Chapter Text
My first memory is that of laying on my back in my bassinet, staring upwards at a small mobile. It was of a group of multicolored rubber balls-- juggling balls-- spinning around in a circle slowly, while a tune played, softly. It was a sad, melancholic song, and that haunts me more than anything else. It sounded like a song one would play at a funeral.
Nextly I remember seeing my own reflection. I was young, still, but old enough to stumble around on my own two feet. I was at Uta's HySy studio, I know now, and I encountered a mirror.
My face was the picture of childhood innocence. Round with baby fat and framed by locks of bright orange hair that was dark-- almost black-brown-- around the roots. My eyes were as brown as the chocolate humans loved. My reflection was quite confusing to me. I seemed to look too fragile, too tiny, compared to everyone else. Uta, who was barely more than a teenager at the time I was born, but was at the time of this memory twenty-three and just beginning HySy, was present in the reflection of the floor-length mirror in which I gazed. My two-year-old eyes widened as I pressed my chubby palms onto the cold glass.
Itori was behind me, suddenly, her hands on my small shoulders.
"Never seen your reflection before, kiddo?"
"Nu-uh, I-tan."
"Well then, remember this, okay? That person in the mirror is you. You are Hideyoshi. And first and foremost, you are a clown. You're like me and Uta. I don't care if your dad says otherwise-- you smile and nod and agree, but remember that we are the clowns, and we always get the last laugh."
Uta chuckled, and came closer to Itori and I. He tossed me a paper-covered mask, which I barely managed to catch and eagerly tore into, revealing a jumble of bright colors.
A clown mask, with a bright green face and a crimson nose. An orange circle covered the right eye, where there was a large circle opening. The left eye was merely a slit, allowing the wearer to see out of but none to see in.
Uta flashed a crooked smile, his dyed eyes gleaming.
"If you're going to be a clown, you'll need a mask."
"Pierrot. Focus on the current predicament, please."
Reality was cruel in calling me back from my reminiscing, but I suppose it couldn't be helped.
"But you're more than capable than of dealing with them by yourself, No-Face." I complain, sighing.
"What happened to respect for your elders?" Uta scoffed, putting his tattooed hands on his hips. "Are you too chicken to deal with them on your own, Pierrot? Or are you too much of a ba-by?"
"You're not that much older than I am, No-Face." I muttered. "I personally couldn't care who dealt with them-- whoa there, getting a little feisty, aren't you?"
"Don't talk about us like we ain't here!" The orange-haired investigator demanded, retracting his sword-like quinque from the ground near my feet. It had missed my foot by inches. "Tch. Damn ghouls."
His purple-haired companion rolled his eyes, but remained silent. His pose was much more confident and his stance much more controlled and ready than his lax orange-haired partner, and I pegged him to be the most dangerous of the two.
Uta sighed dramatically, shrugging. "Oh well, suppose it can't be helped. I am a bit hungry, so maybe this is a good encounter."
"I'd hope you were hungry. That's the entire reason we came out hunting."
"I probably could have waited, but I was bored." Uta admitted.
"Why'd you drag me along with you if you were just bored?" I queried, a bit irritably. "Father had a new experiment he requested my assistance on and I put him off so that we could go hunting tonight."
A sudden ripping sound tore through the dank alley, drawing my and Uta's attention back to the two investigators, just as a sharp projectile shot towards me. I danced out of the path of the projectile easily, almost with an otherworldly ease.
It was from the orange-haired investigator. Unbelievably, a kagune had emerged from his back. An ukaku, colored as brightly as his hair. And as for the sharp projectile buried in the dark walls of the building behind me, well, it didn't actually appear that dangerous, on a closer inspection.
He's weak.
"Ooh, investigators with a kagune. That's new." Uta remarked, his eyes widening with excitement. "I'm officially not bored anymore."
"Oi! I told ya, you stupid ghouls, quit talkin'!"
"Actually, you said, 'Don't talk about us like we ain't here!' immediately followed by 'Tch. Damn ghouls.' You said nothing about talking in general." I retorted calmly. "No-Face, I do hope that you'll help me with this. I'm not going to kill your food for you."
"Oh, I wouldn't ask you to. Fine, Fine, let's see..." Uta seemed to disappear for a moment, reappearing behind them. He didn't actually disappear, and my eyes followed his movements with little difficulty, but to a human it would appear that he vanished and materialized.
Uta sniffed the orange haired investigator deeply, his nose almost touching the investigator's neck. Said investigator yelped in a not-so-manly way and swung his quinque at Uta instinctively, but Uta was already back beside me, chuckling.
"I like this one. He smells interesting. I'll take him, you take the purple haired one?"
"Why not? But let's make it quick, No-Face? Father wasn't too pleased with my leaving to hunt, and I wish to get back soon."
"It won't take long to wrap these two up," Uta agreed.
And no more words were needed. Off like a shot, I charged the purple haired investigator. His shirt tore as a kagune shot out of his shoulder and engulfed his arm, and the koukaku was swung up a split second before my hand would have snapped the investigator's arm at the elbow. The orange-haired investigator that Uta attacked, it seemed, was slower than his companion, because his pain-filled scream echoed through the alleyway. Distantly I heard footsteps-- a companion perhaps? Oh well. They were miles away, and another Dove was nothing to fret about.
The orange haired investigator panted, but stood his ground with gleaming eyes and one arm hanging limply at a crooked angle.
