AN: This one's the final chapter, and I don't plan on a sequel.

In terms of future writing, I think I'm going to spend some time playing around in other fandoms for awhile, but I do plan on coming back to Noblesse, eventually.

I don't own any of the websites, movies, or video games mentioned (and I definitely don't own Noblesse).

Special thanks to DulcetRipple, my reviewer, and thank you all for reading!

Rael Kerita was sorely regretting that he made it a personal rule never to kill a human.

Honestly, three straight hours of 'music' was more than enough. Not to mention that one of those hours had been nothing but listening to a rainbow-excreting, pastry-shaped cat who only seemed to know one word: 'nyan'.

When he'd agreed to hang around the True Noblesse's human pets for a few days, while Raizel, Regis, and *sigh* Seira, were gone off to Lukedonia (Rael hadn't gone back there yet, he was still laying low), he'd expected things to be a little less torturous.

Behind him, four people laughed with evil intent.

"Rae-eeeelllll," said Suyi, "We drew a picture of you!"

"Good for you," said the noble.

"Actually, we drew five of them."

"Hooray," he enthused, not looking up from the jigsaw puzzle he was piecing together.

"And then we made them into a video!" said Ikhan.

"You did what?" said Rael, finally looking up. He knew Ikhan had a YouTube channel, and didn't particularly want pictures of himself floating around the internet.

"Oh, don't worry," said Yuna, "we said it was Draco Malfoy, in the description. Want to see?"

"No," admitted Rael, "but I'd feel more regret from not seeing it and knowing it was out there."

He walked around the table to look over their shoulders at Ikhan's laptop, reading the title of the video he was about to see.

"What in God's name is a 'caramelldansen'?" Rael asked.

The girls giggled evilly. "You'll see," they said.

Suddenly, Rael sensed something out of the ordinary.

"Hang on," he said. "Something's not right. There's a noble near here."

The video was immediately forgotten. "I thought they were all in Lukedonia?" said Shinwoo.

"So did I," said the Kertia clan noble. "Whoever it is, they're heading here, if they just get a bit closer I should be able to—ah, feels like it's just some Central Order agents."

"Must be some sort of inspection," said Ikhan. "to make sure you're not falling back into your evil ways."

"Probably," sighed Rael. "How annoying." He went back to his jigsaw puzzle. The four humans followed suit, Ikhan closing his laptop before taking a seat.

Rael looked incredulously at the four people who'd joined him at the table. "You do realize that if they come in here and see us all doing this, they're going to become suspicious. Normal people don't just sit around en masse assembling jigsaw puzzles."

"We do!" said Yuna, "In fact, we're doing it right now!"

"Whatever," Rael decided he didn't care anymore.

Indeed, a few minutes later, when a few Central Order Agents broke down the door of his house yelling, "surprise inspection!" the first thing they did was interrogate Rael about his current activity.

"Kertia, just what are you up to?" their leader asked asked, eying the four humans with apprehension, apparently recognizing them from the numerous times they'd visited Lukedonia.

Upon seeing their hostile expressions, Rael decided he was going to mess with Ludis' subordinates, as the guys had damaged his house; so he put on his most irritating smirk, and donned his most condescending mannerisms.

"Whatever do you mean?" he asked with a smile. "My, ah, 'friends' and I were simply engaging in normal human social activities. That is what young people do, is it not?"

The central order agent looked at him. "Watch yourself, Kertia," he said. "Scum like you doesn't deserve the title of 'noble', and you sicken me. The Lord let you off easy for your crimes. Don't think you can break our laws so easily. If I find evidence you've stepped, even an inch out of line, I will drag you before the court in chains to face your destruction."

"Hmm," said Rael, "Well, that day is not today," so if you would kindly leave my property?"

"After we inspect the house."

Rael went back to his puzzle, "Go right ahead," he said, "you won't find anything."

The Central Order agents were not gentle in their search and they 'accidentally' broke quite a few of his possessions while going though his things. Eventually, however, they had no choice but to leave.

"Have a nice day," Rael told them, as they left without a word. When they were gone, he got up to go survey the damage.

"Well," said Ikhan, "That was rude."

