In short, this is a fanfiction that's a variation of Tokyo Ghoul :re after chapter 55(ish).
Basically, Haise remains Haise through a series of differences between this fanfiction and the manga, causing a slight domino effect.
Suggestions are always welcomed, and so are requests.
Author's notes at the bottom.
With adrenaline pumping through what remained of his broken body, Haise stood on shaking legs with each breath feeling less oxygenating than the last. Doing his best to use his tunneling and blurry vision to see past the hot tears that were swelling up from the corners of his eyes, Haise stared at the psychologically damaged ghoul who he had just pierced into a half-wall of concrete and rebar.
The pain radiating from the stump where Kanae had severed his right forearm was beginning to grow numb; something that Haise himself wasn't sure was a good thing or something to worry about. Regardless of the pain he felt, or rather didn't feel, Haise's own physical pain paled in comparison to Kanae's. Just from being able to see through her stitched up eyes and lips made him feel empathetic towards her, even if she had been the one responsible for mutilating him.
So when Kanae's lips struggled to move in an attempt to articulate what she had going on through her head, Haise felt his feet instinctively taking a step back along the steel-grated rooftop ceiling underneath him.
"You are not worthy of him..." Kanae whispered hoarsely through her parted and sewn up lips; a vocal act that surprised Haise by not just the suddenness of Kanae speaking, but just from the fact that she could still speak at all.
Even with Kanae's grave injuries, she relented through her pain in order to continue to utter what she felt the need to convey.
"I'm going to kill you… And go home… With Master Shu," Kanae uttered eerily in a calm voice, before slowly turning her head to squint through her sewn up eyelids to stare longfully at Tsukiyama.
She had always felt something for her cousin, and questioned whether it was something she wanted or not. However, as Tsukiyama and Kanae locked eyes with one another while Haise turned around to begin making his way closer to him, it was then that Kanae finally realized that she didn't just love Tsukiyama.
She wanted to be loved in return.
"Kanae…" Tsukiyama whispered in a frightful and despairing tone of voice, as he began to realize the understanding of the words that she silently spoke to him, without ever needing to or previously having the courage to do so.
"Master Shuu…" Kanae whispered back, almost in a way that sounded like a plea to Haise.
By the time that he was standing before Tsukiyama, it was then that Haise realized that he exactly didn't know what to do. What should have been a simple extermination mission suddenly began to dissipate the moment Tsukiyama broke eye contact with Kanae to look up at Haise with a look of betrayal and fear in his purple eyes.
"Stay back… Y-You don't want to do this, Kaneki…" Tsukiyama stated in what seemed to be a last ditch attempt to somehow reason with the investigator before him.
Feeling a twinge of hesitation within his chest, Haise found himself unable to immediately go in for the kill before feeling the corners of his lips curl into a frown. "I'm not… I'm not Kaneki anymore." Haise replied back, which only momentarily caused Tsukiyama to lose hope before quickly regaining his composure.
"Even so, I-I can see it in your eyes… You don't want to do this," Tsukiyama said soothingly before continuing to use his words to fight rather than his own dwindling strength. "Come on…! You're a ghoul to your employers… Your life, your soul… It doesn't belong to you; n-not while CCG has their hand around your throat…!"
Normally, Haise would have had an excuse readily available to use in order to justify his relation with CCG. Not to reassure others, but to reassure himself. However, as he opened his jaw to object to Tsukiyama's bold claims, he instead found himself unable to utter a single word in response to essentially being called a slave.
There was no inner voice of Kaneki trying to convince him or sway him into believing or achieving anything, nor was there that piece of him that constantly told him to pretend that everything was going to be okay.
There were no such pleasant nor deceptive intrudes within his clearing mind; there was only the warm elevated-winds brushing against his bruised and tear-soaked cheeks, and his broken ribs twinging from the fast-paced rhythmic beats of his racing heart.
The look in Haise's eyes and the fact that he was frozen to the spot gave Tsukiyama even more hope that felt far more refreshing than the glass of iced coffee he and Kaneki had shared from a far-off time when things were more simple.
"Listen to me… I can help you…!" Tsukiyama insisted, while Haise merely stood dumbfounded and even afraid of the vacancy and seemingly newfound liberation going on within his psyche.
Rather than outright declining the idea of going against the orders of CCG, Haise paused for a moment and fumbled with his words before whispering out a dry and feeble, "H-How…?"
The traitorous word he had spoken tasted bitter on his tongue, and an immediate sense of shame washed over of his teammates and those who he considered close to him came into his mind, yet rather than summoning up the expected feeling of resolution into his being, a sense of isolation came over Haise.
