Akira isn't ready for prime time
Nishiki threw his hands up. "Finally. Maybe she can talk some sense into you."
"What is going on and why did you send me on a journey to the center of the earth to keep me from finding out?"
Naki crossed his arms and tilted his head to the side. "I think you should listen to the broad, she's had a good idea or two."
Tsukiyama barked out a laugh but tried to disguise it as a dramatic gasp. Miza, standing near him, smacked the White Suit's leader upside the head.
"Well?"
There was an awkward silence.
Miza finally explained, "Furuta invited him to do a televised interview. Claims he'll give Kaneki a chance to tell his side of the story."
Akira had to close her eyes and count backwards from ten. With an icy calm that belied her inner turmoil, she grabbed Kaneki by the arm and dragged him across the hall, into a small room that was being used mostly for storage.
She heard Nishiki's voice trail after them. "Ooh, he made mom mad…"
"That's what you're hiding?" She hissed out, "And you thought you would play these kinds of games with me? Me?"
"I wasn't trying to play games, it's just…I have to do something. If we're not working towards this goal, then…what are we doing?"
She shook her head, and finally voiced the subversive thoughts that had been brewing in the back of her mind for a while. "None of us actually have to do anything. You don't have to fight this battle, you don't have to lead this revolution, we could all just disperse and start new lives somewhere else. You could just take Touka and Ichika and…leave Tokyo."
He stared at her. "I don't think we can live like that. I can't do that. Running away, without anything to run towards." For once, he didn't have that hollow, exhausted look that always hung over him. There was a calm to him, none of the nervous fidgeting he often displayed when he felt unsure. He wanted this. Oh, why did this have to be what lit a spark in you?
He was right. She'd seen it with her own eyes. The ghouls weren't just here to get away from the CCG, they were coming together because they'd finally found some sort of common goal. And…for so many reasons…it had to be Kaneki leading the charge.
The blonde rubbed her temples, feeling another stress headache building. "Then at least don't do this. Deep down you must know how stupid it is, or you wouldn't have tried to keep it from me."
He sighed, having the decency to look ashamed of himself. He spun around and looked over the pile of stuff that had begun to accumulate in the tiny room. With a bit of fumbling, he reached into a crate and grabbed a small box.
He tossed it to Akira. She caught the heavy package and turned it over in her hands.
It was a magazine of rifle rounds.
"Nishiki found a guy who knows a guy who bought an M40 off of a disgruntled Marine in Okinawa. Is that enough of an apology?"
Akira thought about it for a moment. She shook the mag, rattling the rounds. "Maybe. Now I know Furuta has a bullet with his name on it. I just need to find out which one of these it is."
"I don't know if it'll do anything. The more I think about it, the more I think he's figured out our RC cell treatment…or worse…"
"I did tell you that Kurona's spotted him spending a lot of time with the doctor. The possibilities are endless." Letting her shoulders drop, she said, "Everyone agrees this is a trap, right? Nothing about this is a good idea."
Kaneki shook his head. "This is exactly what I wanted."
"Look at me." She set down the bullets and leveled her gaze at him, trying to convey how serious she was. "I'll defer to you on everything else, but you need to let this go. No good can come of it. If he wants to engage you at this particular time and place, you must avoid it at all costs."
"I can't ignore it either," he retorted. "Either it's legitimate—and yes, I know it probably isn't—or he's up to something else and this is just a cover, but either way I can't do nothing. I need to know what he's up to."
"Where is this info coming from?"
"We captured one of the Oggai sneaking around down here. He had the written offer on him. I only read in a few people to talk about logistics."
"And Ayato to keep me distracted."
"Yes," he quietly confirmed.
She took a deep breath. "Did you tell Amon, too?"
"No. I tried to keep it as quiet as possible. I didn't want to spread any panic."
Akira growled in frustration, hands on her hips, tapping one foot compulsively fast. "I want to see him. This messenger."
Soon she was staring at the restrained Oggai child. On tiptoes, Akira peeked through the door window of the old RV-turned-holding cell.
Locking eyes with him, she was shocked to realize that she recognized him. He was one of the rescued orphans from that awful day at the port. Bastard. Was that whole operation a set up to sneak him in?
