AN: OK, the explanation finally, or at least a theory according to Yagari. My apologies to those who studied medicine – I've bent some real symptoms to fit the plot.

Thanks to YenGirl for beta-ing this chapter!

Disclaimers are still the same.

As the men sat themselves around the small hexagonal table by the wall, Sayori walked to the stove, removing the pot with the syringe and putting back the kettle for tea.

"You talk, and I'll prepare something to eat."

She wasn't at all surprised when they answered almost in chorus that they weren't hungry. Guys were so ridiculously predictable at times… and so stupidly stubborn… couldn't they hear that it was not a question?

But here in the familiar realm of the kitchen she felt more confident, so she chose not to rub their noses in the fact that whatever they said – it was pretty apparent that neither had eaten any time recently, and just busied herself with food, letting the silence linger until the guys were ready to talk.

It was the teacher who cleared his throat first:

"You should have felt his aura from out at the end of the clearing… at least…"

"Probably twice as far," corrected the noble as a matter of fact, "though further away I wouldn't be able to estimate the distance, just the general direction to where he was."

"When I saw him by the lake… and my hunter senses gave no reading… for a moment… I thought he was dead…"

Yori dropped the spoon she was measuring the flour with, barely catching it before it clattered over the table-top noisily… So that was what made Yagari rush towards Kaname-senpai at such a run… wait… "hunter senses"? Was Yagari-sensei a vampire hunter then? She remembered the rifle slung over his shoulder so casually as he climbed the path… It was pretty obvious really, wasn't it? And it made such infinite sense – if vampires and humans lived virtually under the same roof in the Academy – there were bound to be a pair of vampire hunters around – just in case… She wondered briefly which of the other Academy staff could be one…

…don't tell me it's Chairman Cross… it would be just too darn ridiculous… Zero though… Zero certainly looked the part… but wait… Zero was a vampire too… Could a vampire be vampire hunter as well?

She felt she was quickly becoming way too confused and turned her attention back to the conversation the men were having.

"So… you said you had a theory about what caused it… if we have proved it wasn't a hunter weapon or a spell – then what it was?"

"That could've been… either… that contributed to it…" Yagari sighed heavily. "But then the effects should have worn out by now… or be… lessening… unless…" He hesitated for a moment. The memory – when it came – made such a perfect sense to him, the only plausible explanation he could imagine, but he really knew too little of Kuran's life or his activities both before or throughout the battle to know if it fit… just a few things that Cross had implied before, just a few much too obvious facts… and he, himself, was too caught up in his worries about Zero to pay a lot of attention… Now he wondered if the young vampire across the table, who was bound to know his leader better, could fill in the gaps. "Let me just tell you a… story…"

He sighed again, remembering, his thoughts returning to that time – some ten years ago, when his life seemed so much simpler than it was right now… teaching the Kiryuu-twins…

…Zero always the more attentive, the more rewarding… Ichiru always a little withholding, not concentrating enough to put even what little hunting abilities he had to their proper use…

…then being called to another mission… yeah…

"It was considered a difficult assignment, so the Association authorities made sure to gather a kind of super-team, bringing in the best of the best," he started tentatively, remembering just the moment when they gathered in the head-quarters to receive their orders – all bristling with egos, all being accustomed by now to leading their own teams and quite a few of them called back from previous missions without a break or even completing them properly… enough to let the whole room of them stew as a boiling broth…

"Apparently, a large 'infestation'… which is an official way of putting it," he explained somewhat guiltily – it sure felt strange to describe the events of hunting expedition to a vampire… "had been discovered on the outskirts of a small town to the north-west of Nagoya, in the area that had never had any incidents for as long as anyone could remember…"

The hunter paused, unsure if the hints he had given would prove enough for the young noble to make the connection.

Aidou seemed thoughtful. "North-west of Nagoya…" He repeated musingly. "Those would be… the Kuran-grounds!.. And ten years ago…" He looked at Yagari, sharp interest very clearly reflected in his surprised eyes.

"Yes indeed," Touga nodded somberly. "It was not long after the word of supposed suicide of the pureblood couple had reached the Association, and I wouldn't be surprised if the hunters who first discovered the 'infestation' had been sent there to… investigate the circumstances… But it is not why I'm telling the story… just… thought to mention it because it sorts of ties with what we had here yesterday… No level D or E with the last remnants of sanity would have dared to voluntarily enter a pureblood's territory… unless it was created by said pureblood… and even the most die-hard hunters knew Haruka and Juuri Kurans had probably never made an ex-human in their entire lives… Which is why it came as such a surprise when a large group of mixed Es and rogue Ds was spotted roaming there… leaving whole villages slaughtered where they passed...

