Akira saves a batch of bread from disaster.

He was sitting up in bed. His hair was a little grayer, he looked a little more gaunt, but he was alive and smiling.

As the group filed in, he grinned and called out in a surprisingly healthy voice, "Amon! Hey, and Mado's kid! I see you two are still together. I knew that partnership would work out if you two gave it a chance."

"And of course you were right," said Amon. He glanced over at Akira.

Shinohara was busy staring hard at Kaneki. "You look familiar. Have we met somewhere?"

At that exact moment, everyone suddenly remembered an incident from several years ago—practically ancient history to them, but still in the very recent past for Shinohara: Him facing off against a certain half-kakuja that would later be code named Centipede.

Kaneki cleared his throat. "Assistant special investigator Haise Sasaki. It's an honor to meet you. I've heard a lot of good things about you."

Shinohara laughed in that loud, good-natured way of his. "Some new kid climbing the ranks, huh? How long was I out?"

"…several years, in fact." Akira stepped forward.

The realization of how much time he'd lost sucked the joy out of him. "Really? That long? It doesn't feel…"

She explained as gently as she knew how. "They tried an experimental treatment on you. If we're right, you shouldn't have any of the atrophy or side effects of being unconscious that long…but yes, it's been years since the battle for the 20th ward."

"Damn. I was wondering if everyone forgot about me. What kind of shabby hospital did you guys stick me in, anyways?"

Kaneki looked over at the other former investigators in the room. Akira nodded at him.

"I can explain, but it involves…a lot of difficult news. How do you prefer to hear it, fast or slow?"

Shinohara thought about it, an uneasy expression settling on his face. He must have been noticing that everything about his reawakening was not quite right. "Let's go slow. It sounds like I've got a lot to catch up on."

Akira sighed. "What's the last thing you remember?"

"We were fighting the One-Eyed Owl, or at least I thought we were…but after we took him down, another one showed up. Bigger, meaner, would have killed me and Kuroiwa in a single blow if we weren't wearing that Arata armor."

Kaneki cringed. There was a lot in there that he'd probably taken offense to. "Let's start there, I guess." He glanced over a Take, who was standing closest to the door. "Could you get us coffee and some food for Shinohara? I'm sure he's hungry and we'll probably be a while."

Take nodded and quietly let himself out.

"There were an incredible number of casualties and deaths that night," continued Kaneki. "You probably noticed already that you lost a leg."

Shinohara frowned. "A hell of a thing to wake up to, but we were all expecting to die. Surviving is enough."

Kaneki nodded. "As a result, a new program was started. To make up for the losses, they would create some of the strongest investigators the CCG had ever seen. Do you know who Dr. Kano is?"

Shinohara frowned and looked at Amon. "We were looking into him, weren't we? Everything about the guy was fishy."

Amon managed to keep his expression still. "That's one way of putting it."

Kaneki asked, "You were investigating the possibility of him surgically transplanting ghoul organs into humans, right?"

Shinohara nodded. "I hoped I was wrong, but the fact that you're still talking about it now…I don't even want to think about his victims."

Akira grimaced. Amon and Kaneki glanced at each other.

The One-Eyed King exhaled and continued. "Here's the first bit of difficult news. The CCG got ahold of Kano's prototype during the battle in the 20th. They copied the good doctor's methods to make a team of artificial ghouls."

That news managed to stun the veteran investigator. "No, that would be unethical. The possible side effects…even if they consented to something like that, only vulnerable, desperate people would sign up for something like that…The CCG would never take advantage of people like that."

"They did. I was on the project for a while, with Arima," said Akira. Because she'd been asked by someone she respected, because it seemed like an important weapon at the time…she hadn't stopped to question the ethics. Her hands weren't clean.

Shinohara thought hard. He still seemed very sharp, for a man who'd been out for years. "That prototype. The kid we tracked to that coffeeshop. So he really was…"

Tense and miserable-looking, Kaneki said, "He was. Still is, in fact."

"He's still alive?"

"Somehow, yeah."

They were interrupted by a knock on the door. Akira went to open it, revealing Take. He entered, carrying a piping hot cup of coffee. "Yoriko and Touka will be here in a few minutes, they're just fixing him a sandwich and more coffee."

"Thank you," she said as she shut the door behind him.

Hirako handed the beverage to Shinohara carefully, hovering for a moment to make sure he had enough strength and dexterity in his hands.

