Thank you for the reviews and support, I love writing this for you guys!
I had a bit of trouble at first writing this chapter, but after a few revisions I decided that this version was good enough to be posted.
Thank you, I hope you enjoy, and the author's notes will be at the end!
Although the fine-line within his head that was capable of separating the differences between what was real and what was just a figment of his imagination was growing ever thinner by the passing moment, Haise still enough of a grasp on reality to understand that he wasn't actually fighting Ayato on the top of the Aogiri Tree's old 11th Ward headquarters, but that he in actuality he was fighting Shirazu within the server room located on the top floor of Corniculum.
Even so, the pain Haise felt from his forcibly-healed injuries were real, as was the stress that the Barbatos quinque suit had on his psyche and body, which made it harder for Haise to keep a clear head as he heard Ayato's voice speak to him.
"'Beat me half to death'...?!'" Ayato repeated back to Haise with his furrowed eyes glaring up at him, as Haise forcibly had to remind himself to remove his tendril from the phantom's body, due to him fearing the possibility of accidentally hurting Shirazu more than he already had. "Don't underestimate me just because you got in one surprise attack, bastard…"
Squinting at the spitting image of Touka's deceased brother, Haise once again attempted to tap the side of his head to force the hallucination away before once again giving up on that idea. "Hey Shirazu... Your kagune takes up resources in a long ranged fight," Haise said while purposefully addressing Ayato by the name of the person who he truly was, which only infuriated the fourteen-year old.
"... I'm not sure if you can hear what I'm saying, or if what I'm saying is different from the words that are actually coming out of my mouth… I'm seeing things right now that aren't there, and I don't want to hurt you." Haise said as warning, with desperate hope that somehow his words would be enough to have Shirazu stand down. "... But if that's not the case, and for whatever reason you choose to persist in this fight, I'll let you know the same thing I told Ayato years ago."
Absolutely baffled at what he was hearing, Ayato gritted his teeth and tightened his hands into fists as he formulated a plan in his head on how to get the jump on the talkative one-eyed ghoul before him. "Again, you're talking nonsense like a fucking idiot… Yamori really must have scrambled your brains into shit…!"
Ignoring Ayato's petty words, Haise continued on with his words of caution. "... If you can bombard me, then it's certainly possible for your attacks to be fatal. But, if you only land a single shot, then your kagune-shards won't be very effective… Even now, this quinque I'm wearing is nullifying most of your attacks, and considering that I know for a fact that I'm superior in close-quarters combat in comparison to you, you won't have any choice but to attack from a distance…"
"... By now, you're probably thinking to yourself 'This guy doesn't have persuasive power. He just praddles on, and on; he just spits out repetitive and pretentious speeches. He doesn't know what he's talking about: doesn't he know that close-quarters combat is my speciality?'... Or atleast, something along the lines of that," Haise recited, after feeling his memory becoming more-and-more refreshed by the passing second.
"... In spite of all that, there's one more major difference between us…" Haise said in a foreboding voice, while glaring down the nervous expression on Ayato's snarling face. "... That key difference is this: I know to always watch the actions of your opponent, and not their mouth." Haise said in a low voice, as his kagune finally reached Ayato's ankles after stealthily digging underneath the floor to reach him.
Having stalled Ayato long enough, Haise's four tendrils shot up from the floor like a snake and wrapped themselves around the young ghoul to grapple him in a constritive hold. "Y-YOU FUCKING RAT!" Ayato spat out scornfully, as he was raised into the air before being immetadly slammed against the floor. Trapped within the iron grip of Haise's kagune, Ayato tried to activate his kagune in order to break out, but was unable to pierce the one-eyed ghoul's tendrils that healed faster than the rate his wings could chip away at them.
"... Forgive me for doing this to you." Haise said with a slightly apologetic tone in his voice, before applying even more constructive-force around Ayato's body, with more than enough pressure to crush the bones in his torso and his arms.
Unable to catch enough of air in his lacerated lungs to expel anything more than a low guttural cry, Ayato was breathless as Haise slammed his body through the many chimneys that surrounded the two.
Thrashing the young ghoul's body against anything he could find while simultaneously squeezing him to death, Haise found himself smirking behind his mask; relishing in his inner sadistic side that hadn't been there in his mind ever since Kaneki 'died' at the hands of the White Reaper.
