Tsukihime is the property of Type-Moon. Melty Blood is the property of Type-Moon and French-Bread. Melty Blood Act Cadenza is the property of Type-Moon and Ecole Software. All additional references and parodies belong to their respective owners.
Chapter 6: A cat and a vampire
Miyako was shoved up against one of the corners of their hallway by her mother. She was currently screaming gibbering cries of terror as the three glassy eyed pale corpses tore her father apart like a pack of jackals.
On the ground between Miyako and her mother, and the group of corpses, was a cellphone. As his last act, her father had tried a desperate dash to the coffee table in the living room. Unfortunately for him, the corpses were faster.
Even now, Miyako's sharp ears could faintly hear that it was dialing out. The dust bunnies that had been agitated from their eternal rest in the corner descended on Miyako, making her nose itch and the urge to sneeze great.
Her halting breath made her mother begin to gibber even louder as she tried to force Miyako into becoming one with that corner of the hall. Miyako wondered how frightening it must be to be the only thing standing in the way of such terrible monsters.
Sometimes she wondered if her mother should have ran, leaving her alone... but Sacchin and her big brother simply held onto her tightly for the next few hours after she worded such thoughts. It was best for everyone involved if she just stayed quiet.
Like she had at that time.
Simply staring as her father was reduced to nothing different than the meat sold at the butcher's store.
At one point, she felt her arm get jerked, nearly popping it out of its socket as her mother slammed open the door to her big brother's bedroom. The lock to it shattered before her mom's determination, but unfortunately that made it easy for one of the corpses – an elderly looking lady in an old fashioned, ratty dress – to follow after them.
"Get out, Miyako-chan! Find Shiki!" Her mother, Emiko Arima, was resplendent to the young girl. Her green eyes shone with the fierce strength of a wild animal and her profile was more noble than anything she had ever seen.
In that moment, her mother, was glorious in Miyako's eyes. The woman threw herself at the corpse, the tips of her hair turning slightly red, buying Miyako time to escape through the window. She desperately rushed towards the window, heart rapidly beating as she did the only thing she had time left to do.
Miyako threw herself at the window, covering her face with her arms.
The glass shattered as a scream tore through the night. With a start, she realized it was her own.
"SHI-"
…
"-KI!" Miyako woke up with a scream, voice immediately choked off by her desperate attempts to breath. Her chest felt like someone had placed a cold iron vice within it, crushing her lungs between merciless steel. The young girl desperately clawed at her bed's cover as she almost fell off her bed in her desperate attempts to get her breath back.
Moments later, the door to her room swung open, crashing against the back wall as Satsuki rushed into the room. The darkness gave way to light as the older girl flipped the switch next to the door.
"Miyako! What's wrong?" Satsuki demanded, half of a pigtail awkwardly held up by her blue ribbon as she moved next to Miyako's bed. The young girl desperately latched onto the older girl, breathing slowly coming easier to her as her body quaked.
Satsuki's eyes softened as she let herself fall. As soon as her knees hit the carpet of Miyako's room, she felt the young girl's arms immediately latch around her neck. Miyako continued to wheeze into the crook of older girl's neck as Satsuki ran her hands through the girl's hair.
"Where's oniichan?"
The high school girl winced as she felt a few drops of moisture seep onto her neck, but she remained silent as she continued to sooth Miyako. The room was filled with Miyako's harsh gasps and Satsuki's nonsense words as she let Miyako lean up against her.
"I...don't know." Satsuki's answer made the young girl tense. Satsuki bit on the inside of her mouth in self recrimination. She hurriedly moved on before Miyako could slip back into her earlier state of panic. "Don't worry, though! He's fine. He just had to go take care of some business..."
Miyako slowly gazed up into Satsuki's eyes. The two of them traded glances in silence for the next few moments.
'Please don't ask, please don't ask, please don't ask...' Satsuki prayed that Miyako wouldn't pressure her. She would already feel her face begin to heat up slightly from having to lie to the girl.
As she glanced away from Satsuki, the last of her tensed nerves began to bleed away from her. "Did Tohno-sama offer him another job?" She somewhat bitterly asked.
"Of...a sort." Satsuki allowed, words tasting foul to her. However, she had to keep herself committed to the act now that it had gone this far.
"...Tohno-sama is kind." Miyako glanced down at her pajama clad lap, the blankets having been thrown off by her struggles.
Satsuki winced. She really couldn't say anything in response to that, knowing the reasons that Shiki had been forced to miss so much school recently.
Miyako moved out of bed, and took Satsuki's hand before the older girl could speak. "Can we watch the television for a while?" She quietly asked. "I don't want to go back to sleep until I see oniichan again."
