The day of Sen's appointment finally arrived. Ryusei was dressed in his field outfit, with the Amazon Driver under his coat to keep a low profile. He had received a lot of stares from people as he made his way to Sen's house, which was understandable. An investigator wandering around town often meant he was patrolling for ghouls to kill.

Finally, he arrived at the door of his house. He knocked several times before waiting. Knowing her, she'd probably be late.

The week passed quickly enough, since Ryusei had done nothing but eat, talk to Sen whenever she was available, hang out with Juuzo and sleep. He and Juuzo had become like brothers. It was nice for Ryusei. Having a real family. He thought of Akira and Kotaro as big brothers and sisters, and Kishou as a father, since it was he who had trained and helped him with his Amazon side.

He looked at his lock screen on his phone and smiled. It was a photo of him with the rest of his GCC colleagues and friends taken when he was promoted after the assault. He sighed and put his phone back in his pocket.

Suddenly, the door opened and he saw Sen dressed in a warm coat and jeans. They smiled at each other.

"Ready to go?" he asked.

She nodded, however, something seemed off about her. She looked a little pale. Ryusei assumed it was because they were going to the 24th arrondissement. He took her hand and rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand.

"Hey, don't worry. If anything happens, I'll protect you. I promise." he said reassuringly.

Sen's lips curled up and she nodded slightly.

"Yeah, sure..." She said with a sheepish smile.

They walked side by side, with her holding his hand. Ryusei perfectly understood her fear of the 24th arrondissement; for civilians it was like going into a lion's cage. It reminded him of the fear he felt for his Amazon side, the fear that it would lash out and attack innocent people one day. Maybe spending time with Sen could help him overcome that. Or give him extra motivation to dominate this monster that was part of him.

A car was speeding through the streets of Tokyo. In this car was Kishou Arima. He had remembered that his deadline had passed and that the bandaged girl would reveal the truth to Ryusei. He couldn't let her. He knew Ryusei wasn't ready yet.

Fueled by his determination, he pressed harder on the gas pedal, making the car go even faster. It was a race against time.

As for Sen, her mind was telling her to give up whatever she was going to do. She didn't want to reveal herself to Ryusei. Not yet. Not until he felt completely at ease with her. Yet as much as her mind wanted to spare Ryusei, her body continued to move with her own mind. She was fighting herself, a battle that would determine both her and Ryusei's future.

The warmth of Ryusei's hand gave her great comfort. All she wanted was to be with him and not to tell him what she really was. But her body knew she had a job to do, a duty to follow, a promise that must not be broken.

Finally, they arrived in the 24th arrondissement.

"It's okay Sen, I'm with you. Everything will be fine." He said to reassure her, completely unaware of what was really going on.

On the outside, she smiles slightly at his comforting words. But inside, she was crying and screaming to back off.

Sen led Ryusei down a deserted street. There were no cars, no people, nothing at all. It was deathly silent. Ryusei himself felt a little anxious to be here. But he had to be strong, for Sen. Completely unaware that tonight would change his life forever...

They walked down the middle of the street, until Sen stopped dead in his tracks. Ryusei realized this and looked at her.

"Sen? Are you all right?" he asked, worried.

She merely looked down at her feet. Her hand left Ryusei's as her right eye began to change into the familiar black and red. That of a ghoul.

"I'm... sorry, Ryusei." she apologized.

He frowned.

"Huh? Do you want to get out of this? It's okay if you want to, I don't mind." he offered.

Sen, inside, wanted nothing more than to back off and spare Ryusei's truth. But it was too late. She couldn't turn back.

"I-It's not that... Je... I lied to you... Every day..." She said hesitantly.

"What do you mean?" Asked the young man, tilting his head in confusion.

"I'm... I'm not human..."

She looked up at Ryusei, and what he saw made his eyes widen in shock.

Her right eye looked like a ghoul's, but her left eye remained the same. But both eyes had tears in them. Ryusei took a step back.

"W-What...? You're... a ghoul? B-But how?! I've seen you eat normal food before and not feel sick or spit. How is that... ? "

He couldn't find the words to express how he felt. The girl he admired, befriended, cherished and even loved, was a ghoul all the time. His breathing slowly became erratic. While he could feel his inner amazon roaring deep inside him, it wasn't like usual...

"I'm so sorry... I just thought... I thought... Things... are very complicated. Please let me explain." Sen implored.

