Ello, guys and welcome to the tenth chapter of Tokyo Ghoul: Remnant. So I'm rather proud of this chapter, not because I myself put a lot of work into this chapter - my total work on it was about minimum.
No, I'm proud of this chapter because it's the first collaboration work between me and my beta-reader, FineChyna, and she did absolutely wonderful with it in my opinion! Give her all of your love because this story feels a lot more professional because of her!
Well, I suppose I should get to the story. Recently, I've been told by one of my IRL friends, who reads this story, that my author's notes are "are long as shit". But before I get to the actual story, I need to tell you that this story is going to be branching off into a new site! A forum to be exact. The Spacebattles forum to be even more exact.
So, you're probably asking yourself, why is he doing this? Aren't you fine with just the fans you have here? Well, yeah, of course I am. I love the fact that hundreds of people bothered to press a button for something I did.
Here's the thing though, I could always have more fans and more of an ability to communicate with said fans, and putting this story on a forum helps that substantially. It lets you share your ideas and I get to tell you what I think about them without having to go through this site's PM.
Well, anyways, if you want to check it out, then go to spacebattles and look up Tokyo Ghoul: Remnant, created by With Death Comes Death. That's my username on the site by the way… They wouldn't let me have the "more" in my username.
So, now that's done, let's start this mother up... ! Y'know, after this super aggressive disclaimer, as promised.
-Mandatory Disclaimer-
Wow, you're still not getting the message? I don't fucking own these series!
-Chapter 9: Emergence-
"So, what exactly are we doing up here again?" Blake asked Kaneki. The two of them were currently situated at the top of a roof, with the snowy-haired young man poised at the very edge.
Said young man, instead of answering, turned to face her and waved his hand, gesturing for her to come to the edge of the roof. Blake did as he directed and strode over to where he stood, glancing down to see what looked like a rather large night club. A rather large night club patrolled by men wearing the same sort of suits that the men who had taken over the settlement wore.
Blake crossed her arms over her chest. "Is this where we meet this contact of yours?" she asked.
"Yeah," Kaneki answered, nodding his head slightly. He suddenly reached down into his shirt and pulled a familiar piece of black leather from its confines.
"You're going to go in there wearing your mask?" Blake questioned, watching as he hooked said mask around his neck.
Kaneki nodded once more as he put on the lower portion of his mask, imposing its toothy grin over his own face. "It's not exactly a place where you want your face seen," he answered. He reached up and slipped off the usual medical eyepatch the covered his left eye. Once it was off, he wrapped the eyepatch portion of his mask over the opposite eye, adding, "It's also not a place where you want your name being heard, so I advise you to not use either of our names while we're in there."
"Yeah, yeah, this isn't my first time doing something like this," she said dismissively, waving off his warnings like she'd heard them dozens of times before. "So, are you planning on going in alone or something?" She turned to face him and added, "Because, as you probably already know, I don't carry a mask on me at all times."
"Here," he said, pulling something bone-white from his shirt and holding it out towards her. Cupping his chin, he explained, "I got this from one of the members of Junior's gang." She took the mask from him almost immediately, studying it as he continued. "I was planning on using it as a spare mask if I ever lost my normal one, but I think it fits you better than it does me."
True to his words, the mask did fit her, but it was in the annoying sort of way. The sort of way that involved a pun.
On the surface, it looked like one of the Grimm bone masks the members of the White Fang wore; and from what Blake could tell, it was made in a similar fashion. However, there were a few select differences that were actually quite noticeable. The first being the fact that it was obviously made to cover the entire face, instead of just the top half. The next being the shape, as it was completely rounded all the way around. The final difference were the eight holes drilled into it instead of the usual two; two were obviously eyeholes, and the other six were obviously meant to be air holes to breathe, as they were placed directly in front of the area the mouth should be.
Strangely enough, there were black lines etched into the surface of the mask. Each one came directly from one of the air holes and looked vaguely like cat whiskers.
"Really?" she deadpanned, making sure to get across how irritated she was with him.
Even with the mask covering the lower portion of his face, Blake could tell that Kaneki was smiling cheekily at her.
She shook her head disbelievingly, half-tempted to retort, but decided against any retaliation. Instead, she put the stupid mask on, which was a rather simple affair, since all she had to do was wrap an elastic strap around her head and adjust it so that her eyes were aligned with their corresponding openings.
"So how exactly are we getting inside that place?" the bow-bearing bookworm asked her companion. The question immediately forced him back into his usual serious demeanor, which amused her slightly.
"Straight through the front door," the masked man answered with a crack of his index finger. "Junior owns the place, and all of his men already know me, so they should let us in without too much trouble."
"Alright then…" Blake trailed off. As her words died, her suspicion of the situation skyrocketed.
What exactly could he have done to garner so much respect from a group of criminals? Blake mused to herself. She opened her mouth to ask that very question, but decided to leave it for a later time.
"You ready to go?" Kaneki asked her. When she nodded in response, the snowy-haired young man stepped off the roof and allowed himself to plummet to the ground feet first.
Blake sighed in exasperation, unsheathed Gambol Shroud from its metal sheath on her back, and followed him down.
Blake felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as she walked down the sidewalk, Kaneki at her side. "Hey, are you alright?" she heard her companion ask her in a low whisper, probably having sensed her tension.
"Yeah," she whispered back, attempting to look back at previous experiences to calm herself. "It's just been a long time since I've been treated to this kind of atmosphere." She smiled lightly under her mask. "I guess my time at Beacon has made me a bit soft," she joked.
That was more or less the truth of the situation.
When she was with the White Fang, she would routinely be forced to stay in environments where it felt like she could've been attacked, if she were to ever let her guard down.
The only times where she felt anything remotely like that over the duration of her time at Beacon were the few times when the teachers allowed her to leave the walls of Vale and meander into the Grimm-infested wilderness. Other than that, her days were spent in places where everything that could be considered dangerous was controlled, so much so that it actually reached the point where it started to feel like nothing more than a simple exercise that an accurate recreation of an actual dangerous situation.
It was clear to her now that she'd gotten soft, too used to the school environment. That much was obvious if she was letting the stares of a few thugs get under her skin.
"Hang in there. Junior's club is right around the corner," Kaneki murmured, attempting to reassure her. Whether it actually did was completely lost to her under her aforementioned paranoia. At least, that was the case until she heard him say, "There, people will be so wrapped up with themselves that they won't even notice you."
A wave of nostalgia washed over Blake when she heard those familiar words come out of his mouth. The uncomfortable smile she had plastered on earlier melted into one that was one part nostalgia and one part amusement.
"Using my own words against me, huh?" she said wryly. "Never thought I'd see the day where you'd stoop so low."
The faunus couldn't see underneath her companion's mask, but she could still tell that he had smiled from the way its corners moved upwards slightly. As she stared at him, she idly noted how amusing and, in a way, endearing, he would've been in any other situation. It was almost like she was looking at a plush kitten holding a flamethrower.
"You caught that?" he asked her sheepishly, scratching the back of his head.
"It was pretty obvious," she replied nonchalantly.
He let out a muffled chuckle that was as sheepish as his voice was earlier, stating, "Well, the words seemed to fit in this situation, so…"
"It's fine," Blake assured him. "Truth be told, I'm actually kind of surprised that remembered something like that, especially from all the way back then." She let out a bemused snort. "Never thought you'd be the type to be so sentimental."