Satsuki's fingers entwined with Miyako's as she silently nodded. Miyako smiled at Satsuki after the teenager put her discarded blanket back on top of her bed and led her back to the living room.
"So then, let's see what we can watch." Satsuki began as she sat down on a western couch. A thin blanket and a small pillow had been discarded on the ground in between the television and the seats around it.
Miyako frowned at them, but said nothing about Satsuki's choice in sleeping arrangements. The younger girl crawled next to Satsuki, leaning up against the older girl as she turned on the television with the nearby remote.
Arcueid finished giggling, eyes twinkling with her mirth as she placed her hands on her hips. "So, did little Altrouge decide to try and be subtle?" She wondered, giving Shiki a friendly smile. "I'm Arcueid. What's your name?"
Shiki took a step back as his danger senses were screaming at him to run and never look back. However, that same sense of danger he had sensed with the Dead a month ago radiated from the innocent looking blonde.
Remembering that time made Shiki grit his teeth, driven by his urge to kill the unnatural thing before him. Assassin's eagerness began to crash against the back of his mind.
'Is this the one? The vampire that caused them to die?' Assassin wondered. Shiki could practically imagine the man perking up. 'She's powerful. We need to go all out.'
"Mou..." Arcueid pouted at Shiki's silence. Her red eyes sharpened as she peered at something past Shiki's shoulders. "Two wraiths inside of a young magus seem a little much, though..." Arcueid shook her head, long hair swaying with the motion.
The presence within Shiki froze.
"Oh, a reaction!" Arcueid clapped her hands.
"What are you doing, idiot?" He hissed. When Shiki glared at her hotly, she merely smiled and gestured around them. The thin crowds were keeping their heads down as they walked around the two of them.
"Don't call me an idiot!" Arcueid shouted, looking offended. "I already took care of them..." She quirked her head at Shiki. "You can talk, though." She sounded like the proud owner of a puppy who had learned to roll over.
Shiki reached for his glasses, but when he did...
Arcueid's red eyes glowed.
"Gah!" His wrist felt like it going to be crushed in an invisible hold. Bones groaned as they were strained almost to their breaking point. His fingertips shook as they brushed up against the side of his frames, but the horrendous power being exerted against that arm prevented him from removing the glasses.
"I studied Japan before I came here." Arcueid began, looking completely composed besides her glowing eyes. "They say that Death walks these lands and that it can destroy you utterly if it casts its gaze on you."
Shiki snarled, but his other arm was locked in place by the same force with another glance from Arcueid.
"I'd rather not risk it, Mr. Mystic Eyes." Arcueid simply replied. Shiki's stunned glance in response made her smile. "Blondes aren't that dumb." She paused a beat. "No! I mean we aren't dumb! Not dumb!" She frantically waved her hands before her.
'I...was defeated by her?' Shiki thought in horror.
'Urobuchi says that she traced us …'
"Hey! I'm talking here!" Arcueid puffed out her cheeks as she glared at Shiki. "You need to pay attention to girls, you know! What kind of man are you?" She leisurely placed her hands behind her head. "Still, you lost before you could even begin. That was pretty sad, Mr. Mystic Eyes."
"My name is Shiki!" He snapped as he tried to push past the bonds holding his arms down. "And my credentials as a man are just fine, thank you very much!"
"So, what were you going to do with that knife if I hadn't stopped you, huh?" Arcueid wondered as she lightly walked around Shiki. The closer she approached, the more his body began to lock up on him as her eyes' inner light began to fill Shiki's world.
Once she arrived at his side, she poked and prodded him at various angles with her hands. "Going to try and carve me up?" Arcueid's touch caused Shiki's blood to try to burn him from within. He let out a hot gasp as his fingers twitched rapidly, shaking his frames up and down his nose. The woman gave him a placid look as she leaned up against him, placing her mouth near his ear.
"I'm not into guro play, sorry." Arcueid impishly smiled into his face. "Fly away, Mr. Mystic Eyes." Moments later, Shiki's whole body was flung high into the air. The further away he rose, the more his body began to respond to his own will.
'Flowing power of the world, embrace him! Appear before us...'
Shiki ripped off his glasses from his head and place them in his pocket. Now unsealed, his Mystic Eyes shone a blazing blue, its anti-demon qualities surging through his body as his magic circuits triggered. The remaining paralysis on him was instantly banished as lines broke apart the city that was swiftly rising to meet him.
'And destroy!'
Prana surged down his arm and into his knife, held in a loose grasp, the blade sharpened as its ability to cut was reinforced.