"I-it's going to be complicated... very complicated and above all... dangerous for both of us..." Ryusei said, clutching his chest with his hands, trying to contain his Amazon as it struggled to break through his restraints and take control. "You... you're a ghoul, and I-I'm an investigator! You know what that implies!"

Despite all he wanted to shout, he was doing his utmost to keep his Amazon side a secret, even in the GCC's inner sanctum there were very few who knew the truth.

Only Arima and the doctor who had revealed what he really was knew, so as not to alarm the others. For those who didn't know, the amazon driver was just an experimental prototype of a service weapon.

And despite all the emotions running high inside him, he refused to let Sen see it. He refused to let her see him as a monster.

"O-of course I know. But... There's a reason you were taken in by Arima from a very young age, in addition to your Amazon side." Sen began to explain.

Ryusei's eyes widened in shock and surprise.

"H-How do you know that? I-I've never told anyone else! HOW DO YOU KNOW THAT?!" He asked, his voice becoming rockier and wilder as his eyes took on a red hue.

For once in her life, she didn't know how to explain this calmly. The way she felt about this particular man was completely different from the others.

"P-Please... I know you're confused, scared and shocked but please... Listen to what I have to say." She implored as she took his hands, which for some reason calmed his inner Amazon.

He didn't know how to act. So far, she'd been civil with him, the same way he was civil with ghouls who weren't hostile. And his Amazon had calmed down at her touch... was this attempt to take control really her way of telling him to trust Sen... he had only one way of finding out.

He slowly calmed his breathing, then nodded for her to speak.

"Go ahead. Explain yourself."

"All I've ever wanted is to create a world where ghouls and humans can coexist. That's what you want too, isn't it?" Sen asked, to which he nodded slightly. "Well, I had a solution for that. But we needed someone to fill the role. We needed a one-eyed king. Someone who could find and destroy a group of human-human hybrids called V who were terrorizing both humans and ghouls. Someone like you."

"Me? I'm not a human-human hybrid. I'm a human-Amazon." Ryusei retorted, finally overcoming his initial shock and doing his best to keep calm.

"Everything. It has everything to do with you. I wasn't looking for myself. Kishou Arima was helping me. He wanted the same thing. But he couldn't do it himself, so he looked for someone else, someone who could succeed him. And when he heard about you, he took you under his wing. A hybrid between a human and a new species derived from ghouls, he found it perfect to redistribute the cards and put V in a bad position, eventually destroying them." Sen replied.

Ryusei's world had collapsed, as he realized that Arima had actually been treating him as a tool all this time. He looked down at his hands, still held by Sen.

"I'm so sorry... All this time, I've... I've seen you like..." Commentça Sen.

"A tool... Is that it? A tool to achieve your ends?" Ryusei asked bitterly, his anger rising. "THAT'S ALL I'VE EVER BEEN TO YOU!"

He looked at Sen with a mixture of rage and sorrow in his eyes.

Sen shook his head wildly.

"N-NO! NO IT'S NOT TRUE!" Sen refuted, letting his guilt and his own sadness explode.

He then took her by the shoulders, looking straight into her eyes as the tears flowed.

"So what is it? What am I to you?! For you?!"

"Ryusei! Ryusei! Please! Calm down!" Sen implored.

But despite all the legitimate anger at learning that he'd been manipulated all this time, his budding love for Sen persisted, and their mutual sadness, despite the tension, made them embrace. Using each other's shoulders to cry.

A car arrived on the scene and a man in a white coat got out. He stared at the duo through his glasses.

"Ryusei!" Arima shouted.

Ryusei looked at Kishou and gently pushed Sen aside. She stood there, eyes downcast as tears continued to flow from her eyes.

"All this time, I was just your puppet... Did you really care about me?" Ryusei asked, now calmer.

Kishou kept a neutral gaze on the boy. But inside, it hurt him to see Ryusei like this. He knew Ryusei as a jovial boy, probably the only person outside Juuzo to do his job in a good mood. But here he was now, looking calm, but seething with rage at his mentor.

"You don't know the whole story Ryusei. Let me explain..." Arima said, in one of the rare moments when we could clearly see emotion in his eyes, guilt.

"Then you'd better be clear and stop lying to me." Ryusei growled as he opened his coat, ready to transform if Arima tried anything.