"You make it sound like being sentimental is a bad thing," he shot back, a fair amount of confusion and offense in his voice, which told her that he wasn't going to deny that he was what she called him.
"It's not," she conceded to him. "It's just that I never thought you of all people would be the type to care about such trivial matters." She shrugged her shoulders nonchalantly. "I don't know, you always just seemed like the type of person who never let their past affect them too much."
"Really now?" he asked, sounding genuinely confused. "I've always thought that it was the opposite."
"How so?" Blake questioned, the same amount of confusion in her voice.
The masked half ghoul averted his one visible eye off and began to scratch his cheek sheepishly, before cracking his index finger with his thumb.
"It's sort of personal," he said, making it very clear that he was uncomfortable with the topic. "Are you sure you want to hear something like that?"
Without a single ounce of hesitation, she gave a quick nod of her head and replied with, "Yeah, I do."
"A-alright, I'll be sure to tell you once we're in a more appropriate location," he stuttered, in an almost begrudging way. "There are too many ears here, and I'd rather not have these sort of people know any of those things about me."
Blake opened her mouth to protest, but she closed it when she realized that he was very much in the right in the situation. There were betters times for talks like that, and now, being stared down by some of the lowest of society's low, wasn't one of those times.
"Alright," she conceded once more, prompting the two to fall into a bout of awkward silence.
They remained that way until Kaneki turned a corner, revealing the front entrance of the building she saw earlier, and said, "Alright, we're here."
"I was going to save this question for later, but how exactly did you manage to track down and gain the trust of the boss of the guys who attacked and took an entire settlement of people hostage?" she whispered as they approached the entrance of the club.
"Tracking them down was actually really simple," Kaneki explained. "I figured that any group who was strong enough to amass enough firepower to take over that amount of people would most likely be hiding in the less reputable parts of town and have a good amount of influence over it. I went around asking questions, knowing that they would catch wind of my snooping eventually and come to me." He cracked a joint in his middle finger and continued. "After that, I forced the two who came to warn me to stop snooping to tell me where their base of operations was. When I let them go, I told them to tell their boss that I was coming to see him."
"Sounds rather personable," Blake commented, her tone dripping with sarcasm.
The snowy-haired young man let out an annoyed snort. "The only way to get people in charge of gangs that use violence against others is to use violence against them," he replied. "Otherwise, they won't even give you the time of day."
"You know, for someone who claims that their last occupation was on a cafe's waitstaff," she said, with an equal amount of amusement and seriousness in her voice, "you seem to know quite a lot about the inner psyche of gangs run by violent criminals, don't you?"
"Well, you're not wrong," he agreed with a brief sideway nod of his head. "I had to work with a lot of gangs like this when I decided to leave the cafe to look for some answers I wanted."
"'Answers'?" Blake parroted, raising her eyebrow curiously at him.
"I can't really say much about it right now," Kaneki stated, gesturing to the area around them with a wave of his hand. "But I can tell you that it had to deal with the doctor that turned me into what I am today."
"Oh, alright," she replied with a nod of her own, deciding that this was a conversation that was best saved for later.
It was part of the explanation Ozpin had given to her and her teammates after they learned about Kaneki being a ghoul. He told them about how the snowy-haired young man was turned into a ghoul by a crazy doctor after he was attacked by one. Knowing that, she could understand why he would want to save that conversation for later.
A silence blanketed itself over them after that. It wasn't a comfortable one like she was used to, but she couldn't say that it wasn't a particularly awkward one either. It was a strange silence, one that buried itself deep in the middle of both extremes, and for the life of her, Blake could not figure out how she felt about it. Although she was grateful that it didn't become awkward between them like it tended to over the past couple weeks, she always figured that the awkwardness stemmed from how close they were, and for there to just be nothing between them, it made her feel as if she walking next to a stranger.
Now look who's being sentimental, she berated herself, walking with Kaneki over to the front door of the night club.
There, standing in front of the double doors leading inside, was a gigantic man wearing the same suit as the men she saw at the settlement.
He must be the bouncer or something… the masked faunus thought to herself, watching her partner walk right up to him, ... so how are you planning on getting past him, I wonder?
The two men stared each other down in complete silence. The standoff was soon broken when the smaller of the two men reached his hand up and cracked his index finger.
The bouncer flinched at the sound and stepped out of the way almost immediately. This prompted the masked half ghoul to let out an exasperated snort as he stepped past the defeated man wordlessly. An amused smile crept onto Blake's lips as she followed Kaneki past the bouncer and into the club, having to pick up her pace slightly to keep up with him.
"Make sure you keep close while we're in here," Kaneki told her once she fell back into place at his side.
"Why?" she asked skeptically. "We've already been over this, I don't need you to look out for me."
He blinked his one visible grey eye at her owlishly, before averting his gaze to the side opposite to her and moving to apologize, "Sorry, force of habit."
"What exactly do you mean by that?" she shot him a question curiously.
Kaneki scratched at his cheek with a black-nailed finger as he answered. "I guess you can say that it's one of my bigger flaws as a person. I have a tendency to try and protect people even though they might not need it."
Memories of Kaneki jumping out of a bullhead in a vain attempt to save her flashed in her mind. In a much harsher tone than she meant, Blake replied. "Yeah, I've noticed."
Her masked companion didn't even flinch at the words; instead, he chuckled in a way that sounded strangely nostalgic to her.
"If it makes you feel better, you should know that I'd only go that far for people I really care about," he stated. Again, Blake could tell he was smiling; she could practically feel the warmth of it through both of their masks.
A warm smile of her own formed on her lips, a faint blush grew on her cheeks in response to the statement. She crossed her arms over her chest and adverted her eyes, silently grateful that there was a mask hiding her embarrassment.
Silence overtook them once more as they walked down the hallway leading to the main section of the club, but unlike the distant-feeling silence that plagued them before, the current lack of conversation that they were enraptured in felt much more comfortable.
"Alright, Junior should be right through here," Kaneki stated as they approached the doors that separated them from the main hallway. "Keep an eye out for him, he should be relatively easy to pick out from the rest of them… y'know, if he's actually here."
Blake nodded as she watched her partner push the double doors open and walk through them before following him in.
The first thing Blake noticed were just how many of the black-and-red suit clad men were in the room, staring at them. She counted thirty shade-covered gazes in total being directed in her direction the moment she and Kaneki entered.
Her amber eyes scanned the large, circular, high-ceilinged room she found herself in. Like Kaneki had said, she found his contact almost immediately; a task that was probably made a thousand times easier due to the fact that their contact was much taller than any of the lower level thugs around them.
He was a tall man, with short black hair; and unlike the rest of his men, he didn't wear the standard full black suit and red tie. He instead wore an outfit that was similar to Kaneki's; a white button-up, a black tie, a black vest and a pair of matching black slacks. The only real difference was that 'Junior' was wearing his shirt buttoned up while Kaneki's remained separated down the middle. The tall man's eyes fell upon them, and suddenly, a warm smiled appeared on his lips, destroying any and all tension that had been growing inside Blake.
"Eyepatch!" he exclaimed jovially, raising a bottle of some alcoholic substance in the air in what she assumed was a greeting. "There's my favorite masked man of the week!"
'Eyepatch', as their contact so lovingly dubbed him, strode over to the counter where the much taller man was standing without a single ounce of trepidation in his step. Blake took it as a sign of familiarity between the two.
The masked faunus followed her partner's example and followed him over to the bar.
