Tokyo Ghoul Root QX

by The Lemon Farmer

Wanting to accomplish his goal of uniting both humans and ghouls in an equal society, Ken Kaneki is pursues his dream by becoming an apprentice underneath a renowned ghoul biologist. After willing agreeing to be the first test subject to undergo an experimental surgery, Kaneki awakens as a Qunix with the power and determination to end the next war between CCG and Aogiri Tree. (AU)

10. Good Will Hunting

This chapter will be focusing on Hide and Morie, a character belonging to another user (KitsuneFire01), who was first mentioned in this fanfic in chapter seven.

This is also an introductory to a new main character that most of you already know, and who was briefly written about in chapter five.

More author notes will be on the bottom. Thank you, and please enjoy!

---

Arriving at the entrance of the 20th Ward's forest-like park, the four investigators led by Hachikawa came to a halt on the paved path leading into the heart of the wooded-area. The ground below their feet shook subtly as a thunder-clap from the distance boomed loudly into the afternoon sky. Looking down at his exposed arms underneath his rolled-up sleeves, Hide couldn't help but feel perplexed as to why the light hairs along his skin were all perked up. However, the sudden increase of static in the air was only momentary, and lasted for only a few seconds before the hairs along his forearm fell back down against his skin.

"Huh… That was odd, wasn't it?" Hide mused aloud to Ayumu, who had been preoccupied with making sure her own blonde hair kept in place to hide her face.

"Annoying is what it is… But still, you're right; it was… Very odd." The blonde mop-headed investigator commented, as she along with everyone else stared off toward the direction of where the thunder-clap had originated from.

Being the one who was already on edge, Takizawa felt his skin grow cold as he swallowed nervously before speaking up. "S-Should… Should we investigate it? D-Did you think that those flying things we saw earlier had anything to do with it?"

"Those 'flying things' we saw earlier were ghouls, boy; they were bloody ghouls…!" Hachikawa said scoffingly, before continuing to address whether or not the noise needed their attention. "As far as investigating that boom… Don't be an idiot; between the four of us, we have two quinques and zero supplies or supplement weaponry. There's not a doubt in my mind that someone else will be investigating the noise, and it would be foolish of us to risk our lives to quell our curiosity."

"O-Oh… Okay." Takizawa said quietly in a conflicted voice.

While Hide wasn't a fan of Hachikawa to begin with, especially when he was being downright rude, the young man had to begrudgingly agree with what the senior investigator had said. Still, that didn't mean Hide wasn't going to not try to cheer Takizawa up anyways.

"Don't feel bad Taki; the investigator inside of me wants nothing more than to 'Nancy Drew' the hell out of whatever made that loud-ass noise; really, that sounds like a great time!" Hide said reassuringly with a wide grin, before walking up to give him a hearty pat-on-the-back.

"But look at this way: Say we did go and check things out for ourselves… We go there, and find out it's some sort of kakuja ghoul, or when we show up, we're surrounded by ghouls; wouldn't you want to have either reinforcements or at least a weapon to your name?" Hide asked with a playfully smug look on his face.

Bringing his finger up to his mouth to ponder while envisioning the possible scenarios that were listed out by Hide, it wasn't long after running through those imagined scenes did Takizawa finally understand why going there would have been a bad idea. "I guess you're right, Hide… Still, I can't help but feel like we're not even doing our duties right now. It kind of just feels like we're scraping by, rather than helping Tokyo."

"We can't help others if we can't help ourselves," Ayumu chimed in, as she finally lowered her arms to her sides after making sure that her mop-hairdo wouldn't stand up on its own again.

"Yeah, what she said!" Hide said agreeingly, before lowering his hand from where he had it on the other man's back. "Now come on! It's a beautiful day outside. The birds are singing; the flowers are blooming… I'd say it's a perfect day to go out for a stroll through the park, wouldn't ya say guys~?"

Although Hide had managed to make Ayumu and Takizawa let out quiet chuckles of amusement underneath their breaths, Hachiawa found the blonde man's optimistic attitude disgusting.

"Shut the hell up, Hide! We're crossing through this park to get to the Lab Division, not so we can frolic in the meadows." The grizzled man stated flatley, before gesturing for the other two junior investigators to follow behind him; but not without first making sure to 'accidentally' bump his shoulder into Hide's arm passive-aggressively.

Standing there with a look of disbelief on his face, Hide knitted his brows at the man as his chocolate eyes trailed behind where Hachiawa and the other two investigators were walking off towards. "... Well the joke's on you; there are no meadows in Ueno Park! It's all shrubbery, marshland, and trees!" Hide spat out in a sassy voice, before blowing his tongue out to give the man a raspberry.

Unfortunately for Hide, Hachikawa and the rest of the junior investigators were already out of earshot, and had left him alone at the front entrance of the park. "Son of a bitch; those guys ditched me….!" Hide growled to himself underneath his breath, before slunking his shoulders and letting out a dramatic sigh. "Oh well… I'll just have to save that quip for later."

After coming to terms that his zinger had been wasted, Hide straightened his back upright before sliding his hands into his slack's pockets. Making sure that Nagomi ⅓'s black rod-like handle was securely tucked between his belt, Hide began to casually trot along down the paved path while whistling a cheerful tune to himself.

Walking towards the shadowed edge of the forest that obscured the sunlight above with its heavy thicket of leaves and pine needles, Hide was only a few meters deep down the paved path underneath the treetops when a subtle sound of footsteps stopped him in his tracks.

Immediately cutting off the song he had been whistling to himself, the perceptive investigator quickly turned around toward the direction of where he thought he had heard the sounds of nearby and heavy footsteps Past the mowed lawn and the grey-bricks that lined themselves outside the perimeter of the park, Hide was only able to glance at the desolate and war-torn streets outside the brick-border through the weather iron-rod gates of the park.

Scanning his eyes above the gate he had closed behind him the moment they entered the park, Hide's mind began to race as he thought of there possibly being a sniper or scout stationed upon one of the distant skyscraper rooftops.

'I don't see anything or anyone up there… Even if I did, that wouldn't have explained those footsteps I heard.' Hide reasoned to himself, as he continued to cautiously keep his eyes and ears open for anything suspicious for a few more minutes, before finally letting down his guard. '... Welp, whatever it is, it's gone. Or worse, it could be stalking us… Ugh, so much for that 'relaxing' stroll I was looking forward to!'

Having held his breath during the duration of his search, Hide finally exhaled his breath before letting out a quiet groan to himself. "Hey! Whatever you are, you better just be a deer like Bambi, or something! I don't want any trouble today, alright? My day's already sucked so far; I don't need anything else raining down on my parade!"

Hide shouted out with an annoyed tone in his voice, before hastily turning back around to make brisk-strides down the forest path to catch up to his group.

---

Outside of the front entrance of the park that was now absent of any sign from her prey, Irimi's large wolf-like kakuja poked its gastly head from above the brick wall it had taken cover behind. Using her enhanced senses, Irimi used her canine-like snout to sniff the air for any scents that differed from the smells of nature she had been accustomed to. Crawling over the nearly five-meter tall brick-wall like it was nothing, Irimi carefully walked down the paved path the investigators had walked down to try and pick up their exact scents.

Being an experienced tracker, it only took Irimi a few seconds to quickly match the scent left behind their footsteps to the other distinct smells riddled within the marshland and forest filled with different species of trees.

However, it was then that she noticed a different kind of scent; one that she didn't recognize as being human nor ghoul. It was a distant, yet extremely unique, scent that was unlike any Irimi had ever smelt in her life. The thought of having new prey excited the huntress, and made it only that much harder to lay low and stay on the prowl, as she carefully followed down the paved path to go after her prey underneath the protective cloak of the treetop-casted shadows.

---

Unloading the burlap sack she managed to take from an abandoned market, Morie squatted down onto the outdoor bathroom's cement floor. Picking up her bag of looted goods from the bottom, Morie shook the brown sack by its end in order to jostle out its contents onto the spot on the floor before her.

Ignoring the various grains of dried rice that had managed to prove itself elusive in her efforts to empty the burlap sack before hand, the various undergarments and bathroom essentials that Morie had to physically fight for were scattered underneath her prone knees.

'For all the trouble I went through to get this stuff, I sure hope there's an outdoor shower, or at least a water fountain somewhere around here for me to bathe in…' Morie thought exhaustingly to herself, before falling back on her behind to sit with her legs spread out between her shoplifted haul.

'Goddammit… It's only been less than a day, and I'm already sick of this place.' Morie thought frustratingly to herself, as she felt herself slumping over at how seemingly pointless her struggles seemed to be.

