the time has finally come for Hide's kagune to be revealed! poor guy though, he doesn't deserve any of this sorry Hide

Hide had been correct to assume he wouldn't get a single scratch—he had at least fifty by now, and the number was only growing.

Despite his complete lack of knowledge on fighting, Touka didn't let up at all. She punched him, kicked him, and tossed him on the ground with no mercy, claiming experience was the best teacher. "T-Touka," Hide panted. "I think I need—"

"No breaks!" Touka yelled, throwing a hard punch at his stomach. Hide attempted to dodge it, only to trip over a raised piece of concrete and fall over. Touka mounted herself on top of him, triumph on her face. Hide closed his eyes and waited for the punch, but it didn't come. Instead, she got off him and helped him to his feet. Smirking, she crossed her arms. "See? That wasn't so bad, was it?"

"Speak for yourself," Hide mumbled, rubbing his bruised and throbbing face.

Touka tossed him an after-work out towel. Catching it, Hide wiped the sweat from his forehead. "We'll go upstairs and rest a bit. After that, we'll work on bringing out your kagune," she stated. Hide nodded and followed her up the steel rungs that led outside.

Back inside Anteiku, which had been closed for an hour or so, Touka started up the coffee machines and brewed them some coffee. She threw in a couple sugar cubes in Hide's. Thanking her, Hide took the cup and sipped it graciously, the flavorful taste of the coffee filling his mouth. They sat down at a nearby table. The shop was illuminated only by the lights behind the counter, leaving the rest in shadows. Like in the lab, Hide had the odd sense of being watched. He looked out the windows at the dark street, but there was nothing. Ignoring the feeling, he returned his attention to Touka, who was talking about blending in with the human world.

"Are you even listening?" she snapped.

"Of course, yeah!" Hide replied, plastering a smile on his face. "What were you saying?"

Touka narrowed her eyes in suspicion but continued anyways. "Interacting with humans is dangerous until you've perfected the art of acting like one. You'll have to learn how to eat human food without vomiting, and you'll have to make sure no one discovers your true identity. If someone does…" She pantomimed slicing her neck. "Understand?"

Hide's smile wavered. Looking down at his coffee, he stared at the reflection looking back at him. The light only shone on half his face, the rest shrouded in darkness. "Yeah," he said simply. "Got it."

They remained in silence for quite some time until Touka finished her cup and got up. "Finished?" she asked him. Nodding, he handed her his cup and she went behind the counter and rinsed them out. Hide had only drank a quarter of his drink, but he had lost his wanting for it. "Alright," she said when she was finished, "ready to test out your kagune?"

"Try harder! Come on, it's not that difficult!"

"Says the person who's been doing it all her life!"

"Just think about releasing the Rc cells and it'll happen!"

Hide groaned, clenching his whole body. He was definitely not doing this right. How the hell did Touka bring hers out so easily?

"Stop tensing up like that," she instructed, giving him a shove. Hide, not expecting the push, nearly toppled over. After regaining his balance, he put his hands on his knees, panting slightly.

"It's no use. I can't do it," he said, catching his breath. "Kaneki was right. I'm not ready yet."

"Kaneki," Touka stated, "was just being overprotective. The sooner he accepts that you're a ghoul like the rest of us, the easier it'll be for him. For all of us," she added at the end.

Hide sighed. "I'm doing something wrong, but I can't figure out what."

Touka shrugged. "Maybe you have to be in a life or death situation; that was the first time Kaneki's kagune came out. He was protecting you from Nishio."

"Maybe," Hide replied. As much as he wanted to know how to use his kagune, he was reluctant to test that theory. "Let's keep trying."

Nothing worked. After wasting another half an hour, Touka decided to call it quits. "I've got school in the morning," she told him. "Come by later and we can try again." She climbed out, leaving Hide alone in the sewers. Hide collapsed on the ground, weary from the past few hours. He didn't know how long he lied there, but, eventually, he decided he had to get going.

Kaneki had told him to call when they finished, but he didn't want to disturb him in case he was sleeping or busy. His friend didn't get much sleep these days, Hide noted. Maybe four or five hours a night max. Hopefully, he had gotten tired waiting up on him and went to sleep, but he doubted it. If there was one thing he knew about his best friend, it was that he was a worrywart.

Hide also didn't know what to make of the kiss the previous day. Afterwards, he and Kaneki had carried on normally, but he could feel the lingering tension between them. He knew if Kaneki wanted to talk about it, he would. Hide never pushed him into discussing things he wasn't ready to yet.

After ascending the steel rungs and climbing out of the sewer, Hide walked a few streets down, trying to get to the more crowded part of the twentieth ward where taxis would be. The dim lighting on the street provided little light, so Hide had to look down to make sure he wasn't going to trip on anything. Suddenly, he was grabbed and pulled forcefully into a dark alleyway he had been passing by. "Wha—"

Wham. Hide was face down on the ground after being hit in the face by a powerful punch. He was barraged by kick after kick, effectively knocking the breath out of him. Curling up into a ball, Hide could do nothing to stop whoever it was that was attacking him. Pain flared up in each spot he was kicked—his legs, his arm, his ribs, his stomach, everywhere.

The attacker grabbed him and heaved him to his feet before vigorously throwing him against the wall of one of the buildings. Hide bounced off of it painfully, crumpling to his knees. Looking up, he saw that his attacker had on a mask and a hood. It was almost indistinguishable in the darkness, but he thought he could make out the face of a rabbit.

"Fight," a cold voice said. Hide's foggy mind couldn't tell if it were male or female. The screaming pain coming from everywhere in his body was almost unbearable. "Fight!" the voice repeated.