"Hello, Junior," the words slipped from the snowy-haired young man's mouth smoothly despite being heavily muffled by his mask. "How's business been going for you?"
"Better than ever because of you," the supposedly hardened boss of a group of criminals replied in a strangely warm tone. "Now tell me, what can I do for you today?"
"I need to call in that favor you owe me," Kaneki him nonchalantly. "It's nothing too big," he attempted to assure the taller man, "I just need to get some questions answered for me and my friend here, and we'll be out of your hair."
"Compared to what you did for me yesterday, that sounds like you're trying to low ball yourself," Junior said, voice filled with amusement as he crossed his thicks arms over his chest. "And I've never declined a deal that leans heavily in my favor, so what'd you want to know?"
What in the world are they talking about? the bow-bearing bookworm asked herself, her hidden eyes bouncing back-and-forth between the two as the conversation continued.
"Your men," the shorter of the two men began, his one visible eye scanning around the room that was currently crawling with said men. "You hired them out a couple of weeks ago, right?" The eye, that was once scanning around the room, suddenly focused directly on the burly man as he asked, "It had something to do with a robbery at a dust shop, correct?"
"Yeah, that sounds about right," Junior said with a slight nod of his head. "Was for a girly looking creep with orange hair. Torchwick." The contact then cupped his chin with a gloved hand and added, "We actually get requests to do stuff for him a lot, it's mostly robberies, but he did have my men help one of his associates take an entire settlement hostage not too long ago."
As her eyes fell back onto Kaneki, Blake noticed that he had somewhat flinched at the mention of the settlement, which made it clear to her that the events that transpired there weighed more on his mind that he let on.
The snowy-haired young man cracked his index finger before asking, "Any more recent requests? Preferably one from the past couple of days?"
"Not that I know of," the gang boss replied with a shake of his head. "Haven't heard so much as a peep from Torchwick, which probably means he's working with an organization other than us if he's still robbing dust shops."
"I think I can already guess the answer to this question, but did he ever tell you why he was stealing all that dust in the first place?" Kaneki asked. Junior simply shook his head in response. Then, without warning, Kaneki turned his head towards Blake for the first time in the conversation and asked, "Alright, did you want to ask something?"
"Yeah," she replied as the burly contact turned to face her. At first, she thought about asking about whether or not he knew anything about who this Torchwick person was working with, but stopped when she realized that he already answered that question indirectly. She decided to ask another question instead. "Have you heard about the ship that's coming into the docks in a couple days? The one with all the dust on it?"
"Yeah, heard from a friend of mine that it's going to be quite the shipment," Junior answered, nodding his head curtly. "Why'd you want to know?"
"We think that there might be a chance someone is going to try and steal the shipment," Kaneki cut in suddenly. "It just so happens to be in our best interest to stop that from happening."
"I don't know what this person did to get this kind of attention from you, but I can't say I envy 'em," Junior joked, chuckling good-heartedly. "Well, I can't say I know much about the details of the shipment, other than it's happening…"
"That's fine," Blake reassured him. "I just wanted to compare info and see if you knew anything we didn't."
"Well, it's nice to have been of service, Miss…" he trailed off in a heavy-handed attempt to get her to tell him a name.
She opened her mouth to shoot down the attempt, but Kaneki cut her off before she could say a word. "You can just call her Cat Lady," he said, sounding cheesier than Blake had ever heard him. She huffed in annoyance and sent a glare Kaneki's way. The corners of his mask tugged up, giving away the grin underneath.
"'Cat Lady'?" Junior parroted with a raised brow, contemplating the validity of the irritating nickname her companion had given her. "Hm, I can see it."
Not seeing the need to waste time in refuting the statement, she settled with shaking her head and telling the masked ghoul off later on.
"Well, like I was trying to say earlier, it's nice to have been of service Cat Lady, Eyepatch," Junior finished what he was saying earlier with a polite nod of his head.
"Alright, I think that's all we wanted to know," Kaneki stated, giving the contact a polite nod of his own before he turned his single-eyed gaze towards her, "or did you have anything else you wanted to ask?"
The cat-eared faunus contemplated answering the question, but eventually decided to shake her head. She definitely had some questions she wanted to ask Junior about his relation to her teammate, but she felt as though the contact wouldn't give anything away with Kaneki in such close proximity.
"Alright then," the snowy-haired half ghoul said, giving the much taller man a nod as he began to turn towards the exit. "We'll be off then."
With that, he strode back towards the doors they came entered from. Blake gave the surprisingly cooperative gang boss a nod before she followed Kaneki out of the club.
"Y'know, for the boss of a group of hardened criminals, he was oddly friendly with you," Blake commented when she caught up with him, using it a tone that she hoped made it sound offhanded. "What exactly did you have to do get that level of trust from him in less than a day?"
"I guess you could say that I helped him pick some coffee beans," he answered, cupping his leather-covered chin with his left hand.
He's cupping his chin again… Blake noted, a frown forming under her mask, ... that has to be a nervous tell of some kind.
She wanted to call him out on it, but yet again, she decided against saying something in favor of saving the conversation for a more appropriate time and place.
A time and a place… A time and a place… she repeated to herself, over and over again to lessen the frustration that was growing inside her.
For the fourth time that day, the two fell into silence, but unlike the last couple times, she had every intention to break it once they were in a secluded enough location.
Because after what she witnessed today, she had a plethora of questions she wanted to ask him.
Blake's nose twitched as she took a deep drag of air. It was completely and utterly saturated with the smell of salt, which was something she probably should've expected, considering they were staking out the docks.
The sound of footsteps clanging against the metal surface of the crate she was currently lying on came from directly behind her, catching her attention almost immediately. She knew who it was instantly, but to make one-hundred percent sure, she called out to the new arrival. "Kaneki, that you?"
"Yeah," the snowy-haired half ghoul replied, sitting himself down next to her. "Has anything of note happened?"
"No, not really," the bow-wearing bookworm replied with a shake of her head. "So where'd you run off to?" Deciding that the situation on the docks wasn't going to be changing any time soon, she took her gaze off of them and on to her newly arrived partner. "You've been gone for an awfully long time. How long has it been, fifteen or twenty minutes already?"
"More like fourteen," he answered simply, reaching into the confines of his vest. He pulled out a green object that was wrapped completely in clear plastic and placed it next to her face. "Here. I may not need to eat, but the last time I checked, you definitely do."
She blinked at the object and immediately realized that it was a green apple. A small bit of warmth spiked up inside her at the thought of him going out of his way to get it for her, which surprised her, despite the act being quite typical for him.
Shifting herself into a sitting position, Blake picked up the green fruit and began to free it from the protective seal around it. She murmured a soft thank you to her teammate as she took a bite out of it.
It tasted just like she expected it to, but her lack of eating for nearly an entire day made it taste a million times better. She turned amber eyes back on to the docks as she munched on the food in her mouth, watching the silhouettes of the workers as they moved from one place to another like a horde of ants.
"Hey Kaneki," Blake said to the young man sitting next to her. After a few second's pause, he turned to look at her. She began to rub the back of her hand nervously as she asked, "Do you mind if I ask you something?"
"Sure, why wouldn't it be?" he asked in a tone that made it sound like she should've already known the answer.
"Ah, well…" she trailed off, averting her eyes as she continued. "... It's sort of a personal one."
