Revised Background~
BACKGROUND:
The world that Yami no Matsuei takes place in is Earth, in the 1990's, the difference being a multitude of supernatural occurrences that are of an occult nature. Vampires, zombies, ghosts, god's of death, imaginary worlds, that sort of thing, all of which fly under the radar. Most of the characters that are not directly involved with this sort of 'spirit world' or the supernatural do not believe in or do not really know about or encounter such. The main characters are deeply involved in this spirit world, however, both of them being shinigami or guardians of death. In order to become guardians of death in this world, you must first die and still have strong attachments in the human world, such as wishing to protect someone still living, wanting to know who your murderer was, etc.
It's treated much like a job in a police force of sorts. Each shinigami must have a partner to prevent them from revealing themselves, or for protection, or even so that they don't run of and try to rejoin the living. The main characters are two such partners, the older one having been a shinigami for a good 70 years, being named Asato Tsuzuki. He is Muraki's main target in all of this, but he'd met his much younger partner, a recently deceased 16 year old named Hisoka Kurosaki, before he had died. In fact, Muraki's actions are the reason why Hisoka became a shinigami in the first place, since he had raped and killed him slowly with a curse, though his memory had been wiped of the event, the only thing the boy being left with is a painful and slow curse that seemed like an illness, and a feeling that he was murdered rather than having been killed by an illness. (The curse had a twofold effect of killing him and allowing Muraki to keep track of him and speak with him telepathically, linking them)
The technology of this world is consistent with that of the 1990's. Computers were just on the rise, cell phones were coming out and slowly becoming mainstream, though most people didn't yet have one. Airplanes didn't seem to be all that big in Japan, though helicopters make an appearance here or there. The entire story takes place in or around Japan, never really touching down in any other countries, though Muraki is known to travel to the United States on business now and then.
Muraki first appears in the main characters' very first mission with each other, after Tsuzuki loses his previous partner because he breached protocol. They are sent to investigate a case of souls being lost and corpses being found drained of blood, the murders being unexplainable by the local human police force. The doctor himself is first met by Tsuzuki after a young girl falls unconscious out of nowhere, people screaming for help for the child.The shinigami races to her side, wanting to help, but has no knowledge to do so, Muraki coming out of hiding and professing that he was a doctor, and while he was on vacation, he would help the girl.
That meeting goes off without Tsuzuki really noticing anything, but it isn't long until they are investigating the mother of the woman who was believed to be brought back to life to become the vampire they were searching for, and she gives away that there is a doctor who was pulling the strings. His position given away, he ends up using his minor control over the boy to call him away from his partner, the curse surprisingly still in effect even after Hisoka's death. The boy, unknowing who was calling him or what it meant, ran off and was easily captured and put under another, more temporary spell that caused him to fall limp in Muraki's arms. After hiding him away, he used the location of his captive as bait to get near to the shinigami, spending a day just grating on his nerves because he'd told himself that he just wanted to get near to Tsuzuki. He fed off of his negative energy that day however, and became insatiable, finding his energy to be sweeter than he had foreseen.
The day is saved when Tsuzuki finally finds the place Muraki is keeping Hisoka and they have a big fight in a warehouse in which Muraki disappears, seemingly swallowed up by the flames of a phoenix summoned by Tsuzuki with Hisoka's help.
Time goes by and they believe Muraki has been killed. Hisoka's memory of the night Muraki set the curse upon him had been returned, causing him to wonder more than he probably would have otherwise, and making him wonder why he didn't feel any better knowing his murderer, and believing he was dead.
However, it wasn't long until the doctor would show up again, this time on a cruise ship they were sent to investigate because of the mysterious disappearances. Of course, the two partners are only vaguely surprised and immediately suspect him when people start showing up dead. He neither confirms nor denies this, though their suspicions are firm in this. They're at a point in their relationship with the doctor where he can come and go between them, and they'll generally just wrinkle their noses at him so long as others are around him, though their hesitation to attack him is out of concern for the people around them and keeping their cover. He even manages to get Tsuzuki to agree(reluctantly) to a game of poker, where he wins Tsuzuki's body for a night, but Hisoka comes in and beats him to win Tsuzuki back.
Then Muraki appears to show up dead, which throws a monkey wrench in their investigation, which had mostly been to prove Muraki guilty rather than simply find the killer. The one strange part about his murder is that his heart was not cut out which was the MO of the killer. It turns out that he had poisoned himself to put himself into a death-like coma that he had to use up a lot of energy to pull himself out of. It left him weak and needing to drain someone to regenerate, which he does when the partners split up to investigate two different areas. Tsuzuki gets attacked by the doctor in the cargo hold and he drains a bit of his energy before the shinigami attacks back with a piece of broken glass, managing to dislodge the doctor's glass eye(that as of yet hasn't been explained). He manages to get it put back in after a little while and then all of the people looking into and affected by the disappearances and the murders convene and he explains that he had been taking small doses of poisons for ten years that gave him a certain amount of immunity to the draft(why no one questions WHY he has been ingesting poison is beyond me).
