Eto followed the trail of corpses scattered across the deserted complex in, her curiosity spurring her on as her bandaged feet splashed against puddles upon puddles of blood, leaving behind a trail of crimson footsteps.
The streets had long since been purged of their human inhabitants by the moon's sinister glow, freeing them up for red-eyed charlatans like her to wander about.
The moon overlooking them was red tonight—something the girl noticed long before this operation even began. Her comrade's panicked tones were something that she remembered, and their foolish proclamation that the red-tinted sphere was a sign of an imminent disaster was the thing that she laughed at. Naturally, in an attempt to keep the team together, the more educated members of her group tried to explain the phenomena away by calling it the result of a lunar eclipse and reassured them that the world wasn't going to end anytime soon.
As calming as that explanation was, Eto wasn't too fond of it—she liked the "apocalypse" idea better.
She wanted the world destroyed. To her, a world not worth living in was not worth preserving.
Her trail of corpse came to an end, with her last clue being a decapitated head resting just a few feet short from the entrance of a skyscraper.
Perhaps, the girl thought to herself, he fled inside the building.
She sent a look towards the towering building and inspected the double glass door of the entrance with extra scrutiny.
There were no signs of forced entry, the glassy surface remained perfectly intact and possessed not a single imperfection that would suggest a fracture of some sort. She highly doubted that the man would have a way inside the building without the usage of brute force.
After all, his life was basically ruined when he was captured by the CCG and exposed as a ghoul. Posters of his face were probably posted all over the neighborhood and the local police station, warning the citizens of concealed danger as well as encouraging them to contact the proper authority should the alleged criminal be spotted.
Even if the CCG decided to forgo the process of informing and decided to keep the reason of the man's detention a secret, the citizens themselves would start spreading rumors.
People often tried to compensate for their ignorance by making up things to make themselves feel informed. She bet that was probably how the whole "red moon is a sign of the apocalypse" rumor was started.
However, although the entrance of the building wasn't damaged, the girl couldn't say the same for the windows that decorated each distinctive floor of the skyscraper. An entire column of the glass panels was damaged, their translucent surface marred by spider-web fractures and circular trenches.
The punctures on the glass were all similar in structure, suggesting that the same item was used to create them.
At the same time, the fact that only a single column was destroyed hinted at a calculated cause of destruction rather than a mindless one.
Maybe he climbed to the roof of the building? That thought made the most sense to Eto. With those kagunes of his, he could easily used them to anchor himself to the side of the building while he pulled himself up.
Having accepted her own deduction as the truth, the girl estimated the distance between herself and the top of the skyscraper, her own kagune emerging from her shoulders in a bubbling concoction of blood and flesh.
The building was approximately 200 meters in height, meaning even she wouldn't be able to reach the top of the building with her kagune in one go. At least she wouldn't be able to do it without risking the possibility of stretching her kagune too thin.
Just like her prey, she had to scale the building a little at a time.
Shaping her kagune into a claw, Eto launched it towards a section of the building that was a quarter of the way above ground. Upon reaching its intended destination, the monstrous limb burst through the window, its entrance accompanied by the choir of shattering glass and the ballad of flying shrapnels. With one swoop, the hand was on top of the elaborately decorated flooring of the skyscraper, its fingers digging through the expensive material effortlessly as it established a strong, suitable connection.
A silhouette of a smile could be seen on the girl's bandaged face as she tested the connection between her modified kagune and the building with a few cursory tugs. She just hoped that her prey would stay around long enough to justify all the effort that she had put in to set up a meeting between them. With one swift flick of her kagune, the girl sent herself rocketing upwards.
Like a feather in the wind, Eto landed on the roof soundlessly and elegantly. Her monstrous kagune followed her shortly afterward, slithering into the cavity of her opened shoulder as it returned to its primal, dormant form.
"Another one?"
She ignored his previous comment and instead moved to take over the pace of the conversation. "Tonight's weather is rather nice, don't you think?"
The other man on the roof chuckled, before beckoning her to come closer with a gesture from his gold-clad finger.
She complied, her feet taking her to the center of the rooftop, bringing her closer to the bulky, suit-donning man that she had been conversing with.
"I thought Halloween was over a while ago. Yet, tonight, I still found myself to be bothered by a bunch of people in silly costumes. Say, were they your friends?" A thorned tentacle slid through the fabric of the man's suit silently, and another one followed soon afterward.
