1Smoke Gets in the Eyes
A Dorohedoro/ Tsukihime fic
As always I do not own the right to the DoroheDoro or Tsukihime, which is also known as Meltyblood.
You can contact me at tsommer
All of my stuff is now stored at or a03.
Just an idea I had. It's a brief one but gives me an excuse to use both a newer and older series. The primary setting is Dorohedoro but it's an alt uni by the end, as you'll see.
And so we'll start.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shin found himself striding up the walkway to En's house, the ever present Noi at his side. Sometimes he wondered if they were conjoined twins in a previous life, since they were inseparable since seemingly forever. It was probably a good thing he had no interest in relationships as he wasn't sure how Noi would react to him having one. She was a bit enigmatic even at the best of times. She might be perfectly fine with it. Or insanely jealous. Or be happy about it and still want to be perpetually at his side.
He wasn't sure which scenario was worse.
The house was impressive; a testament to En's wealth and power. A visitor once called it, 'Stately En Manor,' in En's presence, then looked expectedly at En as though it was meant to trigger a specific response. Instead En only said, "It is," which disappointed the man.
As Shin wondered if he should refer to it by that name, just to see En's reaction, Noi derailed the thought. "So what do you think he wants us for this time?"
"Since it's rarely to enjoy our delightful personalities, he probably wants us to kill someone." Shin, felt an edge of slight sarcasm for some reason. He put the attitude in check. This wasn't the time for it. "There's been some rumblings from the Blackheart Gang. It might have to do with them."
"They're a bunch of pushovers. It'll be an afternoon's work at best," Noi complained.
Shin was inclined to agree. They were strictly small time with no surprises. They were just good enough to think they didn't suck. Those were the worst, the groups with a modicum of talent who thought they were great because of it. The truly pathetic were rarely that delusional and didn't cause problems. The Blackhearts were like a lot of people who thought they were tougher than they were, only to be put down like the rest. It would be another day of business as usual for the pair.
Servants indicated that En was in a room for greeting visitors and was with one at that moment, but the pair of cleaners were to be ushered in anyway. As they entered they saw a stranger with a guitar of some kind. It had an odd appearance due to a device with a hose on the side. En stood next to the man, listening to him talk about the instrument as the pair sat down on a comfortable couch and waited.
The unfamiliar face turned out to be a salesman giving En a pitch on the product he was offering. "A powered guitar is superior to a normal guitar in every way. You put the mask over your face and exhale a minute quantity of smoke which goes down the tube and into the instrument. It then produces sounds which can only be described as… divine." He gave a look up to the heavens, then stared at En with a smile. "Your name will be hailed as the most accomplished guitarist ever."
En looked the device over intently, feeling the weight in his hands, and even flipping it around. Finally he asked, "If I'm wearing a mask how can I sing?"
The man became hesitant. "You can't. You'd need someone else to sing."
En stared at him. "I'm a singer. I've already produced a number of best-selling albums."
Shin whispered to Noi in a low voice. "His albums sell?"
"Only because he buys them all," she confided. "He gifts them to everyone. I use one as a coaster so I don't leave rings on the table. So it is useful."
Shin remembered receiving one when he first joined. It currently rested at the bottom of a landfill since he didn't care if rings ended up on his table. His loyalty to his boss didn't extend to listening to his terrible music. Claw hammers could be used to puncture his ear drums in a pinch.
En continued. "Best of En? En Sings the Hits? Polka Party?"
"I think I've heard of them," the salesman said non-committally. Which meant he hadn't but wanted to make a sale, while technically not lying in case he got caught in one.
Finally talking note of his pair of enforcers, En asked, "Can either of you play the guitar?"
"My upbringing wasn't conducive to music." Shin answered. It was totally geared toward murder, which he was very good at, as his employment in the En Family testified to. You didn't butcher people with a claw hammer on a weekly basis and suck at your job. Unless you were an actual carpenter. Then you were truly terrible at it and needed to seek a new profession.
"I can play a boneaphone," Noi provided.
"What's that?" En asked.
