Akiha Tohno

Tohno Akiha (遠野 秋葉) is one of the five heroines of Tsukihime. Sixteen years old at the beginning of the story, Akiha is the head of the prestigious Tohno family and a student of the elite Asagami Private Girls Academy.

Biography
Born into the prestigious Tohno family, Akiha lived a sheltered childhood under the strict supervision of her father Tohno Makihisa and was seldom allowed to go outside the mansion to play. One day while she quietly waited for her tutor to arrive, her adopted brother, Shiki, took her hand, inviting her to play with him and the other children at the mansion. Thanks to Shiki she was able to experience at least some semblance of the joys of childhood. Unfortunately, not soon afterward Shiki was near fatally wounded in an accident and was sent by Makihisa to live with the Arimas, relatives from another branch of the family. Akiha tried to visit Shiki at the Arima house several times early on, but pressure from her father and other relatives, in addition to Shiki's constant visits to the hospital, prevented their meeting. Contact was made all but impossible when Akiha was placed in a boarding school and she was forced to live on the campus. Akiha also states that she sent Shiki many letters, but because he was ordered by Makihisa to never speak to Akiha again, he never replied.

Upon the death of their father eight years later (and the beginning of Tsukihime's story), Akiha became the head of the Tohno household and, ignoring protests from the remaining relatives, called Shiki back to live at the family mansion with her. Though she tries to conceal it, Akiha called her brother back because she truly loves him and wanted to be near him no matter how much it might alienate her from the rest of the family. She is incredibly shy about her feelings, even acting in complete contradiction to them on occasion. But to her, Shiki is the most important person in the world.

Akiha is very protective of her brother. She is always intent on knowing what he does with his day, and is extremely suspicious of what he does at night. She gets incredibly jealous when he is around other girls. The constant supervision by his little sister sometimes bears hard on Shiki, but she only watches over him because she worries so much about him. Despite her general peevishness, she really is a sweet girl at heart.

Like most of the people with Tohno blood, Akiha has an abnormal condition that causes her body to use twice the amount of heat that a normal person uses. To make up for her increased demand, she must absorb heat from others. She can take this heat in through various means, even by simply absorbing their body heat through contact, but the most efficient method is by drinking fresh blood (as seen when she sucks Kohaku's blood in a scene from the game). When excited, her hair turns to a vibrant red color (her hair's true shade). In some of the game's story paths, the true extent of the power she has in this form is revealed. In addition to becoming red, her long hair becomes a menacing weapon. She is able to control its movements and use it to absorb heat directly from anything it comes into contact with. The drawing out of the heat produces a powerful burning sensation on the surface of the object, causing some viewers of her abilities to believe that she was simply setting things on fire. The hair, in this form, is incredibly fast and can strike an object as quickly as Akiha can look at it. Several of the characters who experience combat with Akiha are surprised at how overwhelmingly powerful this method of attack makes her.

In some story paths (especially the Akiha path), the cause behind Akiha's inversion to her not-quite-so-human form is revealed. Her father remarked in his journal that Akiha's Tohno blood was of the weaker sort and she could live as a normal human if she wished it. But that changed when Shiki's life was threatened in the "accident" from eight years earlier. She was outside playing with Shiki, her adopted brother, and her real brother, also named SHIKI. But the Tohno blood was much stronger in her real brother and he inverted to his non-human form. In this uncontrollable state, he lost control of himself and attempted to attack Akiha. Shiki jumped in the way to protect her and took the full force of the attack. Shiki died protecting Akiha, but Akiha used powers granted to her by her non-human blood to give him half of her life, allowing him to survive. After the incident, her true brother SHIKI was locked away so that he could never again hurt someone and Akiha severed all ties with him and has since said that Shiki, her adopted brother, is the only person she will ever call her brother. She needs twice the heat of an average person because she is supporting both her own life and Shiki's. Because of the strain on her body this causes, she often experiences attacks of intense pain that can last from a few minutes to several hours. But Akiha bears them bravely, knowing that it is all for the sake of her beloved brother.

Role
In Arcueid's, Hisui's, and Ciel's storylines, Akiha is merely a supporting character.

