Akira goes on a girls' trip!
Akira pinned the little cap on her black wig. It wasn't the most high-quality costume, but it would suffice. Across the room, Touka was doing the same.
Touka huffed, "This is ridiculous, you know." She pushed her long, dark brown hair out of her face.
"I know," said Akira. She shook out her skirt and tapped the toe of one very…functional loafer on the ground to make sure it fit properly. "But there's no way around it."
They'd only had to wait a few days to put their plans into action.
A pattern had been noted of attacks launched in multiple areas at once. As soon as the breaking news hit that one attack was underway they all ran to their staging area on the surface, to get dressed and hear where the other one was kicking off.
Akira pushed open the door to the main room they were gathering in.
Kimi followed in and leaned against the wall at Nishiki's side. The two had been nearly inseparable since their reunion. He was monitoring social media and local news sites on a laptop that was plugged in to a jerry-rigged hardline.
Touka stepped through the doorway as well. She froze when she caught sight of Kaneki, dressed in a dapper white suit and fastening that old Eyepatch mask on.
He too froze mid-motion and stared at her. "That outfit…looks really, really good on you."
"Right back at you," said Touka.
Akira clapped her hands. "Children! Get ahold of yourselves. Do I have to spray you with a water bottle?"
Kaneki had the grace to look embarrassed, before he hastily pulled that mask over his face. Touka glanced back at Akira with a scowl. Then she nodded over Akira's shoulder at someone.
Akira turned around to find Amon standing behind her, looking all broad-shouldered and immaculate in his own white suit.
"Huh," said Akira. "That outfit looks really, really good on you."
He stuttered for a moment before he settled on, "I could say the same thing to you."
She suddenly felt a lot less stupid—but just as self-conscious—in her silly little costume. "Thanks. Good luck." She got away as fast as possible before she could embarrass herself any further. She could already feel her cheeks burning.
Akira shook her head to try and clear her thoughts. Touka moved to stand beside her as they both watched the White Suit contingent circle up and go over their plan one last time.
"You know," began Touka, "A lot of people might tell you it's irresponsible to have a baby in the middle of a crisis, but I kind of recommend it. Life is short. Go for it."
The black-haired nurse growled, "Kirishima, I swear…"
"Calm down, I'm joking. Mostly. I think it is a good thing to find something that makes you hopeful, and to really know what you're fighting for." The ghoul fussed with her own wig some more. "Plus, if you get to work on that in the next couple of months, our kids can grow up as playmates."
"Stop. Now." Akira spun on her heel and stomped off. Her time would be better spent pacing around and mentally retracing the plan, rather than letting Touka antagonize her.
And yet, her mind kept drifting back to that cemetery, years ago, and why her guard was so high…
What good does that ego do me, really? Maybe I should be a little less proud and a little more reckless.
On the other side of the room, in a mostly unoccupied corner, Takizawa and the angry girl, Kurona, were sulking. Not together, so much as they'd both gravitated towards the emptiest place in the room. They had a similar enough story—spending time in the CCG hating ghouls before turning into one. They must have felt like there was no one else in the room they could stand near.
Their story wasn't too different from Amon's for that matter, but he was over where the White Suits were milling around, waiting for the signal to go and awkwardly fidgeting with the plain mask he would wear. He still had very complicated feelings about anyone from the CCG finding out about him.
He was standing a bit off to the side of the gang, too. No matter what he did, he'd just never fit in with the ghouls. He was too much an investigator to the bone.
But, he was still going to help them.
He was so involved because she was, and he'd promised to stick with her.
Talk was very cheap to Akira, but actions…
So, she walked over to Amon. Halting in front of him, she looked up to meet his eyes. Akira couldn't help herself, she raised her hands to smooth out his jacket and adjust his collar. "Before you leave, I wanted to say something…This is going to be really dangerous. Get back safely."
He stared down at her, a soft look in his eyes. "You, too. Get back safely." He paused. "This is your plan, why do you look so angry that you're going through with it?"
She huffed, pausing with her hands on his chest. For a moment she thought about what a miracle it was that he was alive and she could feel his heart beating under her hands.
Well, there's no privacy right now but there might not be a chance later.
She moved to grab him by the lapels. "I'm angry because I promised myself I wouldn't do this again. Don't turn away, this time."
And she pulled on his lapels until his face was closer to her level—though she had to stand on tiptoes to close that last bit of distance—and gave him a short hard kiss on the mouth.