'This is what I'm talking about!' Assassin cheered in the back of his head. The spirit's voice strengthened within Shiki's mind as the pair lightly landed on their feet half a block away from Arcueid. He instantly covered half of the distance with three steps – intriguing the blonde a little with the speed he had displayed.
'Her lines...?' Unlike the fractured world around them, Arcueid's lines were thin even with his magic circuits pumping prana within his veins. The shock was enough to make him almost miss Arcueid raise her arm towards him, but his entire body jerked to the side as a swirling blast of wind tore across the horizon.
Assassin's senses, sharpened due to their shared prana, let him see the thin crack that Arcueid's attack had caused on the street behind him.
'Shiki! Trade off control of your body!'
'We can do that?'
'Just do it!' Assassin took over control of Shiki's legs, letting them impressively vault over another swirling blast of air. He immediately handed control back to Shiki, who rolled off to the side as soon as their feet touched the ground.
Arcueid was happily grinning as she continued to project blasts of wind at Shiki, swirling spheres of power that the teenager absolutely refused to allow near him. Shiki moved to hug the ground in his charge, speeding up further as his and Assassin's attempts at dodging were mixed up enough for Arcueid to grow confused.
The blonde's shots began to slow down more as she began to randomly fling larger and larger spheres of air at them. "Hey! What kind of pedophile assassin are you?" Her accusation almost made Shiki trip up, but Assassin was there to salvage them from having their arm broken.
"The hell are you talking about?" Shiki roared.
"Mou...?" Arcueid delicately quirked her head at him like a bird. "My sister didn't offer to make you a knight? Or a contract...?"
"...No!"
"Ah...!" Arcueid slammed her fist into her open palm, generating an unavoidable wall of wind that blew Shiki and Assassin back fifteen feet. "Then you can still be persuaded towards the side of righteousness and full figured women!" She declared joyfully.
'Do it now!' Assassin howled, spotting their opening. Shiki's legs screamed their objection at the duo as they tore across the remaining area in between them and Arcueid. Their knife shone in the moonlight as they raised it.
"Henshin!"
But the two were promptly blown away as Arcueid's eyes flashed. Shiki let out a cry of shock as it felt like he had been clipped by a runaway car. The two collapsed on the ground as mana surged towards Arcueid from their surroundings, suffusing her outfit with light.
The massive energy gathering was enough to reach Shirou, who had been viewing the spectacle from Assassin's eyes with horror from the very beginning. '...oh god.' His voice, a very faint and whispery tone in Shiki's mind now, summed up the situation for the three of them very clearly.
Arcueid's outfit released yellow bolts of electricity as it reformed into something...very...skimpy.
A white bodice with golden trim and flared tips over a short purple skirt. Two detached floppy white sleeves. Long white boots that went up to mid-thigh.
Arcueid grinned at the three of them. The golden crescent moon hair pin on the side of her head glowed before it vanished. A small pink heart tipped baton appeared in her right hand.
"This will hurt me more than it will you." Arcueid's full lips pouted. She wiped away an imaginary tear drop from her eyes. "But the most bitter medicine is the one that's best for you!" She set a stoic look on her face as mana surged at the tip of her baton. The area was flooded with pink light. "Goodbye, Mr. M!"
She dropped the baton.
"Shiki-chan, do you think you can go to the market for me?" Naoaki Arima spoke up after Shiki handed him a towel. Off to the side, a few of the remaining students were volunteering like Shiki, wiping down the ground or putting away the bokken.
"Of course, father." Shiki's casual answer brought a warm smile from the older man. His own towel was around his neck, soaking up his own sweat. "But are you sure you don't need any help cleaning the dojo up today?"
"No ,it's fine. We'll need some more juice. Some octopus as well..." The man began to list the items. A mischievous smile crossed the man's face as he looked down at Shiki. "I'll give you enough so you can buy something sweet for you and Miyako-chan, okay?"
Shiki's gaze moved away from his adopted father - a flash of blue from his peripheral vision having caught his attention.
"Shiki-chan?"
Shiki shook his head and turned back to gaze at his father. "Yes sir!" He sharply nodded.
"No need to be so serious, son." Naoaki softly chuckled as he ruffled Shiki's hair.
Still, something was bothering Shiki as he walked out of the dojo. A slight edge of trepidation followed him into the house, but it grew even worse once he went into the bathroom to quickly clean himself off to do his errand.
A cat's call made Shiki look up into the mirror over the sink.
His own blue eyes, shining brightly, broke the illusion.
…
"What do you mean 'I'm picking on a nice girl's brother'?" Arcueid accused. "I'm the heroine of justice here, Len!"
Shiki silently rose to his feet to the sounds of the blonde arguing with herself. His entire body felt drained of life, barely keeping awake thanks to the shock of how his dream had ended.
