Um. Sorry about the font error...
~oOo~
Six feet under, a wooden box buried below a simple headstone.
This late at night, nothing moved save for the whispering trees.
Up above the ground, above the manmade jungle of metal and stone, the moon was nearly blotted out.
Sirens rang in the distance, a trail of smoke crept up into the sky. A troupe of CCG investigators ran past the gates of the cemetery, quinque at the ready.
Six feet under, none of this was heard.
Black Dog and Devil Ape have engaged Squads 2B and 3E!
Any sign of Owl?
No, sir!
Six feet under, blue eyes opened blindly.
Six feet under, Rin didn't know what the hell was going on.
His hands found a wooden barrier a few inches above his head, and one to his left, and one to his right.
Had the building fallen on him?
Fear gripped, eyes flying wide as he panicked and his chest was burning from lack of air. Warm, to hot, to unbearable.
Panic choked, he screamed soundlessly, and everything around him exploded. Blue fire burned in small patches as the haze of dust and smoke cleared, and Rin found himself lying in a hole in the ground, surrounded by broken pieces of wood.
Wood that looked like it was from a coffin.
He pushed himself into a seated position, pins and needles breaking out in his arms.
Why had he been in a coffin?
Weren't coffins for dead people?
And how the hell was he standing there in the first place? If anything, he'd have been crushed below the falling building, recovered, and cremated, if anything. Rin distinctly remembered being shot, and shouting for Touka and Kaneki to run while he used to last minutes of his life to protect them. He was happy that his death had been for something good.
He remembered the small hard piece of quinque buried in his chest, blood bubbling up his throat. It had hurt when he tried to cough it out. The stab of fear as he was shot again and realised that holy crap I'm actually going to die, wanting to see his brother and cram school friends again before his heart finally failed.
The quinque knife drew across his throat and cut everything off.
He'd hoped that his final burst of flames had given the fucker some nasty blisters.
He remembered the preparations to cross the river. He remembered holding his six coins in the open palms of his cold hands, the unnatural stillness of his chest.
Oh.
Oh.
"I think I need to sit down..." Rin said faintly. His voice cracked.
He did just that, and plunked down heavily in the splintered coffin. In his splintered coffin.
His breath came faster and faster, burning his lungs. Panicked tears pricked as his blue eyes, but he clapped his hands over them before any of the salty liquid could spill.
"All right, calm down," The half-demon muttered to himself. "Calm down. You will never hear the end of it if you don't calm down."
Talking to himself, great. He was going nuts. Well, nutser. Nutser wasn't a word.
It was now.
Was that smoke?
Crap, he forgot to put out his flames!
Leaping to his feet and clawing his way out of the hole in seconds, Rin discovered that the smoky smell was not emitting from his blue flames.
Turning in a slow circle, his eyes focused on a pillar of smoke in the night sky, silhouetted by artificial lights.
Someone left the stove on. He hoped the firefighters got there soon.
Now, which ward was he in?
Turning a slow circle, he looked for familiar landmarks that he hadn't just blown up.
That building with the funny-shaped roof. He was still in the 20th Ward.
Wait a minute.
When he was looking out of the window at Anteiku, he could see that building to the east.
Jumping onto a tree for a higher vantage point, Rin looked at the sky and did his level best to sort cardinal directions out by the stars.
He finally distinguished north, looked between the building-with-the-funny-shaped-roof, looked at the pillar of smoke, and did a double take.
That…that looked like it was coming from the same block as Anteiku.
In the back of his mind, he supposed that the fire could be in a building in the same block as the cafe. But with the combined bad luck of a half-demon and several ghouls, the building would definitely be on fire.
"Time to see how fast I can run," Rin said out loud, sizing up the distance between his tree and the next and hoping to god that this kimono was tied firmly. At least he hadn't been stuck with a furisode.
The polluted air rushed through his hair as he misjudged the first jump and landed far too short, overshot the next (but he managed to do a really cool Spider-man style landing), and finally settled into something approaching a rhythm after the first dozen stumbles.
His eyes tracked places to land, body following a second later before pushing back into the air and alighting in another place. There were one or two instances when what he landed on decided that it didn't like him and tried to dump him on the ground. Thank god that no one was around to see that, he would never have lived it down.