"Yup! Too bad they were all scattered, though. I was hoping that I wouldn't have to go through the night by myself." Eto took another step towards the white-suited man, her eyes scrolling towards the thinly concealed tentacles, dismissed them, and returned to face the man directly.
"Don't worry. Uncle Yamori will be sure to bring you home."
"Oh really? Uncle Yamori is the best!"
Disingenuous squeals and empty compliments were used to continue the meaningless act, but both of them knew that their charade was about to end. And Yamori decided he would be the one to end it.
"I wonder which part of you your parents would want to see first. Your arms, your feet, your head, or your intestines?" The man's face, which once wore a peaceful expression, had now twisted into a devilish sneer.
"CHOOSE!" He bellowed as his kagune surged forward. But the smaller ghoul disappeared before the tentacles could hit their mark.
Yamori blinked, confused by how someone who was in front of him just seconds ago could have disappeared without a trace.
He couldn't see her anymore, the little ghoul he was just conversing with. His eyes darted wildly around the battlefield, until a sound coming from underneath caught their attention.
"You know, I don't think your mother would approve of your manners."
The ghoul that he was looking for was now standing right in front of him, at a distance that was too close for his comfort.
What? Yamori stumbled backward, hoping to create enough space to recover, Eto followed closely, breaking into a run and propelling herself into a jump as she stuck both of her thumbs into Yamori's eye sockets. The man screamed before he could stop himself.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!"
Eto pulled her thumbs from Yamori's eyes with a slight grunt and moved away from the strikes of Yamori's retracting kagune with a single backflip. As she landed, her own kagune materialized, perching on top of both of her shoulders in its blade-like form.
She had just crushed her opponent's eyes, giving her at least 20 seconds to act while her opponent stayed in total darkness. Eto quickly went on the offensive again, her blades dancing across her opponent's limbs, severing what needed to be severed, and shearing what needed to be sheared.
When she finished, she was already several feet away from her opponent, her kagune dissipating as Yamori's body crumbled behind her.
The man who had once been so confident in his own victory now lied on the rooftop, his regenerated eyes pointed towards the night sky idly. A mere head and torso was what he had become. His hands and legs, which were once attached firmly to his body, were now severed and scattered around the battlefield alongside the butchered remains of his kagune. The white suit that he once wore with immense pride was riddled with countless cuts and spoiled by the color of his own blood. He was defeated, completely, easily, and utterly one-sidedly. That much was something that even his own muddled head could register.
A bandaged foot pressed itself on top of the Yamori's throat, keeping the brawny man pinned to the floor. "Well, I guess it is over now. You were quite the disappointment if I do have to say so myself."
No real retort came from the ghoul pressed underneath her, instead, the man just bore his teeth against her in a subtle but noticeable act of final defiance, his face now wearing the color of red as a product of both suffocation and anger.
"But it seems like you do have some rationality. Knowing the difference in our strength, you decided to stay quiet instead of doing anything that might get me angry." The girl stepped off, the absence of her foot on Yamori's throat causing his body to tremble wildly as the man was attacked by a series of coughs. All the while Eto lingered around her subdued enemy's body in a parade of skips and hops as she danced about in circles. "Say, do Uncle Yamori believe in Stockholm syndrome?"
"...Stockholm syndrome?"
"It is a phenomenon where the kidnapped starts feeling sympathetic towards their captors." The bandaged girl explained, her body pirouetting to a stop by Yamori's head. "Personally, I don't believe it. I mean if I was kidnapped and put into danger due to the selfish actions of another person, the last thing I would do is to defend and sympathize with the person who kidnapped me."
Yamori's face was one of a confused man. "What exactly are you getting at?" His regenerative power had already kicked in, his arms and legs, which were once leaking blood from the forced amputations had now transformed into fleshy stumps. The reconstruction of his body was still incomplete, however, keeping him at a state of vulnerability.
A smile blossomed underneath the ghoul's bandaged face. "What I'm saying is, that I'm interested in forming a business relationship with you." Eto then squatted down, her hands framing each side of her face, projecting an impression of sincere attentiveness. "Tell me, Omori Yakumo, what do you desire?"
