Thank you for reading and reviewing! I had a really fun time writing this chapter, more so than the last one, so I hope you enjoy this one!

Please enjoy, and be sure to read the author's notes at the end if you want to.


Wrapping his callused hands around the metal debris that fell on top of Mutsuki's body, Yomo strained himself while lifting the mangled collection of rebar and concrete off of his assistant. "Son of a bitch, that's heavy… Oi, Mutsuki! Are you still alive?" Yomo asked in a flat tone, as knelt down beside the cratered hole that held Mutsuki.

Somewhat thankful that her shredded parka was still covering her undergarments so she didn't have to have an awkward conversation with the man she usually worked with, Mutsuki shifted under the coat of crumbled concrete and rust as she carefully propped herself up. "I… I think so?" She muttered before spitting out a wad of dust and saliva from her mouth.

Covered in a light blanket of grey and brown particles, Mutsuki blindly flailed her hand out until finding Yomo's outstretched arm reaching out for her. "Alright, that's enough laying around, Mutsuki; get your ass up," Yomo said in a flat, yet playful, tone, as he pulled Mutsuki up from the crater before brushing her off by abruptly smacking the dust off of her with his palm.

"Ouch…!" Mutsuki muttered painfully, as she staggered forward each time Yomo smacked her upper back to help her the only way he awkwardly knew how to. Brushing away the dust off of her lips and eyelids, Mutsuki was busy trying to carefully clean her face up when suddenly she let out a yelp as soon as she felt something wet wiping away the dirt around her eyes.

"I'm sorry Mutuski; I didn't mean to startle you," Haise said apologetically, while his voice was slightly muffled by the eyepatch-mask he wore. Having temporarily unzipped his mask to lick his gloved-thumbs wet, Haise had wiped away the dust from Mutsuki's eyes and lips before re-zipping his mask once more.

Wide-eyed and shaken by the sight of her mentor being okay, Mutsuki wasted no time in practically throwing herself at Haise. Wrapping her arms around his back, Mutsuki buried her face into Haise's shoulder as she let out a sigh of relief. "Oh thank God… I thought you were hurt, Sensei… Where's Kirishima?" Mutsuki asked quietly, before suddenly feeling someone grabbing her shoulder from behind.

"... Right behind you," Touka said out loud with an apparent sass to her voice, as she pulled Mutsuki away from Haise before beginning to roughly pat away the dirt from Mutsuki's black tunic in the same rough fashion as Yomo.

"Oh! Good, I'm glad you're okay too, ma'am…!" Mutsuki said nervously, as she stared into the black-eyeholes of Touka's rabbit mask. "Umm… You guys are wearing your masks… S-So does that mean that we're actually going through with your plan, ma'am?" Mutsuki asked, while simultaneously trying desperately to change the subject.

"That's right: I'm going with Kaneki to go save Kurona and free the other ghouls, and I want you and Yomo to stay behind and provide support to Yoshimura… Just be careful though," Touka said in a solemn voice, as she along with the rest of her team stared off into the distance at the silhouette of the One-Eyed Owl flying over the battlefield under the setting sun. "I… I don't have any idea what's going on inside her head."


With her large bat-like wings guiding her kakuja while the large-mass that was her kagune on her upper back propelled herself through the air by expelling high-pressed gas, Eto soared over the skies above Corniculum like a hellish harbinger.

With the sun setting and twilight enveloping the purple skies of the night as dark-clouds drew closer, CCG were forced to carefully choose between having to aim their searchlights at either the massive kakuja flying above them, or the heavily-equipped army of invading ghouls who were marching towards the exposed wall of the ghoul detention center.

"DIE, DIE, DIE!" Eto's demonic and distorted voice growled out in a sadistically excited voice, as she fired a barrage of kagune-shards directly into the blades of an attack helicopter that tried firing a payload of anti-kakuja missiles at her. Seeing her prey going up in flames as it spiraled downward to its demise, Eto's compact kakuja that measured out to be around ten-meters in length was easily able to dive out of the way of the incoming projectiles.

Using her momentum to her advantage, Eto dive-bombed herself directly through the dead-center of Corniculum's North wall, causing the middle portion of the upper wall to collapse in on itself; killing and injuries around one-hundred CCG personnel who were occupying the wall to fire projectiles onto her and United Front's soldiers.

Unscathe even after using her entire body as a bunker-buster, Eto flew upward once again just in time to grab a helicopter from below its underside. Ripping it open like a paper bag, the elongated jaw of Eto's kakuja ripped apart the terrified crew and chewed through their bones and armor before spitting them out to have their remains splatter on the pavement half-a-kilometer below her.

Tossing the bisected air vehicle in half, the jowls of Eto's kakuja began to become illuminated in an intense purple-light. Crushing the last helicopter out of the sky with her kakuja's hands, the builded-up of concentrated RC-cells began to tear away at her lips. Unable to hold back her kakuja's power, Eto's jaw opened up and her throat became blackened as a powerful beam of energy blasted out of her gaping mouth.

Aiming the concentrated beam of purple-plasma directly along tops of Corniculum's remaining walls, Eto sliced clean through the CCG-personnel that were occupying the tops of the ghoul detention center's defenses. Looking at her handiwork, Eto basked at the sight of seeing the bright-burning fires caused by her kakuja eating away at CCG's fortified walls.

Having eliminated the searchlight towers along Corniculum's entire squadron of helicopters, the fires that were left in her catastrophic wake made it so that none of the surviving CCG personnel could use what remained of the walls as a vantage point to attack the United Front soldiers on the ground.

However, despite everything she did, the countless lives that she had just snuffed out in a matter of a few minutes did nothing to satisfy her bloodlust. Doped up on adrenaline and the stress coursing through her body, in Eto's hallucinating mind, she wasn't at Corniculum, but rather she was still at Luna Eclipse.

In her mind, she survived the attempted assination by the hands of CCG, but Haise didn't. In her head during that very moment, she failed to keep him alive, and all she wanted to do was end the lives of those who she perceived to be CCG.

Personnel, property, it didn't matter to Eto; all she could do in her disoriented mind was to try her best to avenge Haise, along with Noro who died to keep her safe.

