really say to him, he’d say it, but Sora wasn’t one for small talk, something Snow probably knew already.

Sachiko’s pen completed the sentence she was writing, and she glanced up again at the teacher, who was still speaking about the second war. If there was anything the Tsukinos were insistent on teaching their children, it was warcraft, and that included history. She could probably give an entire lecture on the battle strategy of a specific commander herself, but she took her notes dutifully anyway. There was no need to make a big deal of things; she believed in doing what she could to preserve whatever harmony she might.

Kaede was still up in the infirmary with Haruka, which was probably to be expected. The girl had a soft, delicate heart, and she wasn’t one to let someone lese lay in a hospital bed by themselves if she could avoid it. Midori was with her, of course, and Sachiko’s own familiar, a small white hart, was out roaming the grounds somewhere, she was sure. It had been something of a shame to her family when she couldn’t produce a more combative familiar like Sora had, but then, that was the nature of her soul, and if her brutal training could not change it, no amount of shaming would. She was better suited to information gathering anyway…

Dark grey eyes flicked over the other students in the classroom. Besides herself, there was Zenith Rosenkreuz, that strange new fellow who seemed to be his protector, and an array of noble vampires who seemed to be caught between awe and confusion. She supposed she could understand, in a way—they were both very beautiful, of course, and their contrasting personalities were a bit odd. The blonde one just didn’t act like a pureblood was expected to, but then, Sachiko was perfectly fine with that, personally. Sora didn’t, and honestly, even she was a bit strange for one of her kind. Her eyes scanned the rest of the room, but everyone seemed to be more or less of a mind at the moment, either taking notes like she was trying to or staring at the two men. It was honestly a little creepy, but then… when not much ever came along in your life that was new or interesting, maybe that was just the normal thing to do.

Her eyes returned to the front, but they quite quickly fell out-of-focus, and her breathing grew shallow and quiet. The first thing she notices is the smell. The blood is thick in her nose, and it smells familiar somehow. She’s been in this vision before—it seems to be her ability’s only way of conveying to her that Sora may soon be in danger. She’s never able to see him, or his future, and so it shows her this one moment in her own past instead. Sachiko looks down, and her hands are coated in more blood. It travels up her arms to her elbows in great smears and drips quietly to the ground. The only thing she can hear is the frenzied, guilty beating of her heart. She’s only ever killed one or two people up to this point, and those kills were clean, clinical. This was different—a frenzied fight to survive the massacre that took nearly her whole clan.

She hears something else, and she knows she isn’t alone anymore, but she isn’t sure if what comes is enemy or friend. Tensing, Sachiko pulls her dagger—it’s not one metal, only very few have ever been able to develop the tolerance Sora has and she is not one of them—and falls into a practiced crouch, willing her heart to be quieter and allow her to hear what’s going on around her. The thundering subsides, and to her other hand, she calls the electricity, the mark of her blood. She feels weak—how many has she killed? Sachiko can’t remember, but she does know that all that’s kept her alive are the extra lessons her cousin has given her. Why hadn’t she seen this coming? Are her dreams, her visions, truly for naught at all?

She knows the next part—the one who was coming was Sora, and he held a tiny human child in his arms. The other attackers had left, but they hadn’t gotten him. She remembers she feeling of her heart swelling with relief, terrible as it might be. She’d loved her family as much as she could, but only he was her friend. He—and they. The parents of that litte redheaded child. She knows this is the part that comes next, but she can’t see it, because he would be in it, and he is never in her visions.

For a moment, her vision flickers, and she sees flashes of other things—a laborarory, a tank with something inside, a dark-haired woman inserting a needle into a young-looking boy. A white-haired girl with a set of marbles… the images are too disjointed to process properly, but she ties to follow their trail anyway. They want to lead her somewhere, she knows they do, but just as she reaches for the door they lead her to, she feels a lurch at the pit of her stomach, and she’s forcefully ejected from her own vision. The last things she sees are three faces: Zenith’s, Asuka’s and Haruka’s. She doesn’t know what that means.

Sachiko blinked, emerging from the vision with a small tremor that she tried quickly to hide. That was… unsettling. She’d have to process it later. For now, she wrote down everything she’d seen, trying to include details of duration and connectedness. She’d need to draw the images later, so as not to forget them. Piecing the information together was no easy task—her visions were never so simple as that, but she’d have to try anyway.

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Sora snorted at the joke about tranquilizers. “I wouldn’t want to, anyway,” he pointed out. As far as he was concerned, Fujiwara could keep doing whatever the hell she wanted, and he’d just have to be there to help when things got too difficult for one person. It wasn’t as if it would be too much of a labor. He quite enjoyed being near her, his friend, the first such person since before his family had all been killed. He knew that it wasn’t quite the right description anymore, but he had no idea what other word to use.

