Akira starts asking dangerous questions
Akira cracked her neck as she left the main offices. She'd spent most of the day at a training session with Take's Squad Zero rookies—making them practice rappelling over and over again until they no longer had that moment of hesitation and terror when they leapt into thin air. She'd recently been reminded how important it was to keep skills like that sharp.
They were a group of children with impressive abilities, true, and she might have a thing or two to teach them, but she still didn't know why Arima had attached her to the project on a long-term basis.
She was barely out the door when she ran into Haise on the sidewalk, holding a potted plant and looking a bit confused.
Here we go again. She groaned. "What's going on now?"
Haise looked at her, desperation in his eyes. "I thought it would be nice to surprise Touka with some flowers after work. I felt bad about buying a bouquet that would just wilt and die, so I thought I'd get a whole plant. But now I'm worried it's a stupid idea. Do you think I should really give her these?" He held up the pot of fuchsia peonies.
"Maybe a Venus flytrap instead?" It'd certainly be more appropriate.
Haise's look of horror almost made her feel bad.
"Just joking. It's a nice idea."
He smiled. "Do you want to come to the café?"
"It's been a long day. Why not. I'll drive, you keep the flowers safe."
Akira held the door open so Haise could enter safely with the plant.
Touka immediately perked up and rushed over to him. The duo made their way to a table in the back of the shop, chatting the whole way.
Akira made her way over to the bar. Yomo, forced to take over Touka's duties when she abandoned her post, grumbled at her. "Drink?"
"Cortado."
She watched the young couple while she waited for her order. Even though they were secretly married, they were both blushing and giving each other wide-eyed looks of admiration. She watched Touka and Haise both reach out to touch the flowers and accidentally touch hands. They both turned bright red and smiled at each other across the table.
Haise seems soft, but he's a lot stronger than he looks. And Touka is feisty when she's not pretending to be human, but she's much kinder than she first appears. I can see how they work, how they meet in the middle.
Yomo set her cortado in front of her. "It's not on the house. If you're going to drive off half of our customers, you need to pay."
"Thanks." She sipped her drink while the two of them observed their wards. "Isn't young love disgusting?"
"I should have told Touka to leave him alone when he first came in. Nipped it in the bud."
"Why didn't you?"
"She wouldn't have listened." He scowled for a long moment. "And he makes her happy. We're doomed to short, brutal lives and I thought it would be nice to see her happy for a little while before I go."
The imposing ghoul pulled out a rag and began wiping down the counter. "Besides, I always knew they'd end up together."
"Do tell."
The ghoul was quiet while he chose his words. He wasn't a big talker, Akira noticed. There's just something about him that makes me think of Amon…She set aside that sad thought and focused on listening. She had to stop letting Amon haunt her.
"When Touka was younger, she would fight or ignore the people she didn't like. When…Haise…first showed up in his previous life, she acted like she couldn't stand him, but she still made time for him. I kept finding them together. It's how my sister treated Arata before they ran off to start their family."
"Huh. I didn't realize they had that much of a history."
He nodded once as he continued cleaning behind the counter. "It was Touka who whipped him into shape, at first. He was useless in a fight before that."
When Haise was first put in her care, he didn't know anything about fighting with a weapon, but he was shockingly good at hand-to-hand combat. "I'll have to thank her, I suppose, for getting him up to snuff. It certainly made my job easier. I'll leave a large tip today."
Yomo shrugged, not really caring one way or the other about anything that made Akira's life easier.
Akira took another sip. I've had good success with just asking ghouls what I want to know. I might as well see what I can get out of him.
Quietly, to guard against eavesdropping, she asked the question on her mind. "Touka said there were rumors of another half-ghoul like the one she's carrying. Do you know anything about that?"
The ghoul behind the counter put away the coffee pot he'd just cleaned and turned back to her. It was a long, tense minute before he responded. "Most of the people involved are dead now and I don't care to protect Aogiri Tree, so I suppose I can tell you."
Then, in hushed, matter-of-fact sentences, she finally learned the truth about the One-Eyed Owl that slaughtered her mother.
By the end of Yomo's story, she was staring down at her empty cup. There was a lot to digest, about how mistaken the CCG had been about everything surrounding both Owls.