Letting out an angered and heart-wrenching scream, Eto dove toward the ground once more. Landing on all six of her kakuja's hands, the pavement cracked and cratered underneath her weight. Mercilessly, Eto's horrific kakuja struck fear into the hearts of everyone as she began to not only tear apart any ghoul investigator who wasn't fast enough to run away from her, but even the passing United Front soldiers who weren't spared from the maddened woman's rampage.

"KANEKIIIIII!" Eto bellowed out with a fit of psychopathic-laughter, as she devoured those who she crushed in her kakuja's deformed claws before shoving them into her elongated mouth. Feasting on their flesh empowered Eto's kakuja, and in turn made her more bloodthirsty and vicious.

Due to the collapsed wall creating a draft that blew air out of the destroyed walls of Corniculum's perimeter, the RC-cell suppressant gas that CCG had tried using to combat United Front and Eto was lost to the strong winds brought on by the encompassing blizzard. Lacking any hope of successfully combating Eto by any means, or even being able to compete with the firepower that the United Front had with them, many investigators either retreated or began to surrender.

Those who surrendered who weren't devoured by Eto were immediately laid out on the pavement by the United Front soldiers. Those underneath Tsukiyama's flag who were merciful did the right thing by cuffing their captives' hands behind their backs, while the others, such as Karren, who had a vendetta against CCG, immediately executed those who surrendered to them.

With the fires along the tops of the crumbled walls being the only source of light for those on the prison grounds, darkness was swiftly falling over the 12th Ward as United Front personnel began to focus their attention on Eto, who seemingly no longer cared who she deemed to be her enemy.

"Open fire on the One-Eyed Owl!"

"Éliminez le hibou!"

"Zielen Sie auf ihre Hände!"

All around Eto in different forms of dialect ranging from Japanese to European, the military-trained soldiers of the United Front began to fight back. While Eto's kakuja had no trouble shrugging off the rain of gunfire coming from all directions around her, she was not as resilient to the many different forms of kagunes and crystallized shards that were being used against her limbs.

Laughing through the pain, Eto let out a howl of amusement as she felt the front arms of her kakuja being sliced clean off, all while managing to dismember and cause several ghouls to explode into a red cloud of gore after firing her own k-bullets from a point-blank range.

With the cries of ghouls ranging from agonizing screams to heartbroken wails, the symphony of death was like sweet music to Eto's ears, while she used whatever was left of her kakuja to go out swinging as she was eventually overwhelmed by the army of United Front soldiers who were surrounding her.

Within five minutes of single-handedly taking on around one-hundred ghouls, Eto had manage to injure fifty of them, while slaying thirty before her kakuja was left as nothing more than a gorey-pile of flesh and muscle. Buried underneath a pile of her own solidified RC-cells, Eto did her best to ignore the sounds of sirens still blaring in the cold air as she zeroed in on the sounds of footsteps closing in on her.

Before the surviving squad of soldiers led by Karren could open fire from a close-distance, the gore around Eto was sent flying around her as she unraveled her massive kagune. With several toothy-appendages chomping down on the heads of her enemies while slicing the as many ghouls into ribbons as she could, Eto managed to seemingly kill around fifteen more United Front soldiers before succumbing to the injuries being inflicted onto her.

With her ears bleeding from having her ear-drums exploding due to being so close to the gunfire that littered her body with bullets, Eto could only hear a muffled ringing in her ears as she fell face-forward down onto the blood-stained pavement; her clothed body covered in long gashes and open wounds that further painted the ground underneath her.

Tossing her emptied-mag rifle down onto the floor out of frustration, Karren's trembling hands grabbed onto her knees as she started to dry heave. "We… Wir überlebten (We survived)..." Karren wheezed out with a feeling of a short-lived victory allowing her temporarily ignore the agonizing pain she felt from her abdomen.

Slowly staring down to see what was causing her so much pain, Karren was horrified upon realizing she had been gravely injured. The incision caused by Eto's kagune spilled her intestines onto the floor underneath her. Light-headed from blood loss and the excruciating pain she was feeling, Karren let out a cry as she collapsed onto the floor.

Laying down on her back, Karren could feel herself going into shock as she clenched her jaw while pulling her intestines back into her exposed abdomen. 'My squad… Lieber Gott (My God), why are they not helping me?!' Karren wondered to herself with a sense of panic setting in, which only intensified after she was able to prop herself up on her elbows to see what had become of her 'surviving' squad members.

Due to the unpredictable way Eto's kagune flailed around violently at speeds that none of them could comprehend, the remaining United Front soldiers had figured themselves to be spared from the fates of their fallen comrades. However, it wasn't long until the almost-invisible slashes encompassing their bodies had finally taken effect after each one of them tried moving.

Falling apart limb-from-limb, section-by-section like deli meats, each soldier fell apart into an array of delicately-sliced parts that sloppily flopped onto the pavement underneath what remained of their feet. Much to the dismay of what remained of Karren's fleeting consciousness, in the end, Eto had single-handedly destroyed most of both Corniculum's combatants along with being the final nail in the coffin for Karren's platoon of soldiers.

"Ist das wirklich die Macht der 'einäugigen Eule' ...? Wie ... wie schrecklich… (Is that the power of 'The One-Eyed Owl'...? How… How terrible.)" Karren muttered weakly to herself, before feeling her trembling elbows finally giving way underneath her weight. Landing hard on her back, Karren could feel her body grow colder by the passing moment as she stared longfully at the dark-clouds overhead.

'Haha, ha… Such dense clouds are… 'Stratocumulus', if memory serves me right… Reminds me of when papa took us to the Vaalserberg during winter… How I miss them,' Karren reminisced sorrowfully to herself, as she felt herself being lifted up by the back of her neck by Eto, who had made enough of a recovery to wobble back up on her two feet.

"M-My little incontent sweetheart… D-Does… Does your incestial love for your cousin go as far as… W-Willing t-to sacrifice yourself in vain... F-For him...?" Eto stuttered out wearily, while being unable to hear anything due to her burst eardrums. Luckily for Eto, Karren had nothing to say as the half-ghoul recited the hateful words she spoke to her six-months ago.

Still hallucinating that she was back on the rooftop of Luna Eclipse, Eto's one functional arm barely was able to toss Karren less than a meter away; just like how she had done in the past with Tsukiyama. With the German ghoul splayed out on the pavement and unable to defend herself, Eto immediately crouched down on her knees beside Karren before digging her hands inside her open abdomen.