"Hey, you're the turncoat, aren't you!" He redirected his gaze to Kaneki behind her. "Watch your back around her. Ever heard the phrase, 'if she'll cheat with you, she'll cheat on you?'"
She backed away from the window.
"He's just saying those things to upset you."
"I know," the One-Eyed King said without hesitation.
She crossed her arms and paced back and forth furiously. "You know what I'm going to say."
Kaneki watched her silently.
"There's ways to get a message to you without giving up a valuable soldier. Furuta's doing it this way for a reason. Stop playing his games by his rules."
"I'm not."
"You are." Pointing at the door between them and their prisoner, she said bluntly, "You need to kill him. Everything about this feels wrong and you know it. We don't have the facilities to hold him securely, so he'll probably break free sooner or later if you keep him alive."
"I heard that!" The Oggai in the cell yelled out. "Furuta told me you were cutthroat but holy crap, I'm just a kid!"
Akira winced, glad the boy couldn't see how well he'd hit his mark.
They moved farther away from the de facto holding cell for a bit more privacy.
"We're not in the heat of battle right now," Kaneki said in a soft voice. "We still lose Furuta's game if we sink to the level he expects from us."
"That's a symbolic loss. I'm okay with those kinds of losses."
"I'm not. Symbols are still important, or else no one would care who's calling himself the One-Eyed King." He chuckled, but there was no enthusiasm behind it. "Look, I get why you think I'm doing the dumbest possible thing. But I need your help to make it work."
That inescapable tsunami bearing down on her blotting out the sun, was back.
She turned around, took a deep breath, and tried to accept what was happening. Akira wasn't the one in charge—all she could do was try to avert disaster.
"There's too much rock over us to pick up any signals," she warned. "We at least need to be close to the surface, if not aboveground, to see the broadcast. And who knows what editing trickery will be involved," Akira added as an afterthought.
He looked askance at her. "I already had Tsukiyama scout out the location. I was thinking…we could be able to watch it live and in person, at the same time. You might as well use that scope while we have it."
He watched the broadcast on the phone while Furuta taunted his absence. "This is a disaster."
"It's also a trap," said Akira as she peered through her scope. "You show up, he kills you, you stay away, he proves you never wanted peace. He's smart, just accept he won this round. I told you—he set it up so there's no way to win this one, you've just got to choose which way you want to lose. There'll be other opportunities."
They had snuck into a building across the street from the location Furuta had given. When it wasn't being commandeered by the CCG it was the studio of a popular news program, with the windows behind the anchors showcasing a cinematic view of Tokyo Tower and whatever the weather was that day.
In the early hours of the morning, Akira and Kaneki had found an empty office and removed one panel from the windows. A small team was waiting at the nearby entrance to the 24th ward, keeping it secure while they were in enemy territory.
They'd sat around for hours and hours. Akira was laying on her stomach on the desk, pointing her new rifle at the windows of the studio. At least it gave her sore feet plenty of rest after all the walking of the previous days.
She passed the time by giving a detailed retelling of her trip underground, and enjoying a light snack of wasabi peas. It was a scene very similar to their early days working with Arima—she'd been perennially frustrated with him then, too, for radically different reasons.
Finally, several vans pulled up and people started milling around in the studio. Through the windows, they watched the station staff move around equipment and check lighting. She even caught flashes of Ui wandering around right before the broadcast began, pointing and tossing orders around.
"Your training didn't go to waste, Akira. I knew he was up to something when he picked this location. They might need a studio for the cameras and the broadcast, but there's no good reason to pick one that's so exposed. I still hate this," said Kaneki. "A dialogue is exactly what I wanted and I'm sidestepping it."
"And he knows you well enough to bank on you feeling that way. I consider it my job to stop you from taking stupid chances. Just say the word. We might luck out and end this right here." Still, she kept her trigger finger on the guard, because she knew what he was going to say. "One shot to shatter the window, one to hit him in the chest."
"No."
No surprises there.
"So…what does Touka think about all this?" Akira knew she'd get a perfectly frank answer from the barista but there hadn't been any time to catch up with anyone before their team's hasty departure for the surface.