A field of purple energy, shaped like some sort of bat, surrounded him. Assassin and Shirou's voices were completely silent, but if he was right, that was probably what had tipped Arcueid off about him in the first place. Every moment he remained in this field felt like an eternity to Shiki.
The blonde had her back to him, fifteen feet away. In her hand, the baton she was waving about was resonating with the field, projecting the same energy that was covering his portion of the street. Shiki readied his knife and narrowed his eyes.
A heavy headache began to pound the back of his head as lines formed around the barrier, one of which was positioned just right.
Shiki let his knife fly with all the strength he had left. The blade, now a silver missile in the night, sliced through the barrier, tearing a small rip through it handily as it sped towards Arcueid.
The blonde's eyes widened and she jerked to the side, saving herself but sacrificing her baton as the knife pierced it right in the heart. With a shriek of surprise, Arcueid dropped it as it detonated in a blast of mana, pushing her back three steps and popping the boundary field that had kept Shiki separated from the rest of the world.
The human collapsed to his knees, coughing desperately as his vision darkened and lightened in time to his headache. Prana surged back through his body, restoring his body's strength within moments as he rose into a combat stance to face Arcueid.
"Huh...you win." Arcueid simply replied, making Shiki almost lose his balance. She crossed her arms in front of her chest with a pout. "Good work, I guess. For a human, I mean." She dragged her boot back and forth across the street.
An awkward silence descended on the two.
"So...want to get some pancakes?" Arcueid offered.
Shiki's continued to stare at her in shock.
"Just kidding."
"What the hell are you?" Shiki wondered. The teenager was warily eying the vampire next to him. Only Assassin's satisfaction with the battle and his own control kept him from trying to have another go at cutting Arcueid into little pieces.
The blonde, smiling next to him – and back in her normal outfit, simply quirked her head at him.
"No, I mean. I came at you with a knife."
"Yeah, but Len said you three were okay."
Shiki opened his mouth, but a quiet meow bubbled up from deep in his throat. The demon hunter slapped his hands over his mouth in shock, nearly slicing off his nose with his knife. Arcueid burst out laughing at his expression.
'Possession?' Shiki stumbled back from Arcueid, hackles raised.
'...my bad...' Shirou's voice faintly reached the troubled boy.
'Woah, woah!' Assassin stayed Shiki's arm. 'That's the boss's problem, not yours.'
Arcueid grinned at Shiki. "Sorry, once I heard you guys, I couldn't resist." She placed her hands together. "Forgive me?"
The innocent hope shining from the blonde's red eyes completely popped Shiki's urge to perforate the woman. With a sigh, Shiki sheathed his knife and placed it into his coat pocket. His glasses slipped over his blue eyes, sealing them back to their normal gray hue. Arcueid gained a look of happiness, immediately taking up Shiki's hand and giving it a firm shake.
"Glad to see you have a sense of humor, Mr. M!" Arcueid enthused. "No need for there to be such dark feelings on both side of the fence, right? Just a little duel to the death."
Despite himself, Shiki felt a genuine smile cross his lips. "Right. Just two people trying to murder each other wholeheartedly." He chuckled.
"Eh, Mr. M, why were you trying to murder me?" She idly wondered.
Shiki's arms drew closer to his sides. "No reason." He curtly replied, not wanting to get into this with someone he barely knew.
For a brief moment, Arcueid's eyes darkened a bit as she appraised him. The strange expression was gone before Shiki could even question it, though.
"Well then, I suppose that's that." The blonde mused as the two of them arrived at an intersection. "You're pretty funny, but I got some business to take care of." She smiled. "Take care not to try to bite off more than you can chew."
'Hey, Shiki, you alright with this? She probably knows something about who you're looking for.'
Shiki stayed quiet.
Arcueid turned and began to walk away from Shiki. The teenager waited a few moments, following her back and brilliant hair as she eventually vanished into the crowd.
Shiki sighed, shaking his head. "Well, that was a bust." He rubbed at the bridge of his nose.
'I suppose so.' Assassin replied, sounded a bit put out. 'What do we do now?'
"Let's go back home for now." Shiki yawned. "I'm exhausted." He rubbed at a crick on his neck as he turned and began to head back home. Before long though, a troubling thought from earlier came back to him.
'...I seriously don't have a demon in me, right?' Shiki wanted to confirm. 'Because I meowed. That's not normal at all!'
Assassin laughed. 'Just a faker and an usurper.' He energetically responded.
Shiki rubbed the back of his head. "This last month has been messed up as hell. I don't need to break out into purrs on top of it." He grumbled as he tried to stargaze a little on his way back to center himself. His pace slowed down as he tried to pierce the veil of smog in the night sky.