"Haha, ha, ha… WHAT?! Don't have anything else smug to say?!" Haise laughed aloud with a gleeful and manical tone in his voice, as he felt a surplus of adrenaline and endorphins being forcibly pumped through veins, due to the Barbatos quinque secretting heavy amounts of RC-cells into his blood.
No longer able to tell what was real and what was just a figment of his rampant imagination, Haise no longer had the capacity to distinguish the differences between Ayato and Shirazu as he continued to beat the phantom Ayato to death. "DON'T LOOK SO DISTRESSED, AYATO-KUN; I'M JUST RETURNING A FAVOR IS ALL! YOU'D DO THE SAME TO ME IF YOU WEREN'T SUCH A WEAK PIECE OF S-"
Before Haise could finish insulting who he really thought was Ayato, he suddenly caught off guard after seeing a black-hooded figure side-lining him from the corner of his eye. Before he could defend himself, Haise flinched as he felt Urie ram a blade deep against his stomach.
Winded from having his lower-diaphragm crushed underneath the impact of the quinque, the only thing keeping Haise alive and in one-piece was the Barbatos suit, as Urie activated Nutcracker's explosive-function while the tip of it was pressed against the one-eyed ghoul's upper abdomen.
Hearing his ex-squad leader scream loudly as the mesh-blade of Shirazu's quinque activated, Urie watched the armor around Haise's body contort and absorb a lethal-amount of trauma from the Nutcracker, while the one-eyed ghoul flew through an aisle of computers from the impact alone.
Surrounded by flashing red-lights that dimly illuminated the server room filled with destroyed technology and decimated structural integrity, Urie found himself momentarily stunned after recognizing that the alarms blaring within the compromised room were indicators that the prison cells below had been opened up.
'What is this? Those lights weren't on when I pried my way through those sliding doors… Unless…?" Urie thought worryingly to himself, as he quickly made his way over to Shirazu's contorted and bleeding body to nonchalantly toss Nutcracker on the floor beside him, before swiftly marching over to the control area of the server room where Chie and Kurona should have been bound in chains.
Upon approaching the master computer of the server room, Urie discovered only a pile of discarded chains and bindings that were still attached to the metal desk where the two women once were. Not only that, but after checking the monitors, Urie discovered that the entire server room had been hacked into after realizing that the facility's operational functions had been remotely activated.
Dumbfounded how the women not only escaped their bindings, but somehow managed to hack into a highly-advanced server, Urie eventually found two damning pieces of evidence: one small USB thumb drive with an antenna attached to it plugged into the master computer, and one discarded bobby pin was all the proof he needed to conclude that Shirazu's prisoners had been the ones responsible for their own escape.
"No… No, no… No, no, no…" Urie muttered repeatedly to himself, as he crushed the device underneath his boot while scanning through the remaining cameras to locate the missing women. Upon looking through the interior cameras, it was then that Urie also made the discovery that all the ghouls that were imprisoned were gone, and all that was left behind were empty prison cells.
"No… No! No! NO! NO!" The Black Reaper screamed in anguish and rage, before unsheathing Ginkui to begin slashing apart the master-computer after painfully accepting that he not only lost his only lead to Rushima Island's secrets, but had potentially lost ghouls who GOAT could have used in their ranks.
Having made so much noise, the Black Reaper turned his back on his handiwork in order to address the face of Eyepatch, who stood parallel from him. "You… You're that guy who was at Cochlea...! You're the one who helped Arima take Hinami, aren't you?!" Haise demanded in an enraged voice, as the thought of being able to confront one of the perpetrators responsible for Hinami's kidnapping filled him with a righteous anger.
Not wanting to respond back to the man who had just snapped out of his psychotic-episode, Urie remained silent as to not give away his identity more than he already had with the sound of his voice. Instead, Urie stood still in his spot as he stared from behind his mask at the look of concentration and hatred in Haise's one-exposed eye.
Like two gunslingers of the Wild West who were seconds away from the clock hitting high noon, Haise and Urie locked eyes with one another from behind their masks while their hands were prep and ready for combat. With the only noise in the server room being the dying sirens that were becoming quieter by the passing second, due to the limited energy in the facility running out, the two men who were once father and son stood motionless with tensions rising in the air.
A spark erupting from the oversurged light bulbs above was all it took to finally ignite the two one-eyed ghouls into fighting. Urie's kagune shot out of his upper back and began wrapping itself around his raised arm, while Haise immediately withdrew his pistol. Before Urie's kagune could finish enveloping his arm to begin pumping his ex-squad leader full of kagune-shards, Haise already had his glock out in front of him.