'Are… Are they even my friends? They were only assigned to me to kill me if they were ordered to… Was I… Was I always this alone?' Haise pondered silently to himself within the recesses of his own mind, while anticipatingly awaiting for Tsukiyama to conjure up a plan of action to not only save himself and Kanae, but whatever remained of Kaneki.
"... Your arm," Tsukiyama said with a sudden burst of eureka, before fighting back his injuries in order to raise his hand up to point over toward Haise's bloody stump. "CCG no doubtfully will sweep the area once they realize that their mission's ending was ambiguous without my corpse anywhere nearby…" Tsukiyama said with an ever growing smile on his face, as he painfully began to rise up to his feet.
"Merde…!" Tsukiyama swore under his breath painfully, before standing up to walk past Haise in order to help his cousin up from the floor. "... Like I was saying," he said while slowly getting Kanae up to her feet, "Your severed arm, along with all of our blood spilt seemingly everywhere will give them an idea or two about what must have become of you…"
"Theoretically, of course," Tsukiyama clarified himself, before going over to Kanae's side to help her keep steady. "By the time that CCG either declares that you're missing in action or presumably dead, that'll give us more than enough time to figure out both our situations… And a game plan afterward," Tsukiyama said concludingly, before being met with the unnerving silence.
Beginning to once again feel an impending sense of dread, Tsukiyama decided to fully go-all-in into his gamble of diplomacy. Wearily and uncomfortably, the French-Japanese ghoul did his best to keep his balance as he slowly lowered his torso down with his hands at his sides to bow submissively to Haise.
"I have the means to help you once we escape, but I'm afraid I don't have the time right now to further persuade you, so… Do we have a deal…?" Tsukiyama asked with baited breath, as he felt Kanae's body beside him already beginning to tense up in preparation for if Haise were to refuse her beloved's offer.
Already caught with a conundrum of wondering what was going on inside of his head, Haise's additional hesitation stemmed from the fact that he still found himself weighing his options.
He could choose to continue on with his life, and live the life he dreamed of that was indisputably built on a foundation of lies. Haise was in a position where he had a somewhat of a good chance to finish off both Tsukiyama and Kanae. From there, he could return to his teammates and associates from CCG, who he considered to be family.
Family that would turn on him the moment CCG deemed him to be no longer of use to them.
"... I… I just want to be happy… Not to pretend that I am." Haise replied with a grim solace in his conflicted voice, and before Kanae could interpret his response as a threat, Tsukiyama rose up from his bowing position to place his hand reassuringly on his cousin's shoulder to have her stand down, before placing his other hand on Haise's shoulder; causing him to finch.
"Then stop dreaming, mon amie… Start living," Tsukiyama said firmly as he locked his purple eyes with Haise's widened-bloodshot eyes. Smiling at the confused and scared young man before him, Tsukiyama couldn't help but to once again feel the same emotions he had once harbored for Kaneki.
The lines or reality and his memory began to blur, and soon Tsukiyama found himself standing not on the rooftop of his dying family's skyscraper, but instead he was within the walls of that coffee shop he had used to lure Kaneki all those years ago.
The desire for friendship and for more replaced his past wishes of wanting to consume, and in that moment Tsukiyama realized that not only could he save himself and Kanae, but he had a chance to save whatever remained of Kaneki.
It was his chance to have his friend back.
"Okay… O-Okay," Haise muttered quietly with a still-shaken look on his face.
Upon hearing Haise's willingness to stray from the ill-gotten path that CCG had put him into, Tsukiyama's face lit up in joy. "Tres bien…!" The purple-haired man shouted out into the starless sky, before wrapping his arms around Haise, who promptly let out a small yelp of surprise.
The feeling of joy that helped Tsukiyama forget about his injuries wore off after he got his fill of hugging the other man, and soon the ghoul found himself painfully separating himself from Haise.
"Shit… Okay… Okay, that's good…" Tsukiyama said with a bit of enthusiasm in his voice before becoming somber as he gazed beyond the dark horizon to look out toward the sea of city lights that could be seen from their position on the Luna Eclipse building.
The same building that was currently under siege, and was being taken over by CCG's heavily armed and trained investigators, leaving them essentially stranded as sitting ducks.
"... Now that our little 'kumbaya session' is over, I'm afraid that our exit routes are beginning to look rather… Limited." Tsukiyama said to Haise and Kanae.
"Scaling ourselves down the building in our current states… A height from a fall this high would certainly kill us," Tsukiyama spoke in a matter-of-fact voice, as he slowly inched his way closer to the edge to get a look at the surrounding squad cars and other CCG-owned vehicles that parked around the base of Luna Eclipse's ground floor.