In a feeding-frenzy like state, Eto ripped apart Karren's abdomen muscles before shoving each torn-piece into her gullet to feed her insatiable appetite. Tossing aside Karren's intestines and colon along with her stomach, Eto dined on her spleen before beginning to furiously devour the ghoul's kakuhou. Smacking her lips in between glutinous bites, Eto's maniacal laughter in between bites gradually lowered down as her body recovered more-and-more after each swallow.

Filling her stomach to its max capacity, by the time Eto was done with her meal, the blood-lust and hazy-hallucinations created by her psychotic breakdown slowly began to subside. Covered in a fresh coat of warm blood that was beginning to coagulate and seep into her shredded-hoodie, Eto could feel the light-snow of the arriving blizzard falling onto her skin that only intensified the shiver running down her spine.

"What…? What am I doing here?" Eto asked aloud, before suddenly starting to grow panicked after realizing that she couldn't hear herself. "Oh no… H-Hello?! Is anyone… Oh my God…" Eto muttered in a ghastly voice that was lost on her destroyed eardrums, as she looked around her at the seemingly abstract-carnage left in her and the United Front's wake. Feeling her heart racing in her chest, the bitter taste of ghoul flesh eventually registered in her hazy mind, and soon Eto was face-to-face with the blurry image of Karren's glazed-over eyes staring blankly at the falling snow above.

Horrified at what she had done, Eto immediately stood up on her shaking legs while continuing to stare at the bodies scattered across the pavement surrounding her. Hyperventilating and feeling herself violently shaking, Eto was considering running away into the dead of night before seeing a black silhouette that was obscured by what she figured to be falling snow approaching her.

Squinting her eyes, Eto silently cursed herself for not putting her contacts in that morning as she tried her hardest to see who the silhouette of the person slowly walking towards her belonged to. Had she had the immaculate eyesight of her kakuja, Eto would have seen the quinque blade the man was holding as she cautiously approached him.

Without her vision or hearing to aid her, Eto tried to use her sense of smell to identify the mysterious stranger, but due to the hundreds of bodies scattered around her, along with the fact that the hooded-figure smelt so alien and off-putting to her, Eto had no way of distinguishing who he was, so she instead decided to try to intimidate the person who was coming ever-closer to her.

"... Foolish of you to approach me! Don't you know who… I..." Starting her bluff strong, Eto's words eventually trailed off and her eyes widened in horror after identifying the man standing two meters away from her to be the same masked-man that she saw at Cochlea with Arima.

Standing before the personification of suffering and damnation, Eto subconsciously took a step backwards from Urie as she could make out sparks of blue-electricity surging from his body through her blurry-vision. Tasting a metallic-taste in the air, Eto didn't know whether to try and fight or to try and flee.

"I… I can't hear you… I don't know if you're talking right now or not," Eto spoke aloud as articulately as her trembling voice would allow her to. Dread was coursing through her body at just being in the presence of the Black Reaper, as if her subconscious was telling her that fighting him would spell out her doom. Everything about him seemed hollow and taboo, and made Eto feel fear unlike anything she's experienced before.

"... Stay back!" Eto shouted desperately, while her mind felt light-headed and her stomach became queasy as she prepared herself to fight past her body's urge to freeze-up to act before Urie could strike her first. Clenching her jaw shut and activating her kagune, Eto immediately tried using her incredibly large tendrils that had arms and mouths growing out of them to strike Urie with a wide-swing attack.

However, before she could land a blow on Urie, her vision became disoriented and the tips of her kagune were burnt to blackened-cripses as a flash of electricity lit up the spot where the Black Reaper was. Knowing fully well where he was going to strike, Eto attempted to evade having her abdomen ruptured by Urie's quinque, Ginkui, by leaping forward.

Feeling the tip of Urie's quinque poking through the back of her hoodie, Eto believed herself to be in the clear and was turning around in mid-air to deliver a counter-attack. Unfortunately for her, Eto wasn't aware of Ginkui's ability to transform and expand, and soon found herself ensnared in the jaws of her foster-father's kagune.

Letting out a muffled grunt, Eto's body tensed up as she felt Ginkui's jaws tightening around her torso. Feeling its teeth pierce her skin and cracking through her ribs, Eto let out an involuntarily painful laugh as she desperately grabbed a hold of the quinque's teeth to pry herself open.

Fighting an uphill battle, Eto was able to successfully pry open Ginkui's jaw long enough to slide its teeth out of her body, before Urie used his quinque as a conduit for his bio-electricity to travel through the half-ghoul's body. Losing control of her nervous-system, every muscle in Eto's body tensed up and violently shook around while Urie prepared Ginkui to bite clean-through her torso.

In a last-ditch effort to save herself, Eto did what she could to try and fight past her seized-up muscles to slam her damaged kagune down against the concrete-pavement to propel herself upward. Although she was able to escape with her life, Eto was unable to escape Ginkui's jaws as they chomped down on her kneecaps.

With her lower legs and knees severed, Eto fell towards the crater in the pavement that she had created in the wake of her narrowly escaping death. However, rather than falling flat on her face, Eto tucked her body in and rolled forward while using her body's high RC-cell count to produce kakuja-created appendages with talons to use as temporary feet.

Barely able to catch a blurry-glimpse of Urie sprinting towards her, Eto instinctively raised her right arm up to block Urie's blade. Knowing fully-well that his quinque would cut clean through her forearm, Eto let out another agonizing bellow of laughter out of her involuntarily wide-smile that she had on her face.

"B-Bastard!" Eto cursed at her opponent, before trying to uppercut Urie with her fist while simultaneously creating a blade-like appendage from her severed limb. Expecting for Urie to grab her fist, Eto swung her kakuja-created blade towards the base of the Black Reaper's neck in an attempt to decapitate him by surprise.

With speeds that she wasn't capable of perceiving, Eto felt Urie grab a hold of not only her wrist, but her kakuja-blade. Feeling the bones in her wrist splintering and piercing through her exposed skin underneath Urie's iron grip, Eto was once again forced to endure the wrath of the Black Reaper's bio-electricity surging through her already-damaged nerves.