"But, as I said, it is beyond the real point of this story…" He rubbed his eyes tiredly, the memories of those bleak days flooding his memory… It was winter too… though the weather was milder, alternating between the heavy snowfalls and meltdowns accompanied with as heavy rains… like the weather too was all set on making the hunt as difficult as it possibly could be…

"There is really nothing worse to fight than such big mixed groups…" He continued slowly. "Because the Ds are sane and cunning and if there is enough of them they can control the Es - to an extent, so it's a battle of wits and skills with them and yet you should constantly have all senses tuned up for the sheer unpredictability of the Es… and it's like trying to function in two modes simultaneously – which means you do not quite succeed in either…"

Touga sighed… The preamble was turning out longer than he wanted, but he saw no other way to explain just how exhausted they felt by the time of the final fight. Well, at least, he seemed to hold his audience captive – Sayori-chan listened transfixed, the spoon hovering – forgotten - over the bowl where she had been stirring something, and Aidou nodded in agreement as if he understood precisely the implications of what the teacher told… Unsurprising really, they just spent a day full fighting a similar horde…

"They led us on a long wild goose chase, getting ever deeper into the country, setting ambushes on the way… and though we killed quite a few, we too had some people injured and sent back to town… By the time we managed to press them to an unfrozen river we all were at the last of our strength… especially those who had be called directly from their previous jobs…" Ah, he was nearing to the important part at last…

"There was this hunter, Akio Hiroshi, we worried most about… His fiancée had been killed by a level E a year before and since then he seemed to be on a personal crusade – taking up a new assignment just as he finished one, begging for them… and as he was just too good a hunter to waste – the Association obliged…

"Now, in a hunt like this… well, in any hunt, come to that… you have to be absolutely sure of the person who's guarding your back… it's enough for your attention to waver once for either you or your comrades to suffer bitterly… and if we were falling over with exhaustion ourselves, what to say about him, who had hardly taken a breather throughout a year?.. Yet he held steadfastly through every fight, including the final… and that one was a sure bitch…" He caught himself, looking worriedly at the girl (nice teacher he was – cussing here…) but she didn't seem to so much as bat an eyelid, and he continued.

"There wasn't a single one of us left completely unscathed… but Hiroshi was one of the lighter wounded… in fact, the only wound he sustained was a shallow rip on his forearm… little more than a scratch… There were others though who didn't fare as well and needed the rest badly, and on returning to the last village we'd passed we decided to stop there for a night before we set for the city…"

He could see it now – the badly lit hall of the inn, and the five of them – slightly drunk on sake and the simple joy of staying alive, and having the first hot shower in a week, and a prospect of sleeping in a bed… and with some pretty country girls if they were lucky (and not too inebriated to function properly - by that time…)

"We were… celebrating a little… in the hall… and… nobody really expected Hiroshi to participate as jovially… so we sort of accepted that he was sitting alone, completely withdrawn from… festivities… and it took time for us to notice that something was wrong… he seemed to be shivering, hugging himself tightly as if he was cold, though the room was almost hot to the point of it being stifling… but we didn't think much of it at first – just advised him to get to bed, assuming that he was coming down with fever – either from cold or from some infection getting into his wound… no big deal, considering that we have already spoken with the inn-keeper about renting his car, so we could all be safely in town by midday, our first stop, understandably, the local hunter hospital…

"Some fifteen minutes later someone noticed that he had not left for his room yet, still sitting slumped into the corner limply… and since he didn't answer when we called out his name, we decided that he fell asleep, and one of us rose to wake him up, joking that it was time the exhaustion caught with "The Iron Akio"… but he called us frantically instead and we all gathered around and saw that Hiroshi was very nearly unconscious, his pupils dilated, his skin clammy and pale and covered in cold sweat…

"He seemed lucid at first, to the extent of telling "feel so cold…" and "what's wrong with me", but then his eyes rolled up and he lost consciousness altogether… that sobered us instantly, believe me, - barely half an hour ago he had been fit as a fiddle and here he looked like he could die on us any moment… so we wrapped him up in a pair of blankets, and put the hot water bottles to keep him warm - we didn't know what else to do... and when we reached the hospital in under three hours, nearly killing the inn-keeper's car and ourselves in the process... they said we were barely in time…"

He sighed… now, this part was done, but the part that followed was equally difficult – if for another reason altogether: he was no doctor and the best he could explain it - was the way it had been explained to him by the kindly old doctor who didn't mind talking "medicine for the dummies".

"There is some fancy Latin name for it, I'm sure… but it's called a "delayed reaction" or a "delayed shock" more commonly… because, well, it is similar to the shock, and because it is, well, delayed… It is like… when a person is injured seriously under some… uh… stressful conditions, and sometimes the mind sort of locks the pain temporarily and the person can pretty much ignore the injury, until the stress is relieved and then it… catches back with a vengeance…"

He looked at his audience and both the girl and the boy nodded in understanding, urging him to continue…

Oh, yeah… her mother is a nurse… and he's just a freaking genius… just imagine how lame your explanation must sound to them?

He continued nevertheless, there didn't seem to be any point in stopping now after he had talked for so long.