However, rather than letting her worries return back to the sactuniy of her mind, Morie did her best to push past her pessimistic thoughts to try and look at the silver lining that just had to be hidden away in the absolute nightmare she was in.

Taking a moment to try and get a hold of her surroundings to get a center hold of her current situation, in an attempt to search for a more positive outlook. Almost immediately, she regretted doing so, after realizing just how unsanitary the state the bathroom was around her.

From its stained walls, to the crumpled up towels that were littered everywhere but within the vicinity of the cockroach-infested trash can, it was then that Morie was beginning to regret last night's choice of coming to the park in the first place.

'... I should have gone to a McDonald's; I would have had air conditioning!' Morie muttered to herself in a scolding fashion, before once again trying to reassure herself that things weren't as bad as they seemed. '... I'm not bound to this place; this is merely just a temporary living situation. I'm not going to live here for the rest of my life.'

Figuring that she might as well leave off with a high-note on that final thought, Morie did her best to ignore the repugnant smell coming from the stall behind her to pick herself up off from the grimy floor below.

'I think some fresh air should do the trick…' Morie mused to herself, while longing for a change in scenery. Making sure that her laptop bag that was slung around her body was zipped up and that her bulky quinque was fastened to the jury-rigged sheath she made, Morie walked out of the bathroom.

Stepping off of the ledge from the weathered-concrete pavement that surrounded the outdoor bathroom, the blades of once-kempt grass brushed against the leather of Morie's boots before the young woman finally came to a halt.

Feeling the warm afternoon breeze brushing against her cheeks and flowing through the brunette locks of her unbrushed hair, Morie closed her eyelids shut as she basked in the warm sunlight cascading down through the opened forested area surrounding her makeshift safehouse.

Lifting her chin upward to elevate her nostrils, Morie took in a deep inhalation of air. Far more pleasant smells, such as the mild scent of pine thistles from the trees surrounding her, and of the earthy aroma emanating from the grass and dry soil underneath her, were nothing short of therapeutic for the mentally and physically worn-out biologist.

She held onto that breath of fresh air for as long as she could, before finally exhaling her ventilated moment of captured serenity through her parted lips. Standing there in isolation, with nothing to accompany Morie but the sounds of birds insects chirping away around her, the young woman remained there in her own little world of zen before rudely interrupted by the rumbling-growl coming from within her stomach.

'... I don't think I've eaten anything in the past twenty-four hours; I should see what the vending machine still has in stock.' Morie thought to herself, before turning around to step back onto the cement ledge of the pavement surrounding the outdoor structure.

Thankful that the metal-sheet awnings connected to the roof of the bathroom were able to provide her with adequate shade, the sound of loose gravel and pebbles quietly echoed out from underneath Morie's boots, as she circled around the bathroom to where a large vending machine was located within an enclave built into the brown-brick structure.

Not even wanting to think about when the aged-vending machine before her had last been serviced, Morie's brown eyes scanned across the vintage stickers plastered over the various products that were available for purchase. Her options were limited to canned bread, presumably available for the convenience of people who fed birds, dried-packaged ramen, and generic cola-products.

'Was this vending machine made for students on a budget…?' Morie thought begrudgingly to herself, feeling especially peeved that whoever was the owner of the machine before her didn't even have the common courtesy of ensuring that the cooling unit worked. Staring down at the red digital text of plain-black screen above the slot where she would need to insert her money into, the temperature displayed read forty-one degrees celsius.

After evaluating her limited choices, Morie made the reluctant decision to purchase the canned bread. Reaching into her laptop bag to pull out her wallet, the biologist retrieved a handful of coins before inserting them into the vending machine's designated slot.

Having already overpaid for a can of bread that was probably from the eighties, Morie nearly lost her already thinned patience as she watched the canned product fall down from the top shelf before getting stuck between the tempered glass and a busted can of generic soda.

'... How annoying.' Morie thought to herself, as she stared down at the canned product. Due to how wide the vending machine was, Morie was unable to get a good handle on it when she first attempted to free her purchased snack by carefully shaking the machine. Seeing as her cautious effort to shift the glass panel wasn't yielding her any success, Morie's shaking slowly and progressively escalated into her trying to rock the machine back-and-forth.

When that didn't work, Morie decided that perhaps she needed to be more direct with her efforts. Not wanting to damage the property of whoever owned the vending machine, Morie did her best to respectfully lower her arm down to knock her enclosed fist against the spot on the glass where the bread was stuck, which once again soon transitioned into her beating on the spot like one would do a drum.

Growing tired of the fight her canned bread was putting up, Morie decided to unsheath her quinque to try bumping the glass with her bandaged-wrapped handle. When that didn't work either, she tried kicking the glass. And when that attempt proved itself to be useless, Morie finally resorted to reeling her dull-machete-like quinque back before striking the glass as hard as she could.

Although her attack had made a loud 'thump' noise when it shook the hardened glass panel built into the vending machine, Morie was left dumbstruck at how not even her quinque, Masuda, was able to unlodged the product from its wedged position.

Having wanted to avoid getting down on her knees, Morie groaned quietly under her breath as she knelt down beside the plastic receptacle of the vending machine, before sliding her arm inside of it. Pressing her ear against its plastic cover, Morie was practically shoulder-deep into the vending machine before she was finally able to finesse her way past its outdated anti-theft measurements to reach what was rightfully hers.

'Finally…!' Morie thought to herself with a slight sense of victory, as she wrapped her thin fingers around the aluminum can. However, when it came time for her to retract her arm in order to claim her sought-after prize, it was then that Morie realized that not only was she unable to unlodged the can, but that she had gotten her arm stuck inside of the vending machine.

Feeling defeated, Morie's fingers gently slid off from the aluminum can, as she remained knelt down beside the receptacle of the accursed vending machine. With her lower back beginning to ache from the position she was trapped in, all Morie could do was sulk as she thought of ways she could free herself from the wrath of the robotic merchant towering over her.

---

Standing out from the monotonous mantra of their boots stepping against the dusty paved path they were treading on, Hide suddenly found himself feeling extremely uneasy as his ears picked up on the sound of a quiet and distant 'thump' coming from the direction they were heading towards.

"Hey guys, hold up." Hide said in a serious tone, which instantly concerned Takizawa and Ayumu, who had both learned to expect the worse whenever Hide had stopped being playful.

"What is it, Hide…?! D-Did something happen…?!" Takizawa asked in a nervous voice that was muffled out by the tightly-enclosed area they were in.

Feeling more insignificant than before he first entered the woods of the park, the young man felt his heart thumping inside of his chest, as he couldn't help but suddenly find himself feeling extremely vulnerable to whatever could have been lurking in the shadows or shrubbery.

Hide quickly picked up on how afraid Takizawa had sounded, and as much as he had wanted to reassure his fellow junior investigator that things were okay, the blonde man couldn't bring himself to say anything of the sort.

"Yeah… Yeah, I heard a 'thump' or something like that just up the way. It was quiet and, well… Sounded like glass or plastic being hit." Hide explained, to which Hachikawa quickly dismissed with an annoyed scoff.

"Hide, don't be a dumbass." The spiky-haired man spat out rudely, which didn't seem to phase the usually talkative and reactive blonde man behind him. "I've been through this park, on this very same path, for about two decades now; what you heard was probably just a stray cat trying to get at that old vending machine near the bathrooms… It's nothing to worry about."

"No, no, no, no… I-I'm not trying to insinuate that we should be worried about that." Hide replied in a cautious voice, as his brown eyes darted through the numerous foliage surrounding them. "No… I'm worried because I-I know for a fact that I shouldn't have been able to hear that…"

"Take a listen…" Hide ordered in a quiet tone, which was beginning to make Ayumu extremely uncomfortable while Takizawa was only a few nerves away from having an anxiety attack.

Seeing the other two junior investigators becoming more-and-more frightened by the passing second, Hachikawa was growing tired of Hide's charade. "Nagachika Hideyoshi; that's quite enough! You're scaring the shit out of your fellow junior investigators… End this nonsense, and focus back on the objective."

Had it been an entirely different situation they were in, Hide would have allowed his teammates to discover the revelation he had made. However, the gut-feeling of them being in mortal danger was more than enough for Hide to look at the old investigator straight in the eyes to convey a genuine expression of fear that even Hachikawa couldn't brush off.

"Hachi, don't you get it?... A forest should be filled with birds singing, and insects making their weird mating-call noises…!" Hide said, as he gestured with his hands at the woods around them, before finally revealing the shocking discovery he had made. "... Noises like that only stop when something feels endangered; woodland critters like that do that to hide themselves from a predator."