Akiha's own story path portrays in detail her struggle to maintain control over her Tohno blood and resisting her Inversion Impulse, which she has difficulty with due to her also maintaining Shiki's life. In the end, she is turned into a mindless, blood sucking creature by SHIKI, and Shiki is given three choices. To kill her to end her suffering (which she requested for him to do if she ever became like this), to allow her to live on as the demon that she currently is (because Shiki cannot bring himself to kill her), or to kill himself (so that she will regain the life energy she gave Shiki when he died eight years ago, and then will be restored to her full strength so she can more easily resist her Tohno blood impulses and restore her mind).

Killing her gives no special ending and is considered a bad end. Allowing her to live as a demon results in Akiha's Normal Ending, where Shiki tries to contain her blood lust by himself, by routinely letting her painfully bite him and suck his blood out of the wound, all the while hoping that someday she will find herself again. If Shiki kills himself, Akiha's True Ending is obtained, in which Akiha regains her sanity, and is able to live a normal life. Despite the fact that Shiki should be dead, Akiha senses deep inside her that there still seems to be a faint heartbeat that is not her own. She recognizes this as a sign that Shiki is still somehow alive somewhere, and that as long as she feels it, she has hope, and declares that she will faithfully await his return. In Kagetsu Tohya, a 'sequel' scenario to Akiha's True Ending can be unlocked where at the end of the scenario, Akiha receives a letter from Ciel that reveals that Shiki did infact survive.

In Kohaku's path, Akiha successfully tracks down and kills SHIKI before Shiki even starts having dreams visions of him, and is happy that she was able to protect Shiki from having to face all the pains from their past. However, due to SHIKI's ability of immortality and the nature of Akiha's powers, SHIKI is able to give Akiha one final curse before he dies. He transfers the burden of his madness caused by the inversion impulse of his Tohno blood over to her when Akiha absorbs his energy to kill him. After this, Akiha begins to slowly succumb to the Tohno blood, despite her originally being quite capable of controlling it. She synchronizes with Kohaku in an attempt to suppress this, but it is not enough, since she now has SHIKI's bloodlust itself. Even though she does not kill them, she begins hunting for victims on the streets at night in SHIKI's place because she can't control herself.

This madness also affects her mentality, and she soon becomes single mindedly obsessed with Shiki, to the point where she threatens to take back the life she gave him if he doesn't declare that he loves her. Shiki admits that he came back to the Tohno Mansion to be with her again, but he also came back to fulfill a promise he made to Kohaku, who is the one he truly is in love with (at least in this route). He only loves her as a sister, and Akiha has deteriorated to the point where she decides if she cannot have him, she will not let anyone else have him. In Kohaku's True Ending, Shiki synchronizes with Kohaku to gain strength, and engages Akiha in a climatic battle. But just as he is about to kill her, he finds himself unable to, since no matter what, she is still his sister. Shiki's display of love for Akiha, combined with Kohaku saying she forgives the Tohno family, is able to move her enough that she regains control over herself. She recovers and is able to live a normal life, albeit still having to deal with the desire to drink blood, which she quenches by drinking blood packs ordinarily used for transfusions.

Abilities
The Caging Hair (檻髪) is the ability of Tohno Akiha; it is a cursed field of plundering that is effective in the range of her field of vision. Being a half-demon, she can "plunder" the heat (lifeforce) from a living creature she can see, but the maximum output relies on time (on how long she keeps plundering heat).

Akiha can start up the plundering once she has confirmed her target, and people who have a spiritual perception will see it as red strands wrapping around the target and charring it down. It does not actually burn the target, as it doesn't affect the target's clothes and stops burning as soon as Akiha stops plundering lifeforce from the target. At its maximum, the red strands cover the target as well as the entire area the target is in, making it impossible to escape - hence the name, caging hair.

The hairs extend and wrap everything in crimson, but normal eyes can neither see nor touch it. Akiha's power reflects in the extension of these hairs, but Akiha herself cannot see them, as she has no special mystic eye.

It is an absolute offensive ability against a normal person who doesn't have any spiritual defense, but it won't be any more of a hindrance than a large spider web to someone with a spiritual status on a whole different league such as Arcueid Brunestud, or a Heroic Spirit. Although, with support, she could use it as shackles to restrain beings of that level.