With the falling snow melting on her exposed skin and soaking her shredded clothing, the agony and suffering Eto felt during the entire thirty-seconds that Urie used to electrocute her felt like a living hell to her. Unable to heal fast enough to compete with the bodily-damage the Black Reaper was inflicting onto her, Eto's eyes were melting in her sockets and bits-and-pieces of her half-kakuja shattered from her body and began to pile up underneath her seizuring-body.

The taste of the black-smoke of her charred organs escaping through her gaped mouth was lost on Eto, due to her having accidentally severed her own tongue due to her jaw shutting-close when she was electrocuted for the second time. Unable to feel pain due to her nerves being fried, Eto was spared the agony of feeling her arms ripped off by Urie before falling face-down on the blood-soaked snow beneath her.

"S… Sasaki…" Eto whispered out in a raspy voice, as her body was being coated in white from the falling snow above. "... Forgive me."


Having infiltrated the four-story prison building while Eto was still flying overhead in her kakuja form, the black-smokey hallways of the interior first-floor were littered with the bodies of investigators and United Front ghouls alike. Needing to be the one to take point due to his incredible healing factor paired up with his quinque suit designed to help him survive in hostile environments, the way up past the lobby had been haunting for Haise to say the least.

With Touka needing to lift her mask up to use her sleeve to filter out some of the smoke, she mostly relied on hiding behind Haise and using him to guide her while he alone had to see the horrors around him. Aside from the usual casualty brought on by combat, the hallways were also lined with bodies of those who suffocated from the black smoke, and those who were in the process of dying.

Many of them were everyday, nine-to-five office workers.

Eventually coming across a flashlight beside a ghoul corrections officer who had died with an access-card key hung around his neck, Haise's hope for finding Kurona alive became fleeting as he and Touka went into the upper levels of the burning building. Due to the Barbatos suit constantly cooling his body while simultaneously filtering out the smoke from his lungs through the microscopic tendrils that entered his body through his skin, Haise was perfectly capable of surviving the smoke-ridden second-story.

However, Touka lacked the miraculous environmental protection that made Haise extremely-resistant to the immense heat and toxic smoke above. Stopping before the first-step of the staircase, Haise could hear Touka violently coughing from behind him, despite herself trying to muffle herself. "Touka… I'm going to have to go upstairs alone. I want you to wait for me in the lobby where there's an air current. Please, make sure no one else comes in," Haise spoke clearly and concisely, as he turned around to begin escorting the ghoul back through the hallways and towards the lobby doors.

Unable to physically argue due to how irritated her throat was, Touka begrudgingly accepted Haise's logic as she willingly cooperated with his wishes. Once they were in the lobby and there was air flow to allow for some of the smoke to travel away from them, Touka cleared her throat up enough to quietly whisper, "Be… Careful."

"You as well… Remember, no matter what, even if you lose all of your limbs… Run. Run away, and live to see another day," Haise said, while Touka merely rolled her eyes at how cheesy she thought he sounded before nodding. "Goodbye Touka, I'll see you soon; I promise."

"O... Okay…!" Touka wheezed out, as she stood by the door inside the lobby to breathe in the cold air seeping in from outside.

With Touka safe and out of harm's way for the time being, Haise immediately sprinted back down the hallway with his flashlight in one hand as he began to make his way up to the second-story. Having been to Corniculum a few times before in the past while working as an investigator, Haise was thankful that his memory allowed him to somewhat remember the layout of the detention center building.

Navigating somewhat blindly through the thick-cloud of blackened smoke, Haise eventually made his way up past the third floor, and eventually to the fourth and final floor of Corniculum. However, the walls and roof of the top staircase leading from the third floor to fourth floor were demolished, making it so most of the heat and black-smoke were escaping through from the burning building like a chimney.

Stepping out of the staircase and into the fourth floor, the clear pathway of the hallway before him was what he needed to take in order to gain access into the master server room. Walking cautiously down the hallway with one hand on his flashlight and the other hand around his silenced-glock, Haise couldn't help but feel suspicious about how empty the fourth floor was.

There were no ghouls or humans around Haise to speak of, alive or dead, and the fact that the emergency lights were only active on the floor he was on made him feel like he was being led into a trap. Stopping in his tracks, Haise decided to investigate the water sprinklers that were hanging from the ceiling.

From what he could tell, the red-liquid mercury that came with each sprinkler had been melted off from the heat already. Although the sprinklers should have gone off, there was no running water to extinguish the flames inside the building.

'Now that I think about it… Why was the fire coming from the first floor, and not the top of the building? This… This isn't right,' Haise thought warily to himself, as he let out a nervous breath before venturing onward toward the master server room that he had somehow managed to obtain a security keycard for. 'Come to think of it… It was convenient that I found that keycard and flashlight on the first floor…'

Once he had arrived before a set of reinforced-metal sliding doors separating him from the master server room, Haise pressed his hand up against the door to check to see if there was a fire awaiting him on the other side of the room. Surprised to find that the air blowing outward from the tight crevice between the sliding doors was remarkably cold, Haise raised his gun up towards the metal doors as he raised his keycard up to the scanner on the wall.

Seeing the red light of the still-running scanner turning bright green, a gust of air-conditioned air blew outward from the server room and against his cheeks as the metal doors slid open for him. Due to how well-lit the server room was underneath the gentle-glow of the overhead lighting, Haise tossed the flashlight into the room before entering it with his gun drawn.

Checking the sides of the entrance before stepping inside, the moment Haise was in the server room, the metal doors closed behind him. Worried, Haise's fears came true after turning around to try and use his keycard to open the doors back up, only to see that the scanner denied him access back out of the server room.

While his first instinct was to try and use his kagune to break the door or to attack the reinforced-walls that were shielded with folded q-metal, Haise deep down knew better than to risk doing anything that could potentially damage a mechanism that would allow him to escape the room.

The last thing Haise wanted to do was to trigger a failsafe event that every CCG server room came equipped with. Not wanting to test whether or not the Barbatos suit could filter out halogen gas from his lungs, Haise decided to save brute force as a last resort.

Knowing that whoever had gone through the trouble of getting him alone this far wouldn't probably want him dead just yet, Haise decided to keep his hand on his pistol and his other hand on Yukimura's white handle as he delved deeper into the massive vault-like server room.

Stepping across white-metallic tiles through rows of tall-plastic racks fitted with cooling units and computers, the server room felt more like a colossal maze for Haise as he cautiously made his way toward where he could faintly make out the sounds of groaning and metal clanking against metal over the deafening symphony of fans and computers blaring into his ears.

