Corie=28
Kaneki=23
Corie stood at the entrance to Amon's room. "Hey, we have a lead on Kanou and my cousin. We're going to head out."
"Okay," Amon replied, confused that she felt the need to tell him this. She never told them about their missions before unless it was as she was already halfway out the door and warning him to stay out of sight while they were gone.
"Do you want to come?"
"What?"
"I think you've had enough training by now, and you have good enough control over your kagune. But…we need your word that if we happen to run into any investigators…you won't turn on us."
Amon looked at her firmly. "I won't turn on you, but I won't kill any of them either."
Corie nodded. "I understand. Good enough for me. You'll be needing a mask then." She handed him a full-face black mask. "It's only a spare so it might not fit perfectly, but it's all we've got for now. I know you have friends at the CCG, but you have to keep that on if they see you. No one can promise that they won't try to kill you if they find out what's happened to you."
Amon wanted to protest, but having worked there himself, he knew there was some truth to her words. Investigators were trained to eradicate anything resembling a ghoul on sight, and the chances were slim that any of them would give him the chance to explain.
"Kaneki leads our group, so you have to listen to whatever he says."
It felt strange to have someone nearly ten years younger than him telling him what to do, but Eyepatch had much more experience in the ghoul world than he did and though it defied reason, he had to come to trust the kid.
Corie donned her red and white mask, and the both of them joined the others in the café before heading out into Tokyo.
Amon had little experience using his enhanced stamina to get around since he had never been further than the training area, but everyone patiently helped him get the hang of maneuvering across rooftops and through alleyways to avoid the citizens' eyes.
Before long, he was able to keep up with them with little assistance.
Once they arrived at the location that housed their latest lead, Corie pulled Amon back. "I'm going to ask you one more time. Once we get in there, all of us are going to have your back. Can we trust you to have ours?"
Another person might be offended that she kept asking the same question, but Amon knew her lack of trust in him was warranted. Investigators had done nothing but hurt ghouls for centuries and their trust in him would be difficult to fully earn.
"Yes, you can," he answered firmly.
Hearing his resolve, Corie made her way into the building with the others.
The large group walked through the halls looking for Eto or any other poor souls they might be able to save from her clutches.
The sound of familiar giggles reached Corie's ears.
"That's her!" she exclaimed as she ran off in the direction of the voice.
"Corie, wait!" Kaneki called after her.
Amon shook his head. For someone who stressed listening to Eyepatch, she was pretty bad at following her own instructions.
He and Kaneki started after her, but someone blocked their way.
They hadn't counted on having company.
Several CCG investigators who had also gained information on Dr. Kanou and the One-Eyed Owl stood in front of them, their quinques at the ready.
"Oh, great," Touka growled.
Kaneki didn't have time for this. He couldn't let Corie face her deranged cousin by herself. She had only been able to defeat Arima with his help. There was no way she could fight the One-Eyed Owl on her own. Why on earth had she run off without them? Surely she knew that would be a battle she couldn't win!
First, he'd have to get past these Doves.
Together with the small group of friends he had formed thanks to his sister, everyone released their kagunes and began to engage in battle with the investigators.
He was pleasantly surprised to find that Amon fought on their side and did not immediately side with the Doves. While he never did enough damage to grievously injure any of the investigators, he didn't let them hurt the ghouls either.
But then one person appeared in the fight that made both Kaneki and Amon pause.
Akira Mado.
This woman had been such a huge influence on both of them. She'd been a mother figure to Kaneki during his time as Haise and she'd been a strong and worthy partner beside Amon after her father's death.
Of course, she didn't realize who she was fighting.
With no hesitation, she whipped her quinque in Amon's direction and grazed his shoulder.
The injury quickly brought him back to his senses.
He was so foolish. He knew better than anyone that even the slightest pause in a fight could cost him his life.
"We can't stay here," Kaneki said quietly so only Amon could hear. "Corie's going to get herself killed. Let's finish this."
Meanwhile, Corie found herself in an empty chamber, her cousin's maniacal giggle echoing throughout the entire room.
"Eto, enough!" Corie demanded. "I'm done trying to help you. You want to kill me, then go ahead. But I warn you that I am not going down easily!"
Eto's massive kakuja form slammed onto the ground. She pulled back part of it to reveal herself. "Dear old Dad wouldn't like that, would he?"
"My uncle means everything to me, but I'm not going to clean up after him anymore. There's only one way for this to end."
