Having sensed movements from the skies above, Yamori crossed his kagune into a shield and shifted the weight of his body to compete with the force of incoming strike. Their kagune —scaled appendages of eldritch abominations— screeched horrifyingly against each other in a way that only scaled appendages of eldritch abominations could.

Ken dropped off, landing on his foot, and quickly darted to the left to avoid the incoming barrage of tentacle strikes that approached him from the front. Yamori's kagune traced after him as he ran a narrowing circle around his opponent, the ground behind him bursting into sizable mud geysers at his wake, suffering in his stead.

Ken produced a third tentacle from his body, feeling like he had just defecated from the waist, and charged straight at Yamori. He shot a single kagune behind him and anchored it into the ground, and with his remaining two flanking his sides, he leapt at the blonde man.

Yamori swiped at the boy, his right rinkaku lashing out diagonally from right to left. Ken reacted by leaning back and allowing himself to be reeled backwards by his planted kagune as Yamori's appendage whipped into nothingness. He pulled himself further away as Yamori's remaining kagune zoomed towards him, narrowly avoiding it by just a second.

While his body moved backwards, his spare tentacles shot downwards into the ground, stirring up the earth and drawing forth a airborne blanket of disturbed soil. He made a brushing motion with his rinkaku and pushed the fading smokescreen towards Yamori's face.

He was quick to regain his bearings once he landed on the ground again and broke into another sprint, dashing to the ghoul's right before throwing his body forward, his momentum carrying him and swerving him behind Yamori. He swung his kagune in a wide arch with the intention to behead, but missed when Yamori ducked down.

Ken clicked his tongue in annoyance. It was like the man had eyes on the back of his head. Not that he expected anything less from an executive of Aogiri Tree.

Kaneki continued to move, not giving his opponent's tentacles the chance to catch up to him. Thorned kagune wove through the air into nothingness and Kaneki moved through the field with everything.

A voice on the back of his mind reminded him to finish things off fast. That he still had two other enemies to take care off—the effeminate man and the perpetually smiling ghoul. Luckily, neither of them decided to interfere thus far. The smiling ghoul was still nowhere to be seen and…

He whirled another circle around Yamori and caught sight of Nico in passing.

… the effeminate man seemed content to rest against a tree and watch things play out from the sidelines.

He paid for the mistake of taking his eyes off his opponent seconds later as he felt something grab his feet and he saw his world invert, whatever relief he felt already turned to panic. His eyes darted upwards to the sight of the spiky tentacles that kept him suspended in the air, his body now held several meters up in the air. A look downwards at the vertical columns of uplifted soil told him that Yamori hid his own kagune underground while he wasn't looking and sprang it up at the moment he least expected.

Kaneki's body lurched violently as Yamori whipped him to the side, the bones in his legs snapping from the uncomfortable angle. A choked cry left him as his body shattered against the earth. There was no need for him to beat himself up over his mistake, Yamori was doing enough for the both of them.

A world of pain captured him next as Yamori thrashed him around like a rag doll. Like laundry in a washer, he spun and smashed into things without rhyme or reason. As he slammed onto the ground for what appeared to be the umpteenth time, he could have sworn that his spine had been pounded to smithereens and that he was merely a deflated tube man floundering in the wind.

He wasn't sure if he was even alive anymore.

It felt like an eternity before the thrashing stopped as Yamori lifted him up from the ground like a gory trophy. He was like a chocolate fountain of blood, red fluid covering every inch of his body and his eyes rolled half way into the back of his head. The boy demanded his body to move and his pinkie twitched slightly in response.

He was still alive... Just like he feared.

Down below, Yamori watched his suspended prey, his breath leaving his body in light heaves. One-Eyed really was as durable as he assumed him to be.

Never did he think that he could be tired from beating someone up. The man cracked his fingers and ordered himself to finish things up.

Amidst the grogginess of his mind, Ken could feel himself pulled downwards. The image of Yamori and his smug grin growing larger and larger in the cloudiness of his vision.

He didn't want to die yet. Not yet. Not when he had already survived this much.

Ken gritted his teeth, a trio of tentacles exploding out of his back and sliced off Yamori's kagune like the blades of a spinning windmill. With a millisecond in between transitions, his tentacles straightened and barreled towards Yamori in a piercing formation.

He could feel his tentacles ripping and tearing through blonde man's abdomen.

"Grrrrrrrararrrarghrargh!"

When blood poured out of Yamori's mouth, a ghost of a smile graced Ken's lips at the idea of inflicting pain on those who had hurt him. He twisted and stirred his kagune inside Yamori's body, disturbing the man's organs. His smile devolved into a maniacal grin as his desire to make chow mein intensified.

Yamori took a shaky step backwards as he pulled himself free. The smug, amused grin that he had worn before had disappeared into the grimacing face of a man with a wounded ego. His prized white suit was now stained with blood, both from his punctured abdomen as well as the bits that he had spat out. He staggered backwards but tried to balance himself. Failing to do so, he dropped down to one knee and vomited another mouthful of red fluid.

Serves him right. These were the thoughts of Kaneki as he admired his handiwork from the distance. But he knew this wasn't enough to get even. He needed to do more. Far more.

The damage that he dealt earlier seemed to have set the man off. That much Ken could observe from the man's flushed face and flared nostrils. He just needed a little bit more to try and goad his opponent into making a mistake.