After about two minutes of almost getting lost in a sea of computers and cooling units, Haise finally arrived into the heart of the server room, where a massive central-user interface equipped with nine-large monitors mounted against a wall towered over the two beaten women who were blindfolded, gagged, and chained to a metal desk.

Making his way over to the two physically abused women, it didn't take long for Haise's mind to register that he was looking at none other than Kurona, who was chained in q-metal braces and links alongside Chie Horie. Staring down at where Kurona's bare feet were against the cold tile, Haise grimaced at the sight of several used-syringes laying beside the beaten ghoul that had more than likely been used to inject her with RC-suppressants.

Wide-eyed and panicked, Haise immediately knelt down beside the two women to remove their blindfolds and remove their gags. Looking far less bruised and beaten than Kurona, Chie Hori's monotone facial expression stared up at Haise as she quietly mused, "Oh… So you did come after all… Guess that blonde guy was smarter than he looked."

Without her ability to heal, Kurona was covered in black-and-blue bruises that ranged from her eyes down to her legs. Despite her blackened-eyes making it hard for her to see, that still didn't mean she couldn't squint pasted her inflamed skin look upon the familiar mask that was fitted onto Haise's face.

"'Onii-Chan'... Is that you?" Kurona asked wearily with her busted lips, as she had a hard time deciphering whether or not the man she was staring up at was the same one who Dr. Kanou had operated on as well.

Caught off guard by being called that name, it took a bit for Haise to remember that Kurona, along with her sister, had referred to him as their big brother in the past. "Ah… Yes, it's me, 'Kaneki'... Although, I do go by another name nowadays: Haise Sasaki, to be exact."

"... Just like 'Rei', huh? You too gave up your identity?" Kurona mused with a bit of pity in her barely-audible voice, before shifting her gaze from Haise to just over his shoulder. "... You should probably turn around now."

Feeling the hairs on his arms standing up after hearing Kurona's cryptic words, Haise quickly turned around with his weapons at the ready and his kagune activated after expecting an ambush. However, what Haise saw awaiting for him was something far more disheartening and confusing than anything he was expecting.

"... Shirazu?!" Haise gasped out with a bewildered look in his eye, as he immediately lowered his weapons down, while deactivating his kagune. Standing four meters away from where Haise and the two girls were, Shirazu stood solemnly with a saddened tone on his determined face.

"... Hey Sassan," Shirazu greeted back with a low and quiet sigh, all while tightening his grip around the handle of his old quinque, 'Nutcracker'. "Wish I could say that it's good to see you, but… Well, you know how the saying goes."

With his parental-instincts kicking in, Haise took a few steps forward with his arms outstretched and a weak smile on his face as he tried to reassure the troubled young man. However, Haise was soon stopped in his tracks after seeing Shirazu raise his quinque up at him.

"That's not going to work, Sassan; not this time," Shirazu said, as he spoke in a flat and emotionally-drained voice.

Heartbroken that the man who he considered to be his son dared to raise a weapon up at him, Haise needed a moment to gather his wits and barings on the situation laid out in front of him.

"I… I don't understand what you're doing, Shirazu… Did you do this?" Haise asked as calmly as he could, as he gestured with his hands over to where Chie and Kurona were chained up and beaten.

"I'm here for the same reason as you, Sassan. And as far as capturing Chie and Kurona? Yeah, I did that, but it was only to use them as leverage." Shirazu said with a slight bit of disgust at his own actions being visible on his face, as he continued to hold his quinque, 'Nutcracker', out towards Haise.

"Leverage? Leverage for what, Shirazu!?" Haise asked with a bit more emotion being apparent in his voice, as he could feel himself tearing up before the qunix. "Whatever's going on in your head, we can fix that Shirazu… The person you're trying to be right now… It isn't you."

"Heh... You're right, this isn't me: it's who I have to be," Shirazu said with a humorless chuckle at the end of his sentence, as he looked down from Haise's single-exposed eye. "... The bounty placed on your head would be enough to pay for my little sister's treatment, and give her enough afterward so she can live a comfortable life…"

"... Like I said, I'm here for the same reason as you are; it's just I'm doing it for my own little sister, and not yours," Shirazu said in a determined yet hollow voice, as he shifted his gaze over slightly towards Chie.

"... I brought that small woman with me, just in case CCG wouldn't let me take Kurona up here. She was following you around, and was too focused on what was on the other side of her camera lens to realize that I was behind her… Speaking of which, since I'm being honest here," Shirazu said gruffly, before fishing out an emptied flare gun from his coat pocket so he could toss it in front of Haise's feet.

Staring down at the flare gun, it didn't take long for Haise to realize what the qunix was implying to him. "... You? You were the one who gave away our position?! Why?!" Haise demanded in a higher-octave than before, while taking steps forward until the tip of Nutcracker was pressed against his armored chest-piece.

"It was supposed to deter you from going through with this, and well… I had hoped that you wouldn't try to put the rest of us in danger after that… Guess I was wrong," Shirazu said, as he stood firmly in place despite seeing how disappointed and angry Haise was. "I… I never meant for anyone to get hurt though. I didn't think CCG would have tried to fire a missile from that range… Oh well, good intentions, and all that bullshit, right? It's what led us both on this self-destructive path, Sassan..."

"... After all, you're willing to do anything for Hinami, and you know what? I think it's about goddamn time that I do the same for Haru," Shirazu said with a joyless and toothy smile, while Haise scowled slightly back at him.

"… Shirazu, you and I can have a talk about what we can do for you sister another time. Where's the key for their shackles, and how do we get out of the server room?" Haise inquired in a demanding and serious tone, after no longer willing to listen to what he considered nonsense coming out of Shirazu's mouth.

Using his free hand to reach into his loose dress collar, Shirazu fished out a black-lanyard that belonged to the deceased warden, containing his master access-card and key. "You can use this key to free them, and this access card will give you full administrative-permission to open up the rest of the prison cells after you reactivate the hydro-pumps into the facility to get rid of the fire… C'mon, take it if you can."

