Character Name: Ciel
Character Series: Tsukihime | Melty Blood
Character Age: Physically 17, actually around 24. In Mayfield, she's classified as an adult.
Housing: 1125 Taylor Road
"Family": "Husband"
made_this_town, "daughters"
headedforhope,
envyspites, and
adropofjupiter,
♦
Extended Character Survey♣
Character Relationships♠
Permission meme for Suggestion and Sixth Sense Background:
As noted by Type-Moon Wikia To elaborate her past...
It began in 1976, in a small, remote, and very rural village in the country of France. A little girl named Elesia was born, with a French father and Oriental mother. Her parents ran the local bakery, and despite not being very good with mornings, Elesia worked hard there in the evening. She also got along well with the kids, the adults, and the elderly of the neighborhood. Life proceeded as normal, and Elesia did look forward to the day when she'll take over her father's business so that she could make her family proud.
Things changed once she grew. She was about 16 of age when it happened; she started experiencing sudden and inexplicable bouts of irritation. At first, they were small things: she'd get very annoyed if a small accident befell her. Say, if she dropped a cookie on the ground, she would have the urge to smash the entire tray. Then it grew, and proceeded to become more and more irrational and violent: she would walk past the street and see the children who looked up to her kindness and generosity play around, and be hit by the sudden desire to snap their little necks. She would pass by a beggar whom she usually wouldn't mind offering bread that's no longer fresh but still edible to, yet instead, she'd feel like running a knife through him, while wondering how beautiful it would be to watch him bleed and die.
Eventually, it completely consumed her. Confused, scared, and completely helpless, Elesia shut herself into her room and refused to come out no matter how hard her parents tried to call. They would have broken down the door, did she not beg them to leave her alone. So they did, and time passed.
Some time later, she hit her limit and broke. The girl called Elesia stopped to exist - or rather, she was swallowed by the 17th reincarnation of Roa, a vampire who sought immortality by continuously reincarnating himself through others like a parasite. He is otherwise known as the Serpent of Akasha, and it was his consciousness that has finally awoken in her maturing body, before completely taking over. No longer herself but at the same time once again in full possession and control of her body and will, she stood up, unlocked the door, and emerged from the room.
Her parents were ecstatic to see her. ...They would've been, if the girl didn't pass by them first before they could fully express their joy. She bit through their flesh, drained them of every last drop of blood that they had, and then ripped off their heads. Her thirst for both blood and violence, however, remained unquenched.
So she continued. Elesia was a gentle girl however, so Roa could not force her to start a mindless slaughter. Instead, she fooled her clients one by one, still putting on the air of the sweet and innocent apprentice baker as she lured them to their doom. It did not take long before the entire population succumbed: the village became a tragedy of bloodbath, and it was only once that she's trapped and slaughtered every last person that she became satisfied.
Not soon after, the White Princess arrived. Arcueid Brunestud, the living weapon whose only purpose in life is to eliminate Dead Apostles, has come to kill Roa once again, in an attempt to regain the power that the original Roa has stolen from her by tricking her 800 years ago. The 17th Roa was taken by surprise, and it was with a gaping hole in her heart that she was killed by the claws of the White Princess of the True Ancestors. This new reincarnation of Roa eliminated, Arcueid Brunestud took her leave and returned to slumber.
The Church arrived soon after. They found nothing but a bloodied and lifeless village where corpses were strewn about at every corner, and the corpse of Roa's 17th reincarnation. As an organization that also pursued Roa, who is still a vampire, they took the corpse to Vatican and preserved it in order to study it. Three years later, against all miracles, the body came back to life. The girl who was once called Elesia is once more - though it is highly likely that the persona 'Elesia' has long ceased to exist. Startled by this new development, the Church took actions. This is, after all, still the body of a heretic, so they tried to kill her.
She did not die, so they tried again. And again. And again. And again.