Could he live things down? He'd technically been dead for gods-knew-how-long, but-
Sweet baby Jesus, that thinking was going to give him a headache to end all headaches.
Rin stopped a street or so away from the burning cafe, balancing on the railing of a random balcony. It was a tall building, offering a sweeping view. The wind blew a few far-reaching embers onto his kimono, and he absently swatted them out.
Where was the fire department? Didn't people know that fired tended to burn things if left unattended? Unless this was one hell of a cooperative fire, Rin wouldn't be surprised if half the block got set alight. The front window of the next shop was starting to crack.
Running feet. What was that?
Taking hold of the pole at the corner of the balcony, Rin leaned out to get a better view.
He then leaned backwards as fast as he could as a quinque crystal nearly stabbed him in the eye.
Doves? What were...
"We have visual on an unknown ghoul!" A faceless and unnamed CCG member shouted into his radio "Male, no mask, wearing a white kimono!"
Rin kicked a flowerpot in the general direction of the squad, and he was over the street like greased lightning, bounding between rooftops, now having to dodge the quinque crystals firing after him. Panic was settling onto his features.
A constant mantra of negatives and curses was muttered as he got closer and closer to the burning café, praying and hoping that he wouldn't be greeted by the smell of burned bodies.
It was snowing. When had it started snowing?
There was someone standing at the front of the cafe, a scarf blowing in the hot breeze.
Distracted by this, Rin skidded upon hitting the ground, keeping upright by sheer force of will.
The person whipped around, exposing a familiar face.
"Touka!" Rin cried out, holding out his arms to keep balanced. "What's happening?"
"Okumura?" The ghoul asked, eyes widening "What the... you're dead! We buried you!"
"Not cool, by the way. I wanted to be cremated."
"W-we tried! You wouldn't burn!"
"That's weird. What the hell is happening? Where's everyone else?"
"How do I know that this isn't a trick to flush them out?" She took a very Touka-like stance that meant that someone would get injured if she didn't like what was said next. "Tell me something only Rin would know."
"You're mortally terrified of birds."
"Not good enough. Any of my friends could have told you that."
What's something only I would know, what's something only I would know...
"We got arrested for public intoxication and fighting."
"You could have looked at the police records."
Oh, for the love of all things holy, unholy, and everything in between.
"Once, Hide threw a movie night. I set myself on fire, Kaneki fell off the couch, Hinami ended up hanging off the lamp, and you hit me over the head with a fire extinguisher. And Hide spiked the water with some alcohol that Itori made. Now will you tell me where everyone else is."
In response, Touka grabbed Rin and hauled him into an alleyway.
"Wha-"
Her hand clamped over his mouth.
Rin rationally thought that he was going to die.
A CCG squad ran past, shouting to each other about the Black Dog and the Devil Ape.
"We'll talk later, when you will do a lot of explaining," She hissed. "Right now, we need to find Kaneki. This is the closest I've come to tracking the little bastard down in a year. He's got white hair, but he still wears the same eyepatch mask. Got it?"
"Got it."
"I am never repeating this, but you need to go closer to the investigators. I don't have my mask and I haven't eaten since last month."
"I don't have a mask either," Rin pointed out, gesturing at his bare face "Or my sw-where's Kurikara?"
"Back at the apartment with Hinami and Yomo. Use my scarf. I don't care if it gets ripped, just get the idiot back."
"Yes, ma'am." Rin said, tying the scarf firmly around his face.
Please, let it not come undone at the worst possible moment.
"Uh, which direction is the CCG in?" He asked, voice muffled by the red fabric.
Touka pointed, before running into the alleyway without a backwards glance.
She took that pretty well, Rin thought as he debated if the awning halfway up the building would hold his weight for the half-second that it would take to get from there to the roof. He crouched, leaped, and was once again running along rooftops.
It was fun, the feeling of wind in his hair and the yawning emptiness under him, but right now the fun was eclipsed by worry.
He put his back to the cafe, and did his best not to look back. All those memories, gone. How much had they managed to get out?
Touka said it had been a year, what did Hinami look like now?
