Akira drops an F bomb. There were no survivors.
Thanks in large part to the Quinx, the Rosé investigation started to move very quickly, the orders came down, and the mobilization took off at a rapid pace. It always amazed her how quickly the CCG could pull together massive operations, like a swarm of bees descending in unison on an enemy of the hive.
Akira would stay with Arima and the rookies of Squad Zero, to guard the main office. They would also be prepared to respond to any other significant incidents that might occur elsewhere.
Akira had often been a part of the last line of defense in her early days under Arima's command. It was boring, but since Aogiri Tree had a habit of using misdirection and launching multiple devastating attacks at once, it couldn't be neglected. When they needed the last line, they really needed the last line.
Which is how she'd found herself dressed to kill—literally—sitting on the steps in the main office's nerve center, trying to ignore the chatter around her.
It did no good to listen in on the carnage during nights like this. There was nothing she could do to help, so it was better to stay ready and wait for the order to mobilize coming through the dedicated radio channel.
After downing the red eye coffee a couple of days ago, she'd learned her lesson. No shaking all day and crashing as soon as she stood still for too long. She was sipping on a cup of green tea. It was pleasant and had just enough caffeine to keep fatigue from setting in. She was buckled in for what promised to be a long, difficult night.
Until something happened, she was left alone with her thoughts.
She'd asked around about the other potential culprit and nothing about him seemed perfectly innocent or perfectly guilty. He was Kijima's younger partner and that fact alone made her suspicious. Even she felt sickened at Kijima's techniques in recent weeks. A junior partner to Kijima could be totally innocent, or he could be fostering a hatred for the CCG as a result of watching Kijima, or he could be encouraging Kijima's disregard for CCG protocol.
Whatever the truth was, it was clear that she couldn't take him off her list just yet.
One of the kids on deck was quietly messing with his radio, jumping between the channels of different teams.
"—need backup on the sixth floor! We've got another group—"
"—got a lot of casualties here, and he's still not down! I don't know what Aogiri is doing here but—"
"—the assault copter took it down. We've got Sasaki on the roof watching—"
Akira finally had enough. She spoke as calmly as she could, "Leave your radio on our channel, please, Shio. You'll get to hear everything when the official reports start coming in."
He looked at her and blinked once. "You're right. I'm sorry, investigator Mado."
She nodded and went back to nursing her green tea.
"If that was Haise you were correcting, he'd be half conscious on the floor." Hirako had sidled up next to her, unobtrusive as always. "Why so gentle now?"
"Maybe I've cultivated patience through painful effort."
"Ah, so that's the secret."
Akira smiled at his deadpan retort. She liked working with Take—he was one of those guys who kept his head down and was quietly excellent at his job. No ego, no drama.
He sat on the steps near her, and they both looked out over the skeleton crew of the main office's control room—managing any civilian and military organizations that needed to be kept in the loop, coordinating rear support for the operation, and monitoring any situations that might call for Squad Zero.
As always, Arima was standing towards the back of the room in silence, eyes darting from monitor to monitor behind his glasses.
"Tell me, Akira. Would you rather be sitting here or on the front lines like when we were fighting in the 20th ward and the Auction?"
"The front lines every time, Take. You know that."
He leaned back and crossed his arms. "You're still that hungry for action after everything we've seen?"
"No. I'm sick of the front lines. But as long as we keep marching into battle, I'd rather be there to protect my people."
Take was silent for a long time, but Akira was used to that. In the meantime, she finished her tea.
"I like that answer. When you have some free time, come talk to me. I have a couple of things I want to discuss with you."
The big news started to roll in first after the active operation was finished. Hairu Ihei was one of the first to die. Shocking. Kuramoto Ito had some serious thoracic wounds—he was being rushed into surgery, but his prognosis was ok.
Shirazu was gone, though he took Noro with him. That was a punch to the gut. He'd grinned and waved boisterously at her as he was loading up in the transport, just a couple of hours ago. And now he was gone.
The Governess was dead, and so was Kijima. Interestingly, his partner Furuta was found crying in the middle of the massacre, the sole survivor and uninjured to boot. Whatever that means, it doesn't go in the "innocent" column.