Besides, there were only so many ways to pass the time, and she was a bit curious on Kaneki's perspective—not least of all because she was acutely aware that she was the main reason Amon was staying in the vicinity.
"She'd be satisfied with giving up and leaving Tokyo. Surviving. She's told me as much. But…she's always just survived. If there's a chance at something better for her, for everyone…I can't let the chance pass me by."
"Too righteous by far." She kept an ear on the broadcast and an eye on the scope.
Suddenly, she heard Furuta exclaim in an unsettling tone, "Ah, we're nearly to the main event!"
The hair on the back of Akira's neck stood up. She stilled and focused her scope.
The little black shock troops started streaming into the room. They looked scuffed up, a little blood-spattered, fresh from combat. "We got it," their leader said. "They put up a fight, but we were ready for them."
One small soldier to his right tossed several objects at Furuta's feet.
She frantically focused the scope, strained her eyes to see…were those heads?
Another moved up through the ranks, something bundled in her arms. "Like taking candy from a baby. Or…maybe, like taking a baby from a One-Eyed King."
Oh no…
As soon as Furuta reached out to grab the bundle, Akira hunkered down behind her gun and fired a shot.
The window across the street shattered.
The barrel was jerked up before she could line up a second shot.
"No!"
Kaneki had yanked the gun out of her hands and thrown it on the ground behind them, then launched himself out the window and down the side of the building. She caught a flash of his kagune as he arced through the air.
"Fuck," she whispered to herself. She spun around, picking up the phone and the rifle as she ran to the door. Throwing it open, not sure yet whether to rush in after him or try to find reinforcements—
-the gun was yanked out of her hands again.
It looked like the choice would be made for her. They'd been surrounded the whole time.
There was never any winning, just different ways to lose.
She was half-marched half-dragged across the street by several of the Oggai. Having no bright ideas, Akira opted to just stay quiet and keep an eye out for any openings.
They kicked open the set of double doors leading to the studio, revealing a standoff already in progress.
Kaneki on one side of the expansive room, standing in the glass of the window that Akira's bullet had shattered, and Furuta on the opposite side. Two cameras were being operated by Oggai that looked much too short for the job—it would have been an amusing image in any other circumstance—trying to keep both combatants in frame.
She noticed in the corner the decapitated heads that the Oggai had brought back. She thought, under the blood, she could recognize the ghouls that were supposed to be their rear support team…a couple of Cochlea escapees and Koma. Shit.
Furuta laughed. Bounced the baby in his arms. "I told the Oggai to head right back to me as soon as they secured the precious cargo. The rest of the CCG is still down in the 24th ward as we speak, though, to hit them with a head-on attack and slaughter them all. We'd better hurry up and finish this if you want any chance of saving anyone."
Kaneki took a step forward.
Furuta backed away, turning to shield Ichika from her father. "Ah, not so fast! The world is watching!" He nodded around to the cameras. In a stage whisper, he said, "You need to be on your best behavior. I already tried to pin the Washu massacre on you and no one cared too much thanks to that bitch Eto."
A whine of feedback reached her, from the nearly forgotten phone she'd shoved in her pocket. It was still playing this ridiculous show trial. She stared at the small black clip on his shirt. He's got a hot mic. Why would he admit those things…unless he'd be happy to ruin everything for ghouls and the CCG.
The bastard grinned. "Ohhhh, I know!"
"What," he said, barely restraining himself.
"What if you let me kill you! Go to your death peacefully. Make me look bad, show them all what monsters we are at the CCG." He swept an arm at the lines of Oggai.
"Don't," Akira hissed. A sharp yank on her arm rebuked her for speaking.
But…she was of the opinion that they were cornered and whatever Furuta said, they would all definitely die if they stayed quiet and cooperative. Fighting, causing some chaos, was their best bet at creating any sort of opening.
Kaneki looked her way and appeared to pick up on what she was thinking. Along the way, his sharp eyes traveled over the room, sizing up everything he was up against. He turned back to Furuta and shook his head.
"No dice? Then there's someone else who'd like to have a word with you…" He whistled.
The sound of heavy, clacking footsteps sounded behind them. Akira's heart pounded painfully with each thud.
Juzo, menacing in his Arata armor. His eyes held that steely focus he took on during a battle.
