The remnants of the Goat leadership were gathered around an old table and chair set someone found being eaten by vegetation. Once freed from the brush, it was serviceable enough.
They went over what they knew and didn't know, what they could and couldn't do next.
Maybe this place used to be an outdoor café, Touka thought. She sat a little apart from them on a stone wall in the derelict park, staring off at the horizon with glassy eyes. It would have been a beautiful spring if not for the monster swallowing up the Tokyo skyline.
She was still in shock. Her thoughts were scrambled, unable to comprehend the twists and turns of last 24 hours. Most of the ghouls who had stayed at her side were probably in the same headspace. She knew that they were waiting for her to take the lead, she could feel it in the way their eyes would glance at her every time she twitched.
She was the manager, dammit!
No next step was going to reveal itself. She'd been at rock bottom before, and she knew what it was like to pick herself up and claw a path out of nothing.
And, of course, once she'd resolved to dust herself off and do something, that was when then Hide came to the rescue—like he always seemed to—trailed by Akira and Amon.
"What's your plan, then?"
Hide shrugged and looked around. "Looks like you've got several dozen ghouls ready to follow you. Why not just walk on down to the main offices and ask if they could use some help?"
Touka stared him down, unamused. "Just hand ourselves over to the people that were trying to murder us half an hour ago? That's your plan?"
"I don't have any more tricks up my sleeve. Times like these tend to make people put aside their differences. There's never been an opportunity quite like this for ghouls to get on the CCG's good side."
"That might be the dumbest thing I've ever heard." She turned around and was about to stomp off—figure something else out. "I can't believe I thought you could help."
He held his hands up. "I'm glad you think I'm a tactical wizard playing 4D chess, but really I'm only good at two things: sticking my nose in where it doesn't belong, and being ready to act fast when opportunity falls in my lap. But, I'm really good at both of those things."
Touka looked around at the dejected, lost remnants of Goat. "It's not enough. Can't you see that?"
Her despair nearly suffocated her, but she fought it back out of stubbornness. She could go on out of spite if nothing else.
He thought for a second. "Actually, hold on. I have exactly one more trick up my sleeve." Opening his jacket, he reached into a deep interior pocket and withdrew a rugged-looking phone with a huge antenna. Dialing a number, he held it up to his ear.
"Hey! How're you holding up on your end?"
Hide paused to listen to what sounded like yelling.
"Yeah, I'm about to head back. I want to give you a heads-up, I'm bringing some friends who can help, so leave the front door open and lay out the good china. Oh yeah! One more thing! Could you play the bad cop for me? Really just ham it up."
Another pause. "That part's a surprise. You'll figure it out, don't worry."
Hide hung up and looked at Touka. "That's it, I don't have any more strings to pull. I've got them rolling out the red carpet for you, and two former investigators to lead the charge. They still have just enough social capital that the CCG won't shoot first and ask questions later. The only other thing we can do is run away."
Touka looked up at the sky and filled her lungs, tried to clear her mind. He was right. They could run away or they could march back in to Tokyo to meet their fates. Those were the two live options.
They had spent so long running, always against the ropes, always being driven further and further into hiding…and nothing ever changed.
What would it be like, just this once, to walk down the streets in broad daylight with heads held high? To turn and confront their hunters? To demand to be heard? Wasn't that the original mission of Goat, after all? They'd all spent their lives locked into the choreography of attack and retreat…what would happen if they broke the pattern and did neither?
She clenched her fists and swallowed down her nerves. You either charge headfirst into something this crazy, or you don't do it at all. There's no glory in half-assing it, she thought to herself.
"Listen up everyone! We have a city to save, a king to rescue, and nothing left to lose! Grab your your masks, here's what we're going to do…"
Akira and Amon had been watching the negotiation silently. Privately each was contemplating what it would mean to reenter the building they had dedicated their lives to, this time walking side-by-side with the enemy.
Akira was still more than a little numb at having her whole identity uprooted, so she wasn't afraid of anyone's reaction. She wasn't looking forward to being called a traitor, though. The thought of getting in an argument or even a fistfight with anyone who tried to stand against her, though—that sounded enticing. It might be just the thing to get her blood pumping again.
Amon, on the other hand, felt as though he was about to go off a cliff. He wished to be anywhere else. The very thought of being in public, in daylight, exposed…it set his teeth on edge. He'd been running long enough, though. Besides, it was for the sake of saving the city…there would never be a better motivation to take that next painful step.
Noticing his tense posture and focused scowl, Akira reached over and grabbed his hand. Even when she thinks she's empty she's still the strongest woman I know, he thought. Her calm, icy demeanor bolstered him. Amon borrowed a bit of the steel in her spine, stood straighter, and breathed deeper.
He was as ready as he would ever be when Rabbit finished speaking to the ghouls. She turned to look at him and Akira, sighed, and said, "Alright. Let's go to the CCG."
Hide pumped his fist in the air. "Excellent! You probably won't regret this."
Touka looked over at Hinami, who was looking particularly pathetic. "Not so fast. We're wounded and starving. We won't be much use unless…"
Hide's upbeat attitude faltered. "We passed plenty of bodies on the way here. I don't think that'll be a problem."
Akira recoiled at the thought, but before she could say something Amon jumped in. He now understood that a person had to be practical about these things. "Just…leave anything that could be used to identify the victims. For their families."
Touka nodded and discreetly passed the orders along to several of the ghouls at her side—they would be in charge of locating and distributing the deceased along the way. They would also make sure no one in their macabre column looted the dead, started any fights, or took more than their share.