Firing bullet-after-bullet directly at the tip of Urie's outstretched arm to chip away at the black-kagune so he could prevent it from fully developing, Haise sprint forward while continuously shooting. Just as his ammo count had gone black, Haise's kagune took the form of a long red-blade that he used to swing sideways at Urie's kagune.
With Haise forcing Urie's right arm downward, the Black Reaper quickly used his free hand to retrieve Ginkui from his scabbard. Having already wrapped his tendrils around Urie's kagune after first clashing with it, Haise's scaled-appendages were able to crack open the Black Reaper's artificial-blade and tear it off of his mangled arm.
Without flinching as the bones in his arms were shattered, Urie swung his quinque upwards in one-single motion, with enough power to tear apart all four of Haise's tendrils in less than a second.
Being one-step ahead of his opponent, Haise had already reloaded his glock ever since the moment he first saw Urie's quinque being retracted from its scabbard. Ducking down to the floor, Haise narrowly avoided being decapitated by Ginkui after Urie had swung it horizontally at the base of where his neck had been.
Pulling Yukimura's white handle from his belt, a glowing pink light shot out of the tip of Haise's quinque before forming into a blade. Before Haise could leap upwards to ram the tip of his blade through the underside of Urie's jaw, the Black Reaper delivered a powerful and swift front kick into his face.
Disorientated, Haise let out a low grunt as he flew back from the force of the impact. Sliding backwards on his back, Haise shook away the flashing colors in his vision as he watched Urie remaining frozen to his spot while raising Ginkui upwards to aim its blade. Seeing the Black Reaper's quinque's blade transform into an eyeless entity with a wide-mouth filled with teeth shocked Haise, and made him nearly piss himself after seeing it immediatly protracting outwards towards him with snapping jaws.
"Shit...!" Haise cursed under his breath, as he quickly steadied his glock upwards at the bloodthirsty quinque, slid on his back against the metal floor while firing all seventeen shots from his firearm directly into Ginkui's mouth.
Successfully shattering all of the quinque's teeth along with slowing its velocity down to a skidding halt, Haise rolled backwards up to his feet before swinging Yukimura's blade down to sever Ginkui's morphed head off of its blade. With the Black Reaper's quinque unable to perform its most deadly function, the victory that Haise felt turned out to be extremely short-lived.
Preparing to sprint forward to clash blades with the Black Reaper, a barrage of missile-like projectiles dug their rigged tips into Haise's sides, before suddenly exploding at a point-blank range. Feeling the side of his face being filled with small-bits of shrapnel, Haise once again howled in agony as his own quinque's microscopic tendrils pierced his own body to begin putting his shattered ribs and ruptured organs back into place, all while his body was again sent flying from the explosion.
Having just witnessed the familiar sight of seeing the barrage of kagune-missiles fired from just out of peripheral vision, Urie finished waiting for Ginkui's broken blade to retract back to its handle before sprinting over to the corner of a destroyed rack to see Shirazu hunched over, drenched in blood.
"It took you long enough, Shirazu…" Urie said in a voice that barely conveyed his relief for seeing his best friend alive and well enough. "... I thought you were training? How did you get overwhelmed so fast in the first place (Seriously, you lasted like five minutes)?"
"Shuddap'...! Your ass still has a lot to answer for...!" Shirazu snapped back with an angered and betrayed look in his eyes, as he stared back at the hollow shell of what Urie used to be. "Whatever the hell Sassan's wearin' keeps making him come back from shit that no one has any right survivin'... Hey, why are you even still here; weren't you supposed to get those two girls and leave? Where the hell even are they!?"
"Gone. They weren't here when I got here; I couldn't even pick up on their scents or use the cameras to tell where they went." Urie explained in a bitter voice, as he unraveled his kagune once more to allow his modified-blood to seep out of him to fill in its cracks along with starting repairs on his damaged quinque. "Why were they able to escape? That shouldn't have happened..."
Too distracted with seeing the symbiotic-like black-blood spreading out unnaturally over Urie's kagune, Shirazu couldn't help but to ask "... What the fuck is that shit?!"
Without missing a beat, nor wanting to waste any more time than he had to, Urie replied by explaining, "They're kakuja-infused RC-cells, called 'dragon-cells'; they contain heavy-traces of RC-cells and liquid-quinque metal. To make it simple for you to understand, imagine yourself being able to control every aspect of your body the same way you'd control your kagune..."
