Archive of Our Own

Vaggie couldn’t remember her last breaths as a human.

She would never be able to forget the moment she realized she was a monster.

Before any of that, she made a mistake, one that would cost her her life in a way that she never could have predicted. It wasn’t even a big mistake in the grand scheme of things. A rookie investigator would be nothing less than an idiot for wandering off on their own, but her? Adam had said that there was talk of promoting her to a first class investigator before the end of the year, for fuck’s sake! She should have been fine!

She thought she was going to be fine.

*

She was hungry.

It was cold.

She didn’t know where she was.

Those were the first things she realized, in that order. Memories came next, a hazy blur of moments that she couldn’t quite make out, let alone make sense of.

A stab in the back. The sound of someone laughing. A terrible pain in her gut, separate from the one that had already been plaguing her. A sudden absence of that first pain, followed promptly by new pains. Something disgusting being forced down her throat. Something delicious being crammed down, only for it to come back up anyway. Vicious eyes, mocking words, hands poking and prodding and stabbing and searching over and over before they finally declared her—

Not quite.

Vaggie didn’t get a chance to try to make sense of any of it. She didn’t have time to try to make sense of any of it. She was hungry, cold, and didn’t know where she was, which all meant one thing: she had to escape.

At first, she thought that it was taking her eyes a while to adjust to the dark. The realization that the space she was in was so without light that such a thing was impossible sent her heart sinking into her stomach and acid rising up her throat. The bitter taste of panic could not be stopped from filling her agonizingly dry mouth, but she could keep herself from succumbing to it.

Slowly, she pushed herself up onto her knees. It was more difficult than she had anticipated. Upon trying to stand, she found that it was more than a matter of her own physical weakness; the room she was in was moving.

She was in a truck.

She had been fucking kidnapped.

The grating pain in her throat may well have been the only thing that kept her from screaming. The weakness radiating out from her cramping stomach to contaminate the rest of her body couldn’t hope to keep her from lashing out. With a frail, strangled snarl, she threw herself to the side and pounded on the cold metal wall.

The truck stopped immediately.

The panic fled Vaggie’s system immediately, replaced by cold, crystal clarity. She had fucked up. Anyone who was strong enough to kidnap her on a good day could definitely destroy her in her current state. They were almost certainly a ghoul. She had been fighting when she was taken down, hadn’t she?

Vaggie had been defeated and abducted by a ghoul, but that hadn’t bothered to eat her. They hadn’t even killed her. The torture had come and gone, yet she was still breathing. If she was still alive…

Ghouls lacked any capacity for kindness to begin with. The average person could hope for nothing more than a swift death to save them from their suffering when they found themselves in the hands of a ghoul. A ghoul investigator who was defeated by one of their quarry knew for a fact that their death would be excruciating. But death did come for them, without fail.

If she was still alive, that could only mean that the worst was yet to come.

Vaggie’s hand twitched with the urge to reach for her quinque. She knew better than to waste time trying to search. It wouldn’t have done her any good even if the truck wasn’t pitch black. Beasts though they may be, no ghoul was stupid enough to capture a ghoul investigator and leave them with their weapon.

Without their weapon, a ghoul investigator was no better than any other human.

No human stood a chance in a fight with a ghoul.

No. That wasn’t true. People had survived scrapes with ghouls unarmed before. Adam, if his bragging was to be believed. Lute, albeit only through an incredible stroke of luck, and then only by a hair. Zestial, more than once. She had to fight. No matter how weak her body was or how hopeless the situation seemed, she had to fight.

If nothing else, she refused to give the monsters who killed her the satisfaction of knowing that they got her to roll over as well.

She had barely made her resolution when the metal door that constituted one of the truck’s walls was yanked upward with a clattering screech. Vaggie spun around to find herself face to face with a pair of ghouls. The first seemed to be male. He was a slender individual dressed in a glossy black mask and matching suit. The other was almost certainly male judging by his height. He wore a white-lined red suit and a gaudy peacock-patterned mask that only covered the top half of his face, leaving his sadistic grin exposed for all the world to see.

Both broke out laughing at the sight of Vaggie.

“Shit, look at the little dove!” the ghoul in the black suit exclaimed. “Trying to be all puffed up and intimidating with her clipped wings!”

“I would say more than clipped, mi amore,” the flamboyant ghoul purred. “But do you think she has realized just how grounded she is?”

“I mean, if he hasn’t yet, it’s not gonna take long! Ohh, should we see it for ourselves? We could go grab a mirror or–”

“Shut up!” Vaggie barked. “Let me go or–”

“Or what?” the black-masked ghoul sneered. “You’ll squawk at us?”

Vaggie’s fingers curled around the empty space where her quinque should be. Her nails dug into her pain in its stead. The jolt of discomfort that it shot through her was nothing compared to the gnawing in her stomach. That, in turn, was nothing compared to the urgency of the situation. She glared them down with a confidence that she did not feel and, like a portent of the death that they so thoroughly deserved, declared, “You’ll bring the CCG down on your heads. They’ll avenge my death. They’ll make it hurt.”