Did Hide end up dying his hair again, like he'd been considering?
Was the spare room ever painted?
Did Nishiki end up proposing to Nishino?
What about the exorcists? His brother?
His eyes were sweeping the ground, his head going around with his eyes and making him very, very dizzy.
Stopping for a minute to clear the spinning, he noted that the largest squad seemed to be directly west. He could see several parked vehicles to the south-east, and could make out the CCG logo on the side if he squinted.
He tailed a squad that he could hear talking about "The Eyepatch Ghoul" for a few minutes until one spotted him and shot him in the arm. That hurt. He should have been paying attention.
Silly mistake.
In this case, a silly mistake could get him killed.
Biting his lip, a habit from when his teeth were blunt, he paused on top of a television aerial (that creaked alarmingly) and looked around again.
Flashes of light were emanating in the near distance, so he moved to a steadier footing before heading in that general direction. Gunshots were ringing out as he stopped atop a construction site and slid down through the metal maze.
He could see a squad of CCG officers fighting a group of what he guessed were ghouls.
As he climbed lower, he realised that the ghouls were part of Aogiri tree.
Oh, things just got personal.
Everything was moving too fast for him to jump and reliably land on one of the enemy, plus he didn't fancy getting shot again.
A petite blonde CCG officer cracked a whip-like quinque, wrapping it around the bikaku of one ghoul to pull it off balance, ripping off its head, and then giving the same treatment to another.
As Rin watched, she paused for breath, shoulders rising and falling as if she'd just run a marathon. With the number of ghouls that Rin was now smelling, he reckoned that it was a fair equivalent.
A young man that he vaguely recognised passed her, firing off a quinque that didn't appear to have a trigger. Rin wondered how that worked.
"How many more of these bastards are left?" Quinque Guy ground out, turning to fire the said quinque in another direction.
"It doesn't matter," the blond called back "We cannot let them pass!"
"Yeah, no shit!"
He's certainly not here, Rin thought to himself, I'll get up higher and jump again.
"Yes, sir."
It was the little blonde talking again. She reminded Rin of Shiemi in the looks department.
"But they'll break through if we leave!"
Rin's foot slipped in a puddle of melting slush, and he swore, perhaps a little too loudly. He was grateful for the fall a few seconds later, as a bullet pinged off the space where his head had just been.
Moving in a manner reminiscent of an eel, the half-demon managed to squash though the metal maze and emerge at a higher 'window'.
A few seconds passed, while he leaned against the nearest solid object and took several deep breaths. He wasn't that sure how much jumping his legs could take, already they felt weak and shaky.
A yell sounded nearby, followed by a loud burst of gunfire and a shout of "Mado! Get your head out of the clouds!"
Rin didn't want to get shot again, so he picked a random direction and bolted, this time trying to get lower to avoid having to jump again.
Argh, running was worse.
He hadn't been buried with shoes, so his feet were getting torn at by the rough asphalt. Not to mention that there were dead fricken bodies lying around, and he did not want to stand on one.
Three streets, four turns, and seven close calls later, he ran into a bank of what looked like mist, but tickled his nose a lot more than mist would, and forced him to back out of it lest he start sneezing his brains out.
Inside the mist, his sharp eyes could pick out flashes of red that looked similar to the colour of Kaneki's kagune. Then again, there were lots of ghouls with red kagune.
Squinting and holding his breath to avoid the bank of what he realised was dust, he watched as three red tentacles (definitely Kaneki's) struck out at what looked like falling debris. With a jolt, Rin spotted three humans, two of which were supporting another, cowering where the debris would have fallen.
Kaneki saved them. What else would Rin expect of the guy?
It looked like the men were having trouble walking, and it seemed that all half-breeds had a soft spot for injured humans, so Rin took another breath before rapidly picking his way over to the three men.
They startled when he first appeared behind them. Most people do that. After the initial panic, they calmed down a little when they saw that Rin's eyes were normal, human, with no sign of the red and black of a kakugan.
Ten minutes of blundering around in the dust cloud followed, ending with Rin sneezing more than he ever had in his life, and all three CCG men hanging off him. He only got rid of them after walking smack bang into the middle of another squad and dumping them.