"... They have healing properties and can be remotely manipulated by my neurons sending out signals through the same electrokinetic waves that my body uses… Now, about those girls-"
"-Holy shit dude…! Doesn't that, like, I dunno… Fuckin' hurt you?!" Shirazu asked with an astonished look in his eyes, all while holding Nutcracker's handle firmly in his hands as he scanned around the room for any traces of where Haise had gone. "Surely that sort of shit can't be good for you, ya know…?"
"... Kurona is no longer my primary objective," Urie stated in a low voice, making it clear to Shirazu that he had no interest in letting the other man know the consequences that he had to suffer at the hands of his augmentations. "Leave if you choose to, but I must stay behind to eliminate Sasaki. I can afford to have that ghoul-bitch slip out of my hands, but I can no longer afford to allow Sasaki to live; I see now that he's a danger to GOAT's mission."
After hearing Urie expressing his willingness and determination to murder his ex-squad leader, Shirazu completely dropped the subject of the other man's corrupted anatomy to instead address what he had just heard. "Woah, woah, woah…! Y… You wanna kill Sassan?!"
"It's not what I want to do, it's what needs to happen," Urie quickly replied, as he raised his arm upward to take aim with his kagune-blade that was visibly sparking with electricity as it began to build up a electromagnetic charge. "Besides, what's with the hesitation? Wasn't your plan to kill him and collect that bounty? Or... Was that all just an excuse for you to make a martyr out of yourself?"
"... Tell me, Shirazu: was the guilt eating you up? Did you only agree to helping me, because you figured this was your only chance of saving Haru?" The Black Reaper mused without an ounce of empathy in his voice, as he felt his arm beginning to heat up from the electricity being overcharged in his kagune. "Does dying seem easier to you, rather then actually going through with it?"
Feeling challenged by Urie's proposed assumptions, Shirazu opened his mouth to speak, but was quickly shut down the moment the Black Reaper shot out a powerful electromagnetic blast that was fired from his kagune like a railgun. "Jesus, fuck dude…!"
Having created a pathway from his projectile shot that blew apart the pieces of the reinforced ceiling and walls that had been hit, Urie's remaining eye scanned across the opening he had created while charging up another electromagnetic attack. "About your question, in regards to the downsides of me having dragon-cells… In order to survive, I need to absorb the RC-cells of at least one ghoul, or ten humans, a day… It's been this way for me for one-hundred and sixty-one days..."
Once his kagune had charged up enough overcharged RC-cells to begin causing his blade to violently spark, Urie fired another powerful blast that cleared a quarter of the entire server room, all while still searching for where Haise was; knowing fully well that the one-eyed ghoul wasn't going to flee due to his dedication he had for Hinami.
"... In order to survive this world, your resolution, your strive for what you believe in, must be greater than those around you," Urie explained to the confused and terrified quinx, before blowing apart more of the server room without any lack of concern for anything other than his mission. "To carry on with this wretched existence, I've so far taken the lives of fifty-one ghouls, and one-thousand and one-hundred seventy humans… Those are just the lives I've needed to end just for my own survival…"
Blowing apart what little remained of the large room around them, the red lights from the decimated sirens had disappeared, and in their place was the darkness from the night sky casting over the Black Reaper, as the violent winds of snow blew onto his robes and armor.
"One-thousand, two-hundred and twenty-ones lives, snuffed out by my hand… And those aren't including the countless killings I've committed against CCG and the Aogiri Tree." Urie stated out loud with a voice that conveyed his own self-condemnation, as he took aim at the last remaining aisle of malfunctioning computers and crumbling walls left in the server room.
Finding it borderline incomprehensible for him to accept what he had heard, Shirazu shook his head with a pending sense of overwhelming denialism drawing closer to his psyche, as he backed away slowly from the Black Reaper. "U… Urie…? What… Why? What… W-Wha…-"
"-Why do I choose to live this life of damnation? Was that more-or-less what you were going to ask?" Urie asked with a slight sense of amusement at the end of his sentence, before suddenly turning his arm around to press the tip of his kagune against Shirazu's stomach. "... If I told you that everything I've done was all in the name of securing a future for your sister, Mutsuki, and Saiko… Would you believe me?"