They stayed that way for a while, staring into each other's eyes as they searched for signs of deceit and insincerity. It was only with the sound of crumbling concrete did the duo take their attention off of each other in favor of finding the cause of the noise. A red kagune had latched onto the edge of the rooftop when neither of them were paying attention, and Eto smiled when she saw who was on the other end of the crimson tentacle.
"I take it everything is finished over here." A white-haired man was the one who spoke, his exposed crimson eyes conveying the disinterest and displeasure that the rest of his face could not.
"Yup!" The tiny mummy beamed. "Eto finished everything so Tatara-san wouldn't have to get his own hands dirty."
"Oh, is that so?" The man's voice slid through the mask of iron cladded over his face as he approached the defeated Yamori and his bandaged ally.
Shortly after his towering presence reached them, the Chinese ghoul did a cursory scan of the dismembered ghoul's body, taking in every scars and stream of blood that still existed. "You're dirty." He remarked bluntly after a moment of inspection, successfully invoking the blonde gangster's ire.
Thorned tentacles once again erupted from the suited ghoul's back and barreled towards the white haired man who had just shown up. Without even flinching the Chinese ghoul swung his arm in a horizontal chop, and like a knife slicing through butter, he sliced through the tentacles. The section of the kagune no longer attached to his kakuhou dissipated into a mist of RC cells as the blonde ghoul's eyes widened in shock. "Tsk."
"Please stop with the meaningless resistance." Tatara's eyes were still dull and uninterested, as if the ghoul who had just tried to attack him was nothing but an insignificant annoyance. A minor character in a storybook that existed only to serve a one-time purpose and disappear without a trace afterwards.
Eto chuckled and stood up after observing the brief skirmish. "Tatara-san, you have to admit, though, what he did just now took courage. I'm sure he would be much happier to negotiate peacefully in a more calming environment." She then turned towards the supine ghoul laying by her feet and spoke with a sweetness and pleasantness that her eyes betrayed. "Am I right, Yamori-san?"
Yamori didn't answer, just seething in silent anger. This was a situation he didn't want to be in again. He hated vulnerability. He hated not being able to do anything while others have their way with him. Bad memories that he had taken so much effort to suppress came rushing back at him all at once. Memories of that interrogator. Memories of getting his face bashed in. Memories of getting his fingers chopped off. Memories of screaming for his mother.
Tatara turned away, his hands pointing a black flare gun towards the sky. A steady billow of green smoke ascended the evening sky at the press of the trigger, and many more soon followed, relaying the success of the operation to the other members of Aogiri.
"Let's take him back," Eto said as she started to walk away, moving towards the edge of the rooftop where she planned on making her exit. Tatara followed silently, his kagune wrapped around Yamori's torso and dragged the ghoul along in spite of his protests.
Suddenly, Eto stopped, as if sensing something massive in the air and stepped back, her body bending backwards just as a surging stream of electricity overtook where she once stood—the golden electricity mere millimeters away from tickling the fabric of her bandages.
Without missing a beat, she spun around and quickly located her attacker while her mind slapped a name on him.
Kishou Arima. The CCG's "Reaper." A troublesome opponent that she would rather not deal with at the moment.
The investigator, however, shared none of her reluctance and quickly repositioned himself. The metallic panels of Narukami once again zoomed in on the ghoul wrapped in bandages, and a bolt of lightning quickly followed.
Like what she did before, Eto dodged. Her body sprinting to the side as the condensed blast split through the concrete composition of the rooftop.
"Run." She ordered, turning towards her red-masked subordinate, who obeyed her wish right way and took off in the opposite direction, his feet taking him to the edge of the rooftop, with Yamori towed behind him. When an electricity blast surged towards her escaping comrade, she threw herself in front of the sparkling projectile and absorbed the attack in its entirety with her own bones and flesh. She slumped down and dropped down to her knees, feeling the aftermath of her rash behavior. The side effect of the blast leaving her in a state of weakness, unable to move properly until her muscles regain their strength.
It was just within character for the CCG to show up at this juncture of the turf war. The organization always reminded her more of vultures than the doves that it was commonly associated with—always pecking at dead carcasses and benefitting from someone else's work.
But as much as Eto would like to take this opportunity to punish them for their wrongdoings, this was simply not the right time. Kishou Arima didn't come to the rooftop by himself, but brought six underlings with him, each of which dressed in an identical manner and had their face concealed by the hood of their coats. This time, she was the one left alone—completely devoid of backup and susceptible to ending her own life with one mistake.