It was then that Hachikawa finally understood what Hide was hinting at. Losing the grizzled confidence that someone of his veteran-status would have gained from years of survival, the widening expression in the senior investigator's eyes made it clear to Hide that he finally was beginning to grasp the gravity of their situation.

With his team of investigators now on high-alert, Hide fought past the primal urge to remain frozen to the spot, as he reached into his belt to wrap his right hand around the handle of his quinque. After being unable to locate any trace of the source of why the woodland critters had stopped singing their tune from within the foliage, Hide reluctantly turned around to face back at the path they've already walked on.

Holding his breath, Hide took a hesitant step forward before once again stopping in his tracks. Turning his head over his shoulder, Hide did his best to lighten the mood of everyone's uncertainty by forcing a smile on his face, before turning his back to stare off at that shaded path behind them.

Dreadfully, each step Hide took as he backtracked down the path they were on felt like an invisible knife cutting away at his nerve, as he forced himself to tread down the ominous shaded area that was starting to seem darker than he remembered it being.

With his chest tightening as he became more and more encompassed into the bleak path, a breath of relief that Hide had unknowingly been holding finally escaped his lips, as reached the curvature of the path that allowed him to have a clear and direct line of sight back toward the distant iron-rod gates of the park's main entrance.

"Oh thank God…!" Hide sighed loudly to himself, as he felt himself gasping for breath. Letting out an uneasy chuckle, the blonde young man was beginning to feel more-and-more ridiculous about his accusations that stemmed from his paranoia that got them all worried in the first place.

Already starting to think about the apology he would have to make when he got back to his group, the short duration of relief that Hide had experienced quickly came to an end the moment he felt a warm and oddly-large amount of liquid drip down onto his shoulder.

Although initially disgusted after realizing that the somewhat translucent liquid that had fallen onto him was nothing more than saliva, the only thing that Hide felt afterward when he instinctively looked up was the deep-seeded feeling of primordial fear, as he stared into the two large kakugan-eyes from the colossal beast suspended above him in the treetops.

Only being able to catch a glimpse of its nearly meter-long wolf head glaring back at him with a writing mass of tendrils that covered its neck like a furry mane, the moment Irimi unhinged her kakuja's elongated jaw to below out a deafening roar is when Hide immediately began his sprint back up the path towards his group.

With her cover blown, Irimi no longer bothered to tread lightly, but instead began to tear through the branches and even the trunks of the trees she had planted her kagune into to support her weight, as she turned herself around to face her fleeing prey.

With the large branches above him falling down onto the path, Hide had to duck and weave from the falling foliage, as he caught a glimpse of Irimi's large kakuja-form falling down behind him. Just as he had to dive forward to avoid being crushed by a falling cedar tree, Hide felt a warm gelatinous tendril wrap itself around his ankle.

Letting out a grunt of pain as his body was suddenly jerked back towards the mess of collapsed trees and splinted bark, Hide used his elbow to turn around to stare at the shiny-metallic kagune holding him still, as Irimi's large wolf head poked itself from above the trunk of fallen cedar tree.

Snarling and snapping at the air towards his direction, Irimi tried to use her kagune to pull Hide closer to her gaping maw, but was met with resistance when Hide used his free leg to press his foot against the trunk of the tree to prevent himself from being reeled in.

With adrenaline coursing through every fiber in his being, Hide quickly activated his quinque, Nagomi ⅓, and curled his body up towards Irimi to chop down at the tendril-like appendage. Hearing a howl of enraged pain from the feral ghoul, Hide wiggled the severed tendril free from his ankle, before rolling back on his stomach to pick himself up.

However, before he could even begin to lift himself up, another metallic tendril had managed to wrap itself around his left shin. Even in his adrenaline-ridden state, Hide let out a muffled scream as he felt Irimi's kagune beginning to cause the bones in his shin to splinter.

Wasting no time in acknowledging the fact that he was only centimeters away from being bitten in half, Hide swung his quinque as hard as he could, and was instantly rewarded with the sense of relief in his damaged leg, after having severed another one of Irimi's appendages.

Hearing her howling in pain, Hide fought back the tears in his eyes as he finally picked himself up from the pavement below. However, the young blonde man wasn't even able to set one foot forward before suddenly feeling a large muscular arm bash him from behind. Falling down face forward, Hide accidentally dropped his quinque during his effort of trying to prevent himself from cracking his head open on the path.

Back on his stomach once again, the muscular arm that had shoved Hide reached over the fallen cedar tree to wrap its clawed and beast-like hand around Hide's injured leg. Without a quinque to defend himself, Hide's only option was brace for impact, as Irimi swung wildly in the air in an attempt to keep hold of him while trying to free herself.

While being swung chaotically from side-to-side, Hide felt his ribs crack and the air fleeing from his lungs after Irimi had unintentionally swung him backwards into a nearby tree. With his vision tunneling and finding it extremely difficult to breathe, Hide felt his arms dropping over his head as Irimi held him upside down toward her maw, with the intention of biting his head off despite still being trapped underneath the pile of splintered trunks and branches, thanks to her own doing.

Just when Hide was beginning to prepare himself for a painful, and hopefully quick death, a loud and familiar explosive cannon-like noise shot out from the path ahead of him. As though it were divine intervention itself, Hide was spared a horrible death the moment a bolt fired from Hachikawa's quinque found itself plunged deep into Irimi's left kakugan.

Roaring a howl of immense pain, Irimi instinctively raised her arm up into the tree tops with Hide still in her grasp, before flinging him towards the direction of her attacker.

Tucking his arms and legs in as best as he could within his confused and injured state, Hide could feel his skin being torn apart into ribbons, as his body rolled across the paved path like a rock being skipped across the surface of a puddle. After coming to a halt, Hide's bloodied and bruised arm was immediately used by Hachikawa to lift him back up to his feet.

Knowing how futile his attack was, considering that Irimi relied heavily more so on her other senses than her eyes to fight, Hachikawa immediately gave up on trying to aim another lucky shot on the massive kakuja that was only moments away from free itself from the encumbrance foliage. Turning back around, Hachikawa quickly ushered the injured young man to get a move on, before shouting out the words "RUN!".

Seeing the man in his forties running ahead of him faster than he thought possible, Hide only took one more side glance over his shoulder at the massive and extremely pissed-off kakuja behind him, before turning his attention back towards the trail ahead of him. Heaving for air, Hide wrapped his arm around his broken rib cage and did his best to ignore the agonizing pain he felt in his lower left leg, as he sprinted as quickly as could towards where his group had run off to.

---

With her arm still trapped within the receptacle of the vending machine, the sounds of trees splinting, the symphony of screams and howls, along with the stampede of loud steps were a clear indication for Morie that it was time to go. Pulling did nothing in terms of trying to free herself, and the practically indestructible vending machine from the eighties was nothing more than a plight to her dire situation.

Having exhausted practically every reasonable option at her disposal, it was about the time when Morie began to feel the Earth beginning to shake underneath her is when she used her free arm to twist her trapped elbow upwards. With dread boiling from within her stomach, the biologist felt her skin become even more clammy and cold as she prepared herself to enter a world of pain.

Taking only a momentary breath to muster up all the courage she could gather, Morie leapt up from where she was squatted and used the vending machine's anti-theft mechanism to secure her forearm in place, as she snapped her elbow in the complete opposite direction.

"S-Shit…!" Morie spat out under her breath, as she fought through the immense amount of pain of having to slide her disfigured appenged out from the machine. Wincing in agony, Morie made sure that her laptop bag and quinque were secured to her person before standing up to her feet.

Breathing harder-and-harder out through her dried lips, Morie made sure to use her free arm to compress her broken limb before sprinting away from the bathroom and towards the opposite direction of where the incoming sounds of trees being uprooted were growing closer-and-closer.

Knowing that she wasn't exactly the fastest runner there was, Morie avoided taking a paved path that would have given away her position to whoever was approaching, and instead chose to ignore the thorny pain of the nearby shrubbery, as she leapt into a particularly large bush. Shifting frantically, yet as quietly as could, Morie turned around and positioned herself around past the small branches until she was able to peek through the leafs of the bush.

Taking only a moment to look down at her bruised arm, Morie hesitantly tested her healed arm's maneuverability and range of motion by moving it up and down carefully. From within the time it took for her to sprint about twenty meters in length from the vending machine to the foliage area surrounding the clearing the bathroom was centered in, the bones and tendons in Morie's once broken arm had already reconnected themselves, and her collection of purple bruises that previously covered her elbow had since faded away.