Deep in thought, Shinohara grabbed his coffee without hesitation and took a sip. "Damn, that's good. Funny story—the only other time I had coffee this good was at that café run by ghouls."

"I believe it," nodded Kaneki. "Mr. Yoshimura's coffee always tasted…like home. I'm lucky Touka's coffee is just as good."

Shinohara took another sip of coffee. The way his eyebrows were furrowed reflected how hard he was thinking. "Now, I might have a few cobwebs in my brain, but I made it to special investigator because I can put two and two together pretty well. If I recall, Yoshimura was the owner of the coffeeshop…the one we suspected of being the One-Eyed Owl. And that raises a lot of questions."

"Just ask."

"Kid…are you hinting that you were the poor bastard Kano experimented on?"

"I am." He awkwardly scratched at the back of his neck and looked anywhere but at Shinohara.

Akira discreetly kicked him in the ankle.

He straightened back up. "Um, I hope you forgive me for…some things. That was a rough time in my life."

The special investigator leaned back in his bed, an astonished look on his face. "Rough time…yeah, must be an understatement. Shit. So you're… Ken what-his-name?"

Kaneki nodded. "Haise Sasaki was the name I went by at the CCG for lots of reasons. But Kaneki works, too."

Shinohara shook his head and chewed on that information for a long while. Took another thoughtful sip of his coffee. "No offense, but if you're here…with Amon, Mado, and Hirako instead of in Cochlea…You must have a helluva story to tell me."

He looked at all three of them. Waiting for someone to explain the missing pieces he was beginning to sense.

"It certainly is quite a story, for all of us, I think," said Amon quietly.

Akira heard chatting in the hallway and cracked open the door. Touka and Yoriko had arrived, carrying more coffee and a couple of plates of sandwiches. They were quietly trading news about the patient. She glanced over her shoulder at Kaneki. "We'll be here all week at this rate. Can we speed this up at all?"

Kaneki nodded. "Is Touka out there? Can you send her in with more coffee?"

"Bold move," she said.

Shinohara figured that was significant but didn't grasp why. "And who is this Touka? You mentioned her before."

"You can meet her. Thank her for the coffee. Though, I think you've met." Kaneki stopped and thought for a second. "Please be nice to her."

Shinohara looked at Amon with confusion. "Why wouldn't I be nice to her?"

Amon hesitated.

"They're married. He's just being overprotective," Akira butted in. "Also, she can be a little…reactive."

Kaneki himself walked over to the door. He opened it, gestured for Touka to follow him, and took Yoriko's dishes himself.

Shinohara watched the newcomer. Akira watched for the moment of recognition, when his sharp-eyed curiosity was suddenly locked behind an expressionless mask.

Touka handed Akira a cup of coffee, before smiling and giving Shinohara the plate with a sandwich. "Enjoy."

He nodded woodenly in thanks, now just going through the motions of etiquette as he tried to figure out what the hell was going on.

She looked at the rest of the room. "Kimi's grabbing a meal right now, but she wants to check his vitals again soon. Should I tell her to head back this way when she's done eating?"

"Yeah, you can send Kimi back in," said Kaneki. "I think we'll need to give him a break soon."

Touka left quietly, glancing anxiously over her shoulder as she went.

"Alright, I'm calling it. Where am I? This doesn't look like any hospital I've ever been in. Just tell me. I can take it." Shinohara's gaze darted back and forth between the (former) investigators.

The One-Eyed King spoke, finally starting to sound more authoritative. "We're not in a hospital. We are underground in the 24th ward."

He set aside his sandwich without taking a bite. "Excuse me?"

"We're in the 24th ward."

He cleared his throat. Looked at Akira and Amon. "Are you trying to tell me we're hostages?"

This is where it gets rough. After several false starts from everyone in the room, Akira finally blurted it out. "We're not hostages. We're…with…the ghouls."

The silence that followed was maybe the most uncomfortable of her entire life.

He looked down at his lap. The full breadth of his situation was hitting him. "So you're saying…I'm a hostage."

"On paper, yes. I'm sure the CCG considers you our hostage. Or a casualty—I don't know yet. But you're more of a…peace offering."

Amon stepped forward. "Sir, I wouldn't have allowed this if I thought anyone here meant you harm."

The special investigator shook his head. He whispered, mostly to himself, "What the hell happened while I was out?"

"We've only scratched the surface. It'll take a long time to unpack everything." Kaneki glanced over at the untouched sandwich. "Maybe we should let you eat and think about things so far. That was a lot, and you're still recovering."