Rael laughed derisively. "Indeed it was," he agreed. "Though, it's my own fault, I suppose. Things would be a lot easier for me now if I'd shown some self-restraint these past two centuries."

"This is just because they think you're a killer," said Shinwoo. "They should lighten up when they find you've still got your powers, right?"

Rael shrugged, looking over what used to be his kitchen wall-clock, not paying much attention to the conversation. "Actually," he said. "They already know. I wasn't expecting things to turn out this way, but whatever.

"My brother found out I still had my powers, and realized I hadn't killed anyone. I'd guess the rest of Lukedonia knows it by now. Things have gotten a bit better, but I doubt the stigma attached to my actions will disappear for another century or two.

"More than anything else, I seem to have supremely embarrassed the Clan Leaders by my actions, because, I, a pureblood and the brother of a Clan Leader, behaved in a manner unbefitting of my station. It's the fact that I drank human blood, more than anything else, I'd guess.

"With the three nobles you guys usually hang around, the fact that they drank your blood can be justified by the fact that they are your allies, and they view you as equals. Even if I didn't take human life, what I did was still blood-slavery—one of the most controversial subjects in our society.

"It was less than a thousand years ago that the nobles kept personal blood-slaves at Lukedonia, after all, so we've got a lot of hereditary guilt associated with the practice, and those who are found guilty of it are punished harshly," he finished sweeping the pieces of the clock together and dumped them in a trashcan.

Yuna was shocked. "The nobles used to keep blood-slaves?"

Rael nodded. "I believe it was your master, Raizel, who put a stop to it," he said.

The four humans exchanged surprised glances at this new bit of information.

Then, they wordlessly split up and proceeded to clean and straighten the rest of the house.

It was another hour before the reconvened in Rael's living room. Actually, Rael was the last to get there.

When Rael did, he saw that Ikhan was hooking his laptop up to Rael's television.

"We're going to watch a movie," Suyi announced, when she saw him.

Rael thought this a good deal better than working on the jigsaw puzzle, and he didn't try to argue. Instead, he merely asked, "What's it called?"

"Silence of the Lambs," said Shinwoo.

Rael frowned, not recognizing the title. "It's not a musical, is it?" he asked.

"No," said Yuna, "It's not."

Two hours later:

"Well, that's all right," said Rael, "I wasn't planning on sleeping tonight, anyway."

"That was fun," agreed Shinwoo. "Who wants to watch Saw?"

"Is it anything like the last one?" Rael wanted to know.

"Oh yeah,"

"Pass. I like for my food to stay inside my stomach, thank you."

"Ha!" said Suyi. "Is the big, bad criminal unnerved by a twenty-year-old horror movie?"

"Why do I feel like you're trying to make a point here?" Rael asked the ceiling. "And why do I have an even stronger feeling that it's going to be really cheesy?"

"Okay," said Ikhan, "you caught us. We just don't want you to turn into a morose angst-bucket."

"If you're the worst criminal the nobles have to deal with," said Suyi, "then I'd like very much to visit the fluffy little world they live in. It must be a nice place... because humans create worlds which would shatter theirs, simply out of boredom."

"Don't beat yourself up over what they think," said Yuna. "They called you 'scum'? They don't have any idea what scum even is."

"Okay," said Rael. "I should 'have faith' and 'believe in myself' and 'never give up' and everything will turn out fine, will it?"

"Of course not," said Ikhan. "There's every possibility that they could hold this against you forever, maybe even disown you. Our point is that they'll be idiots if they do."

Rael laughed softly.

"I know," said Yuna, "Let's watch The Producers!"

"Does it involve demented serial killers?" asked Rael.

"Nope!"

"Grisly murder?"

"Not at all!"

"Is it a musical by any chance?"

"As a matter of fact—"

"Let's watch it," said Rael. "I could use something to dilute that nightmare-fuel I just sat through."

"You might regret it," warned Shinwoo. "This one has singing Nazis."

Rael's expression showed disbelief, but by that time, the film had already started, so he let it go.

A few weeks later:

When Frankenstein came home to an empty house, he was initially quite worried. At least, he was until he heard what sounded like techno music coming from Suyi's house. Then he got suspicious.