Frozen to the spot, unable to process Urie's sudden act of betrayal, Shirazu stared back at his own reflection being mirrored on the visor on the Black Reaper's broken mask. Staring back at the heartbroken expression of terror in his ex-deputy's eyes, Urie already knew the other man's answer without him needing to say a single word.
"I don't blame you... I wouldn't either," Urie said in a low and slightly apologetic voice, before firing point-blank into Shirazu's stomach. Catching only a glimpse of the quinx's innards and muscle splattering out from his lower back, Urie remained stone-faced as he watched Shirazu's body launched out of the server room before being engulfed by the dead of the night.
Unable to see him due to how far the propulsion blast had sent him, Urie figured that he had successfully dealt with Shirazu so he could face Haise alone in the arena he had purposefully created for himself. Knowing fully well that Haise had been listening and watching, the Black Reaper made his way over to the center of the opened area on the fourth-story of the disamated building before turning around to see Haise stumbling out of the shadows.
"U… U… Ur… Urie…?" Haise mumbled out with a haunted and traumatized look in his eyes, as he cautiously and absent mindfully shuffled out from behind a rack that he was using to plan a non-lethal ambush. "... No… No, that's… No… N-No, you're… You can't be-"
Cutting Haise's quiet mutters of heartache and confusion off by slowly removing his helmet, Urie stared back with an exhausted and somber expression on his scared face as he met Haise's horrified gaze. With his greying-dark hair flowing in the shivering winds, Urie's left missing eye was replaced with an abyss of black-goo that dripped down his cheek as he continued to look at his ex-squad leader dead in the eye.
"... I wish you didn't have to witness that interaction, Sasaki; it would have spared you the knowledge of my identity… It would have also made this easier for the both of us," Urie said with a foreboding voice, before putting his helmet back on while unsheathing his quinque.
"There's no further point in explaining myself to you; you know why I'm here, and I know why you're here... Let's get this over with," Urie said in a slightly reluctant voice, before immediately stabbing the tip of Ginkui downwards into what remained of the metal floorboards.
With Haise still desperately trying to figure out why Urie had seemingly murdered Shirazu, along with being responsible for having a hand in Hinami's kidnapping, the one-eyed ghoul barely took notice of the fact that there was a black-pool of RC-cells seeping through the floor underneath him.
Emerging from the black-abyss beneath his feet, several small variants of Noro's kagune sprung out of the shredded-metal floors. Extending upwards to latch their jaws down on his arms and legs, the Ginkui was unable to pierce the reactive surface of the Barbatos suit that was preventing the quinque's teeth from puncturing Haise by actively attacking the numerous amounts of serpent-like appendages trying to devour him.
While his quinque was battling against Urie's, Haise staggered a few steps forward before being pulled down against what was left of the metal floor beneath his body, after the Black Reaper realized that Ginkui wasn't a match for Barbatos. Doing his best to avoid looking into Haise's heartbroken eyes and at the tears that were flooding down his cheeks, Urie kept his quinque pierced into the floor before advancing towards his ex-squad leader.
Unable to ignore the fact that Haise wasn't attempting to escape or was showing any signs of wanting to fight back, Urie found himself further lowering his gaze until he was merely watching the snow piling up on the broken pieces of plastic and shards of metal that littered the floor.
Charging up his kagune with the intention of giving his previous father-figure a quick and painless death, Urie came to a halt after stepping into the pool of RC-cells that housed Ginkui's appendages.
Shifting his gaze up only enough to allow him to see what he was doing, Urie bent his knees and lowered himself closer to Haise to grab his chin in order to hold him still. Bending his right elbow back, Urie raised his electrified kagune back and aimed the tip of its black blade directly in front of Haise's widened eye, as the one-eyed ghoul's psyched-up mind was manipulated by the Barbatos quinque to contort his reality once again, as he once again began to hallucinate.
While Urie was building up the nerve to put down his old squad leader, the snow that had been piling up around Haise began to transform into a field of white-flowers before his very eye. Gone were the rubble and debris that had been left in the wake of the Black Reaper's path of destruction, and the night sky above faded away into the familiar white walls and ceiling of Cochlea, where Kaneki had previously undergone the process of becoming Haise.
There was no kagune before him, and no begotten son of his to cloud his judgement; all that Haise could see before him was Arima standing above him with IXA's blade centimeters away from his eye.