After feeling satisfied enough with her recovered injury, Morie raised her head once again to quietly observe the two investigators sprinting towards the bathroom she had used as a temporary safehouse.

Judging by how young they looked, Morie figured that they must have been ordered to take shelter rather than trying to face whatever was tearing its way through the forested park. However, Morie also couldn't help but to find it odd that neither of the investigators had a suitcase on their persons, nor did they even appear armed from what she could tell; the only clue that they were actually linked to CCG were their white trench coats they wore.

Just as she watched the two enter within what little protection the bathrooms could provide for them, it was then that she saw a spiky-haired man with a muffled collar covering his mouth sprinting out of the woods with a gold-plated quinque in his right hand. Despite how old he appeared from what Morie could tell by his wrinkled forehead and his greying hair, the investigator was remarkably agile.

Leaping up to hold onto the ledge of the metal awning surrounding the bathroom, the grizzled man was able to use one arm to pull himself up onto the roof. From his vantage point, Morie watched the investigator take aim at whatever must have been following behind him.

Emerging from the woods that were in the midst of deforestation was a blonde young man limping for dear life, as a large wolf-like kakuja trailed behind him on all fours. Assuming the worst for the injured young man, Morie's conscious, the side of her that had always led her into trouble, screamed at her for her to do something.

Steadfast and trying to think about the virtues of self-preservation, the brunette did her best to silently talk herself out of interfering and possibly risking her life to save a group of people she never once met in her life. Had it not been for the fact that the investigator on the room had not only missed his shot, but had been shot himself by the kakuja's winged kagune, Morie might have been able to stay still long enough to remain hidden until the massacre passed.

'What the hell am I doing…?!' Morie thought somewhat sarcastically to herself, as she reluctantly stood up from the shrub she had planned on hiding in. Fearing the worst for her laptop, Morie undid her strap before setting it along with her other belongings down within the safety of the shrub, before unsheathing her dull quinque.

Seeing how the blonde man ahead of her had been pinned down by one of the clawed hands of the kakuja, Morie knew that the time to devise an elaborate plan to ensure her own safety had long since passed.

Swearing under her breath at how foolish and impulsive she was, Morie ignored the survivalist in her that was being drowned out by her conscious, as she sprinted past the grizzled investigator, who laid splayed out in pain on the grassy field within the clearing they were in, before getting close enough to do the first thing that came to her mind.

Watching as the kakuja beast parted its gaping jaw to reveal rows of white fangs in preparation to devour the young man underneath its weight, Morie turned her body sideways as she raised her quinque above her head. Having only milliseconds to take an approximate aim at her target, Morie grunted underneath her exhaled breath, as she chucked her machete-like quinque directly at Irimi's head.

The surprise and momentary pride she felt after hitting her distant target was extremely short lived, and soon the sinking feeling of regret followed suit as Morie locked eyes with Irimi's feral gaze. Although Morie was an educated individual who had a very methodical sense of conveying her thoughts, the only words that were entering her head that very moment were 'SHIT', 'RUN', and of course 'VERY BAD DECISIONS WERE MADE'.

Only being able to take one step forward after the moment she turned around with her back facing the nearly three-meter tall kakuja, two clawed hands dug themselves into her shoulders as Irimi pinned Morie down onto the grass. Squirming in an attempt to free herself, it didn't take long for Morie to realize that the drooling wolf-like monster hovering above her wasn't going to let her go without a fight.

Thinking back to what she knew about canines, Morie decided to take another impulsive gamble. Waiting for the snarling ghoul above her to get close enough to try and take a whiff of her unique scent, Morie swung her head up and backwards as hard as she could. Having bashed the back of her head against Irimi's extremely sensitive snout, the quick yowl of pain Morie heard behind her was enough to tell her that her gamble had paid off.

With Irimi letting go of Morie to raise her hands up in order to cradle her nose, Morie immediately flipped herself around on her back to face the apex predator behind her. Hoping that holding eye contact with the feral ghoul who had already displayed animalistic behaviors would somehow prevent her from getting pounced on again, Morie used her elbows and the heels of her boots to crawl away as quickly as she could.

Unfortunately, Morie's reasonable assumption proved itself to be too far-fetched than she would have liked it to be. Having only moved the span of a meter backwards, Morie let out a horrified gasp as Irimi leapt onto her once again.

Having been more prepared for it than previously, Morie tucked her elbows and arms close to her body before curling upwards to avoid having both her shoulders once again pinned against the Earth. With Irimi opening her large gaping maw to take a bite out of her, Morie attempted to kick the kakuja in the throat, but was once again reminded that she wasn't actually being attacked by a wolf when her counter attack proved useless.

Raising her left forearm up to shield her neck, Morie let out a cry of pain, as she felt Irimi's teeth dig straight through her muscle and even through her bones. As if that weren't enough, Irimi plunged her left claw deep into the brunette's shoulder before proceeding to violently shake her wolf-like head side-to-side with the arm still within her clenched teeth.

Within the fit of agony she was in, Morie tried desperately to reach down with what little dexterity one could possess while being mauled by a feral beast to retrieve her scalpel. As she felt her skin and muscle being torn apart as Irimi began to sever her forearm from her elbow, Morie let out a panicked and blood curdling scream as the blood spurting from her ribboned wound sprayed itself onto her face and track suit.

In a last ditch effort to save herself, Morie used all of her remaining strength to lean her body up to get close enough to Irimi's head to plunge her scalpel into the kakuja's already punctured eye. Hearing the ghoul above her of letting out another animalistic howl of pain, Morie's mangled forearm fell limply by her side as she tried to use her trembling legs and one good arm to pick herself up.

Before she could fail at lifting herself up, it was then that Morie felt a hand wrap itself around her wrist. Letting out a panicked scream, Morie looked up to see who had grabbed her, and was met with a pair of comforting brown eyes from the blonde young man she had tried rescuing.

"Up and at 'em; let's get going," Hide said as light heartily as he could, before quickly kneeling down to help Morie back to her feet. With both of them knowing exactly what the kakuja behind them was fully capable of doing, Hide and Morie fought past their aching limbs and fresh-stringing gashes along their skin, as they both ran in the opposite direction of where the ghoul was.

Needing only a few seconds to successfully get accustomed to the foreign object within her kakuja's pulped eye, Irimi growled again as she glared up with her one good eye at her fleeing prey. Despite how determined the two young adults seemed in their efforts to escape from her, Irimi knew already that they were no match for her incredible prowess and speed.

Kicking the soil underneath her clawed hands and feet, unintelligible words were muttered underneath Irimi's heaving breaths as she drew nearer-and-nearer towards Hide and Morie. Lunging forward and leaping up into the air, the tips of Irimi's claws were only able to brush against Morie's lockets of brown hair before she was hit by a bolt fired from Hachikawa's quinque, Kajiri.

The projectile was poorly aimed, and had been caught within the thicket of her large mane around her kakuja's neck that was made up of thousands of writing tendrils. While the fired bolt merely bounced off of her before landing near her hand, it served as enough of a distraction for her prey to slip away from her.

Enraged and feeling embarrassed at herself for letting such an easy kill evade her grasp, Irimi shifted her hateful stare at the investigator who had attacked her.

Standing in the open, Takizawa stared back at the massive beast with nothing but absolute dread in his tear-ridden eyes. Still, in spite of his trembling body and quiet sobbing, the brown-haired young man refused to budge from where he stood.

"I-I'm tired of cowering away…! I'm t-tired of ju-just HIDING like I'm c-chikenshit!" Takizawa announced loudly in a proud and terrified voice, as he fired another bolt at Irimi, who was more than easily able to tank the attack. Even after seeing his bolt bounce off of Irimi's kakuja as though it were made of rubber, Takizawa didn't hesitate to fire another round at her wolf-like head.

"I'm an investigator, Goddammit…! We don't run from monsters like you; WE KILL THEM!" Takizawa yelled out in a shaking battle cry, before screaming continuously as he kept firing his quinque again-and-again at Irimi, who would have laughed at his useless endeavors had it not been for the fact that her mind was too far gone.

Lunging forward, the feral ghoul pinned the hysterically panicked investigator onto the ground with her clawed hands piercing through his claival bone. Opening her mouth once again, Irimi wasted no time in sinking her teeth within the quinque and into his arm. In a matter of a few seconds, Irimi had crushed Kajiri into a crumbled mess of shrapnel, along with turning Takizawa's arm within the quinque into a fine paste of viscous and bone fragments.