Hide opened his mouth to speak, but as he did, his head was slammed into the wall behind him, and all he could see were stars and more stars. Falling to the ground was the only thing he could do as spots danced in and out of his vision. Once again, he was yanked upwards to his feet by the person's incredible strength. Through lidded eyes, Hide saw something that looked akin to wings forming behind the person. It was a ghoul.

"If you don't fight, I'll slice you to ribbons," the ghoul hissed. Hide weakly lifted his trembling arms and attempted to hit the person, but his measly, feeble attack was blocked easily. "Not good enough!" Hide cried out in pain as three sharp shards of crystallized kagune dug into his skin.

"Please, stop…" Hide managed in between deep intakes of breath.

"How pathetic," the ghoul sneered. "How can you ever face him again, knowing that you're only a deplorable weakling who's holding him back?"

"I'm not…He's my best friend…" Somehow, Hide knew that the ghoul had been referring to Kaneki. It couldn't be true, could it? Was he holding Kaneki back from achieving some goal he had in mind? Kaneki had said they were in between missions, but was that the actual truth? Had Hide being turned into a ghoul screw up his entire plan?

"He would be much better off if you died here. But you already know that, don't you?"

"No…"

"Then prove your worth!"

Yelping as two more pieces of kagune pierced his body, Hide was able to wriggle out of his attacker's grasp and stumble away, trying to get out of the alley. In a flash, the masked ghoul was in front of him. With one heavy kick, Hide was sent spiraling back into the alley. How did this person have such superhuman speed?

The thought of being a burden to Kaneki got him moving. "I'm not…weak!" Hide charged the ghoul head on, only to be knocked back with by an uppercut to the stomach. He could feel his body healing, mending what had been broken earlier. The cuts caused by the kagune weren't, but Hide didn't care. Quickly getting back to his feet, Hide charged again. He was knocked back once more, but that didn't stop him. His movements were becoming faster, his body becoming numb to the pain.

As fast as Hide had become, the ghoul was even faster. In the back of his mind, Hide finally registered why he was facing an opponent with such speed and precision—he had an ukaku kagune. Touka had told him about each type; all their strengths, their weaknesses, and who they were trumped by. While the ukaku kagune was fast, the user had a limited amount of stamina while using it. Hide noticed the heavy rise and fall of the ghoul's shoulders; he was reaching his limit.

If I can just outlast him, I can win, Hide thought. But the real question was, how long could he last?

Running away was his best option. Turning around, Hide began to run deeper into the alleyway, where hardly any light was. The ghoul chased him, quickly gaining ground on him, not even using his kagune to get a speed boost. Shit, Hide cursed to himself when he reached a dead end.

No, this was not good. This was not good at—

"I win."

The ghoul was directly behind him, and before he knew it, Hide was smashed into the solid wall, and that was it. He dropped to the ground, unmoving. His vision faded in and out, and he was sure he was dying, sure that he would never get to see Kaneki's smiling face again. He would never hear Kaneki's adorable laugh or see him blush again. He hadn't even gotten to tell Kaneki how he truly felt.

He couldn't die here. He couldn't die at the hands of some random ghoul on the street.

No, he wouldn't.

As the ghoul was walking away, something curled around his leg, snaking its way up his whole body. Looking back, he saw Hide, bloodied and bruised, crawling towards him using only his arms and sheer willpower and determination. The kakugan in his single eye had activated, visible even in the darkness, and there was something sticking out of where his tailbone should have been. It had the appearance of a long spinal cord, and it was the thing that was wrapping itself around the ghoul's body.

Abruptly, Hide used his bikaku kagune to yank the ghoul off his feet before slamming him into both walls back and forth repeatedly. The ghoul cried out, the cry distinctly feminine, but Hide didn't care if it were a girl anymore. He—she had attacked him, and now she had to pay.

Getting to his feet, Hide held the ghoul suspended in the air before he was showered with a rain of crystallized kagune spikes and was forced to drop her to bring his kagune back to protect himself. But he found he didn't need it; something else had protected him.

"You're kidding me," the ghoul said, getting up and trying to steady her uneven breathing. "You're a hybrid, just like Hinami."

Hide felt the light weight on his shoulders and saw that he had subconsciously brought out another kagune. He had crystallized the Rc cells within it and shielded the front of his body.

"How do you know Hinami?" Hide questioned suspiciously, liquidating the Rc cells to reveal a pair of fiery dark red and purple wings. A ukaku kagune. The ghoul lifted her hand and took off her mask. Hide's mouth opened in astonishment.

It was Touka.

"T-Touka? No way, I thought you were someone who was actually trying to kill me…" he said, falling to his knees in relief. Exhaustion had begun to overwhelm his system, and he didn't have the energy to keep his kagune out. Slowly, the dual kagune retracted back into his body, leaving large holes in his clothes.

Touka sighed. "Was it not obvious that I was trying to kill you? It was the only way to bring out your kagune—and it worked."

Groaning, Hide fell over onto the ground, the numbness that had kept him from feeling the pain while fighting wearing off. The last thing he remembered was being hefted up; then he blacked out.

so tell me what you guys think about Hide's kagune! if it's not clear what it's supposed to look like his tail is basically a flattened rectangular spinal cord, it's kind of a cross between the bin brothers' kagune and hinami's rinkaku kagune with the different segments of hers but the shape and general ability of theirs. and then of course his ukaku is just the standard wings except maybe a little darker than usual just to give it some flare

things are about to pick up in the next two to three chapters. after a little more character development there will be much in store B)

thanks for reading!