Mama Mia, it's been a while since I've had the creative thought or time to actually write something that doesn't feel like I'm forcing myself to write.

This story takes place after the end of Tokyo Ghoul :re, although to not spoil the beginning story or the first arc, I won't specify how much time has passed between the War with V and to when this story takes place.

"Goodnight Haise."

Those two words were the last thing that Haise Sasaki expected to hear before finally fading away before Ken Kaneki finally took control.

Or so he thought.

Unlike how he figured he would just slip away into an eternal slumber or void of some kind , Haise was instead awoken mere seconds later by the sudden feeling of asphyxiation burning away at his lungs. With his eyes shooting wide open in a state of panic and confusion, Haise found himself staring through what appeared to be a grey-rimmed glass panel and up at a dim ceiling light through the red-watery substance that surrounded him. Reaching up with his arms, the numbing feeling tingling through his limbs was a clear sign that he had been stationary for quite some time, but the question of how long he was like that was the least of his worries at the moment. Using his arms and now his legs, the loose panel door of the capsule that Haise had been caged in was far less heavy and less secure than he had expected it to be. Splashing around inside the translucent and red watery substance that he had awoken inside of, Haise's powerful legs were able to finally launch the panel across the small room he was in with relative ease; creating an opening that Haise quickly took advantage of in order to free himself. Rolling off from the side of the capsule that stood horizontal to the cement floor below, Haise landed on his stomach before immediately expelling the red liquid from his lungs and stomach. After about ten minutes of vomiting and coughing up whatever foreign substance that had made its way into his organs, Haise simply rolled over onto his back; completely naked and exposed as he stared up at the dim white lights above. 'Where… Where am I? This isn't right, I… I was fighting the One-Eyed Owl… What the hell…?' Haise thought to himself, as he lamented on his current situation, and what he could remember before seemingly fading away. 'Damn, I can't remember anything happening after that… This doesn't make sense; none of this makes sense…' The frustration Haise was accumulating while also failing to understand how he ended up in a capsule inside a cemented room only grew as he felt his stomach grumbling; demanding him for substance. 'Alright… I guess I should look for something to eat for the time being… Glad to see I got my priorities in order.' He mused to himself, and sighed aloud, as he rolled back onto his chest to proceed in struggling to push himself up to his feet. Feeling like a newborn taking its first steps in life, Haise stumbled and nearly tripped over his own two feet for the first few steps he took before finally remembering how to walk again. 'I guess it's been awhile since I've… I guess done anything? Weird…' Haise thought to himself, before being reminded by the rumble in his stomach of what his first current objective was: find food. Walking over to the archway inside the small cell-like room his capsule was inside of, Haise found himself standing before a sliding door that was made up of the same metal poles that were used in prison cells.

Giving the cell door a quick jerk, the decrepit old barred door slid right open without putting up much of a fight. Stepping outside into the hallway just outside of his cell, a quick examination of his surroundings gave Haise the impression that he was late to whatever violence went down outside of his cell; and judging by the decayed armored corpse in the middle of the hallway of different other cells like his own, it was one hell of a catastrophe. Dried blood that was brown in color splattered the cement hallway, and upon further inspection of the mummified corpse on the ground, the man who Haise was crouched over was a CCG security guard named N. Takahashi, according to the keycard the guard had clipped onto his lanyard around his decayed neck. "Sorry Takahashi… I'm going to need to borrow your prized possessions, I'm afraid…" Haise whispered quietly under his breath, as he took the corpse's keycard, along with the blood-stained and weathered 9mm pistol that had been entrapped in his mummified grasp. Brushing away the dry skin flakes and crumpled finger tips from the grip of the pistol, Haise decided to remove the man's black belt that had with it a holster, several magazine clips for the firearm, and a few metal canisters that Haise quickly read to be labeled as 'RC-Suppressor'. Armed and still naked while dripping wet with translucent red liquid, Haise with the help of his training as an investigator raised his newly acquired firearm up in front of him before beginning to cautiously explore the rest of the five other cells that lined the hallway.