She pushed her dishes away from her, signaling that she was finished. "This shadow organization you mentioned…V…we've never heard of them. Is it a group like Aogiri Tree?"
"Older and more powerful. From what little I know of them, though, they're dangerous. If you ever think you're getting close to them, turn around and walk away."
"Huh." Akira pulled some cash out of her billfold and tossed it on the counter. "Thanks. Keep the change. I have to go home and feed my cat." She turned around and took one step towards the door, but a final thought occurred to her.
She stepped back up to the bar and caught Yomo's eye again. "If V is so old and so powerful, how is it that the CCG knows nothing of them, and ghouls don't know much more? It just doesn't seem possible."
He cracked the barest hint of a smile, as if he'd been waiting for her to come to that realization. "There's two options to consider. The first is they don't actually exist. The second is that they are hiding in plain sight, they're far more powerful than you imagined, and they kill anyone—ghoul or human—who starts asking questions like the ones you're asking."
"That would mean they have unparalleled influence over ghouls and the CCG."
Yomo shrugged again. "There's only so much you can get from speculation. I'll tell you one thing, though—I've seen enough to convince me that they do exist."
Akira nodded to him and left, waving to Haise—still at that back table and totally engrossed in talking with Touka—as she went.
She sat in her car for a long time.
Does V actually exist? I don't know. It's something to keep an eye out for, on top of everything else.
And to think, I never would have heard of them if I hadn't been put in a position to converse with ghouls. Which means no one else in the CCG—unless they're under the influence of this V organization—will know about them either. And anyone I do ask might lead to my assassination. How do you even investigate a target that elusive and that potentially deadly?
And yet, if they do exist, they're up to no good, so how could I ignore them?
As she started up her car, she couldn't shake the feeling that unseen eyes were now following her.
Akira spent the next few days feeling incredibly anxious for when Touka would get in touch to relay whatever information she could glean from her contact.
So, when her phone rang in the early evening as she was about to head home, she picked it up immediately.
"Mado here."
Touka's shaky voice came through the speaker. "Akira?"
"Yes?"
"I…I just had a visitor. She said she was going to do a favor for me if I promised to help a friend of hers, and then she gave me some information."
It took the tired investigator a moment to understand. "That's a strange proposition."
"She was a strange visitor. Human, but she knew way too much. She freaked me out, so I'm telling you."
"As long as it's not a blatant setup." She still didn't fully trust the blue-haired ghoul.
Touka wasn't offended. "Not on my end. I don't think she's playing a game with me, either. She was weirdly straightforward. She said that she may have made a mistake and that the White Suits were never supposed to get involved? She found out someone's planning an ambush on Haise very, very soon, and they might kill him. I tried to call him as soon as she left, but he didn't pick up. I'm getting nervous. Can you get ahold of him and make sure he's okay?"
Akira massaged her temple with her free hand. "I can do that. I'll get back to you in a minute."
After hanging up, she checked the location of Haise and the Quinx squad on her phone. They were all together in a parking garage nearby—nothing unusual about that.
Until she tried calling each of them, one after the other. No one picked up until she got to the last number: Yonebayashi.
"Akira?" Her whisper sent a shiver down Akira's spine. Safe people didn't whisper, and they didn't ignore calls from their superiors.
"Yonebayashi, what is going on?"
"We were attacked! I'm hiding behind the building, but I think I need to go back in and help Mutsie…"
The girl sounded terrified, so Akira snapped into action. "Stay put. I can see where you are on the map, I'll be there in two minutes."
Get there fast or wait for backup? They're attacking close by in a public space and nobody else has raised an alarm, so it'll be a small force. I can't afford to wait…I need to get there.
She grabbed her quinque and ran down the hall, breezing past a startled Suzuya.
She skidded to a halt, a ridiculous idea forming. "Hey Juzo, if I asked you to hotwire Marude's bike out front, no questions asked, could you do it in thirty seconds or less?"
The eccentric investigator grinned. "Oh boy, I'd love to!"
"Let's go."
Oh noooo I wonder what'll happen next? I feel like I need to sometimes change what happened a bit—massage certain details into place, if you will—to make this story make more sense. I hope it's not too jarring and it feels like it's unfolding in a reasonable way :)