Give the Boy a Hand(private)

Ozaki spotted the other vampire from a distance. And upon doign so internally cursed his luck on this. He had hoped that he would be able to do the job alone. The posting had been up in the Academy. But still. He had gone on this job alone hoping to do it alone. Because… I mean it was unicorns damn it. He had a few good reasons for doing this particular job. But that didn’t make doing it any less embarrassing when you met someone you knew at the very same gig.

What was Sharaku of all people doing this job for? More than likely he’d be finding out soon if he was right in assuming they’d be made to work together.

Sharaku was going to be hell to deal with. The cut off arm was intense enough to deal with. But a fellow vampire was likely to zone right in on the fact his fangs had been filed down. If Ozaki hadn’t injected a local anesthetic for them he’d still be in excruciating pain from that. How was he supposed to explain that of all things? He could try to hide it, but someone as observant as Sharaku would notice sooner rather than later.

As Ozaki got close he gave a little wave. “Sharakuuuuu… Crazy we took the same job. I’m going to talk to the owners real quick and be right back.” His hair was messier than normal despite looking like he had recently gotten a hair cut. It’d have been a damn good one if well… He could stop messing with it.

Overall Ozaki looked like he’d been hit by train. His tone was a bit too chipper, and his smile tight lipped as he was doing his best not to show his teeth- namely his filed down fangs- too much. He was trying his best to not to reveal anything was wrong… But of course his attempts were trying to hard and likely telling in on themselves. Already he was walking off at a brisk pace to where he was told the owners would meet him at.

WC: 359
TWC: 816

He gave a snort at the joke Sharaku made. Yah. That would be… Weird. The unicorns definitely would not dig that. When he met the owners they were hesitant initially upon seeing him. He waved off their concerns in saying that even with only an arm he’d be able to do the job fine. As desperate as they were they opted to accept him, even in his current condition. They gave him a list of things they were meant to do along with some instructions, then pointed him in the direction of Sharaku.

Great… Dude was like a dog with a bone when he saw something he wanted figuring out. Aaah… Maybe not the best metaphor. At least it’d only been in his head.

Maybe things would be fine if he could just manage to find a way to ignore everything that had happened the past few days. Forget about Mordred, forget about Nyx’s broken leg. And hope to Artemis that he had actually managed to throw his sire’s goons off of his trail before coming here. Ozaki was pretty sure he had. But if they did show up. Or even worse- Mordred himself… There were many parts of Ozaki’s life he did his best to keep separated.

His sire would definitely be one of them.

Maybe he could just give a sparse explanation and Sharaku would drop it if he asked him. Ozaki would honestly not think about it at all. He returned after about ten minutes. “So… Funny seeing you here huh? Didn’t reckon you’d be the type to take this kind of job.”

WC: 273
TWC: 1089

Because his boss sent him home and refused to let him work for the rest of the week. And as much as Ozaki just wanted things to go back to normal, there was no reason he was going to go back home and relax. A bunch of gangsters knew where he lived now. At least until he managed to find a place to move to. For the past few nights he’d just gone to the bat cave rather than go back home. He’d gone back once to try and straighten things up a bit and try and explain things to his landlord…

That had been something. Getting all that black and red blood out was going to cost a lot. Yet another reason he was here.

Any how, with any luck if he returned tomorrow with two arms she might change her mind on that. “Seemed the safest job on the board… Plus there’s a good chance one of these unicorns might heal up my arm right quick so…” Worth the embarrassment of being seen taking care of unicorns. Not that Sharaku could technically tease him since they were in the same boat.

At this point Ozaki just gave up on trying to conceal his filed down fangs. He couldn’t concentrate on doing that the whole damn time. He was going to be to too busy for that later.

When Sharaku asked the question of what he thought of him Ozaki momentarily wondered if he really had to answer that. “I guess super serious?” He offered, handing Sharaku the papers as he asked. “They’re instructions for what we’re going to need to do throughout the day. Grooming, mucking out the stalls, feeding them at the end of the night.”

There were instructions for earlier on in the day than they had arrived as well. Which mostly involved the morning feeding. Why they had included them Ozaki wasn’t sure. Perhaps they were being passive aggressive about when the two had arrived. Or maybe they were hoping that if one of them did it again, they’d arrive at that time next time. If they’d wanted people to arrive sooner they really should have been more detailed in their posting… Whatever. Gee Ozaki was really not in a great mood today.

Being an arm short tended to do that. But he was determined not to take that out on those around him.

WC: 408
TWC: 1497

Ozaki would like to say no. But he had been acting really stupidly when he’d gotten his arm cut off. Whether or not his intent had been to kill his sire, what the hell had he been doing taking him back to his actual house? Sure that had been his intent, but given that he had not done it while the vampire was asleep, there was no guarantee of anything until he was actually dead.

And what if he had changed his mind for some reason? Okay well… The person he’d been while under the influence of that blood wouldn’t have changed their mind. No matter what kind of world shattering information they received. Don’t think about it Ozaki, he told himself. He could not afford a break down here. “No… I unwittingly drank some bad blood and picked a fight with the wrong person.”