In a whisper, he said, "Why'd you have to kill Shinohara? Why would you hurt him like that? Hurt me?"
Akira tried to yell, "He's not—" but the Oggai holding her wrist kicked her in the back of the knee and threw her to the ground. A small hand pressed her cheek into the ground and held her mouth shut. Her arms were rapidly twisted behind her back by someone sitting on her to keep her immobilized. Another sat on her legs in case she got any smart ideas.
All she could do was stare at the dusty corner she was facing and listen.
"Juzo, please, that's not—"
"No!" he screamed. "I thought we were friends, Haise!"
With a metallic crash, she heard fighting explode behind her. A rush of air wafted past her. Akira gritted her teeth, jolting at the sound of every impact.
She heard Furuta laughing with manic glee. "Now this is great TV!"
Ooh, I've never wanted to kill anyone as badly as I want to kill that smug little shit.
The sounds of trading hits moved from close to far and back again. But she was familiar enough with Kaneki's combat abilities to tell by sound alone that the battle was intense, but he wasn't down and out.
Though—Akira's thoughts were racing down every available track, keeping tabs on the fighting at her back, trying to wriggle around and find any weakness in her guards' restraint, wondering what was really happening back in the underground—when she realized something strange amid the utter anarchy.
Ichika hasn't made any noise. She should be crying at all this ruckus, at the very least.
The sounds continued—Arata plates rattling at high speed, the sounds of a kagune whipping through the air, Kaneki or Juzo crying out when a hit landed. Again, she couldn't tell if anyone was winning or losing, but at least it didn't sound like a one-sided beatdown.
The clacking of hard-soled dress shoes ambled over near her. "Man, I'm starting to get bored, aren't you? Hey kids, help him out a little!"
Suddenly the jeering of children filled the room and sent a shot of ice water through Akira's veins.
There was a cacophony of screaming and crashes and then—
Quiet.
"You'd better finish it while we have the advantage," came Furuta's voice.
"Why the hesitation? He took away the closest thing you have to a father, now you get to return the favor for his precious little princess!"
Akira struggled again, now desperate to get free, but the three Oggai holding her down didn't give her even the tiniest bit of leverage to work with.
But the clanking of Juzo in his armor stopped suddenly. "He's…"
"Oh, don't start getting sentimental on me now, of all times. Yes, he's her father, why do you think I set this whole production up—"
He cut off suddenly, but Akira couldn't see why. There was just the sound of something whipping through the air, making an impact, a scream—
It escalated so fast. The noise grew deafening. Shrieks, crashes, the sound of objects—bodies?—getting thrown around.
The weight of the Oggai holding her down was suddenly gone, though the hand on her head was still there.
She reached up to touch it, and to her shock it slowly slid off of her head to land behind her with a thud.
At first she panted, beginning to panic—What was happening?—before a few pebbles of debris hit her and she snapped out of it. It felt like an earthquake, so she got on hands and knees to scramble for the nearby doorway.
She didn't look around. Not yet.
Hunkered in the door frame, hands covering her head and neck, she finally raised her eyes from the ground in front of her.
And saw…the sky.
Where'd the building go, she thought dumbly.
She glanced back where she'd been laying and saw no Oggai…just a spray of blood and a single arm that had been sliced at the elbow.
"Wow, that was gross," said a voice from nearby. Furuta stood up from behind a toppled section of wall. Still holding the squirming baby bundle.
"The baby…" she choked out. Struggled to her feet. She wasn't wounded that she could feel, but she was shaky nonetheless.
"The baby! Yes! It was a big gamble, waiting forever to use that against him. That's a card you can only play once so you better make it count! Here, catch."
He gave the bundle an underhanded toss, high in the air. That woke Akira up—she came back to herself. But she didn't catch it. It landed in front of her with a dull thud and rolled to her feet.
"Harsh…remind me not to pick you for my baseball team."
Does he ever shut up?
She'd already figured it out, but there was still that fear that he'd somehow...She flipped it over with her toe, the rumpled blanket revealing a very realistic rubber baby.
Furuta laughed and clapped. "It's just a CPR dummy! They have all these animatronics built in to make them move and make noise, it's great. Had to splatter it in some ghoul blood to confuse the scent, but it all worked out perfectly."