Another ten minutes were wasted looking for Kaneki, narrowing his eyes against the dust and finally getting his sneezing under control. He discovered that the dust seemed to muffle everything, but he knew he was leaving a clear track of footprints. There wasn't a lot that he could do about that.
Worryingly, he couldn't hear anything. The earlier crashes and shouts were gone, faded into white silence that pressed at his ears and did nothing good for his nerves.
The asphalt was tearing at his feet now, causing him to limp, probably adding little bits of blood to the footsteps. He hoped that wasn't the case, he was told that his blood had a very spicy scent that would certainly draw curious ghouls, and he wasn't sure if he could access his flames or not, so a fight was one of the last things that he wanted.
The air was so clogged that he could hardly see past his knees now, forcing him to slow for threat of tripping over a curb and ending up flat on his face.
It sure as hell wasn't a curb that he tripped over.
Against his better judgement, Rin turned and looked down at the object that had tripped him and nearly shot out of his skin at the sight of the grinning teeth less than three centimetres away from his ankle.
He did not scream, jump backwards, and fall over while flailing his arms even slightly.
"Kaneki..." Rin breathed, scrambling forward and putting his hand on the half-ghoul's chest.
Steady and sure, his heartbeat pulsed through the thin black material that he was wearing. A whole weight of stress lifted off his shoulders. He wasn't sure what he would've done if he'd had to show Touka the dead body of the man she liked.
"Sweeeeeeet sonofa bitch." Rin gasped as he tried to lift the half-ghoul off the dusty asphalt, barely stopping himself from asking what Kaneki had been eating. He didn't want to know.
Now, how was he supposed to find Touka? He didn't know the masks of any of the other Anteiku members, and his sense of smell wasn't as strong as some ghouls, especially now.
He couldn't risk waiting here, and he couldn't risk running around the streets of the 20th Ward carrying an unconscious ghoul. He wasn't even sure if he could jump again.
Sighing through the scarf, he put one of Kaneki's arms around his shoulders and hauled him upright, already hating himself for what he planned to do next and hoping that he didn't have to walk too far with the deadweight ghoul hanging off him.
They were nowhere near silent now.
"Please, please, please," Rin mumbled, scanning the ground as best as he could.
"Arima has arrived!" He heard a nearby squad leader shouting, "Keep pushing! It'll be over soon!"
The squad didn't notice two of their fallen being dragged quietly into a nearby alley.
Rin gently laid the dead squad members down and stepped back, bowing his head for a moment. This part was going to be unpleasant.
"Sorry," he murmured to the bodies as he stripped their clothes, and propped Kaneki up to better shove the armour over his head. He didn't know how this stuff worked, so he gave it his best shot and ended up with it looking just about right.
He had to take off Kaneki's mask to jam the helmet onto his head, and shove it down his kimono. Why did the CCG have no pockets? He pulled the chest armour over his own head and hauled Kaneki upright again.
The way he figured it, the CCG knew Kaneki's mask, but not his face. If he didn't show his kakugan, they'd be fine.
No one would look twice at two limping CCG investigators in this melee.
Except for ghouls.
Aaaaagh, why couldn't his problems line up and present themselves in an orderly fashion, one by one so he didn't have to deal with all of them at once.
The current problem was that he had no clue how to find Touka. That was major right now.
Maybe she had stayed around Anteiku? Probably not, who would want to see their home burn?
Should he try mingling with a squad and trying to listen out for word of White Rabbit?
No, she didn't have her mask. She would have holed up somewhere to wait out the fight.
"Hey, you two! Do you need medical assistance?"
It was a female investigator, with short black hair and a cut on her cheek. She was holding her left shoulder, and blood was staining her fingers. A small group of similarly inured investigators were milling around behind her, some supporting others and some skirting around the edges with quinques held in shaking hands.
Rin felt sorry for them, he really did. They were only doing their jobs, and had probably just seen their friends dying.
"No!" Rin called back, "He is only knocked out."
"Why are you wearing a kimono?"
Kaneki stirred, and Rin locked the ghouls head down to stop him from moving.