He wanted to leave it there, but there was so much on that topic. Bad blood did not cover it in the least. Ozaki had broken one of Nyx’s legs for crying out loud. And the whole time he’d been attacking her she’d been worried to death over how weirdly he was acting and how his fangs had been actively bleeding at the time. She didn’t even try to defend herself. That being said… Running away was a form of that. But still.

At Sharaku’s laugh Ozaki was a bit taken aback. Well he guessed the man had made quite a few jokes while they were together. Some of them positively on the dirty side. “The grooming I’m thinking. The mucking out the stalls definitely looks like a two handed job.” Plus he was kind of hoping that’s where he’d score his brownie points with the unicorns… Just as well unicorns weren’t empaths or mind readers. He wasn’t particularly sure they’d regard his intentions as pure by any means.

Ozaki started walking over to one of the nearest unicorns, offering his hand for the horned creature to sniff a few times, it sniffed as his chest investigatively as well. To anyone else it might seem like a completely random move. But Ozaki could think of a couple reasons the unicorn might do it, the primary one being there was a bat sleeping in the pocket the unicorn had just sniffed. Many of them had insisted that he at least take one of them. Dealing with the fight that had been caused when they tried to decide which one of them had not been something he’d been particularly up to. So he’d just ordered them to stop at the time and picked one himself.

He reached out his gloved hand in order to pet the unicorn’s muzzle a few times, and started leading it towards the nearby barn. Being so close to it while having this umbrella on was a bit tricky, so he was going to lead it inside of the barn where at least part of the area would be shielded from sunlight and he could do without this for awhile…

Ozaki really should have gone back for his sunglasses when he’d realized he’d forgotten them. "By bad blood I should note that it turns out I drank from the same batch as... As Nyx did when she turned into Fluffy. Probably safe to say that's what caused it." Ozaki was glad he had an excuse not to make eye contact with Sharaku right now given that he was leading the unicorn and had to keep an eye on it and not accidentally bapping it with his umbrella. 

WC: 617
TWC: 2114

For once Ozaki was almost glad that Sharaku was asking more questions. He wasn’t going to say that he would answer all of them completely honestly, but he couldn’t keep all of this to himself. He frowned as Sharaku commented on the fact that he stocked them. Yes. Yes he was. “The true nature of the blood was veiled. Even my talent didn’t catch onto it until it was too late and I was already under its effects. And it basically specializes in the analyzation of foreign substances.”

From what he had heard this blood had been given the day of the blood drive. Now he was trying not to make assumptions. But one did not pull one over on his talent simply by accident. Surely not. Had this actually been planned? Had someone really tried to taint the blood supply of the school’s hemophages? Ozaki could only imagine what kind of person had this kind of stuff running through their veins. Or what they had taken in order to make it like this.

Once they got into the barn and into an area removed from sunlight Ozaki removed the umbrella with a bit of difficulty. After a bit of trying to shut it with only one hand hand at his disposal, he abandoned the effort and just left it in an out of the way area that was clean enough. He then grabbed one of the brushes and started scrubbing down the unicorn’s side in circular motions like the instructions had told him to. Ozaki himself knew that a unicorn’s magical healing powers were pretty damn good. He was just hoping that the powers weren’t so mystical that they’d somehow bring back the tattoo on his arm as well as the rest of it.

It would be problematic to have to claw up the newly remade tattoo right in here. Of all things to question, the sizzling sound of flesh and the subsequent clawing into his own flesh he’d have to do to remove such a thing would definitely elicit questions.


WC: 351
TWC: 2465

Ozaki felt his temper begin to flare slightly as Sharaku spoke. Of course he had checked the blood. He knew how to do his job and did not like the implication to the contrary. His talent could work with scent on some level. Not nearly as well as with ingesting the material, but was better if he tasted a bit of the blood. And there were other safety measures as well. And this blood had slipped through all of those. If he had known he could have converted the blood to an untainted version. Safe to consume for all. But he had missed it, and because of that Nyx had become Fluffy. And he had done so much worse than she while under its effects.

He started on rubbing down the unicorn’s back, but was having a bit of a hard time given his short stature. The unicorn kneeled down upon noticing that Ozaki was having a hard time getting it its back, whinnying in appreciation as he rubbed down a few dirty and itchy spots on there.

“There are safety measures Sharaku… And even for all of those it still slipped through the cracks.” And it was his fault. Despite how angry and frustrated Sharaku might make him sometimes, he couldn’t actually hate him. He was right about everything. The unicorn snorted in agitation at his turn in tone. While the creature could not understand what was being said, it could pick up on the tones in which people around it spoke.

Ozaki stroked the unicorn a few times, settling both himself and it back down before speaking again in the best calm tone he could. “But you’re right… I did mess up. And as for what was in it? My talent would need more time to take a crack at it before it could really nail it down. It was something like pure darkness or chaos. Something abstract. I doubt it would have the same effect twice even on the same person.”

Abstract substances were harder for his talent to analyze than most.


WC: 349
TWC: 2814