Feeling strangely impulsive and confident, Ken held out a hand and snapped his middle finger in a mocking imitation of his opponent's signature gesture.

Yamori charged at him like he had hoped. "Shitty brat!"

Kaneki intercepted an incoming punch by locking Yamori's punching arm in between a pair of his own. He then flipped his entire body backwards, one leg draped over Yamori's torso as he rotated, while the other leg, the one closer to Yamori, axed onto the back of Yamori's head and flipped him over until the man landed horizontally from him, right into tightly cinched-in armbar.

Thorned whips of flesh erupted from the suited man's back as an instinctive defense but Kaneki pinned them down with his own kagune instantly. With his hope of escape neutralized, all Yamori could do was thrash around futilely as Kaneki tugged away at his trapped arm.

"You shitty brat!" Yamori cussed, his feet kicking against the forest floor futilely. The man's face was redder than it had ever been.

That's right. Lose your composure! The more you do that, the easier it will be for me. Ken could hear something crack as he tugged against the arm locked between his thighs. Not enough! He straightened his body before violently throwing it backward, putting all his weight behind his movements as he gave Yamori's arm a final tug.

The sound of something tearing was quickly followed by the sound of silence.

Then a scream loud enough to deafen ears boomed through the darkened woods. Kaneki Ken felt something wet splash against his hands.

In one fluid motion, the boy rolled onto his back with his momentum, the mangled arm of Yamori held in between his hands. Good. He congratulated himself. Now I will have an edge in close-quar...

Then, there was darkness. Something had latched onto his head and enveloped it entirely. Something slimy and cold—like the kagune of a ghoul. As he stared dumbly into the sudden darkness that had become his world, only one thought cut through his mind.

So fast…

Yamori let out an animalistic growl and ran, dragging Ken along with him. He slammed Ken's head into a nearby tree then ran to bash it through twelve more.

Ah….Concussion…..

Ken's brain felt like mush by the time Yamori tossed him on the ground again. Being too weak to do much else, he stared blankly at the night sky, only tilting his head up slightly at the sound of nearing footsteps

Walking towards him was a lumbering behemoth that teetered along a strange line between familiar and foreign. The man's back was now covered in blood-red kagune. Thick strands of muscle tissues covered his face like the helmet of a gladiator. His left arm, the one not ripped off, was encased in a thick lengthy armor that extended his reach by several meters and ended with a quintet of bestial claws. It was like a ghoul had gotten tired of swinging its kagune around and decided to wear it instead.

Under the beast's hissed insanities and unintelligible words, there were still signs of what used to be Yagumo Oomori. The man's white suit that he once wore proudly had exploded from the sudden increase of bulky kagune tissues and now hung limply from his waist in its pitiful remnants. The man's right arm was still missing a sizable portion below the elbows—a small reminder of Kaneki's previous victory.

"Kaneeeeeeeeeeeeeekiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~" The beast snarled, tendrils of saliva connecting his parting mouth like the silks of a spider.

"Kaneeeeeeeeeeekiiiiiiiiii~~~~~~" It repeated then stopped to look around the area frantically, as if trying to remember who its enemy was or what its enemy looked like. Then its crimson eyes zoomed in onto the boy that lied a few short meters away.

"Kaneeeeeeeekiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!"

The beast called out his name for third time and stopped —the sound of his name finally gotten stale in its tongue. It raised its armored limb up and brought it down upon Kaneki's legs, lopping both of them off simultaneously. Ken sat up straight at the sudden influx of pain, saliva leaked out of the corners of his mouth while his body spasmed uncontrollably.

Ahhhh...I'm dead…

The boy neither writhed nor screamed as the claws of the beast speared him through the chest and lifted his skewered body into the air. The pain was already too much for him to feel a thing.

Panic set in nonetheless as he stared down at the beast's maniacal eyes, its maniacal grin. His resignation earlier all but disappeared.

The feeling of 'wanting to die' and knowing 'you are going to die' was worlds apart.

Suffocated in the iron grip of his enemy, Ken couldn't help but hope for a bit of mercy.

Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait.

But such a thing wasn't to be found.

The claws of the monstrous limb snapped open and his ribs crumbled under the pressure. He crashed onto the ground a short while afterwards in a heavy sprinkle of flood.

Everything hurt so much.

Kaneki's eyes moved about frantically as he searched for help, but no one was around. Not even Takatsuki who he had rushed in to safe.

His heart must have stopped beating at one point.

He woke up on a bed confused to how he was still alive or why the afterlife bore so much semblance to life itself.

He tried to move his arms. Nothing.

Then he tried to move his legs. Nothing still.

Tentatively, he looked down, then to his sides, then up again as he collected his thoughts with a deep breath. He didn't have arms or legs anymore.

"I see you're finally awake, Kaneki-kun."

He looked to his right, towards the figure sitting on the other bed of the room, the collars and chains shackling him to the wall behind him ringing appropriately.

"...Takatsuki-san?"

The mummy nodded.

Like him, she too was seated up on a bed, a metallic collar chaining her to a wall. Her body was covered under a red blanket and he was too afraid to wonder what she might be hiding underneath.

"Where are we?" He asked.

"Detention."

He noticed the barred gates that kept them from the outside.

"They sure did a number on us, didn't they?"

He had to agree with her words.

A/N: ...To all the happiness TG brought me over the years...