Over the course of a full month and more, that was all that this girl knew, day after day and night after night. She became an experiment that was subjected to over several hundred ways that would otherwise kill a normal person, yet she regenerated without fail every time, coming back to life to only suffer more. The reason was simple: she was a living paradox. This body belonged to Roa, and in essence, is still Roa, despite the fact that Roa has been defeated in this body and left the shell. His spirit still lives, however, and he shall reincarnate again as the Serpent of Akasha. So for as long as Roa's spirit exists and will continue to reincarnate in another, this girl's body cannot die. Her time will forever stop, unable to move even the slightest to what she is now.
In the end, the Church gave up trying to get rid of her. Instead, they "baptized" her into their own ranks. She cannot die, her body still possessed outstanding magical and physical potential, and she has inherited Roa's knowledge: it would be more useful to appropriate her abilities for their cause. It was so that the girl named "Ciel" has been created: she has been made as a member of the
Burial Agency, a group of elite assassins within the Catholic Church that is even feared by the Church itself, because unlike the rest of the Church, Faith is secondary to ability. They only have one mission: hunt down and kill heretical existences that the Church itself would otherwise refuse to acknowledge. Namely, vampires, and any non-human beings that has no place in God's world.
With the Church's training, Ciel's abilities only developed, and it was because of her Immortality that she has been attributed with the 7th seat of the Burial Agency: the seat designated to the one who acts alone. She may be human, but her strength and speed can still match up to some Dead Apostle Ancestors, though it is really her ability to wield the
Seventh Holy Scripture that she begins to present a huge threat to any vampires alike. Ever since then, she has been with the Church, and her goal is simple: annihilate Roa's existence, both under direct orders of her superiors and also following her own death wish. It still will not earn her forgiveness for the heinous acts that she has committed as the 17th Roa, but she'd be damned, if she didn't try to atone.
Following that, the story of Tsukihime begins, when Ciel arrives to Misaki City in order to hunt down and exorcise the 18th incarnation of Roa - likely residing within one who has Tohno blood, which is why she infiltrated Shiki's highschool for information. As for the rest... It's too dependent of which route you take. Go read the VN. :V
Personality:
♥. Supportive
She is not nicknamed Ciel-senpai only for her seniority. Cheerful and compassionate, she is always ready to support someone in their time of need, willing to listen to their troubles and giving them some small assistance when she can. Shown clearly in the “Near Side of the Moon” routes, where she finds Shiki soaked and miserable in the park after he ‘kills’ Arcueid, and takes him in like a lost duckling. There, she also silences him of his pity speech, in thinking that he was a bad person because he killed, and tells him that the moment he is remorseful for whatever crime he thought he committed, then he is not a bad person (she never allowed him to tell her he killed someone and felt awful over it). That said, she’s no Samaritan and possesses a good judge of character: she may offer help to humans she has previously spoken to and have given her no reason to believe that they may be bad, but it would be an entirely different story with non-human beings, or another race that may threaten a human’s safety. …Vampires, most notably, for not only is that her night job and true job, she will also forever have a bone to pick with Arcueid. ……Still, maybe that’s JUST Arcueid. She may have almost fought to death with Akiha in the manga, but in the end, both nevertheless cooperated several times to bail the other and Shiki out of trouble when it mattered. Lenient of Sion, understanding of Satsuki, and courteous with Akiha, it IS more likely that Ciel just has an eternal ‘rivalry’ with the ditsy True Ancestor.
This trait, additionally, is also the most present in the entirety of Tsukihime, even in the “Far Side of the Moon” routes where SHIKI and the Tohno household are much more prominent. As a constant of Shiki’s school life (or so he thinks, anyway), she is always there as a comforting presence, offering to eat lunch with him and hear him out to get him to relax and calm down.