Although what Shirazu was extremely informative and helpful, Haise found the way he announced the usefulness of the keycard to be oddly too forthcoming. "Okay, alright… Just lower the sword, and hand it over, okay? I-I'll get us out of here, and we can-"

"-We can do just what, Sassan?! Get pulled into some other batshit scheme to save that girl of yours?!" Shirazu asked bitterly as he finally broke out of his emotionless state. "Our lives were fine until you woke up! Everything was easier before you decided to flip that shit over, and for what?! To go look for the same chick that got Kirishima's little brother killed?!"

"...I would have done the same for you, Saiko, Mutsuki, and Uri-"

"-BULLSHIT!" Shirazu screamed out defiantly, as he swung his quinque at Haise, causing the one-eyed ghoul to take a step back. "Ever since you had your freak out, you haven't given two shits about anyone else other than Hinami Fueguchi! Admit it, you probably haven't thought twice about Urie, have you?"

"... Urie's a capable individual, he can take care of himself," Haise reasoned as he continued to do his best to de-escalate the unstable young man standing before him. "Listen to me Shirazu: it doesn't have to be this way. I'll get us out of here, and I'll be sure to leave everyone else out of my search for Hinami, okay? You'll have your lives back, and-"

"-Look at the monitors, Sassan… Look at them, and tell me what you see," Shirazu said in a flat and bitter voice, as he ushered the one-eye ghoul with this quinque to look over at the live security footage behind him.

Not wanting to needlessly aggravate Shirazu more than he already had, Haise stared back at the young quinx for a few moments before cautiously turning his back towards him to make his way to the user-interface setup. Doing his best to subtly reassure Chie and Kurona by flashing them a small smile, in an attempt to convey to them that everything was going to be okay, Haise turned his attention toward the screens.


Surrounded by pools of splattered blood beginning to get soaked into the blanketing snow that was piling up at an alarming rate, bodies of CCG and United Front personnel alike were beginning to become buried underneath the wrath of the snowstorm above as Yomo and Mutsuki soldiered on through the howling winds. With the small ice particles feeling like tiny shards of glass against their exposed skin, the two were grateful for the protection they could get from their masks; especially Yomo, whose raven-mask came equipped with shielded-goggles.

"I-It's hard to see, Yomo! Are you sure we're even in Corniculum still?!" Mutsuki shouted loudly in her best attempt to speak over the gusts of freezing wind.

"I'm sure of it! Keep following behind me, and don't run off, understood?!" Yomo shouted back in response, all without losing his monotone-flat voice. Constantly needing to wipe away the ice from his goggles, Yomo hid behind the sleeve of his raised arm as he led Mutsuki towards the last spot where he had seen an all-too familiar array of blue sparks.

Finding it hard to even walk, Mutsuki unraveled her kagune and began to use her four wedged-tendrils to navigate through the thick piles of bloodied snow. Despite essentially using her kagune as a walking stick, Mutsuki eventually tripped over whatever unfortunate soul had perished underneath the snow.

Hearing the woman letting out a yelp from behind him, Yomo immediately turned his head over his shoulder as he felt his heart racing the moment he first caught a glance of Mutsuki laying flat on her face in a pile of red snow. "Shit…! MUTSUKI!" Yomo screamed in a gruff voice, as he practically dove down to assist the woman who he thought got shot. "Mutsuki, hey! Get up!"

Confused as to why the gruff ghoul was so worried about her tripping, Mutsuki couldn't help but let out a quiet chuckle as she pushed herself up from the blanket of snow. "It's okay, Yomo…! I-I only tripped, I'm f-... YOSHIMURA!" Immediately forgetting about the amusement she found in Yomo's overreaction, Mutuski pushed herself up from the ground and began to sprint past Yomo.

Confused, Yomo looked up toward where Mutsuki was struggling to run over to, and what he saw made the hairs on his arms stand up and his heart sink deep into his chest. Standing around a scene of raw carnage, the same man who had attacked him in Cochlea had Eto raised up by her throat while his hand was pierced through her abdomen.

"Damnit, kid…! I told you not to fucking run off…!" Yomo muttered vulgarly under his breath, as he picked himself up to make his way through the heavy mounds of snow to catch up with Mutsuki, who was making the same mistake he committed two-weeks earlier by trying to engage the Black Reaper in close-quarters-combat.

Taking out her two quinque-knives, Mutsuki raised them both up above her head before leaping up from the snow. With her kagune arched behind her in preparation to strike, Mutsuki glared meancilingly behind her eyepatch-mask with her grey-and-red eye focused on Urie. "GET AWAY FROM HER!" Mutsuki screamed hatefully at the Black Reaper, who looked over his shoulder at her to stare at her behind his black-visor.


Although it was difficult to see through the heavy falling snow that obscured the security cameras, the sight of hundreds of bodies sticking out the white-blanket of snow reminded Haise greatly of CCG's raid on Anteiku; more specifically, it reminded him of the white flowers that he vaguely remembered seeing in place of the corpses that were scattered around Arima when he first fought him.

Along with the bitter and painful detailed-memories of Anteiku's raid flooding back into his consciousness, it wasn't until Haise used one of the remaining functional cameras outside to zoom into where the Black Reaper stood. Seeing Eto's mostly-severed body laying down with empty-bloodied sockets staring up at the sky after she was tossed aside by Urie, Haise felt his heart sink further into his chest and his knees beginning to tremble after he also realized that Mutsuki and Yomo were going to try and take on the Black Reaper he had heard about.

"... Kaneki, you're going to need to kill him if-" Kurona tried explaining, before immediately being cut off by Haise.

"=Shut up!" Haise snapped back at Kurona, before immediately turning around with his kakugan activated in his left eye as he glared menacingly at Shirazu's saddened expression. "Enough of this shit, Shirazu! You're going to give me that goddamn badge, or I'll rip it off of your neck!" Haise demanded in a hostile tone, all while taking his quinque and pistol out of their holsters before unraveling his kagune once more.

"... What did I tell you? You're so hyper-fixated on going on some crusade for some chick who might as well be dead, that you're willing to kill the ones you love," Shirazu mused with a humorless chuckle, as he softly shook his head at Haise. "Think about Sassan… Because of you, there's been a mass-slaughtering of both humans and ghouls here today… So many people are dead, and their blood is on your hands..."