There were six cells in that dimly lit hallway, including his own. Out of the five that he went to investigate, three of them were empty, and showed no signs of recent tampering or escape. The first body that Haise found still in its capsule was barely recognizable; if he could consider what he found inside that goop to be a 'body'. Inside the capsule was merely a glowing pink skeleton with purple tendons and muscle attached to it with a pearly white set of teeth and a pair of white eyes with red irises that appeared odd to Haise upon first glance. While reluctantly placing the tips of his fingers against the body's neck to search for a pulse, after having taken off the top of the capsule himself, it soon dawned on Haise that the eyes of the underdeveloped body were glowing subtly; not enough to be immediately noticeable underneath the dim light from above, but it was just faint enough for him to glance at without being taken aback by it. After failing to find a pulse on the body, Haise found himself staring at its somewhat fascinating form. Although it didn't appear to have skin, the corpse was far from grotesque, and instead carried with it something mystic and alien about it. It wasn't long after becoming entranced by the sight of the purple and pink body when Haise suddenly felt a chill run up his spine as a sudden thought popped into his head. 'Is… Is this thing an experiment gone wrong...? Is… Is that what I am? Am I whatever the hell that thing is?!' Forgetting the fact that he was hungry, which didn't matter to him because the alien-like body inside the capsule didn't stimulate his appetite in the least, Haise pushed aside the corpse inside inside the capsule and waited anxiously for the translucent red water to subside into a reflective surface that wasn't tainted by ripples. After a few moments of letting the water calm down, Haise felt a gasp escape his lips and his eyes grew wide once more as he was met with the image of himself when he first started as the leader of the Quinx-Squad. Gone was his straight hair, and instead he again had his wavy and bushy white hair with black roots on top, and he appeared to be just as young as he did when he was twenty one. That's not what made him scream in defiance before falling down onto his ass before backing up against the wall into a hyperventilating mess however; no, what gave Haise a panic attack was the sight of his grey and red irises glowing gently in his red-tinted reflection. Just as subtle yet noticeable as the eyes of the purple corpse just inches away from his reflection. "Fuck, fuck, fuck…!" Not normally one to be shaken up, let alone curse like a sailor, Haise repeated that same word over and over again as he stared wide eyed at the open capsule in horror. With his knees raised up and his fingers pressed against the side of his face, Haise fought with his mind to regain composure as thousands of questions regarding fear of the unknown ran rampant inside his head. Just to make sure that his suspicions were indeed real and not just a trick of the light, Haise reluctantly forced his eyes to gaze down at the scars he remembered having around his pelvic area and fingers from when Ken had been tortured. Just as he dreaded, there wasn't a single mark on his pristine-pale skin. Continuing to swear under his breath, tears began to well up in the corners of Haise's eyes as he buried his face into his knees while still breathing in and out at a rapid speed. 'What the actual hell is going on around here?! What the fuck is all this?! Where am I? Who the hell am I? WHAT AM I?!' Thoughts similar to these came and went unanswered through his head, as more and more existential despair ran rampant in Haise's head like a rogue tornado. Delving deeper and deeper into his new found stress, Haise would have probably continued to be plagued by horrifying thoughts and eventually fall into madness had it not been for sudden muffled banging coming from the other side of the wall he was huddled against. Wiping his eyes with his forearm, Haise let out a long and shallow sigh as he turned his head toward where the newfound noise was coming from. 'That sound… It must be coming from that cell; the one I didn't get to… Someone must be in there.' Taking in one last deep breath before getting up to his feet, Haise made sure his gun was raised in front of him before making his way out of the cell; making sure to avoid catching another unwanted glimpse of the purple and pink corpse left in its watery grave.

In the room of the last cell that held those God forsaken metallic and coffin-like capsules that Haise grew to resent, he found that the sound of constant and panicked banging was coming from the middle of the room, where a capsule was shaking violently. Running over to the capsule with the absence of fear that he felt moments ago, Haise quickly stared down through the transparent cover of the capsule to be met with the sight of a young woman with long purple hair and wide purple eyes staring up at him with a look of primal fear in her eyes. "Holy shit…! H-Hold on, I'll get you out of there!" Haise shouted reassuringly to the young woman, who for just a moment before Haise broke eye contact with her, stared at him in surprise. Putting his gun back in it's holster, Haise wrapped his fingers around the metal frame of the capsule cover and gritted his teeth as he attempted to pry open the sealed door with brute strength. "Damn it…! It's no use; it must be vacuum-sealed or something…!" Haise concluded with a frantic look in his eye, as he took a step back from the shaking capsule. "Shit! I'm going to have to find some other way to open this… J-Just hold on and stay still!" Unholstering his firearm, Haise wasted no time in taking aim before firing the gun at the bottom of the capsule. A submerged scream unnerved him slightly, fearing that he had accidentally shot the young woman inside the capsule by mistake as he watched a stream of red-watery liquid flow out from the bottom of the pod-like imprisonment. Just as he had hoped for, the hole he had created inside the vacuum-sealed capsule quickly made the top pop loose; allowing for him to quickly grab hold of its edges before throwing against the cement wall. Without thinking much about anything else outside of rescuing this young woman, Haise ignored the flailing girl's arms in order to wrap his hands around her frame. In one swoop, Haise plucked her out of the capsule before gently lowering her to the floor; allowing her to expel the red liquid from her body in the same fashion that he had done earlier. Not knowing what else to say as he watched the young woman breathing in and out with shaking arms, Haise asked the usual question of "Are you uh… Are you okay?" 'Really? Out of all questions to ask, I ask that…? What am I, a dumbass…?' Haise thought sarcastically to himself, as he looked down to see the look of utter confusion written all over her soaked face.