Sometimes she wished that her playmates would play a little bit more fair.
In an instant, Arima closed the distance between them, his right arm swinging the razor-sharp edge of his transformed Narukami towards the ghoul's neck.
The girl raised her arms up out of instinct and blocked the hit with her arms, facing the incoming blade with no other defense except the hardness of her skin. The white blade struck through, and she lost the usage of her hands. The portion of her arms that were severed by the blade of Narukami dropped to the ground with a barely audible thud, too insignificant for either one of the combatant's notice.
A slice aimed towards the waist kept the pressure on Eto, forcing her to leap further backwards to avoid the archway of the approaching blade. Like usual, he was showing no mercy. She too was getting weary of this charade. This superficial posturing.
"If you want to live. Work for it, huh." The girl muttered as she dodged another one of her opponent's strikes.
Narukami once again changed forms, its blade reverting back into four distinctive rectangular panels, and fired off another wave of electrical energy.
This time, knowing she had fulfilled her purpose, she allowed herself to get hit. Her body recoiled awkwardly from the intensity of the blast, causing her to stagger backwards clumsily and bringing her closer to the edge of the rectangular rooftops.
Arima caught her before her body flipped over the edge, the quinque wedged in her heart the only thing keeping her still. Dazed, Eto stared up at the man, her eyes studying the grayness hidden underneath the thick lenses of his spectacles. His eyes was a color of apathy, a color of indifference. It was a color truly befitting of a man who had killed and would kill again.
She never liked the color of gray. The color's dull fence-sitter attitude always annoyed her. But at that moment, she found it to be the most fascinating thing in the world. She saw a reflection of herself in his eyes of tranquil indifference. His eyes reminded her of how her own eyes looked in the mirror before she forced life into them every morning.
With a gentle push, the stoic investigator slid her body off the blade of his prized quinque and offered her to the wind.
"Here you go."
Another book signed and delivered to the hands of her admirers. Another book shoved her way.
"Takatsuki-sensei, the last couple chapters of your newest work really kept me on the edge of my seat. I heard that you had a lot of trouble writing those, but I have to say, I really couldn't tell by those chapters' smoothness and fluidity."
She flipped open the cover, her hand scribbling her signature on a blank page of the book while her ears listened to the words of her fan. When she finished, she gently closed the cover and handed it back to the man standing in front of her, a grateful smile forced on her face as she donned the mask of humility and modesty.
She thanked the man for his kind words before she joked about how she overcame her writer's block one night when she was staring at her computer screen and her hands just suddenly started typing uncontrollably, as if her old pair of hands, which had caused her inability to write a satisfying chapter, had been replaced by a pair of new ones.
The fan left shortly after he received his book, the abundantly apparent smile on his face letting Eto know that he was pleased by her sense of humor.
She waited patiently while the line in front of her shifted again, this time, her visitor was an elderly woman in her mid-forties, who asked her to sign the book for her son who couldn't make it due to illness. Just like how she did for her previous visitors, Eto spoke to the elderly woman kindly, threw her baits for a brief conversation, and wished her son a swift recovery before the woman left.
Reaching for the cup of coffee set on her table, Eto took a sip, the putrid taste of the caffeinated drink filling the interiors of her mouth. She quickly set the cup down and consciously resisted from grimacing. It was the favored drink of a certain fool. She wasn't surprised that she didn't hold the same appreciation for the drink that he did.
Her line shifted again, and a black haired boy stepped up, her book held firmly nestled against his chest. At first glance, she could tell that he would be the shy, meek, and reserved type that was easily bullied. Her prediction wasn't wrong, as the boy proved to be a tongue-tied fool. Any words he did say came out in stutters and mumbles, too disjointed and too quiet for her to understand him.
Meek, innocent, vulnerable and utterly incoherent around a woman of similar age. The boy reminded her of the novel protagonists that she loved to corrupt and ruin.
With a smile, she tried to put the boy at ease. "Hello there, you want me to sign your book?" She said, pointing towards the hard-covered copy of her latest work that the boy had in his possession.
"Y-yeah." Relief washed over the boy's face as he handed over his book.
"May I ask you what your name is, young man?"
"K-Ken."
He gathered himself shortly after that, and proceeded to reintroduce with notably more confidence, giving her his full name this time. "Kaneki Ken."
It was then that she noticed it—the grayness of his eyes.