in too deep

Because I’m on a Castlevania kick, vampire blood is an ingredient in the Water of Life, and it’s canon that my boy Alucard has a Japanese alter ego for… some reason, that’s why. (Also because, in the Japanese version of the animation, he’s voiced by Miki Shin’ichiro. I couldn’t pass that up.)

It all happened so fast.

One moment Chizuru was fleeing from some ronin in pursuit. The next, they and their killers were all dead. She’d barely had time to take in the ronin’s screams of terror and the monsters’ gleeful cackling before they’d been cut off, quite literally, and now there was only silence.

Except in Chizuru’s mind. Cries of abject terror and twisted joy still echoed in her mind, mingling together in unbearable cacophony. What were those creatures? They looked almost human, but their actions were worse than beasts. Besides that, their hair had been white like their gleaming blades, their eyes red like spurts of blood.

Reminding herself at last to breathe, Chizuru looked around to realize she had sunk to her knees at some point. And then her eyes finally landed on her savior—not the small army she half expected, to have dispatched multiple bloodthirsty murderers with such ruthless efficiency, but rather a single man.

Though he had crouched down to examine the corpses, Chizuru could tell from his proportions that he was very tall. His kimono was black, its subtle pattern in what might have been red and gold. His skin was paler even than Chizuru’s in the full moonlight, and his hair was black and somewhat wavy, worn loose and hanging some way down his back.

And the man wore only one sword, its scabbard at his side. Chizuru had never seen anything like it. The hilt was shaped differently, and the blade was entirely straight, tapering to a fine and lethal point. Both its edges were sharp and glinting, just like the man’s dark eyes. “Shinsengumi,” he muttered, his voice quiet and husky and foreboding, and glanced up at Chizuru. “Are you unharmed?”