Author's notes at the bottom.

Chapter Two: The Electric Boogaloo.

Updates:

14-May-2021: Changed the beginning to Haise actually enjoying the taste of Eto's blood. Thank you for pointing that out, Reviewbruh, and I'll answer your inquiry at the bottom.

While plumpting to one's doom and receiving one last kiss before inevitably splattering on the Earth might have been romantic to some people in theory, but Haise couldn't say that he himself was a fan of what Eto was doing to him.

The taste of her blood mixed in with her saliva was, as much as Haise hated to admit it, perhaps the sweetest and most savory flavors that had ever graced his taste buds. But to Haise, the sweet flavor of the kiss was sullied due to him receiving it from the One Eyed Owl herself, a half-ghoul who had been responsible for a significant amount of trauma in his life and his past life as well.

Not to say that he secretly didn't enjoy it, but all in all, the part where Eto was seemingly trying to kill him was perhaps what ruined it for him.

All in all, Haise wasn't having the best of days.

"Mmpphhh… Guh!" Haise grunted out through his muffled screams, before finally being able to shove Eto away from him to free himself of her lips.

Gaining what little composure he could maintain while falling down rapidly with the wind blowing into his eyes, Haise did his best to not gaze down toward the asphalt below and instead focused on getting a barring on his surroundings.

"LET'S DIVE HEAD FIRST~!" Eto screamed gleefully into Haise's ear, which soon caused the panicked young man to hear an agonizing ringing in his left eardrum.

"Let go of me...!" Haise gasped out in a stressful tone, as he did his best to resist Eto trying to reposition him and her to have the top of their heads facing down toward the ground below.

Needing to act faster than he could think, the corners of Haise's eyes immediately darted over to just past his shoulder where he noticed just how dangerously close they were to the side of Luna Eclipse's wall. Propelling his kagune out, which meant having to pull one out of Eto's lower torso, Haise used his purple-tinted tendrils to pierce through the side of the skyscraper to begin the process of slowing his fall into what he hoped to be a halt.

Upon seeing what Haise was trying to do, Eto immediately buried her face into his chest to avoid catching any tiny pieces of glass from the windows into her green eyes. Wanting to stop Haise from saving himself, but knowing that if she were to remove her hands from his back to stop him it would risk her falling off of him, Eto immediately decided to pull herself even closer to Haise to try and rip his throat out with her bare teeth.

Only having enough time to react after Eto's teeth had already broken his skin, Haise used his only remaining hand to reach up toward the half-ghoul's throat to begin straggling her in an attempt to have her involuntarily release her grip on his throat.

If he were to remove her forcefully by pulling her away from his throat, Haise knew that he would essentially be helping Eto rip his own jugular out.

Immediately beginning to gag the moment she felt Haise's hand crushing her windpipe, Eto's jaw unclenched as she started to gasp for a fleeting breath of debris-filled air, all the while noticing that their momentum was beginning to come to a closing stop.

Due to them stopping just a mere story above where they would have undoubtedly met their ends, Eto no longer saw any reason to hold onto Haise for the sake of taking him down with her.

As flashlights from various CCG patrol cars and red-laser sights began to lock onto the two, various onlookers and investigators began to close in on the two's hanging location, and watched as Eto took one hand off of Haise's shoulder to begin strangling him back in retaliation.

Off in the nearby distance, just North of the property within the safety of his well armored vehicle, CCG's Division II chief, Itsuka Marude, had his hands full with all the reports that had been flooding in.

Having only been given a thirty minute notice before arriving at Luna Eclipse to act as the coordinator for the additional support given onto Division I after they had sent a request for immediate assistance to the Main Office, Marude was already stressed before being given a heavy workload the moment his armored vehicle was parked.

During what should have been a straightforward operation, the surviving Tsukiyama members who had tried fleeing on their private helicopter had been shot down by CCG's own aerial support helicopter. A short-lived victory that was quickly diminished moments after their helicopter had been destroyed after an unidentified figure had stowed itself away on one of its landing skids.

The same helicopter that held CCG's Bureau Director of the Main Office's son, Matsuri Washuu.

Thankfully for the Bureau Director's sake, and Marude's own career's sake as well, he had received reports that the Division II's officer had managed to grapple rope down the failing helicopter and through a window along the Luna Eclipse before it could crash.

Another short lived victory that was squandered by the additional intell that came following suit.

About five minutes after Matsuri's helicopter had first been sighted spiraling down, another report came through after Marude just received the first batch of intel about two unidentified persons who were last seen by multiple personnel stationed on the North West side to be falling down the side of the skyscraper's roof.

