-95: Taken Amid the Trees—

We ended up letting the mauled trio go alive. Despite my misgivings on the consequences of the idea, I let Touka take the lead on that part of the encounter.

"So," I said, "educate me; why did we let those guys go?"

We were several blocks away on a store's sloped roof, plotting out our path to the location wolf head had described.

Touka groaned. "You and him, I swear, it's like I'm teaching damn toddlers sometimes. It's about reputation, you idiot. If you want to get recognition, you have to win fights, but if all you do is kill off the witnesses, you're just some bloodthirsty ghost unless you're part of a gang. Understand?"

"Ah." As usual, I didn't really have a reply to her irritated education.

"Also, what the actual hell were you thinking when you bit that guy!? Seriously, shit like that is not going to make you any friends."

"I'm not here to make friends," I pointed out, "I'm here to find Kaneki. Everything else is secondary."

That was a lie; I also still wanted to get in a fight, because wolf head had barely been anything.

"Really? Because the way you launched yourself at that Aogiri guy says otherwise. Hell, they might even believe we're from the thirteenth ward after that shit you pulled. You sure you're feeling all right?"

"I'm feeling just fine." I replied, taking a final look at the map before folding it away.

That was actually the truth. After all that, my headache had up and vanished along with the feeling that something was pushing down on the top of my eyes and left me with only the vague feeling that I had been awake for far too long. It also occurred to me that this was the first time I had eaten anything since Kaneki had been kidnapped; had all this been just because I was hungry? Hm. Trick question; in this case food had done nothing to sate my need to beat the stuffing out of somebody.

I asked Touka why they would've thought we were from the thirteenth ward as we made our way to the point on the map. According to her, the ward was one of the places where other ghouls and not the CCG were what made it difficult for ghouls to get by, with the controlling faction—the White Suits wolf head had mentioned—being the prime reason for that. The reason for me making us look as if we really were from there was that it was one of the places where cannibalism was more common.

It sounded like cannibals were more common here than they were back home. Hence why Monica suddenly turning the tables and turning a ghoul used to hunting dinner into being her dinner was usually accompanied by a lot of panic. For some reason, the rest of the team found her doing that a lot much less amusing than I did.

Despite how embarrassing it was to admit it to myself, I kind of miss all her 'I care but I won't show it' habits.

Shaking my head to dispel the thought, I brought my mind back to the present. We're getting g close now; that looks like the road on the map from Hide.

Surprisingly, the street lamps were on, despite the site supposedly being abandoned.

"We're not going to walk on the street to get there, are we?" Touka was sizing up the road as if recalling every horror trope possible."

I was not about to tempt fate. "Nope."

So we stayed in the trees, just close enough for slivers of yellow light to knife through branches and dead leaves.

"Remember," I hissed, "we're only here to look and gather information. If this goes sideways, we run."

A little ways to my left, I heard Touka mutter something and decided to take it as acknowledgment.

The trees thinned out abruptly and my breath escaped from between my teeth in a hiss. This place was a lot bigger than the map made it look—the buildings being looming gray teeth not reducing the creep factor. But there was somebody occupying the buildings, though it was dead quiet, I saw faint glows of light in windows. Squatters probably weren't the occupants here; there were lights in every building on nearly every floor, leaving the only likely occupant being Aogiri due to how much of the complex was occupied. Also because Aogiri had probably eaten whoever was unlucky enough to be homeless in this ward.

Touka followed my lead as I crept around permeter, using the treeline as cover. There were eight rectangular apartment blocks arranged in two rows, all of which appeared to be occupied and number of outbuildings—a few of what looked like groundskeeping sheds and some larger buildings that I didn't know enough to guess about. This was going to need a lot of searching to get through. For her part Touka was quiet, until we got around to look at where the complex butted up to the ocean, when she yawned and reminded me that this was still a school night for her.

"You should head back." Waves were crashing against the rocks close enough to half drown out our conversation. "We can put together a map of this tomorrow and give it to Yoshimura. Gotta convince him to hurry too; with all the lights on here there's no way the CCG isn't going to move in on this place really soon."

"While you stick around to make friends?" The shadows from the tree cast a frown across Touka's mask.

"I want to check out the other side of the complex. I'll be like an hour behind you at worst."

"And if somebody sees you? We're pushing our luck getting this close. Should've gotten the hell out once we figured out this was the place."

"Here," I passed her the map Hide had given me, "Get this to the manager if nothing else and tell him we—actually, tell him I said we need to hurry."

Her head bobbed down to the map and then up to me.

"I swear," she growled, "you better not fucking die and leave me with you and Kaneki's work to do."

