Smoker had never been on a train before in his life. The East Blue didn't have a lot of islands large enough to require one.
Once, he decided, was more than enough.
The train was cramped, thanks to the entire company of Marines and twice as many security personnel crammed into it. It was noisy, it reeked - he wasn't sure what they were burning to fuel the train, but it sure as hell stank - and quite frankly, it was a hell he was grateful he'd managed to get out of at the first opportunity, leaning on one of the catwalks in-between the train cars.
If only he'd been able to avoid the company - namely, the Butcher Bird and Herman. Well. At least Tashigi was with him. She'd keep Herman in line, leaving the Butcher for him.
"No offense, Commodore, but your men stink," the Hound growled. "How do you stand it?"
"Herman, take a minute to realize that not everyone is cursed with a sensitive nose," the Butcher Bird snarked from his perch atop the train car. The man's bloodstained coat billowed in the wind, somehow still firmly attached to his shoulders despite the fact his arms weren't in the sleeves.
"Do you ever wash that damn thing?" Smoker asked.
"Nah. First, it makes sure nobody mistakes me for one of your guys, because I'm pretty sure half the Line's population can't read kanji. Second, it scares the crap outta people. Third, it looks badass as all hell, why on earth would I?"
Smoker stared at the Butcher Bird. The Butcher Bird stared back.
"You're basically an immortal teenager, aren't you?" Smoker asked despairingly.
"Ding! We have a winner."
"Why do I put up with you?"
"Because I'm so immensely charming?"
Smoker glared at him.
"I always figured it was because you could beat him up and not have to worry about pissing anyone off, since he'd heal from whatever you did to him," Herman offered. "I mean, that's about sixty percent of why everyone on the crew deals with him."
"What's the remaining forty?" Tashigi asked.
"About evenly split between the Captain enjoying the chance to vivisect him and most of the rank and file being absolutely terrified. Which in and of itself is hilarious. It's like watching someone being scared of a teddy bear."
"A teddy bear," Tashigi said dubiously, looking at the Butcher Bird, who was grinning with far too many, too-sharp teeth. Smoker had to agree - the last thing he could see the Butcher Bird being was snuggly.
"Kaneki's a prickly little shit to everyone not on the crew, but if you're on it...Jack's the only one who's more of a mother hen, and that's because he's basically the only responsible person."
"There's Gin," Kaneki pointed out.
"Yeah, true, Gin's the other one who doesn't understand the meaning of fun," Herman allowed with a shrug of his armored shoulders. His cloak billowed just as much as Kaneki's coat, even the heavy hide and fur twisting in this kind of wind. "But still, there's a reason C turned out as good as he did when raised by our lot, and it's because long dark and scaley up there beat the concept of helping your own into him."
"A bit literally at times," Kaneki allowed, standing up and stretching, ignoring the wind entirely. "And, right on schedule, there's the city walls," he continued with a sharp-edged grin.
Smoker leaned out past the train carriage, looking ahead. Sure enough, walls were on the horizon, massive things of iron and stone. This wasn't the familiar white brick of a Marine base - this was something foreboding and ancient, seeming old beyond measure despite the fact he knew they were only fifty years old. Smoker was struck by the sudden urge to find a way to go back in time solely so he could slap whatever architects had decided to make the walls look obviously evil.
"Looks like hell," the Butcher Bird said. "Oh, I bet this will be fun. OI, CITY, LET'S SEE WHAT YOU'VE -"
Thwack.
Smoker winced as a low-hanging branch from one of the numerous trees that lined both sides of the tracks smacked the Butcher Bird in the face and sent him tumbling off the train, cursing all the while. "Idiot," he muttered.
"Eh, I'm pretty sure he does stupid shit like that because he can ignore the consequences," Herman observed. "He'll be fine."
"Doesn't make it any less stupid," Smoker growled.
"It does make it a little difficult to take him at all seriously anymore, Commodore," Tashigi said with a small smile. "I guess that means he's giving us a little bit of trust."
Smoker considered his ensign's words, then glared at Herman until the Berserker Hound shrugged. "Guess so," the armored pirate allowed. "Like I said, he's usually a hell of a lot more prickly." The Zoan user glanced up. "Ah, there he is."
Smoker stepped back as Kaneki dropped from the sky like a stone, landing on all fours in front of him with an impact that made the train shudder. "Not doing that again," the Butcher Bird said, cracking his neck.