The black masked ghoul laughed yet again. Vaggie had only just met him, but she was already growing sick of his voice. “Oh, darling. Babe. Honey,” he wheezed out between boughts of laughter. “If you think that the Commission of Counter Ghoul cares about one little agent, especially now… Well, you’re in for a ruder awakening than I thought.”

“More to the point,” the flamboyant ghouls said, taking a step forward. He moved with a fluid grace that served to make him look like even more of a monster. “We know that we are going to get visitors at one point or another. It is no true concern of ours. You don’t need to worry about it either, my little songbird, because…” He leaned against the side of the truck, offering Vaggie a faux-charming smile that had her struggling not to step back. “We have already decided to set you free.”

Vaggie took such a sharp step back that she almost stumbled. “What… Why would you do that!?”

“Hmm.” The black masked ghoul walked over to the truck and leaned against the other side of the opening, across from his fellow abomination. “Y'know, as much as I love a good audience, I think I'm going to go ahead and say that's for us to know and you to find out. It'll give you a mystery to work on while you try to find your way home!”

“Unless you want to stay with us,” the other ghoul purred. “You aren't quite what we're looking for, but I'm sure we could find some use for a creature as lovely as you.”

Vaggie would like to be able to say that she fought. In a better world, she would have mustered all of the skill, technique, and courage that she had gained as a ghoul investigator and put the beasts before her in their place. In a kind world, this never would have happened in the first place.

The world was not kind. Vaggie jumped out of the van and ran for her life.

“Hey, dove!” one of the ghouls called after her. “When your flock asks, tell them it was the Vees!”

*

The sound of laughter rang in her ears until it was drowned out by the cramping in her stomach.

The ache in her feet dogged her every step until her stomach drowned that out too.

The hunger felt like it would make her go insane until exhaustion managed to overpower it.

*

“Does anyone know why the CCG exterminates ghouls?”

A slender hand shot up immediately. The guest speaker, a first class investigator, smiled fondly at the girl it belonged to. “Why don't you give someone else a chance to answer, Lute?”

Lute dropped her hand with a tremendous scowl.

Vaggie glanced warily between her professor and her classmate. Once she was content that he was caught up in trying to find another volunteer, she leaned over to whisper, “You don't need him to call on you anyway. You're going to go to the Academy in six months.”

“That's not the point,” Lute hissed back. “Besides, that's still six months in this stupid child zoo.”

“You mean orphanage?”

“I said what I said.”

Vaggie rolled her eyes. She then cast another glance at the speaker, who was now urging other students to raise their hand. It didn't look like his attention was anywhere close to her or Lute.

“At least you get to leave in six months,” Vaggie whispered. “I need to stay here for three more years.”

“Sucks to be you.”

“Hey! I'm trying to-”

“Peter, thank you for volunteering!” the investigator exclaimed. “Do you know why ghouls must be exterminated?”

“Because they eat human flesh,” Peter confidently said.

A chorus of snickers arose from the classroom. Vaggie pressed her own lips together to keep from contributing to it.

Peter dropped back into his seat. A bright pink blush had overtaken his face.

The speaker smiled at him patiently. “You're partially correct. Due to their unique anatomy, ghouls are only capable of eating human flesh. Real food might as well be poison to them. But the real answer is that we kill ghouls because they kill people. Can any of you tell me why?”

“Isn't it so they can eat?” Vaggie blurted out.

A fresh round of giggling sounded through the classroom. Vaggie refused to blush, instead staring the investigator down in a silent demand for answers.

His expression softened marginally. “Vaggie, right? If I'm remembering correctly, you've only been here for a few months.”

“Four months and six days,” she corrected.

Four months and twenty three days since she had come home to find the bloody remains of her parents.

Four months and six days since she had been sent to the Commission of Counter Ghoul's orphanage.

One month and three days since she had started attending these lessons.

The investigator nodded. “It makes sense that you wouldn't know this then. Lute, why don't you explain?”

The other girl shot upward, eyes blazing with an all-consuming rage. “Ghouls eat people because they aren't people. They look like us and infiltrate our societies, but they aren't capable of human emotion. We act out of love and duty; they are driven by hedonistic desires and a natural bloodlust that drives them to sadistic acts. They don't kill because they need to. They kill because they like it.”

Lute turned to face Vaggie. “Ghouls are monsters, Vaggie. Don't ever forget that.”

*

Vaggie woke up with a pit of dread in her stomach and the dream of a memory fresh on her mind.

She pushed both aside and rose to her feet. Her head felt clearer. It wasn't perfect, but it was enough for her to ignore how hungry she was and focus on the situation at hand.

The first thing she noticed was that she hadn't gotten very far. At least, she thought not. Vaggie hadn't paid much attention to her surroundings during her initial escape. Now, she could see that she was somewhere in the far outskirts of the city; dilapidated buildings as far as the eye could see and not a soul to be found.

