Creation began on 08-05-17
Creation ended on 08-13-17
Tokyo Ghoul
Alleviating the Rifts
A/N: This idea came due to watching the episode Rift, but falls into the same scenario as the previous chapter of this story. Here goes.
Before Juuzou Suzuya could swing his scythe on the Yasuhisa twins, time seemed to stand still, and the strangest part was that he was conscious of his immobility.
The twins were aware of their immobility, as well.
"I'm disgusted by each of your inability to find a way to coexist without having to resort to murder," they each heard a man's voice as footsteps came from behind Juuzou. "Even though I once stated that people were no better than Ghouls, the truth is that there are those that don't want to fight or kill to survive…and there are those that will do whatever they want to ensure their own survival, even if it means crossing lines that were never meant to be crossed without anticipating the consequences."
It was a man that didn't seem to fit in with Japanese society because of his dark skin, but his eyes held a mysterious darkness and light that people had no comprehension over.
"You two," he told the twins, walking around Juuzou and placing his right hand over the axe made from Ghoul parts. "Go lick your wounds until I come for you at a later time…and I will come after you later. But for now, I have to deal with the CCG members and Ghouls that are present here."
"What?!" Juuzou demanded. "What are you talking about?!"
"CCG members like you…and Ghouls that choose to murder people as young as children."
The twins held onto each other as they got up and staggered away from where Juuzou stood immobile.
"Thank you," Kurona said to him.
"Don't thank me," he told her. "You're on my list of mistakes that need to be corrected, too. You're just not a priority right now because of your injuries…and your former associate is more unstable than he appears, just as that elderly man is."
"Who are you?!" Juuzou demanded, just as the man relieved him of his weapon and watched it atomize into dust. "Hey, that was mine!"
"Oh, spare me your whining, and my name is Brother Correction. I'm related to all souls in existence, past and future, and a guardian of those that seek redemption and peace over domination and suffering." He revealed to the investigator, facing him. "You're a lost soul and you need to be removed from the equation that is everything going on here before you cause more hopelessness around you."
Brother Correction raised his left hand towards his forehead…and in an instant, Juuzou, originally known as Rei, vanished from the hall, leaving only himself present.
"Now for Tatara," he uttered, "and to quiet the violence for tonight."
-x-
Just as the Ghoul known as Tatara emerged from the control room of the Ghoul prison facility, the walls began releasing a strange gas that wasn't meant to keep the Ghouls in check.
"What is this?" Tatara demanded, sniffing the gas and feeling some degree of fatigue.
The investigators breathed in the gas and started to lose consciousness.
"It's just sleeping gas," went Brother Correction to everyone there. "Though, for you Ghouls, I made the gas more potent than it would be for humans. Enough to disable you…but not enough to kill you."
"Who are you?" Amon demanded, just as his quinque and those of the other investigators atomized to dust, leaving them vulnerable.
"I'm just someone that has had enough of people hunting down Ghouls…and bad Ghouls hunting down people because nobody's trying to find a way to coexist peacefully. I understand that Ghouls need to eat human flesh as their sustenance, but you don't focus on the Ghouls that binge on or hunt down humans. Because of this, I must focus on safeguarding the innocent Ghouls from your organization…while at the same time making sure the bad Ghouls are handled humanely, as opposed to inhumanely by you. And I'll only ask you this once because your mentor disgusted me. Stop hunting down Ghouls and using pieces of them to create your weapons to face them. If you continue to persist, I will take drastic measures to ensure that you stop and focus on something more tolerable. I'm the only one that can handle the Ghouls that go too far…and stop you from continuing to go too far."
"Ghouls are the enemy…and you're protecting them?"
"Not just them. People, too. I'm protecting everyone from everyone else that refuse to find another way to survive, to coexist."
He approached the fallen Tatara and picked him up, surprising everyone still conscious enough to see a dark man lift up a Japanese Ghoul.
