Akira Mado, amateur explorer!
Climbing down through the tunnels was eerie. She could almost feel the weight of a million tons of bedrock above her. If the lights went out, she'd be plunged into complete darkness. The temperature was pleasantly constant, though, and the going was fairly easy.
They were marking their progress with chalk on the walls, and occasionally using a spool of guide line to make backtracking easy when the tunnels split. They weren't following standard caving procedure, but then again, this wasn't a standard cave. Even if some of the route took advantage of natural fissures, the subterranean path had long since been modified by ghouls. It meant that there were not many significant natural obstacles, aside from the occasional path that had been blocked by an old cave-in.
Really, the most difficult part was the rising sense of claustrophobia as they descended. Her deepest instincts very much did not want to be this far below the surface.
Without much audience for his tough-guy act, Ayato calmed down and became slightly more personable.
"You see these?" He pointed towards the wall as they walked. Akira leaned close and scrutinized what looked like some rough shapes chiseled into the stone, nothing very sophisticated looking. "That's how we know how to get around. It's saying if we keep heading in this direction, we'll hit a fork with one side heading up to the surface, and the other side heading down to…"
"To where?"
"Well, that's the thing. It's a symbol that starts showing up when you get real deep, but I don't think anyone remembers what's down there anymore." Ayato stood and looked down into the black tunnel. "Probably because it gives you the heebie-jeebies to stare down into the darkness like that."
Akira pointed her flashlight down the tunnel. It bounced around, barely illuminating the black path in front of them. "You feel it too?"
A couple of the ghouls near her nodded. "I keep waiting to run into a ghost," one shuddered. Somewhere in the distance, the plinking of a water droplet against a rock echoed.
The investigator laughed. A bunch of ghouls, scared of the dark. She took her turn in front. "Here, I'll go first. I don't believe in ghosts."
"You don't?!"
She crouched down. The ceiling was a bit low in this stretch. "Nope. The whole world is a graveyard. If ghosts existed, I'd have met one by now."
"Well maybe they can tell you're a buzzkill and stay away from you," he muttered behind her back.
A part of her mind stayed on Goat, worrying that they would all spontaneously combust as soon as she turned her back on them. She had to keep reminding herself that, as much as she liked to believe that she was totally indispensable, the world would keep spinning in her absence. And the ghouls would survive a couple of days without her.
The experience was contradictory. Half her brain was awash in horror at the way she continued to walk down into the belly of the earth, and the other half marveled at the experience. It had likely been years or even decades since anyone had walked this path. The thought was exciting, in a way she probably shouldn't have enjoyed so much.
As she walked, she spoke. 'Did you know that there's a condition that affects cave divers—they call it 'rapture of the deep'. It can manifest as euphoria or hallucinations, or even intense terror and a sense of impending doom."
Ayato answered in a strained voice, "Why would you say something like that?"
"What? I thought it was an interesting fact."
"It isn't!"
They paused for dinner. Akira ate some dried fruit, a bland protein bar, and an energy gel for dessert, while a couple of the ghouls snacked on some questionable jerky. She opened her mouth to say something, remembered that she would be the next best option for a meal, and kept her mouth shut.
It had been a long day, full of blocked tunnels and backtracking, but they thought they'd finally identified a viable path towards wherever that mysterious symbol was taking them.
"If we don't find anything by tomorrow, we turn around," Ayato muttered. "No point in getting lost down here for nothing."
Akira nodded. She was already tired of the shadows, the echoes, the cool damp smell of the endless stone passageways…
When they unfurled their bedrolls and finally turned off the lamps, the disorienting blackness and near silence sent a shudder down Akira's spine—not that she'd ever admit it.
There were limited ways to pass the time on their little expedition.
At first, they quizzed her on the marks that they were following. When she picked it up a little too quickly for their liking, they got bored and walked in silence for a little while.
That superstitious ghoul from Ayato's squadron was very talkative, it turned out. He never took off his mask, but he also never shut up.
"So…if you were a ghoul, what do you think your alias would be?"
She finished taking a drink from her water bottle. "I don't know. I'm boring."
"Well…what do you like?"
"I like spicy curry and my cat, I guess." There actually was nothing better to do but humor him. "I'd be the Carolina Reaper," she deadpanned.
He mulled that over for a moment. "I don't get it."