Logically, she knew that she didn't need to walk very far to find signs of life. There wasn't many places in New York that were well and truly abandoned. What such areas did exist weren't very large. It did not feel that way. Between her aching feet, her cramping stomach, and the remnants of fear and adrenaline coursing through her system, every footstep felt like a mile.

Her heart leapt when she found a gas station. She wanted to run inside as fast as she possibly could.

The best that her body would allow was a slow, staggering walk.

She had planned to demand to be allowed to use a phone the second she stepped through the door.

That plan was derailed by a delicious smell.

Vaggie's previous priorities fell aside in favor of a growling stomach and a mouth full of saliva. The divine smell was some sort of meat that promised to be better than prime rib. She had no idea what such a thing was doing in a shitty gas station, but she wasn't going to question it. Instinctively, she turned toward the store's goods in search of her meal.

She found nothing.

There was food alright. Pastries wrapped in little plastic packages lined one of the green wire shelves. They looked unappetizing to the point where the thought of biting into one invited nausea. Hot dogs rolled over in their greasy cooker. The smell rising from them was absolutely putid.

“Holy shit! Are you okay!?” someone shouted from behind her.

Behind her. The food was behind her.

Vaggie turned around with a wide, hungry smile.

The cashier leaped back with a cry or, “Ghoul!”

The girl couldn't have been more than seventeen. She had pigtails and a freckled face. Her terror was enough to break through Vaggie's haze of hunger. “What?” she asked, shaking her head. “I'm not a Ghoul, I'm–”

“Please don't eat me!” the girl begged. Tears were already rolling down her cheeks. “I'll do whatever you want, just p–please, don't kill me!”

Vaggie held her hands up and approached her. “I'm not going to hurt you! I'm here for…”

The smell. It got stronger with every step she took, reigniting her hunger until it clawed at her insides. She frantically looked around for the source, but couldn't find a thing that she recognized as food, let alone food that could smell that good. But that girl…

No.

Vaggie took a step back.

Her stomach continued to growl.

There wasn't anything in the gas station that looked like food and wasn't repulsive.

The girl continued to sob.

There was a mirror mounted on the wall behind the cash register.

Through the cold grip of fear overtaking her, Vaggie held onto the hope that she would look in the mirror and see herself.

That hope was killed by the monster staring back at her.

The thing looking back at her was almost Vaggie. Its true nature was given away by a single nightmarish eye. The red iris practically glowed against its black sclera. Black veins branched out around the eye to further spread the taint. As she stared, she felt something twitch beneath the skin of her lower back, a pulsating twitch, like–

The ghoul ran out of the gas station.

*

“You got it wrong. Again.”

“How many times do we need to go over this?”

“Until you can prove that you’ve memorized everything. Again.”

Vaggie lifted her head to give Lute an unamused glare.

Lute met it head on, so impressed that she wasn’t bothering to glare. “I’m taking time out of my day to help you. If you want to fall behind and risk getting rejected from the academy, that’s up to you.”

Vaggie bit back the retort on her tongue. Yes, it was true that she had years before she would take her entry exam. Yes, it was also true that a childhood in the CCG’s orphanage was almost a guaranteed route to acceptance at the academy. But what if she was the exception to the rule? What if she was accepted to the academy itself, but they turned her away from the investigator track?

What if she kept making a fool of herself in the classes that she was taking right now?

She looked back down at the notebook sprawling open on her bed with a reluctant sigh. “Okay. Where do you want me to start?”

“How can you tell a ghoul apart from humans?”

“That’s a trick question. You can’t tell ghouls apart from humans at a glance. Unless you run a blood test, the only way to tell is if the ghoul tries to attack, is so hurt or hungry that it can’t hide its ghoul traits, or you notice inhuman behavior.”

Vaggie looked up in time to see Lute try to smother her smile.

“Correct,” she said. “What will you see if the ghoul isn’t trying to hide what it is?”

“Kakugan,” Vaggie immediately said. “Ghouls’ real eyes have bright red irises, black sclera, and are surrounded by black veins.”

“They’re ugly as fuck,” Lute said with a nod. “Why do they have kakugan?” Her smile returned. This time, she let it grow wide and sharp. “Apart from being soulless monsters.”

“It’s…” Vaggie bit her lower lip. “An expression of RC cells. That’s how you can tell who’s a human and who’s a ghoul from a blood test. Ghouls have extremely high levels of RC cells.”

“What else do RC cells do?”

“They give ghouls advanced healing capabilities, but they don’t work unless they’re well-fed. They also make their skin too hard to be penetrated with anything but a kagune; that’s why quinques are made out of kagunes. The kagune comes from the kakuhou, which is a special organ that stores and creates RC cells.”

“All correct.” Lute leaned forward. “What else?”

“Uh…the RC cells are the reason ghouls can only eat human flesh?”

“Theoretically. So, why don’t we just carve the kakuhous out and see what happens?”

“The ghoul will die or grow it back.”

“Correct. And if you keep cutting it out over and over again, the thing will die before you get anywhere.”