And the One-Eyed Owl had shown up, but Haise had beaten back the kakuja for now. He'd also thrown the younger Tsukiyama off the roof, but that body was not yet confirmed.
Even though she hadn't participated, Akira felt a certain emptiness that followed all great battles. She'd never before stopped to examine the feeling, but after a moment, she was able to pinpoint it: Standing in the wreckage, seeing the list of fallen comrades grow, it was hard to feel like the fighting was truly worth it.
Akira headed towards the locker room as soon as the operation was declared over. Her path took her through a stream of returning combatants.
The first to return were the walking wounded. They were ferried back to the CCG's in-house doctors to be patched up and sent home.
Soon after, the Quinx squad came in, looking beaten and haunted. And Shirazu—the professional part of Akira's brain screeched to a halt and shoved that thought into a compartment for later.
They all looked terrible, unable to meet her eyes as they plodded dejectedly past her. Haise appeared the worst off—hair matted with blood and a fresh trickle running down the side of his face, clothing torn and dirty. He'd taken a beating.
Because he was upright and moving under his own power, it took her a moment to realize what was off—he was missing an arm.
She felt a moment of outrage for whoever had organized the withdrawal from the Lunar Eclipse building. Who cares if he's an artificial ghoul. He's been horribly wounded fighting for the CCG, and no one can spare him a gurney?
"Haise," she said before she could stop herself.
His steps faltered for a moment. "Akira," he said in an emotionless voice.
The stiff posture, the expressionless face, the way he stared dead ahead…
She stared at him. "You're not—" Haise. "—okay."
"No. I'm not okay. I had an arm ripped off and I lost a subordinate." Haise paused and looked her way out of the corner of his eye. He was looking far more hostile than she'd ever seen him before. "You said to focus on being a good husband and father. I told you Touka was pregnant, but I never told you we got married. Stay out of my business, Mado, or we're going to have a serious problem."
As he walked off, her heart ached for the pain he was in. More than that though, she felt a growing unease in her gut.
He's right. I let that slip yesterday. I'm still being outplayed.
He disappeared down the hallway towards where Dr. Shiba was giving checkups to the Quinx. If she knew him at all, he probably would avoid being seen until his arm grew back.
She sighed and tabled that thought.
There was a sudden commotion when the news hit that the Tsukiyama prisoner transport had been attacked, but it was over so quickly that there wasn't any time to deploy backup. The call went out and she raced for the transport reserved for Squad Zero, but it was nixed before she even got to the doors.
Of course. Normally we'd have much more security on that, but no one was expecting Mirumo to surrender that fast so it was thrown together in haste. Sloppy of us.
Losing the elder Tsukiyama was a bitter pill to swallow after all the death that went into his capture.
Once she changed out of her combat gear and finally got back to her personal cell phone—stashed in her locker to minimize distractions—she first noticed a series of texts from Touka.
Akira, I need to ask you a couple of questions about something the CCG is doing.
Then, It's important, or I wouldn't be pressing you for information. I'll explain why, call me.
Akira?
And lastly, Were you there? Did you survive?
She found herself unsettled by what Touka must have meant, but again, she had more important things to attend to—now that she wasn't a first responder, she wanted to get informed on how the battle unfolded until she was cleared to go home.
Heading back into the main staging area for returning investigators, she began to gather bits and pieces of what had truly unfolded. She listened to a couple of uninjured investigators recount their evening from behind the front lines.
After listening to a few accounts from different vantage points, she had a clearer picture of how it went. And it was starting to sound like a big, bloody slaughterhouse.
One of the forensics teams rolled in through the door soon after. They'd likely already delivered various samples to the labs. They would spend the coming days reconstructing the battle as accurately as possible for future analysis.
Most other investigators wrote off the research division, preferring to stay in their own lane. Akira knew from long experience, though, that the lab rats were the guys to talk to for juicy developments. "Anything interesting to report?"
They all glanced at each other. The younger-looking one spoke up. "Well, we were put in charge of locating the body of Shu Tsukiyama and…we couldn't."
