Doves?
Hei stiffened. He sensed people steadily surrounding the building; he was about to disappear around the corner into the night just like the creepy informant had when, with a twang of guilt, he realised he'd left Yin inside. Glancing around at the people swarming the building, he slipped inside, puzzling over what he had glimpsed. Some sort of government agency? There were about twenty of them, all dressed similarly in long white coats and carrying briefcases. They were decorated with strange emblems, and though Hei hadn't managed to get a good look, he was certain it was nothing he'd seen before.
There was definitely a sense of panic inside the stuffy dive bar. People were jostling and shouting over each other; amidst the chaos, sat silently like a sliver of moonlight, was Yin, looking vaguely uncomfortable. This was, Hei thought, quite a display of emotion for the usually inexpressive doll.
"Yin!" he called out urgently, forcing his way through the patrons. She reached for him with her small white hand as she recognised his voice; before he could get to her, however, the white-coated strangers burst into the bar and immediately noise and violence erupted all around him.
Hei ducked behind the bar as the sudden, unexplainable conflict broke out. Barely a foot to his left, someone was thrown into a shelf of spirits, and shattered glass exploded outwards- a shard caught Hei on the cheek, and he flinched. He lost focus entirely on the cut on his face, however, when his gaze fell on the person lying amidst the jagged glass bottles and pooling alcohol. He'd expected to see a scratched, bloodied mess, but found instead a creature, with eyes of the darkest red, looking unperturbed as it rose and shook off the fragments of glass. As it- or she, as it was clearly female (but not so identifiably human)- stood, Hei failed to comprehend its form: she seemed to have a broad, solid writhing tail maybe two feet in length and starkly red in colour, which she brandished like a weapon as she launched back into into the fight.
Hei, however, didn't have time to think about it; he scrambled up and scanned the room for Yin; she was still stood in the corner, backed up against a wall and watching silently with wide-eyed confusion. He made a dash for her, narrowly escaping the swing of what seemed to be a briefcase, which then transformed into an elaborate weapon almost like a bladed whip. Whatever these people were, they couldn't have been humans, or even contractors.
He stepped out from behind the bar and was immediately confronted with another red-eyed creature, this one a burly male. Hei had his blade and his wires, and of course his ability, but he wasn't entirely sure even that would be enough to take on these unfamiliar monsters, and so he ducked agilely out of the way and tumbled onto the floor, before springing back onto his feet. Someone was shoved into him and Hei was sent crashing into a table, which he plunged gracelessly over and carried on through; eventually he was close enough to grab onto Yin's hand and they fled through the back door and into the smoking area, sheltered by a set of damp stone steps stretching onto the roof, the gate leading to which was padlocked tightly shut. Hei noticed this in the fraction of a second before before he noticed that there was a handful of the white-coated 'doves' attentively guarding the exit with their strange weaponised briefcases. There would be no way through without some kind of pursuit, he realised, despite knowing they had nothing whatsoever to do with this particular battle. Thinking quickly, Hei grabbed tight onto Yin's arm and reflexively went for his wires. The doves noticed him and Yin just a moment before they disappeared into the night; Hei hadn't had time to secure everything as perfectly as he usually did, and they landed roughly on the flat asphalt roof.
"Hei," Yin whispered, seeming somewhat frightened, though as usual she didn't seem quite as concerned as she possibly should have been. "They aren't contractors," she said quietly.
"I know," Hei replied. He searched the roof for any indication as to what their next course of action should be. Before he could come up with anything, Yin stiffened in his arms, her eyes widening in alarm as she turned to point statue-like towards the stairs.
...
"Suzuya!" Shinohara yelled. "Don't... run off again..." he trailed off and sighed as he watched Juuzou charge up the steps to the roof. There had been a fleeting, barely distinguishable shape that had flown up there just seconds ago, but the investigators watching the exit had more pressing more issues as a fairly high-rated ghoul had begun an increasingly difficult fight, requiring the attention of all four of them, both to subdue the ghoul and to make sure no-one attempted to flee out the back door. Of course, instead of staying to help, Juuzou had pursued the brief flash of black onto the roof, alone.
Juuzou clambered over the padlocked gate and onto the asphalt, quinque in hand. He was certain that in the second he'd glimpsed the two people who had swung onto the roof, he'd recognised one of them as the man from the other roof, that time he had been sat at the top of that old hotel. Seeing the man now, stood there clutching a slender girl with silvery hair by the arm, his suspicions had been affirmed; however, he was pretty sure the man wasn't a ghoul. Juuzou wondered why he was here if he wasn't a ghoul.
"Hei," came the wispy voice of the girl with the silver hair, and they both turned to look at Juuzou.
"You?" Hei asked, recognising the boy almost instantly.
Juuzou was about to say something to them when he sensed someone approaching him on the stairs.
"Behind you," the girl informed him calmly.
Swinging round and taking out the approaching ghoul with his Jason in one clean swipe , Juuzou watched as the ghoul's top half fell from the rest of its body before it even had a chance to realise what had happened. He hit again (just making sure it was definitely dead, he thought) and then another time (just in case) and then just once more, until he was all but drenched in its blood.
"I think he's dead," Hei pointed out dryly. He remembered the boy from that time up on the roof, and was surprised to see him entangled in this mess.
"I know you," Juuzou said, turning away from the brutalised ghoul corpse. "Your name is Li something." He stepped lightly across the roof towards Hei and Yin, trailing his quinque on the asphalt behind him.
"What is happening here? What was that thing you just killed?"
Juuzou stared. "A ghoul, of course. We're raiding this place for them. I only came because I like killing them. I'm good at it!" he said with a smile.
