Scene #4515: Questions and Ashes

Owner	Pose
Yuuki Kuran	It's been six months since Vampire society went utterly berserk and the Hunters were let off the leash by their minders in the upset caused by Kaname Kuran commanding the self-execution of the standing members of the Vampire Council and assumed full role as King of Vampires. His motivations for doing it had publically been because of the corruption and breaches of trust the Council had been engaged in - the illegal trafficking of humans and human blood beyond what had been allowed for (none, and some, respectively), as well as incompetency and vileness unbecoming of nobility. Vampire society grudingly accepted this, because as always, the Purebloods just Did Shit. There were even some greybeards among the nobility that remembered the last time there was a Kuran King. The real reasons was that they creeped on Kaname's sister to an overing degree and had arranged an attack on Cross Academy and their mansion in the hills, and Kaname didn't mess the hell around. Now, with Fall coming, the man next in line to lead the Hunters, and protoge of Chairman Cross, had been invited... To the village beneath Kurain Mansion, at the foot of the snowy mountain. Yuuki knew that Zero hated coming to her house, but couldn't go all the way to Cross Academy to hang out - her duties and position and security concerns meant that the small cafe in the early evening had come with a few minders - specifically a pair of black-suited women who vaguely resembled Secret Service agents, complete with sunglasses hanging out in the wings of the place, obviously vampires - thralls or servants, really - to someone with the sense to feel it. Yuuki herself wears her old snow coat and sips slowly at a cup of steaming coffee. She looks tired with none of the markers for it, her eyes bright and well-rested, her posture fine, if intentionally hunched over the table, and her skin of a pale if healthy color. She just looks somehow beaten down. And so she waited for her school friend to visit.
Zero Kiryu	The Hunter's Association had been a mess in the immediate aftermath. The scent of blood in the air had frenzied the hunters just as surely as it had frenzied the Vampires, and a firm hand was needed to bring things to heel. Although Chairman Cross remains the formal President of the association, it had been Zero who stepped in and bloodied everybody's lips to get them to calm down and not cause an even bigger incident than might otherwise have been necessary. It had been an awfully long day, and it wasn't the kind of work that permitted Zero the opportunity to feed at the end of it. He had fought and fought and fought, and in the end he'd been exhausted, scuffed up, and hungrier than he can remember being for an age. Bloodlust is a facet of both hunter and vampiric physiology, and the overall effect is only amplified by overlap. So when he'd started his walk towards the designated meeting place, Zero Kiryu was already coming with the wrong sort of mindset to get anything done. A unique gloom trails him like a little cloud of doom. It isn't the aura of an exhausted predator, but more the demeanor of an irritated t-rex that's just gotten done hurling insects off of its hide with a shake of its head. Go away, it says. You don't want any of this, it roars. To begin with, he didn't know what could possibly be said to him in these circumstances. Zero has already been acting as bodyguard to Yuuki periodically, and it isn't all that uncommon for them to meet, for personal or professional reasons either. Less lately, with the blood in the water. But still. The bell attached to the cafe door rings merrily as Zero enters. He's wearing a white button-down shirt, black slacks and shoes, and a beige winter overcoat that is buttoned up tightly. A violet scarf is wound loosely 'round his neck. If not for the frankly frightening demeanor that he has to him at the moment, he'd look fairly normal. Violet eyes flick between the Vampire(?) Secret Service. "Leave." He says to them, turning his head slightly towards the ceiling. "The ones around the building, too." The expression that Yuuki is wearing doesn't exactly calm Zero down, but it does give him enough reason to go ahead and sit down across from her instead of /remaining/ overtly standoffish. Based on his present levels of crankiness though, it's probably fair to assume that he's of a mind to physically eject the minders if they don't comply. Zero assumes that they /will/ comply, unless they're under an active compulsion. He looks towards Yuuki appraisingly, trying to get a better read on her. He seems for the moment disinclined to speak openly with the minders listening, but his eyes flick from hers towards the general direction of Kuran Mansion, and back again. YOUR HOUSE IS AWFUL AND BAD AND I'M SURE IT HAS SOMETHING TO DO WITH THIS.
Yuuki Kuran	The minders seem unmoved by the presence of Zero as he stalks in to the cheery jingle of the bell to the door, while Yuuki turns her head slightly, a red-brown eye tracking him and lighting up, a sort of quiet joy in simply seeing her friend - someone she considered a brother perhaps close than the one related by blood. Like dawn breaking on a cloudy morning, much of the weight pressing down on her lifts away. Then, her expression changes, not just noticing Zero, but seeing him. Placing the steaming cup down, she turns fully to watch his approach. "Ah..." She begins, but his snap - and his command, causes her to look to her two minders inside, and then gesturing with her chin. They both bow once and then see themselves out. And then they are 'alone'. "Zero... I'm sorry about the minders. Brother won't let me outside of the house without bodyguards, but at least with you, I can dismiss them. How have you...?" She begins, and then sighs. Hanging her head, she breathes, slowly, closing her eyes. Draws air through her nose, and clears through her mouth. She smells him, 'feels' his presence, and focuses. "We can still talk like we did in school, can't we? I liked it better back then. Everything was much less... complicated. Tense." She murmurs hopefully, raising her chin to open her eyes more.