"Obviously not…" The young woman chuckled half-heartedly back in response, before lowering her head to hide her face away from Haise's curious gaze. "What… What the hell is going on, Kaneki? What did you do…?" The young woman asked quietly, before letting out an anguished scream. "WHAT THE HELL DID YOU DO TO ME?!" Any fear and anguish on her face became immediately replaced with primal rage, as she screamed once more before looking up to reveal her eyes had become two glowing red and black orbs that shun brightly at him. "You… You're going to start talking right now, before I tear you in half…!"

Taking a step back with his firearm instinctually raised up to take aim at the young woman who revealed herself to be a ghoul the moment four glowing pink tendrils unveiled themselves from her lower back, Haise did his best to keep his composure and control of the situation as he kept his eyes focused on her. "Let's just, calm down, okay? No need to get violent now…" Haise said calmly, as he used his other hand to motion the enraged young woman to keep her distance from him. "Let's just… Let's just start with names, okay?" Haise said awkwardly, as he nearly squeezed the trigger the moment she got up to her feet to stand in a crouching stance to allow her kagune to get into a striking position.

It took about an hour for the two to talk things over, with Haise only having to fire two warning shots at her feet during the conversation. The young woman revealed herself to be Rize Kamishiro, a name that Haise Sasaki himself had only heard of in his reports while investigating who Ken Kaneki was on his own off time. According to Rize, the last thing she remembered before waking up in that capsule was being in excruciating pain, and being forced to stay alive for the sake of creating what she could only described to be as a colossal beast made up entirely of RC-cells that resembled a black worm with grotesque tendrils the size of roads, with thousands of eyes covering its skin. Apparently from what she remembered hearing from Kichimura Furuta, the half-ghoul who had been the one behind the creation of the ungodly beast, she had been used to create a 'dragon', which would use the corpses of its victims to create spawns that resembled large bipedal monsters that were covered in the same grotesque skin and lacked eyes. These spawns of the dragon were called 'dragon orphans'. Her final memory she could recall was being killed by none other than Ken Kaneki, who looked far different from the young man she was now standing before. "So… You were a different personality of Kaneki's…? Not exactly your own person, since you inhabited the same body, but… Tell me, do you remember who I am?" Rize asked with a curious expression on her face; which surprised Haise to say the least. "Do you remember anything about that night I… I asked you out?"

'She's handling this all so well… Better than I did, that's for sure.' Haise thought to himself before trying to remember anything personal about Rize, or anything that Ken Kaneki had experienced with her in his life. "I… I remember being able to recall snippets of his life here and there; outside of researching and investigating who Ken Kaneki was… But that all seems so foreign to me now, including his memories, like-"

"-Like as if you were trying to remember the life experiences of someone who you only read about, right?" Rize interjected with an intrigued look in her purple eyes, as she began to pace around Haise as though he was an interesting piece of historic art. "The way you're referring to Ken Kaneki is the same way someone refers to someone else entirely… You seem detached from his memories, as though you were a persona birthed from whatever had created me as well… As if you were reborn, in a way…" Rize concluded, with a sense of wonderment and thrill in her glowing purple eyes that made Haise frown skeptically.

"You um… You seem to be taking this all in so well." Haise chimed in with a nervous chuckle in his voice, as he watched Rize raise a brow at him with a cute grin spread across her lips. "After our talk… It seems sort of hard to believe that this is all going on; hell, even some of the things that I remembered seem like utter bullshit after saying them out loud!" Haise chuckled dryly before reaching up to rub his palms against his cheeks out of stress. "Sorry for the language, it's just… Nothing makes sense right now, you know?"