He thought hard and nodded. "Yeah, I'd appreciate it."

Several hours later, Kimi had given the patient a clean enough bill of health to start moving around.

Akira volunteered to help him, as everyone else was occupied with something or other for the moment.

With a set of crutches in hand, Akira headed over to his room. She knocked on his door, waited a few seconds, then swung it open on its rusty hinges. "Are you ready?"

"For what?" Someone had given him a copy of Takatsuki's polemic last novel to keep him occupied. He'd been paging through it.

"The next part of this…plan. I'll assume you're smart enough to guess at ulterior motives, so I'll tell you to your face. The next part is for you to spend time with the people…ghouls…down here. You're an ambassador for the CCG. If you can win over some of the more aggressive ghouls, they'll be easier to manage if peace talks ever occur."

"And the flip side is I'm supposed to go back to the CCG and tell them these ghouls aren't half bad." He stared at her. "Well, I don't really have a choice, so I ought to play along, right?"

"Exactly. You're not escaping any time soon, so you might as well take the opportunity to do some recon. At the very least, you'll get to spy on the enemy up close."

She helped him out of bed and made sure he didn't tip over as he got used to the crutches. For someone who hadn't had any exercise in a couple of years, he moved with a surprising amount of vigor. As if he'd just recovered from the flu instead of devastating internal injuries and years of atrophy. Those RC cells sure are something.

Out in the hall, he made slow but steady progress. He stopped and stared as Naki and two of his underlings walked by in conversation, not even bothering to acknowledge Akira.

She glanced at the patient, who had recognized the infamous ghoul. "When you're not on a Whack-a-Mole assignment, it's pretty boring down here."

They made their way down the rubble-filled corridor, to the cavernous dining area they'd set up for the humans. Of course, it was also where the shocking quantity of coffee-making supplies was stored as well, so ghouls also passed through at all hours of the day and night.

Irimi was manning the coffee station, handing out a couple of cups to Yomo and Hirako.

Kaneki and Touka were at the table. He was holding Ichika on his lap while Touka tried to spoon-feed her some rice. The child was much more interested in trying to get ahold of some bread rolls that were rising on the table nearby, though.

Once Shinohara was settled in a chair—salvaged so that he could sit and stand one-legged as easily as possible—Yoriko walked over and handed him a bowl of a simple miso soup.

"They said you might want simple comfort food for the first couple of days, so start with that. Let me know if you want anything else for your next meal." She smiled warmly and returned to her counter, where she was setting up to cook a pork dish. Her little Squad Zero assistant was busy prepping vegetables.

Shinohara was staring down at the bowl, shocked by the hospitality he had been shown. "…Thank you."

"Yoriko, you need to sit down and feed yourself at some point," Akira scolded.

The head chef shook her head. "I'm used to a restaurant schedule. You eat on the go until all the work is done. Here, let me grab you some leftover soup."

As she turned to leave, Yoriko noticed something in her peripheral vision. It was Tsukiyama, peeking in the room. She whipped around and pointed her ladle at the doorway. "Hey! I see you there. No, never, not in a million years. Touka?"

Touka glared at Tsukiyama. "Get your skeevy ass out of here and leave Yoriko alone or we're gonna have a problem."

He held up his hands and took a step back. "Oh, mais non, you misunderstand. I thought…perhaps I could watch her cook? Surely it wouldn't be repulsive to teach a bit of technique."

"Yeah, we all know what you're gonna try and use it for," grumbled Touka. Still, she looked at her friend for her answer.

The head chef set down the utensil, wiped her hands on a dishtowel, and pointed to a crate in the corner. "Whatever. Sit there and don't touch anything. I don't care if he watches as long as he never tries to sneak human meat into my kitchen again." She shuddered at the memory.

Akira looked at Touka. "Did I miss something horrible?" Yoriko returned and handed her a bowl containing the last of the soup.

Kaneki responded, looking impossibly exasperated. "Tsukiyama almost tricked her into making him a…nontraditional steak earlier. There was a lot of yelling."

She winced. Absolutely disgusting, but as far as figuring out how to coexist, that's a small, very manageable bump in the road. An incident between the Gourmet and a human cook could have gone far, far worse.

He must have been thinking similar thoughts, because he said, "I think we'll figure out how to live together better once we can give each other a bit of space. We're in close quarters now, but it's temporary."

Akira nodded. "Agreed. A little more distance would be healthier for all of us."

Ichika said "Ah!" and clapped in agreement.