"Ah, fire away then," the snowy-haired half ghoul replied with an understanding nod. "It's probably only fair," he added, just as a high powered light passed over them, causing the young man to glow in the light momentarily. "I mean, you told me about your connection with the White Fang, so…"
Taking that as a sign to go ahead and ask her questions, she took another moment to figure out how exactly she wanted to word it to him. Finally, she spoke. "Back when Ozpin told me and others about how you became a ghoul, he said that you were turned into one a couple of years ago. What exactly was your life like before then?"
"Nothing too exciting…" Kaneki murmured, almost immediately. Doing as Blake did earlier and presumably taking a moment to decide on the words he wanted to say, he paused before continuing. "Truth be told, it was really more depressing than anything else."
"How so?" Blake felt compelled to ask back.
She could hear him take in an audible breath, in and out, as he began with his explanation. "When I was younger, I lived with my mother. My father had died when I was small, and she worked herself to the bone everyday for me and her leech of a sister."
Blake's eyes widened at the sheer anger that presented itself in his voice when he said those words. However, Kaneki wasn't done. "My mother was too cowardly to deny her sister money we could've used to make our lives better. Instead, she worked herself so hard that she died." Anger had begun to appear in his expression as well, his dull eyes narrowing as he spoke. "She decided that it was more important to her to try and not lose anyone important to her than to make sure her own son wouldn't have to live in the world without her."
"You sound like you hate her quite a bit," the faunus stated, in hopes of having him elaborate further.
"Yeah, I do. But it wasn't always like that," he explained, cracking his index finger. "There used to be a time where I held her in the highest possible reverence." His tone was bitter as black coffee. "And truth is, I probably wouldn't hate her as much as I do now if she hadn't instilled that same weakness in me."
Blake thought back to what he said, about his habit of assuming that he needed to protect everyone that was close to him. Was he trying to tell her that the reason why he acted that way was because of his mother?
"After she passed, I went to go live with my aunt and her family," he continued. "The same aunt who helped suck the life out of my mother." A sardonic chuckle let itself out from his lungs as he added, "Everything was fine at first, and I genuinely wanted her to be proud of me, and for a while, she seemed like she wanted me to become a part of the family, but…" Kaneki's face lost all of its sardonicism and adopted a much lonelier expression. "... But eventually, all of that changed too."
"What happened?" Blake felt all but compelled to ask that question, even if it touched upon a topic that he was uncomfortable with sharing. She was sure that he expected it to come.
"Prior to my adoption, she already had her own, actual son... and let's just say that he wasn't a very good student." The answer came out with almost zero emotion once again. "Instead of doing his homework or studying like I did, he would play video games nonstop." Yet underneath that haze of emptiness, there was an underlying feel of isolation in his voice. "His mother saw my successes and his failures, and remembered the fact that she and my mother were in the very same situation when they were younger. She resented me for that and gradually began to ignore me."
Blake felt as though she could piece together what happened next to him from there, but to make sure she was correct with her assumptions, she asked, "What happened then?"
"You ever hear that expression about home being where the heart is?" He ended up answering her question with one of his own. She nodded in response. "Well, I guess you can say that despite the fact that I lived in that place, it never became anywhere close to what a home should be."
Those words and the loneliness that they harbored within told Blake all she needed to know. She decided to not press him for anymore information after that.
The faunus honestly pitied the young man sitting next to her. She couldn't even begin to understand what he went through, living in such a cold and unloving environment. Mainly because her own childhood home, despite all of its shortcomings, always felt like a home and had people who loved her inside it.
"It wasn't all bad though," the snowy-haired half ghoul mentioned, a wistful smile growing on his face as he spoke. "I had friend growing up, or to be honest, he was my only friend growing up." With that sentence came another crack of his finger and yet another explanation. "He always stuck by me and made me feel just a little bit less alone in the world."
"He sounds like a good friend," Blake commented offhandedly, not expecting him to respond in any way, shape or form.
"He was the best." In the end, Kaneki ended up defying her expectations for the millionth time since the first day she met him.
Silence reigned over them once again after, and they both decided to sit in it for a moment. Blake used the silence to gather her thoughts and assumed he used it to do the same.
Honestly, despite the ever-growing pit that was forming in her stomach and how incredibly selfish it sounded in her head, she wanted to keep talking to him about his past. She knew that it was probably extremely hard on him to have to relive such memories, but she took every word he told to her and used it as justification for her asking.
Each and every word that came out of his mouth had that quality that made it feel as though it was the first time he's said anything to anyone about it. It felt good to know that she had somehow managed to wriggle her way deep enough into his heart to warrant such openness from him, but in the end, she still felt pretty conflicted about the entire situation. She wanted to know how much further she could push him, to see just how much he'd be willing to share with her, but she didn't want to have to watch him hurt himself to do so.
"Hey, Blake." Aforementioned girl was yanked out of her thoughts by the voice of the young man she was thinking about. "Can I ask you a question?"
She would've nodded her head, but noticed that his eyes were no longer trained on her and were instead focused on the docks below them, so she was forced to verbally announce her approval instead. "Yeah, go ahead."
It was only fair that he get to ask a question given how earnestly she answered hers, after all.
"Why exactly did you come here to Beacon?" He asked. It felt like a question he had been pondering the answer to for quite a long time. "If you were in the White Fang like you said, why in the world are you here learning how to become a hunter?"
She opened her mouth to answer, not knowing why he asked it in the first place since she's already answered it, but before any words could come out of her mouth, he added, "I can understand you not being able to agree with the direction they were heading, but that still doesn't fully explain why you just gave up on them and left."
"'Gave up?'" She repeated his words with wide eyes, not having expected a question like that to come from him. "What gave you the impression that I gave up on the White Fang?"
"You're here and not there," he answered in a tone that lacked any emotion once again. "What more reason do I need?"
Blake's mouth opened to deny the accusation, but she stopped herself when she found the words to do so were almost non-existent inside of her. Feeling extremely irritated, she instead asked, "What in the world even brought this on?"
That irritation left her almost immediately as she saw his once blank slate of a face adopt that same sadness he had back in the settlement. The one, that she hated to say, seemed so natural on him.
"It's because I did the same to him," he replied. "The friend I was telling you about." His hands balled themselves up into fists as he turned his head down towards the ground. "The moment I became a half-ghoul, I lost all faith in him…" A bitter chuckle escaped from his lips as he added, "... I thought of him more as a liability and not as the friend who stuck by me through those lonely years."
"…" Blake wanted to say that she had instantly come up with some sort of rebuttal to his claim, that she vehemently believed what he did was different from what she had done, but she just couldn't come up with the right words. So she went with what had to be the most pathetic response that she could've come up with. "N-no, I didn't give up on the White Fang-"
"So what, did the White Fang, a group of hundreds of faunus, give up on you then?" His words unnerved her greatly. This was her first time being on the receiving end of this part of Kaneki's personality, which was probably why it threw her off so much to begin with. This side of him, the side that would occasionally pop up when he fought, was completely and utterly ruthless in getting what he wanted. It didn't matter to him who it was directed towards it seemed. Not even friends were exempt from this treatment, and she didn't know how she felt about that.
"Do you hear how that arrogant that sounds?" Another sign of his amusement came from him, but this time it erupted from his lungs as a full-blown laugh that was filled with so much sardonicism that it somehow sounded like it had come from another person entirely. "The White Fang clearly doesn't care about you at all, so why do you even pretend to care?"