"You done screwing around?" Smoker asked. "We're almost there."
"Yeah, yeah, keep your shirt on, Smokey. I'll behave." The Butcher Bird smiled at him. "Besides, ain't like I- do you hear that?"
"Hear what?" Smoker asked, wondering if the ghoul was trying to mess with him.
"No, I hear it too," Herman growled. "Really high-pitched...what on earth?"
They were suddenly plunged into darkness, and Smoker started, before relaxing as he realized the train had just entered the tunnel through the quarantine walls. He'd been so focused on the pirates, he'd missed the entrance.
"Gone now," Kaneki said into the darkness. "Creepy as hell, though."
"Hrmph," Herman grunted.
The squeal of the train's brakes sounded, and the light returned just as suddenly as it had vanished, their ride gradually slowing as it moved towards a massive warehouse - one that he could already see orderly lines of people forming outside of.
"Time to get to work," he said flatly.
Things were quiet, and Herman didn't like it in the slightest.
Something about this place - maybe the smell, maybe something even his ears couldn't pick up - put him on edge, and putting that in contrast with the quiet, orderly way crates of medicine were being unloaded by the security personnel in their grey greatcoats and handed out by white-coated Marines was...disconcerting.
Kaneki had obviously come to the same conclusion - he already had all six tendrils out, scanning the crowds restlessly as he paced. Herman wasn't sure if the ghoul had noticed the half-dozen children who were trying to follow him - why the hell there were kids here, he wasn't sure, but they seemed fascinated by Kaneki even though the ghoul looked grumpier than a badger with a toothache.
Well, for Herman's part, he was more than happy to wait and conserve his energy for when the clusterfuck inevitably happened. Yes, he was expecting a clusterfuck, because that was his life, and quite frankly he was overdue for a life-or-death fight at this point.
"This place giving you the creeps too?" Tashigi asked as she walked up to him, on what would ostensibly be his blind side if not for the sheer weirdness that was his eye.
"Damn straight," he replied with a huff. "I don't like it. At all."
The woman nodded, laying one hand on the still-nameless blade at her hip.
"You know, I've wondered about something," Herman began. "Your whole...thing, is about taking named blades out of the hands of pirates, bounty hunters, the usual scumbags, right?"
"That's right. Leaving works of art in the hands of evil men...I can't allow that."
"Right, but what do you do with them afterwards?" he asked. "Are they just sitting around in your cabin right now?"
Tashigi paused.
"They are, aren't they."
"Do you have any idea how few actual swordsmen are in the Navy?" Tashigi asked heatedly. "I'm not talking about the ones who can swing around a cutlass, I mean people who are actually dedicated to the idea."
"Not a lot, I assume."
"I've met eight, and six of them already had named blades. And I'm not going to just hand them off to my superiors for them to decide. What if they give a blade to someone who's just as bad as the last wielder?"
Herman nodded. "Smart. How many do you have locked in there?"
Tashigi set her jaw and didn't answer, despite the faint blush on her cheeks.
"Tashigi, how many people have you beaten up and taken swords from?" Herman asked.
"I….might be having a difficult time entering my cabin by now," she muttered.
Herman chuckled. "Scrappy, aintcha."
"There's a lot of idiots who think a sword with a name makes them invincible. And they all seem to want to pick a fight with me."
Herman smiled. There were a lot of teeth in it. "Oh, so a lot like you, then."
"I picked a fight with you because I thought you were mocking me."
"See, this is why I'm not a swordsman. You're all so prickly about your honor."
Tashigi paused, then shrugged. "I used to think it was ridiculous, that you kept saying you weren't a swordsman, when using a named blade and fighting with it was most of what you did."
"There's a 'but' in there."
"But it makes sense, the way you fight. None of it's really...swordsmanship. Not the way I would use it, at least. What I don't get is...you listen to swords. The way you fight, or, hell, the way you just practice, it's the same way a master would with their own blade. You understand blades, a lot better than most swordsmen would, and that's the most important part, so I don't understand why you don't call yourself one anyway."
Herman sighed. "Easy enough."
Amakatta came free of its rig, the black steel humming slightly as he held the massive blade flat out in front of him. "I could," Herman continued. "Call myself that. It'd still be a lie. Swordsmen...they dedicate their lives to mastering blades. There are no other paths for them, and they revere their blades like deities. Me? I understand swords. I am a smith, that's my job. You can't revere something you see the flaws in, and once your hands forge a blade...it's hard to see them as anything but tools. Ones with quirks and gifts and spirits of their own...but still just tools."