'Want to talk about it?' He continued cheekily when Shiki hesitated. 'Unlike the vampire, I can assure you that I won't be hopping into any other person's head and tell them. I'm a one brain samurai, as you can tell.'
Shiki sighed. Hell, why not?
'Well, alright, then.' Shiki's thoughts felt slightly clipped, turning away from the smog filled skies to focus on his thoughts. 'I had gone out to hang out with Arihiko and Satsuki Yumizuka.' He paused. 'Arihiko Inui, that is. Satsuki, the class rep, and I were trying to pull up the idiot's test scores...'
"He ditched. Again." Satsuki had a look of dull horror on her expression, arms crossed in front of her chest to try and ward off the harsh realities of life, causing Shiki to wince from his perch on the low stone wall surrounding her house.
The pair of highschoolers were outside her house, Shiki keeping an eye on the streets for a familiar mop of red hair and Satsuki was hammering her house phone's number pad as she kept trying to call the missing person. With each minute, Shiki felt the ominous chill down his spine rising as Satsuki's expression turned grimmer by the moment.
Shiki idly considered fleeing, but decided he couldn't abandon Arihiko to this fate.
It was kind of tempting him, though.
"Maybe he had something important to do with his little sister?" Shiki idly asked as he rocked slightly, sitting on top of his left left and dangling the other in Satsuki's general direction. "Probably that's why he wasn't at school the last three days."
Shiki knew that was a lie, knowing that his friend had decided to go off on one of his little winter retreats. The jerk hadn't even offered to take him along this time.
'Hm...now I really want to ditch him when he gets here.' Shiki idly mused.
From the slight softening of Satsuki's expression, he could tell that he had bought Arihiko a few more minutes before his execution was decided. Still, this was the most emotive that he was used to seeing the girl.
'Arihiko has a gift for pissing people off, I guess.' Shiki's resulting chuckle from that made Satsuki glance over at him curiously.
"Oh, sorry." Shiki waved her off. "I was just remembering something funny."
"Ah..."
"Yeah." Shiki nodded. The silence that fell on the two of them was comfortable for Shiki. The sudden urge to swing by the mansion to see how Akiha was handling taking over his brother's post as heir briefly made itself known, but he remembered Shiki's warnings about how Akiha's final bit of training would cause her blood to be thick enough to affect him for the next few months.
Deciding to just call it half ways, he pulled out his cell phone and snapped a lazy picture of the neighborhood. At Satsuki's alarmed look, he merely shrugged as he began to type in a message. "I figure I can try to message him again." He smirked at her a little. "Maybe he's dodging because he knows he screwed up already?"
Satsuki sighed, shaking her head with annoyance, but didn't reply. Deciding to take that as confirmation, Shiki began to send out a quick message to both Akiha and Hisui along with Arihiko, letting them know where he was out of boredom.
Not even ten seconds passed before he got his first reply.
'Nii-san, I've told you time and again not to wander into those kinds of neighborhoods! Can't you just stay indoors with Miyako-chan? Girls have delicate feelings about those kinds of things...'
Shiki rolled his eyes. Typical Akiha.
"Nanaya-kun, I'm going to go get something to drink. Do you want something?" Satsuki nervously asked Shiki.
"Nah, I'm okay."
The girl looked a bit depressed for some reason, but she headed back into her house. Using the opening, he quickly messaged her again.
'That's pretty conceited to the people that live nearby, Akiha-chan.' He dashed the message with a smile emote and sent it off.
With amazing speed, Akiha's response appeared. Shiki really hoped that things weren't so boring up in the mansion that she was paying this much attention to his bored messages.
'Don't tease me! It's just that there's two new ...guests in the area!' Shiki blinked at the little blushing smiley face along with the typos in the message. He wondered what he gotten her chain rattled, but decided not to make her mood get worse.
'Shiki is still inviting more?' He frankly found it distasteful on the principals his old family stood for. 'I guess the construction businesses must love him for finding all the new families though, huh?'
The flood of messages stopped at this point from Akiha, and a message from Hisui finally appeared. As usual, it was sloppily written, but he was able to decode a message out of the flood of emote icons and typos.
'Shiki-chan, did your test go well? I bet you passed. Akiha-sama is going to give me some time off in a few days so I can go see Tokie-sensei for my treatment. Would you like to meet me at the office tomorrow?'
Shiki was about to respond to the message, but another message – this one from Akiha- suddenly flashed on his screen.
'The Arima are under attack – we're sending agents in. Please help them!'