Sen looked at Ryusei with tears in her eyes. She had never felt her heart beating so fast before. Her hands had never sweated as much as they did now, and she had never felt so broken inside. All this... because she'd fallen in love and the object of her affection was undergoing an existential crisis.

"The Aogiri Tree only exists to try and fight V. V is a terrorist organization whose sole aim is to "keep the world in balance". In truth, there is no balance they seek. Or at least none that anyone could benefit from. Many of the events that people think were caused by ghouls were in fact the work of V. The ghouls wanted nothing more than to live a peaceful life, at least most of them did. Sen, or rather, Eto created the Aogiri tree so that she could concentrate on leading the main battle against the group. It's the only reason they exist. For the benefit of humans and ghouls alike. But V can't be defeated so easily, unless we have our one-eyed king." Arima explained.

Ryusei simply shook his head, leaning against a mut. His whole life had been turned upside down. All this time, he'd thought that greedy, cruel ghouls or rotten GCC investigators were the real threat, but it now turned out that most of the ghouls he'd killed were actually trying to save humans. Or at least that's how he interpreted it. But her eyes widened when he said Sen had created the Aogiri Tree. He looked up at her.

"Sen... You are..." He said as he realized the truth...

The one-eyed owl, the one who would have killed or traumatized him had his Amazon not awakened... was the woman he... he loved.

She nodded slowly.

"I'm sorry, Ryusei. I didn't mean for this to happen. I didn't even know you were really. I just had to see if you were ready. But I've changed! I don't care if you become the one-eyed king! I don't want that for you!" She said as she knelt face down, begging forgiveness from the man she loves.

"So... you're the one-eyed owl..." he realized, cursing himself as his brain finally made the connection between Sen's right eye and the ghoul's code name...

But against all odds for the instigators of this vast manipulation... Ryusei burst out laughing...

"Damn, that's some evil genius." he said as he struggled to breathe between two laughs.

"Y-y-you okay?" Arima finally asked him when his protector stopped laughing.

"I wouldn't go so far as to say yes... it's all a lot to take in." Ryusei replied. So you want to make me the new one-eyed king to stop V... in that case we'll redefine the rules of the game a bit."

"W-what? You... you agree to this." Sen asked, shocked.

"I wouldn't go that far just yet. But now I'm the one holding the cards. So we're really going to change things... And I think I've got an idea. But for that, you have to do exactly what I say..."

Arima was now in a dilemma. After all this time planning and preparing his potential successor, he would now have to drop everything to rely on a plan he knew nothing about at the moment...

"Agreed." Said Sen, without any hesitation as she looked up at him still kneeling. "If it will make me forgive you, then I'll do whatever you want."

This alerted Arima, Eto didn't realize what it might involve. At the moment, she wasn't acting like the leader of the Aogiri Tree, but like a girl in love and desperate.

Ryusei then took on a gentler air, kneeling before her and placing a hand on her cheek.

"I can't forgive you right away, Sen... but... I can't hate you either... it'll take time, but maybe I'll get there. All I can promise you, whether you accept my plan or not. Is that we can start over and hope it works." He told her in a reassuring voice.

And in response, she hugged him and cried again as he rubbed her back and the back of her head. Then he turned his gaze to Arima.

"And you, do you accept?" he asked.

He hesitated for a long moment, but was forced to admit that Ryusei held all the cards at the moment. His plan depended on him, or would take years to rearrange, taking into account a variable that could constantly change the game.

He really had no choice...

"All right, then. So, what do we do..."

A few days after Ryusei learned the truth, in the GCC prison, a man holding a suitcase stepped out of the elevator and paced the different cells, as if looking for a piece of meat.

He worried the ghouls because his face was disfigured and riddled with scars, with a particularly large scar running down the left side of his face.

Some ghouls recognized him by the way he cracked the fingers of his free hand, and wore an expression of pure terror. It was Goumasa Tokage, the former investigator who had created Jason after all the torture he had endured.

He continued on his way through the cells, taking advantage of the fear he could see in the eyes of those whose gaze he crossed, until he found one who wasn't looking at him. He didn't seem to give a damn about him.

This made him smile, he had found his prey. It was a young teenager with light green hair and violet eyes.

He unlocked the cell's electronic lock, which opened the door, went inside to place his suitcase on a table and open it to take out all his torture tools, but it was then that he heard a large number of doors open.