Looking down at Haise with a disappointed expression hidden behind his eyeglasses that shined underneath Cochlea's overhead lights, the phantom of Arima glared down at him before speaking in the same cold and emotionless tone that the one-eyed ghoul had once found comforting.
"Get up," Arima commanded in a monotone voice, which made Haise involuntarily attempt to pick himself up from the floor, but to no avail.
"But… I can't… I can't stand, Arima…" Haise croaked out painfully, due to the fact that he was relieving the same pain of having to train with the White Reaper in the past, along with having his arms and legs pinned down while still trying to recover from the stress that the Barbatos suit was putting onto his body and mind.
Unsatisfied with Haise's answer, Arima's hold on Haise's chin grew tighter. "You must, Haise. Do your job. Kill, just as I do… You are my quinque, unless, Haise…"
"Would you like to die again?" Arima asked in a somewhat rhetorical sense, while Haise slowly watched in anguish as the tip of his quinque began to enter through the center of his eyeball.
"Will you die… AGAIN?"
"AHHHHHHH! AHHHHHHGHHH!" Haise's voice bellowed out into the night sky, as his kagune involuntarily shot out from his lower armored back to sever all the sepentile heads of Ginkui.
While Urie couldn't predict what was going on in Haise's damaged head, he did know that his time for hesitation had run out, and it was time for him to act. Just as Urie fired a concentrated shot of kagune-shards that blew apart Haise's head, the Black Reaper felt Eyepatch's kagune pierce into his chest before ripping apart his insides just as the tendrils erupted into a red-cloud.
More bewildered than horrified that Haise was able to pierce through his armor quick enough to scramble his heart, lungs, and framed-kakuhou sacs before his dragon-cells could seal his Arata quinque up, Urie collapsed onto his knees as he felt his mortality fading away as he watched his black-blood oozing onto the floor. 'How… How the hell did he do that…?! I… I shouldn't have waited, I… I…?!'
Vomiting out the torn apart remnants of his vital organs that had been expelled out of his body by his dragon-cells, Urie was barely able to pull off his helmet just in time to allow the black-bile to splattered from his mouth and onto the ground before falling down on his side.
Unable to move while in the process of having to endure his body creating kakuja-like organs to replace the ones destroyed beyond repair, Urie's head violently shook while he tried to keep his vision steady enough to stare at Haise's body.
Due to how hard it was for him to keep his head still, it took Urie several moments to notice the tiny tendrils protruding from Haise's mutilated head. Observing, it didn't take long for Urie to realize that the tiny tendrils were reconstructing Haise's skull and tissues by using the Barbatos' own RC-cells to accelerate the one-eyed ghoul's already impressive regenerative abilities.
'...That quinque, it's… It's falling apart,' Urie thought to himself, after noticing that the quinque-metal plates were disappearing while the fabric-like surface of the Barbatos suit was drying up and turning into dust before his eyes. While Urie wasn't sure what to expect, seeing the depleting quinque beginning to transfer its own supply of RC-cells and resources to begin forming a kakuja-mask over Haise's face wasn't something he had accounted for.
Feeling dread overtaking his body, Urie knew fully well from just the sight of the elongated armored-protrusion sticking out over Haise's nose that the one-eyed ghoul was in the process of becoming the same centipede-like monster that had decimated CCG's forces before.
'Damnit…! I have to get up, now… I… I need more power…' Urie thought drastically to himself, as he manipulated his body to use its dragon cells to cannibalize the organs that he didn't need for battle, such as his liver, kidneys, and most of his digestive system. "More… More! More! MORE!" Urie screamed out in a shrill and crazed voice, while beginning to allow his cursed blood to begin absorbing the RC-cells from the quinque-frame that kept his kagune regulated.
"MORE! MORE! MORE, MORE, MORE, MORE!" Urie continued to repeatedly shriek out with a wide-psychotic grin splitting apart his cheeks. Feeling a dopamine-high the moment his dragon-cells made direct contact with his exposed kakuhou sacs that were freed from their frame, Urie laughed maniacally as he felt his body producing large-plates of heavy-set armor that began to encompass his body.
While the two one-eyed ghouls' bodies were being enveloped in their own developing kakujas, the weight of their new forms was what finally caused the destroyed-foundation of the floor underneath them to collapse. With the damage caused by Urie, Haise, United Front, CCG, and the blazing fires before they had been put out, the first impact made by the two caused a domino effect to occur after the third floor caved in.