"I've got no plans to end up dead." I promised. "Tomorrow, we can take all this to the manager, okay?"

That finally seemed to placate her enough to leave. I noticed that she seemed to be moving to first put as much distance between herself and the complex. Taking Touka along had probably not been a wise choice.

Sticking around was probably not the safest choice either, but I knew from experience that more intelligence only made planning easier. If nothing else, I probably wasn't going to get sniffed out by anybody; the distinctly salty breeze coming in from the surf meant I was effectively downwind of anyone in the complex. Still, I stuck to being stealthy as I wound my way around the treeline again. I did not envy the CCG when they raided this. Two directions were basically impassible due to the water and an encroaching cliff, not to mention the only good way to get a vehicle in was via the road and up a few shallow flights of stairs. The whole location basically forced a frontal assault, unless the CCG could wrangle up gunboats or an armed helicopter for the other fronts. I had had seen castles with less effective defenses than this.

I had only heard it joked about by people who made more than me, but this looked like a place where 'just bomb it to the ground' was potentially the easiest option. Plus, explosions.

Finally, I got to the other side, where only one building caught my eye; a short and fat structure that looked as if a grain silo had attempted to become an observatory. Or maybe it actually was something obvious and I was just an idiot. Compared to the other boxy shapes, it just kind of lurked, somehow looking more ominous than ordinary.

Despite clearly being used, I didn't see, hear or smell any activity in any of the buildings—not that my senses were much better than baseline human. Perhaps everyone had an early curfew? If that was the case than Touka and I had really gotten lucky. A little part of me wanted to push my luck a little and get closer.

Don't. It's a really bad idea to take a risk like this without backup. I'm only here to look.

I repeated the last sentence of that over and over as I backed off further into the trees, staving off any other foolish choices for the night. I had seen more than enough to draw a good map of the complex. I needed to just get back, convince Yoshimura to move up the timetable and I could look more when we came back to get Kaneki out. Right now, getting back to the twentieth was the most important thing to do.

Retreating, I stayed somewhat parallel to the entry road which was visible only as a dreamlike glow from its lamps if I looked hard to my left. After the forest, I'd be back in the urban areas and from there I'd have an easy time finding a train ride back out of this sketchy ward.

And a tiny 'alert' light clicked on in the back of my head. I dropped into a crouch and stopped dead. There was…something…going on. Exactly what was still unknown—local wildlife, Aogiri ghoul heading home, paranoid delusion, Touka lying in wait. This was the feeling of standing in the middle of an unfamiliar street and sizing up every movement in the windows as banal local life or a hatchling ambush.

Something squawked and fluttered from my right side to my left.

Just a bird.

I quietly let out a breath I thought I hadn't been holding. Just a—

My vision flipped, giving me a brief view of the glow of the city sky poking through branches before dead leaves and twigs took their turn greeting my eyes before knocking the remaining wind out of my chest. I half-recovered, sucking in air and already high enough on adrenaline that I didn't feel my landing as much as heard it.

Another ghoul? Half of me clamored for a fight. No, leave it, and get out of the ward.

Somewhere to my side I heard a high pitched giggle. Planting my feet, I made a beeline away from the laughter and didn't attempt to be stealthy as the trees zipped past and low branches clawed at my clothes. City, railway, getaway. The plan bounced in my head as the second best idea I had; the first best being leaving at the same time Touka had.

The second time, I got a glimpse of my attacker: small, definitely Aogiri and much faster than I had any chance of reacting to. A kick landed home, something in my shoulder made a crunchy sound, and I ended up getting knocked off my feet again. Unfortunately, I didn't get any open ground to tumble in and ended up hitting what felt like a good size tree with my ribcage.

When I got back to Anteiku, I was never going to ignore Touka's recommendations again.

Getting back to my feet hurt, and this time my route was blocked by a white-garbed and red-jawed tree of a man. A second ghoul? Some kind of garb for the Aogiri elite? We sized each other up for about half a second before making our moves. I got lucky, for once tonight: he came in with the same low jab that Trish and Frank were fond of using on the mats, something I only notice after muscle memory had moved to deflect. That was going to be another bruise. The only response was a grunt that sounded suspiciously like approval.

There was a breeze on the side of my face and everything winked out for a second. Next thing, I was on the ground and a foot was being planted on my sternum. The small figure bent over my face, putting enough weight on that I felt something pop.

"Well now, look what just wrote itself into the story." The figure toyed with the mesh of my mask and giggled. "What a lovely little surprise!"

The smile that cut through the mask of bandages was both playful and inhumanly far from reassuring.