After receiving confirmation about one body landing, Marude was trying to figure out why he was receiving reports about the aforementioned body being reported as missing; and more importantly, why he wasn't getting any responses from the initial investigators who had reported the findings to him in the first place.

That's when the stressed out chief received a panicked, and not very well articulated, new piece of intel that made Marude immediately begin to alert all ground support and investigators alike.

The tall and ungodly ghoul that had taken so many of his investigators, Noro, had been reported by the Qunix squad to have suddenly ceased fighting against them and the investigators inside in the matter of a few minutes after the body had first gone missing.

According to Ginshi Shirazu, the squad's deputy underneath Haise Sasaki, he and his team were unable to give chase, due to their injuries.

Shirazu's last known sighting of Noro was of seeing four large tentacles tearing their way through multiple floors and downward toward the bottom floor at a frighteningly fast speed.

Just when all Hell seemed to be coming loose for Marude, one last radio transmission had caught him extremely off guard and nearly sent him over the edge.

"C-Chief Marude?! Chief Marude, do you copy?!" A surprisingly feminine-sounding voice bellowed out through the speakers of Marude's headset; a voice that the man recognized as belonging to a particular member of S1 Squad.

More noticeably, it was the operation's commanding officer.

Grabbing his receiver device from the built-in communications radio in front of him, Marude quickly pressed down on the small black button along the side of the radio equipment before speaking out in a calm, yet stern, voice.

"This is Chief Marude of Division II. What's your status Special Class Koori?" Marude inquired over the radio, and no sooner than a few seconds after his question had been sent out through air waves over an encrypted radio signal did he receive a response.

"Chief, I-Ihei's downstairs with the medics, b-but before I could make sure she and the rest of the i-injured were sent out to the medical ba-bay, w-we heard a loud crash and-"

While Marude understood that even some of the most hardened of his investigators had moments of panic, it was still his job to speed along Koori's report as fast as he could.

"-Your report, Special Class Koori; what is it you have to report?" Marude asked in an impatience tone that even then wasn't an accurate portrayal of just how stressed he was in.

"-Haise's outside, hanging from the second story… South West... H-He's in a scuffle with some green haired girl in bandages… I…. I think she's a ghoul…?"

"Her eye…? H-Her eye?! I-I think, I think…!?"

"Koori, you need to calm down and tell me-"

"-IT'S HER! SHE'S THE ONE EYED OWL!"

Nearly throwing his headset off of his head after having his ears violated by the shrill screaming coming from Koori and the other investigators with him, Marude quickly turned his attention towards the emergency receiver he kept separate from his other comm links.

"This is Itsuki Marude, of Division II…! All vehicles equipped with mounted turrets fitted with heavy-caliber rounds, report to the South West of the Luna Eclipse…! Target the kakujas, and open fire until you run out of ammunition..."

"... All investigators who are fit for combat, take a defensive position behind the cover fire that the turrets will provide…"

"... Engage the One Eyed Owl and Noro once their kakujas have been neutralized…"

"You have your orders… Now commence operations!"

With his instructions given out that he knew would put Haise within the crosshairs of CCG's primary targets, Marude fell back into his chair with a gruff sigh escaping his parted lips.

Splayed out on his chair with a million thoughts racing through his head, all the overworked man could think to do in that very moment was to reach down into his trenchcoat's pocket to retrieve his flintbox lighter, and what remained of his pack of cigarettes.

The short timeframe between Haise's sneak attack on her and the time it took to fall down the side of Luna Eclipse was all the time Eto needed to recover enough of her body to strike back. Seeing how her plan to kill both Haise and herself had gone bust, Eto knew that it was now or never that she formed her own escape plan.

As her newly-healed kakuhou sacs began to multiply within her regenerating body, Eto was granted enough strength to swiftly overpower Haise's hold on her neck. Feeling her kagune beginning to take more and more of its form around her lower body to allow her to generate another kakuja to fight her way out of CCG's perimeter,, Eto used one of her hands to let go of Haise to grab his arm that he was using to choke her.

Grabbing his arm with one hand while using her other hand to place her left palm underneath his elbow, Eto was able to effortlessly break his arm to free herself from his grasp. A sickening crack was all Haise could hear in his eardrums, before feeling himself losing control of his kagune's hold of the building's rebar-ridden concrete wall.

Letting out a victorious chortle, Eto made sure to shove Haise underneath her as they fell to help break her fall. Landing on top of Haise as they finally made contact with the pavement below, Eto took pleasure in hearing the all-too familiar sounds of ribs breaking underneath her legless torso.