"It's like a xylophone but made out of a human ribcage. I had to learn it as part of my devil training. Their pipe organs were made out of actual human organs. They made amazing sounds." Noi was temporarily lost in memories of the past.
"That doesn't do me any good," En admitted, then turned to the salesman. "I'm not purchasing any at this time. If the situation changes, I'll get back to you, so leave your card." As the man packed up the guitar, En focused on the pair of hired muscle. "I'm glad you two are here. I need you to do a job. Recently a number of mages have gone missing in the Hole."
"Lizard head again?" Shin asked.
"Possibly," En admitted. "I was considering recruiting a couple of them into the family. I don't like it when people take decisions out of my hands. Find whomever it is and deal with them. If mages see me as protecting them, that will only increase my popularity among the lesser ones. It could help my future plans."
"You want to control more of the city?" Shin asked.
"I want more sales on an album I'm planning on making. You can never have enough good PR when it comes to sales. Keep your ears open for someone who can play guitar. I need to find a guitarist."
"Oh." This was both exactly and not exactly how Shin thought the day would turn out.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
"This place really is a hole" Noi bemoaned. "I hate coming here. They need to find somewhere else with people to practice magic on. Maybe someplace that's sunny and near an ocean."
Shin was inclined to agree. He had lived here and it was a hole, just like the name declared. It was never bright and the closest thing to an ocean was the cisterns the sewage system emptied into. He knew it for the festering pit it was. But then he felt that way about Sorcerer's World as well. The mages thought they were better since they could manipulate magic, but they were just as much failures of humanity for the same reason the Hole's residents were. They were just as corrupt and died the same way. He had killed enough of both that he was pretty much an accredited authority on mortality. Shin would have been in a different line of work if everyone wasn't so screwed up. Himself included since he was doing the work; he was just smart enough to know he wasn't on some higher moral ground. High moral ground was as much a myth as Angels. Sorry, only Devils were real, and you could make deals with them if you paid the price. And even when those who paid it said it was worth it, they never sounded sincere.
And now he was in a hellhole looking for scumbags who were killing other scumbags because the guy who paid him wanted it done. Which, when Shin thought about it, meant he was probably a scumbag himself working for another one.
And that was the circle of life here.
Noi looked around the depressing landscape. "So how do we find him?"
"I doubt he'll be carrying a sign, 'looking for mages to kill.'."
"The lizard head guy might. I still think it's probably him."
"Perhaps," Shin conceded.
Noi saw a passerby and shouted, "Hey, do you know anyone going around killing mages?"
The man actually seemed to shrink into himself. He shook his head and scurried away. Shin thought it was very rat like, but at the same time sensible since no good could come of having contact with him or Noi. Those that lacked survival instincts didn't last long here. Sometime those that did still died. There were no guarantees in life.
"Maybe we should do something to attract his attention." Noi then shouted, "Hey! We're mages. Anyone wanting to kill us, come on out!"
Shin rolled his eyes. "You do realize if he has an ounce of common sense, he'll go to ground and we'll never find him."
"If he had common sense he wouldn't have irritated En enough to send us after him."
It was a good point. Shin decided to wait here an hour so word could travel and, if the killer was stupid enough to show up, kill him. But it passed and he didn't. All the pair received were nervous glances from the few passersby courageous, or stupid enough to wander into their line of sight.
Finally Shin said, "Let's start looking around." And the cleaners set off, not knowing where to look but doing so anyway in case they got lucky.
After twenty minutes of dinginess that bordered on boring, Noi suggested they cause an incident to see if that would flush him out."
"We kill a dozen or so people, he might try to stop us."
Shin shook his head. "I don't like random murder. It's beneath us. Just because we kill a lot of people doesn't mean we should be unprofessional."
He might have said more, but Noi stopped and looked up the alleyway they were in. "Hey. What do you make of that?"
It was a non-descript teenager with, black hair, neither long nor short. There was nothing about him that would have made him stand out in any way save the look he shot the pair: anger and intensity. Since they hadn't done anything to merit that on a personal level, that made it highly probable he was here for trouble.
And then he pulled out a switchblade.