Muraki manages to drop cryptic clues to the shinigami, more for the fun of the game than anything, since he believes he's already won. It turns out that he had been using a drug that makes people easily influenced(like hypnotism) on the young girl Hisoka had taken a shining to. She was the daughter of the ship's owner, and had been the recipient of a heart that was taken from a friend she had known well and had been very close to. He'd used her knowledge of this and the knowledge of the fact that the ship was a moving organ farm(along with the fact that he knew she had fallen in love with him) to brainwash her into thinking that she was possessed by her friend's angry ghost, who was the real culprit of the murders.
She is talking to Hisoka and Tsuzuki about the situation when Muraki shows up again and the young girl professes her love to him, to which he responds by shooting her in the chest. Hisoka is enraged again by Muraki's cruelty, and Tsuzuki as well, who then tries to punch Muraki, but the motion is thwarted by "bulletproof glass"(which, no matter HOW MANY times I read that particular part in the comic, I don't understand where it comes from). He escapes then on a private helicopter, then detonating a bomb on the ship to sink all evidence of his crimes, since he was the one that had been in charge of the organ farm and had used threats and blackmail to keep it going after the ship's owner had grown a conscience.
For whatever reason, they don't actively search Muraki out then, the villain disappearing throughout a series of odd missions and sidetracks, wherein Tsuzuki gets swept up in a book, and they go to an all-male school to take in a soul that had outlived it's body, and a demon possesses Tsuzuki momentarily.
A girl gets eaten by demons then, causing the pair to be drawn to a school to watch over her friend who had seen a shinigami(The belief being that if they are invisible then only humans near to death can see them). She resists, but is eventually in their care, Muraki making a quick appearance as a school nurse, joking with Tsuzuki when he goes to the nurse's to ask for a band-aid that he "didn't kill her or anything". Tsuzuki obviously is more than a little displeased to see him, but he ends up convincing him to come to see a play with him by telling him that he is the threat to the girl's life that is in their protection. He agrees begrudgingly, to yet another awkward date. They go to Muraki's best friend, Oriya's, restaurant/brothel where Muraki ends up pinning Tsuzuki to the mats and telling him how badly he wanted to touch him and tear him apart, and that he could probably do so right there and then before Oriya returns and throws a fit about him bringing a 'kagema'(male prostitute) to his brothel, which is 'sacred' in some way. Muraki and Tsuzuki share a bit of a talk during the play where Muraki insults his intelligence ever so subtley and also hints at more to come.
The night ends without incident really, but the next thing that happens is Muraki using his magic to possess the young girl the shinigami were protecting and turn her into a demon that attacks Tsuzuki and has to subsequently be killed, damaging the shinigami's psyche yet again.
This ends in everyone back at the Ministry of Hades(the name of the shinigami headquarters), where Tsuzuki had lost his mind, and was licking at the girl's head, the others guessing that he was doing so on an animalistic impulse as he tried to heal wounds, though they could not reach him for his shikigami(summon creatures that serve as protectors), Byakko and Suzaku were going berserk and destroying the Ministry. Muraki teleports himself in, scooping Tsuzuki up and whisking him away then without a problem, the shinigami going on high alert then and scrambling to find out where he'd gone and how to get Tsuzuki back, who had been established by this point to be the most powerful(though the laziest) shinigami, having fought and won against 12 shikigami who had then pledged their loyalty to him. This, along with his amethyst-colored eyes had set him apart from most everyone else, and they could not afford to have him killed or worse by Muraki.
They return to Oriya's restaurant to speak to him, who makes them sword fight him in order to get the key-card they would need to reach Muraki, since he'd put up a powerful magical barrier that would keep them out otherwise.
Their help wasn't necessarily needed to get Tsuzuki away from Muraki though, as he manages to stab the doctor with his own scalpel and get himself loose and lucid long enough to summon one of his strongest shikigami, which would have the power to wipe them both from the face of the earth, and would have done so, as his flames are meant to consume both the enemy and the user.
Muraki seems to definitively 'die' then, bleeding out even before the flames got to him. Tsuzuki is saved by a reckless charge from his partner, the two making it out alive and well despite the decree that the shinigami would be burned along with his enemy, but Muraki hadn't been killed then either, the shinigami having felt an evil energy sweep him away.
