Chapter Text
Jason tasted foul.
Kaneki’s tastebuds went into overdrive after he’d taken a bite out of his first ever ghoul, practically screaming at him that what he just did was wrong, unnatural, cruel. Still, in spite of all that, it felt good. It was already perfect enough that he got the chance to get revenge on the bastard who put him through the worst hell imaginable for the past 10 days, but on top of that he felt so powerful all of a sudden, far more than he ever had up to this point. It reminded him of drinking a particularly strong energy drink from back when he was a human, only with its effects multiplied by tenfold.
‘I guess there was a hint of truth to those superstitions about ghouls eating each other after all. How fitting it is that Yamori’s the one on the receiving end of it!’ Ken gleefully pondered, looking down at his handiwork.
He could hear it now, the downed ghoul sputtering out barely coherent sounds in a poor attempt to form words as he rotted on the floor, waiting for death to inevitably come.
“Don’t… leave me here alone… please…”
Kaneki could hardly believe the audacity of the man to be asking for something like that after everything he’d done to him. How many times had he pleaded with Jason to put an end to the torment he was receiving, only to be met with laughter in response? Too many, that was for damn sure, and he wasn’t about to grant the living piece of trash any kind of release from his current suffering.
Beginning to walk away, Kaneki glanced back only for a brief moment, taking in just how pathetic Yamori looked right then. Scoffing, he practically spat out “I don’t want to be responsible for something like your life” before turning away from the blonde for good, abandoning him to his fate. He observed the room one last time as he left, noting how unnecessarily big it was for the acts of cruelty being carried out here. Not once did it ever feel like such a large space was needed for what Jason was doing, he could’ve kept Ken trapped in a worn-down shack and achieved the same result. It was so… wasteful.
‘Doesn’t matter at this point’ he thought, finally reaching the gigantic door that led to the outside, ‘Nothing about the last 10 days have been necessary’.
Opening it and exiting out of the large, grandiose torture chamber for the first time since he’d fully embraced being a ghoul, Kaneki was met not with the sight of the stairway leading down from the room that he’d entered through what felt like a lifetime ago, but instead some kind of worn-out, broken-down lobby to a building he didn’t recognize. He was slightly surprised that there was any kind of structure left standing at all, seeing how poor of a condition it was in. Pieces of the walls had fallen off entirely, with fragments and chunks scattered all across the floor, moonlight flooded in through gaping holes in the ceiling, and dusty old furniture littered the space intermittently, looking like it hadn’t been touched in decades.
What grabbed the white-haired ghoul’s attention more than anything else, however, was the man wandering around at the other end by some of the chain doors, seemingly unaware of the newcomer’s presence.
He looked like he was about as lost as Kaneki felt, judging by the way he nervously glanced at his surroundings like he expected someone to jump out and attack him at any moment. In one hand he held an old fashioned style lantern that emitted a barely noticeable halo of light around the small flame burning inside, while the other was kept close to his stomach, as if it was in pain, and a closer look revealed why: two of his fingers were missing, with a haphazard bandage wrapped over the stubs of where they used to be in order to stop any blood that might have been flowing out of them. This must have been recent
‘He should consider himself lucky that’s the only body part he’s lost’
The fact that they hadn’t regrown suggested he was a human, at least, which ruled out the possibility of him being a member of Aogiri. Was he with the CCG, then? It seemed unlikely, looking at his lack of uniform and quinque, but then what could he be doing here?
Kaneki ultimately decided he didn’t need to find out, and stuck to the corner to try and sneak his way past the man and get out of here undetected. He knew he could win any fight that might break out with ease, but he’d rather not be forced to hurt anybody that he didn’t have to right now. Unfortunately for Ken, while the man may not have noticed him, the dog sitting by the entrance did, and in an instant it was barking like crazy at the ghoul. A quick glance back revealed to Kaneki the gun that was now pointed directly at him, as well as the glaring look of fury on the face of its wielder, and it was clear that any chance he had of escaping quietly had just gone out the window.
'Shit.'
Mike, Sanatorium
01:26
Mike was startled by the sound of the wolf barking its head off, and then again when he turned around and saw that he was no longer alone in the sanatorium’s chapel.
“Fuck!” he yelled out in surprise, immediately unholstering the revolver he’d just found a few moments earlier from the pocket of his jeans and pointing it at the figure. The intruder stopped in his tracks upon being noticed, but didn’t seem too concerned at the implicit threat of being shot. If anything, he looked mostly annoyed about the situation, and Mike would’ve felt insulted if he wasn’t already overflowing with a mixture of fear and anger that clouded his mind.