"Set your arm back, Shirazu, you idiot. If it starts healing, then you're screwed and they'll have to re-break it." The purple haired investigator commented irritably. I was fascinated by his lack of concern for his partner. I thought doves were supposed to care about one another?
Father will be pleased by my discovery that some Doves can be apathetic assholes to one another, I mused, maybe some humans aren't so bad.
"Thanks, Urie!" The orange-haired investigator whom I presumed to be Shirazu exclaimed, apparently in the dark to the fact that his companion's advice, however correct it may be, was said merely out of spite.
I wasted no time in bringing my knee up as hard as I possibly could, nailing the purple haired investigator in the chest. He stumbled back, one hand clutching his chest-- it appeared that I had broken ribs, but I wasn't sure-- while blood leaked out of the corner of his mouth. It wasn't a lot, but I was surely disappointed.
"Humans... are so fragile," I murmured.
"Going soft on me, Pierrot?" Uta questioned, wheeling his body in an abrupt twist to kick the orange investigator in the side. Said investigator slammed into the alleyway wall hard enough for the glass to shatter in the window above the impact zone.
"No. Just disappointed, I suppose."
"You're quite right, though it appears that these investigators have an upgraded durability," Uta said delightedly, and I had a feeling he was smiling under his mask. "Really, at this point the CCG is no better than Aogiri."
I examined the purple haired investigator I was engaged in conflict with, and noted that only one of his eyes had a kakugan. The sclera was grey, however, not black, and I sneered.
"At least Father and Aogiri can make real half-ghouls. Look at these failures. Nothing but cheap knockoffs. Fakes."
The koukaku was swung at me, and I danced out of the way, ducking as the investigator changed the momentum of his body and arm faster than I had imagined he was capable of, and it nicked my leg. I made an admittedly shocked noise, but the pain didn't even register. The edge of the koukaku felt almost blunt, weak, like a cheap kitchen knife. It barely cut me at all. It did tear my clothes, and that was enough to spark my anger.
"You tore my pants-," I managed.to say through gritted teeth.
"Look at all the fucks I give-," The investigator retorted with cold eyes, and I almost respected him for keeping his cold composure even though I was about to brutally slaughter him.
Almost.
The koukaku was swung at me again. I caught it, and my eyes blazed behind my mask.
"You tore my pants."
I held the bladed koukaku and the arm it was connected to firmly in my hand, before kneeing it with all of my might. A loud cracking noise resounded through the alley, and the purple haired investigator finally let out a scream as he collapsed to the ground. His breathing was ragged, and his kakugan started dissolving. A punctured lung, probably. He was down for the count, and I was starting to get hungry. I wasn't much for cannibalism, but food was food, and I could always hunt again later.
Besides, it wasn't really cannibalism if it was just a poorly made imitation. And I suppose the smell of the purple haired investigator wasn't completely unappealing...
My thoughts were cut off as two figures came into view at the opening of the alleyway. One of them was a lean male, shorter than average but not by much. He had unusually forest green hair, and an eye-patch. I felt a pang of nostalgia, remembering my old friend, but dismissed it. His companion, however, froze me in my tracks.
He was my height, perhaps a half inch shorter. His hair was two-toned, more white than black, and his eyes were the pale grey of steel and storm clouds.
"Sassan!" The orange haired investigator managed to cough. "Tooru! You made it!"
"Shirazu-kun! Urie-kun!" The green-haired investigator gasped, horrified at the bloody scene.
"This just got a lot more interesting," Uta said gleefully. "This is the most fun I've had in ages."
I wasn't listening. It was so clearly him. It was there, in his eyes, in his stance, in the way he stood and the way his hair fell.
I stepped over the mostly unconscious body of the still-alive purple haired investigator (perhaps he was more durable than I had thought) and walked towards him, my eyes the size of dinner plates behind my mask.
He gripped his briefcase, and a click was audible before the case pulse and morphed into a quinque with a long, tapered end. Previously a koukaku, I guessed, though the thought was distant in my fogged mind.
"Stay back, Mutsuki-kun. When you see your chance, get Shirazu-kun and Urie-kun out of here and run." He announced grimly, putting a hand out to stop his green haired subordinate, who had begun to step forward to stand beside his superior, two knives drawn.
"But Sasaski-san--"
"This is an order from your superior. Do you understand, Mutsuki-kun?" His voice was firm and hard, and I understood the meaning perfectly. He was conveying, without directly saying it, knew that he and his subordinates were majorly outclassed and overpowered by Uta and I, and he would hold us off for as long as he could in order to enable his subordinates escape, quite possibly at the cost of his own life.
The green haired man swallowed, his single visible eye darting from his superior to Uta and I.
"I-I understand, Sasaki-san. I'll call for back-up as soon as I can. Please, be careful."
"Don't worry about me, Mutsuki-kun. I'll be okay." His voice was thick with the lie, and I couldn't comprehend why he didn't recognize me. Sure, I wore a mask that concealed my face, but should he recognize me? I wasn't that different. I was a little taller, and I had aged a few years, but so had he. He would recognize my voice. He had to. You don't just forget someone who was this important to you.
So my footsteps were sound and sure when I approached him, and my hand sure as it came slowly to my mask, ready to reveal my face the moment he recognized me. Would he gasp and splutter, I wondered? Would he laugh, and greet me with something absurdly mundane, like 'It's been awhile,' ?
I took a deep breath to steady my erratic heartbeat, and as I breathed out I said his name.
"Kaneki."