Furuta continued. "You know, I was going to grab a baby from a stroller or something, but then I thought, whoa, pump the breaks, you're not that kind of guy. Wouldn't want to cross a line, you know."
Akira stared over his shoulder at a destroyed apartment complex across the street and the thing that did the damage—a twin to the thing she'd witnessed deep underground except this one was not lifeless, it writhed with awful vigor. Dust still hung in the air, and she could hear a few people start screaming for help. How many people died just now?
She could only whisper, "What did you do?"
He looked at her with pity. As if she was too stupid to understand. "I had a dream and I made it happen. All I had to do was push your little One-Eyed King's buttons just right. Isn't it marvelous? A dragon!"
Slipping into shock, Akira could only stare blank-faced at him and repeat his words. "A dragon."
"Exactly!" Then he smiled in that disturbing, carefree way of his. "Cheer up. Weapons like this don't come along every day."
She could feel the grit of collapsed buildings on her skin, in her eyes, on her tongue every time she breathed…The cloud of dust kicked up by all the destruction was starting to darken the sky, like a storm just rolled in.
For once in her life, her mind was empty and she had no words.
She dumbly watched Furuta brush off his hair and his jacket as he sauntered off towards the main body of the…dragon that had taken over the skyline. He called back, "I resign, by the way."
Movement out of the corner of her eye. Kori Ui, stumbling out of a nearby production control room and falling back against the wall as he processed the devastation before him.
Juzo, too, was swaying on his feet and staring at the rubble. "What…"
Akira's legs gave out and she sat down. "I guess you guys weren't expecting that?"
No one answered.
She was alone with her thoughts for a solid minute. What do I even do now? I can't sit here doing nothing.
She climbed back to her feet and brushed herself off as best as possible. Looking at the two investigators, she said, "On your feet. We need to get to the 24th ward and figure out what's going on."
They looked at her, silent and wide-eyed, both looking like lost little boys.
"Now!" she said sharply. "You two are going to start busting your asses to atone for the fact that you backed a monster."
Ui's lip curled. "As if you're any better. Arima says jump and you jump, he says defect and you defect. Don't think I haven't figured out he had something to do with yours and Hirako's betrayal."
"You don't know what the fuck you're talking about and I recommend you shut your mouth." Akira spoke in a low snarl.
He backed down at her outburst and started checking his pockets in hopes of finding a single forgotten loosie. "I…I thought…he had a plan to somehow bring back Hairu…hell, I might even take Arima at this point."
Juzo took a shuddering breath. "And…Shinohara…"
She snapped and screamed, "He isn't dead!" Her voice carried through the rubble. "We brought him back! He's waiting for you! Who knows if he survived whatever happened in the 24th ward today, but he was alive and well when I left this morning!"
The boy froze, eyes watering. "What?"
Akira was now shouting so forcefully her voice cracked. "We wanted peace! We wanted to show you what was possible beyond just killing! We only ever wanted an end to the killing, and look at what you did!" She gestured angrily towards the ravaged city.
"I—I—" Juzo hit the release of the armor on the back of his neck. The carapace retracted, and he stood there hugging himself, looking almost frail. "Can you take me to him? I don't wanna follow…anyone else but him ever again."
She looked him over, heartsick. Just following the right orders isn't going to fix you the way you want it to, kid.
Walking over to the destroyed half of the room she peeked down at the street—now choked with some massive, monstrous snake. She backed away and tried to get her thoughts on track. "Whatever you want, Juzo. Just help me get back down to the 24th ward, without getting killed by that…thing."
Womp womp
As much as I could happily set up camp in the "underground resistance" portion of the story for so much longer, I don't want to get stuck there and I'd like to wrap this up eventually so we must move on! One of the promises I made to myself when I started was that I wasn't going to cheap out on the ending (and the grand finale is mostly laid out, it just needs a lot of polishing up) but…ngl, I'm kind of starting to get why the back nine of TG:Re was a tad rushed…
I went back and forth a lot on how to split up the last chapter, this one, and the next one…just know that I almost left this one on a much worse cliffhanger hehe
Next week: Akira doesn't want to be the only adult in the room