Keeping her feet planted on the ground and her head cleared, Corie released her kagune and delivered blow after blow to her.
Unfortunately even with her head as clear as could be, she could barely do any damage to someone who had built up such a strong armor over the years.
Eto laughed and slammed Corie into the far wall with one of her large appendages. Corie gasped in pain and fell to the ground coughing up blood onto the white floor. Mustering up what remained of her strength, she struck Eto again but in her weakened state, it did even less damage than before.
Eto just laughed before hitting Corie again which sent her careening in the opposite direction.
A glass covering encased Corie against the steel she had slammed into.
Eto shed her kakuja form and spryly jumped over to face Corie inside the glass tube.
Corie banged on the glass. "What are you doing? What is this?"
"Well, after you freed dear old Dad, Kanou didn't have a kakuhou to work with anymore. So I figured we could use yours instead. Your kagune is quite remarkable, and I think we'll be able to do things with it we never could have imagined."
"Why do you need a kakuhou? Why turn people into ghouls? What will that accomplish?"
"Ghouls are superior to humans in every way, my darling cousin, or haven't you learned that yet? If they are going to hate us without knowing us, then the best option is to show them what it's like, right?"
"You can't keep doing this. We need flesh to survive. We'll run out of food at the rate you're going."
"No need to worry about that. I don't know if you've noticed, but half-ghouls taste pretty good." She smirked as she put her hands behind her back. "You know, this was a little out of order of how things were supposed to happen, but I've always been one to adapt."
"What does that mean?"
"Kaneki was supposed to die in that fight with Arima. I knew that would crush you enough so that you wouldn't care anymore if I killed you, or better yet, tortured you."
"You planned for that fight?"
"I planned everything. Who do you think pointed Rize towards a certain café in the 20th ward? Who do you think dropped the steel beams on her in the first place?"
Corie's breathing came in short gasps. "You…you were responsible for that?"
"The second I saw Kaneki, I could see how he resembled my darling little cousin, Reo. And I knew that meant you would do anything to keep him safe. So I decided to let you. Of course, I had to make sure you failed sometimes, such as when I let Yamori take him or when he went to go fight Arima and he almost killed him that night."
Corie felt like she couldn't breathe.
"The only thing that's happened that I didn't count on was Kaneki walking out of that second fight with Arima alive. I never could've guessed that someone would be able to beat him."
Corie banged on the glass as hard as she could. "I'm going to kill you!"
Eto looked at her pitifully. "Oh, you're not going to be doing much of anything in a few minutes. Kaneki will die tonight while you are stuck in here waiting for your kakuhou to be harvested. Do you know what happened to Rize when we used her kakuhou? She went insane from the never-ending grueling process. But you're tough. It won't happen to you. Maybe."
A foul-smelling liquid began to fill the tube. Corie realized this was the same liquid used to keep her uncle in stasis. If she didn't get out of here, she was going to end up just like him.
Corie frantically banged on the glass. "Eto, don't do this! Eto! ETO!"
Eto giggled and bounded off.
Trying to keep her panic down, Corie tried to reform her kagune, but she couldn't make the organ appear. The area inside the tube was too small and the terrible smell of the liquid was messing with her senses.
It was now up to Corie's knees.
The members of Kaneki's group had managed to render nearly every single investigator useless either through some form of injury or by destroying their quinque.
The only one left was Akira.
She glared at the group of ghouls, breathing heavily as she tried to ignore the throbbing pain in her shoulder. "Someone I respected once told me to fight, even if it cost me my life."
Amon froze.
"And that's what I'm going to do. But I'm going to take at least one of you down with me!"
Akira whipped her quinque at Touka, but Amon leapt in front of it and took the blow himself.
Touka stared at the former investigator in disbelief as he cried out in pain. This man, the same one who had sought her out with a vengeance, the same one whom she had caused so much pain, had protected her from a quinque. If she had had any doubts about him being on their side before, she didn't now.
However, in the process of protecting her, Amon's ill-fitting mask fell off his face.
Akira's eyes widened. "…Amon?" she said softly. "No…you died."
Amon looked back at his former partner in shame. What could he possibly say to her in this moment? With his winged kagune extending from his back, he could feel her betrayal and anger radiating towards him.
"I don't understand," she bit out.
Before Amon could explain any further, a loud growl sounded from the other end of the building. One all of them would recognize anywhere.
The One-Eyed Owl.