"A good blade is a swordsman's partner," Tashigi said, eyes flashing with distaste.
"And that is why I am not one," Herman agreed. Amakatta growled in his grip as he swung the blade downward, the scattering dust off the ground with wind. "There is no blade that is equal to your own body, in my book. Blades need bodies to use them."
"That's-"
A peal of laughter cut Tashigi off, and Herman diverted his attention to where Kaneki was standing frozen. And for good reason, because a couple of the local children were trying to use his tails - the same appendages that dissolved corpses and could cut steel - as a jungle gym, ignoring the outcry from their parents and the Marines alike. Kaneki seemed utterly bewildered by the attention for several long moments, before chuckling and dropping into a cross-legged position while his tails shook the brats off.
"Right, then," the ghoul said, pulling out his pipe and lighting it. "What's got you brats so interested?"
"What are those tails?"
"You've got really weird eyes!"
"Why're you not dressed like a Marine?"
"What even are you?"
Kaneki smiled sharply as what seemed like a small army of brats materialized out of the crowd. "What am I? I'm a pirate, brats."
"But...pirates are mean," one of the kids said. "You're not mean."
"Oh, really?"
Kaneki's eyes went black-and-red. The kids remained unmoved.
"Nah," one of them said.
"Kyakahahaha...fair enough, brats. So...let me tell you a tale, then? Seems a decent way to pass the time."
"Is it scary?" one of the brats asked.
Kaneki smiled. "Only if you're a priest. So gather close, and listen. YISUN, King of Kings and God of Gods, walked with his disciple PREE ASHMA in the garden of bones and plums, which was one of YISUN's more favored places to walk, for it set the mind at unease…"
Tashigi blinked repeatedly. "Should I just pretend I didn't see that?"
"Already doing it," Herman replied. "Kaneki and children are not meant to mix."
"Agreed."
Herman paused as something seemed to ripple through the crowd of locals, someone shoving their way through with alarming speed, and -
Blood. The scent of it, tinged with something he couldn't name, reeking of madness and-
"Children. Run," Kaneki ordered.
Something, someone, burst from the crowd, moving almost too fast to be tracked as it lunged for the nearest Marine.
Herman was faster, Amakatta howling through the air as the massive blade spun end over end to pin the attacker to the dirt, the blur resolving into a thrashing man in bloody clothing impaled on the blade's length. The bloodied man howled, a sound that made every hair on Herman's body stand on end, and grabbed the blade pinning him with bloodsoaked hands, wrenching Amakatta free with a snarl and leaping back to his feet despite the growing amount of crimson drenching him.
Herman's viewpoint narrowed to just that man, as the creature locked eyes with him and bared its teeth.
It charged, crossing the distance between them in an instance, and ignored the gauntlet-clad punch that snapped its jaw in half as it grabbed Herman and slammed him into the train carriage behind him, fingers clawing at his neck, finding purchase and starting to squeeze. Herman ignored the sudden lack of oxygen, and drove his thumbs into the creature's eyeballs, which it ignored even as the orbs popped and blood ran down its face.
Herman's vision began to darken, before the pressure around his neck suddenly vanished and he realized he was holding a severed head in his hands. He dropped the grisly thing, and gave Tashigi a nod as the woman sheathed her sword again. His vision expanded out again, searching, as he stomped over to where Amakatta lay.
Kids, alright. Smoker, considering the snapped-in-half pieces of his jutte as he stood over a corpse that was missing several vital pieces thanks to Kaneki. Crowd, not reacting in the slightest to the brutal violence, nor the security personnel, though the Marines had stopped working and were milling around like idiots as they finally processed what had just happened. Kaneki...sitting down hard and shivering suddenly. What? What was he -
The Nightmare first mate tipped over slowly, and hit the ground unconscious, as his tails turned black and withered, and Herman suddenly realized that things had just gotten very complicated indeed.
Vinci stepped out of reality to the unusual sight of Smoker being restrained by his fellow Marines.
There was also the sight of Kaneki on a stretcher, shaking and shivering, blackened veins crawling up his neck with every heartbeat.
Vinci ignored both for the moment, and fixed his eyes on the two security personnel who were blocking half a company's worth of Marines and one very pissed-off Commodore from entering the Center. "Explain," he said flatly.