Vaggie wrinkled her nose. “How do you know that?”

“You know that boy from the academy who stopped by the other day, Adam?”

“Yeah?”

“He said that someone who works at Cochlea told him.”

“What are they doing in Cochlea that would tell them that? And who is Adam talking to?”

“They’re looking out for the good of humanity. Adam’s talking to…” Lute trailed off, eyes narrowing. “It’s a plausible theory, at the very least. Anyway.” She swiped Vaggie’s notebook out from under her. “What types of kagune are there, what are their strengths, and what are their weaknesses? From memory.”

Once again, Vaggie’s glare was met with unwavering, unforgiving coldness.

“This part is complicated. You can’t give me shit if I mess it up again,” she grumbled.

“You’ve messed it up five times. I’ll give you as much shit as you deserve.”

Again, Vaggie bit back her retort. It was better to learn now and only get shit from Lute than to be laughed at by the entire class again. Slowly but with as much determination as she could muster, she said, “Ukaku kagunes come from the shoulder blades. They look kind of like wings. The “feathers” are RC crystals that they can use as projectiles. That makes ukakus good for long-distance and close-range fighting, but bad for mid-range. Ukaku ghouls are fast, but the kagunes are draining, so they have low stamina.”

“What kagune type are they weak against?”

“It’s…” Vaggie sat up a little straighter as she remembered. “All kagunes types have a disadvantage against the ones that comes beneath them.”

“And what comes beneath the ukaku.”

“The… Koukaku! They’re strong, heavy kagunes that come from the upper back. They usually wrap around the ghoul’s arm. Most of them look like shields, but some take the form of swords, lances, and other weapons. They’re really good for defense, but they’ve really heavy, so koukaku ghouls also tire out quickly unless they’re strong. They have an advantage over ukakus because they can defend their attacks, and…”

Vaggie slapped her knee with a grin. “They’re weak to rinkaku kagunes because rinakus are strong enough to break them! Rinkakus are the best offensive kagune. Rinkaku ghouls also have good stamina and healing abilities, but their kagunes are brittle and can be broken more easily than any other type. They don’t have any defense at all.”

“Great. What do they look like?”

“Tentacles.”

Lute raised an eyebrow. “Tentacles?” she flatly asked.

“What else would you call them!? They’re tentacles that come from the ghoul’s… lower back! They come from the lower back and most ghouls have between three and six of them.”

“Tendrils. We call them tendrils, Vaggie.”

“That’s giving the ghouls more dignity than they deserve.”

Lute snorted. “Fuck, I don’t think I can argue with that. But… What’s the last one?”

“The last is… Bikaku! It looks like a tail and comes from the tailbone. They don’t have any particular strengths or weaknesses, which gives them an advantage over rinkakus, since they’re so lopsided. They’re vulnerable against ukakus because their speed can overwhelm them.”

Vaggie couldn’t help but hold her breath as she awaited Lute’s response.

Her friend stared at her unreadably for a long time before breaking out in a grin. “You might be able to cut it as an investigator after all.”

*

She was still Vaggie, right? She had to be. She still felt like herself. Her memories were all still there. There was no way that she was suddenly one of those things.

She couldn't trick herself into thinking that it was a nightmare. If it were, she would have woken up by now. Whatever had been done to her was very real. But it had been done to her. That made it different, right?

It had to. You couldn't turn people into monsters. Vaggie wasn't a real ghoul. She was the victim of some sort of sick, twisted human experimentation. If she made it back to the CCG, they would fix it. Someone had to know how to undo what had happened. If they couldn't…

They'd still fix it. Vaggie was one of their best investigators. They wouldn't write her off as a monster. Someone would help her. Everything was going to be okay.

All she had to do was make it home.

She barely made it three blocks away from the gas station.

Every part of her gave out at once. She barely managed to stagger over to the closest wall before she dropped like a puppet with its strings cut. The wall was made of bricks. It was some sort of big building? It looked kind of like a fire station. If it was a fire station, there would be…

Vaggie didn't finish the thought. She wasn't capable of thought, her mind slowly slipping into an ocean of hunger, exhausted, and every gut-twisting feeling lurking just beneath the hope that she was trying so hard to cling onto.

She wasn't dead yet. For a little while, or perhaps a long while, she might as well have been.

Her consciousness re-surfaced at the sound of a stilted, cautious, “Vaggie?”

Vaggie looked up to see salvation staring down at her.

Lute looked closer to frightened than she had ever seen her. Her eyes were wide and her lips twisted in something that could have been worry or disgust. Realistically, it was probably both. Vaggie would have been hurt by the latter if she weren’t so relieved that she was looking at her at all.

“Holy fuck,” a gravely voice breathed from behind her friend’s shoulder. Vaggie looked over to find Adam looming behind Lute, peering down at Vagie with the same curiosity and disgust that a child would show a particularly strange insect. That’s not actually Vajjie, right? Like, what the fuck could do that?”