For a couple of minutes everyone at the table—or at least, Shinohara, Akira, and Ichika—enjoyed their meals.

After careful thought and a lot of wavering, Shinohara leaned over to ask Akira in whisper, "How did these ghouls get ahold of that child?" He sounded appalled.

She snorted. "Touka, he thinks you kidnapped a human baby."

"Weird," she said without looking away from her giggling daughter. "I could swear I remember giving birth to her or something."

"She's a half-ghoul, so she can eat human food just fine," explained Akira.

"…Oh." Shinohara ate his soup for a couple of minutes while watching the young family. Akira ate her soup and watched him.

Investigators were taught to be disgusted at the way ghouls playacted at being human. Was Shinohara hiding thoughts like those? How long would he have to watch them before he realized it wasn't a ruse, that they actually were a mother and a father who loved their daughter?

"We tried to track you down at that coffee shop," Shinohara said to Kaneki after a moment. "I really wasn't sure what I was going to do if we found you—treat you like a victim or an enemy."

"Anteiku was a good place to end up," Kaneki mused. "They saved me, in a lot of ways. Dr. Kano was just using me for his experiment. I was rolled into his operating room because I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. And in the end, the CCG was using me, too. Anteiku was the only place that treated me like a person."

"You're forgetting the most important part: you met me there," joked Touka.

"Abababa," agreed Ichika. Kaneki smiled.

"And you're the one who brought me my drink then, too." The investigator set his empty bowl aside and addressed Touka.

She nodded. "I remember that. I remembered you. I even visited you in the hospital a few times."

"Why?"

She shrugged. "After Anteiku fell, I was angry, and sad, but I was also getting sick of killing. I guess, I thought that if I kept doing the same things everything would always stay the same…so one day I decided to try something different."

"Something different." He looked thoughtfully at her. "I'm in a shitty position, aren't I? I'm down a leg, I can't get away, and I'm at the mercy of a bunch of ghouls who have every reason to kill me. Reminds me of a saying I heard somewhere—the people you step on while on your way up are the ones who'll kick you on your way down."

Touka pulled Ichika's hands away from the rolls on the table again. "Yeah, you're in a shitty position. You lucked out, though. We're following this guy's lead—" she nodded at Kaneki "—and he thinks we should figure out how to make peace with each other."

Kaneki smiled back, a little embarrassed. It was moments like that where Akira saw how uneasy he still was at being the flash point for everything happening around them, though he usually hid it well.

All because, as he put it, he had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Rolled into the wrong operating room.

Touka looked across the room where Take, Irimi, and Yomo were chatting and enjoying a coffee break. They looked like any group of friends you might see meeting at any café after work—if you ignored the underground setting.

She mused, "Things look bleak right now in some ways, but maybe there's reasons to have hope, too." She grabbed her daughter from Kaneki and gave her a big hug. "And not just because I want to believe that for Ichika's sake."

Shinohara nodded slowly, deep in thought. Akira felt cautiously optimistic. Ichika's existence—and that of artificial ghouls like Amon and Kaneki—were bound to make even hardened investigators like Shinohara stop and think. They weren't as easy to write off as full-blooded ghouls.

Touka gave up on feeding Ichika and just switched to tickling her. Kaneki joined in, and soon the loudest noise in the room was her hysterical laughter.

Amon arrived, then. He'd spent the morning helping to clear debris from a tunnel, to open up some more space. As he sat at the table next to Akira, Irimi set a cup of coffee in front of him.

Yoriko brought a plate of simple sugar cookies to the table. "Here, I made these to use up some leftover butter and eggs. Eat up." She grabbed one herself and snacked on it as she went back to overseeing her kitchen.

The chitchat continued as the humans all passed the plate around and grabbed a cookie or two. Amon passed it to Akira without taking one.

Shinohara noticed and joked. "Never thought I'd see the day you turned down free sweets. Did all those calories finally start catching up with you?"

The chatter at the table stopped. Akira and Amon looked at each other sharply. His eyes looked haunted. She grabbed his hand under the table, out of anyone's sight, and squeezed.

"Oh no, what'd I say," asked Shinohara.

Amon sighed. "There's a lot of reasons why battle lines were redrawn so fast while you were out."

"Spit it out. I can only take so much more suspense at this point."

Amon braced himself and recited dispassionately, "The debrief is that Aogiri got ahold of many of the casualties in the aftermath of the battle of the 20th ward. The casualties were handed off to Dr. Kano, who continued his experiments with Aogiri Tree's help. There were only two survivors from that round…Takizawa, and me."