This is where I will be taking him from~
The world that Yami no Matsuei takes place in is Earth, in the 1990's, the difference being a multitude of supernatural occurrences that are of an occult nature. Vampires, zombies, ghosts, god's of death, imaginary worlds, that sort of thing, all of which fly under the radar. Most of the characters that are not directly involved with this sort of 'spirit world' or the supernatural do not believe in or do not really know about or encounter such. The main characters are deeply involved in this spirit world, however, both of them being shinigami or guardians of death. In order to become guardians of death in this world, you must first die and still have strong attachments in the human world, such as wishing to protect someone still living, wanting to know who your murderer was, etc.
It's treated much like a job in a police force of sorts. Each shinigami must have a partner to prevent them from revealing themselves, or for protection, or even so that they don't run of and try to rejoin the living. The main characters are two such partners, the older one having been a shinigami for a good 70 years, being named Asato Tsuzuki. He is Muraki's main target in all of this, but he'd met his much younger partner, a recently deceased 16 year old named Hisoka Kurosaki, before he had died. In fact, Muraki's actions are the reason why Hisoka became a shinigami in the first place, since he had raped and killed him slowly with a curse, though his memory had been wiped of the event, the only thing the boy being left with is a painful and slow curse that seemed like an illness, and a feeling that he was murdered rather than having been killed by an illness. (The curse had a twofold effect of killing him and allowing Muraki to keep track of him and speak with him telepathically, linking them)
The technology of this world is consistent with that of the 1990's. Computers were just on the rise, cell phones were coming out and slowly becoming mainstream, though most people didn't yet have one. Airplanes didn't seem to be all that big in Japan, though helicopters make an appearance here or there. The entire story takes place in or around Japan, never really touching down in any other countries, though Muraki is known to travel to the United States on business now and then.
Muraki first appears in the main characters' very first mission with each other, after Tsuzuki loses his previous partner because he breached protocol. They are sent to investigate a case of souls being lost and corpses being found drained of blood, the murders being unexplainable by the local human police force. The doctor himself is first met by Tsuzuki after a young girl falls unconscious out of nowhere, people screaming for help for the child.The shinigami races to her side, wanting to help, but has no knowledge to do so, Muraki coming out of hiding and professing that he was a doctor, and while he was on vacation, he would help the girl.
That meeting goes off without Tsuzuki really noticing anything, but it isn't long until they are investigating the mother of the woman who was believed to be brought back to life to become the vampire they were searching for, and she gives away that there is a doctor who was pulling the strings. His position given away, he ends up using his minor control over the boy to call him away from his partner, the curse surprisingly still in effect even after Hisoka's death. The boy, unknowing who was calling him or what it meant, ran off and was easily captured and put under another, more temporary spell that caused him to fall limp in Muraki's arms. After hiding him away, he used the location of his captive as bait to get near to the shinigami, spending a day just grating on his nerves because he'd told himself that he just wanted to get near to Tsuzuki. He fed off of his negative energy that day however, and became insatiable, finding his energy to be sweeter than he had foreseen.
The day is saved when Tsuzuki finally finds the place Muraki is keeping Hisoka and they have a big fight in a warehouse in which Muraki disappears, seemingly swallowed up by the flames of a phoenix summoned by Tsuzuki with Hisoka's help.
Time goes by and they believe Muraki has been killed. Hisoka's memory of the night Muraki set the curse upon him had been returned, causing him to wonder more than he probably would have otherwise, and making him wonder why he didn't feel any better knowing his murderer, and believing he was dead.
However, it wasn't long until the doctor would show up again, this time on a cruise ship they were sent to investigate because of the mysterious disappearances. Of course, the two partners are only vaguely surprised and immediately suspect him when people start showing up dead. He neither confirms nor denies this, though their suspicions are firm in this. They're at a point in their relationship with the doctor where he can come and go between them, and they'll generally just wrinkle their noses at him so long as others are around him, though their hesitation to attack him is out of concern for the people around them and keeping their cover. He even manages to get Tsuzuki to agree(reluctantly) to a game of poker, where he wins Tsuzuki's body for a night, but Hisoka comes in and beats him to win Tsuzuki back.
Then Muraki appears to show up dead, which throws a monkey wrench in their investigation, which had mostly been to prove Muraki guilty rather than simply find the killer. The one strange part about his murder is that his heart was not cut out which was the MO of the killer. It turns out that he had poisoned himself to put himself into a death-like coma that he had to use up a lot of energy to pull himself out of. It left him weak and needing to drain someone to regenerate, which he does when the partners split up to investigate two different areas. Tsuzuki gets attacked by the doctor in the cargo hold and he drains a bit of his energy before the shinigami attacks back with a piece of broken glass, managing to dislodge the doctor's glass eye(that as of yet hasn't been explained). He manages to get it put back in after a little while and then all of the people looking into and affected by the disappearances and the murders convene and he explains that he had been taking small doses of poisons for ten years that gave him a certain amount of immunity to the draft(why no one questions WHY he has been ingesting poison is beyond me).