“I don’t know,” Vaggie rasped. She groped along the side of the wall to drag herself upright. Lute met the movement by taking a step back, while Adam tilted his head to the side, consideration sparking between his gold eyes. “I got– A ghoul grabbed me. They did something to me. I–I don’t know what.”

“I mean, fuck. If you’re telling the truth, it looks pretty damn obvious what.” Adam let out an airy chuckle. “They turned you into a ghoul, babe.”

“No.” Vaggie shook her head. It brought on a bout of dizziness that had her leaning against the wall. She fought to hold her head up and say, “I’m not a ghoul. They… I don’t know what they did, but I’m not one of them.”

Lute’s brow furrowed. “You keep saying them. Was there more than one?”

“I don’t–” Vaggie swallowed as she tried to turn her sluggish thoughts into words. “They called themselves the Vees. I don’t know how many of them there are. I only saw two.”

“But they had the resources to do this,” Lute said, her words turning into a disgusted snarl toward the end. “They must be a group. A pack of beasts who’ve figured out how to make good people like them.”

“No!” Vaggie gasped. “I’m not like them! Lute, I swear, I’m still me! Please, I’ll do whatever the CCG says. Just– Please. Let me come home.”

Lute hesitated. Her hand tightened around the handle of her gleaming silver briefcase. Her eyes, however, turned to Adam.

Her partner, the special class investigator regarded as one of the most talented ghoul killers in the CCG, met her with a careless shrug. “I dunno what you want me to say, babe. Bitch might be telling the truth. The higher-ups might wanna keep her as an attack dog or something if we take her back. Or they could kill her, but ya know.”

“Please,” Vaggie whispered. “I won’t fight.”

Lute shot her a wary glance, but turned back to Adam without a word to her. “So you think we should take her back?”

“I didn’t fucking say that,” he scoffed. “If that thing is Vajjie, some cunt with a mad scientist kink figured out how to turn a human into a ghoul. If it isn’t, then we have a fucking hybrid on our hands. Either way, there’s no telling what that thing can do.”

“So what the fuck are you saying!?” Lute snapped.

Adam grinned. “I’m saying that this is an on-field emergency that there’s no protocol for. Which means it’s on you to make one.”

“But you’re the senior investigator.”

“So?” Adam spun his own briefcase by the handle, dropped it back to his side after a few twirls, and took a step back. “You’re a badass associate special class. As the senior investigator, I’m telling you to figure out how to handle it. I’ll go along with whatever you decide. I’ll vouch for the freak to Sera and Zestial and all of them if you think it’s actually still her. Or I can help you clean the bloodstains off if you decide you’d rather believe in basic biology.”

Lute leveled her with the heavy gaze of someone trying to decide her next move as judge, jury, and executioner.

“Lute, it’s me,” Vaggie begged.

“...You aren’t anyone anymore.”

There was a reason why Adam and Lute had climbed so high in the CCG’s ranks despite being so young. She and every other investigator she could name saw it as a reason to admire them.

Lute opened the latch on her briefcase, and for the first time, Vaggie truly understood why those same traits made the ghouls fear them.

For the first time, she entertained the thought that ghouls may be capable of feeling true fear.

Lute was always a blur of motion when she got her quinque out. This time, Vaggie noticed every detail. Her wrist was already positioned to hold her weapon steady in combat before it was more than halfway out of the case. She was already preparing to strike when she activated it. The blow was already falling when the repurposed kagune came surging out of the hilt.

Lute wielded a unique quinque. That was part of what made her and Adam an effective team despite both of them preferring koukakus as their primary weapon. The axe-like blade of Adam’s quinque was eye-catching, but it was still the typical broad, heavy implement best wielded in brute force.

Lute’s quinque was lighter than any other koukaku owned by the CCG. It formed a long, slender, goldish-red blade that cut through the air with devastating speed and precision. Vaggie was familiar with every part of it, from the way that it shimmered in the right light to which parts of the body it cut through the easiest.

She knew that it was already too late for her by the time she saw it.

Instinct saw her diving to the side anyway.

Vaggie barely felt the impact when she hit the ground. It simply joined all of the other noise flooding her senses, from the pain to the confusion to the hunger to the fear to the betrayal. All of it was shoved to the back of her mind in favor of one directive: survive.

The strongest instincts in the world wouldn’t be able to make her move fast enough in her current state. It would have to be enough for them to keep her moving. She let out a blood-curdling scream as a streak of searing pain shot through her back. The feeling of Lute’s quinque shredding her muscle was agony, but it remained muscle. Vaggie rolled away in time with the attack, causing the blade to slide across her shoulder blades rather than plunge into her ribcage. The next thing she knew, she was lying flat on that fresh wound, the contact pressing against her flesh like an acid-laced anvil.

Once again, there was no room for thought, only a desperate need to lessen the pain. She instinctively sat up in an attempt to do so.

The tip of Lute’s blade had plunged into her eye before she could realize that it was a mistake.

Something sharp and writhing tore out of Vaggie’s back before she could finish the job.