"Gods..." Shiki stared at the screen with enough intensity to cause it to combust in any other situation. His body began to heat up as incomprehension gave way to the rage he felt creeping up his neck, feverish heat attempting to swallow his brain up with pain .
"Nanaya-kun, I made some lemonade, and I was wondering if you wan-" Satsuki cut herself off with a gasp.
Shiki's eyes shot up at Satsuki in alarm, and for a brief moment he understood why. The reflective surface of his lenses were showing his blue eyes shining back at him.
He could see Satsuki's body, segmented into several smaller sections by thick black lines, taunting him behind the glass for just a few moments before the lines vanished like a hallucination. Or a waking nightmare.
"S-shiki...?"
The teenager sprang to his feet with a curse, spun around, and began to race away from his classmate. Her desperate, entreating cries on his back were shoved towards the back of his mind, along with the sight of those lines and everything else.
Shiki ripped off his glasses, scrapping the skin of his nose and losing his cellphone, with a harsh motion. The teenager had no time to double back to pick up his phone, focusing on trying to stop a disaster in the making.
The teenager's body flooded with energy as he finished his invocation - foot speed dramatically increased as the new found energy from his environment allowed him to tear his way out of Satsuki's neighborhood in record time. Cries of pain and shock rose around Shiki as he began to practically vault towards the Arima's home, smashing aside the unfortunate pedestrians in his path with his body, not trusting himself to use his hands in fear of cutting someone's limbs off now that the lines had manifested themselves again.
What was normally a leisurely half hour trip was reduced to a few minutes.
A small crowd was gathered in front of the Arima home. Several of the nearby houses had their doors open, light flooding out into the dimming neighborhood. For a few moments, Shiki's heart leapt to his throat as the worst of possible scenarios appeared in his mind.
They were blown completely away when he got a good look at one of the things.
Shiki nearly collapsed to his knees. Bile rose up the back of his throat. Staring at him was nothing but Death.
"Ngh...?" He hacked as spittle and a little bit of acid spilled forth from his gullet as a collection of man shaped abominations, bodies covered from head to toe in the lines of death, moved towards him with sluggish movement.
However, even in those horrid bodies there remained a tiny spot of normalcy that Shiki desperately focused on as he drew his knife. That spot, its location differing based on the creature, pulsed with life. The energy of life trailed away to the north, but if he had a guess, it had to be something that Kohaku had informed him about once.
Familiars.
Shiki drew Nanatsu-yoru, his faithful knife slipping into the groove of his hand once again, and focused at his enemies. The monsters sped up towards him, but he was ready, coiled body springing towards the familiars and his knife springing forth in a deadly weave of slashes.
The fuel of life spilled forth, thick and noxious to his nostrils, driving Shiki further into a killing rage as he sprung through the ranks. Everywhere he struck was a killing blow for the teenager, but a vicious hammer blow to his side with monstrous strength was enough to momentarily distract him from the agony that was settling on the back of his head.
'How can they have so much strength?' Shiki thought in shock as he was knocked to the ground. A sharp kick, which removed the bicep of one of the monster's groping arms, bought him a few seconds as he tried to get up. However, the blood that was released from his earlier kick treacherously turned on him, staggering the teenager as he stood up, keeping him unsteady long enough for another blow to be struck.
Feeling his jaw shatter was never a pleasant thing. Blood filled his mouth and heady amounts of pain assaulted him with all the subtlety of a jackhammer to the skull. A manic snort erupted from his nose as he recoiled, barely managing to keep to his feet.
Shiki was sure that it would have been enough force to pop his head off if he hadn't been reinforced. The grim thought of what that would look like briefly flashed through his mind in all of its glorious, rotten glory as he stumbled backwards from the familiar that had attacked, arm still extended in the strike that had nearly done him in while his slashed up fellows hadn't been able to do.
In response, Shiki sprang forwards and slammed his fist straight into a mass of lines on the dead creature's head, releasing more tar onto the streets.
Shiki's forward momentum slowed to a crawl with the monster's brain matter pulped up against his fingertips, but the teenager solved that with a twist of his upper body and flattening out his fist into the shape of a knife. The top portion of the mannequin's head went soaring in one direction as the body dropped to Shiki's feet.
A heady cocktail of biological chemicals were surging through Shiki's veins at this point as he glanced at the direction of the remaining creatures. The pitiful things moaned and mindlessly began to shuffle towards him and Shiki, feeling their tar dripping off his face and lower body merely replied with a vicious grin.
"Nii-chan!" Miyako's wail, mixed with the sound of a cat's cry, was the only thing that snapped him out of his deranged state. Shiki instantly rushed towards the sound of the girl's cry from a half a block away.
