One and Only

Chapter 1

"Sakuya's out again today?" 

Akira halted in her steps outside a school as her enhanced hearing allowed her to hear Mahiru's worried voice talking to his friends, Ryusei and Koyuki, in their classroom.

"I know. It's weird for him to miss so many classes in a row." Koyuki said.

Akira knew that her Master had been having some suspicions about the boy for a while now and wasn't really all that surprised to hear he'd decided to skip out on classes, no matter how uncharacteristic of him it might've been to his friends.

"Maybe he caught some kind of cold and is stuck in bed." Ryusei said.

"I did call him yesterday, but no one answered the phone at his place." Mahiru said.

Akira tuned out at that and continued walking as she had heard enough to assume that Mahiru was more than likely going to visit Sakuya.

This was something her Master would want to know about.

****

Shiroyuki leaped gracefully over rooftops as she followed Mahiru from a distance. One of her Familiars had informed her of what they had heard and a bad feeling developed within her as she thought about the hunch she had about Sakuya.

She could see that Kuro and Mahiru were conversing with each other, but was too far away to hear anything. Quite frankly, she didn't really care much for their conversation anyways.

Mahiru suddenly slowed to a stop and Shiroyuki watched curiously as he seemed to have some sort of existential crisis for a moment before Sakuya snuck up on him and gave him a fright.

The two boys spoke for a moment before a scream was heard and Sakuya dragged Mahiru down an alleyway.

Shiroyuki watched what happened, not really paying much attention to the words being spoken, until Mahiru was suddenly wrapped in strings and she hid herself as she noticed a girl dressed in white with short white hair and a bored expression controlling the strings from a distance.

She flinched slightly as two swords were thrown at either side of Kuro, who was in his cat form and was also tied up.

"Hahahaha! Now, let's hear some applause!" The deranged voice of Belkia yelled.

"Nia. Tsume." Shiroyuki quietly muttered and her two Familiars appeared at either side of her. "Wait for my signal."

"Yes, Master." They spoke simultaneously.

"The skewering spectacular is about to begin!" Belkia said as he jumped down from his perch.

"Mahiru. I warned you didn't I? That there are Vampires around here?" Sakuya spoke almost monotonously. "I told you so, so, so many times to be careful!"

"I guess you were right, Shiro." Tsume spoke.

"He's Tsubaki's Subclass." Nia added.

Shiroyuki stayed quiet as she observed the scene before her.

Sakuya asked Mahiru just how many of his memories were actually lies as he brought out three knives and attempted to slash at him. Fortunately, for Mahiru, Kuro had broken free from his restraints and and shielded him from the blow. Belkia then attacked Kuro, driving his swords through his back and pinning him to the ground.

Shiroyuki felt a pang of concern go through her as she watched this happen and clenched her fists lightly as she restrained herself from jumping in too soon.

"You're making it up! You're not actually a Vampire, right?!" Mahiru yelled.

"Oh, you'd love it if that were a lie, wouldn't you? If Vampires didn't exist and I wasn't one of them, you could chalk this up as some kind of trick." Sakuya said. "People always want to believe the lie that's most convenient for them. Vampires take advantage of that and use it to hypnotise humans."