"... Even if we were to get down to the ground floor, we aren't going to get too far before getting gunned down or being on the receiving end of a quinque…" Tsukiyama mused aloud to his companions before succumbing to his bottled up frustration and grief that had been caused by his friends and family dying underneath his feet.
"Putain…!" Tsukiyama screamed in a shrill and emotional voice, as he slammed his fists down against the railings that separated him from the plummeting fall that was beginning to seem more and more like his only means of escape by the passing second. "Damn it… Unless we're planning on dying like martyrs in an utterly pointless attempt to fight our way out of this mess, I don't see how we're going to get out of this…" Tsukiyama said in a despairing voice, while Haise and Kanae both stared toward him in a deafening silence.
A deafening silence that was interrupted by the sound of loud and ungodly breathing from what sounded like several orifices.
In the matter of a few seconds, an elongated arm stretched out from underneath the side of the skyscraper, and warped its clawed and purple-hide hand around Tsukiyama's waist. Letting out a guttural cry of pain that overshadowed that faint sound of his rib cage being crushed, Tsukiyama was raised up above the head of a large six-appendaged kakuja that climbed its way in a grotesque manner over the edge of the rooftop railings.
"Master Shuu…!" Kanae whispered out in a hoarse cry, before quickly summoning her four pronged-tendilled kagune from her lower back. Without a sense of self preservation or even a fleeting second thought, the German ghoul zeroed in on the arm holding her beloved cousin before sprinting her way over to liberate him of the One-Eyed Owl's grip.
"My little incontent sweetheart…! Does your incestial love for your cousin go as far as willing to sacrifice yourself in vain for him?!" Eto asked mockingly, all the while easily evading Kanae's savage swinging kagune, which was used through her blind rage.
Without receiving a response that was extended past a German swear or what sounded like maddening rambles of a crazed ghoul, Eto decided to test Kanae's loyalty for her own amusement and curiosity.
A part of her knew the answer already, but that didn't make the opportunity to throw Tsukiyama off of the Luna Eclipse skyscraper any less daunting for Eto. Dodging Kanae's ever-growing-accurate attacks, the kakuja the green-haired half-ghoul was controlled halted suddenly at the North West ledge of the rooftop.
Seeing the deliciously mortifying look of fear past the torn and mutilated eyelids of the German ghoul that she had been responsible for sewing together in the first place, Eto soaked in the despair on Kanae's face before casually tossing Tsukiyama's weakened body over her kakuja's front shoulder.
"Whoops, clumsy me~!" Eto cheerfully said outloud in a demented voice, before taking a slight step to the side in order to take witness at just how fast Kanae willingly sprinted over to her, just to leap off of the roof.
Turning her back to Haise in order to watch the spectacle, Eto watched with anitpcation and excitement in her eyes as she watched the seemingly dramatic scene taking place before her kakuja's very eyes.
At first, there was the bellowing and heart wrenching cry of Kanae screaming for Tsukiyama.
Then, there was the spectacle of seeing Kanae finally dive her way over to where the French-Japanese ghoul was free falling. As they embraced, Eto watched as what presumably were heartfelt words being spoken to one another before she watched Kanae using her kagune to redirect Tsukiyama's velocity so that he would survive the fall by throwing him further out in a completely different direction.
Finally, there was the quiet splattering sound of Kanae's body against the asphalt below.
Satisfied with the performance that was on display for her viewing pleasure, Eto let out a perverse grunt of joy that would have shivered Haise down to his core. An elongated and sickly-colored tongue whipped itself up out of her kakuja's thin and toothy-grin.
"Oh my, my…! How rude of me to allow myself to get caught up in such distractions!" Eto sarcastically cackled aloud, while turning her kakuja around to be positioned back to where she last saw Haise standing. "... I would have heard the rooftop door closing, Haise… There was a reason why I led that imbecile over here in the first place; to block off your only hope of exit." Eto said revealingly to Haise, who she knew must have been still on the roof with her.
"There were no sounds of glass breaking, metal parting... Nothing to indicate that you've escaped me, my child," Eto beckoned out onto the rooftop, while slowly beginning to maneuver her kakuja up on its legs to begin searching for any traces of where Haise was currently hiding.
Searching underneath the aluminum vents that connected themselves to each air conditioning unit that she crawled over, Eto's patience was beginning to waiver the longer she fruitlessly looked for the one-eyed ghoul.
Using her sensitive hearing proved useless due to her being unable to hear anything that sounded remotely like breathing over the loud fans built into the various fans on top of the roof, and even her sense of smell proved pointless due to the fact that Haise's scent had been everywhere due to his gory battle against Kanae.