With the idea of using the same kakuja she had produced up on the roof of the skyscraper to assist in her escape, Eto's kagune grew more and more into grotesque form that began to quickly spread out over her back.

"So close, yet so, so far… Isn't that right, you incompetent child?!" Eto spat out in a taunting manner, all the while making sure to pin Haise against the bloodied asphalt with the use of her functioning hands.

A luxurious bodily function that one-armed Haise with his broken other arm didn't quite have the means to during that very moment.

Unable to defend himself, Haise watched as Eto smiled menacingly in a sadistic fashion. Sliding the tip of her finger with her free hand to trace her way down from his throat to where she figured his naval would be, Haise felt the stark cold sensation of utter dread wrapping itself over his body as he watched her rip open his lower shirt to expose his stomach.

"Before I go… I'm going to make sure that have a quick bite for the road," Eto said in a voice that was eerily cheerful, all the while she made sure to lock her eyes onto Haise's own; just so she could feel the rush of dopamine coursing through her body from seeing the look of terror in his eyes. "... It's time for you to die, Haise… Good-!?"

Cut off by the distant symphony of gunfire from seemingly all directions around them, Eto's eyes bulged in surprise. Clenching her jaw together, the half-ghoul appeared mentally switch gears before focusing on regenerating her kagune at a rapid enough pace to keep up with the heavy rain of bullets tearing through her underdeveloped kakuja.

Haise could have sworn he even heard a low moan of agony beginning to escape from her gritted teeth the moment after he began to realize that not only were the personnel outside using turrets to pin her down with suppressive fire, but from what Haise could see from underneath her protective umbrella-shaped kagune, Eto was essentially being used as target practice for whatever investigator outside that wielded a ranged quinque.

Bullets, kagune crystals, explosives, bolts of superheated RC-cells; it seemed like everything but the kitchen sink was being used to tear through Eto's diminishing defenses.

"I-Isn't it funny…?!" Eto called out to him under the great deal of stress and agony she was experiencing. Staring down at him with beads of sweat drenched down her forehead, Eto stared intently at Haise as she continued to speak to him.

"The same v-very people you probably thought of to be your friends… They're fully willing to throw your life under the bus and write you off as collateral damage..." Eto mused through her gritted teeth, before finally succumbing to her injuries enough to let out a howl of pain mixed in with a manic fit of laughter. "... If only they truly saw you as one of them… Maybe they would have done more to save you rather than damn you."

By that time, Haise was able to gather his wits enough to notice that she had already released her hold of his neck. Making sure to take it easy with the arm Eto had just moments ago broken, Haise fought back against the unpleasantness of coughing up a wad of blood before finally spitting out what must have been several ounces of it onto the pavement below him.

"G-Go," Eto muttered through her tightened lips, as she stared at Haise with a somewhat bittersweet smile on her face, "T-There's no point in both of us actually dying; not like this, anyway..." Eto said, in as calm a voice as she could muster. "… Do whatever it is you n-need to do; just get out of here."

The part of Haise that claimed loyalty to CCG that had begun to waiver ever since his recent negotiations with Tsukiyama on the rooftop, the very same part of him that would have wanted to deny Eto of what she said, was seemingly dead and gone as he stood behind the organic shield that the half-ghoul was unintentionally providing for him.

Feeling that same hated emotion of isolation once more, Haise was met with the both profound and undesirable realization that he truly was on his own during that moment. Either he died there with Eto, or he could try leaving her to her fate and live another day as a disposable member of CCG, and pretend that he was a valued member of their organization.

There were no voices within his head to help him, other than his own conscience and the words he remembered from Tsukiyama up on the rooftop.

"Then stop dreaming, mon amie… Start living..." Haise remembered Tsukiyama telling him.

'... Start living,' Haise repeated to himself within his mind one last time, before looking onward to where Eto was struggling to keep up with CCG's platoon.

Without even having the knowledge of who Eto was outside of CCG's intel on her, Haise wished he had known her well enough on a personal level to know her name beforehand as he approached her.

Staring up at him with an utterly dumbfounded look on her face, Eto was met with an empathic look in Haise's grey eyes as he opened his mouth to begin speaking what he figured might be his final words to the half-ghoul before him.

A potentially inspirational speech that was immediately cut short by the Earth-trembling boom that came from the large explosive ordnance that landed a direct hit on the One Eyed Owl's back.