His master's friends hadn't planned anything for that night, but they weren't exactly into planning things in advance. And someone was clearly throwing a wild party there, if the flashing of strobe lights and pounding of bass was anything to go by.

Being the sound scientist he was, Frankenstein decided to test his hypothesis, and so let himself into Suyi's house and proceeded to look around.

The first thing he noticed was that all of the lights were off, save for a strobe that seemed to be coming from the living room, and a line of light underneath the dining room door.

Frankenstein went for the door. When he entered the room, he saw that there were several people within, all relatively calm. They made for a strange panorama.

At one end of the table, Ikhan was playing Rael Kertia in chess. Yuna, a man he didn't recognize (who looked rather like a slayer), and M-24 were at the other end of the table, going through a stack of documents, each of them armed with a scanner, which they were using to copy the enormous pile of paper before them.

They all looked up when he entered.

"Have you seen my master, by chance?" Frankenstein asked.

Yuna thought about it. "Hopefully, he's still in the house. If not, Tao and M-21 probably dragged him out to a club or something."

"...what exactly is going on here?" asked Frankenstein.

The slayer, a guy with long red hair, was the next to speak. "Well, it started when my teammate and I were systematically performing reconnaissance on the slayers who were taken in the nobles' last raid."

Frankenstein raised an eyebrow. "By breaking into their homes, I presume?"

The slayer shrugged. "If you want to put a label on it, yes. We weren't expecting there to be people living in Crombel's house."

M-24 laughed. "No rent? Why on earth wouldn't 21 and I take advantage of that?"

"And Rael Kertia?" asked Frankenstein.

"He was just visiting," said 24.

"Hmm," said Frankenstein, noncommittally.

The slayer continued with his narration. "The unexpected encounter lead to conflict between the five of us," he admitted.

"While not unexpected, that still doesn't explain the current situation," pointed out Frankenstein.

"Yes," said the slayer. "Well, the... argument... that we here having attracted the attention of the neighbors." He gestured to the two children. "These two, along with five others, arrived. We knew each other previously, and they helped act as mediators. Eventually, M-21 and M-24, and Kertia agreed that we could look through Crombel's documents, on the condition that we remain discrete about their presence here. Ms. Im offered us use of her dining room to make records of the documents, as the power has been shut off at the slayer's place, and we weren't keen on working in the dark."

"And the music?"

Rael Kertia scoffed. "The other slayer lost interest in information-gathering after he discovered the home-entertainment system. The last thing I head before the ungodly noise began was Tao shouting something along the lines of, 'Screw guitar hero, we're playing DDR!'."

"So," said Yuna, "We're pooling our resources to copy this stuff, and, when we're done, each group gets an electronic version. The three of us have been taking recordings of the documents before we replace them. Then, we'll make Tao look them over when he comes down off his metaphorical sugar-high."

"Tao would be?" Frankenstein asked.

"Tao is my comrade," said the slayer. "I am Takeo. Tao, hopefully, is still in the living room. To be precise, I believe there are currently three nobles, three humans, and one werewolf in the room that sounds like a rave," supplied Takeo.

"That would be Rai, Regis, Seira, Shinwoo, Suyi, Tao, and M-21," clarified Ikhan, moving a bishop to create a fork against Rael's knight and rook. He looked up at Frankenstein. "Want to play the winner?" he offered.

Frankenstein thought about it. On the one hand, he should probably go check up with his master. On the other, he really didn't want to get roped into playing Dance Dance Revolution.

"Thank you, Ikhan, I think I will."

He sat down. Warily eying M-24, the vampire he'd so often clashed with, and Takeo, who was clearly a vampire slayer. He didn't even glance at Rael Kertia, the scandal-king of the season in Lukedonia.

He was past the point where he was capable of confusing reality for a dream. The fact was, reality was often quite a bit stranger. Especially his life, which was often a place filled with no shortage of violence, intrigue, and oh so much idiocy.

At times like this, there was really nothing left but to go along with it. And, who knew? This night saw slayers, humans, nobles, and a werewolf under the same roof and in peaceful alliance with each other. In a world where such a thing could occur, possibilities were limitless.

So Frankenstein, like the seasoned observer he was, sat calmly in his chair and watched the game play out before him.