“See why what?” he asked, clearly perplexed. These familiars… it was like they could only speak in riddles. But there was no answer—the bird simply flew away, leaving Sora to his thoughts again. He rolled his eyes and took to looking out over the landscape. Sachiko would probably want to draw it or something. He could only look, he supposed. Sometimes, he’d used to wonder what he would do when the fighting was over. He wasn’t good for anything else, really. But then he’d been reminded that the fighting was never over. Life was war, and he was only a soldier. He’d die for it, eventually, but in the meantime, he fought. It was deceptively simple, he supposed.

Sachiko glanced back down at the words and pictures in her notebook. Sure enough, three faces stared back at her, and she thought… she wasn’t sure, but she thought they must be in some kind of danger. Three people that Sora knew… but three more different people, she could not have imagined. There was Asuka, the girl he spoke of, who didn’t smell quite human, the human Haruka with the hair like fire, and… Zenith Rosenkreuz. If Sachiko had still bothered to form opinions about the strangeness of the things she saw, she would think it very odd indeed that she was having visions involving him, since the ones that came to her most often were of the people closest to her, and by extension, the people closest to Sora. She recalled that the two had been roommates, but… she wasn’t sure Sora had much of an opinion on the man, even.

She’d asked him, once, if he was angry at Zenith for what he’d done, and he’d told her that hate was a useless emotion that made people weak. What the white-haired vampire had done was reprehensible, and there was no excuse for it, but he didn’t hate him, and he wasn’t angry, it appeared. She’d taken her own cues from that and decided not to be upset either, though of course she would be stupid not to be wary. And yet… perhaps he still deserved a warning.

Though in all honesty, she wasn’t really sure how any of them would take what she had to say. She wanted to meet with each of them, to see if this would trigger further information, but clairvoyance was not one of the more common vampiric talents, and she had met people before who didn’t believe her when she said she had it. It figured that what caused her so much trouble was supposed to be a gift, and one that most people didn’t even think truly existed. Then again, most people didn’t know about vampires.

Well… she might have to see Zenith about this matter eventually, but she was far too wary to approach him first, and Haruka was still unconscious, so… that left Asuka. It wasn’t hard to pick out the young woman’s unique scent considering her training, and Sachiko waited until she was out of sight of the day class before picking up speed, following the smell of Asuka until she reached the spot where the girl sat, accompanied by a white owl. Ah, her familiar. Sora said his name was Snow? That seemed right to her. Aware that her sudden appearance out of seemingly nowhere might be a little alarming, she smiled disarmingly. “Ah, hello there, Asuka-chan,” she said mildly. “I was hoping that perhaps I could talk to you for a moment? Oh, my apologies, where are my manners? I don’t think we’ve ever been properly introduced.” What happened outside the school gate a few days ago probably didn’t qualify.

“It just feels like I’ve known you for a while.” The other girl’s face had been in her visions a few times, which was how she’d even known to ask Sora about her in the first place, and while he never gave away any of her personal information, she could tell from the way he spoke about her, with just a hint of a smile on his face, that she was important to him, and that meant Sachiko wanted to know everything she could about the person who could make her infamously-cold cousin smile again, even just a little. Bowing, she rose and smiled, taking a seat crosslegged across from the brunette prefect. “My name is Sachiko Tsukino. I’m Sora’s cousin. He… probably didn’t mention me, but there it is.” Falling silent, the pureblood woman waited patiently either for a return introduction, permission to make her queries, or perhaps both. She’d also, of course, be happy to talk about her cousin, because honestly, she was curious about this woman who seemed to have had such an effect on him.

A familiar? Well, wasn’t that interesting? Sachiko wondered if maybe Asuka was a human with some vampiric abilities, or a vampire who smelled mostly like a human. Either way, it really didn’t matter. She was Asuka, and that was whatever she wanted it to be. This was an attitude that she and her cousin had both learned from their friends, not their family, and they shared it quite deeply. “Then hello to you as well, Snow,” she said with a smile, inclining her head as if greeting an honored guest, but the effect was a little bit ruined by the giggle that escaped her when the owl decided that her lap was a good place to sleep. Smiling, she stroked his feathers gently and looked back up at Asuka.

She noted the warmth in the other girl’s eyes when she spoke of Sora, and her small smile grew a little wider. He’s had so few people to love him… are you willing to take that risk? She thought the question, but did not ask it aloud, instead shaking her head. “He does care, in his own way. Sora’s not very good with his feelings, I’m afraid…” the smile dropped off her face, and she looked sad for a moment, her mouth turning down at the corners. “They made him so, I’m afraid.” But she did her best to chase away the gloom. This was supposed to be a nice conversation, even if it may also turn into a warning.