“Hold it right fucking there!” He shouted as clearly and confidently as he could, although even he could tell that there was more shakiness to his demeanor than he’d have preferred. The boy complied for now, saying in a calm, quiet, and somber voice “I’m not your enemy.” It was just barely audible to the teen standing on the other side of the room, who could only be confused by such a statement.
“Oh yeah? Is that why you tore Jess’ jaw clean off her goddamn head you murderer? Don’t try to feed me that bullshit!” Contrary to his own words, Mike was having doubts about whether this really was the guy who killed Jessica or not. He didn’t get a good look at the figure who was at the mineshaft where he found her body, but he was pretty sure that he didn’t have white hair, and his clothes were definitely different as well. Still, he wasn’t trusting anybody he didn’t recognize in a place like this, especially someone with an appearance as strange as them.
The hair color didn’t stand out on its own, but that combined with him looking like he couldn’t’ve been more than a year or two older than him made it feel out of place on such a young person. On top of that, his outfit hardly seemed fitting for the freezing cold mountains of Blackwood Pines, it being composed of just a ragged black shirt and shorts that were torn right above the kneecaps, suggesting that they may have been pants at some point. This all combined with the wild glare in his eyes gave the man a certain feral look to him, which made Mike more on edge than he already was.
The mention of Jessica’s death caused the boy’s gaze to soften for a brief moment, a hint of sympathy present in his stare. “I’m not the ghoul that ate your friend…” he begins, the tone in his voice remaining unchanged as he glanced slightly down, letting his bangs cover his eyes, “...but it sounds like you won’t believe me no matter what I say.”
Michael just barely had enough time to think ‘The hell is a ghoul?’ before suddenly a giant, blood red tentacle exploded out from his back, as long as he was tall. It was grotesque, like a slab of raw meat, making a disgusting fleshy sound as it extended upwards in a curved motion, stopping only once it was pointing directly at Mike.
Staring in shock at the impossible sight in front of him, it took everything in his power to not immediately lower his gun and do anything he could to get away from whatever the hell that thing was.
“What the fuck!?”
“I’m giving you the chance to walk away from this peacefully, you’ll be much better off if you did.” The implication behind a statement like that was obvious, and every part of him screamed at himself to do as he was told.
But then the image flashed in his mind of Jessica’s corpse sprawled out across the mine’s elevator, the completely lifeless look in her eyes combined with the gory sight of the bottom half of her face missing. He remembered her terrified screams as she was dragged through the cabin’s window, and how he was too slow to save her because he wasn’t brave enough to take the risks necessary to get to her in time. Mike couldn’t make that mistake again, and by this point he had no doubt that this was the one who took Jess. No normal human could have dragged her as far and as quickly as she was, and it was obvious that this ‘person’, whatever he was, wasn’t human. So, putting all his fears and disbelief to the side, Michael Munroe did the only thing he could think of to do in a situation like this.
He fired.
The bullet struck the monster clean in the shoulder, going straight through and making a noticeable clanking sound as it hit the wall behind him and fell to the floor. Mike watched as he stumbled backwards, feeling a small degree of pride at having managed to hurt it in a meaningful way.
‘How’s that feel ya fuck?’
His confidence then quickly was shattered when the boy stopped stumbling and remained on his feet, seemingly unaffected by having just been shot. That wasn’t what caused the sudden sense of dread to fall over him, though. Instead, that’d be the thin needle-like threads that emerged from his open wound, quickly patching it up and causing the bullet hole to close within a matter of seconds, as if it was never there to begin with.
‘Holy Shit! This can’t be fucking happening!’ Mike was beginning to realize just how poorly of a decision he had made, and he took a few cautious steps backwards to put some more distance between himself and the demon which, having fully healed, finally looked back up, revealing his left eye to be a sickening mix of black and red that stared daggers straight through Mike.
“I guess it can’t be helped. Just remember that you were the one who chose this.” Suddenly, the tentacle shot forward and wrapped around him with ease, restricting his arms at his sides and forcing him to drop his revolver in the process.
