The Eminence in Shadow – 23 – Rather Over the Top

Claire and Mary reach the top of the tower, but Cid isn’t there. Then, in an instant, Claire is impaled through the shoulder by one of the slowly awakening Vampire Queen Elizabeth’s tendrils. She’s then carried to Elizabeth’s waiting fangs, which sink into her neck. Moments later, the vampiress is beheaded =by Beta, who has arrived with 664, 665, and 666 to rescue Shadow’s sister.

Elizabeth’s head doesn’t stay detached, however, and as the queen continues to gain consciousness, she only becomes stronger. Beta knows they have a hell of a fight on their hands, but all they need to do is hold out until Shadow arrives. Juggernaut has a go at Liz, but gets dusted, and has to spend the remaining battle up in the cheap seats with Yukime.

They’re wise to keep their distance: Elizabeth is a whole other level of power. Beta even notes that her magical energy exceeds Lady Alpha’s, and not only is she and the other Garden lasses wounded and their blood used to heal Liz, but she is also able to control their possessed blood, or corrupt Shadow’s Blessing. She even awakens the possessed blood within Claire, who then suddenly awakens in a standard school nurse’s office.

Awaiting her there is none other than Nurse Aurora, who has brought Claire into this other plane of being not to explain everything, but just enough to get Claire on the right path. Long story short, Claire’s human and possessed blood is adapting and evolving, which means she’s becoming far more powerful, but also has a long hard road ahead. Back up on the tower, Aurora borrows Claire’s body so she can fight Liz, who is technically her kohai.

Aurora seems ready to cast her version of Shadow’s I Am Atomic before Liz’s flurry of blood blades forestall it. No matter; Aurora has done enough stalling to give time for “the star of the show”, Shadow himself. Beta’s look of elation when he touches down is priceless.

Surrounded by a cloud of shattered gold coins, Shadow dazzles all the more for a delighted Beta, who cheers him on as he confronts Liz and goes toe-to-toe for her in an absolutely bonkers, light-speed battle up in the sky with the blood moon as backdrop. As Yukime puts it, it’s all a bit over the top, but that’s why it’s so bloody brilliant and fun.

After fighting to a stalemate, the combatants pause, and Liz says her first words (in Hayami Saori’s voice), asking Shadow his name. He responds by saying “I … AM … RECOVERY ATOMIC.” Well, that’s a new one. Rather than destroying Elizabeth, this attack turns the entire Lawless City to monochrome, resets everything to before all hell broke loose with the ghouls and vampires.

Cid later explains, while waiting for Claire and Mary to have a cozy goodbye, that his ability simply quelled those various forms of magic overload, resulting in an “all’s well that ends well” state. He didn’t recover all the cash he had wanted, but knows he can always return to the Lawless City if he finds himself short on funds.

A guarded Claire also tells Cid about what is stirring in her arm, and he responds with a vow of unconditional support. No matter what path she chooses, he’ll be by her side. It’s exactly what Claire needs to hear, and it puts her enough at ease to fall asleep beside Cid on the train ride home.

That said, Shadow eventually ends up on another train at night to meet with Yukime, whose face we finally see in full. I love her regal, ethereal aloofness, so their future interactions should be fun. Until then, Eminence delivered yet another stylish barnburner of a battle.

The Eminence in Shadow – 22 – The Maddening Thirst

The warrior Crimson captured and made into a guard for the gate of his tower witnesses the awesome power of Juggernaut and Yukime, but neither of them is a match for a third combatant: Shadow. Juggernaut sidesteps him and heads into Crimson’s tower, while Yukime notes that Shadow has helped some of her girls in the red light district, so she take her leave peacefully.

Beta is doing some research in the library on the cult and their level of technology when Claire and Mary enter via a hidden passage. Beta acknowledges both of them by name, but states her preference to not fight them. Her true target is the Blood Queen, a Progenitor Vampire. When Claire mentions her brother, Rose, AKA Number 666, speaks out of turn out of concern for Cid, but is chastised by Beta. Good to see ya, Rose!

Claire and Mary continue on, and witness Juggernaut take out Lord Crimson’s most powerful underlings. They try to stay in the shadows, but he detects them and engages them in combat. Claire even ends up punched in the face by an opponent for only the second time in her life, and is not happy about it.

Mary, meanwhile, is slashed quite badly, and in order to heal, she sucks some of Claire’ blood, which she takes with an unannounced kiss. Even with her vitality restored, she and Claire almost end up at Juggernaut’s mercy, but for Shadow, who arrives just in time to land on his blade and kick him off the tower before taking his leave—before Claire can recognize him.

