back from my trip! hope you guys are ready for the final plot-oriented chapter on Thursday! ^^ chapter 28 is basically a long epilogue that tells what happens afterwards and stuff

anyways, I'm beginning a new fic! it's hidekane (ofc) and is an au in which they've never met and ghouls are integrating into human society. not sure how long it will be but I have high hopes for it! it would mean a lot if you would check it out, I'll have the first chapter up tomorrow if not later today. I'm trying out kind of a new style (it's not really different tbh, just how I'm writing the dialogue is), so if you do decide to give it a look, let me know what you think!

Each time Kaneki struck the glass container with his kagune, Hide cringed. It was far too loud for his liking, and he prayed Eto didn't have incredibly refined hearing lest she stray near them again. The containers, they learned, weren't made of normal glass. They were much thicker than they appeared and were hard for a kagune—even Kaneki's—to break.

Finally, the front of the container shattered and the liquid within it poured out, leaving the man inside it hanging limply by the various tubes attached to his body. Kaneki sliced them. Hide caught the man before he hit the floor of the container and carefully lifted him out before placing him on the ground in front of it. Three down, too many more to go.

Seidou came next. Kaneki broke the container after three tries and cut him loose. "Good to see you again, Seidou," Hide said quietly, a small smile on his face as he got him out of his once-liquid prison before setting him on the ground. "Once this is all over, I'll buy you all the office cafeteria food you can eat."

"Did you know him?" Kaneki questioned.

Hide nodded. "We were acquaintances. I always picked up his and everyone else's lunches if they were too busy. We ate lunch together when we had the chance, though. He was a good guy." His smile turned into a sad one. "He didn't deserve this."

Kaneki looked at Seidou's unconscious body for another moment before turning his attention to the next container. Hide did the same. There was no use in dwelling on the past. He had to focus his attention on rescuing the investigators before he could do any reminiscing.

As Kaneki broke the last container, Hide felt a tap on his shoulder and had to force down a yelp of surprise. Turning, he saw one of the first people they'd rescued had awoken, a confused look spread across his face. "Where the hell is this? What am I doing here?" he asked.

Hide quickly shushed him. "Keep your voice down; the Owl is patrolling the hallways." That served to confuse him even more, so Hide delved into a brief explanation of their situation.

"So everyone here"—he pointed to the bodies strewn in front of the containers they'd been pulled out of—"was kidnapped, just like me?"

Hide nodded.

"Well, shit," he sighed.

"Hide." Hide turned and saw that all the liquid had drained from the last container and that Kaneki was waiting for him to position himself to catch the body. Just like the other twenty or so before, Kaneki cut the tubing and Hide set her outside the container. And that was the last of them. Except now, they had an entirely new problem.

They were waking up.

One by one, each was roused from his or her unconscious state. There were many questions asked, the most common being: "Why am I naked?"

Hide wanted to ask that too. He had seen more junk in the past half hour than in his entire life, and he wasn't sure how he was feeling about that. He definitely wasn't looking forward to parading more than twenty naked people through the halls of the facility.

Kaneki watched as Amon Koutarou's eyelids fluttered open. A look of disbelief and surprise crossed Amon's face before acceptance replaced it, and he smiled wearily. "I can never seem to escape you, Eyepatch."

Seeing Amon alive was like finally releasing a breath that had been long since due to exhale, one Kaneki didn't even know he'd been holding. "Kaneki Ken," he stated. "My name is Kaneki Ken."

"Kaneki," Amon confirmed. "It's good to see you still alive."

"And the same to you." Kaneki helped Amon up, noticing how the arm he had chopped off during their final fight was somehow back. That wasn't a good sign.

Amon surveyed the room with raised eyebrows but said nothing. Everyone spoke to one another in hushed whispers. Hide was doing his best to calm down Seidou, who had awoken a couple minutes ago and immediately went into a panic attack.

Amon stretched his arms, which had lost muscle over the months of floating in a container. "When we get out of this," he said to Kaneki, "I hope you'll enlighten me to your point of view. Even if we're still sworn enemies, I would like to have a civilized conversation with you. But, for now, I have only one question. Why did you help us?"

"We're on the same side now." The words felt strange on Kaneki's tongue; he had never expected to be on the same side as Amon, who, he supposed, was his nemesis. Would it be possible for them to forge a friendship from their hardships? He sincerely hoped it would. He had always wanted to hear Amon's view of the world.

Amon nodded without question. Now wasn't the time to wonder about the strange circumstances, he told himself. He could be filled in as soon as they were safely out of…wherever the hell they were. "Kaneki, where are we and how do we get out?"

"We're going to tell all of you at once," Kaneki replied.