"We're not allowing someone who's obviously infected into -" one began before being cut off by Smoker's snarl.
"Cut the crap. He's not sick with Reaver Syndrome, you fucking know that," the Marine growled. "I just watched this bastard put himself between a crazy person and a bunch of kids without a second thought, I will not let you keep him from getting help. Now move, or be moved."
Vinci let his control over his emotions slip just enough to feel a little appreciation for Smoker's change of heart, before he glared at the two guards, both of whom paled and began to sweat. "I think you should do what he says. And send word to prepare an operating theater, now. And word to my cousin, as well." He paused. Pride demanded otherwise, but pride meant nothing against crew. "I will in all likelihood need his assistance."
The two guards exchanged glances, then ran inside, leaving the doors open. Vinci led the way into the Center, following remembered hallways instinctively as he beckoned Smoker to walk with him. "What happened."
"Two of the berserkers showed up. Herman and Tashigi handled one, other went for some kids. Broke my jutte on its head and it kept coming anyway, your man stabbed it with his tails. Then he froze up and keeled over, and the tails turned into some kind of ash. We got back as fast as we could."
Vinci nodded, already spinning through possible causes and cursing the lack of time to do a proper in-depth analysis of Reaver Syndrome's effects on ghoul tissue.
"You did the right thing," he said flatly.
They reached the operating room.
Things passed in blurs. Snapshots. Gloves and mask, on. Kaneki strapped to the operating table, muscular tremors necessitating restraints. Work of needles and scalpels, crimson blood so bright on a glass slide.
Through the microscope, Vinci saw chaos. Cells attacking others, foreign dark-colored things warring with Kaneki's C-cells. The invaders were winning, but slowly.
But still winning. Still killing his first mate.
As Vinci watched, the invaders began to attack conventional cells, injecting foreign substances into them, leaving black stains on nuclei.
Genetic rewriting.
Options.
Conventional treatment impossible beyond delaying whatever was occurring. Giving Kaneki more of the stabilized C-cell serum might give his body more resources, but with the current spread of infection it was also a delaying tactic. Consequences of dealing with the altered cells...unknown. Medical options were limited.
Save one.
Damn it, he'd only had a week to work, it wasn't guaranteed to help at all…
"Vinci."
Vinci looked up from the microscope. "Cousin," he said neutrally.
"I was not expecting you to call on me," Viktor said quietly, ignoring Kaneki.
"You do not understand me, then," Vinci said. "I have lost crew, Viktor. I cannot undo death. I have failed to keep crewmates alive, despite all my skill. And I refuse to let such a thing happen when I have the means to prevent it." He put a hand on Viktor's shoulder, concentrating for a split second. "Keep him alive. I need to retrieve something."
He stepped, reality bending and breaking, and touched down in his lab. In a secure glass tank, his latest project floated. Red on gold, a mix of differing experiments and approaches to power. The Demon's Heart.
Incomplete. Untested. Dangerous.
But, as the King's had been before it, the only option.
Vinci smiled. It was not his usual grin, but a quiet, sad thing that he knew didn't fit on his face.
Viktor would demand a price of some sort, and Vinci could already guess what it would be. Samples from Kaneki.
He did not have the right to give such a thing, and yet Viktor's assistance was the only thing that would make sure Kaneki survived implantation and the rewriting of his genetic code that the Demon's Heart would perform.
He did not have the right to put Kaneki at the whims of his untested creation, and yet it was necessary for him to live.
He did not have the right, but he would do so anyway, because at the end of the day, principles came second to family.
Doctor Franz Josef, Head of CDPR Disease Prevention, opened the door to his darkened office, clutching a stack of papers to his chest.
The moment he closed the door behind him, an arm like an iron bar closed around him, cold steel touching his throat.
"Don't you dare move," a low voice uttered, one that Franz Josef immediately recognized. The weasel-faced doctor sighed in relief.
"Grigori. Good. Saves me the trouble of having to find you without drawing too much attention."
"What."
"Well, you want to know about Reaver Syndrome, right? With your first mate in a coma?"
The steel moved slightly. "Correct," the Nightmare captain said flatly. "You're taking this better than I anticipated."
"I think...I think, in this case, we have the same goals," Josef said carefully. It wasn't the first time he'd been held at knifepoint, though it'd been a long while (since his desertion from the Kriegers, so long ago, in fact).