"Leave the Ghouls alone," he told Amon before the investigator was forced to sleep.
Then he took the most dangerous Ghouls and disappeared from the facility.
Just one more chore for the night, he thought as he reappeared.
-x-
Ayato lost consciousness as he fell from exhaustion in front of Shinohara, who was wearing armor made from the remains of his father.
This has gone on far enough, thought Brother Correction as he appeared in front of Shinohara. "Remove that abomination you had made from the remains of a Ghoul."
"Who the Hell are you?" Shinohara asked, surprised by his presence.
"Someone that's about to atomize that ridiculous getup your people made from harvested Ghouls because it upsets the Ghoul that lost consciousness fighting you!"
Soon enough, the Arata that Shinohara was wearing crumbled to dust, leaving him vulnerable to any Ghouls that were nearby.
"Are you some sort of Ghoul?" He asked Brother Correction.
"Only when I choose to be," he answered him, and then waved his left hand at him, sending him flying backwards against a wall with enough force to knock him out.
"Aah!" Shinohara gasped as he fell to the ground.
Brother Correction then picked up Ayato and disappeared; even though this Ghoul was among the ones that were on his list to be dealt with by taking them to the same island that Rize was placed on so that they and people were protected from one another, he decided to try once with him to see if he was capable of changing his habits and trying to live the way his sister did.
-x-
"…I do understand that if he tries to cause trouble again, I will handle him properly, Touka," Ayato heard someone talking as he came to, finding himself inside a small room that had the lingering scent of coffee; this indicated to him that he was inside Anteiku. "I'm taking a serious risk by holding onto the hope that he can give up this crusade. A life of vengeance is no life for anyone, human or Ghoul, regardless of morality."
"Ever since we split up since our parents died, Ayato has always been rather defiant," Ayato heard Touka's voice. "If this doesn't work out for any of us, how can I be sure that you won't try and kill him if he crosses a line?"
"When I started this, I wanted to find a way to alleviate the tensions between humans and Ghouls. I dealt with a binge-eating Ghoul by simply relocating her to an uninhabited island that now serves as the locale for only Ghouls that kill. But I don't let them go hungry or sleep on some garbage."
"Very humane of you."
"I do this every time. I shall be by next month with another shipment for Anteiku."
"Thank you, sir," another voice, an older male, responded.
What Ayato didn't understand just yet as he fell out of consciousness again was how he was here and not under some investigator's dissection team being reduced to pieces used to make their weapons like other Ghouls had been. He only remembered losing consciousness in front the investigator wearing his father…and then waking up here at Anteiku. Something…just didn't add up.
-x-
"…Forget about trying to escape from here," said Rize to the new arrivals as they thought to run into the water and swim away from this island. "I've tried to, twice, but to no avail. The guy that brought us here is the only one that can free us…and he won't unless we stop hunting down humans. At least he feeds us."
"I won't be held prisoner by a human!" Tatara shouted, and then noticed a small shack with a plate with his name on the door. "What is this?!"
"That…is your new residence," Rize explained. "The guy that calls himself Brother Correction only gives us what we need to survive. Since we only need human flesh for once a month, he has to come back here each month to make sure we're fed our monthly needs. The only downside to being his prisoner here…is that the investigators can't find us."
Dozens of other Ghouls noticed other shacks that just appeared on the grounds by the beach, one for each of them, with their names on the doors.
"This guy can't be human," Tatara suggested.
"That's exactly what I thought, too," Rize told him.
-x-
"Look out at that city," Brother Correction told Juuzou, gazing at Tokyo from atop Tokyo Tower. "Have you ever taken the time to just marvel at its beauty? To bask in its nightly glow? So many people, humans and Ghouls, just tying to survive in a cluster of many a great city. How symbiotic, how social, how remarkable."
"I think you're insane if you think letting the Ghouls roam free will change anything!" Juuzou declared, ignoring his question about the city. "The CCG is permitted by the government to deal with all Ghouls within Tokyo! We have jurisdiction over any case involving Ghouls! If you think you can just show up and take over, you have another thing coming!"