Zero Kiryu	A few moments pass where Yuuki, sitting there across from him, can tell that Zero is simply feeling out the bodyguards with his mind. He's looking at her, but he isn't exactly /seeing/ her, because his attention is drawn towards the would-be prey. His scent is flecked with small amounts of blood, indicating the brawls he's been in with other hunters recently. Nothing serious, nothing like you'd get from fighting other vampires. But enough to tell that he's been rough recently. The light of immediate awareness returns to his eyes when his name is called. They've been through enough in the Multiverse together that he's largely abandoned the hostility that he'd projected immediately after her transformation into a Pureblood, but he's still... He's still off. Still cranky, and bitter, and difficult. Until Yuuki mentioned Kaname, what she sensed in him was the usual-- tension from self-neglect and powerfully restrained predatory instincts. A coil wound up tighter than you could imagine would be possible but held firmly in place all the same. When she talks about not being /allowed/ outside without bodyguards, Zero looses his grip on the coil. Predatory agitation rolls off of him like a stormcloud, but it's nothing so overt that you'd notice if you weren't focusing on him, like she is right now. "Nobody 'lets' you do anything. You do it regardless if you feel strongly enough about it." He points out, and it takes a terrible amount of effort for him to keep the biting tone to a minimum. It's not hard to see that he's trying-- and neither is it hard to see that he /has/ to try. Zero deliberately ignores the question about how he's doing. He inhales sharply, drinking in the scent of her and resting his hands on the table. A multitude of answers come to mind, most of them even more deliberately biting than his initial answer. He looks down towards the table and remains silent for an uncomfortable period of time, searching for the correct thing to say. The corner of his lips twitch slightly as he seems to reach some kind of decision. "The surroundings aren't suitable." He looks up again, swallowing harshly. "This isn't a staircase, or a bathroom."
Yuuki Kuran	A look filled with sympathy - that one may mistake for pity, if they didn't know Yuuki - crosses her eyes, as she droops. "You smell like fighting. But..." She allows herself a small sigh of relief. "You also don't seem hurt. I'd know!" She taps her nose with a finger, but smiles despite herself. "And I don't need this to tell." As he sits, she reaches a hand forward to place on his, a show of solidarity, a cautious hope. The tempestuous reaction to her mentioning Kaname, however, returns some of that sensation of weight to her shoulders, a visible droop of the head and back. She can 'feel' the predatory agitation, and, trying to mollify it slightly. Should she be rankled back? Perhaps. There's an almost imperceptible stirring from her corner, but she has her own beast under control. "I..." She gives a helpless shrug. "It's a little different, now. I'm not just a 'royal' in name, but function. I can't just..." She sighs, before shaking her head. "You're right. On that you're totally right. I could just run away, have my fun, try to be the hero again. I just thought it would be... really irresponsible. I know, I know." Yuuki's expression softens as she shifts her weight onto her elbows, canting her head to the side as her hair falls over her shoulder and waterfalls onto her arm. "You're right. This would be an awful place for you to be shirtless!" She jokes lightly. "I have the day, you know. We could escape into town, or out through the gate. Do you... want to go someplace? Someplace quiet, or fun, or relaxing? Like before?" ... Yuuki reconsiders that. "Not a bathroom or staircase in a dorm, though. Definitely not."
Zero Kiryu	"There was a great deal of blood in the water. And hunters don't obey if merely instructed to heel." Zero explains, matter-of-factly. He doesn't elaborate any further. For Yuuki it would be a matter as simple as saying No, Sit Down. Even if he possessed such an ability he would more than likely decline to utilize it, having been subjected to it in personally ruinous and humiliating ways more than once. His eyes drift down towards the hand laid over his, lingering there for a moment. Once again the silence that settles lasts too long to be anything but awkward and uncomfortable, his demeanor -- internal and external -- grinding against one another to come to some sort of acceptable medium. There's nothing she could say that would make him like anything about Kaname Kuran, but he understands that it doesn't really help to take it out on her. At first it may seem that Zero is moving his hand to distance himself, and previously that would probably have been true. Today, he laces their fingers together and closes his hand around hers. It would be a sweeter gesture if it wasn't balanced with what he has to say. "You're a pleasing bird he has locked in a comfortable cage." He doesn't look at her when he says it. "If he wished you to have the ability to move about as freely as he does, he would have taught you how to use your abilities with better efficacy a long time ago. Instead he waited until you were coming apart at the seams to turn you into an infant eternal and left it at that." "Instead of cultivating you to be able to care for yourself, he cultivated me to be his disposable proxy and surrounded you with weaker proxies when the most critical danger to you had passed and I was no longer 'necessary'." Zero raises his gaze here, his eyes gleaming a momentary red. He seems on the edge of adding something to these thoughts, but with another harsh swallow -- perhaps near literally swallowing his words -- he moves on, idly stroking her hand with his thumb. A sharp exhalation is his immediate answer to her shirtless remark, but Zero appears beyond even the ghost of a smile just now. He's hungry enough that he wouldn't be surprised if he started getting feverish soon, at which point going shirtless out here really wouldn't bother him much. He did it occasionally in the stables, or out on the grounds, until it got to be more trouble than it was worth. "Yes." He mutters a reply. "But I don't know where." It wasn't that long ago that Yuuki had crashed in his apartment. There was a study, but almost no books. There was a bedroom, but it was a mess. Clothes, medicine, weapons, food. Places to exist, but not really 'things to do'. At school Zero had enjoyed being around the horses that would tolerate him, but that was only one of them, and on reflection he hadn't ever really initiated the idea of going out anywhere unless it was to eat or help with an errand or some other kind of work. For somebody who expected to eat a bullet or go crazy any day, it must have seemed pointless, and now he doesn't really know how to adjust.