"Come on out, Haise…! Arima wouldn't cower away in the corner; he wouldn't hide like a helpless child…" Eto said tauntingly out loud in an attempt to get a reaction out of Haise that would help her pinpoint his location to her. When that didn't work as she expected it, Eto instead chose to merely give into her frustration.
"You think you're clever, do you?! Think you've outsmarted me, huh?! Huh, you COWARD!?" Eto screamed, before letting out a bellowing symphony of screeches from her mouth as well as the mouths that lined her kakuja's arms and body that could be heard over the hustle being emanated by CCG's ground personnel and Luna Eclipse's occupants alike.
Flaying her kakuja's clawed hands out, Eto mercilessly began to tear apart the ceiling of its large metallic fans that annoyed her, along with the air conditioning units and insulated-aluminum pipes that connected them to one another. Not even the grated floor was safe from her rampage, as she began to take handfuls of flooring, rebar and debris from the rooftop's foundation, before carelessly tossing whatever fit into her kakuja's hand over the rooftop.
Drowning out whatever sounds could have had been made by Haise, Eto's maniacal laughter and screams alongside with the sounds of metal screeching and concrete crumbling was what gave the investigator an small window of time to move underneath the metal grating that she wasn't ripping into. The One-Eyed Owl's compromised patience and composure was quickly punished by the sudden feeling of her kakuja's chest being pierced open from underneath her.
Being pried open like a crab, Eto could feel legs being torn off from her body while Haise's kagune ripped through her armored kakuja before completely bisecting her by surprise.
Landing onto the a piece of metal grated floor that Haise had managed to climb underneath without alerting her, Eto felt a pair of hands clamping down on her shoulders before being pulled out of her kakuja's bisected husk.
Being tossed into a pile of rubble that she had created during her rampant search for Haise, Eto gritted her teeth together in anger as she looked up at the one-armed young man who stood over her with a still-shaken expression on his face.
"That hurt… Damn it, you stupid half-witted piece of shit…! You're no better than-"
"-Hey… Arima would have dodged that, wouldn't he?" Haise said interrupting, with a small and taunting grin spreading across his dusty lips. "
Haise's unexpected sass, needless to say, surprised Eto, who was completely caught off guard by the attitude being displayed on the young man who was only moments ago caught in an existential crisis.
Letting out a dry chuckle, she allowed herself to continue to snicker dryly while trying to summon a kagune to attack Haise with. When it soon dawned on her that her assailant had torn her kakuhou sacs from her, Eto continued to laugh while her hands searched for a piece of rebar to clobber and maime Haise with.
That's when Haise used his kagune to pierce her chest, in order to prevent her from escaping. "It's over… You'll be going to Owlcatraz Prison when I'm done with you...!"
Eto's knee-jerk reaction to punish Haise for making a inappropriately timed pun was diminished by the sudden realization of just where she and Haise were located upon the rooftop.
More specifically, just how close he had unknowingly thrown her towards the ledge of the destroyed rooftop.
Smiling with a genuine expression of malice on her blood-stained face, Eto reached her arms up to grab hold of the tendril piercing her lower chest. Looking at Haise's suddenly confused and worried face, Eto chuckled slowly with an amused and curious look in her eye before uttering out, "... Care to wager on that?"
Using her blinding speed that outmatched Haise's reaction time, Eto used the one-eyed ghoul's kagune as a pole to lift her bisected and torn-bandaged body up at a rapid pace. While Haise was still trying to figure out what was going on, Eto sunk her teeth into his shoulder to fasten her grip on him before wrapping her arms around his back.
Manipulating the panicked investigator who was only now beginning to realize that he too had been caught in a prompt-to-trap, Eto was able to use her weight and muscle to get Haise close enough to the roof's railing to pull not only herself off of the top of the Luna Eclipse building, but Haise with her.
Figuring that she was about to die, and she really didn't want to hear Haise screaming into her ear before they met the same fate that Kanae did, Eto removed her mouth from his bleeding shoulder before closing her lips around his as they fell toward the ground below at their combined terminal velocity.
She figured she'd at least get to know what it was like to kiss someone before meeting her grave end.
Apologies for the short opening chapter, but I'd figure I'd try to write shorter chapters to help pace the story well.
It's been a while since I've last written a Tokyo Ghoul fanfiction piece; let alone fanfiction in general.
I'm not a huge anime nor manga fan outside of the mecha and classic genre, but Tokyo Ghoul has almost stuck out to me more than any other manga, and thus I enjoy its lore and expanding on it from time to time.
As for this piece, I've decided to work on the concept of Haise Sasaki never transforming into the Black Reaper, or ever in a sense 'die' for the sake of Ken Kaneki's return.
So to speak, that is.
Please leave a review if you have the time, or would like to suggest anything else. I'm even open to changes if it'll improve the story.
Thank you!