♥. Knowledgeable
In the same vein as the title “Ciel-senpai”, she is not featured as Ciel-sensei to teach the dumb players and inform them of their mistakes at every bad end once the 4th wall has been torn down as well. Even in the game itself, as an agent of the Church and Roa’s vessel once in the past, she is very well versed in Roa’s nature and vampires in general. When Arcueid isn’t feeling whimsical enough to explain, it is usually Ciel who clues Shiki in on everything that he should know - one step at a time, but also only when she evaluates it as necessary. While it will take Shiki some time to get Ciel to trust him enough for her to pass onto him the information that she has (since depending on the route she may be more or less actively investigating him specifically), she is precise and thorough when she does begin to talk.
♥. Good-natured
Ciel might be a bit strange to follow sometimes (nowhere near as bad as Arcueid, just a note), but she generally gives off the air of a kind, mild, well-mannered, polite, reliable, smart, and even motherly older student - sure, she’s not without her quirks, but generally, she gives a nice and laid-back impression of someone who goes by her pace and can follow another’s. She makes use of honorifics and family names, referring to Shiki as ‘Tohno-kun’ and Arihiko as ‘Inui-kun’. She does seem to drop the family name with Akiha, calling her Akiha-san, and outright picks Arcueid out as a thieving cat and an airheaded vampire, but these people are special, so there’s no need to speak more of that. Even angered, she can hide her dismay well, and that is hard to notice for she is constantly smiling, so her presence is generally always considered to be a soothing one.
♡. Reserved
While Ciel is good at smiling and providing an ear to listen to and a shoulder to lean on to others, she is in fact very, very reserved about herself, and will rarely speak of her own circumstances to another, at least not without very good reasons. This stems strongly from her past experiences: as one who obliterated her entire hometown and drained the blood of all those whom she once loved, she does still harbor some guilt over this, so it will be very difficult to have her openly speak of herself. Since her body is also covered with the marks and tattoos of the 7th, she will stick to wearing long-sleeved clothing with high collars and prefer them, despite the fact that she can hide these marks fine (i.e. in the case of bathing suits). This reservation can also be perceived as modesty, which is not false, for Ciel isn’t one to boast about her assets and abilities.
♡. Deceptive
As good-natured as Ciel-senpai may appear to be, she is not above lying and omitting truths to even those that she greatly cares about, in order to keep them safe and reach her own goals. Actually, it can even be said that she’s not honest at all. This goes on for at least a good half of Tsukihime, where she pretends to be Shiki’s upperclassman by deceiving the entire school. Fortunately, since she is a good person, she does hide information for good reasons, and in this instance, she kept quiet to try to keep Shiki out of this mess, and not involve innocent humans. She only finally told him when it became absolutely necessary, like when Roa is starting to make Shiki himself his vessel. Ciel is also very good at masking her emotions; only Shiki can tell when she’s angry, because she is always cordial and seems pleasant even in bad situations. She can say some very scary things while wearing a perfectly natural smile, so poor Shiki has to be a fast learner before he says something that he can’t take back. Again, Arcueid is exempt to this, like everything else that is nice about Ciel. She will not hesitate to call the True Ancestor a whore, if only Ciel herself was actually that vulgar.
In the end, she does admit that if to no one else, to at least Shiki, she has to play innocent - as in, put up the smile of a knowing and kind older senpai no matter the situation, to preserve a fragment of normalcy in a student like Shiki’s life. She hasn’t failed that yet, able to switch between the brutal and heartless Executor and the annoyed but forgiving chiding senpai in less than a fingersnap, and that may be something that even Shiki has yet to fully accustom himself to.
♡. Professional
Linking in to everything above, Ciel is still the 7th of the Burial Agency, first and foremost (though Shiki might disagree), and as some other characters have noted throughout Tsukihime and Melty Blood, a ‘dog of the Church’. The commands the Church has over her are absolute, and she will not go against their teachings or their orders. Faithful and determined, that means that if she is issued a mission, she will do everything in her power to complete it. Keen and careful, Ciel is an even-headed fighter who does not crack to pressure and can put on and leave on the cold mask of a vampire hunter for as long as she needs to. Staying true to her objectives, she can go so far as to willingly try to kill Shiki, whom she grew very attached to, in order to eliminate Roa. …In the end, however.