Jerking her head back while digging her claws deeper into him, Irimi ripped Takizawa's forearm clean off before proceeding to chew hungrily at the quinque and severed limb within her maw. With the young man underneath her seizing up and violently shaking as his body was going into hypovolemic shock, Irimi's meal was cut short when a dull-blade was rammed deep within her only functionally remaining eye.

Having been the one who picked up Morie's quinque in order to attack the beast, Ayumu had to get close to her in the first place to strike the kakuja's eye. With that being said, she wasn't able to step away in time to avoid being hit by Irimi's thrashing body. Letting out a muffled cry, Ayumu was flung several meters away after being struck by Irimi's whip-like tail.

Receiving a gnarly gash that tore deep into her right thigh, Ayumu laid with her back against the bloodied grass underneath her, as she reached down to try and compress her profusely bleeding wound.

Time seemed to slow down for Hide, as he turned around in the midst of his escape to see the carnage left behind him of his team mates. A gasp of horror fled past his soft lips, as he saw Takizawa lying within a pool of his own blood with his right lower arm missing, while Ayumu began to hyperventilate within her state of panic.

From what Hide could tell, despite how much pressure she was putting onto her wound, the young blonde girl wasn't able to keep up with how much blood was pouring out of her bone-deep gash, and realizing that made Ayumu fear for her life.

It was within his trance-like state that Hide heard a familiar and gruff voice calling out his name. Shifting his brown eyes over past Morie's shoulder, it was then that Hide realized that it was Hachikawa who had been trying to get his attention.

Laying stationary to the spot he had landed after being shot in the side, Hachikawa turned his neck to face towards the blonde man standing practically ten meters away from where he was. While doing his best not to disturb his wound and cause himself to bleed faster than he already was, Hachikawa reached up to lower his propped up collar.

Feeling the warm summer breeze brushing against his exposed muscles and bare teeth, Hachikawa, without any article of clothing to obscure his voice, screamed as loudly he could to have his scratchy voice reach Hide's ears.

"DO SOMETHING, YOU DUMBASS!"

While the words were far from being graceful or elegant, especially if those could have been his last words spoken on Earth, it was enough to bring Hide out of his stupor long enough for him to quickly devise a plan.

Unsure whether or not his plan was even going to remotely work out the way he had planned it, Hide mustered up all the remaining courage he had left before sprinting towards Irimi's berserked kakuja. Keeping low to the ground, Hide kicked his feet underneath himself to slide forward with his body close to the grass, in order to narrowly avoid being cleaved-in-half by Irimi's elongated and powerful tail that swung horizontally over him.

Rolling forward to get back to his feet before the tail could once again swing towards his direction, Hide picked up Masuda from the grass where Ayumu had dropped it. With every fiber in his being telling him to stay away from Irimi's snarling and snapping jaws, Hide had less than a second to calculate and estimate the patterned rate of that the kakuja's mouth would open and shut.

Reeling his elbow back as far as he could, Hide resisted the temptation closing his eyes in order to keep a clear line of sight of where he had marked his invisible target. "Choke on this…!" Hide spat out in a low voice, before extending his arm and the quinque deep into the kakuja's maw.

Having reached past her kakuja's extended gullet, Hide was able to shatter Irimi's front teeth after he had rammed the blade-obsidian-like quinque straight into the ghoul's actual throat. Quickly as he could, Hide retracted his arm out of the kakuja's maw before it could shut close, before kneeling down to get a grip on Takizawa's blood-soaked trench coat.

"Hey, Taki! Stay awake, okay man?! We're almo-" Interrupting Hide's reassuring words that he had tried speaking to the unconscious young man, Irimi swung her clawed hand sideways into the blonde man's arm. Although Hide was able to pull away from Irimi's bladed digits just in time to avoid having his entire arm rip off, the tips of the kakuja's claws tore deep into his bicep as the ghoul flung Hide away like a rag doll.

Turning her head over her shoulder, Morie watched with baited breath as she watched Hide's body fly right past her before skidding across the grass and soil. Rolling onto his side, Hide's body came to a halt the moment he reached the pavement surrounding the outdoor restroom. Seeing his body covered in blood, dirt, blades of grass, and gaping wounds, it was then that Morie knew that she truly was now on her own against the large wolf-like beast approaching her blindly.

As Irimi coughed loudly she drew closer-and-closer to where Morie stood frozen, it was then that the brunette was able to see the handle of her quinque getting pushed out of ghoul's throat with each passing croak the feral woman made. Morie wanted to run, to turn around and escape from the carnage around her, but no matter how much she fought with her own body to budge even the slightest bit, the biologist was unable to do anything other than await her grim and gory fate.

Finally hacking out the entire saliva-covered quinque from her throat, Irimi spat Masuda onto the grass beside her clawed hand that was just itching to disembowel the brunette trapped within her gaze. Growling and snarling once more, Irimi felt her confidence returning to her as she took in the blindly pointed her sensitive snout towards Morie's direction to get an exact read on her location.

After spending more than enough time basking in the would surely be the other woman's last moments alive on Earth, a dry and raspy grunt escaped from the kakuja's lips as Irimi lunged forward into the air to finish the biologist off.

Staring into the wide gaping jaws of the incoming kakuja heading down towards her, Morie found herself ignoring its shiny rows of jagged teeth and even looked over the fact that its claws were aimed directly for her stomach. There, within the drool-ridden and blood-stained jowls of Irimi's wolf-like creation, Morie found herself focusing her attention onto the shattered teeth and bleeding gums within the ghoul's actual opened mouth.

Feeling like a spectator within her own body, Morie watched with withheld breath as she felt a pressure erupting from within her lower back. That odd sensation of having her skin painlessly broken along with feeling like she had grown an extra appendage was quickly overshadowed, as she watched as a glowing crimson tendril covered with a shiny black-obsidian-like material shoot out from behind her, and watched as it lunged its blunt-and-rocky tip directly into Irimi's throat.

Although the wolf-like jaws of Irimi's kakuja quickly closed down on Morie's kagune and had forced her brittle tendril to disintegrate into a red-powdery mist within her clenched teeth, the force behind the biologist's miraculous attack had enough power to launch the beast over five meters away.

Unsure of what just happened, Morie now found the inner scientist from within her brushing aside the worry and fear that had frozen her to the spot in the first place, as she stood still to carefully observe the aftermath of her attack.

Finding it harder than it should have been to get back up on her kakuja's hands and feet, the highly bitter and repugnant taste in her mouth evoked a rejection response from her body that seemed to be hard-wired even in her feral state.

Lowering her kakuja's head, Irimi's mouth was salivating heavily and beginning to foam slightly before moments later vomiting out a mixture of stomach acid, crushed quinque, crimson vicious and bone shards on the spot of grass between her hands.

Attempting to fight past whatever was tearing through her blood vessels and stomach at an alarming rate, Irimi tried to raise her kakuja's head to strike fear into the woman who had attacked her.

After making a pathetic-sounding growl at the biologist, the feral ghoul was able to take a few steps forward with her trembling limbs before suddenly vomiting another wave of blood and acid onto the ground underneath her. Violently coughing and gagging, Irimi's kakuja form began to shrivel up and started its disintegration process, before falling onto its side.

Slowly approaching her quinque without daring to break eye contact with the kakuja that was still shaking and writhing, Morie ignored the saliva covering Masuda's wet-bandaged handle as she tightened her fingers around it.

Like a dried husk filled with living parasites, the kakuja's shriveled and dried ribs expanded and shifted back and forth until they finally broke apart like a mummified shell. Naked and covered in blood, Irimi rolled out from the wolf's husk and onto the grass, as the red and white nerves connected from her kakuhou to the spine of her kakuja snapped apart with ease.

Seeing the woman heaving and violently shaking, Morie didn't feel even the slightest bit of sorrow for the pain Irimi was experiencing. Even as the ghoul underneath her stared up at her with the same horrified look that she and the other investigators had been all-to familiar with, Morie felt nothing for the woman other than the need to kill her before she could get back up.

Bringing her right leg back, Morie kicked Irimi straight in the side of her head to daze her before lowering herself down beside her. As the ghoul feebly attempted to ward off the brunette in an effort to protect herself from facing the biologist's wrath, Morie squinted her eyes and bared her teeth at Irimi as she raised Masuda up above her head before swinging it down.

Hearing the loud cracking-sound over the 'thump' her quinque made after she bashed its dull-blade against Irimi's skull, Morie wasted no time in raising her weapon up above her head once more to deliver another righteous blow to the older woman's bloodied cranium.

Unlike most other quinques that other investigators were given, the one Morie had been gifted with was carried around for simmental reasons, rather than it being commonly used for practical reasons. Although she wanted Irimi to die, Morie wasn't a sadist by any stretch of the imagination, so the prolonged pain that was putting the ghoul through was unintentional.