Lute watched in wide-eyed horror as the scaly red thing that couldn’t possibly be a part of Vaggie lashed out at her. She stepped back at the last second, but wasn’t quick enough to keep her quinque from being pulled out of her hands and thrown unceremoniously down the street.

From that point on, Vaggie was only vaguely aware of what was going on around her. Lute shouted something in the snarling tones of a hunter who would show no mercy. Adam readied his quinque, the ruthless blade shining the same red as the blood of his victims in the sunlight.

Then there was only the sound of her shoes pounding against the pavement. The ache that spread further through her chest with every labored breath. The way she had to fight to stay upright as the world tilted and swayed around her. The reason for that unsteadiness, the screaming, aching absence in her head, a pain so terrible that it overshadowed everything else.

Vaggie ran until she couldn’t anymore. She didn’t know when that point came or where she was when it happened. The red-hot hell coursing through her nerves anchored her to consciousness for a few more agonizing seconds, but she was lost to the world in every way that mattered.

The world was lost to her.

By the time she heard approaching footsteps, she was too far gone to feel hope or fear. Someone cried out as oblivion finally claimed her, but she couldn’t register any of the words.

It was a beautiful voice though.

*

Lute was going to join the academy in two days. It was all she had been talking about for over a week.

Vaggie was happy for her.

She was trying to be happy for her.

Apparently her best efforts weren't anywhere close to good enough. With an exasperated sigh, Lute paused their movie and said, “Alright. What has you sulking?”

“I'm not sulking,” Vaggie protested.

“And I'm the Grand Czar of Russia. Stop being a baby and tell me what it is.”

“Nothing! I was just… Wondering… We're friends right?”

Lute pulled the exact disgusted face that she had expected. “Are you seriously asking that?”

Vaggie scowled. “I told you, it's not–”

“Of course we're friends. I'm not going to abandon you because I'm going to the academy. You need me too much. Christ.” Lute turned the movie back on. “Don't act like a baby over something so stupid.”

*

Vaggie woke up in a strange bed with a full stomach.

The first realization sent a bolt of alarm through her immediately.

It took her a moment to remember why the second was far, far worse.

She started to run her tongue along her teeth without meaning to. It was hard to detect yet called to her like a siren song, the lingering hint of something more decadent than she ever could have imagined. It sent a wave of desire through her despite her stated stomach, making her mouth water at the tantalizing image of–

No.

She slapped her hand over her mouth in an attempt to dispel that awful, inhuman feeling. Instead, it served as a barrier to hold back her sob. It did that job well. Some sound escaped, but it was muffled and soft. The tears rolling down from her eye and shaking of her shoulder were another matter entirely.

At some point, she became aware of the pain in her back and eye. At no point did she begin to care. Any pain in the world would have been tolerable if it would make this all some sick dream. Nothing was debilitating enough to distract her from the way her world was falling apart around her.

Nothing except for the girl who poked her head through her door with a cry of, “Oh, you're awake!”

Vaggie had become a monster to cower away from in fear. This girl, with her concerned eyes and kind smile, walked over to her like she was something of value. “Are you okay? I mean, of course you aren't okay, those investigators really did a number on you. What I'm trying to ask is… Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

“Who are you?” Vaggie croaked.

“Oh! Right, I should probably introduce myself, huh! Sorry, I got a little caught up in my head with the…” a shadow of pain fell over her smile. It was gone in an instance, replaced by a light so bright it was almost blindly. “I'm Charlie Morningstar! It's nice to meet you!”

She held her hand out to Vaggie.

She looked at it like it was a mirage.

Her savior's fingers wiggled when she didn't move to take it.

Vaggie lifted her eyes back to her face with the slowness of someone weighed down by awe and horror alike. “Are you…?”

Charlie lowered her hand with a frown. “Am I what?”

“You're telling me your full name?”

“Yes? It's not like you're going to hand me over to the CCG or anything. I mean…” She tugged at the collar of her warm red turtleneck. “If you were thinking about it, I'd really appreciate it if you… You know… Didn't?”

No human had any reason to fear the CCG.

That was to be expected. No human in their right mind would save a… Whatever she was now.

But no ghoul had any reason to save her either.

“What am I doing here?” Vaggie asked.

“Healing?” Charlie furrowed her brow. “I couldn't just leave you out there.”

“Yes you could have.”

“Well, I didn't want to.”

Vaggie looked down at her lap. The world looked different through a single eye.

She had to be lying. Ghouls did not possess any true empathy or capacity for kindness. Charlie had to have saved her to serve some ulterior motive. She had to want something from her.

What difference did that make though? Vaggie couldn't afford to reject her help if she wanted to live.

…Did she want to live?

“Hey.” A pale, slender hand touched her knee with the kindness of grace of a feather. “I know I already asked, but… Is there anything I can do to make you feel better?”

“Is there anything you can do to make it hurt less?”

“I'm sorry, but I don't think so. You were pretty out of it, but I fed you a few hours ago. I think need to wait to heal now. But I could get you a cup of coffee?”