She grimaced. "Nevermind then…maybe something to do with weapons. I've been accused of being a weapons fanatic."
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Ayato stiffening up and glancing over at her. Ah, yes, the Fueguchi.
She tried to pivot. "It's a pointless discussion, since ultimately the CCG assigns names. Why don't you ever take off your mask?"
"No reason, I'm just ugly," he shrugged. "I've been thinking it's time for a new one now that Aogiri's gone. What should I go for, though?"
Akira groaned, totally out of patience. "Water bear?"
"Hm. Sounds badass."
"They are. Terrifying predators, water bears."
It was towards the end of the second day—according to her watch, at least—that she noticed a draft.
This deep underground, fresh air could only mean one thing.
Everyone in the group was on edge, expecting to turn a corner and end up in mortal peril. Add in the claustrophobia of the tunnels, of having precious few places to escape to…An oppressive silence fell over them all for the last few hours of their trek.
When they rounded a bend and nearly stepped into midair, the ghouls in front shot their flashlights out into the expanse they'd nearly fallen into.
After so long in the caves, it took her eyes a minute to adjust to the vast empty space in front of her.
It was…a city. Some lost underground civilization, but empty and destroyed for a long time now by the looks of things. On the far end of the cavern, the rumble of an underground river resounded. Something like a huge dead vine or root wound its way through streets and around buildings.
She looked at the ruined city, so vast that the edges faded into the darkness. The scale of destruction disturbed her. Nothing organic should be that powerful. Her stomach felt uneasy, that gut instinct she'd learned to trust with her life speaking loud and clear. They were messing with something far bigger and more powerful than she could wrap her mind around. Every instinct was telling her to stop and turn around.
Nothing good had happened down there. No good would come of disturbing these ghosts, even if she didn't believe in them. She'd seen enough horror movies to know that much.
"I can't believe we found it," whispered Ayato.
Akira responded darkly, "Maybe we never should have."
Ayato looked at her like she was talking nonsense. Perhaps, as a ghoul, his sense of danger was tuned to a different frequency than hers.
But rolling through her brain was something from one of the history books she'd been reading lately, something that had stuck with her—the strange warnings left on long-term nuclear waste repositories for people thousands of years in the future:
This place is not a place of honor... no highly esteemed deed is commemorated here... nothing valued is here.
What is here was dangerous and repulsive to us. This message is a warning about danger.
The danger is in a particular location... it increases towards a center... the center of danger is here... of a particular size and shape, and below us.
The danger is still present, in your time, as it was in ours.
The danger is to the body, and it can kill.
If anywhere needed a warning like that, it was this godforsaken pit.
The ghouls just dropped their packs and jumped down, rudely leaving Akira to set up anchors on a couple of rocky outcroppings, throw her rope over the edge, and rappel down at her own leisure.
They'd already poked around the street by the time her boots hit the ground. There were larger buildings farther in, but this area looked to be populated by modest dwellings.
"Nice of you to join us," Ayato snorted.
Akira didn't respond, just pointed her light on a nearby door. Resting one hand on it, she tested its strength. The dry-rotted wood and rusted nails crumbled easily in a muted crash.
She looked inside. There wasn't much, and what little furniture there was—a low table, a bedroll—was covered in dust and looked like it would collapse if touched. Had the people—ghouls—who lived here grabbed their belongings and fled, or had they owned little to begin with?
Her light landed on a shelf. It still held a lopsided set of ceramic dishes and what could have been once been an old bottle of mirin and a sack of rice under a thick layer of grime. Did humans live down here, too?
"Don't go in any of the buildings. They're not structurally sound," she warned.
"I thought it would be ancient ruins or something," one of the ghouls said.
"I'm no expert," said Akira with a frown, "but this architecture can't be more than a hundred, maybe a hundred and fifty years old."
"Old enough to be built when the CCG was just getting started," someone else chimed in. "It would have taken a while to get all this material down here."
She nodded. "And…it looks like it's been abandoned for decades, too…which matches what we know about some sort of uprising right after the war. They must have thought it was a good time to strike, and they were extremely wrong."
Ayato kicked at some pebbles on the ground. "We were hoping to at least find some ghouls down here that could fight with us, and they've probably been dead for ages."
"What have you picked up?"
He frowned. "Not much. The noise of that water makes it hard to hear anything else, and it just smells like an old basement. No fresh scents yet."
