Twelve- Aggregati

"What do you want here?" The tall student tilted his chin up defiantly. He was surrounded by a group of flunkies, blocking the screens. There were five of them, three boys and two girls. They looked very angry and very young.

Vaz sighed. It would be wrong to rip the boy's throat out, and he knew it would be wrong. So he refrained for the time being and bowed instead. "I'm looking for my test scores and those of my friends who could not make it to the board today. Please move aside so I may find them."

The tall boy sneered but moved. Vaz surveyed the screens, picking out his number and Asha's; once again, they'd both scored at the top of the class, but their scores were segregated from the humans' along with the other Aggregati.

"Whatcha lookin' at that screen for, geshu?" The friendly term was spat like an insult. "You an Ag-lover?"

Vaz looked at the tall boy with carefully blank eyes. "Should it matter? Or should I ask what you scored? It seems the Aggregati students, as a whole, did better than the humans."

"We just don't want our air dirtied by some Ag-loving piece of trash." A shorter girl spat on the sidewalk; her face would have been pretty if not for the ugly sneer on it.

Vaz shifted his bag against his shoulder so the buttons on the strap showed more prominently. If they were as clueless as they seemed, it might help to hit them with a clue-by-four.

"Sst! Lookit the buttons- he is an Ag-lover!" The taller boy narrowed his eyes at the subordinate who spoke but then turned his glare on Vaz.

"I've seen you hanging out with that new trash, the girl-freak. We don't want your filth here." He stepped into Vaz's bubble of personal space, and Vaz could see the energy in him tremble, barely contained.

"That girl-freak is my fiance, Hanabi Asha." Vaz let his own expression turn slightly contemptous. "Do you know the sort of prejudice the Aggregati community suffers on this campus? I'm sure you do, since you're probably responsible for part of it. People like you spread ignorance and hate and force people like Asha into the very situations you hate them for."

"Fuck you, pig fucker!" The tall boy shoved him, and Vaz let himself be shoved. "You can't marry one of those freaks- they're animals. Deviants like you shouldn't be allowed to walk around. You shouldn't be allowed to breathe our air."

"The right of marriage is one of the things we are fighting for, to help ease the stigma of such relationships. The Aggregati are people, no different from you. They never asked to be commissioned, just as you never asked to be born. And, once created, they cannot be uncreated without the same sort of trauma needed to murder a human." Vaz let himself be pushed again, hating himself for bowing into the phsyical intimidation and feeling more than a little silly to be preaching. Asha was better at this than him.

"Ah, my students! How pleasant- I hope you're all pleased with your test scores."

The gang immediately backed away from Vaz and nodded their respect to the professor. Vaz turned and gave the man a full bow. "Professor Savasena. It is an honor."

The wrinkled old man smiled and bowed lower. "Really, your grace, that's not necessary. I was hoping to catch you here before sunset; I wanted to congratulate you on yet another perfect test." The smile in his eyes was a little too sharp as he turned to his other students. "And it's so good to see you getting to know your classmates."

Vaz could have kissed the little man for his understanding. "Indeed. We were just introducing ourselves." He bowed to the little group of ingrates, touching the seal on his forehead. "Aburame Vazani."

The twelve-point mark blossomed outward from his forehead, trailing down his temples and across his face in delicate lotus flower patterns. The seal itself burned a little as it materialized. Vaz resolutely did not smirk when they all realized what, exactly, his seal signified. It was difficult to misinterpret a crown with wings on someone's forehead, after all.

"Your grace." They all bowed as low as possible without kow-towing. Vaz could smell their fear. It was delicious.

"Please, that is unnecessary." He managed a smile that didn't use teeth when they looked up. "You see, you were somewhat innacurate in calling me a lover of Aggregati; such a delineation is redundant when one is already an Aggregate."

"His grace honors our class with his presence and his excellent grades for the duration of his stay on the east coast." Savasena sounded friendly enough, but the reprimand was clear. "Of course, it's natural for one so highly ranked as the Lord of the Eastern Skies' personal assistant to want to keep a low profile, so I'm sure I needn't tell any of you students to be careful of what you say."

"Of course not, professor." The tall one was pale but not cowed.

Savasena smiled again. "Indeed. Have a good evening, children, Your Grace."

Vaz bowed to his professor and smiled at the students with too many teeth when he was gone. "I am not normally the sort to proselytize and picket- I'm not an activist by nature, and politics disinterest me. But you must understand that even being who I am, I cannot marry my fiance. Aggregati are not even allowed to marry each other. So it's a bit of a sore point when someone insults my people and the woman I love in the same breath." He retracted his seal slowly, with more control than most humans would ever manage over their one-point seals. "Some day more than just the Lords will be able to fight back when idiots like you choose to voice your prejudices."

He didn't bow to them in farewell; none of them had showed him their seals, and he outranked them all anyway. He had every right to tear out their throats, in fact, but that would have upset Asha. Sometimes it amused him when he thought about how much he'd changed.