She pressed the heel of her palm between her eyes and tried to massage away the stress. "So there's no body for Tsukiyama Junior, and the transport for Tsukiyama Senior was attacked? We didn't capture or kill our primary targets?"
"Yeah." He looked around to make sure no one would overhear him. "I think I know how it happened. We found enough trace kagune residue to run some tests on a couple of nearby bodies. The field tests are never super accurate, but there was a match with a pretty good confidence interval when we ran the results through the database. Wherever Tsukiyama is, he's with the Black Rabbit."
No…
She had to be wrong.
She was cleared to go home very quickly, along with all of Squad Zero. They had been held in reserve the whole night, so they had nothing to contribute to any debriefs.
She took a detour on the way home, though.
Akira stormed into the still-lit café, ignored the yelling of the woman who had been nodding off behind the counter—a face she recognized as one of the openers she'd never spoken to—and marched straight through the door to the back room where she was met with a table full of ghouls.
Including the missing, not-confirmed-dead Tsukiyama heir. Beaten and haggard, but alive.
Akira couldn't hold back her anger. "Oh, what the fuck, Touka?!"
The ghouls had all frozen at the investigator charging in, but the familiar way she addressed their beloved manager snapped them out of it.
Yomo and Nishiki were among them, and they held back Tsukiyama and the guy in the bow tie when they tried to jump up and attack her.
When the shouting died down, she crossed her arms and snarled, "We found traces of your kagune outside the Lunar Eclipse building. Do you want to explain how that happened?"
"Akira…"
"Look me in the eye when you answer me. How many investigators did you kill tonight?"
"Two, but only because they were about to attack Tsukiyama."
Akira was nearly vibrating with anger. "Are you trying to get yourself killed? Do you want me to kill you?"
Touka looked back at her, sad but determined. "It wasn't about killing investigators. It wasn't about ghouls versus investigators at all. I had to return the favor for the tip-off about the parking garage ambush." She gestured to a petite young woman sitting next to Tsukiyama. The new girl waved cheerfully at Akira.
Why does she look so familiar? Isn't she a human who's wanted by the CCG for questioning?
"Besides," continued Touka. "I can't sit back and let someone die when they ask for my help."
Akira shook her head. "This was an awful night. A lot of people died. And now I have to go to memorial services all next week, while the reason they died is sitting right there." She pointed a shaking finger at Tsukiyama. "And I have to pretend I don't know where he is. No, that's not true. I don't have to pretend. I did this to myself."
"Yeah, you're right, this sucks!" Touka raised her voice. "Nothing about this is okay! Nothing about it has ever been okay! It's always been bitter and miserable, but we keep going and pretending nothing is wrong because if we let that mask slip, we're doomed. Welcome to our side of things."
Resisting the urge to pull her hair out, Akira stomped over to the table and aggressively pulled out an empty chair. She sat directly across from Tsukiyama and aimed a death stare at him.
"You."
He shrunk back, eyes darting around the room. "Miss Kirishima, what's the meaning of this?"
Akira snapped her fingers, drawing his attention back. "Eyes on me. You have thirty seconds to convince me that you deserve to live."
His lip wobbled and he burst into tears. "I don't! They all gave their lives for me and I'm not worth it!"
Tsukiyama then laid his head on the table and started sobbing in earnest.
"As long as we both agree you're worthless." It was evident that there would be no productive conversation with Tsukiyama. Not that she wanted that. She wasn't sure what she wanted.
She stood up and waved for Touka to follow her out into the front of the café.
As the door swung shut behind them, a wail of "La tristesse! Le désespoir!" followed them.
Touka looked at the woman up front. "Irimi, can you go back there and slap him out of it or something?"
"Is it safe to leave you alone with her?"
Touka nodded.
The other woman, Irimi, glanced between the ghoul and the investigator. "Okay then, but yell if you need me."
Akira slumped into a chair.
"All my employees know that I'm hanging out with a dove now. They're already talking about how I'm pregnant, but they know I'll blow a gasket if they ask for details."