That single armor-piercing quinque shard was all that was needed to finally shatter Eto's kagune, and soon Haise's fell onto the floor under the weight of Eto's gory heaps of her underdeveloped kakuja, that collapsed on the both of them.

Before Haise's earing was overtaken by a high-pitch ringing and his vision went to black, the young man heard Eto speak weakly in what might have been her last moments alive.

"Y... You're a dumbass..."

With his handy and refurbished quinque 'Higher Mind' laying down by his feet, Special Class Investigator Mougan Tanakamaru stood proudly in front of the line of defense, where his fellow investigators stood back in awe.

Having been the bravest of them to gather enough courage to storm his way underneath the rounds of bullets being fired from all directions, the mustached man had managed to visually pinpoint the weakest location on the One Eyed Owl's bubbling mass of flesh and kagune before firing a q-metal tipped rocket from a launcher designed for vehicle mounting.

The two-meter long canister he had fired from the hip had dislocated his left shoulder, but his aim proved itself to be true in the end, and as he stood victorious for feeling responsible for being the one to put the horrid half-ghoul down, Mougan watched with a feeling of inspiring patriotism dwelling within him as he witnessed his fellow investigators rushing in with their quinques drawn; all of them prepared in to kill whatever wasn't torn to shreds by shrapnel.

That sense that they had finally gotten the upper hand against Aogiri Tree during their series of bumps in the road all came tumbling down upon seeing four large tentacles tearing through the walls above where the One Eyed Ghoul now laid in a bloodied heap of disintegrating RC-cells.

Poking his kakuja's two-mouth head out of the destroyed South West wall of Luna Eclipse like an unholy rose bud, Noro let out a defiant roar as he pulled himself of the hole he had created to begin making his advancement towards the surrounding vehicles who were once again firing everything they had in order to hold the beast back long enough for the investigators to retreat back toward their defensive positions.

Unfortunately for many of those who ran their fastest to escape Noro's wrath, only a few of those men and women who were closest to the perimeter of turret-mounted vehicles managed to flee with their lives.

The rest were promptly crushed by the sheer mass of Noro's colossal kakuja, who seemed to care only about redirecting as much as the gunfire as he could away from what remained of Eto.

Noro had always known that he had been biding his time. His ability to regenerate and his kakuja's size made him a nightmare to CCG; he was just as infamous to them as the boogieman was to children.

However, as he felt his kakuja being torn to ribbons by heavy ordnance artillery and various different kinds of ranged quinques, the sinking realization of his end finally drawing nearer and nearer to him by the passing second made whatever remained of his mummified heart sink deeper into his chest.

In his mind, Noro had been too late to rescue Eto from harm; he wasn't even sure if she was still breathing, truth be told. All Noro had left in the world that wanted him annihilated was the small possibility that Aogiri Tree's leader would be able to somehow, by a miracle or sheer luck, live to see another day.

It was that steadfast hope that was all that Noro still had left to cling to in his destruction. He watched emotionlessly as two of his tentacles were blown off, slowing down his movements to a fatal halt.

Left immobile, all Noro could do was pray that Eto was still somehow alive, or that she could at least forgive him for not being there to protect her when she needed him the most.

"... I'll see you on the other side, Eto," Noro spoke aloud for whatever god or other deity that cared enough to listen to his final woes.

With nothing else left to say or do other than to fruitless sway his remaining tentacles around to take as many lives as he could with him, Noro remained silent and retreated into his thoughts towards his fondest memories of being with the woman he considered to be his foster daughter, as he waited for the investigators to come closing in once his kakuja had been eviscerated enough for them to tear him apart with their quinques.

His death was not going to be glamorous, nor was it going to be quick or painless in the least bit.

Thank you for the review, Guest; whoever you may be!

In case it wasn't made clear, Kanae was the reported body that went missing when Marude was sorting through his reported intel.

The explanations for Kanae being unable to be located as well as Ihei's hinted survival will be explained in further chapters.

My intentions are to have Haise beginning to understand his actual position in the CCG, and him having to fight for his own survival while working towards his own goals to stop V.

I want to thank those of you who've read this far; I'm really enjoying making this, and I hope you've enjoyed what I wrote!

Have a pleasant day!

Edit: Eto never wanted to actually kill Haise in this story so far. She was just trying really hard to test him, in order to see how well he'd do as the One Eyed King. The reason she flat out threw Tsukiyama off the rooftop was because she figured Haise and him were already peacefully negotiating, so there wasn't any point in trying to use Kanae. So, she decided to just test him directly herself from there on out.

I made a few edits in the chapter to help clarify that, most notably when Eto switches her focus from Haise to CCG.