"When your pants get ripped off by a ghoul, you can't exactly be picky." The half-demon said, hefting Kaneki's weight again.
His shoulder was not going to forgive him for this.
"Alright, then," The woman said, regarding him with a sort of tired wariness "I'll take you to the nearest safe point. Inoue, check him for head trauma."
"Yes, Tatsuki!" Another woman, this one with reddish-brown hair and a large bust ducked through the small group and lifted Kaneki's eyelids to shine a flashlight in his eyes.
They tramped through seven streets. A less injured investigator (Kirosaki? Kurosaki!) had taken Kaneki's other arm, and was helping support the weight.
Rin wondered what would happen if the man realised that he was holding up a ghoul.
On his other side walked a shaking man, looking like he was barely out of the academy. His hands were bloodied and there was a slash down the side of his armour. He was singing, in a wavering, near-silent voice.
"Sa-sakura, sak-kura, y-y-yayoi n-no soraw-wa. M-mi wa t-tas-su kagi-i-ri."
In the gory and dark surroundings, the broken children's rhyme sounded like something right out of a horror movie.
It became a horror movie three seconds later when Kaneki's eyes flew open and he immediately tried to take a bite out of Kurosaki.
The investigator screamed and leaped backwards as though he had been zapped.
Probably half-blind, Kaneki snarled and tried to go after the investigator again, only to have Rin jump on him and tackle him to the ground.
"Run!" He shouted at the rest of the squad, "I'm sorry, I didn't realise that it was a trap! Run!"
They ran, only the black-haired woman pausing to look back at him.
"Jesus fucking christ, Kaneki!" Rin growled as he struggled to keep the half-ghoul down on the ground "Stop struggling, and I'll let you up!"
At the sound of his voice, Kaneki froze.
"Rin?" He breathed, sounding more terrified than anything "I-is this it? Are you t-taking me to hell?"
Rin snorted. Loudly.
"I'm taking you to Touka. Same thing, if you think about it."
"T-Touka doesn't want to see me."
"There's a line between not wanting to see someone and being mad at them. She's mad at you, but she definitely wants to see you again."
"Sh-she does?"
How the hell could Rin keep pinning him down when he could basically hear the tears welling in his eyes.
"I'm going to get off you now. Don't attack me, 'kay?"
"I w-won't."
For all the badassy look that the white hair and black fighting suit gave him, Kaneki was still the trembling boy who screamed at a cockatiel less than a tenth of his size.
"Come on, you," Rin said as he stood up and offered his hand "Never keep Touka waiting."
After a second of hesitation, Kaneki took the outstretched hand and stood up, still looking at Rin as if he expected him to suddenly scream "PYSCH!" and drag him to hell.
Any other time, he would have done it.
Right now, no. His shout would bring more attention that the previous scuffle had.
"Can you smell Touka at all?"
"No, there's too much blood around."
Well.
That complicated things even more than they were currently complicated, if that was even possible.
"Do you know where she might have gone?" Rin tried, looking around in stupid hope that she would be jumping out of nowhere preparing to kick him in the head for taking so long.
"No."
"No clue? Not even the faintest?"
"No. I really don't know."
"I will take anything other than wandering around in this mess."
"Anteiku?"
"On fire."
"Oh."
A footstep crunched nearby, and both half-humans whipped around.
That black haired investigator, Tatsuki, had come back. This time, she was holding a Q-gun.
Pointed straight at Kaneki's head.
"You...You're with them?" She snarled at Rin. "Traitor! He thinks of you only as food!"
Rin stood slowly, moving to put his body between Kaneki and the angry investigator.
"Kaneki," He whispered, trying not to move his mouth. "Kaneki, run. I'll catch up."
Never underestimate the speed of a terrified ghoul. The one-eye was gone within seconds, leaving Rin to face the dove.
"What are you doing?" The safety clicked off. "His kind kill ours! His kind killed my mother, and my best friend! And her brother!"
"Have you heard of race stereotypes?" Rin shot back, not really sure if the words he was speaking were Japanese, of if race stereotypes were even a thing. Oh well, no turning back now. Time to draw on skills in bullshitting that he'd used to scrape C's on essays.