Grunting louder-and-louder, Morie ignored the splotches of blood beginning to coat her face and her already soiled tracksuit, as she swung her quinque down repeatedly, over-and-over again, down on Irimi's shattered skull.

Fearing to yield in case giving Irimi an ounce of mercy would be enough for the ghoul underneath her to spring a counter attack against her, Morie didn't stop her assault until the woman's head was caved in, and her liquid grey matter had fertilized the surrounding blood-soaked soil.

Practically hyperventilating, Morie could feel her chest tightening and could hear her heart racing from within her eardrums, as she outstretched her trembling hand to lay her quinque down on the grass beside her. Falling down on her backside, Morie's adrenaline had finally reached its course, and left her feeling sick to her stomach as she stared down at her own handy work.

As a ghoul biologist, the sight of gore and dismemberment amongst working on the dead had never bothered Morie. Far from it, the brunette actually found her line of grizzly work within the world of autospies to be gruesomely fascinating, and felt comfortable with the grim subject for as long as she could remember.

However, despite her numerous accounts of dissecting bodies and casually having to work on ghouls that had been disfigured by the wrath of investigators, Morie had never once in her life personally ended someone else's life with her own hands.

Feeling the burning sensation in her stomach beginning to nausate her, Morie did her best to resist the urge to vomit, but quickly lost that battle in the matter of a few seconds. Thankful that she never ended up eating that canned bread in the first place, Morie spat out the remaining acidic saliva from her mouth and onto the grass beside her before shakingly bringing herself back up on her feet.

Using her previous therapeutic method to get a hold of herself and her surroundings, Morie raised her chin once again to take in a deep breath of fresh air, while doing her best to ignore the smell of death emanating from the corpse underneath her. With the birds and insects chirping away and singing their high-pitched songs for the park's inhabitants to hear, Morie was able to clear her mind enough for her to be able to switch gears.

No longer in the mindset of someone who's had their first taste in killing, Morie's calculative-brown eyes scanned her surroundings, as her mind began to use triage tactics to see which investigator needed her help first.

Ayumu was bleeding uncontrollably, but it wasn't anything a belt used a tourniquet couldn't handle; she would be the easiest and quickest one to provide care to.

Although Hachikawa had been impaled in the side of his torso underneath his rib cage, the veteran investigator had enough wit about him to leave the crystalized projectile in its place, rather than trying to remove it. Judging by his flushed skin and the judgemental stare he was giving her from afar, Morie figured to put him at the bottom of her list of the people who needed her help for the time being.

That, and Morie couldn't help but get 'asshole vibes' from the way Hachikawa was glaring at her.

Then there was Hide, who although appeared to have suffered from the most numerous amounts of inflicted injuries, actually looked worse-for-ware. The gashes on his arm weren't bleeding profusely, and he appeared to be breathing at a steady-enough rate as he was going to get.

Last but not least, there was Takizawa. Lying unconscious in a pool of his own blood with clammy and pale skin, the fact that he was missing a part of his right arm wasn't the most alarming infliction done to his body; the wound on his arm could be taken care of with a tourniquet. What worried Morie the most was the fact that from where she was standing, it appeared as though Irimi had managed to sever his clavicle artery from when she dug her claws into him.

Sprinting towards the husk-like kakuja to pull her q-metal scalpel out from its eye socket, Morie practically lunged down to plunge the tip of her medical tool into Irimi's stomach. Having years of experience in extracting kakuhous without needing to look, Morie only bothered to make a quick incision along Irimi's slender abdomen before plunging her scalpel deep into the corpse's still-warm body.

While it was proper etiquette to normally have the subject lying flat on their stomach with their posterior facing upwards, the process of needing to carefully sever each rib before making a cross-section incision was a lengthy procedure that required more time than Morie had to spare.

Accounting for her limited time to act, Morie decided that reaching underneath Irimi's rib cage to extract the kakuhou located in her shoulder would be her best, albeit messy and unethical, option.

In the span of a few seconds, Morie had broken her own personnel record after blindly extracting the predatory sac-like organ out from Irimi's body. Ignoring the fact that she didn't have PPE or was using sanitary methods of operating, the biologist carried herself as fast as she could toward Ayumu, before setting her freshly harvested organ down on the blonde girl's chest.

"Oh, God…! T-That's disgusting…!" Ayumu muttered, as she stared down from underneath her long bangs to get a good look at the wet kakuhou that was spilling blood and sloppy viscus onto her clothes.

"Sorry," was all Morie bothered to say in an indifferent voice, before quickly undoing Ayumu's belt. Tucking the end of the leather belt underneath the blonde girl's thigh, Morie looped the belt through its buckle before tugging at it as tightly as she could.

Hearing the girl whimpering in pain underneath her, Morie quickly took off her own tracksuit jacket before wrapping it and tying it around the gaping wound. "Put pressure on this and don't let go," Morie ordered, before picking up Irimi's kakuhou to sprint the short distance to where Takizawa was dying.

Kneeling down, Morie felt pity for the fact that she didn't have any sedatives or even morphine to numb the man's pain. After undoing Takizawa's belt to use as a makeshift tourniquet to wrap around his bicep just above where his forearm had been severed, Morie carefully, yet hastily, made an incision across his stomach.

From what she could tell from his pale skin and the fact that his clavicle artery had stopped bleeding, it was clear that Takizawa was beyond the human standards of saving, especially with her knowing that she didn't have the proper equipment needed to even do an emergency blood transfusion.

Not being one to give up, especially when it meant life or death, Morie quickly sorted through her mental checklist of what available options she had at her disposal. Due to that list being underwhelmingly limited, it didn't take long for the brunette to consider a far more… Unorthodox method, of what she could do to have a chance to save Takizawa's life.

As a ghoul biologist, she remembered having to study and write essay-after-essay about Akihiro Kanou's breakthrough and groundlaying research and procedures, along with having to do a recreation of his past work in order to pass one of her more advanced classes.

In her experiment, she operated on a white lab mouse she named 'Shirozumi', and recalled being able to successfully transform it into a mouse-equivalent of an artificial ghoul subspecies that Kanou had created called a 'One-Eyed Ghoul'.

Kanou would later go on to creating more advanced and intricate procedures, and which would lead him producing artificial 'half-ghouls' using various test subjects in his attempt to find what he considered to be the 'missing link' between half-ghouls and humans.

With that being said, she once again lacked the proper equipment, technology, and general resources needed to even attempt a theorized 'qunix' operation on Takizawa. The surgery needed to transition a human into a one-eyed ghoul was surprisingly simple, and only required the surgeon to have an extensive understanding of both human and ghoul anatomy.

She felt terrible for changing his future, and for being the one to dictate his forced transition into a life-changing new experience that would more than likely feel like damnation for any investigator. Still, Morie refused to even humor the idea of willingly ignoring the possibility of being able to save the young man's life.

Hippocratic oath or not, Morie would be damned if she stood by while a fellow CCG member died under her watch.

Doing her best to recall her written notes and of the steps she took on her old lab mouse, Morie sighed quietly under her breath, as she glanced over at the extracted kakuhou in her other hand. Without further adieu, the ghoul biologist slid the the sac-like organ into forcibly-made open area underneath Takizawa's shoulder, before reaching her other hand deep into the incision she made to begin the less-than-ideal operation.

---

Dusk was approaching, and the sun was on its course of setting when Haise finally arrived at the torn up grounds of what used to be a cemetery. Thankful for the fact that he had invested into making sure that the metal canisters on his latex mask weren't just for show, Haise was able to breathe the warm and polluted air around him without any trouble.

Dressed in his black battlesuit and his eyepatched-mask, the ash and embered covered soil felt warm underneath the soles of his boots, as he approached towards the large cratered hole in the center of the desecrated grounds.

The fallout of debris had long since died down since he had arrived in the first place, which made it easy for Haise to see the large silhouette of what was left of Eto's massive kakuja, laying hunched over with its head and several limbs missing.

A gasp escaped through Haise's lips, and the blood coursing through his veins grew cold as he gazed down below the organic and charred husk to see a woman with long-messy green hair laying down on her side with her back facing him.

"Yoshimura…!?" Haise whispered out in a horrified breath, before sprinting over as fast as he could toward Eto's body. Anxious over what could have happened to the other half-ghoul, Haise's worst fears were plucking away at his heartstrings, as he practically fell on his knees to get a better examination of Eto and the white-haired young man she had embraced in her arms.