"I'm shocked you kept it relatively quiet this long." The fire of her rage had burned out quickly. Now, Akira could only speak in a measured monotone. "It doesn't matter. Congratulations, you did it. I'm in too far now. Even if I turned around and dragged him back to the CCG, told them everything, I'd be arrested and probably executed on the spot."
"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry."
For some reason, Akira thought of Maris Stella. She'd often thought of the cat as a friend, very nearly a person—until the first time Akira caught her tearing a bird apart on her balcony. She didn't begrudge the cat its cat nature, but she also never again forgot that her sweet pet was, at the end of the day, a predator.
In a quiet voice, Akira said, "I was starting to think you were different."
That cut Touka deeply. Her eyes started watering to the point where she blinked the tears away. She looked over at a broken teacup displayed on a nearby shelf, then reached out to touch it.
"We just want to be left alone. You'll never leave us alone, though, so we have to keep fighting. It's not…I don't blindly hate investigators anymore. I don't. But I don't want to watch any more ghouls I know die, either. I don't know how to make that happen without killing."
"That's an elegant explanation for why this little partnership is doomed in the end."
The ghoul closed her eyes, looking heartbroken. "Kaneki really believed there could be a better way forward. I've only seen my side and you've only seen yours, but he's seen both and he never thought it was impossible. I've put my trust in that, at least for now."
So optimistic.
Akira's eyes were stinging and her throat was aching from holding back tears for so long. She cleared her throat and changed the subject. "On the subject of your husband, he's not doing well. I don't know the finer details of what happened on that rooftop. Maybe you should ask Tsukiyama about that," she spat. "In any case, he was deeply affected. He wasn't…himself when he returned to the main office afterwards."
She noticed, offhandedly, that the stupid pot of fuchsia peonies Haise had gifted Touka were sitting on the counter next to the register.
Touka looked down at her fidgeting hands, clearly uneasy at Akira's words. "We both know he pretends everything's okay when it's not. He's been pushed too far for too long, I think. I kept wondering what I could do to try and keep ahold of him before he slips through my fingers again. At least this time I got a bit of leverage to try and pin him in place. If what happened tonight set him off, I hope that's enough."
"Tell me if you still think that after you talk to him."
The ghoul lowered her head, an unhappy look on her face. After a moment, she took a deep breath and blurted out: "I don't know if this would be too…messed up…but we can donate some catering to the funerals."
The blonde leaned over the table, covering her eyes with her hand. It's too bright in here.
"You mean blood coffee instead of blood money?"
"Either one. I mean it. Some travel food influencer put us on a list of hidden gems to check out when in Tokyo, so we can afford to be generous."
Akira barked out a laugh at the absurdity of it all. "Fine. Anonymously donate your mimaikin to the memorial fund. Donate to my Botox fund while you're at it." She rubbed at the spot between her eyebrows where her stress headaches tended to start.
The beleaguered investigator stood to leave, but suddenly remembered why she'd been in the records room yesterday to begin with. She reached into her jacket pocket and grabbed a folded-up bulletin for a CCG person of interest. "Here. Quit running around like you're invincible and get checked out by a doctor. Maybe get an actual due date."
Touka unfolded the page, covered in phrases like speaking out against countermeasure law, medical treatment for ghouls and likely responsible for recent increases in student groups of ghoul sympathizers. "Dr. Ogura, huh? Haven't I seen him on TV?"
"Yep. Exercise caution, he's under CCG surveillance. I'm going to go home, question all my life choices, and go to sleep. Same as every night."
When she finally made it through her door, she could barely put one foot in front of the other.
She was halfway to her bedroom when she noticed something was off. A single light in her kitchen was on, and there was a glass of water on the table. Akira sniffed the air. That wasn't all. Some instant noodles were cooking in her microwave.
"I saw the commotion in the city, and I guessed you were a part of it."
Akira turned around to face Amon, standing in the kitchen. He was dressed more casually than she'd ever seen him, in jeans and a long-sleeve T-shirt. It was strange to see him standing there, back from the dead in her boring kitchen wearing boring clothes, and at the same time it was the most welcome sight in the world.