Muraki manages to drop cryptic clues to the shinigami, more for the fun of the game than anything, since he believes he's already won. It turns out that he had been using a drug that makes people easily influenced(like hypnotism) on the young girl Hisoka had taken a shining to. She was the daughter of the ship's owner, and had been the recipient of a heart that was taken from a friend she had known well and had been very close to. He'd used her knowledge of this and the knowledge of the fact that the ship was a moving organ farm(along with the fact that he knew she had fallen in love with him) to brainwash her into thinking that she was possessed by her friend's angry ghost, who was the real culprit of the murders.
She is talking to Hisoka and Tsuzuki about the situation when Muraki shows up again and the young girl professes her love to him, to which he responds by shooting her in the chest. Hisoka is enraged again by Muraki's cruelty, and Tsuzuki as well, who then tries to punch Muraki, but the motion is thwarted by "bulletproof glass"(which, no matter HOW MANY times I read that particular part in the comic, I don't understand where it comes from). He escapes then on a private helicopter, then detonating a bomb on the ship to sink all evidence of his crimes, since he was the one that had been in charge of the organ farm and had used threats and blackmail to keep it going after the ship's owner had grown a conscience.
For whatever reason, they don't actively search Muraki out then, the villain disappearing throughout a series of odd missions and sidetracks, wherein Tsuzuki gets swept up in a book, and they go to an all-male school to take in a soul that had outlived it's body, and a demon possesses Tsuzuki momentarily.
A girl gets eaten by demons then, causing the pair to be drawn to a school to watch over her friend who had seen a shinigami(The belief being that if they are invisible then only humans near to death can see them). She resists, but is eventually in their care, Muraki making a quick appearance as a school nurse, joking with Tsuzuki when he goes to the nurse's to ask for a band-aid that he "didn't kill her or anything". Tsuzuki obviously is more than a little displeased to see him, but he ends up convincing him to come to see a play with him by telling him that he is the threat to the girl's life that is in their protection. He agrees begrudgingly, to yet another awkward date. They go to Muraki's best friend, Oriya's, restaurant/brothel where Muraki ends up pinning Tsuzuki to the mats and telling him how badly he wanted to touch him and tear him apart, and that he could probably do so right there and then before Oriya returns and throws a fit about him bringing a 'kagema'(male prostitute) to his brothel, which is 'sacred' in some way. Muraki and Tsuzuki share a bit of a talk during the play where Muraki insults his intelligence ever so subtley and also hints at more to come.
The night ends without incident really, but the next thing that happens is Muraki using his magic to possess the young girl the shinigami were protecting and turn her into a demon that attacks Tsuzuki and has to subsequently be killed, damaging the shinigami's psyche yet again.
This ends in everyone back at the Ministry of Hades(the name of the shinigami headquarters), where Tsuzuki had lost his mind, and was licking at the girl's head, the others guessing that he was doing so on an animalistic impulse as he tried to heal wounds, though they could not reach him for his shikigami(summon creatures that serve as protectors), Byakko and Suzaku were going berserk and destroying the Ministry. Muraki teleports himself in, scooping Tsuzuki up and whisking him away then without a problem, the shinigami going on high alert then and scrambling to find out where he'd gone and how to get Tsuzuki back, who had been established by this point to be the most powerful(though the laziest) shinigami, having fought and won against 12 shikigami who had then pledged their loyalty to him. This, along with his amethyst-colored eyes had set him apart from most everyone else, and they could not afford to have him killed or worse by Muraki.
They return to Oriya's restaurant to speak to him, who makes them sword fight him in order to get the key-card they would need to reach Muraki, since he'd put up a powerful magical barrier that would keep them out otherwise.
Their help wasn't necessarily needed to get Tsuzuki away from Muraki though, as he manages to stab the doctor with his own scalpel and get himself loose and lucid long enough to summon one of his strongest shikigami, which would have the power to wipe them both from the face of the earth, and would have done so, as his flames are meant to consume both the enemy and the user.
Muraki seems to definitively 'die' then, bleeding out even before the flames got to him. Tsuzuki is saved by a reckless charge from his partner, the two making it out alive and well despite the decree that the shinigami would be burned along with his enemy, but Muraki hadn't been killed then either, the shinigami having felt an evil energy sweep him away.
This is where I will be taking him from~