At the mention of lunch, Sachiko snapped her fingers as though remembering something, then reached into the small bag at her side and fishing out a bottle of pills and another of water. Dropping one of the little white tablets into the clear liquid, she watched with vague distaste as it turned red, then shot Asuka a wry look. “If you have a familiar, do you use these? I think they’re awful, but unlike my cousin, being able to starve is not something I take pride in, and I’d rather avoid it if at all possible.” She shuddered slightly, then pinched her nose shut and drank the water down quickly, shaking her head a little when it was done and scrunching up her nose. It really did taste awful. Putting the bottles back in her bag, she dug the notebook out of it and set this on her knee, still careful not to disturb snow aside from the gentle petting she was giving him.

Of course, it came around to business then, and Sachiko sighed. “I really would just like to have a nice conversation with you, Asuka-chan, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to say some other things first.” Looking down at Snow, she tilted her head to one side and kept going. “I think you might be familiar with my kind, at least to an extent, and perhaps you know that some of us, particularly the purebloods, have unique powers? Well, everyone in my family can manipulate lightning—” she held up her free hand and let sparks jump from between her fingertips—“But some of us are afforded further talent. I, for example, am what you might call clairvoyant. I can see things, bits and pieces of the present and the future, what might be. It’s not always useful, and I don’t really get to decide what I see, but… earlier today, I saw you.”

Flipping open the notebook, she stopped on a page occupied by three portraits: Asuka, Haruka, and Zenith. The amount of detail and realism in the drawings was extraordinary; whatever else she may be, Sachiko was a talented artist. “I think… the three of you might be in danger. It’s hard to say, exactly, but for some reason, your three faces came up at the same point in the vision I had. I could be interpreting it wrong, but…” She trailed off. She’d felt fear. Not just in general, but fear for them. That on its own was a powerful indication of something, because she barely knew them.

Flipping to the next page, she showed the other girl three new portraits: one of Ex, one of Alice, and one of a woman with long, dark hair and a coy smile. “These three… they have something to do with it, I think. I’ve never met any of them before, but they were associated in my mind. They may even be together right now, but whatever the case, they have something to do with the danger you’re in. There are others, too, a man I couldn’t see very well, a woman floating in a tank of some kind, and someone that I can never see, no matter how hard I try.” Her lips pursed. That last one, she’d been seeking for a very long time, but was never able to find. She hadn’t known he had anything to do with these other people until she’d tried to seek out the source of her nameless fears in her vision. It was the same prohibitive foreboding she got every time he was near, but still unseen.

“I have a name though. Or, a title, rather. He calls himself the Contra Mundi, and he’s the same person that had my family killed—twice.” She fell silent, giving Asuka the opportunity to process this. She might simply refuse to believe it—that was a fairly common reaction for Sachiko to get. But, she didn’t know those second three people, and if Asuka maybe did, perhaps she could help anyway, by at least making her a little wary of them. “I’m very sorry to just suddenly dump all of this on you, but… I wouldn’t have felt right not warning you. The future is so uncertain—I don’t always see things so clearly. When I do… it’s usually because they’re half-done already, almost inevitable. Just please… be careful. Sora cares about you, and I think I understand why. Losing you… I think it would kill him.”

Sachiko was genuinely a bit surprised to hear that Sora had given up his blood twice to Asuka. She’d known, of course, that he considered her a very dear friend, and she knew how he actually felt, even if he didn’t, but she wouldn’t necessarily have expected that out of him. Sora occasionally forgot that not everyone in the world was as strong as he was, and she’d swear he’d forget that vampires even drank real blood if it hadn’t been for the fact that he’d occasionally caught an associate looking the wrong way at her or Kaede. To straightforwardly offer such a thing was evidence of a level of consideration she thought he’d forgotten how to show. It was interesting, that was for sure, and the pinking of Asuka’s cheeks was also interesting, and a thoughtful little smile spread over her face.

Maybe she shouldn’t be so surprised. Though he tended to act the part of the self-interested jerk, Sora had a big heart, and was truly generous with his time, his energy, and apparently, his blood. Well, it wasn’t like he’d suffer too many ill effects from letting her drink it, but still. Tsukinos were brought up not to do that, so he was defying the rules of his house for her. Sachiko wondered if Asuka understood what that meant.