Alerted, he went outside to see all the cell doors open.

"Oh no..."

An alarm was triggered and all available personnel mobilized to stem the tide of escape.

It was sheer carnage, with all the ghouls fighting the armed forces, trying to neutralize them, take them back to their cells and kill them.

Akuma was fighting against several of the armies, determined to get past them and get closer to freedom. He killed them and advanced to find himself facing Amazon Omega in a corridor where all the surveillance cameras had been destroyed.

"So you're going to finish what you started this time?" Akuma asked, ready to fight.

However, Amazon Omega threw him a card, and as Akuma grabbed it, it flew past him towards the prison. This action surprised Akuma, who read the card before laughing and resuming his journey to freedom, having put it away in a pocket.

"That kid's a nutcase." he said as he ran.

Once in the prison section, Amazon Omega was more concerned with preventing as many people as possible from dying. Saving as many GCC staff as possible when they were about to be killed, and killing only those ghouls willingly seeking to kill people, while neutralizing others.

Some ghouls, especially those present in the 22nd district warehouse during the operation he was part of, returned to their cells or fled as soon as they saw him taking part in the counterattack.

But one ghoul stood out from the rest, the one Tokage wanted to torture. As soon as this boy crossed Amazon Omega's path, a powerful fight broke out between the two of them. It was a ghoul with a kagune rinkaku. Even if his fight with Binge Eater had highlighted some mistakes in his tactics with this type of ghoul, attacking them from different angles made it difficult for him to defend himself while retaliating.

For him, every blow meant suffering several.

He could have finished quickly with this ghoul. But he wasn't like the other inspectors; he knew the difference between a desperate ghoul and a murderous one. And this boy was definitely desperate.

But this came at a price. Having had enough of fighting, and wanting to escape at all costs, the ghoul grabbed one of Amazon Omega's arms and bit deeply into it, making him howl in pain as blood poured out of the wound and was drunk by the ghoul for sustenance, unaware that it wasn't all human blood.

The ghoul then began to feel something happening in his body, but it was also accompanied by a pain that was unbearable for him.

He repeatedly stabbed Amazon Omega before slamming him hard against the wall between two cell doors, shattering them on impact. This stunned his opponent before he fled, taking advantage of the fact that everyone on the scene was busy with other ghouls to stop him, finally leaving the building in an explosion of red energy as he let out a roar-like scream.

"Ryusei... Ryusei!"

Ryusei regained consciousness a few minutes later, seeing Kotaro and Akira in front of him, worried.

"Are you all right?" Kotaro asked, helping him to his feet.

"Urgh, yeah, he took me by surprise. I really need to be more careful with the rinkaku." He said as he leaned against a wall, noticing when he saw his arm that his transformation was deactivated. "Did you detach the driver?"

"Yes." Akira replied. "We wanted to make sure you were okay."

"Okay, cool." He said as he felt himself getting much better. "Do we have any idea who did this?"

"According to the prison's IT department, there was a bug when a senior officer opened a cell during maintenance. But once the situation calmed down, no senior officer was present before the cells were opened." Akira explained.

That's when they heard a loud knock on a door. When they went to look, they found Tokage locked in one of the cells, screaming to be let out.

Recognizing the man, Ryuseil unlocked the door with his badge and grabbed him by the collar, pinning him against the wall.

"Who do you think you are, kid?!" The former CCG investigator shouted at the young man.

"For the one who'll disfigure you even more if you don't behave." Ryusei said before looking at his friends, finally noticing the suitcase. "You can open the suitcase, just to confirm what I'm thinking, while I search him to see what badge he might have used, since he no longer has the credentials to enter here, let alone open a door.

Kotaro nodded as Akira noticed something on the floor.

Kotaro opened the suitcase to see a whole array of tools designed specifically for torture, as well as a product he recognized as the one he could use to slow down the regeneration of ghouls during "tough" interrogations. Akira picked up what she'd found, an investigator's badge, that of Kishou Arima.

"Well, it looks like we've found the culprit. We've got enough to prove his guilt and his less than laudable intentions." Akira commented.

"And surely enough to persuade the hierarchy to finally change things, concerning rotten people like him." Ryusei grunted, arm-locking Tokage to immobilize him while they handcuffed him with a pair of handcuffs from the suitcase.