There was a long silence at the table, broken only when Ichika started saying nonsense.

The recovering investigator shook his head, rubbed his hand over his face. "Now it makes more sense. I couldn't understand how anything would ever get you two to leave the CCG. But I think I'm starting to see it."

Amon let out a relieved gust of air.

"But still, to abandon the CCG and throw your lot in with the ghouls is crossing a line."

Akira, still holding Amon's hand under the table, gave him another squeeze.

Amon collected himself and spoke carefully. "Aogiri Tree and the CCG got into an arms race for the best artificial ghoul. Neither of them ever cared about the cannon fodder it took to win."

Akira felt a moment of pride for him, the way he was pushing back against one of the people he respected most in the world.

"Now hold on a moment. I don't like anything I'm hearing about their recent actions, but you can't hold everything the CCG has done at the same level. You might kill me for saying this, but…" He took a deep breath and braced himself to speak. "But every time we exterminate a ghoul, we're saving the lives of all their future victims."

It was a stark statement, and no one could wave it away. But the ghouls hanging around the kitchen area were there because they were sympathetic to humans—even Tsukiyama had Chie Hori to think about—so Shinohara's words didn't cause the outburst he may have expected.

Everyone looked at each other, cognizant of how important it was to handle this delicately.

"I don't think that has to be true, though." Kaneki was the first to speak up. "I think ghouls and investigators live in two separate worlds. Investigators have only ever seen bloodthirsty ghouls that murder indiscriminately, and ghouls have only ever seen investigators that want to brutally exterminate them no matter what they do. But neither side's perception is actually true. If both sides give a little, if they could see beyond the warped version of reality they're stuck in…I think maybe ghouls don't always have to kill humans and the CCG doesn't have to kill ghouls."

"The first casualty of war is always truth," added Amon.

"It also takes a lot of truth to float a lie," Shinohara shot back. "I might be willing to buy that a few ghouls can be reasoned with, but I've seen enough innocent people murdered and families destroyed that I can't pretend they're all just misunderstood."

"I get that," said Touka. "But that's kind of the point. It took me a long time to see that some of you investigators are monsters, but a few of you are all right. We're a lot like humans in that way. It takes time to realize that, though, and there's no magic formula that works on everyone."

Akira frowned, thinking through the ways she had changed. There was no lone instant, it was a slow accumulation of experiences and conversations. "It's not something we're going to convince you of by arguments or logic. Just by living."

As the rest of the cookies and coffee were slowly consumed, they discussed other things that Shinohara had missed, talking him through the most important events. It was an interesting conversation, putting together the ghouls' and investigators' sides of the story in tandem. Even so, it was a terrible and draining topic for everyone.

Akira was startled back to the present during a lull in the conversation. Spotting movement out of the corner of her eye, she called to Touka, "Hey, watch your spawn.".

Akira pulled the tray of bread out of the little monster's reach, but it was too late for one unfortunate victim. Ichika had finally gotten her hand under the towel and grabbed a roll while everyone was distracted.

"No, little girl," said Touka calmly as she pried the mangled ball of dough out of the baby's hands.

Kaneki grabbed a towel and helped clean the mess up while the baby wailed in dismay. Between his patience, and Touka's ability to hold it together under pressure, they really did make great parents.

Haltingly, Shinohara observed, "She's cute, but she's bossy."

"I wonder where she gets it from," Kaneki joked.

Touka looked around at all the eyes that were suddenly on her. "Excuse me? Only one of us is running around, calling himself a king." She elbowed a now-embarrassed Kaneki for good measure.

Laughter went around the table.

Tsukiyama watched them, still sitting in his corner like a naughty child in time out. He called out, "When are you two going to get married already?"

Kaneki answered without thinking. "Oh. We got married ages ago. Before Ichika was even born."

The Gourmet yelled, "What? You're already married?"

"WHAT?!" No one had noticed Ayato slouching through the back of the room for coffee. "Oh for the love of—" he threw his hands up and stomped away, grumbling to himself the whole time.

Tsukiyama, meanwhile, was deep in thought. "And no reception? We'll have to fix that, now, won't we?"

I know when I had this idea I thought that it would be so ridiculously fun to write, because I freaking love when characters have to make dramatic revelations to each other…Then it turned out super difficult to write because there were so many different ways to approach it and going with one idea meant giving up all the other ideas…I hope it at least turned out okay in the end!

Next week: Akira's chasing gains