"Pretend?" The parrot of his words left her mouth with the greatest amount of indignance she could muster up. "I'm not pretending to care about what happens to the White Fang." She wanted to make it clear to him that she was fuming with her voice and it seemed successful-well, at least it did to her. "I don't care what prior experience you have in the subject." She cared about the White Fang, why else would she be out here? "What happened to me and what happened to you are two different things." Her words were coming out as nothing more than aggressive growls at this point, but she couldn't bring herself to care. "So don't you dare try to compare the two or question how loyal I am, understand?"
Silence is what decided to greet her instead of a response.
The snowy-haired half ghoul simply continued to stare off into space, showing absolutely no sign indicating any sort of reaction to what she had said. Truthfully, she didn't know whether or not she should feel disappointed by that.
"You're not even going to bother apologizing?" Blake eventually asked, having grown sick of the silence between them over the past couple hours. The fact that nothing had happened on the docks for the exact same amount of time only made it even harder to bear. This act garnered nothing more than a confused expression from him. One that made it seem like he wasn't aware of what he was apologizing for, and so she decided to educate him. "For what you said earlier, I mean."
"Did those words really hurt you that much?" Kaneki shot back at her. She half expected him to laugh after he asked that. "And here I thought you were ready to get to know me better."
"Get to know you better?" She repeated those words in a way that sounded like a toddler after they were caught doing something bad.
He nodded, before sending her a sideways glance and asking her yet another question. "Wasn't that what you were trying to do by asking me those questions earlier?" The sound of his emotionless voice coupled with his piercing stare sent a chill up and down her spine, but she managed to nod despite it. "Well, I just learned something about you, do you want to know what it was?" He continued before she could even open her mouth. "I learned that you and I really are similar in a lot of ways."
"Similar?" The bow-bearing bookworm found herself repeating his words once again, though this time was much more sarcastic than the last. "What in the world made you think about that?"
"Hey, you want to hear something else from my past that you may find interesting?" the black clad young man asked suddenly. Blake was about to ask him what he was trying to say, but stopped herself when she realized that there was probably an explanation coming.
"When I was younger, when my mother was still alive, I was cast as the lead role of a play." From the nostalgic expression that was plastered all over his face, she could tell he was speaking the truth. "I practiced and practiced every night, and when the night finally came, I did so well that my teacher and even a few of the parents told me that I seemed like a natural-born actor." A bitter chuckle came from his throat as he continued. "The funny part was that I never volunteered for the part to begin with, and I never made any indication that I wanted it in the first place."
"Why did they choose you for the part then?" She asked him confusedly.
"The class volunteered me for the role." He answered with slight mirth to his voice. "They all claimed that it was because the words were too hard to read, but I knew that they were only doing it to spite me for being able to read books way above anything they could even comprehend at the time."
"Then why did you go through with it?" Blake asked him another question, but this one was followed by another one. "Was it out of spite?"
"No, I did it because of something my mother taught me when I was younger." Despite what he was saying, the correction Kaneki had given her came out in the most spiteful voice she'd ever heard. "'It's better to be hurt yourself than to hurt others'." The words flowed from his mouth with a strange smoothness that felt rehearsed in a way. "That's the reason why I did everything I could to help people who didn't care about me at all."
"What exactly are you trying to say here?" She asked him with furrowed brows, thoroughly confused as to what he was trying to get at. "That the only reason I'm out here investigating these robberies right now is because I'm stubbornly holding onto a belief from my childhood?"
"Yes, actually," he answered bluntly, a wry smirk spread across his lips. What left his lips next left with a lightness that hadn't been present for the entirety of their conversation, and it made her smile. "It's nice to know that I don't have to explain things in their entirety again."
"Well, I can't say that I agree with you, but I do have admit that you make a good point," she began to concede, her tone harboring a mix of reluctance and amusement. "Alright, let's say that, hypothetically, you're right, and I'm only doing it because of my own pigheadedness." Blake brought her knees up to her chest and tucked her head in between them. "What do you think I should do to fix it?"
"Other than being less stubborn," he quipped cheekily, which prompted her to let out a feign of a chuckle, "I think that you should try and indulge in what you have here in Beacon." Her eyes unconsciously widened at this. "You have a really good thing here, and I don't want to see you making the same mistakes I did-the same mistakes I'm making right now, actually."
"So, is that what you were trying to tell me earlier when you said that we were similar?" The most obvious question slipped from her mouth, but she could've really cared less about originality at this point. "Because you see the mistakes you've made in me?"
"Yeah."
"Couldn't you have just told me that from the get go?"
"Of course. I like to think that I always have a method to my madness."
"Ah, so you're just going to flat out admit that this entire conversation was illogical then?"
"To you maybe. It seemed perfectly within the realms of logic to me."
"You say that, right after calling your previous statement 'madness'? You're not very good at convincing people to think things, are you?"
"I'm not, I'll freely admit that, but it's not like I'm trying to be a motivational speaker or anything."
"What? Does that mean you're trying to become a hunter then? I thought you were only staying here for as long as it takes to find a way home…" A bit of sadness crept into Blake's voice as she reminded herself of that fact by accident. She then began to idly wonder what her life at Beacon would be like without Kaneki's presence. It was funny for her to think about, but he had only started attending the school less than half a semester ago. And yet he still somehow managed to wriggle his way deeper into her heart and mind than almost all of her other teammates. In that amount of time at the very least.
Before she could delve deeper into the depressing possibilities, Blake was stopped dead in her mental tracks by a weight that rested itself on her right shoulder. She glanced over at aforementioned shoulder and found that the color white had taken up a majority of her vision.
"Yeah, I did say that, didn't I?" The half ghoul's voice resonated in her ears, despite its softness. "I'm sure I also said that I was making the same mistakes you were earlier."
For the millionth time today, silence reigned over them once more as Blake decided to lay her head on his. A wry smile graced her lips.
"Kaneki!" A familiar voice half-whispered, half-yelled at him, shaking him from the confines of his slumber with a slight start. "Kaneki, get up!"
The aforementioned half-ghoul, having sensed the tension present in the voice, forced his weary eyes open and immediately found himself staring up into familiar pools of amber.
"Blake…?" He called weakly, pulling himself off of the metal wall-the wall he had seemingly fallen asleep against. "Did something happen?"
The bow-bearing bookworm, in response to the statement, crept back over to the ledge of the shipping container they had been camped up on for the entirety of the last twenty hours and laid down stomach first right at its edge, which prompted him to do the same.
Once his eyes were over the edge and staring down at the docks below, he was surprised to find the once empty docks were now crawling with activity. There, moving constantly from one place to another, were men he assumed to be soldiers of some kind. A pretty easy assumption for him to make when they were all clad in full uniform.
"Is that-?" he began to ask his companion, but she cut him off before he could finish.
"Yeah, that's them," she answered with a solemn nod of her head. "They're…" She unsurprisingly paused for a second before finished her train of thought, "... they're definitely members of the White Fang."
I probably should've been able to guess that, Kaneki thought to himself. Y'know, since they all have the organization's logo painted on their backs.
"Alright, what do you suggest we do then?" He asked Blake, curious as to how she would respond. "Do you want to try and intervene, or…"
"I think we should-" she began to say, but she cut herself off suddenly, right as her eyes seemed to focus on something down on the docks.
Following her gaze downwards, Kaneki soon found himself staring at an orange-haired man who stood out from the rest of the pack. A fact that he directly attributed to the fact the man was the only one wearing a complete suit in a sea filled with body armor and holding a cane.