The undead rushed to meet his rush with equal speed.
One of the dead brought its arms outwards in an attempt to give him a crushing bear hug, but Shiki sprang up and braced his left foot up against the shirt of the former human. Fabric began to rip as his right heel hooked against the dead man's shoulder, but Shiki didn't care as he used his sheer momentum to spring up into the air using the thing's body as a platform.
The dead crashed down to the ground as Shiki began to rapidly descend, aiming towards another monster. His left foot slammed into the monster's forehead, pressed down into it with enough force to snap the unfortunate creature's neck, and allowed him to leap the rest of the way past the remaining twenty monsters.
Shiki saw a glimpse of Miyako, herded up against the corner of a neighbor's yard by a pair of dead things. She was huddled up in a ball, trying to desperately avoid seeing what was in front of her. His glimpse ended as he landed on the street.
The teenager let his body loosely roll along the cooling surface of the street for less than ten seconds before he began to crawl on his hands and knees. Pain had long since stopped being a factor, both with the adrenaline and his reinforcement, so the rapid fraying of his pants were ignored as he shifted his hands.
His speed increased as he moved on the tips of his fingers and shoes – abandoning his knife at this point and picking up a few stray pebbles. With a roar, he shoved himself up with his fingers, and began to dash the last bit of distance towards Miyako as he vaulted the fence.
Miyako, face bloody and with bits of glass stuck in her raw hands, let out a scream as the dead hissed as they moved towards her. Shiki whipped his right fist out in their direction with all his might – unleashing several stones that whistled as they slammed into and through the undead.
The little girl simply passed out as the majority of their heads simply vanished in a haze of gore. The bodies, no longer sustained by the brain, simply collapsed to the ground like marionettes which had their strings cut.
Shiki continued his dash at Miyako, palming the remaining stone he had in his left fist as he recalled the feline cry. His worry was proven correct as a small tabby cat, with a disgustingly long and ratty looking tail, threw itself at him from the rooftop of the nearby home. The creature's tail ignited in a flaming whip – which the creature swung towards Shiki's face.
The teenager feeling the heated air blast at his face, went into a roll, the smell of burnt hair and a hiss of disappointment lingered in the air. Shiki bounced off one of the perforated bodies of the undead, but came to a halt in front of Miyako.
The smell of urine assaulted Shiki's nose.
Both cat and human came springing back to their feet, Shiki getting his feet underneath him and an arm wrapped around Miyako's slight form awkwardly. Their tense standoff ended when the sounds of blaring horns and the cracks of firearms going off could be heard.
The cat let out a mournful cry before it turned and began to race away. The flames on its tail extinguished themselves, but Shiki's remaining stone soared through the tip of the beast's appendage before it could make a complete get away.
Its cry of pain briefly echoed like a curse before it raced out of sight.
Shiki, feeling his last nerve fail him, collapsed onto his rear as he stared in the direction the cat – nekomata had run off towards. The sounds of the Tohno Family sweepers rushed up to him, each layered on top of the other in an incomprehensible mess as the situation he had gotten into finally hit him.
'Don't Panic.'
The self rebuke forced Shiki's eyes to slam shut as he tried to distance himself. From Miyako, face broken into bloody patches with deathly pale portions that hadn't been stained red; the neighborhood, slashed to pieces thanks to the death lines; and finally the two rotting bodies two feet in front of him.
His breath, harsh and rapid, was the only noise he made.
The sound of crunching footsteps caused Shiki to open his eyes once again.
Kohaku, expressionless and backed up by one of the family's sweepers, gazed down at the meat in front of Shiki for a long moment. "What did they look like to you?" She finally decided to question.
"They were unsightly."
"Hm..."
The man, looking like he was about to be ill, broke into their conversation. "Nanaya-kun, those were...!" He wheezed.
The bottom fell out of Shiki's stomach.
Kohaku gazed away from the bodies and towards Shiki. "Don't do it." She warned, amber eyes glittering.
His left hand shakily reached towards his coat pocket.
"Shiki-kun..."
The Mystic Eye Killers glinted in the night.
"Idiot, help me!" Kohaku hissed over at the stunned agent. He immediately moved with the redhead to block Shiki's view as he donned the glasses, banishing the death lines from the world around them. A wedding band glinted on the mangled hand of one of the bodies.
"...move."
"No. I refuse." Kohaku simply retorted. She and the man with her proved an effective enough blockade with the darkening skies. "Radio for backup. I want those corpses taken away to be burned." She commanded.
"...yes, ma'am." The hired arm reached for the radio on his waist and began to call in their location.