"... I tipped them off about you coming, you know? It's why there were a bunch of them with big guns and quinques waiting for you and that group of terrorists to show up…" Shirazu said, as he unraveled his enlgaonted ukaku-kagune out from his upper-back; with its claw-like projectiles exposing themselves through the sides of his dark-purple kagune.

"We can't go back to how things were, Sassan… So long as you're alive, you'll just drag everyone else with you into the grave that you're digging for yourself… How many more people need to die, until you realize what you're doing is asinine?" Shirazu asked rhetorically, as he readied his quinque.

"Asinine…? You're the one who is being asinine right now, Shirazu!" Haise shot back with an outraged tone in his voice, as he prepared Yukimura to block Nutcracker's glowing black-and-red blade. "Those deaths weren't my fault, and even if they were, those men and women out there knew the dangers of what they were doing… You're wrong about a lot of things, Shirazu, but the most incorrect thing you've said is what I'd do to you…"

"... I'm not going to kill you, Shirazu. I'm going to bring you home… Think about what you're doing, and how scared Saiko must be," Haise said with a slightly hopeful and determined tone behind his words, as he slowly began to lower his weapons down toward the floor. "... One way or the other, I'm going to make sure that I take you home, where you all belong… Where we all belong: you, me, Hinami, and your sister… I promise you, I can-"

"-ENOUGH OF THE FUCKIN' EMPTY PROMISIES!" Shirazu screeched loudly out of pure passionate rage and betrayal, as he swung his quinque sideways not at Haise, but at Kurona and Chie.

The true reason Chie and Kurona were being used as leverage wasn't to negotiate with Haise, but so Shirazu could make sure that his ex-squad leader would have a reason to attack him back.

Realizing what Shirazu was doing, Haise had no other choice but to use his quinque to catch Nutcracker's blade before using the smooth-side of his kagune to smack the quinx away from the two captives. With the training he'd received from Arima and the CCG academy, Haise had his gun drawn on Shirazu while using his other hand to ready Yukimura to strike.

Crashing into a rack containing a stack of computers and running air-conditioners, Shirazu could feel the hard-plastic and metal breaking underneath him as he slowly pulled himself out of the large-dent that had been caused by Haise striking him. "Hehe, hehe, hehe… Ah…! It's like I said, Sassan: when it comes to saving that girl, I don't think there's anything sacred enough in this world that'll stop you from chasing her…!"

Rather than engaging with Shirazu's ramblings, Haise continued to approach the man he considered to be his son while still having his gun aimed directly at his chest. "This is your last warning, Shirazu: give up now, or I'll be forced to- Shit…!" Haise quickly cursed out, after immediately needing to take a step back so he could use Yukimura's blade to catch Nutcracker's blade once again.

Making sure that his quinque's blade was locked against Haise's, Shirazu's thumb hovered over the special button on Nutcracker's handle. "Be forced to what?! Kill me?!" Shirazu shouted mockingly with tears running down his cheeks, before making Nutcracker's blade explosively-expand out into a mesh-like ball. "C'MON THEN, KILL ME YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

With enough force being inflicted onto his body to tear apart a kakuja, Haise clenched his jaw and felt parts of his kagune tear off into a misty-cloud as he was sent flying through several rows of highly-compact racks.

Feeling the Barbatos suit around his body compressing tightly around parts of his body that had been the most damaged by Nutcracker, Haise gritted his teeth as he felt his shattered bones and ripped organs being forced back into place as he skidded across the server room.

With the quinque suit forcibly preventing his body from getting torn apart, just like Tsukiyama had mentioned earlier, the agony that Haise felt as his body regenerated itself at an accelerated rate was overwhelming. Seeing bright flashes of light in his vision, Haise could feel the quinque suit regulating his heart rate as he pushed through the pain to get back up on his feet.

With his stress beginning to cause him to hallucinate as his body was pumped full of surplus RC-cells and adrenaline thanks to the Barbatos suit's instivie reaction to keep him alive and ready to fight, Haise found the computers and air-conditioned racks around him to be fading away before his very eyes. Despite trying to force away the poorly-timed hallucinations by tapping the left-side of his head, the fact that the world around Haise was fading away in spite of his protests only infuriated him further.

'Goddamnit… Not now!' Haise thought bitterly to himself, as watched the server room transform into the grey-concrete rooftop of the Aogiri Tree's 11th Ward headquarters; the same very one that he had escaped to after he had defeated Jason.

Looking around him, the illusionary-night around him seemed surreal, as the same grey clouds and starless sky from before seemingly towered over him. Half-expecting to see Hinami's phantom pop up somewhere, Haise did his best to remain focused on searching for Shirazu as he wandered around the imaginary roof-top to walk around rows of chimneys that he knew to actually be computers.

Following a destroyed path of debris that he knew had been caused by Shirazu using his quinque on him, eventually Haise came to an opening where he saw a familiar and haunting sight that shook him to the core.

Hearing the all-too familiar cries of pain erupting from a seventeen-year old Touka's mouth, Haise watched in horror as Ayato ripped through her one-winged kagune with his teeth in order to begin devouring her kakuhou. Upon seeing Haise from the corner of his eye, Ayato immediately stopped his act of cannibalism to glare hatefully at him.

"Oh… You've changed, haven't you? Shitty Eyepatch...!" Ayato mused with a sinister grin on his face, as he rose up from Touka's mutilated body to glare at Haise. "If you didn't, you would be long dead…" Ayato said in a malicious tone, as he unraveled his ukaku-kagune while slowly couching down on one knee to take aim at Haise.

Fearful of the idea that his mind was interrupting Shirazu to be a phantom of Ayato back when he was fourteen years-old, Haise raised his firearm once more at Ayato before calling out, "Last chance, Shirazu! Don't make me do this!"

"'Shirazu'? You dumbass; can't even remember the name of the man who's going to kill you... Don't you ever THINK?!" Ayato screamed out in a battle cry, while defying the last-chance of mercy that Haise was trying to extend out to him.

Just like how Haise remembered, Ayato's kagune produced small-shards from his kagune before firing them at him like a submachine gun. Leaping out of the way, the projectiles that did manage to knick Haise only bruised his muscles thanks to the Barbatos battlesuit reactively spitting the kagune-shards out the moment they pierced its quinque surface.