Then she stepped back, spun around, and marched off confident but red-faced as she ignored the heckling and applause of all the witnesses.
The image of Amon's stunned face as she walked off had her grinning the whole way.
She returned to her team's area by the tunnel they would take when the signal came. Banjo, Kimi, and Touka were waiting for her. Touka gave her a serious nod and a thumbs up.
Akira said, "Screw you." But she couldn't contain her smile as she said it.
And then came the signal.
"They're attacking! We have our second location." Nishiki's voice rang out through the chamber. Everyone froze.
Kaneki yelled, "Go time!"
The newly expanded White Suits left to defend against the Clown attack that had just commenced and put Goat on the map.
However, that was partially a distraction. A smaller, carefully chosen team of Takizawa, Kurona, and Ayato would be breaking into the CCG labs to steal as much RC suppressant as they could get their hands on.
And the medical team—Banjo and Kimi—would go with Akira and Touka, who knew the location of their target best.
After a race up to street level where they'd hidden a stolen truck hidden behind some trash in an alley, they climbed in—Akira driving, Touka in the passenger seat, and Kimi and Banjo in the back.
The roads were in chaos, but everyone seemed to be heading away from where they were driving. Akira pulled into a loading dock behind the hospital.
The women left Banjo in the truck and raced through the basement.
"Everyone must be in the emergency room right now," commented Kimi. "Responding to a mass casualty event."
Touka nodded. "It works out perfectly for us." As the strongest, she got stuck carting the folded-up gurney.
They ran up the stairwell and ducked into a supply closet so Kimi could stuff her pockets with anything that caught her eye. When Touka unfolded the gurney in the tight quarters, Kimi started tossing more supplies on the bed.
Akira cracked the door to glance into the hall. People were running to the elevators at the end of the hall. There was shouting and the sound of explosions on a television at the empty nurse's station, but their wing was empty.
"Let's go," she said as she held open the door.
Touka steered from the front of the gurney, Kimi and Akira pushed from the back. They raced around a corner with urgency and continued onwards. Someone called after them, but they ignored it. They had somewhere to be, after all.
Within two minutes, they'd arrived at the room they were searching for and quickly piled in.
Kimi started to flip switches on the displays to disable alarms, then began disconnecting wires and tubes. She seemed confident about the procedure, but Akira noticed a slight shake in her hands.
"Good, he's already intubated. Here," the young doctor said. "I'm switching out his ventilator for this Ambu bag. Can you keep him breathing?" She quickly switched attachments on the patient's face mask.
Akira stepped up and started squeezing the bag.
Kimi nodded in approval. "That's it, just keep a slow, steady pace."
On the count of three, Kimi and Touka grabbed and lifted the sheet under their patient and transferred him over to the gurney.
They all held their breath as Kimi used her stethoscope to listen to his heart and lungs.
Finally—she nodded. "I've heard better, but this is good enough. Let's go."
They worked to maneuver the gurney out of the room and back into the hall.
Before they left, Touka pulled a sprig of pink mums out of her pocket and tossed it onto the bedside table—a calculated message they'd gone back and forth on all day, before resolving to go through with it.
"If you don't leave a calling card, it's just a random kidnapping and we don't get the credit," Akira had pointed out.
"Or the blame if it goes wrong," muttered Touka.
This was the riskiest part. They had to wheel their patient to an elevator and get him down to the basement.
The trio of women moved down the hall, turning towards a freight elevator they'd passed on the way in, when some orderly waved them towards the main elevators.
"Here! Hop on! I'll take the stairs." He held the door open, while the group exchanged fearful glances.
Touka said, "Let's go, they're all heading to the same place."
They entered the elevator.
As the door was closing, the orderly waved at them and dashed down the hall.
Dammit.
Being in a full elevator proved useful, as no one else could squeeze on when the doors opened again on the next floor down. Now that they were in the main part of a hospital dealing with a massive influx of patients, they were able to get lost in the chaos.
Akira's hand was starting to feel clammy and tired from squeezing the bag valve mask strapped over the comatose man's mouth.
On the next floor, the door dinged open in front of an emergency department. It was a sudden cacophony of alarms, crying, and shouting.
Twenty feet in front of them, a patient was crashing on a hospital bed and dripping blood onto the floor. A small team of doctors and nurses were surrounding him, giving chest compressions and yelling orders to each other.
Kimi froze. "Hold the door."
She darted out of the elevator, ran across the room to a doctor who was stitching up a head wound on a less dire patient, and asked something.