Floor, by floor, in a matter of less than a minute, the entire four-story prison had been demolished and leveled to the ground. A cloud of thick dust erupted from the charred remains of the ruined structure that was quickly blown away with the violent blizzard that was now at full effect. The snow from the heavens above had only a few seconds to settle down on the corpse of Corniculum before suddenly two large kakujas burst from the debris.
With two-large armored and pronged tails extending out of his upper back, Haise climbed out of the rubble with the single red-eye of his kakuja mask scanning his surroundings. Like a centipede hunting for its prey, Haise remained still and quiet as he felt snow and ash raining down on his chitinous armor that covered his body from top of his neck, to all the way down his feet. Using his armored-palms and intricate tendrils that had clawed hands at the tips of them, Haise eventually felt a sudden shifting vibration underneath the rubble he was hunched over on.
Taking in a loud breath, Haise sprung backwards into the air just as Urie shot out of a pile of rubble to take a swing at him with his four-meter long kagune-blade that narrowly missed the centipede's feet. Leaping forward with two elongated black-blades that glew erieely red, just like the rest of his kakuja.
With the dragon-cells having mutated his frameless kagune to transform into what looked like a black-knight out of Hell, Urie's five-meter tall figure cut through the air like a knife as he targeted Haise. "YOU'RE IN MY WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY (LIKE YOU ALWAYS WERE)! DIE, DIE, DIE (KILL, KILL, KILL)!" Urie screamed hatefully, as he gave it his all without any more hesitation or love left in his heart to hold him back.
Similar to Urie, Haise's reluctance had disappeared, and instead of being heartbroken, all the one-eyed ghoul could feel was an overwhelming sense of anger and betrayal as he stared back at the man he once considered to be like a son to him.
"GIVE HER BACK! GIVE HER BACK!" Haise screamed in a scornfully-demanding voice, before breaking the sound-barrier as his pronged centipede-tails shot out from behind him to parry the electrified-blades protruding from the Black Reaper's arms.
Due to the density of Haise's centipede-like tendrils, Urie's electrokinesis was only able to propel the two from one another due to the expulsion of magnetic-force upon his kagune blades clashing against the chitin-armor. Skidding across the snow while crashing into several large chunks of rebar and cement, Urie stabbed what remained of the pavement underneath him to anchor himself to a halt, all while looking forward to see Haise sprinting toward him on all fours.
"Y-YOU FUCKING TRAITORRRR!" Haise screamed in the form of a battle cry, as he launched himself forward with his tendrils and armored tails arched back in preparation to attack.
Retracting his blades from the ground, Urie sprinted forward before jumping upwards towards Haise who was descending down on him with his single-white eye staring blankly at him from behind his kakuja-mask. "SASAKIIIIII!"
"URIEEEE!"
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the chapter!
I'm a bit busy at the moment while proof-reading this, so I'll be quick about the reviews!
First of all, thank you to those who have PM'd me or gave a review; I love reading your feedback.
Urie was violent in the last chapter, but in this one I made sure to display how cruel and distorted his moral compass had become. Haise would have died had it not been for Tsukiyama's priceless gift to him… Which he destroyed on his first mission.
After his stressful nightmare, there will be a downtime period where Haise and everyone else recovers from the mission, while planning for their next move.
Thank you for the compliment Carla, lol; that one stuck out to me, and I appreciate the kind words. The person who will be healing Eto will be revealed in the next chapter (ie, it's Nico).
As in this chapter, the black blood 'dragon cells' do have a numerous amounts of negative drawbacks: the host must constantly kill daily, it constantly eats them alive and even then all Urie could do is just prolong the process of dying while sustaining irreversible damage, and it's VERY painful. Imagine the prototype Arata quinque constantly eating you, that's what Urie deals with 24/7.
Roma got her ass handed to her, but don't worry; her clown ass will be okay.
Thank you, I'll try to make smaller chapters in the future to help with pacing.
Touka did try to use her kagune, but also wasn't very articulate about it due to her freaking out while being asphyxiated. The blood is toxic, I'll show that later, but it's not fatal. Just imagine a bad taste in your mouth, and it cells upsetting your stomach. Touka did eat Arata, so she will get a power boost and a kakuja later on.
Don't worry, Eto and Touka are gonna get smashed soon, I promise lmao.
Also, the Nutcracker review made me laugh.
I've been meaning to post this on AO3, and probably will in a few days.
Anyways, that's all I have time for.
Thank you, and have a great day!