Shin sighed. That wasn't going to do him any good, unless he had lizard guy strength, and he didn't look the type. Actually he looked like dead meat, which might be a kinder fate than being transformed into a mass of mushrooms. Shin couldn't think of anything worse than that.
"Looks like we flushed something out after all." Noi said. "I'll handle this."
"Take him alive since we need to make sure he's the one," Shin reminded her, then added. "Breaking his limbs is fine."
"Good as done," she said and charged toward the stranger.
She threw a left at him. Given her prodigious strength, it most likely would have broken a lot of bones wherever it connected. The young man barely ducked out of the way while at the same time driving his switchblade into Noi's stomach.
Shin watched and shook his head sadly. A stab wound like that would barely slow her down. Even a bullet between the eyes only dropped her for about a minute. However, to his surprise she slumped to the ground, unmoving.
The surprise was so total Shin, didn't move. It proved a mistake as the youth's blade was pinned by Noi's unmoving form and, had he reacted, Shin would have been upon him before he pulled it free. But with the hesitation the blade pulled out, making a slushing sound common to metal being removed from flesh.
"Damn you!" Shin was tempted to kill the youth outright, but he needed to know what he had done to incapacitate Noi, and how to reverse it. And if he didn't, well, the strange kid would die slowly and in agony.
Shin brought the claw hammer down, resisting the urge to aim for the skull and instead aimed for the youth's shoulder. Metal sank into his flesh this time, and he cried out in agony as the sharpened end dug in.
Then the switchblade sank into Shin's side. A blow, given its location, that should not have been fatal. At least not right away. It sank to the hilt, piercing a kidney, but he had two so it should have been a minor inconvenience. Instead Shin felt pain and then everything went black.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shiki Tohno groaned in agony at the claw hammer still embedded in his shoulder. The blow had been so hard it had nearly broken his shoulder outright, and the pain great enough he had almost dropped the knife. If he had, it would have been over for him. But luckily he hadn't. His blow had struck true and the mage was dead. He had pierced the point perfectly, as he had on the heart masked man's companion. Two more dead mages at his hands.
The 'Mystic Eyes of Death Perception' never lied.
He could identify any mage by them since, while looking human, they weren't. Their lines and points were unique in their locations and patterns. Even without masks, they couldn't hide from him. Once Shiki had learned what mages were, mostly because one had been stupid enough to try and 'practice' on him, it had become a crusade. Their handiwork was on the bodies of the residents of the hole. He would put an end to that when the opportunities presented themselves, like it had these two who had announced their presence in desiring a showdown. Well, they had received it.
Ever since being unwillingly hurled into this world, Shiki found himself locked in this situation, trying to figure out some way back home. But the mages kept coming, and so he kept dealing with them. And now he had dealt with two others, but this time paying a hefty price. He would have to go to a hospital and have the injury treated since claw hammer wounds were not the sort of thing he could shrug off. The regular hospital rather than the one for magic victims. Conventional injuries required conventional solutions.
Although he had once gone to the young/old doctor, who had been enthused when informed of Shiki's abilities. He had been convinced Shiki was a mage and had examined him thoroughly for some organ that could produce their 'smoke', but he lacked one. The only explanation the doctor had was that 'the smoke must be in the eyes'. Shiki had no real answers. Sometimes, things just happened. Like surviving a near-death experience and seeing the lines of death in all things, living or inorganic, which was really a form of hell. Now it seemed he was fated to be in nothing but near-death situations, trapped in a cesspit with hostiles constantly doing their own form of raiding it.
Now his life was in a literal hole as well as a metaphorical one.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[END FIC]
Just a little thought I came up with since I'd always wanted to use Shiki from Tsukihime, and surprisingly enjoyed Dorohedoro, though I can see it wearing out its welcome with me since I'm more about the plot than the characters. I wasn't even all that wild about Tsukihime, but I loved the concept of those eyes. Not going to continue this since this was more an exercise in executing an idea rather than anything long term. And I wanted to do something without humor, just a brief story. Also I doubt anyone will come up with this combination ever again.
Hope you enjoyed.