"What the hell is she doing?" Akira felt queasy at the sudden change in plans.
Touka, who kept her foot in the door, whispered, "I have no idea."
A nurse ran by, but did a double take at the open elevator. "You guys need help?"
"No," snapped Touka. "We need to get this guy to imaging fast but we're waiting on the doctor." The ghoul dressed as a nurse pointed at Kimi, who was now opening drawer after drawer on a cart.
As the nurse continued crossing the room, she passed by Kimi and called out to her. "Hey! Get back to your patient, they're holding up the elevator for you!"
The doctor spun around and sprinted back to the elevator. Touka took her foot out of the door and let it close. "I knew watching those dumb doctor shows would come in handy one day."
"Sorry. But look." She pulled several vials of liquids out of her pocket. "Ancef and prednisone. And some epi for fun. I was most worried about infection and inflammation. With these I think we really might have a chance."
"Cool," said Touka, "But the whole floor got a look at us."
Akira's heart was still beating far too fast. "Am I crazy, or were some of those patients wearing…clown costumes?"
They finally got to the basement level—silent after the pandemonium they'd left—and continued running their patient across the hospital.
Finally, they opened the door of the loading dock to reveal Banjo, waiting in the back of their truck. "You're back! I was getting nervous."
"Here, help us get him in," said Akira.
They loaded up, then Banjo and Kimi checked over the patient. "Do I just…go for it," he asked.
Kimi was holding up one of her stolen vials and filling a syringe from it. "Yeah. Let me hit him with this Ancef and then I'll take over breathing from Akira."
One jab in Shinohara's leg later, and Akira was free to run back to the driver's seat.
As she pulled away from the hospital, she realized she was shaking. In the passenger's seat next to her, Touka ripped off her hat and wig.
"That was crazy."
"Uh-huh," agreed Akira.
"But shit, what a ride."
They were the first team to make it back, since they technically had the simplest job.
They got the truck underground, then unloaded and rolled the gurney down the long route to the room they'd prepared. Not the fanciest accommodations, but it was private and quiet so it would suffice for the next few days.
After helping Kimi and Banjo get their patient settled, they broke apart to change out of their nurse costumes. Touka immediately disappeared to grab Ichika from Yoriko, and probably tell her how it went.
Akira trudged back to the main entrance to keep watch.
It wasn't long until the other two teams started filtering back in.
When Amon walked in, she ran up to him and grabbed his hand. "We got him."
"You did?" He was shocked but happy.
She squeezed his hand. "Yeah. He's in the room. You can go see him if you want."
He looked torn, probably because of that stunt she'd pulled before they left.
"I know you want to see him. Go!"
He nodded decisively and left to visit Shinohara with a determined stride.
She could have gone back to her room, but she felt the need to sit and wait until the last soldier returned.
She nearly had a heart attack when she saw several of the White Suits carrying bodies in.
"What the hell is going on here!"
One of Naki's underlings stopped to adjust his grip on the mangled corpse he was dragging in behind him. "They were killed by the clowns. We need to eat and they were dead already."
He continued on his way, the body leaving a dark red streak on the ground behind it. "Don't get your knickers in a twist, we brought more than enough to share with everyone."
The outrage she felt threatened to swamp her. She had to get up to pace around a bit before she did something rash. From a logical standpoint, she should be okay with the ghouls scavenging as they retreated from battle. It wasn't so different from Café :re's suicides. It was certainly preferable to the alternative.
And yet, it burned her up inside. Seeing friends, lovers, children, parents…murder victims…reduced to meat. This was the point of friction she would never be able to get around.
"Oh no, did something upset the ice princess?"
She spun around. Standing behind her, looking recalcitrant, was Takizawa.
He'd avoided her like the plague since she woke up. On occasion, she had caught a glimpse of him on a rooftop aboveground or at the other end of a tunnel underground, but he hadn't said a single word to her yet.
Several people had told her, however, that he was a constant fixture at her bedside while she was unconscious after Rushima.
Business-minded as always, Akira immediately asked the question at the top of her list. "Please tell me you got the RC suppressant."
Takizawa held up an industrial-looking chemical container. "Of course." He tossed it to her. "Now we're even for Rushima."
She caught it with both hands. It was a lot heavier than he'd made it look. She glared at him. "Not even close. You didn't deserve anything Aogiri did to you, but that doesn't give you the right to take it out on the rest of us. So, I guess you'll just have to stick around and keep making amends."