"WELL YOU'LL STILL DIE!" Ayato screamed maniacally at Haise, all while firing volley-after-volley of kagune-shards at him. Becoming aggravated and spiteful that Haise was dodging and brushing his hailfire of organic projectiles off, Ayato gritted his teeth while beginning to formulate a way to mess with the Eyepatch ghoul's head.

"What's wrong Eyepatch?! Let's see you fight!" Ayato jeered on, while still being unable to land a critical shot on the evasive one-eyed ghoul. "Fight back! C'mon and kill me!" Ayato demanded, while being forced to go on the defensive side once his kagune's supply of bullets needed time to regenerate.

Getting up from his knelt position after dodging the last of Ayato's attack, Haise propped himself back up on his feet before staring at him from behind his black-leather mask. "I can't do that… If I did that, Touka… No… Saiko would be sad." Haise corrected himself, after finding himself repeating the same words he had spoken to Ayato years ago.

"You're the only brother she has around… So, even though you're my enemy, and someone who's hurt my friends and family… I cannot kill you." Haise said in his deepened voice, as he stared into the amused and cynical eyes of Ayato.

"'Saiko'? Hah! I don't even know who that is, dumbass…" Ayato laughed aloud, while he subtly took aim at Haise's head after feeling his kagune building its ammo-reserves back up. "You're babbling on about dipshits who I don't even know… I thought you'd become a bit more realistic, but you're still the same! 'I cannot kill you'? As usual, you're naiv- EUH!?"

Just like before, Ayato was caught off guard by Haise's using his kagune to pierce his stomach and pin him into the cratered-concrete. With Ayato unable to escape underneath the pressure being applied to him, all the young ghoul could do was watch with widen-eyes and clenched teeth as Haise approached him with his quinque and pistol.

"Like I was saying… I cannot kill you, therefore I'll only beat you half to death."


Thank you for reading this chapter! I'll go ahead and go over some of the reviews I got.

That's right L, another poor turtleneck has bitten the dust. And yeah, that kiss between Haise and Touka was written with Spiderman in mind, minus the rain. And yeah, I can definitely see the correlation you made about Kaneki/Haise being Touka's 'Spiderman'.

Haise deserves all the smooches, and yes, it's unfortunate that CCG had to ruin it. Eto did more than just destroy the helicopters in this chapter, and did really well in my opinion. CCG won't recover finacannily from that, that's for sure.

Thanks for reviewing Root A, and Urie is most definitely a double-agent. Matsuri will always be a bitch imo, and yeah he really is only hanging onto CCG by a thread. Smoking triggered him, and the Oggai Twins along with the rest of them are most definitely going to betray his ass under Urie's command. Even more CCG employees are going to quit, including Ayumu who probably will be too afraid for her own life to continue on with them. Haise really should have kept the rifle, but thankfully he snuck behind enemy lines so he didn't need it.

Thank you for reviewing Carla, and yes Eto came for her man. I promise, the next lemon will be Eto and Haise. Their kiss was fun, and unfortunately it was short lived huh? Eventually she'll remember it, now that she's looking a lot like her old self after she got blown up. You called it too: Eto destroyed the prison by herself. Kurona probably wouldn't want to go with Haise, but between him and Urie, I'm sure she'll be more willing to go with him. Thank you for the compliments and encouraging words, and I love updating this story for you guys!

Thank you for reviewing Saitama, and yeah Saiko really kind of dropped the ball, as you could see in this chapter. Haise's journey to save Hinami won't be easy, that's for sure. But once he fights Urie, he'll at least know that the Black Reaper is still in the vicinity of Tokyo. Once he finds out the Black Reaper is Urie, RIP Haise's feelings. Tier 15 will be coming, probably while Eto is recovering. Shirazu had good intentions, much like Haise, but ended up screwing them over and blaming his ex-squad leader instead of himself.

Eto and Haise will be more intimate after this mission, do not worry. And don't worry, after this mission, Tsukiyama and :re will be on extremely bad terms and will be gunning for each other. I mean, Eto did kill Karren, so I guess that's one less woman for Haise to get at. Haise has to worry about Kurona, Chie, Eto, and Mutsuki now.

After the whole botched mission passes, Eto and Haise will be on a first name basis after having a talk with one another, if you get what I'm saying (huhuhuh). Eto-Chan, huh? I should do that, along with Touka…

Fifty-meter walls, and oh yeah huh? They are as big as the Attack on Titan ones, and just as vulnerable too as it would seem. It did cost CCG a fortune, too bad they're not fully insured.

Thank you for reviewing, Reviewbruh! Matsuri is definitely losing control of CCG, and Urie is playing him like a fiddle. The Oggai are kind of like the clowns imo, except they're more about power along with furthering GOAT's agenda rather than causing needless destruction for the sake of fun. Tsukiyama should have hired them, but alas they're loyal to the One-Eyed King: Yusa. Urie still has feelings for Mutsuki, and despite what he tells himself, in the end he really is using Saiko to keep tabs on them. Saiko will be heartbroken for sure, but at least she'll have her Maman. CCG and the United Front both suffered Eto's wrath. And you're right, Touka probably won't let go of calling Haise 'Kaneki', especially after Yomo tries to fight the Black Reaper. And for the flashdrive, don't worry, Chie's got it taken care of.

Haise and Hinami kissing would be cute, albeit a little awkward at first for Haise, while being a dream-come-true for Hinami. Haise's got a lot on his plate, and deserves some rest for the shit he's gone through, so bedding some of his 'harem' would be nice. I can see Hinami thinking Haise is a hallucination at first, before suddenly realizing that she can touch him.

Touka, just like Yomo and Ayato, is reckless at heart, so yeah she really should have withheld her excitement for seeing Haise; pulling him through a ladder probably wasn't the smartest thing she could do. CCG got those missiles because Matsuri ordered them out of paranoia ever since Eto was spotted at Cochlea, and yes Eto and Haise always get targeted by them lol. Don't worry, Yomo and Mutsuki are alive, for now.

The security did trigger Eto, and you predicted it, Corniculum did meet its maker! The server room will be mostly intact, for now.

Haise did indeed exchange saliva with Eto, and hell yeah she wanted more.

Urie is there to stop Haise from taking Kurona, and yes she's under RC-suppressants. She really won't be useful this mission lol.

I think that's all the reviews I got for chapter fifteen. Thank you for reviewing, and reading as well!

I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and that you have a great day! Goodbye for now!