"It's where racism started. One ghoul doesn't decide if all ghouls are evil, he just wanted to leave a peaceful life before his hand was forced!"
"You expect me to believe that?"
"He's fighting for his life, and you're fighting for yours! We all take sides!"
"You chose the wrong one!"
The gun fired.
Unlike last time, Rin moved.
Had he mentioned that demons were fast?
In a matter of seconds, he balanced on a lamppost, scowling down at the woman as she whipped her head around.
"Who's to say that there are wrong and right sides?" He asked, causing to investigator to whip around. "We pick our sides and try to win. If you win, you live, if you lose, you die. If you don't fight, you can't win."
Her gun lowered a little.
"Did you just quote Attack on Titan?"
"Um..."
The next shot was also expected. Yukio - his brother, his twin, his other half - had taught him about being lured into a false sense of security.
He flipped through the air, landing in an awkward crouch.
At that moment, he would have killed to be wearing his old school uniform. At least he could move his legs without worrying about flashing anything.
While the investigator was still trying to locate him again, he slipped away.
Within seconds, Kaneki dropped down from the heavens and nearly knocked Rin flat.
He did not make a trodden mouse noise even slightly.
"I picked up Toukas' scent," He said breathlessly. "Come on!"
Hope renewed, they were faster and quieter.
Somehow, they encountered no one.
That made Rin nervous. Either the ghouls had wiped out all the humans, the humans had wiped out all the ghouls, or it was a trap. Most likely a trap, he doubted that either side had the manpower to completely wipe out the other.
Sheer effort kept his head from whipping around when he heard a footstep, and a breath.
"Kaneki," He hissed. "Someone's he-"
Rin was not expecting the massive ball of electricity that slammed into him even slightly.
His breath left him in a startled half-yell, and he was tossed into the air. Everything blurred, he couldn't tell which way was up or down. Down decided to show the half-demon where it was, and smacked him with the road.
Through the buzzing of his ears and the jumble of thoughts centring around the lines of 'what the hell just happened', Rin heard Kaneki scream out.
Hey, arms? I know that you're comfortable lying there, but could you please work right now?
His arms didn't reply. If they had, that would have been a sign of madness.
Lungs not seeming to want to expand properly, Rin pushed himself up with his right arm.
Crack.
Bile rose in Rin's throat as he looked down as his arm.
Oh. It looked like his radius was broken. See, there was the bone sticking out of the skin.
It took a few seconds for the pain to catch up with the half-demon, and when it did, it was like fire burning through his veins and stealing his breath away.
He choked as his body tried to rid itself of his stomach contents, only to find that there was nothing in there.
His body was shaking, weak, and he hated it. He had to stand, to walk to Kaneki, and fight beside him.
"Come on," He whispered, as though words could coax out his infamous blue fire. "Come on, damnit!"
A spark. That was all he had.
Kaneki screamed, in a mix of pain and anger.
This new guy, whoever he was, was basically wiping the floor with the half-ghoul, and all Rin could do was watch.
One, two, three.
He shoved himself to his feet with an awful shriek of pain, the broken arm hanging limp by his side. His fangs were bared as if he could scare the pain away.
"Kaneki!" He screamed.
Flames flared weakly around him. All show, no burn.
Rin was too damn slow. His movements were sluggish, and the most he was able to do would be flop and hope that the investigator was confused for a half-second that it would take Kaneki to escape.
He fell again, twisting to throw up as his broken radius tore more skin open and cracked nastily against the dirty concrete.
The quinque swept forward, tearing Kaneki's throat out.
It was fast. The world didn't care about who had died.
The half-ghoul dropped like a stone.
The kakugan faded out of his right eye, leaving glassy grey in its wake.
No.
The investigator was turning now, walking towards Rin instead.
No.
A cold blade rested at his throat.
This isn't fair.
Rin bared his teeth angrily, glaring up at this man and his cold eyes and wishing all the pain of hell on him.
None of this is fair.
The blade drew across his throat.
A second world overlaid the first, a reaper standing to welcome him a second time and a faded Kaneki behind it, smiling at him.
Everything hung still for one last moment, frozen in crystal-clear clarity.
It broke.
~oOo~