That gave him pause. Looking down at the ground, he muttered, "I can't stay. We both know that."
"Of course, you can stay. What, you think you're so much more hated around here than me? Don't give yourself too much credit."
"I can never go back. I made myself an enemy to ghouls, the CCG, everyone…"
"You took a step in the right direction today. Just stay and keep living like that. Keep trying."
"I don't want to try!" He screamed loud enough that several people near them turned to stare. "I don't want to try, and fail, and have to accept the fact that no matter what I do I'll never, ever measure up to you. God, you even made treason look so easy and righteous."
He reined himself in a little before he sneered at her. "I don't want everyone I've let down staring me in the face every day. I just… I just want to be left alone."
"You're condemning yourself to a lonely, bitter life, because you think that's all you're good for?" She blinked away the angry tears that had begun to well up. "Fine. Go. I'll be waiting for you to realize what a jackass you're being."
He threw his hands up. "Oh, now you're crying? See?! I'll never be that pretty when I cry. There's no fucking winning with you."
Against her will, she laughed. "I mean it, Seido."
He turned to trudge off into a dark side tunnel.
"Hey, is he leaving already?" Someone yelled from across the room. "Wait!"
Akira and Takizawa spun around. It was Touka, back in her regular clothes, sprinting towards them.
She skidded to a halt in front of Takizawa, caught her breath for a couple of seconds, then cranked her arm back and slapped him across the face with a crack that echoed through the tunnels. The impact was so hard it knocked him off his feet.
"That's for hurting my husband. And thanks, you asshole!"
Touka dusted her hands off and turned to Akira with a huge smile on her face. "Both/and, right Akira?" She walked off, looking very pleased with herself.
Takizawa sat up cradling his half-red face. A handprint had already formed, but it looked to be clearing up fast. In a confused voice, he whispered, "What the fuuuu—"
"I could explain what just happened, but I think I'll leave it for the next time I see you. Because there's going to be a next time, right?"
"Will I get slapped again?"
"By her? Probably not. By me? Depends on how long it takes you. Go figure your shit out or whatever it is you think you're doing, but come back soon."
As he disappeared into the darkness, Akira noticed the glint of something wrapped around Seido's wrist. She squinted. Is that…Amon's cross?
The frustration she felt at watching him leave faded away. He at least had something tying him down. And sooner or later—hopefully sooner—she had a feeling a twitch on the line might reel him back in.
Akira helped Touka bring some food to their very small medical wing. Kimi left her patient under Banjo's watch while she ducked out and sat on the floor of the hall, eating her sandwich and giving an update.
"He's doing surprisingly well. Already, he's breathing on his own. The prednisone is helping to temper the immune response long enough to let the RC cells do their work, but his fever is climbing. I don't feel safe letting it go on until the leg grows back. I'll give him the shot of suppressant as soon as I think the internal damage has healed enough. That part's a little bit of a guessing game without a CT scan or even any labwork, though." She quickly took another bite of her sandwich, barely chewing in her excitement. "This is an insanely powerful treatment. It'll work like magic once it's refined."
The blonde frowned. "I've heard a couple of reports from the lab team. What they saw there…it sounds like Kano is back to his old tricks at the CCG."
"I wouldn't be surprised," said Kimi. "I told him I was going on vacation to New Zealand with friends from college, and he mentioned that they might relocate before I got back."
Akira didn't want to bring the optimistic mood down, but she felt it was her job. "If he's going active again, you know what I'm going to ask you."
"To go back," Kimi said with a heartbroken expression. "You'll tell me that bridge is too valuable to burn."
Touka was sitting on the floor across from Kimi, entertaining Ichika by playing a game of peekaboo. It was amusing to watch such a short-tempered person show so much patience.
Kimi shook off her bad mood and smiled. "I love seeing chubby, happy babies. You're doing a great job."
"Thanks. I wasn't sure how much of her diet should be a ghoul's versus a human's, but I figure as long as she looks healthy I should stay where we are, at about eighty percent human food."
The doctor nodded. "I guess all you can really do is play it by ear." Then, a thoughtful expression crossed her face. "I hope this isn't too forward, but she's a little young to be on all solid food. What…do baby ghouls survive on before that?"
The ghoul laughed. "Are you imagining baby bottles full of blood or something? They nurse, just like human babies."
"But formula wouldn't be an option, right?"
Touka shook her head. "Not for full-blooded ghouls. For her, maybe, but I didn't want to risk it."