Akira shuddered, but the soldier in her knew that an army marches on its stomach. The provisions in question were human beings, for God's sake—innocent people who had woken up and gone about their day and died suddenly and violently—but they were being handled as respectfully as they could be, all things considered.
While Touka organized the exfiltration, Hide walked over to Hinami. He held out a hand, helping the temporarily one-legged girl stand. "Hey, kid. Remember me? I used to hang out at Anteiku."
She pressed her eyebrows together in thought. "Yeah, I think I do remember. What happened to you?"
"What happened to me? What about what happened to you! You look a bit diminished."
Hinami looked down at the stump where her leg used to be. It wasn't healing very fast. She gave a sad, sniffly laugh. "There is a little less of me right now, isn't there?"
"How long do you think it'll take to, ya know, be back on two legs?"
"I can heal fast if…if we…"
"I get it. You're not gonna be too fast on crutches, though…maybe if you hop like a pogo stick?"
In spite of herself, Hinami smiled.
Hide glanced around for the nearest person who looked like they could carry her with ease. Amon was the lucky winner, so Hide waved him over and gestured to the girl. "Any chance you can help her out?"
In one motion, Amon hoisted her up on his back and pulled her arms around his shoulders. Being a teenage girl who was down a limb, Hinami was feather-light to him.
As they started walking, Akira fell in step beside him. They glanced at each other, sharing an increasingly common look that said, If Investigator Mado could see us now…
Touka brushed off her clothes, stirring up a surprisingly large cloud of dust from the underground destruction they'd outrun. "Let's get going then."
Sirens were going off in the distance, and occasionally they would pass a shell-shocked straggler—who would be gently steered away from the epicenter of destruction—but overall they encountered very few people. Everyone is either dead or sheltering in place while waiting for instructions from authorities, Akira surmised. No one understands what happened yet.
After a few minutes of walking in silence, Hinami's quiet voice spoke up.
"Do you…no, never mind."
Akira sighed. "What is it, Fueguchi?"
Hinami looked over (down) at Akira with watery eyes. "I'm just…tired, and scared, and I've never lost a leg before…and I was wondering if I'll ever be grown up enough to stop wishing my mom was here to give me a hug…"
Akira was so distracted by how casually the girl talked about her first leg amputation—wasn't ghoul physiology a bizarre subject—that she almost didn't register the end of what Hinami said.
Amon, who had watched her mother die, stumbled briefly.
Hinami laid her head on Amon's shoulder and said in a long-suffering voice. "I shouldn't have said anything. I'm sorry."
It occurred to Akira that the wounds their parents and friends and mentors had dealt each other were a done deal. The only thing left was either reopening them or letting them heal. And healing was sounding better all the time.
"I still miss my mom," Akira offered. "I think about her all the time. About how a hug from her would fix everything…It doesn't mean you're immature, it's a very…human thing to feel."
Amon hesitated, but he could feel Akira's eyes burning a hole in his face, waiting for him to join in and take the heat off of her. "I barely remember my mother, she died so long ago…but sometimes I remember that feeling of comfort and safety and I wish I could find it again. I don't think that yearning ever leaves you. Someday you might be able to help someone else feel safe and comforted, though, because you understand what they're feeling and how to help them."
Akira reached over and rubbed the adolescent ghoul's back, the same way her mother had soothed a young Akira in times of distress.
When the ghouls paused briefly to devour a freshly found body, Hinami—being young, grievously wounded, and tactically valuable, was one of the first to receive her rations. The girl found a semi-private alcove to pogo over to, where she quickly consumed the muscle and liver she'd been handed.
Akira still sneered at the sight of dripping viscera that used to be a person being passed around like a charcuterie board, but she noted distantly that her disgust had lost its sharp edges.
She watched as several of the ghouls left the poor deceased's wallet and wedding ring on an out-of-the-way concrete ledge and bowed their heads for a moment of silence.
Hinami's leg was mostly regrown less than an hour (and several corpses) later, when they began their final approach to the CCG Main Office. By that time most of the ghouls had grown nervous enough to don their masks, more out of habit and anxiety than any hope of protecting their anonymity. They were about to enter the lion's den, after all.
Touka was one of the last to give in to the nervous urge to hide behind her mask.
Hide glanced at Akira. "What kind of promotion do you think I'll get when I bring the Rabbit right through the CCG's front doors?"
Touka scoffed. "We all know Amon beat you to the punch on tracking me down years ago."
Akira gasped dramatically. "He what?!"
Hide and Touka glanced at each other, wide-eyed behind both their face coverings, fearful that they'd just ignited another war by spilling the beans on their undocumented rendezvous.
The blonde-haired young man scrambled to do damage control. "Uh, he saw her in the Rabbit mask first?"
Akira crossed her arms, glared at Hide, and…cracked a smile. "It was a joke. I know about your little meetings. It was one of the first things Amon told me about after we left Goat."
She flipped her hair over her shoulder and continued walking through rubble towards the office. Calling back to the stunned duo, she added, "Who do you think I am? Artificial ghoul or not, I'd carve his heart out with a rusty spoon for keeping those kinds of secrets from me."
Hide shoved his hands in his pockets and shook his head. "Ohhh, she got us good."
Touka smiled at Akira's little prank. She elbowed Hide in the side and continued striding towards the towering building. "Quit standing around before I carve your heart out. We've got a job to do and it's all your idea, so you better take point."
Amon had been a silent witness to the brief exchange. He understood how the urge to joke around grew as tension did. That was natural. He remembered, amused, a thought that had crossed his mind after that fateful library meeting: Akira and Rabbit were more alike than they realized, and God help them all if they ever met.
He hadn't been wrong.