Hide hushed the scared, mumbling crowd of investigators. A still quietness settled over them as Hide cleared his throat to speak. "You're all, I presume, the investigators that went missing after the attack on Anteiku. All of you participated in that, right?"

There were nods all around.

"Yeah, that's what we thought. Okay, uh…" He scratched his neck, trying to decide what to say next. "I don't know what's happened to you. Maybe nothing. But the likelihood of that is pretty close to zero. They wouldn't keep you here for months without reason."

"What the hell are you suggesting?" someone asked angrily.

"I'm saying that you've all probably been victims of experiments."

"Experiments…" Seidou murmured, eyes widening in fright at the idea that he'd been tampered with. Oh, god. What had they done to all of them? Were they altered permanently? Did Hide even know what he was talking about? For his and everyone else's sakes, he hoped he didn't. The last he checked, Hide was just an intern at the CCG. How could he know all this?

Wait—how was Hide even here? He had been missing for months before the attack on Anteiku, and now, he had just shown up out of the blue and rescued them from wherever they were. There was something definitely up with him.

"Hide, how—"

"I know you have questions, and I promise I'll do my best to answer them all after we're out of this," Hide interrupted. "But right now, we have bigger problems to deal with. The Owl is in this place, and it wants to find us—Kaneki and me specifically. We're currently in Kanou's lab, which is where a previous CCG raid took place. Our main goal right now is to just get the hell out of here without dying. Everybody good with that?"

"Well, what's the plan, then?" a woman questioned.

Hide grinned wryly. "Why, I'm so glad you asked. There is no plan."

As much as they would have liked to check the other rooms for more people, Hide had a feeling they were running out of time. And luck. Moving a large group of people could only go well for so long. So far, they hadn't run into anything, but that could change at any moment.

Hide led the group through the hallways of the facility to the best of his ability, trying to get them back to the center room. If he found that, he was hopeful he could get them out. He still remembered his way back from the first time he found himself in Kanou's lab.

Kaneki followed them in the rear, making sure nothing snuck up on them. As much as he wished Kaneki were by his side through this whole ordeal—especially after just being reunited with him—he knew safety and practicality came before his personal feelings. He wasn't going to risk the lives of these people just to be able to glance at Kaneki out of the corner of his eye as they walked.

Finally, after a few wrong turns and stopping multiple times to listen for anything coming, they found themselves in the center room of the facility. Bodies littered the ground, both CCG and Aogiri alike. Some were neither human nor ghoul—they were mutants, the results of ungodly experimentation. But there were no signs of any living creature, meaning the CCG had pulled out after losing too many men without yielding results and that the battle was over.

Kaneki made his way to the front of the group. "I think I should lead from here, unless you're one hundred percent confident in where you're going," he told Hide. "I did just come through here with the squads, after all."

Hide smiled. "If you think that's best, go ahead. I'll take the back."

Kaneki nodded and smiled in return. Hide took his position in the back of the group and they began moving forward again. After exiting the room, they soon ran into a band of cloaked Aogiri ghouls who were feasting on a pile of dead CCG worker bodies. To say they were shocked to see a group of twenty naked people led by a ghoul was an understatement. Kaneki quickly disposed of them and they continued on.

They passed more dead bodies. "Why do they smell so good?" Kaneki heard one of the investigators mumble. He turned and saw that nearly all of them were looking at the bodies with longing. Some of them blinked in confusion and rubbed their heads before looking away. Others continued staring, biting their lips. Suddenly, there was a shout.

"He's—he's eating it!"

Kaneki halted the group as Hide ran up to pry one of the investigators off a dead CCG member's body. Hide yanked him away with more force than he meant to, and the man landed flat on his back. When he opened his eyes, they told the horrible, ugly truth to just what experimentation had been done on the group of investigators.

One eye was white with a dark brown iris, while the other was black and red.

He was a half-ghoul.

They were all half-ghouls.

Panic immediately erupted within the group. Amon watched as those around him sunk into madness. The only thing that he felt, though, was numbness, as if he couldn't believe it was true. It couldn't be. He couldn't be the very thing he despised the most in the world—it defied his whole being. It tossed out the window all he had ever known about himself, all he had ever believed in.

It couldn't be true.

But it was. The truth was staring him right in the face.

"Everybody, stop!"

Panic-stricken faces turned to Hide, whose commanding voice had gotten their attention. "I know this is a shock," he began. "I was in the same situation a few months ago. I was kidnapped and turned into a half-ghoul, just like all of you. I had been hoping this wasn't the case, but it is, and now we have to deal with it. So everyone just stay calm and don't do anything stupid, alright? Just continue on until we get out of here like normal, and just don't look at the bodies."