"It's been a long day. Let's make camp and figure out the next move." She kept looking around as she spoke, still on high alert.
They all agreed with her assessment and turned around to head back.
She brought up the rear, but hesitated. She did not like the eerie, cavernous ghost city, but she still felt the urge to confront it head-on. Looking back, her light travelled over the street—and landed on the eldritch monster blocking the end of the street. Akira stared hard for a long time, waiting for the low hum of terror to subside, but it never did.
The cliff the ghouls had easily leapt down turned out to be a bit too tall and sheer for a vertical jump.
Ayato backed up and released his kagune. "Get back, there could be falling rocks. I can make a ladder. Climb fast."
"I wouldn't," said Akira, shaking her head. "We're not sure what's down here and we're already making a lot of noise. I think you should tread as lightly as possible."
He stared at her, not happy to have his bombastic plan shot down. "Buzzkill," he muttered—but his kagune sputtered out.
While they tried to figure out how best to parkour their way back up to their gear, Akira walked over to the rope she came down on.
Grabbing the ascenders clipped to her belt, she rigged them on the rope and started working her way back up. She was nearly halfway by the time anyone noticed.
"Hey!" her new chatty friend called up. "Can I go after you?"
"Sure." Sliding one ascender up the rope, standing on the foot loop, sliding the other up, she painstakingly climbed a little higher. "You can spend an hour figuring out how to do it in ten seconds, or ten minutes doing it the hard way," she quietly called down to the rest of the group.
Everyone but Ayato went up the hard way. It indeed took him nearly an hour to identify a couple of small crevices he could use to aid his ascent. But, she had to admit, it did look cool once he figured out how to do it in ten seconds. If she hadn't seen his several failed attempts, she would have said he floated up effortlessly.
Akira had to roll her eyes at the boy's refusal to accept help, but there was something in his determination that was a little admirable.
They set up camp on a small outcropping and divided up shifts to keep watch, then fell asleep almost instantly.
The next morning, Akira sat near the edge and looked out over the ruined city as she braided her hair back.
"If anyone is still down here, all our lights will draw their attention eventually. Do we explore a bit, figure out more of what happened? Or do we turn around?" She hoped they would decide to turn around without too much fuss.
The ghoul who kept bothering her with chitchat blurted out, "It's probably been long enough, right? If she wants to go back?"
"No, dummy, one more day," Ayato hissed.
Akira froze. "What is that supposed to mean?" She dropped her hands, braids forgotten.
The goon slapped his hand over the mouth of his mask.
She turned around to Ayato. "What did he mean by that?"
The boy was quiet, not meeting her eyes for a moment. Then something in him gave way. He did, after all, have a bit of the same impulsive streak that Touka had. "Screw it. You were sent along because the damn king wanted you out of the way. Something about how you wouldn't be okay with what he wants to do."
She stared at him. "Really." With dexterous motions, she quickly fixed the rest of her hair up in a bun.
They wanted to stay and look around some more, but they didn't try to stop her when she packed up her gear and turned around, either.
If she wasn't boiling mad, the thought of making an ascent alone would terrify her or at least strike her as foolhardy.
Since she was traveling alone on a rage-fueled mission, she made quick progress back up to the surface. She'd marked the path clearly. There was none of the indecision or dead ends that slowed their descent, so within 6 hours she was back in familiar territory.
In a tizzy, she popped by her room to freshen up and change into clean clothes as quickly as possible.
Out of breath, she stormed through the compound. "Where are they," she growled at a random sentry.
He didn't even pretend to be confused, just pointed down the hall at a small meeting room.
She shoved at the door to the room, slamming it open. She didn't take the time to look over everyone, but she caught sight of Nishiki and Naki at the table—with Kaneki at the head.
Everyone turned to look at her. "Miss me?"
I hope this wasn't too weird of a side quest! I've always been fascinated with urban exploration and cave diving so it was fun to take a tiny bit of inspiration from those areas. I think I would be the first one to die in the horror movie, because unlike Akira I would be allll about exploring the spooky abandoned city.
Has anyone else ever had a Carolina Reaper? I have a fridge full of them right now. They're so hot they blow right past being spicy and completely short circuit your sense of taste. I ate one and sat there thinking very calmly, "Hmm, yes, very intense. I can't feel my face and I think I swallowed some lava."
Next week: Akira isn't ready for prime time