"No, no, I get it…" Rize said quietly while nodding her head to agree with Haise's sense of disbelief. "To me, it's just something to take with a pinch of salt, I suppose. What I said is true, as far as my memory goes, but I don't really have any reason to not trust you, nor trust you, so… What matters right now isn't the how or why about us being here, but really all I care about right is just figuring out where we are, and more importantly, what's on the menu to eat…" Rize muttered the last part of her sentence before smiling to herself. "You know, I… I was about to half-jokingly tell you that if I don't find something to help with my appetite soon, that I might have to consider taking a bite out of you… But just saying that feels like an empty threat, if I'm being honest with myself." Rize mused as she took a step closer to Haise to inspect his wide eyes and youthful face. "... No, I don't think I have any desire to sink my teeth into you; or human meat for that matter… The thought of eating something so raw, so… bloodied, actually is kind of appalling to me right now… Funny, right? A ghoul like me, who was infamous for her unrelenting hunger, finds the thought of eating human meat disgusting…" Rize said with a humorless smile on her face, as she continued to stare directly into Haise's confused eyes. Suddenly, Rize quickly brushed away her humorless smile to instead smirk whimsically as her eyes averted downward. "Wanna know what else is funny…?"

Not knowing that he really wanted to know the answer to her question, Haise furrowed his white eyebrows as he frowned a bit at how close Rize managed to get near him. "I, uh… S-Sure, what's funny, Rize?" Haise asked nervously, to which he was quickly met with a sudden and stimulating sensation of having her hand cupping his groin with her hand. "H-Hey?!" Haise yelped out in a mixture of shock and embarrassment, as he quickly took a step back with his cheeks set ablaze with a fiery red blush.

Seeing Haise's reaction, Rize raised her hand up to cover her lips as she let out a snicker. "What's funny is that you look like a discount stripper with that belt and gun on you, dumbass!" Rize snorted, as she wiped the hand she used to grab Haise's manhood on her thigh. "Haha, you were telling the truth about that shitty persona story! You really are the same dork I met at that cafe! I guess that makes it official: maybe your story wasn't complete bullshit after all!" She teased playfully, much to Haise's dismay.

"Was that what really made you believe me…?!" Haise asked in a bewildered tone, which only further made Rize crack up even more.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves, Haise! I said 'maybe' your story isn't completely bullshit! Not that that I believed you!" Rize laughed aloud, before slowly calming down to rest her face into a smiling expression. "Let's be real Haise, if that really is your name, what you told me sounds like something that Sen Takatsuki would write about; and even then, that plot would have been too weird even for her."

After the initial shock of having been grabbed inappropriately by the young ghoul who he just met in person, Haise allowed himself to lower his guard, and soon he was joining in at the absurdity of it all. "Y-Yeah, I figured that you took what I said a little too easily… But SENce you brought that up, allow me to say… I am Haise.~" The young man said playfully with a goofy expression on his face, as he did a mock bow before standing back up with the gun now holstered back into his black belt.

Astonished at what she had just witnessed, Rize stared dumbfounded at Haise's joking gesture before letting out another cackle. "Oh. My. God… You're a lot funnier than that small shy kid that used to ogle at me from afar! Hell, you REALLY must be a different person than Ken!" Rize declared with an extremely wide-eyed expression as she smiled at the grinning young man before her. "Hehe, oh wow, that's actually hilarious…! Come on Haise, let's look around a bit; see what our current environment has to offer in terms of fulfilling our needs… Starting with a shower! I feel gross…" Rize pointed out, as she stared down at her curvy body with a bit of disgust in her glowing purple eyes. "If I'm going to inevitably have you staring at my ass for the time being, I want to make sure I look at least presentable…~" Rize said wink a flirtatious wink, as she smirked while staring back up Haise's blushing face. "Come on, let's have a look around this joint."

Seeing how he was the only one with a firearm and a badge that would allow him access to the reinforced steel sliding door at the end of the hallway, Haise figured that it was his responsibility to take lead. Raising his gun up from his holster, Haise used his other hand to hold onto the lanyard as he motioned for Rize to follow behind him as they went out of her cell. "Do you uh… Do you think this place still has anyone here?" Haise asked casually, as he walked past the mummified corpse in the hallway.

Raising an eyebrow at the question as she glanced down at the corpse on the ground, Rize let out a dry chuckle. "Judging by the decomposition of that poor bastard there… I don't think we'll be running into anyone alive around these parts." Rize said sarcastically, as she stepped over the body to continue following behind Haise. "Although, just because we probably aren't going to find anyone still alive around here, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't rule out the possibility that we won't run into whatever did that to him… Do you have a kagune? Considering that Ken used one before putting me out of my misery, or least that's what he probably thought to himself before actually doing it, I'm assuming you're a half ghoul or some other crazy thing..." Rize said with a bit of bitterness in her voice.