“Shit!” He yelled out as he was lifted into the air, his struggling and writhing doing very little to help him break free. The creature began to walk towards him slowly, the tentacle gradually receding into his back as needed to ensure that Mike remained in place despite the distance between them shortening. He could do nothing but look on fearfully as it approaches, realizing that he was in a lot of trouble if he didn’t find some way to get out of this soon. “What the fuck are you, you little freak!?” He shouted, but only got the appendage tightening around him as a response.
If the monster was affected by the insult then it didn’t show it, coming to a stop only once it was standing directly in front of him. “I would’ve thought that you’d be able to recognize a ghoul when you see one.” He said it as if Mike’s supposed to know what a ghoul is, and unless this person is an actual ghost (maybe the white hair would make sense, in that case) then he absolutely did not. He pauses for a moment, as if pondering over the method he’d like to use to put an end to Mike in the most painful way imaginable. His gaze then becomes far less harsh after a moment of consideration, however.
“You’ve lost somebody recently, and for that reason I won’t kill you. Don’t let me see your face again.”
This was followed by a sudden jerk from the tentacle as it shot to the side, releasing Mike in the process. He cried out as he was sent flying in the air, but that’s cut off after less than a second once his body collided with one of the Sanatorium’s walls, and everything went dark after that.
Kaneki, Sanatorium Grounds
01:28
Kaneki loomed over the now prone, motionless body of the man who shot him, making sure that he was both still alive as well as incapacitated and unable to attack him any further. The fact that he was breathing confirmed the former, and his unconscious state heavily suggested the latter. There was a certain degree of disgust that the ghoul felt when looking at how powerless he was, and how easily he’d been able to dispose of him.
‘It’s no wonder he wasn’t able to save his friend, if that’s how weak he is. Who could he ever protect?’ He thought to himself, before turning away and heading towards what he presumed to be the exit to this place.
It wasn’t hard to find, being pretty much a straight path to get out, so during the walk he got to thinking about where he actually was. This definitely wasn’t Aogiri Tree’s hideout anymore, at least not the one that he remembered. Was he moved at some point during his ten days of torment, and he was just too distracted by the pain to realize it? Kaneki felt like he would’ve remembered such a thing happening, but a lot’s changed about him recently, so maybe his memory was affected as well.
Regardless, getting out of here would almost certainly give him a better picture of where in Tokyo he was, so he put his speculations to the side until after he opened the double doors that finally led to the outside, revealing…
A vast, isolated, and mountainous snowy landscape that stretched on for kilometers, with hardly a building in sight.
For the first time since eating Jason, Kaneki's confident demeanor began to falter as his eyes widened in shock.
‘No, that can’t be right!’ he thought, internally panicking a bit. ‘This… this isn’t in Tokyo at all! Wh-Where am I?!’ Whatever the case may be, however he got to a place like this, the fact of the matter was that he was somewhere far, far away from Tokyo and any of its wards, and his hopes of getting back to his friends were shrinking by the minute.
Of course, his mind then also went to the question of how he’d fulfill some of the more… unsavory needs he had as a ghoul in such an isolated place with almost no other people. He thought back to the man he’d encountered just a few moments before, and how vulnerable and defenseless he was right now.
‘It’d be so easy to feast on him, he’s practically served up to me on a platter…’ His mouth waters at the thought, but then he shakes his head to try and break himself out of that state of mind. In spite of everything that’d happened to him, he still refused to become a monster and eat an innocent human.
The opportunity presented to him wasn’t so easy to resist, however, especially given his admittedly fragile grasp of sanity at the current moment.
‘Is he innocent? He did shoot me, after all. Besides, who knows when the next time I’ll see an actual person is. This could be my last chance to sustain myself for days, maybe even weeks.’ It took quite a bit of effort on Kaneki’s part to not immediately turn around and make a mad dash towards the human back in the building, kagune out and ready to feast.
‘Wouldn’t it be nice to wash out Yamori’s awful taste with something so much better?’
Fortunately, he was able to spot a structure slightly off into the distance, one with a blinking red light at the top that he could just barely make out. ‘A fire tower! Maybe up there I can find out more about where it is I’ve been taken to’ he thought, finally able to get his mind off of his endless hunger. It was as good a plan as any, and crucially gave him some actual direction in figuring out how to get out of here, so he focused on that for now.
Having an excuse to leave the man behind, Kaneki began to take his first steps out into the freezing cold landscape, uncertain about what lay ahead. Despite everything, a fresh wave of determination fell over him as he did so, and he gazed up at the faint, red light as if it was a beacon guiding him forward, leading him the way back home.