Scene #317: Basically A Kidnapping

Owner	Pose
Yuuki Kuran	It seems as if the mountains that the Kuran Mansion was tucked into the great collection of frigid, snow-covered mountains that had amalgamated together in the multiverse. Still a place of seclusion, with paths down into its home-world, at a certain point the little footpaths and tunnels that would take a visitor to the gates the roundabout way turned slowly into a large open space. Trudging towards her home going on for a year was Yuuki, who was more than a stone's throw away from the 'front entrance', having looped around to see if anyone was visiting. It was almost a forlorn hope. Rarely did people visit, and she had not given her address to the Union. Not yet. Only people who knew her well would be calling. And those sorts of people were few and far between. Though, with the fiascos she had gotten into the last few days, she never knew.
Zero Kiryu	As it would happen, there is somebody who has come calling at Kuran Mansion, but it isn't somebody who actually wants to be here. Apart from being tucked away in the wrong end of nowhere, it's a place with more than a few unpleasant associations to Zero, who really doesn't have much in the way of a choice but to come anyway. He was able to tell right away that the person he was looking for wasn't home, long before he arrived at the front door. Taking this as permission to get out and try again another day, he had turned right back around and begun his return trek. That's when she'd entered the edges of his perception, the sensation of her standing out like a spotlight in the dark relative to everything else around. Zero had paused momentarily, a hand reflexively dipping underneath his jacket towards Bloody Rose without exactly being commanded to do so. Then, he had stopped and waited. Zero had no desire to accelerate this meeting by going out to meet her, and instead planted himself firmly where he was. As she got half of the way there to him, he had taken the opportunity to pull a packet of pills out and toss an unhealthy number of them back. That is where she finds him now, perhaps appearing at first at the edge of her senses as she had to his own. Zero stands not before the mansion itself, but nevertheless along the path. He is clad in the black-and-white uniform of Cross Academy, with a long coat worn over the top of it. His expression is flat and predictably sour... made more so by the awful taste of the tablets that he just forced himself to eat a good dozen of in one go. His expression is almost like that of a child, forced to take a nasty chewable medicine. He does not greet Yuuki, or regard her with familiarity, and it takes him a small effort to avoid doing so. Zero's heart is not altogether frozen, but it does not take much thinking to summon up memories of words to be bitter over, and those words quickly strengthen his resolve to keep this... businesslike.
Yuuki Kuran	As she walked, Yuuki's mind wandered along brighter paths, ones filled with sunlight and happiness. Of the times that she had spent with Chairman Cross, with Zero, and the happier times with Kaname, when she was happy and ignorant. Those times seemed so long passed, with a simple year seperating her from them. A single year. It was so hard for her to conceive of 'forever' when a year hurt so much. Then she senses him, potentially after he does her, and she smiles wistfully. Was he here to talk to her? To rekindle lost friendship? Would times become better? Would things return to the way they were? No. Not this time. She had said horrible, hurtful words. She didn't know if Zero would ever really open up to her again. But she approaches, with her face set. Her eyes betrayed her sadness, but her mouth would not. She had learened that much in the year apart. "Zero... Is this about what I've done recently?" She wonders simply, standing out in the snow with her hood down and her hair swirling around her. "It's not like you to come to the house."
Zero Kiryu	"Lady Kuran." The greeting is deliberately formal and distant, and Zero doesn't look at Yuuki properly when he delivers it. He reaches into his jacket, and it wouldn't be a great wonder if he had drawn his gun. What actually comes out from the inner pocket of his jacket is an envelope that has long since been cracked open. He flicks it towards Yuuki without explanation, evidently intending for the contents of the document to explain his presence here without further words exchanged between them. This will, inevitably, prove impractical. Zero is not going to be able to entirely escape Yuuki's company for quite some time. This makes him... grouchier. The contents of the letter explain the situation in pointless, highly diplomatic language. It is a longwinded way to say, 'One of our hunters is going to be protecting you while you roam the Multiverse!', with undertones of, 'And now the vampire king owes us some favors.' Evidently he was attempting to ignore what Yuuki said a moment ago, because after flicking the letter to her, Zero is silent until he reviews their exchange just now. His gaze sharpens then, focusing on her... dangerously? Perhaps critically, at the least. "What you've done recently." He repeats back at her, ponderously. Uh oh.
Yuuki Kuran	Yuuki looks at Zero, and the first two words out of his mouth... Hurt. She doesn't keep her composure there, looking deeply hurt that he'd simply return to honorifics. A small part of her exults in one finally knowing its place, but that is the same part that calls her to lunge at him, to bear her fangs upon his neck and devour him utterly. Just like everything else she loves. She reads the letter, glancing up at Zero now and then as she does, before folding it up and placing it carefully back in the envelope. "I am sure my brother will be... happy that I am in such good hands, Zero. But... You can call me..." She begins, trailing off. Could she really tell him to call her Yuuki? The name of the girl that was eaten by her 'vampire side'? "N-nevermind. I, well... Have done some things. I helped some people... Helped a vampire from another world with blood tablets... gave someone some of my blood, you know, normal... things. For me. To be doing." "Unsupervised."