"Kagune? Yeah, I'm pretty sure I still have mine… Which I guess technically is yours, if my memory of Ken's origin serves me right." Haise said with a bit of a smile on his face, before leaning down to carefully make sure not to strike Rize as he unraveled his kagune into four glowing purple tendrils. With the tips of his scaled tendrils shimmering in the dim light above, Haise looked up at the tips of his kagune, intrigued at how different he remembered them being. "Odd… I could have sworn they were more veiny and less… Illuminating."

"Let's just chalk that up as one of the many oddities we've both encountered today, and get a move on." Rize said impatiently, as she let out a sigh under her breath while unveiling her kagune as well. "All jokes aside Haise, I'm hungry, thirsty, and really want to wash this goo off me and get into some warm clothes… And get to the bottom of this whole situation as soon as we can." Unlike how she had sounded ever since Haise and her had come to the unsaid mutual agreement that they were allies for the time being, her voice had fear in it.

Getting to the large door at the end of the hallway, Haise paused for a moment before turning his head over his shoulder to smile reassuringly at Rize. "Hey now, don't worry about a thing 'mon; cause every lil' ding', is gonna be alright~." Haise said playfully in an attempt to mimic a reggae artist to lighten up the mood, as he blindfilly pressed the keycard against the device scanner alongside the left of the reinforced sliding door. His attempt seemed to work a bit, even if Rize knew just as well as he did that neither of them knew what was up though the dimly lit flight of stairs that led up to the unknown above.

"It's… It's funny, really." Rize said quietly as she began to follow behind Haise, as they began to ascend up the flight of metal stairs that had empty bullet casings and spots of dried blood littering every step. "I think I remember using the excuse of me being afraid of 'what goes bump in the night' to get Ken to follow me into that alleyway..." Rize mused aloud with a nervous tone behind her words, before flinching at the sound of claws scraping against cement from up above from what sounded like several large creatures shuffling around in the near-distance. Frozen in their places, Rize's tendrils extended out further past Haise's own kagune; worried about entrusting her life along with her only companions' well being entirely into the hands of him. "Those… Those things, the d-dragon orphans or whatever that cocky asshole called them… They looked exactly like the sketch Ken drew and showed me while we were on that fake date… The same date that I used as a ruse to make him think that I saw him as anything more than an easy meal..." Rize said in a quiet voice, as she was practically now whispering into Haise's ear due to how close she was to him. Wishing that the flight of stairs were longer than they actually were, Rize felt her heart drop and her kagune tense up as the dim light from above the lobby that the stairs had led them into revealed a crowded room of tall hulking beasts; all who hissed at them with their claws and teeth bared out at toward their direction. There must have been at least twelve crammed inside that small lobby, all of which were beginning to make their way towards the duo. "... It really is funny, isn't it?" Rize asked calmly into Haise's ear, before side stepping into a crouching position just as her companion raised his firearm to take aim at the bulkiest dragon orphan out of the group; presumably the alpha of the horde. Letting out a horrifying scream that sounded like a mix between human and demonic, the alpha led the eleven other dragon orphans, as they began to swarm their prey.

"... It sure is, mon'." Haise said solemnly, unaware that he was still using his fake-Jamaican voice as he fired the first of many shots from his firearm while simultaneously tearing his enemies apart mercilessly with his tendrils.

Haise and Rize, together in a team to help each survive and discover the mystery behind their rebirth? Yeah, consider that I absolutely adore Haise far more than Kaneki, and I've always felt like Rize was wasted potential for an actual character rather than just a plot device and a hallucination for Kaneki to see during his evolution as a one-eyed ghoul.

This story, unlike my previous works and a little bit like Conquesitore, is a bit out there in means of story, yet is free and open like a sandbox for my creative pleasure. It's not grim dark like my previous story, but it sure will have lots of graphic violence, blood, gore, sex, and profanity while still being comedic (or at least me trying to be funny without it being too overbearing or overstaying it's welcome).

The inspiration for the story came from a mixture of Dead Rising and Fallout New Vegas, considering that although Ken Kaneki helped unite humanity and ghouls by creating an enemy for both sides to focus on rather than each other, he also pretty much released a swarm of reproducing beasts that went underground and no doubtfully ravaged the rest of Japan, who more than likely didn't get the memo about the dragon orphans in time due to TSC not being able to communicate with CCG due to them being two separate organizations with different ideals; no doubly being politically against one another.

Basically, both sides at least in Tokyo are prepared and working together against dragon orphans, but that doesn't mean the rest of Japan will fair just as well. CCG wouldn't be able to survive in a world where dragon orphans are ravaging the lands.

If you have any ideas you would like to be implemented into this story, or want to see your OC joining the fray, please don't be a stranger!

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!