Vaggie wanted to laugh. The closest that she could get was closing her eye and cutting off her tears.

That was right. Ghouls couldn't digest painkillers. Coffee, however, was the one thing that they could eat the same as humans. Adam had always avoided it for that reason. Something about it being a betrayal to mankind.

Vaggie opened her eye.

Was that a betrayal, staying alive to open her eye? Was she an evil thing for drawing breath and letting her heart beat and having been fed.

Yes, surely. She was a traitor to all she knew and would remain one until she knew it she was ready to die.

In the meantime, she looked at Charlie and said, “I'd like that.”

*

“And the most fucked up part? They’re ten times stronger than any other ghoul, but they’re also ten times crueler.”

“Why would they be ten times crueler?” Vaggie interrupted.

“Shut up, Vaggie,” Lute hissed, leveling her with a sharp warning glare. “Adam’s being generous enough to take time away from the academy to tell you all about ghouls. You should show him respect by keeping your mouth shut and listening.”

Vaggie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Barely. Lute would deserve it for how much she was sucking up to this asshole to try and make him notice her. She also deserved it for having such gross taste. Luckily for her, Vaggie was a good friend, so she would hold back.

Mostly.

“You’re visiting from the academy too,” she pointed out. “He isn’t an investigator yet or anything. If he wants extra respect, he should earn it.”

Lute bristled.

Before she could jump to her new pet moron’s defense, he let out an offended scoff and said, “Okay, you little shit. How’s this for earning your respect.” Adam leaned forward with a sharp grin. “One-eyed ghouls are worse than the rest because no one wants them. The other ghouls hate them because they’re half human. It doesn’t mean shit that they also eat human flesh. They’re fucked up little freaks. And with how strong they are? Fuck, the CCG finds one, they’ll be on it like flies on shit! Ghouls might be animals, but they aren’t stupid enough to keep them around. But the thing is, they’re still ghouls.”

“I thought they were hybrids,” Vaggie interrupted.

Adam pulled a face. “You’re being a bitch on purpose now.”

“You’re—” Being a bitch for attention.

Vaggie bit the words back upon glancing the pleading look on Lute’s face.

“You said they’re hybrids,” she tried again, like she hadn’t, in fact, been being a bitch on purpose. “Now you’re saying that they’re ghouls. Does it make any difference that they’re half-human?”

Adam scoffed. “Does a drop of water in a bottle of milk make it water? Maybe they aren’t normal ghouls, but there’s too much ghoul in them for them to be people. They’re monsters no matter how you cut it. That means they can never live with humans either. And that’s why they’re so fucked in the head.”

Adam stood up to spread his arms out like the overdramatic peacock that he was. “Ghouls are manipulative little cunts. Most of the time, when people think they see them having feelings, it’s all bullshit. But they do feel one thing the same as us: they don’t like to be alone. And fuck, maybe hybrids are human enough to want it more than the other ghouls. Friends, family, all that shit. They’ll never get it though, because they don’t belong anywhere. And maybe they can put up with it for a while, but the loneliness gets worse and worse until…” He lurched forward to clap his hands in front of Vaggie’s face.

She didn’t so much as flinch.

Disappointment flickered across Adam’s face for a bare second. Then he was back on his bullshit, surveying the circle of assembled orphans as he said, “They lose their goddamn minds and turn into worse monsters than you could ever imagine.”

Peter raised a hand. “This is really interesting, but… I thought hybrids weren’t real?”

Adam sputtered for a moment before snapping, “That’s not the point, you bitchy little twink!”

“What’s a twink?” a girl who couldn’t have been more than six asked.

Adam’s eyes went wide as saucers. The next thing Vaggie knew, he sprinted off with a bark of, “I’ve got shit to do, no more questions!”

*

Vaggie was a total stranger who Charlie had taken in from the streets. She had no reason to help her. She had no reason to be kind. She had no reason to trust her.

Yet she did all three with such readiness that she made it look as natural as breathing.

Vaggie was still struggling to adjust to only having one eye, so Charlie sat by her bedside and read her books to help pass the time. When her voice grew tired, she brought her laptop into the guest bedroom and found something for them to watch. Charlie had a preference for sweet, happy stories that Vaggie would have declared impossible for a ghoul if she weren’t seeing it for herself. When they got tired of that, Charlie would take it upon herself to coax her into a conversation.

Vaggie was one massive unknown, yet Charlie never asked any prying questions. There weren’t any hints of suspicion in how she spoke to her. The topic of the past and how she had found her way to her was left untouched in favor of light-hearted, entertaining, amusing topics that were all too clearly meant to distract.

They worked.

When Charlie brought her a bowl of something that could almost pass as soup, the excitement with which she talked about the interesting old man she’d met the day before allowed her to avoid thinking about what it really was. The sparkle in her eyes caught her attention more than how disgustingly delicious it was as it slid down her throat. The warm relief on her face when she finished half of it overshadowed the way her stomach twisted with the knowledge that she had eaten half of it.