♥. Humane
She is human, and far from being a mere killing machine. As “Talk”, a side story after Tsukihime notes, it is her very compassion to her colleagues and people she knows that makes her her, and keeps her that way despite everything that she has been through. Occurrences of characters being surprised at Ciel letting them go despite being a vampire are numerous, and that is exceptionally lenient, for a member of the Burial Agency - though she is also clever enough to cover up for it by saying something sensible. In Melty Blood, she ultimately lets Sion go because she trusts Shiki to keep an eye on her, and that her mission, first and foremost, was to eliminate the Tatari: catching the Alchemist and returning her to Atlas is second to that, so as long as the Tatari still roams, she can overlook Sion. In the same vein, she lets Yumizuka go when encountering her randomly one night, in her Arcade mode storyline in Melty Blood Act Cadenza ver. B. …Sure, there might be an ulterior motive, since all these people were connected to Shiki, but that does still show that she knows mercy and can be lenient, willing to turn a blind eye and use the bigger picture as an excuse to not follow her teachings as closely as she could have. The strongest example is her gambit with Shiki when the latter was having dreams of brutally killing people; she had him in a deadlock and each could kill the other in less than a heartbeat, yet despite having seriously fought and hunted Shiki, and even injuring him, she never intended to kill him, only going this far to prove to him that he was not the killer, nor a bad person, the moment that he drops his knife and they can call it over.
♪. Meganekko
“Senpai isn’t senpai without her glasses!” - Tohno Shiki
While she does not actually need them, as Ciel proves when she goes srs bsns vampire hunting in her priest garbs, she will still always wear them in public under broad daylight, to complement her image of the kind, knowledgeable, dependable and sweet senpai. This is important, so I’m making a note of it.
♪. Curry addict
Played more for laughs in the fandom at this point but still an inevitable part of her character, Ciel loves curry. Anytime you want to get on her good side and have her forgive you for something, give her curry. She’s not AS shallow to accept it right away, but dear Akasha knows that it would DEFINITELY help.
Abilities:
Excellent athletic abilities: As a member of the Burial Agency, a merciless and universally feared organization that is the equivalent of a SWAT team within the Catholic Church of the Nasuverse, Ciel is extremely fit. Swift, strong, and accurate, she can move on top of buildings, lampposts, and electricity/phone line poles with great precision and speed. As a wielder of the Black Keys, she also has very good aim with projectiles, and she can swing around the 7th Holy Scripture, which basically just looks like a huge metallic gun cannon with a bayonet attached, with ease. She’s also physically trained in martial arts, skills that she has acquired through vigorous practice.
Skilled magus: It is the original reason why Roa chose her as his next vessel: because the magical aptitudes that Ciel’s body possessed were outstanding. Ciel has roughly 100 times the capacity as an average magus, which as Fuyuki notes is either going to be around 2500 at the low end or 4000 at the high end, depending on info source and what constitutes to one as an "average magus". Saber, under Rin, is estimated at ~1500, which translates out to rank A, so Ciel's aptitude is truly monstrous. More shown in the manga than the VN, she can somewhat match Roa with bolts of lighting, put up magical barriers to seal and protect, fire powerful magic that can even harm Arcueid (in a weakened state, but still), and perform healing, which is a skill that she probably learned by putting her circuits to use under the Church’s teachings.
UPDATE: From Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code, when going serious and all out in her battle dress, Ciel makes rampant use of her magic, and in one of her victory quotes, she likens the average magus' capacity to that of a car/motorbike, and her own, to a jetplane. Some attacks:
Code Carré - Undetermined
Code Six - 6 horizontal bolts straight forward. 6 Hits.
Code Dix-Sept - 17 horizontal bolts straight forward. 17 Hits.
Code Dix - 10 vertical bolts coming down like curtains. 10 Hits.
Code Onze - 11 vertical bolts coming down like curtains. 11 Hits.