"I can see that you are," Hei replied, glancing towards the several unrecognisable pieces of body strewn across the top few stairs. "What is a... ghoul?"
"I thought you were a ghoul," Juuzou continued, not seeming to care about answering Hei's question, "but now I don't think that you-"
"Watch out, Hei!" Yin suddenly gasped.
Hei turned as he heard the thud of another 'ghoul' landing on the roof behind him. It snarled, its eyes black with crimson irises and pulsing red veins like cracks filled with blood where the whites should have been. Instead of a tail, this one had what appeared to be wings protruding from its back, flickering like strange unearthly flames around its shoulder blades. Instinctively, Hei reached for it and grabbed, letting the electricity course through him and into the creature. The familiar crackle of the hot white energy through his fingers was enough to send the ghoul toppling back off of the roof, where it landed with a crunch on the concrete below. It might have gotten up again, Hei wasn't sure, but his powerful display was enough to keep it from returning back to the roof.
"How did you do that?" the boy- Juuzou- exclaimed excitedly, and Hei was reminded that while Juuzou was somehow involved in this unexplainable fight between this mysterious agency and these even more unexplainable monsters, he had no reason to be aware of the existence of the world of contractors and dolls and the Syndicate. Perhaps, Hei thought, there was more than one kind of hidden underworld to Tokyo, that even he had no idea about. The thought sent a chill down his spine.
"I'll tell you, if you tell me what a ghoul is. And who the people fighting them are," Hei proposed uncertainly.
"Investigator Suzuya, get down here!" someone hollered from down by the back door, and Juuzou frowned.
"I think they need me," he said, sighing petulantly. "I'll get in trouble again if I don't go."
"Wait!"
Hei blinked hard in surprise as Yin detached herself from his arm and cried out softly, reaching for the boy.
Juuzou looked at the girl, tilting his head as he looked into her pale, unseeing eyes. "What's your name?"
Yin didn't reply. Hei stared at her, wondering what she wanted. She'd been starting to act strangely lately, he'd noticed, but he'd thought very little of it. Of course, she wasn't exactly like other Dolls- she'd always been a little different.
Hei was distracted as a familiar scene unfolded in front of him: the same man who'd been with Juuzou that time atop the abandoned hotel was heading up the stairs, this time wearing- to Hei's surprise- one of the long white trench coats, spattered with blood and slightly torn.
Yukinori Shinohara glanced down at the butchered ghoul littered over the steps and frowned. He looked back up and jumped slightly as he noticed Hei stood defensively in his black coat, carabiner-ended wires coiled at his feet, and Yin poised with her delicate fingers reaching for Juuzou, her brows furrowed ever-so-slightly.
"You?" Shinohara exclaimed.
...
"Don't just run off on your own, Juuzou. Working as part of a team is an important skill to learn as an investigator, you know."
Shinohara was sat on a hospital bed, having just had a relatively small injury on his leg patched up; Juuzou was sat against the wall, carefully unpicking stiches in his hand. Shinohara winced as he glanced over at him. He understood that the body stitching was just a way for Juuzou to express himself without hurting himself, but it was still uncomfortable to watch.
He coughed. "It was strange, seeing that same guy on the roof again, wasn't it?"
"I thought he might have been a ghoul and so I followed him," Juuzou replied.
"And you're sure he wasn't? Who was the girl he was with?"
"He wasn't a ghoul, but..." Juuzou frowned, still concentrating on undoing the elaborate patterns cross-stitched on the back of his hand. "There was a ghoul there, and he electrocuted it."
"What? How?" Shinohara thought back to the roof, trying to remember if there had been any means of electricity up there at all. His memory was blurry as he had been tired out from the fighting, and his leg had been sore; he remembered the two of them- the one who had called himself Li and the girl- had disappeared off the side of the building and into the darkness as soon as they caught sight of him, and he remembered the battle in the Helter Skelter ending not long after that. It had been mostly a success, with a few ghouls that had been previously noted as dangerous either killed or sent to Cochlea, and no investigators had been killed. However, after catching sight of the man on the roof once again, Shinohara had been convinced there was something else going on, something they were missing. He hadn't spoken to anyone (except Juuzou, obviously) as he wasn't at all sure what he thought might be going on, but he had a feeling something wasn't quite right.
"He just touched its arm," Juuzou said, answering Shinohara's question as if he was excited to tell him about it, "and then there was all this electricity, and the ghoul fell off the roof!"
"That's... impossible..." Shinohara murmured, before shaking his head. "I don't know. You must have imagined it or something. But Juuzou, the most important thing is that you stick with the squad! If you run off like that again, they won't let you come anymore. In fact..."
Juuzou stopped paying attention, having decided he didn't feel like listening to anymore lecturing. He'd heard it from Marude and some other important investigators he didn't like ever since the raid at the Helter Skelter, and by this point had entirely lost what little interest he'd had in being talked at. Instead he focused on his stitching and let his mind wander. The man on the roof, he remembered, had introduced himself as Li something, but the girl with the strange eyes had been calling him Hei. And no matter what anyone said, he used nothing but his hand to electrocute a ghoul, causing it enough damage that it had fallen off of the roof. So while he definitely hadn't been a ghoul, Juuzou wondered if he was human, and if not what other kind of thing he might be.
Maybe there was more to it than just ghouls and humans, he thought.
Maybe there was something entirely different out there that nobody, not even the CCG, knew about. The thought of it sent a weird feeling down his spine, and he looked up through the window and at the sprawling city outside with wide, wondering eyes.