Hesitant at first to put his hands on her naked body, Haise pushed aside his sense of modesty to reach over to place his hands on Eto's chest and stomach to roll her over onto her back. Looking down at the large and freshly-made scar that stretched vertically from her belly button to just below her sternum, Haise felt slightly relieved to see that her body's regenerative ability was still active.

Other than the white scar that stood out from the rest of her already pale skin, Eto's body looked usually gaunt, and the color in her green hair appeared somewhat washed out compared to its usual lush-vibrance.

With his hand resting on Eto's shoulder, Haise's red-left eye gazed up from the woman's ash-covered body to focus on the young man across from him. Haise stared at Kaneki's snow-white hair that reminded him of what he had heard about CCG's White Reaper's own hair, and gazed down at his face while feeling squeamish at what he had become of the qunix.

Although Kaneki's closed eyelids and resting lips appeared to be peaceful, Haise couldn't help but feel worried for the young man after seeing how transparent his pale skin had become. Underneath the hypodermis layer of Kaneki's skin, Haise could see a map-like expansion of blue and black veins that extended across the young man's body.

With his uncovered eye trailing down Kaneki's body, it was then that Haise looked down to notice that the young man's fingers and toes looked as though they had been dipped in a vantablack paint, and were standing out due to their blackened color seemingly absorbing the sunlight above.

Spending a few minutes on both Eto and Kaneki to do a trauma assessment for each of them, an elongated breath of relief and joy escaped from Haise's lips, after coming to the conclusion that both of them were stable. Taking a moment to collect himself and to regain his composure, the half-ghoul who had been given the alias 'Eyepatch' placed the palms of his hands on top of his latex-covered knees, before pushing himself up to his feet.

Lowering his right hand to begin tapping the screen of his smartwatch tied around his left wrist, Haise took a moment to scan his eye across the blackened soot and ember covered horizon to keep a look out for anything or anyone who looked especially suspicious. Without needing to look at what he was doing as he tapped repeatedly on his smartwatch, by the time that Haise felt safe enough to make the call to his superior, the small speaker on his watch was already ringing.

After waiting for approximately a couple of seconds, Touka quickly picked up on her end before answering the call with, "What did you find, Sasaki?" The White Rabbit asked in an impatient tone, to which Haise quickly tried to answer by explaining the condition of the bodies he found within the center of the cemetery.

Having gotten a few sentences into his debriefing, an annoyed and loud groan on the other line from Touka quickly cut Haise off, and forced him to pause. "Your mask, Sasaki; unzip or take it off already! I can't hear shit with you wearing that gimp-piece around your face!"

Sighing through his nostrils, Haise found himself rolling his eyes as he raised his free hand up to unzip his half-mask's toothy grin, before parting it open to expose his lips to the smokey air around him. "It's not a , *cough*, 'gimp-piece' Kirishima; it's a functional gas mask and my disguise…!"

"Yeah, whatever. Did you find Eto or Kaneki yet, or are you calling me to waste my time?!" Touka demanded in a sarcastic and loud voice, which did little to phase Haise's demeanor or confidence.

"I found Eto and someone who might be Kaneki? It's sort of hard to tell, if I'm being honest…" Haise chuckled uneasily, before reaching into the pocket of his black cargo-shorts to retrieve his cell phone. "Here, I'll take a picture for you to peek at..." Haise said, as he used the camera on his phone to line up a shot that would be respectfully covering up Eto and Kaneki's private-parts before taking the picture and sending it.

"There, I sent it! Let me know when you get it, Kirishima!"

"... Don't tell me what to do." Touika replied back playfully in a fake-grumpy tone, before waiting for the pictures to show up on her side. "Damn, they look like shit… Are they even alive still?!" Touka asked with a flabbergasted voice.

"Yes ma'am! I checked, and I'm glad to announce that their breathing patterns and heart rate are surprisingly normal, despite the state they're in, and they're somewhat responsive to stimulation!" Haise replied back in a chipper voice, which earned him an amused chuckle from the half-ghoul on the other line; a response that he didn't quite understand. "What? What did I say?"

"Pfff! It's nothing; it's just that you're kind of a dork…!" Touka snickered back after having given her response to the young man who she knew, even if she couldn't see it, was smiling on the other line of the call. "Yeah, that's great news, Sasaki; really great news, actually… It's been too long since I've heard good news."

"God only knows that we can use a lot more of that, huh…!?" Haise added in agreement to what Touka had said, to which elicited a dry laugh from her.

"Right?! Everything's been so goddamn grim lately, especially in the other Wards, like the eight and first." Touka mused with a genuine tone of honesty, as she continued to confine in the trustworthy half-ghoul who she had come to rely on.

"With all this fighting gone on, and us trying to keep Tokyo's utilities and shit running… It's fucking exhausting, isn't it?! I don't think most of us have even gotten a chance to sleep yet, let alone a chance to take a break!" Touka shouted into her phone, while Haise silently nodded his head on the other side, as he listened carefully to each word the half-ghoul spoke aloud to him.

"Like, seriously! Why the hell are those CCG bastards still putting up a fight?! And worst of all, while we're out here busting our asses to try and help others who have NOTHING to do with this, they're risking the lives of others, and for what?! To put themselves back in power, just so they can keep killing innocent ghouls?!" Touka asked in an outraged voice, before taking a long breath to try to calm herself down.

"Ugh... It's… It's-"

"-Hard, isn't it?" Haise finished, as he spoke the word on behalf of the proud woman on the other line, so that she wouldn't have to say it for herself. For as long as he knew her, Touka had always been determined in whatever she did, and would always find it difficult to admit to others that she was struggling with whatever she was doing.

"Y-Yeah… Yeah, it really is." Touka said quietly, before falling back into silence.

Not wanting for their phone call to end on a sour note, Haise took a moment to think about what he was going to say to Touka before filling in that bout of heavy silence. "You know, it's okay to feel weak sometimes. It's okay to be afraid, too."

"... What the hell are you talking about, Sasaki?" Touka asked with a confused and slightly offended tone in her voice, as she was starting to think that Haise was calling her those two words that she hated the most:'weak', and 'afraid'.

"What I'm trying to say is that it's okay to be those things, Kirishima; the important thing is that we face the hardships ahead of us, regardless if that means facing our fears or not." Haise continued, in hopes of making sure that his encouraging words were understood by the emotional woman on the other line.

"It's… It's what makes us strong, and I don't think there's anyone else who's as strong as you are, Kirishima." Haise said with an empathic and proud voice, which evoked a subtly-surprised gasp from Touka. "I'm not just talking about your physical abilities… Excuse me if I'm stepping over any boundaries, or if I'm out of line, but… You've lost a lot in your life, Kirishima."

"Whether it's the loss of your parents, your home, having to live under the shadow of what your father's done… That's a lot to handle, and yet here you are: concerned with keeping your family and the lives of the innocent safe. I don't think you've ever once fought for selfish reasons, Kirishima. From what I've seen, you've only ever fought to stand up for others who aren't able to stand up for themselves…"

"... That's why I think you inspire so many, ma'am. Not because you're your father's daughter, but because you bring people hope; hope that ensures them that even when everything seems grim and gloom around them, that there's still people like you who exist, and are willing to fight to make sure that they're able to see a brighter tomorrow."

By the time Haise had finished with his motivational thoughts that he wanted to share about Touka, he was met with a surprisingly buzzing spout of silence from the other line. Unsure if he had accidentally ended the call or if or if she had by mistake, the young man raised an eyebrow as he used what little depth-perception he had to look down on the screen of his smartwatch.

"... Ma'am, are you still there? Hello?" Haise asked with an uncertain tone in his voice, until moments later he was answered by the sound of a nose being blown on a cloth from the other side of the line. "Kirishima? Are you okay?"

"Y-Yeah! Y-Yeah, I am…!" Touka replied back in a forcibly loud voice, in an attempt to mask the shakingness within her trembling voice. After having unmuted herself, Touka blew her nose once more into the trenchcoat of the unhappy man next to her before catching her breath.

"Um… Y-Yeah, so, uh… B-Back to what I was saying…!" Touka stuttered out, before transitioning the conversation away from the emotionally heartwarming words that her underling had spoken to her. "I'm with Kishou Arima right now, and we're dragging an injured investigator back to Anteiku to fix him up, so we can uh… You know, um…"

"Question him?" Haise asked in a curious tone, while finding himself experiencing mixed emotions over the sudden news that Touka was in the company of CCG's most dangerous investigator. "Hey, um… Why are you with the White Reaper, if you don't mind me asking? I thought you said you were going to kill him the next time you saw him, or something like that…"

"I say a lot of threats that I don't actually mean, Sasaki...!" Touka admitted with a light-hearted chortle, before briefly going over what Haise needed to know.