Last Arc : Code Square: Tempête, Quatre-Vingt Dix-Neuf - Throws foe upwards with the bayonet of her Scripture, draws a cross while wrapped in an orb of light, and then massively electrocutes in midair. 99 Hits.
Setting those aside, due to her ability to tap into Roa's knowledge, she's also versed in Numerology (i.e.: Blue Wind, Thunder), High Speed Incantation, and Simplified Repetitive Incantation.
Black Keys: As mentioned above, these are her weapons of choice, though Ciel is also proficient with a dagger. They are actually just sword hilts created from the pages of a Bible, but Ciel can materialize the blades and throw them at her leisure whenever she desires. Because of how they are made, she also has a huge supply. She can also engrave spells on them so that they gain additional properties: the entire list is
here. Canonically, she is shown to have been capable of pinning a human in place and making them unable to move, by burying a Black Key in the ground and through their shadow. She also stated with confidence that once planted, she is the only one that can remove it.
Regeneration: It's her born ability which allowed her to revive from having her heart removed in the first place, as Roa 17th. Because of her insane potential, as long as the brain, which controls the circuits and the body, is not destroyed, Ciel will slowly be able to regenerate from any wounds received. It's a much longer and limited process contrasted to that of her Roa-bound immortality, but one nevertheless with use, given her line of career. That body has an abnormal reviving ability.
Suggestion: Also known as "Mystic Eyes of Whisper", they are also possible because of her circuits: Ciel has the ability to captivate ordinary humans with weak magical resistance and make them believe whatever she says. What she really does is subtly encourage people to abide by her idea, and not ask questions in return. For example, canonly she was capable of convincing both Shiki and Akihiko that she has been studying at their school for as long as they remember: she could do that because they had no reason to doubt her to begin with, and she acted perfectly the part as well to match up. Her ability will not be able to fully coerce another to believe something that they have valid reasons to have doubts over, or manipulative another to do something that their true selves would never really want. The former happened to Shiki, who realized that Ciel was manipulating his psyche to make him feel better in Ciel’s Route True End, when he realized the inconsistencies of Ciel talking about taking over her father’s business when he already knew that it was impossible, because she killed her entire family herself as Roa’s vessel a long time ago.
Necromancy: Manipulation of dead corpses. She admits this, when characters from Kagetsu Tohya, Tsukihime’s fan-disk, 4th walls the original game, and she confesses that in Arc route, on the 10th day when Arcueid and Shiki were suddenly ambushed by 4~5 Deads, she was the one manipulating them. Her motive was simple: getting rid of Arcueid, though eliminating competition for Tohno-kun’s affections WOULD be a nice side-bonus. Still, she did it for the Church! Honest.
A side note is that she was once immortal, because as Roa’s vessel, she cannot physically die while he still exists. Since Ciel is taken from post Melty Blood, however, Roa has already been defeated and his existence permanently erased, so she is no longer immortal. …There are also probably other things that Ciel can do, being the 7th, but these are all that are canonly known one way or another. All her abilities relating to her magic circuits are currently sealed, but she still retains her natural/trained physical aptitudes.
Regains
[†] Magic Circuits
[†] Seventh Holy Scripture
[†] Senpai glasses (Traded for Burial Cloth, regained again)
[†] Burial Cloth (Given to Tohno Shiki after his glasses stopped working Recovered, after he chose to become a Youkai and no longer needed the cloth)
[x]
Mafia Business suit - why is this even here she can sew it herself
[†] Memories from arriving to Japan until Roa's final sealing, AKA all of Tsukihime
[†] 1 Kidney
[†] 1/3rd of the liver
[†] Immortality
[†] Elesia's peasant dress
[†] Holy Charms (2 rings)
[†] Personal stash of Garam Masala
[†] Various spices (turmeric, cilantro, cumin, red pepper)
[†] Japanese Green Tea
[ ] Japanese Tea Set
[ ] Various firearms
* Red denotes Post Office losses.