Brother Correction had him floating two feet off the ground, restrained by mere rope. There was no need to use more extreme methods on restraining a mere human, especially one as disturbed as this one. Such methods were preserved for those that were beyond human, such as demons or mutations.
"And I guess you believe that the only good Ghoul is one that's dead, on a table, cut open for its best organs, and then disposed of like medical waste?" He asked Juuzou.
"Yes," he answered.
"Then you're truly like some of the other people I've met since I came here to fix the errors that exist. You're no better than a Ghoul, too. It makes me wonder why, though. Is it 'cause humans think themselves the only organism on the planet…or the universe…capable of feeling and expressing emotion? Well, then, you're wrong. Ghouls have feelings just as humans do. Even dogs and bears have feelings. But you… Your behavior, emotional aura, even your very personality… You're like every other soul that has succumbed to darkness without any desire for forgiveness. You disgust me."
"Not as much as you disgust me for destroying my quinque!"
"At first, my idea was to simply remove you from this dimension, but I might as well try something different for a young and disturbed mind like yours. If you hate Ghouls so much and were willing to kill artificial Ghouls that used to be human, then you can hate them in a sleep so deep, it'll take you years to wake up from."
Brother Correction then placed his right hand atop the young man's forehead…and made sure he was so swift that nobody that even bothered to look up at Tokyo Tower never heard Juuzou scream as his brain was temporarily maimed by a man that became more than mortal. But he would be merciful, since he had explored this boy's past and saw how damaged the young man was due to being raised by depraved Ghouls, degrading whatever sense of morality he might've had a long time. It was his hope that a long dream would aid in curing him of his own depravity and get him on the path to humanity, humility and forgiveness.
-x-
"Hmm?" Ken Kenaki went as he returned to his apartment late that night, looking out at the neighborhood around him.
He thought he heard someone screaming somewhere. Chalking it up to wishful thinking, he decided to disregard it and return his attention to a job interview he had later in the week at this small cafe he walked past a month ago.
Some place called Anteiku.
-x-
"…We found him at Tokyo Tower," a female investigator explained, showing the picture of Juuzou to her superiors. "He's been confirmed to be in a coma. The doctors aren't sure how he got injured or for how long he was tortured, but they confirmed that this isn't Ghoul-related."
"So, then, he was attacked by someone else?" One of the men in front of her questioned. "Someone that was willing to attack a CCG Investigator?"
"That's the going theory," she answered. "All we have to go on it was a note that was left with Investigator Suzuya. Apparently, whoever left it on him is taking responsibility for Investigator Suzuya's coma, claiming he did so to alleviate the rifts that exist between humans and Ghouls, that the CCG is incapable of dealing with the Ghouls with our methods. Also, that he felt sorry for what happened to him before we found him."
-x-
He wasn't afraid of the CCG trying to find him. To be honest, he wanted them to find him, eventually. The note he left on Juuzou was only the first of several breadcrumbs that would lead them to him…and he would show them that there were other ways to deal with Ghouls that didn't need to include hunting them down like animals and killing them to make their weapons.
Whatever plans they have for me, the bad Ghouls and the CCG will blow, Brother Correction thought, looking down at the wards in the blanket of the night. For some of us, there is always hope for change that comes with forgiveness and acceptance to find a new way to deal with a so-called enemy or threat that doesn't include murder and separating children from their parents.
"Aaahh!" He heard a woman scream from one of the single-digit wards, and knew that it was an innocent woman being hunted down by an immoral Ghoul.
Let's go collect us another Ghoul, he thought, and relocated himself to the street the Ghoul was on after the woman. "You're not going to binge on her tonight."
A/N: And here's the next chapter of No better than a Ghoul. What do you think? Who do think Brother Correction should go after next? Should Kenaki become Anteiku's sole human worker?