Within fifteen more minutes, they reached the entrance room. Hide honestly couldn't believe their luck. Had Eto really not found them in all this time? It seemed too good to be true.

Kaneki pushed open the doors and revealed the outside world. He stepped out of the facility with caution and looked around. Hide told the group to stay put before joining him. He breathed in a breath of fresh air before taking in his surroundings, which were starkly different from the inside of the lab. The sky was overcast with gray clouds, meaning it was most likely going to rain sooner or later. The surrounding trees swayed with the wind.

Suddenly, Hide felt something fall on his shoulder. It was wet and sticky to the touch. Confused, he looked up.

Yeah, it had definitely been too good to be true.

"Kaneki, move!"

Kaneki whipped his head around just in time to see Hide barreling into him to prevent them both from being crushed under Eto's Owl form as she descended from above them, where she had been clinging to the building. They quickly scrambled to their feet and ran as she charged. Abruptly, she halted and allowed them to see what was in her large, talon-like hand. Pinned down against the ground was an unconscious Misaki.

Kaneki clenched his fists in anger. Misaki was one of the few in the CCG who hadn't written him off as a monster. She didn't deserve to die at the hands of the Owl. He wanted her to go on and live a good, fulfilling life, to spread happiness to those who needed it most.

"Close the doors!" Hide commanded the group, who were still inside waiting.

Amon, knowing none of them would be any use in this situation, immediately shoved his way to the front and pulled the heavy doors shut before a round of Eto's crystallized kagune speared them all.

"Everyone, remain calm," he instructed. "We're going to let them deal with it."

The question was: were they actually going to be able to deal with it?

"All of you, get somewhere else!" a voice Amon didn't recognize shouted. A group of cloaked people he could only assume to be ghouls pushed through the group. The one leading them stopped in front of them, and her eyes widened before she quickly moved past him. Amon narrowed his eyes in confusion. He got the feeling he should know her, but nothing came to him.

"Didn't you hear me?" the girl hissed without turning around. "I said, get out of here!"

Amon took charge. "Follow me, everyone. We'll wait in one of the halls." He led the group of his fellow investigators out of the entrance room and into a nearby hallway, where they stood, nobody really knowing what to do. Amon watched from around the corner as the one who had spoken said something to two of the members of her group, who nodded. She then opened the doors, and she and three others walked out before closing it behind them, leaving the two she had spoken with behind. Were they going to help Kaneki and Nagachika?

Eto stared at both Hide and Kaneki with her single eye, which sent shivers up Hide's spine. How the hell were they supposed to fight her? Well, they were going to have to. Taking a deep breath, he managed a shaky grin. "Looks like we're all on our own, Kaneki. You ready?"

"You're not alone."

Hide and Kaneki looked past Eto to see Touka, fully recovered, standing in front of the facility entrance along with Nishiki, Tsukiyama, and Kanae. "We're going to help you," she stated. "We're going to help you to the end, because that's what friends are fucking for. And no, Kaneki, we're not going to run. So you can take whatever you were about to say and shove it up your ass because we're here to stay. Got it?"

Kaneki, who had indeed been about to argue, slowly closed his mouth and let it form into a small smile. "Yeah, I got it. Thank you, everyone. Really."

Touka grinned. "You can thank me by buying me a year's worth of coffee when this is all over. And not the shitty kind either. The good, quality kind that'll make your wallet cry. It'll be for the new shop that you also have to donate part of your unfair paycheck to."

Nishiki snickered. "Man, Kaneki, you'll be broke by next month. Let's kick this guy's ass so I can live to see the day you become a beggar for money to feed your coffee addiction."

Eto looked from Hide and Kaneki to the newly arrived group of four. "Ooh, more brains to scramble! This will be fun!" Grinning, she made eye contact with Touka, who clenched her jaw. How were they supposed to even begin to deal with this thing? The odds of them beating the Owl were so close to zero that it dampened her confident mood completely.

And then she spotted something coming towards them on the road. It was a single vehicle, and it appeared to be a CCG truck. Eto noticed it as well and turned around, the ugly grin widening on her face. "It looks like someone else has come to play too!"

The vehicle stopped. A door opened, and out stepped the one person who could singlehandedly face the monstrous Owl. Indeed, someone else had come to play, and it was a game he played very well. He calmly brought out his suitcases and activated both quinques. Closing the door behind him, he walked up to Hide and Kaneki and nodded at them, then at Touka and the others.

"If you are engaging, prepare yourselves," Arima Kishou stated.

He lifted Narukami and put it into first offensive mode. An orb of lightning formed between its four satellite panels.

He shot it, and the battle began.

thanks for reading!