Her thoughts were taken elsewhere, though, when the girl identified one of the three people she didn’t know as Zenith’s sister. If she looked at the portrait right, she could see the resemblance, but there’s been something about that girl… from Zenith himself, the only impression Sachio had really received was temperate neutrality—which alone convinced her that he wasn’t exactly evil, but the girl… she’d been chillingly-cold. It was strange. They just didn’t seem to be the same at all in her head, physical resemblance or no. Still, she had no reason to believe Asuka was making that up, so she shook her head. “Well, whatever the case, watch out around her. That much, I do know,” she replied thoughtfully, but then her smile returned.

She looked down at Snow and winked at the owl. This one could very easily become her partner in crime… well, if matchmaking was a crime. Still, she shouldn’t push too hard. Sora wouldn’t react well to that. He had to do things at his own pace or he was never satisfied with the result. Still, if she could make him feel like it was his own pace, while actually making him move a little quicker… that might work too. Asuka’s blush was making her a very bright shade of red, and Sachiko laughed lightly. “Don’t worry; I promise I won’t tell him.” Not directly, anyway. Unlike Asuka, she understood perfectly well what Snow was implying. The years between the first slaughter of her family and the second had forced her into a much more prominent position in the house, and she’d been exposed more to vampire society as a whole. Though she was still really an outsider to that culture, she had learned many of its nuances, and this aspect to the sharing of blood was one of them.

“But you know, Asuka-chan, opportunities don’t last forever. Tomorrow is a different day, and I of all people would know that things can change very quickly. Sometimes, leaving important things unsaid can be more painful than saying them and risking your heart.” She said it with the air of someone who knew very well what she was talking about. Sachiko had been in love once, but that had ended a long time ago now, yet the unspoken words lay heavy on her heart all the same. She’d accepted his death, and moved on, but… she still wished she’d told him, though she knew she would have been rejected all the same.

Sighing lightly, Sachiko’s smile brightened. “Well, now that the gloomy stuff is out of the way, is there anything else you’d like to talk about? If you need to get back to the school, I can certainly walk with you, though I’m sure my cousin will take care of the rounds in the meantime.”

Haruka’s death had shaken the campus to a certain extent. The demise of a classmate was usually an unexpected thing, and this one was no exception. Still, even with a year and a half separating then from now, nobody had forgotten the explosions back then, nor the lives that had been lost. It was, in a sense, taken much more quietly than it would have been, before. Some of the students in the Day Class put together a memorial service three days after the fact, and though he had not openly attended, Sora had been there, and watched from the boughs of a tree.

Kaede had openly wept. The girl was accustomed to death—too accustomed for a child of her age, but all the same, she had not lost her sensitivity to it. The friendship that had been blossoming there was still tentative, but it had bee blossoming all the same. The young human had thought that it was a shame that Miss Haruka should die without ever learning how to live—those had been her words, and her eyes had borne right into him when she said it, as though she saw straight through every doubt that Sora had ever had about himself, about what he did with his life. It was uncanny, what that girl knew.

Sachiko had gone as well, and watched the proceedings with sad eyes and a heavy heart, but unlike the rest of them, she had always known this was a possibility. She’d also known that Haruka would die, though not when or how, only that it would be before her human lifetime was naturally due to expire. In the moments before her death, she’d had a new barrage of visions, new faces appearing alongside those she’d already seen, as though the stilling of one human heart was in fact altering the very fabric of fate; especially the fates of those she held dear. Destiny moved in a new direction now, but she was as yet uncertain what to make of it.

Sora had made a point of being there for Asuka, though he wasn’t honestly sure if his presence made any difference or not. He liked to think it might—whatever they were to each other, they were not insignificant in one another’s lives, and was it not best to keep close the ones you cared about in such times? He could tell that she was mourning, and he did his best to provide comfort where he might, but he was not accustomed to playing such a role in anyone’s life. He could seek revenge and he could perpetuate death. Neither of these things lent itself to dealing with what happened in the wake of it. All of this was too much like the moments after the explosions, when he’d just kept digging, even after he’d recovered everyone that could have possibly survived. Only Fujiwara’s strange behavior had dragged him out of that stupor, but this was not nearly so… urgent as that. She was simply gone.

Now, a week in total after the girl’s demise, he found himself on morning rounds, making sure that all the Day Class students were going where they belonged, and that the Night Class made it inside before the sun rose and the others suddenly had cause to wonder why the whole lot of them were allergic to the sun. The week since had been largely uneventful, actually, which was perhaps something of a relief—he would not have wanted her to have to deal with more worries atop the grief she endured now. She’d lost so much… and too many of his thoughts seemed always to revolve around her. It was in one sense annoying, but he didn't exactly mind it even so. He’d always preferred having other people to think about. It had taken him a long time to realize it, yet it was just as true for all that.