None of them were currently equipped to fight that monster. All of the investigators were out of commission, the ghouls were exhausted, and Corie was completely AWOL.
"Get out," Amon growled. "Get your comrades and get out now."
Akira glared back at him, furious that he was now one of them and even more furious that he had been alive and had never contacted her. "I am not going to abandon my post."
"I said get out. If you stay here, that thing will kill all of you. And I am not going to let you die here like this."
Akira pressed her lips together, conflicted. She wanted answers and she wanted them now, but he was right. If they stayed here, they were going to get massacred. Sometimes a good leader had to know when the better decision was to leave the fighting for another day.
Resolving to find answers later, she and the other investigators who could still stand began to help the ones who were too injured to walk properly exit the building before the Owl appeared and slaughtered them.
Kaneki turned to his group. "Touka, Takizawa, Kurona, come with me and Amon to find Corie. The rest of you keep that thing distracted. Do not fight it. Just give us enough time to find Corie and then get out of here. Leave the fight for when we have more strength."
Amon, Kaneki, Touka, Takizawa, and Kurona rushed in the direction Corie had gone while being careful to avoid the Owl.
When Kaneki stumbled into the same chamber Corie had found earlier, his heart nearly came out of his chest.
Corie stared back at him from a glass tube. A tube now completely filled with the same liquid that had encased Yoshimura. She weakly banged on the glass as her eyes drooped closed.
"Corie!" he cried.
Kaneki released his kagune and prepared to slam it into the tube.
"Eyepatch, stop!" Amon ordered.
"I've got to help her!"
"I know. But if you just slam it too hard, you might accidentally hurt her too."
"So what do we do?"
Amon frantically looked around the space for anything that looked like it would open up the tube. But he didn't see anything, and he didn't have time to search for it. Every second he wasted out here was one more second Corie didn't have any air.
"We need to detach the case from the wall," he finally said.
"How are we going to do that?" Kaneki asked quickly.
"By taking out the wall itself. Everyone ready your kagunes. Rabbit and I will send projectiles around the case. Eyepatch will take the top, Takizawa will take the left, Kurona will take the right."
Kaneki, Takizawa, and Kurona positioned themselves across from the case and released their kagunes.
"On the count of three, everyone hit the wall at the same time," Amon ordered. "You three, be prepared to catch the steel so it doesn't crush her. One, two, three!"
As the three rinkakus hit the wall with each of their kagune tentacles, Amon and Touka leapt up into the air and released a swarm of hardened projectiles in an arc above the case.
The wall cracked, but the case didn't budge.
"Again!" Amon shouted. "One, two, three!"
They all repeated the same action despite being weakened both from the previous fight and from the exertion of using their kagunes with such force.
Amon realized that this was why Corie was so hard on him when training him. So that when the time came when a life depended on his strength when he felt weakest, he knew how to find more strength to keep going.
The wall cracked further.
"One more time! One, two, three!"
The case finally detached itself and fell forward. The glass case shattered, and the rinkaku kagunes whipped out to catch the steel wall that made up the back of the case before it fell too far. Liquid spilled onto the floor along with Corie's limp form.
"Rabbit, come help me! Careful, watch the glass."
Touka and Amon quickly and carefully extracted Corie from the pile of shattered glass. Once she was clear, the other three let the steel wall drop.
Amon knelt down and began administering chest compressions. "Eyepatch, come here. When I say 'hold', I want you to give her two breaths, got it?"
"Yes!" Kaneki said as he raced to Corie's side.
After about twenty seconds of compressions, Amon stopped. "Hold."
Kaneki tilted Corie's mouth up, pinched her nose, and gave her two breaths.
Amon continued administering compressions, but there was no response.
"Hold."
Two more breaths.
After one more round of compressions, Corie lurched to the side and coughed up the liquid she had inhaled. She took deep gulps of air in between ragged coughs.
Amon leaned back as he sighed in relief, sweat dripping down his forehead from the exertion of doing compressions.
Kaneki helped her sit up and held her close to him, his head pressing onto hers. "I thought you were dead…"
Corie's bottom lip trembled as she clutched onto his arm. "You're…not getting rid of me that easily."
She closed her eyes as she let Kaneki hold her, trying to fight back tears. She now realized just how much Eto's hatred of her had escalated. It wasn't enough to kill the people she loved before killing her. She wanted Corie to suffer for as long as she could possibly draw it out.
If she didn't somehow stop her soon, Corie was going to be tortured into insanity.