"Hey, what's the hold up?" The man yelled, in a tone that sounded awfully condescending. "C'mon, pick up the pace, folks!" There was something strangely familiar about that voice, but the snowy-haired ghoul couldn't place where he'd heard it before. Maybe it was something that only Haise was able to recognize? "We're not exactly inconspicuous at the moment!"
Glancing back over at the former White Fang member at his side to gauge her reaction, he found that she wasn't doing anything that surprised him. She was glaring at the well-dressed man directing the faunus on the docks with narrowed pools of amber. The disappointment in her eyes was being steadily replaced by a fury that leaked in from a source that was unknown to him.
"This isn't right," Blake muttered, loud enough for Kaneki to just barely hear, which made him assume that she was talking more to herself than him. "The White Fang would never work with a human." After saying that, she pushed herself to her feet faster than he could protest and pulled her weapon out from its sheathe. "Especially not a human like that."
"Blake, stop," Kaneki told her right as she took a step towards the edge of the container, making sure to use a hard enough voice to get her to listen. "Are you really just going to charge in there without a plan?" The question left his mouth as he pushed himself up to his feet. "You can't expect to just be able to take them all down by charging in their with reckless abandon," he continued. "We should at least take a moment to come up with a plan."
The dark-haired faunus let out a scoff and turned towards him, flashing him a wry smirk that somehow managed to exude extreme amounts of confidence, despite its size. He was half-convinced that he managed to convince her into taking a moment to think things through. But then, in a move that should only have surprised him half as much as it did, she took a step back off of the shipping container, uttering a few words to him right before she fell. "Like that's stopped you before."
An exasperated sigh left his lips as he shook his head at the blatant shot at him. He had no sooner done so then he took a step forwards.
Kaneki could tell from his position up on another shipping container that Blake was going to need his assistance.
At first, he was content with watching her take on the members of her former affiliate and the nicely dressed man leading them. A choice that was seemingly affirmed as the right one when he saw her successfully sneak up behind the orange-haired man and put a blade up to his throat.
The artificial ghoul watched as she tried to appeal to the members of the White Fang, even going so far as removing the bow hiding the cat ears. Only for it to quite literally blow up in her face when two bullheads suddenly flew in from out of nowhere, which distracted Blake enough for the man to shoot an explosive of some kind at her feet from his cane.
Kaneki would've intervened right at that moment if it wasn't for the fact that Blake somehow managed to escape the blast relatively unscathed. She was now on the retreat, dodging blasts from the man's cane with skill and agility.
Seeing that as the perfect opportunity to set up an ambush for the man firing at his partner, he had moved himself up on to the container he was now currently squatting on, as it was right on the path Blake was on, and was now lying in wait for the perfect opportunity to strike.
When his aforementioned partner in crime passed by him with the orange-haired man following in slow, calculating pursuit, he cracked his index finger and proceeded to push himself off of his stoop in a way that ensured he would land in front of said man.
"Here, kitty, kitty," the man taunted, right before Kaneki hit the floor and landed directly in front of him, remembering to crouch upon impact to lessen any strain that might be put on his knees. "Oh, another one?" The snowy-haired half ghoul stood to face the assumed leader of the robbery as he asked that. "That's just great, now I have another brat I'm going to have to deal with," the awfully familiar orange-haired man groaned with an exaggerated shrug of the shoulders. "And here I thought this dock robbery was going to perfectly smoothly."
Kaneki let out an irritated snort through his nostrils and took a step towards his newly gained adversary, but was forced to stop when a bullhead suddenly swooped in overhead and released a total count of five men, who all landed right behind the man in question with their weapons ready. All members of White Fang, from what he could tell by their uniform.
"What?" The man asked as the five landed behind him, arms extended out wide to the sides in a mocking gesture. "You don't seriously think I'd let this fight be an even one, did you?" He then proceeded to point his cane right at the only ghoul in all of Remnant and add, "No, that'd be just plain stupid of me, which sort of reminds me of you right now for getting in my way." The half ghoul gave no response to the taunt and that prompted the orange-haired man to command his men with an exaggerated shrug of a single shoulder, "Sic him."
At that moment, acting almost as if they were a pack of dogs listening to the commands of their master, all five of the foot soldiers charged at him with reckless abandon, weapons raised, which prompted Kaneki to let out a scoff and crack his middle finger as they neared.
Looks like they're not all equal in terms of speed, the rinkaku-type noted offhandedly. That's good. Makes it much easier to deal with them all.
The fastest of the five, and the first to reach him, slashed at his head diagonally with his blade. Kaneki tilted his head and body underneath it with ease, causing the soldier to fly past him. Turning, he then sent the underside of his shoe straight into the back of the grunt's knee as he slowed himself to a stop, which caused it to buckle almost immediately.
The artificial ghoul then grabbed the poor grunt by the collar and threw him straight at one of the other men charging him, making sure to throw said grunt with enough force to incapacitate the both of them instantly.
The three remaining men stopped momentarily to look at their fallen comrades, but continued with their charge towards him a second later. The first swung at his midsection, the second swung at his head, and the third decided to hang back and wait, probably to try an attack on him when he was most vulnerable. In response to the group's actions, Kaneki dodged both of the incoming swings by sidestepping right and ducking. Unlike the first man to attack him, both of the grunts hadn't built enough momentum in their charge to soar past him after their attacks failed, and remained close to him instead.
Taking a small step forward, he turned on a heel towards the one who swung at his head and made sure that the tip of his shoe met with his stomach. Said grunt keeled over due to the impact of the attack. Kaneki then proceeded to grab the back of the afflicted's shirt and pull him into his body while simultaneously forcing a knee into the center of the man's stomach, which resulted with his opponent laying flat on his back after flipping forwards thanks to the momentum.
Once that opponent was dealt with for the moment, Ken turned his attention back onto his other attacker, who had decided to retry his earlier attack on him. The grunt swung at a trajectory that started from his left shoulder and would eventually lead to the blade entering his own if no action was taken, but as per usual, the expected contact never came. The half ghoul leaned back to just barely miss getting hit by it. A point he found to be moot really, considering the fact he knew that the blade wouldn't hurt him much if it hit him anyways.
As if to prove this, he reached out and grabbed the blade of the sword with the palm of his left hand and pulled it close to his body, taking its owner with it. That, of course, prompted his opponent to lose all balance and stumble towards him with zero defenses up.
Once the man reached an acceptable range, the half ghoul circled his black-tipped fingers around the soldier's throat and lifted him up high, before slamming him down right into the midsection of the soldier he had downed earlier. The two bodies made an audible slapping noise as they collided.
Before he could even take a moment to regather his bearings after doing all that spinning, heavy, rapid footsteps coming from directly behind him and rushing towards where he stood caught his attention. Already knowing that it was probably the one soldier who had waited before attacking, he glanced over his shoulder at where the sound was coming from and found more incoming steel.
An unimpressed click of the tongue left Kaneki's mouth as he spun once more and swatted the blade with the back of his left hand. A loud metallic clang-a sound that was almost loud enough to drown out the sound of his finger bones snapping that followed it-rang out through the air as the blade snapped in half like it was a twig.
The soldier that was facing him stared down at the newly broken blade in his hands and then back up at him with a helpless look that was hidden behind his mask. Not even waiting the couple seconds needed for the bones in his hand to mend, he used his much more usable right hand to land a shot to the man's stomach, which made him crumble to a heap almost instantly.