"Him and I are currently working with one another to see what's best for Tokyo, and to question the investigator we're dragging behind us; for now, I need you to bring Eto and Kaneki with you, and meet us over at Anteiku... We'll talk more in person."

"Hear you loud and clear, Kirishima! I'll go ahead and let the others know where we'r-"

"-About that, Sasaki… There's something I have to ask of you." Touka quickly interrupted, which quickly piqued Haise's curiosity once again.

"Um… Y-Yeah; of course! Sure, what can I do for you, ma'am?" Haise asked with an optimistic tone, which only made Touka feel all that more guilty for what she was about to ask of him.

"Alright, so, um… I need you to kind of keep quiet about what we're doing here. That means I don't want you mentioning it to anyone else from Aogiri Tree, understood?" Touka asked with a slightly uneasy voice, which was quickly put to rest the moment Haise quickly agreed to her request in his usual can-do-attitude.

"Of course! I'll give you my word that I won't mention this to anyone; it'll be our little secret!" Haise said reassuringly in a confident and chipper voice, which relaxed Touka after hearing how okay he was with withholding information for her.

"Thank you, I… I appreciate you doing that for me, Sasaki; it means a lot to me." Touka said with an appreciative voice, with a subtle hint of humility and gratitude, before quickling changing the subject to avoid getting caught in her feelings once more. "Um… Yeah, bring them both with you and meet me at Anteiku, okay?"

"Alrighty, I'll see you soon! Goodbye, Kirishima!"

"Bye Sasaki; be safe, okay? Or I'll kick your ass." Touka said playfully, to which Haise snickered at.

"Sure thing, ma'am! Please, stay safe yourself!"

"Mmkay." And with that being said, their phone call came to an end.

---

Letting out an exhalation of breath in preparation for the journey that he'd have to make, Haise stared down at the bodies of Eto and Kaneki before kneeling down to pick them up one at a time. With Kaneki on his left shoulder, and Eto on his right, it only took Haise needing to take a few steps forward before deciding that he wasn't about to walk across the 20th Ward while carrying two people on his shoulders.

Without needing to take the time to carefully activate his kagune to avoid accidentally ripping any piece of clothing, four dark-magenta colored tendrils ruptured from his implanted kakuhou. Extending out in the length-span of two-and-a-half meters long, Haise planted the tips of his robust and scaled tendrils deep into the soil underneath him, before lifting himself, along with Eto and Kaneki, up into the air.

Like a spider with four stubby and round legs, Haise immediately felt regret hitting him, after realizing that he had forgotten to zip up his mask before ascending with Eto and Kaneki on his shoulders. "For crying out loud…!" Haise muttered to himself, after it soon dawned on him that he was going to have to endure breathing in the ashy taste of the air around him.

As Haise coughed repeatedly while using his kagune to carry him across the desolate and ruined grounds of the chapel's cemetery, he was being watched from a distance.

Unbeknownst to the half-ghoul, there within the torn up chapel that had been previously cleared out by the White Reaper's Zero Squad, there was an investigator within the ruined halls of the chapel.

Knelt down beside a shattered window, Shinsanpei Aura held tightly onto his set of high-powered binoculars, as his eyes followed behind the half-ghoul in the far off distance. After Haise was completely out of his field of vision, Aura sat down with his back pressed against the ash-covered wall that was still intact, which couldn't be said for what structurally remained of the church.

Placing his binoculars down beside his propped-up assault rifle and his quinque, Tsunagi, which was still enclosed within its silver-shell suitcase, Aura struggled to remember which pouch of his CCG 'Recon Outfit' his cell phone was in.

Unlike the heavily padded 'Riot Armor' or the versatile 'Raid Armor', which was mostly made to provide various degrees of protection for its user, the outdated and obsolete navy-blue and mocha-brown uniform that the young investigator sported consisted of only a pair of dark cargo pants, and a lightly-armored vest with pockets; lots, and lots, of pockets.

The 'Recon Outfit' was first put into service during the early age of CCG, back when investigators would be called to scout ahead in the wild or within the 24th Ward, in order to complete scouting missions. The light-weight material and the numerous pockets were ideal for investigators who were on recon duty, and would be used to carry supplies with them that would allow them to be out for weeks at a time.

For Aura's case, the outfit had been given to him due to CCG's sets of riot and raid armor being currently all in use. The recon outfit was cheap, and thus, CCG still had plenty of them in storage, due to how historically speaking, it was frequent for investigators who were put on recon duty to die.

"Come on…! Where the hell are y- Oh! There you are…!" Aura said quietly under his breath, before finally retrieving the cellular device from within the pocket located on his mock-turtleneck's shoulder-stitched pouch. Taking only a few seconds to unlock his cell phone and to choose the contact he needed to choose, Aura pressed the speaker of the device below his messy dark-green hair, and against his ear, as he patiently listened to the ringing on the other line.

As anxiety began to eat away at the young man having to wait a few minutes before the Division Commander on the other line finally picked up, Aura was immediately greeted with Marude's annoyed voice. "Report your findings, Scout."

"S-Sir, um… I'm not a scout, I'm an invest-"

"-I'm a busy man; I don't have time for formalities." Marude quickly interrupted, as he was beginning to feel the young and shaking voice of the shy man beginning to piss him off. "Now tell me your findings."

Nervous and intimidated by his superior's demand, Aura swallowed back the lump in his throat before quickly following his given order. "Um… I-I went to go investigate where that cloud exploded, over by chapel a f-few blocks away from the where the Main Office used to be, a-and-"

"-Get to the point, Scout."

"Y-Yes sir!" Aura replied back in a submissive and slightly pathetic voice. "I-I saw Eyepatch carrying the One-Eyed Owl and that one kid posing as Grave Robber; they're heading towards downtown..."

"And you didn't stop him?!" Marude asked in an outraged and bewildered voice, which only made Aura further regret reporting his findings in the first place.

"N-No, sir; I'm alone, and-"

"You're an investigator!" Marude groaned loudly with an extremely irked tone, before taking a moment to calm himself down by taking a swig of an unknown liquid that Aura wasn't able to identify; if he had to guess, it was probably alcohol. "Gah… I want you to follow him from a distance, and keep me updated on where he's going. You not attacking him immediately might have been a blessing in disguise..."

"Y-Yes, Si-" Before Aura could affirm his orders, the young man was interrupted by the dull sound of a dial tone, after the Division Commander quickly hung up on him.

Having received his new orders from his commander, Aura wiped his eyes free from tears with his soft sleeve one more time before standing up to his feet to begin collecting his equipment, and whatever remained of his confidence.

"D-Dammit…!" Aura cursed under his breath, as he stabbed his rifle over his shoulder, before clenching his fingers around the handle of his suitcase."I-I should have shot him in the head when I had the chance…!" The young man said angrily to himself, before beginning his long and treacherous walk to follow behind where he figured Haise was heading off to.

---

Thank you for reading, I hope that you enjoyed this chapter, because I had a blast writing it!

Irimi is dead, and Morie is operating on Takizawa to do Kanou's human-to-one-eyed-ghoul procedure, which was done to him more painfully in :re.

Haise Sasaki will be a major character in the future, and wears the battlesuit that Kaneki wears from the original Tokyo Ghoul, along with his mask. He has the alias 'Eyepatch', but his kagune is similar but different to Rize's.

Rize's kagune is composed of four dark-crimson tendrils that extend out further than Haise's, and are thinner and more blade-like. Her kagune is more offensive based.

In this fanfiction, Haise's kagune is more like the one illustrated in :re. It's shorter, thicker, rounder, has more noticeable scales, and is a dark-magenta color. If you remember in chapter five, I wrote him having pronged tendrils that were similar to Dragon Kaneki's from the end of :re. That will be explained later, but just know that is merely his half-kakuja.

The reason I explained in detail to what the 'Recon Outfit' was is simple: it was to give it context, a brief history lesson, and an explanation of why it's being used. It's a mass produced uniform that was decommissioned, and is far more available than riot armor or raid armor.

The inspiration for the recon outfit came from the visual reference of the 'Scribe Outfit' from Fallout 4.

You might notice that firearms are more used in this fanfiction than the canon, and the explanation for that is that it's safer to shoot a ghoul from a distance, rather than risking to get close to land a hit.

Quinques are more expensive to make in terms of resources, and q-metal is more widely available to make for bullets and basic weapons, rather than trying to arm everyone with them.

Without further adieu, I'd like to wish the best for you, and would like to once again thank you for taking the time to read my fanfiction.