Kohaku silently extracted Nanatsu-yoru from beneath the obi holding her kimono closed. The blade, sticky with blood, was silently wiped up against Kohaku's knees before she offered it towards Shiki.
"This is yours still."
A terrible, unknown fear kept Shiki's words trapped in his throat as he took the knife from Kohaku. The two of them simply remained silent until the bodies had been moved away.
Assassin mulled over Shiki's story as the pair finally approached Shiki's neighborhood. 'Why are you still living here, then?' He prodded.
'It was a clan of nekomata assassins. They had gotten past all of the security the larger branch families hired and killed their heads. Hell, one even got through a few years ago and killed Makihisa Tohno.' Shiki, thoughts dark even twenty minutes later, responded with the unfiltered truth.
'So no escape.' Assassin sighed. 'What happened to the girl?'
'Kohaku.' Shiki's gratitude could be heard in his tone. 'She's a user of witchcraft.'
Assassin felt vaguely troubled. 'So...she doesn't remember about her parents?' He aired out his grievance.
'It's there. She's just ...detached from those memories. Witchcraft can only modify memories.'
Assassin let out a small noise as he considered this.
'I'd need the help of someone that uses a traditional system to actually erase them, but neither Shiki nor Kohaku can do it.' Shiki rubbed at his chest uncomfortably. 'Until then...she can still remember...'
'And feel them subconsciously, correct?' At Shiki's stunned silence, Assassin quietly continued. 'It's like a magical induced state that you go into to handle your stress in battle. It isn't a long term solution at all.'
Shiki remembered the crash he had felt after coming out of his Nanaya state. He silently agreed with the Heroic Spirit.
'The withdrawn girl knows about our world because of this?'
The teenager walked the final approach to his home.
'No, she started down the path because I dropped my phone," Shiki grimaced as he recalled his own stupidity. 'She harbored suspicions for years, though. I was always a clumsy guy around her.' He shook his head.
'Then what happened...?'
Shiki began to open the door to his house, but the door slid open before he could reach for the door.
"Well, we're sorry to trouble you both." Akiha, clad in a high collared long coat, stood before Shiki. "I'll just see about talking to Nii-san tomo-" She trailed off as her head turned to fully glance at him. Her expression reminded Shiki of a puckering fish, but he decided to keep his thought to himself.
Hisui stood behind Akiha, dressed in a dark sweater with a large white scarf and an ankle length skirt. She raised an eyebrow, but otherwise remained cool under Shiki's sight.
Miyako and Satsuki, both showing slight distress, gazed at Shiki imploringly from over Akiha's shoulder, having moved further down the hall so they could connect their line of sight with Shiki's eyes.
"Nii-san..." Akiha's stunned expression positively melted as delight shone forth from her blue eyes. He rather enjoyed contrast that she now had between her complexion, hair, and eyes.
"Akiha-chan." Shiki greeted the younger girl casually. Just as Akiha's eyes began to narrow with her annoyance, he decided to finish her off in one blow. "Looking as wonderful as always. I like your new look."
'And how I haven't been driven insane by it.' Shiki finished the thought.
'Yet.' Assassin didn't leave well enough alone.
A pink blush crossed her cheeks.
Hisui glanced away.
Miyako looked like she wanted to tear something apart.
Satsuki woodenly turned and marched in the direction of the kitchen.
"Ah...it's decided, then." Akiha cleared her throat, banishing the flush on her cheeks. "You two are coming home with me tonight."
"What." Shiki blurted.
Assassin somehow projected a tangible aura of schadenfreude.
Wise Up!
It is dark.
You are likely to be eaten by an Oni.
Oh? What's that? You need a distraction?
Well, let's me see how the other Masters are doing for you...
A tall man, with a bronzed complexion that could only naturally be produced in regions further to the south, walked amongst devils. The hulking, furred beasts were manifestations of a foreign folklore that had been imported from Canada.
The howls of the Wendigo brought forth a crushing snowstorm to descend on the city below. Terror began to stir in the hearts of the populace as nature turned on them.
"Now go!" The man pointed a muscular arm in the direction of the community. Its lights began to die out in various portions as the high speed winds knocked down electric poles throughout the town. "Gorge yourselves, feed until you are hungry no more, and return to Master Wallachia so we may travel beyond this land to Misaki – source of our desires!"
The wild beasts let out eager grunts as they began to bound down the hillside to the city.
"And I..." Servant Berserker flexed his neck, popping his joins as he shook his arms to ready himself. "Shall show the knights the error of their ways before I banish them to Tartarus." He grinned, summoning forth a bolt of lightning in his left hand.
...oh no.
Angra Mainyu did it.
The almighty idiot actually went and copi-ckztttt!