Now… He thought to himself, right as he heard a clicking noise coming from his immediate right.
Turning that direction, he found that familiar-looking orange-haired man from earlier pointing the tip of his half-cane, half-cannon directly at him. Already knowing what that weapon of his was capable of, he reached into his pocket for his own. The world seemed to move in slow motion as he did so and watched a projectile fire from the cane's tip.
Pressing the needed button on the hilt of his weapon as ripped it out of his pocket, Kaneki slashed down vertically on the incoming projectile,bathe blade sliding out fluidly as he did so. Need to move! The snowy-haired half ghoul subconsciously commanded his body as he knew that one couldn't simply cut an explosive projectile in half and expect to come out completely unscathed.
So, once his blade went clean through said ball of fire, he planted a foot into the ground and shot forwards, feeling both halves of the explosive whiz by his face as he did so. What he felt next was heat licking the back of his clothes-a heat he immediately assumed to be the explosion he was trying to avoid.
Kaneki came upon the orange-haired man within less than a couple seconds and he slashed at his mouthy opponent the moment he got into range.
Metal met with wood as the suited man blocked his initial attack, but was forced backwards due to the amount of force put behind the attack.
"Huh…" The defending of the two trailed off as he tried to push against the force that was being applied against him"...You're a lot more trouble than I thought you'd be." Probably finally realizing that he'd never be able to out-muscle Kaneki, he released himself from the stalemate and jumped back, nonchalantly stating, "You're just like another bug I know." He then narrowed his mascara-lined green eyes at him and added, "Actually, now that I look at you, you're a spitting image of the wimp."
It was now Kaneki's turn to narrow his eyes as he felt an all too familiar pain beginning to radiate from his stomach. Dammit, now is not the time! He cursed in response to the pain, his grip tightening on the hilt of his blade as he took a step towards the man with every intention of ending the fight.
His approach, however, was stopped when an all too familiar black blur swept past him screaming, "He's mine!"
Blake charged towards the orange-haired man and let off a flurry of slashes when she was close enough, but the man managed to block each and every one of them with his cane while also managing to score lighter hits on her in between attacks. He would've been more than happy letting her fight her own battle, but that changed when suddenly, her opponent landed a hit that was able to push her back substantially.
Charging towards with blade in hand, Kaneki passed by his cat-eared companion and sent his own flurry of slashes their adversary's way, only to find himself in what he could only describe as a much more active stalemate than the one he had with the man earlier. He got out attack after attack only to find more metal hitting wood, but whenever his opponent tried to gain the advantage, he was able to fight it back with equal effort.
Their clash persisted until the suit-clad man pointed the tip of his cane down at the floor under his feet and fired another explosive shot, which prompted the snowy-haired half ghoul to flip backwards in retreat. He was more than prepared to shoot forwards when his feet touched the ground, but Blake beat him to it and shot towards the man.
The dark-haired bookworm landed a significant blow on the man, which pushed him back quite a bit. Seeing it as an opportunity to strike, the half ghoul sprang back into the action the moment he got his feet reset and grabbed the man by the lapel as he tried to regain his balance.
A grunt of pain came from his cane-wielding opponent after Kaneki picked him up and slammed him against the wall of a nearby storage container. Said wall's metal surface bent substantially in response to the impact, and a wooden clanging noise rang through the air as he wrenched the weapon out of the man's hand and threw it randomly off on to the ground somewhere.
One knee to the stomach. Another grunt of pain. Another knee elicited a violent coughing fit instead. He smirked at the man's pain before he threw him back over to where Blake was standing, like the piece of trash he was.
"Ugh, that hurt…" He heard the man grumble to himself bitterly as he pushed his way back to his hands and knees. A position he didn't keep for too long; Blake was upon him the moment he began trying, kicked him over onto his back and pointed the tip of her sword right at his throat once more. "Well, if isn't this a familiar sight," the man drawled nonchalantly in response, even though his voice was still quite hoarse from the pain. "What'cha going to do, kitten?" Kaneki narrowed his eyes at the calmness in his voice, now fully expecting a trap to be sprung. "Talk down on me sternly?"
The cat-eared faunus's brows furrowed at the jab and she opened her mouth to say something, but was cut off when the sound of an explosion sounded overhead, an explosion that was accompanied by a bright flash of pure white light from his right.
Of course, his attention was drawn on to where the explosion had come from first and found a sight that nearly made his heart stop. There had been a storage container being help up by a crane sitting right over Blake and the man, and the chain seemed to be the main recipient of the explosion.
The container was falling down towards them. The snowy-haired ghoul moved to act as everyone of his protective instincts flared up inside of him. Sprinting forwards with every ounce of speed he had while throwing his weapon to the ground, he latched onto his partner's torso once he was close enough and pulled her out of the way of the falling object, positioning his body so that he would take the brunt of the tumble across concrete they were about to take. A bright flash of light came from directly besides him as he did so.
Slight amounts of pain erupted through him as he tumbled across the ground like a rock being skipped across a pond, before slowly skidding to a stop on his back. "Hey… you alright?" He asked his companion, who was currently laying on top him with her head next to his own, releasing his hold on her as he remembered that an enemy was currently upon them.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she replied, grunting as she pushed herself up so that their chests weren't touching with her eyes closed, stopping for a moment to open her eyes. If he had to guess as to what she found then, he would have to wager that she had found his eyes like he had found hers. A would be rather embarrassing position any other time than in a combat scenario, most definitely.
Before either of them could speak, however, the sound of someone clapping to a rather slow beat reached their ears m prompting them to turn their heads towards where it was coming from in near perfect unison. They found nothing there other than the smoking wreckage of whatever was in the storage container that had been dropped on them, but a silhouette soon appeared in the smoke, followed by a voice.
"Really now, Haise?" Both Blake and Kaneki recognized that voice almost immediately, but as two entirely different things. Blake remembered her as the woman who had called to taunt her about her friends' capture, and Kaneki remembered her as the woman who plagued his other self's memories nonstop. "You've already managed to replace me in that heart of yours?" Neo asked, with what sounded like mock hurt in her voice as she finally stepped through the smoke, the man's cane gun in hand. "And here I thought I occupied a space in there that just couldn't be replaced. But then again, you've always had a thing for cats."
Upon seeing a known enemy with a weapon, Blake jumped up to her feet and Kaneki rolled himself over onto all fours, and the two faced their newly arrived opponent.
"Neo…" He growled at the approaching opponent, gnashing his teeth together out of anger, already preparing to bring his kagune out for combat. She had tried to severely hurt not just him, but Blake as well…
"What? Did I make you angry?" The tri-colored girl asked him in a mocking tone. "Not happy to see me for once?"
Every question caused the pain in his stomach to rise bit by bit and his anger levels with it, but despite his other self's protests, he wanted to see her completely and utterly obliterated.
"Kaneki, what is she talking about?" Blake asked him with a fair amount of suspicion in her voice, as was warranted. "Do you know her from somewhere?"
"No, I've never met this woman before," the half ghoul answered vaguely as he tried to hold back his anger. "I'll try to answer your question, but for now…"
"Yeah, I suppose you're right," the cat-eared faunus replied with a nod, pointing her weapon at their newly arrived opponent.