"Or, as in Hiroshi's case, there could be no one injury and no one stress, but rather the organism is forced to struggle under continuous strain - physical and psychological, or a succession of straining and stressful situations occurs that gradually diminishes the restorative powers – until suddenly, at the smallest provocation, or even seemingly without one – the body just decides to shut down… it happens to humans too, though quite rarely… and it is only considered life-threatening at the moment of actual shock… since, you see, if the person is brought out of it safely… it just needs some basic support – proper nutrition, some vitamins, lots of rest – for him to recover. In this case – Hiroshi was out of bed on the third day… though, of course, it took him a month to get back to his full strength… physically…

Now, he thought, now was the moment that he dreaded – if the two of them do not just laugh his theory off completely that is.

"There is an aspect of a "delayed reaction" though that the humans know nothing about – since they have no equivalent for it… but when the body shuts down – everything shuts down, and some things do not restore as easily as the others…"

He saw the apprehension growing in the eyes of the vampire, while Yori just listened intently… yeah, right, she didn't know what both Aidou and he knew…

"When Hiroshi awoke on the very next day…" He said simply. "…his hunter senses were dead. He couldn't use them, and – when he had enough of physical stamina to try – he couldn't work the easiest spell…"

Sayori stared at Hanabusa's horrified face and her heart ached with the desire to go and comfort him immediately – he looked so distraught… but she knew she wouldn't be able to find the right words - because she still couldn't figure something that obviously both the vampire and the hunter were deeply aware of.

She listened attentively to everything Yagari-sensei related – to the point where she forgot her own decision to busy herself with food all through their talk, and the kettle had been whistling shrilly to be turned off – and she only just noticed it now... She had no difficulty noting the symptoms that could indeed be similar to Kuran-senpai's (though the overexposure to the winter cold made the picture less clear), nor following the medical explanation… But the implications escaped her somehow… Kaname was a vampire, not a hunter… and try as she might she just couldn't understand…

She coughed softly, trying to draw some attention, and this time it was Hanabusa who snapped somewhat out of his horrified stupor to explain.

"Not me, nor Yagari-sensei can feel Kaname-sama's aura, Yori-chan… and if there is no aura, there are no powers… And right now Yagari-sensei implied that it could be permanent…"

"Not permanent…" The hunter shook his head vigorously. "Just that they may take longer in recovering than his physical health does."

He saw a relief flood over the young noble's features, yet he knew it would be unfair to let his hopes grow too much.

"I'll be completely honest, Aidou-kun. I saw another person who suffered a case of delayed shock, an old librarian at the Association Headquarters now, and he had never recovered… But he was old and pretty weak in his hunting abilities to begin with… Hiroshi, though, who was both young and strong – recovered fully… with time..."

"How much time?"

"How would I know?" Touga asked back, with more than a hint of exasperation showing in his voice. "I never witnessed it happen with purebloods… with vampires in general… only with hunters… Hiroshi started feeling something about two month after the incident, and it took him over a year to get back to his former level. But the hunters have only a smattering of powers compared to purebloods, and I suppose… well, I hope that once his powers started to restore, his real healing abilities will also kick in and speedup the process exponentially. As to when they will start… Two weeks?.. Or a week?.. Or a month?.. How can I tell?"

He stood up and went to the counter, where Yori was measuring tea-leaves into the pot to brew some tea.

"Excuse me," Sayori asked quietly, unwilling to further bother Hanabusa, who was still sitting at the table and obviously brooding over the information disclosed. She felt silly for asking, but that was the question that came to her mind instantly when the whole 'vampiric powers' thing was first mentioned. "Does it mean that right now Kaname-senpai is a... mere human, the way that Yuuki was before?"

"Of course not!" Both men exclaimed simultaneously with so much indignation that it would've been almost laughable if it didn't feel like she was revealing herself as an absolute idiot.

"Sayori-chan," the hunter patiently explained. "A powerful spell was used to make Yuuki human and conceal her vampiric nature completely. Kaname-kun, on the other hand, is still very much a vampire – he has fangs, he needs blood, he heals even now at a somewhat quicker rate than a human would, and we do not know as yet to what extent are his other senses affected... though of course the powers enhance them tenfold".

"Not only a vampire," Hanabusa corrected, the hidden urgency giving his voice an unusually hushed tone, "A pureblood!.. His blood smells the same…" He paused and gulped painfully, and she saw a hint of blush rising up his cheeks as if he felt uncomfortable discussing the matter. "When Yuuki-sama was… eh… concealed… her blood smelled human, even if sweeter than it normally should… but Kaname-sama smells… damn near irresistible…" He finished with tortured candor. "I always thought that the nature gave the purebloods all this awesome powers just so that nobody dares approach them… because without them – he is like... the ultimate prey for any vampire in the vicinity…"

He stood up abruptly, a new resolution shining out of his big blue eyes.

"We have to protect him... I'll go and bring the others… we'll set up the watch..."

"Great," Yagari-sensei replied sarcastically. "And who will then protect him from you?"