Kimi thought for a moment, then stood and paced back and forth several times.
"You alright," Touka muttered.
She frowned. "I'm having…an insight. All great scientific advancements actually came from nature. Taq polymerase, CRISPR, Yamanaka factors—they already existed, we just hijacked them for our own use. The solution must already exist."
There was a beat of silence, then the doctor halted. "Yamanaka factors! That's it! Don't you guys get it?"
The room was silent.
Kimi sighed. "Ok, so, adult cells and stem cells have all the same genes. The difference between the two is that there's a bunch of genes active in stem cells that are inactive in adult cells. This guy, Shinya Yamanaka, identified dozens of those genes and then experimented with turning on those genes in adult cells in different combinations. He figured out that reactivating only four specific genes could turn an adult cell back into an induced pluripotent stem cell, or iPSC. They're actually very similar to RC cells…" She trailed off, but shook her head and got back on track. "He won the Nobel Prize for that discovery."
Touka frowned. "That's such an interesting story, but…what does that have to do with anything?"
"I'm going to use his method. Sure, we could use Yamanaka factors to just grow a bunch of human tissue in the lab, but that would be difficult to scale up, and besides, it's the boring answer."
She grinned, and rubbed her hands together in excitement. Akira was starting to see how she'd survived so long dating a ghoul and working with Dr. Kano…she was a bit of a mad scientist herself. "Ghouls need to eat human flesh containing low amounts of RC cells, but culturing RC cells alone in the lab has proven impossible. Breast milk isn't a type of cell, though—it's more of a gene product, like insulin, something you can produce on an industrial level."
She took a deep breath and started talking at a mile a minute. "If there's only one thing ghoul infants can survive on, and it's not human flesh, we can compare it to the human equivalent and figure out exactly what the difference is on a biochemical level. It's a perfect test case. I'm guessing there's some protein, some enzyme, something that makes all the difference. From there, it'll be easy to clone the genes responsible into…I don't know, some lab-grown beef and figure out the minimum combination that'll make it edible for ghouls. That's how we'll figure out what the necessary genes might be."
She pulled a notepad out of her pocket and started taking furious notes. "I could write so many grants on this! Oh! Once we figure out the right genes, it'll be a snap to engineer entire ghoul-edible cows, and pigs, maybe even fruits and vegetables! Reliable food on a large scale, in the form of self-perpetuating breeding lines."
Akira looked at Touka. "Sounds like you're only a few miraculous breakthroughs away from enjoying a Wagyu steak."
"I'll make it happen," snapped Kimi. "Treating Shinohara and doing this sort of research is only possible because of everything Dr. Kano did—asking questions like this instead of just how to kill ghouls. He's probably an undiagnosed sociopath, but he's right on this. If we don't do this research, all the suffering means nothing."
She paused for a second. "Flox! We could flox in the target genes, crossbreed them with a tissue-specific cre animal, and bam, you've created a cow with an on/off switch in individual tissues for ghoul-edible meat! Ooh, if I could design a few AAVs…" She trailed off, lost in thought.
Akira and Touka stared at each other. They hadn't understood a word out of the impassioned young scientist's mouth.
It was less than two days later when Kimi burst into one of the de facto common areas.
A large group was having an impromptu poker tournament in an attempt to kill some time. Naki was cleaning up, thanks to his incredible poker face—or maybe half the time he didn't even know when he had an amazing hand.
It turned out starting a revolution involved a shocking amount of sitting around and waiting.
Kimi declared, "He's awake and asking where his family is."
"That's my girl," shouted Nishiki. "Who should go in to talk to him?"
Akira set down her cards. Her hand was trash, anyways. "Former CCG personnel. Amon, me, Take. I don't want to shock him." She looked over at Kaneki. "You, too. If you're going to be the One-Eyed King, you've got to take the lead in these things."
Yet another long chapter that I probably should have split up…but I just didn't feel like it.
I had a professor who thought everyone should get a tattoo of the Yamanaka factors so we never forget them, they're that big a deal. The fab four are c-Myc, Oct3/4, Sox2 and Klf4. I'm sure he'd be proud of me for shoehorning them into this.
There's a joke in my head that I can't seem to properly work in, it keeps getting edited out: something along the lines of ghouls loving medical dramas because it's their equivalent of a cooking show where you watch a professional chef prepare a fancy meal you'll never eat.
Next week: Akira saves a batch of bread from disaster.