She finally couldn't hold back anymore. Her face crumpled and tears spilled down her cheeks. "I'm just so tired. I don't know whose side I'm on, and I don't know what I'm doing anymore."
He wrapped his arms around her and held her as she cried. He even rested his chin on top of her head. Too tall.
How long has it been since anyone held me?
Not since before my dad died, certainly.
"I understand, Akira. I'm here."
He let her finish her crying, then gently guided her to sit at the table, drink some water, and eat.
"I know your heart is in the right place, but eating instant noodles in the middle of the night is a sign that you've lost control of your life," she said between bites.
He laughed. He'd made himself coffee, too, so he wouldn't just sit there and awkwardly watch her eat. "You're the one that bought them. I'm just working with what was in the cupboard."
"I know. Usually there's not a witness when I eat instant noodles in the middle of the night."
She continued eating. Between bites, she gave Amon a quick rundown of everything that had happened that night.
After she finished her midnight snack and tidied her kitchen, she brought her glass of water with her and sat on the couch. Amon followed with his coffee.
"You said you don't know whose side you're on anymore."
"I have a growing suspicion of the CCG. Even if I could back out of my involvement with the ghoul café at this point, I don't think I could go back to the CCG with what I know."
"Tell me."
So Akira tried to tie together what few clues she had. Eyepatch had bypassed the RC gates long before he's been on the CCG's roster. His kakuho had come from a ghoul that was somehow from the Sunlit Garden, and a male investigator from there had some involvement with her. That investigator had infiltrated the Clowns and was looking to destroy the CCG, according to a ghoul informant of debatable reliability.
And…the whispers of an organization called V that seemed to be lurking in the shadows.
She remembered an offhanded comment from Marude, how the leadership just kept sending good men to die. She wrote it off at the time, but it had lodged in her brain and grown sharper and sharper. That thought was rapidly wearing a hole in her loyalty for the CCG, especially on nights like tonight when good men and women were thrown into a meat grinder for the glory of men like Matsuri Washu.
We need the CCG, though. People have a right to not be murdered. Ghouls murder people. Except…it's not that simple, is it? Some of them eat suicides and only fight because they're trying to protect each other. It almost seems like some of them have the same right to not be murdered.
Amon listened carefully with a frown. She recognized that look of consideration.
"What are you thinking?"
He took a deep breath and, after several false starts, he spoke. "When he rescued me from Aogiri, Nagachika warned me to stay hidden to avoid Kano's men and Aogiri, and to stay away from the CCG. I thought…" He held up his misshapen hand and clenched it into a fist. "I thought it was because I would be exterminated on sight. Now I wonder if it was because he knew something we don't about the CCG…"
The blonde tapped a finger to her lips in thought. "Maybe."
Then Amon told her about his brief forays into a parallel line of investigation: peeking into the CCG's suspicious actions surrounding the Yasuhisa family and the Sphinx corporation, and their dealings with RC suppressant precursors.
"That reminds me—Nagachika used RC suppressant grenades. He must have obtained them from someone inside the CCG."
Now that piqued her interest. Those were still so experimental, she could track down the fate of the few dozen that had been produced. "I think I can find out where he got them."
Then she slouched, considering the bigger picture. "It'll be a slog, though. We have so little information to work from, and it's all siloed between ghouls, investigators, and maybe Nagachika."
"So work the case." He looked at her with a steady gaze. "Your father taught me that. Keep pulling at a thread long enough, and you can unravel the whole thing."
We might end up unraveling a lot more than we bargain for.
Exhaustion hit her, and she tipped her head back to rest on the couch cushion. Amon put his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close to him.
She fought through the heavy weight of sleep pulling her eyelids shut to say, "Next we track down Nagachika, then."
"But first you need to sleep." He helped her stand, and walked her to her bedroom.
This is actually getting embarrassing. "Okay."
That's a big chapter, but I couldn't decide where best to split it so there you go.
My sad midnight snack preference is actually corndogs.
Next week: Akira receives a compliment.