The captain didn't say a word, but the blade vanished, and the lights turned back on, revealing the familiar lines of desk and filing cabinets and the countless other accoutrements of Josef's job that filled his office.
Josef stepped away from the Warlord, smoothly, unhurriedly, not showing a single sign of fear at the simple fact this man could kill him in an instant. Grigori Vinci glared at him with eyes glowing gold.
"How is he?" Josef asked.
"Coma, like you said," Vinci said. "He survived implantation, and the worst effects are receding, but there's no telling when or if he'll wake up." The Warlord grimaced. "And whatever the hell it is, it isn't a plague."
"No," Franz Josef said quietly. "It isn't."
"You knew." It was not a question, but it contained another one, nonetheless. What reason can you give, that I won't kill you right now?
"I have spent, let's see..." Franz Josef began quietly as he walked to his liquor cabinet and poured himself a drink of cheap bourbon. "Call it two decades of my life, on one, single, unending task, Grigori. And that is to undo the wrongs that were committed on the city of Emory."
"What happened."
"Are you familiar with Detvitam opus? It was...something, one of your ancestors made, fifty or so years ago. Maybe a great-uncle, I'm not certain. Miraculous little thing, I think he made it by crossbreeding algae. Cleansed diseases and contaminants out of a water supply with ease. In humans, it coexisted, made them healthier. Not really stronger, but nobody would ever get sick." The liquor burned as it went down. "Testing in labs, and some small-scale efforts, went alright. No signs of side-effects. So they put it into the water supply of Emory, to see what would happen." The empty glass clicked on the wood of his desk. "Everything seemed fine. It was when they removed it from the water supply that problems cropped up. When you remove a symbiote...dysfunction follows. Reaver Syndrome...it's not a disease. It's withdrawal symptoms."
"And the medicine, then, I suppose is more of the organism," Grigori said tonelessly.
"The traces left weren't enough to keep the population sane. And we couldn't risk them leaving. So…"
"The quarantine."
"Yes. The walls house white noise generators. Keeps the organisms inside the city from dying off as easily as they do normally. Buys time to make more of them, ship them in, distribute them. Even then, someone usually goes into withdrawal before we can get to them." Franz Josef sighed. "I've been trying to find some way to remove the dependency. Nothing has worked."
"Why wall them off at all? Why keep them alive?"
"Emory has over six hundred thousand people in it. Imagine that many enraged berserkers, seeking to kill all those who aren't infected like them. The decision back then...it was made because the Elder Stars were worried that even an Admiral wouldn't be able to stop that many." Josef sighed. "So they were walled off and quarantined, kept alive by shipping in food and medicine to keep the pretense up. And this Center...it started as a place to make more of the organism. Then it became legitimate, and also...something else." He placed a hand on his desk as he walked closer to the Warlord, looking up at the man. "There are archives, deep below. Centuries old, some of them, moved here in secrecy. Every failure, every loss, that the Elder Stars wanted to keep hidden. Access is restricted, but they're there. Including the original strains of the organism."
"Why are you telling me this?"
Franz Josef let out a breath. He summoned up the same courage that had seen him throughout his fifty-seven years of life, that had led him to desert the Kriegers when Euclid Siegfried had turned his battalions on his own people.
The same courage that had seen him earn his doctorate by stubbornness and effort despite his lack of formal education beyond battlefield surgery, that had taken him to the highest position in what he'd once thought was a noble institution and had instead proven to be nothing more than a mockery of his ideals.
The same courage that had let him keep going when all his efforts to help had yielded nothing more than failed attempts at healing.
The same courage that had led him to insist on being the one to euthanize those too far gone.
The same courage that had led him through his life, now let him throw aside all meaningless pride, fall to his knees, and genuflect before the one man in the world who had the knowledge to, perhaps, succeed where he'd failed.
He drew in a deep, shuddering breath.
"I beg of you," he said, head to the floor. "Save these people. Whatever resources you need, whatever samples or documents, I will bring them despite whatever consequences may fall on me. All that matters is that this nightmare ends."
Plea made, Franz Joseph could only wait. Wait through the ticking of the clock and the beating of his heart as-
The metal-capped butt of the Warlord's scythe thudded against the floor of Josef's office, and Grigori sighed. "Stand up, man. When all else fails, I am still a doctor. To know what is wrong, and to not do what I can...I have discarded enough principles as it is. Not this one."