Having already discarded his weapon, Kaneki immediately drew the only weapon he had on him-his kagune. Four jet black tentacles slipped smoothly out from where his kakuhou was surgically placed and pointed towards the irritating woman. The snowy-haired half ghoul glanced over at his companion, who did the same. They both nodded at each other before shooting off towards their opponent at the same time.
Knowing that his weapon would be too dangerous to use in tandem with Blake's, he jumped up into the air once he felt it timely enough and stabbed all four tentacles into the ground around Neo as to limit her movement. He watched as Blake moved to take advantage of the opportunity and tried to bash Neo with the pommel of her sword.
Kaneki hoped that the both of them attacked fast enough to take her by surprise, but that hope was immediately dashed when she simply teleported away like before. Instead of landing back on the ground, he remained up in the air, suspended by the four tentacles coming out of his back, eyes darting back and forth across the docks, looking for the woman he knew from another life.
A flash of light came from the corner of his eyes and immediately drew his attention, but before he could see or do anything regarding the light, vibrations coming from directly under him took his attention away from it. Mainly because whatever it was took out all four of his kagune out from under him.
Now falling down towards the ground, he flipped himself in midair so that he would land on his feet, managing to catch a quick glimpse of the area below him and found a crater that had a disturbingly high lack of a certain faunus.
Shit, where the hell is Blake? He asked himself as he landed in a crouching position. Protective instincts flared up as he frantically searched for his teammate. Where is she? Where is she? Where-
"You never change, do you?" When Neo's voice reached his eardrums, he immediately turned his head to face the girl, but he was once again stopped from seeing the origin of the noise by a sudden immense force being applied against the side of his face. Whatever it was hit with enough energy to send him flying into one of the nearby shipping containers. Her next words just barely rang out past the screeching of bending metal as he bounced off of its surface. "Even now, you're still overly protective." The approaching sound of footsteps was the next to ring out through the deafening noise, so Kaneki forced himself to look where it came from.
There, walking towards him, was Neo in all her glory. The gun-cane being replaced by the umbrella she stabbed Haise in the back with. "Calm down, your little friend is going to be fine," the woman told him, reaching her hands out and wrapping her cold fingers around his aching cheeks. An explosion rang through the air as she continued to speak. "She's just a little occupied as of the moment."
"What did you do?" Kaneki growled fiercely, roughly pulling away from her grip and lashing out with a kick to her legs. An attack that, of course, missed its mark and landed him with the bottom of her boot pushed into the side of his face.
"Hey now, didn't I tell you to calm down?" The woman sneered as she pressed her foot down harder on his face. "C'mon, be the good little boy I remember and listen to me."
Having had enough of her abuse, the half ghoul released one of his kagune and allowed it tunnel through the concrete under him. Said predatory organ burst out from the ground right next to his head with its tip pointed directly at his opponent, forcing his colorful haired opponent's foot, and pretty much her entire body, off of him.
"Yeah Kaneki, why won't you listen?" An all too familiar voice forced its way to the forefront of his mind as he pushed himself back up to one knee. "I'm just trying to talk to you, I won't bite, y'know." Deathly cold fingers crept up the length of his spine as the voice made its intentions known to him. "I'm just trying to help you win."
"Shut the fuck up," he growled, at whom, he really didn't know, his anger with the situation finally boiling over with the voice's sudden appearance. "I don't want to listen to a word you have to say."
"Is that really a good idea?" He couldn't tell who he was listening to anymore. Neo's mouth was moving, but the voice in his head was talking at the same time. Maybe they were saying the same things? "You and I both know that you have no chance of winning." The ground took up most of his vision as he shifted his gaze down towards it. "What do you think might happen if you lose here?" His eyes widened at the statement. "What might happen to that precious little friend of yours?"
"What are you…?" He began to ask, but stopped when he remembered a couple choice words the cat-eared faunus said to him. "No, no, no, you're wrong… she'll be fine."
"Am I?" Whoever it was speaking continued, a familiar all encompassing cold now moving to directly in front of him. "Do you think that she'd really be able to beat back two opponents when you can't even beat a single one of them on your own?" His palms began to bleed from how tightly he was clenching his fists. His mind was racing with the possible scenarios. "You need help, just throw your pride away and admit it already."
Kaneki swallowed the lump that had formed in his throat and opened his mouth, but he was cut off by a force hitting him straight into yet another shipping container.
To say Neo was confused with what she was witnessing would've been an understatement. Haise-or Kaneki, as that faunus from earlier called him-no longer seemed to be paying attention to what she was saying. Instead, he was opting to have a conversation with himself.
An ounce of worry filled her at the sight of the young man's erratic behavior, but she pushed it away with an irritated snort. She had better things to do than worry about his mental well being, like hurrying up and knocking him unconscious, so she dashed forwards with her umbrella primed to strike.
When she was close enough, she reared up and swung her weapon straight into the side of his head with all of her might, sending the snowy-haired young man into yet another shipping container, which had more containers stacked on top of it. The sound of more bending metal defeating her momentarily as he bounced off of the thin metal wall like a wet rag.
Looks like I win again, Haise, she thought to herself condescendingly, taking a step towards her seemingly unconscious opponent.
She stopped dead in her tracks, however, when she heard his voice came from his disheveled heap of a body. "Blake… Must protect…"
He put both of his palms onto the concrete and pushed himself back up to his feet, shoulders slouched and head hanging low. "Everything precious has slipped through my fingers," he growled. Something bone white exploded from the small of his back and into the container behind him, leaving gigantic holes on the edges of it. Whatever it was pointed themselves right at her like the tentacles earlier, but these were much different. They were significantly larger than the ones before, covered with white plates and hooked, black spikes.
They looked distinctly like centipedes.
"Ms. Fueguchi, Irimi, Koma, the manager…" The woman with mismatched eyes found that said orbs were transfixed on her former partner as a white, glowing red substance began to creep outwards from the left side of his face. "I lost them not because of bad luck, or anything like that, but because I wasn't strong enough." The container that she had slammed him into earlier suddenly gave way under the weight of the other containers on top of it and folded. This caused them to slide off and land directly to Haise's right, which enveloped the corresponding side of his body with murky shadows.
"And so, if I have to give into you to make sure no one gets in the way of my happiness, then…" A loud cracking noise rang through the air as Neo watched him raise his head, revealing something that genuinely worried her. "I admit I need your help now…"
There, instead of his normal features, was a bone white mask that grew from literally out of nowhere and now took up half of his face. A big eye resided in the middle of the mask-its sclera jet black and its iris a brilliantly bright red-staring right at her. If that wasn't enough to unnerve her, she could see that he was smiling on the side of his face that wasn't blocked out by darkness. It was the same countenance she had seen him wear before. Wild and bloodthirsty.
"...Help me." His words suddenly took on a muffled, distorted tone, as if he were speaking underwater. "Help me…obliterate everyone and everything in my path." His hands reached up and clenched the sides of his face, black-tipped fingers digging into his skin. "Help me…take her on a date, scramble up her insides, and gobble her all up~."
-Chapter End-
Alright, so that's done. *ducks under desk to avoid gunfire*
Hey, I warned you about the cliffhanger this time on the update on my profile! So, you're not allowed to shoot me.
Wait, what? Most people don't check the profile for updates, you b-baka? Well, I messed up. *Ducks to avoid more gunfire*
Anyways, what do you guys think? FineChyna did a pretty good job, didn't she? And by the way, send any love you have towards her and sent all hate mail to me. I need the insults, like crazy these days.