Mary admits to Claire that despite being a legendary vampire hunter, she herself is a vampire, one of Vampire Queen Elizabeth’s closest servants. She regales Claire with the tale of “Haven”, the state of being that was achieved when Elizabeth led a group of vampires away from drinking blood, which allowed them to live peaceful lives in the sunlight.

Unfortunately, among them all only Elizabeth’s thirst for blood endured and strengthened, until the night of the last red moon. She went berserk, and a massacre ensued. She took responsibility by stabbing herself in the heart with a blade, but rather than turn to dust, her breath and heart both stopped, and she was interred.

After that, Lord Crimson took possession of Elizabeth’s body and spared Mary’s life. Claire says she can relate; she too believes she’ll one day become a monster, but until then, she’ll happily help Mary get Elizabeth, and possibly the haven she built, back, while she’ll handle getting her brother back.

Of course, Crimson has other ideas. While Elizabeth’s body has rotted away like that of any corpse, her heart remains intact, and as he places it into a sacrificial body in hopes of resurrecting her, Shadow arrives and ethers him in a ball of flame. By doing so, he may have kept the balance of power in the Lawless City balanced, at least for now. More importantly to him, he was able to fight the Big Boss before any of the main characters!

The Eminence in Shadow – 21 (S2 01) – Black and White and Red All Over

Our boy Shadow, sitting in his throne room, hears reports of stirrings in the Lawless City from the Seven Shadows. It’s your typical serious, brooding, self-important exposition scene…suddenly hilariously undercut by Shadow getting everyone to freak out about whether they have B.O.

Turns out it’s the red moon he smells, and rather than a bad omen, he sees the moon as no big deal, and intends to investigate the Lawless City himself. With that, Eminence is Shadow’s second season heads to a new place with lots of new and familiar faces.

It just so happens that coming off her Bushin Festival win (of course she won), Claire is also headed there to hunt vampires. Because she has a brother complex, she ensures they’re in constant contact by dragging him by the back of his collar through the city.

On the way they encounter Goldy and Quentin, having been defeated and now on sale as pets, but only Cid vaguely recognizes them. He then somehow ends up separated from Claire, has his pocket picked, and proceeds to use his slime to pick the pickpockets’ pockets. He’s already starting to like this den of villainy.

He likes it even more when another night under the red moon comes, and with it a sudden outbreak of ghouls (i.e. vampire thralls). He’s ready to go toe-to-toe but a badass-looking red-haired woman spots him, assumes he’s about to die, and “saves” him.

Introducing herself as Mary, an eminent vampire hunter, she then spews a series of cliches about a frenzy starting, the moon is red, their time is running out, and if he wants to live he’d better run. This whole scenario is like catnip to Cid. Meanwhile, Claire begins searching for him, killing ghouls as she goes.

From there we meet Marie, a bruised sex worker trying to wallow in despair when she hears commotion outside: the ghouls are biting people and turning them into more ghouls. When they invade the brothel, Shadow is right on time to behead them and save Marie. But she doesn’t just get saved in the immediate mortal sense.

Shadow parrots the exact same sequence of clichés he just heard from Mary, and they inspire Marie to get up and leave her life of turning tricks, quite assured despite her friend that Shadow can’t possibly be a bad guy. Perhaps she’ll end up in Shadow Garden like Rose, who unfortunately doesn’t appear…yet.

Claire’s search leads her to finding the remains of someone who vaguely resembles Cid, but on closer—heck, just on regular inspection, the head she’s holding had blue eyes, thus ending her grieving session. This needle scratch of a fact is pointed out to her by Mary, and the two decide to team up as they’re headed to the same place: the Crimson Tower.

A young, glasses-wearing student council-type dark knight and her few comrades who didn’t flee are about to be overrun by ghouls, but Shadow once again does the exact same thing he did with Marie: rescue the knights and say his borrowed spiel, only he adds a little extra.

Sadly, we don’t get to see him do it a third or fourth time, which would no doubt lead to a game of telephone-esque devolution of the phrases into something completely different and possibly cornier. But we do learn that the outbreak of ghouls was no accident.

Lord Crimson, one of the three de facto leaders of the Lawless City, intends to use the red moon and the blood of the city to resurrect the Blood Queen Elizabeth, who has slumbered for 1,000 years. He’s opposed by the other two lords: the stylish Yukime who rules the White Tower, and the musclebound Juggernaut.

As those latter two bicker and fight with one another (no enemy-of-my-enemy-is-my-friend compromise to be found here), Cid decides it’s the perfect time for Shadow of the Shadows to enter the fray. The moon is red, and a frenzy has begun, but fortunately we’ve got plenty of time to enjoy more Eminence, which is back and as solid as ever.