Zero Kiryu	Those words were carefully chosen, but they are a little biting to Zero, as well. He steels himself against the hurt expression that she looks at him with, and gazes back indifferently. It is not entirely the truth of his feelings, but he is hardly inclined to make her feel better just now. Even if, strictly speaking, she has done nothing recently to provoke such a biting introduction from him. Of course, the last time they spoke... They both lashed out quite badly. "Give Lord Kuran's thanks to somebody else." He answers, his eyes sliding towards the letter. "I am following orders. That's all." If indeed there was somebody that Zero is more bitingly hateful of than he has been towards Yuuki since her... transformation, it could only be Kaname. As for the rest however, Zero almost immediately adopts a familiar expression of flat exasperation with Yuuki. There's still spite in there somewhere, but for the time being it seems that he at least has some understanding of what's going on. Yuuki saw something going on that she didn't like, so she pushed her way into it. "I don't care if you do normal stupid things." Zero says after a long, tense silence, his tone briefly more akin to what it was when they were merely prefects, "But keep your blood to yourself." He looks back then, towards Kuran Mansion itself. It's a ways off, but not an uncomfortable walk. Still... he has no intention of staying here. But if what Yuuki is telling him is the truth... "I'm not staying here." He states, matter-of-factly. "And I don't think you mean to, either. Where are we going?"
Yuuki Kuran	Yuuki shakes her head sadly, starting to shiver slowly as she hugs her arms together, looking at Zero and just staring, unblinking. A thin dusting of snow falls across her hair and shoulders, and, well, across Zero too. Then, she hangs her head. "I had read that a long time ago, Purebloods would use their blood to heal and fortify their human servants, and someone was hurt. I'm... This is what I am, Zero. I need to find something good, something... something that's not monstrous. Something that isn't waking up at dawn with a raging headache if it's not deep darkness outside, something that's not being incapable of looking at the sun with anything but disgust and pain, something that's not making flowers wither when I hold them, or breaking things when I get worked up, or... Or these!" She cries, frustrated, jamming her thumb into her fangs, causing a pinprick of blood to well up, her eyes having turned a lambent crimson as she ranted, coming into full glow as she began to bleed. She winced, then, licking the blood off her finger, the wound already gone. "And now, like, every vampire in a mile, plus my brother, plus you, is now freaking out! Because I was... Too emotional. Too... Too me. I'm not..." She hunches down, hugging her knees and looking intensely pouty.
Zero Kiryu	Of course this wasn't just going to boil down to physically protecting Yuuki. That would have been altogether too simple and easy for Zero to disassociate himself with. He watches her in silence for a time. It is a little familiar to see, but different in its own way. Instead of simply slowly self-destructing, she's grasping at straws, looking for something, anything that isn't awful about her... condition. Personally speaking, he had never really reached a satisfactory conclusion about that, either. The exact moment that Yuuki draws her own blood, is also the exact moment that Zero realizes he really doesn't have a choice but to do something about this. A part of him, that very much feels betrayed at her transition into this... thing, would be quite content to rub her nose in the problems she's encountering. Another part, that clawed itself raw and bloody until that girl came to stop it, issues a tiny protest that the whole of Zero cannot ignore. The actions that follow are simultaneously comical and dead serious. Zero kneels down next to Yuuki, an expression of extreme aggravation overtaking his features. Hunger and bloodlust mixed in equal measure, but he's not freaking out as badly as she predicted. Possibly, in fact, because she predicted it. It is at this point that one might expect him to simply take Yuuki's hand and lead her away to wherever it is that he expected them to go in the first place. Instead he just straight-up lifts her in an extremely abrupt fireman's carry. "I will be unable to fulfill my orders if the person that I am supposed to guard is hurting herself and attracting unsavory attention." He says to her flatly, as he sometimes did when criticizing her back at Cross Academy. "We're leaving, Yuuki." This is more like kidnapping than proper bodyguarding...
Yuuki Kuran	At the looks, the pain, everything, Yuuki just sort of... Curls up tighter. She knew Zero didn't have the answers, she was even part of the problem. As he leans close, she stares sullenly back, her red-brown eyes peeking over the ends of ker knees and the tails of her coat. It was like they were brother and sister once more, living with the chairman, doing ordinay things. Having ordinary problems. Living... well, not-really ordinary lives. Not even then. But it was better. Had they really changed? Yuuki loosens her hands and opens her mouth, and then she is being hoisted over Zero's shoulder. She's entirely speechless. Then she starts paffing him in the back. "Hey! Dummy, put me down!" She wails, but there's no force behind her blows, or her words. Then he calls her Yuuki. She calms down after that, though she still looks sullen.