The wound on her back left Vaggie bedridden for a little over a week.

Unbelievably, Charlie made that week feel like little more than a day.

Impossibly, she kept her from falling into the abyss opening beneath her feet. She was always teetering on the edge, but every time she felt herself start to slip, a gentle hand was there to pull her back up.

It was nonsense, it was obscenity, it was a betrayal to everything that she had ever known.

It was all she had to hold onto. Faced with the alternative of falling into a cold, aching oblivion that she knew she’d never be able to climb out of, she clung with all her mind.

That was how it came to be that, when Charlie approached her with heartbroken dismay on her kind face, the first words out of Vaggie’s mouth were, “Are you okay?”

Charlie’s smile didn’t light her face up the way it usually did. “You’re nice for asking.”

“I mean it,” Vaggie said, because she didn’t know how to explain that it was the absolute least she could do. “You can tell me if something’s wrong. I’ll do what I can to help.”

It probably wouldn’t be much. Vaggie was healing faster than she would have thought possible — fast enough to make her stomach twist in haunting understanding — but she was still in a state that Adam would oh-so-eloquently describe as ‘absolute dogshit’. There was a real chance that she wouldn’t be physically capable of helping Charlie. Failing that…

Charlie was nothing like what a ghoul was supposed to be, but she was a ghoul. Vaggie, meanwhile, was still human on the inside. The Charlie that she had met seemed like the kindest person in the universe. But how deep did that kindness run? What were the odds that it was nothing more than the manipulation that Lute and Adam had always warned her about? She owed her too big of a debt to turn on her if she was, but if she asked her to do something truly despicable…

Charlie looked far too sad to be someone preparing to ask something despicable of her.

“I’m sorry, Vaggie,” she said. “It’s…” She looked to the side, shame rising up to overshadow her despair. “Your eye should have grown back by now. I asked my dad about it and he said… If it hasn’t grown back yet, it probably isn’t going to.” She swallowed heavily before turning back to her with another agonized whisper of, “I’m sorry.”

Vaggie frowned. “That’s it?”

Charlie frowned right back at her. “That’s… it?”

“I didn’t expect my eye to grow back in the first place.”

The flash of bewilderment across Charlie’s face told Vaggie she had messed up even before her shocked sputter of, “You didn’t?”

The words came spilling past her lips without a thought. “A high ranking ghoul investigator gouged my eye out with a quinque. Someone like that would know how to do permanent damage, right? I was lucky to survive at all. I’m not going to get worked up over an eye.”

Charlie’s confusion dissipated in favor of sadness, which in turn promptly gave way to resignation. “You’re right,” she sighed. “I still wish I could have given you better news.”

“You’re upset because my eye isn’t going to grow back. I’m happy because you saved my life. I think I win here.”

The way that Charlie lit up could turn a thunderstorm into clear blue skies. “I’m happy I found you. I know that the ghoul investigators think they’re doing the right thing, but they can get so cruel sometimes. No one deserves to die like that, especially you.”

“Thanks,” Vaggie forced out through a throat that suddenly felt unspeakably tight.

Charlie went on to tell her a story about some kittens she’d seen while walking past a pet store. Vaggie tried to listen to her. She nodded at all the right points and asked questions when appropriate.

On the inside, she clung to one all-important fact.

She hadn’t lied. Technically speaking, none of the words to leave her truth were untrue. If what hid unspoken between the lines was something other than what had actually happened, it was still the closest to telling the truth that she could come under her circumstances.

It was the closest thing to the truth that she would ever be able to tell her.

*

Vaggie had expected the day she officially joined the academy to be more… more. She was meant to feel like there were fireworks going off in her heart while visions of greatness shone in her eyes.

That was how Adam had described it, anyway. She knew better than to blindly trust anything that he said, of course, but Lute had described something similar, even if she had been a little more subdued.

Yet Vaggie didn’t feel anything of the sort. She accepted her uniform and schedule anticipating something incredible. Yet when she looked down at them, she felt totally normal. She just felt like herself.

That was until Lute tracked her down and with a sharp, proud, excited grin, asked, “Are you ready to start your new life?”

It was the razor-sharp gleam in her eyes that made Vaggie understand. She was meant to feel like herself.

She was the one whose life had been destroyed by ghouls.

It was her right and responsibility to return the favor.

*

Vaggie was trying her best to act like a normal ghoul.

Perhaps understandably given the circumstances, her best was piss fucking poor.

Charlie was one of the ghouls who preferred to cook her food. She was pretty good at it, too. If she didn’t know better, she wouldn’t realize that the petite steak laid out before her was human flesh at all.

Vaggie did know better. Her stomach twisted in guilt-ridden horror while her mouth filled with saliva.

It was never easy for her to eat. On some days, it was simply hard. On others, it was close to impossible. It looked like today was one of the impossible ones. She couldn’t tell if it was going to be like this forever or she would get used to it eventually yet.

She didn’t know which option was worse.

Yet somehow, the worst part of it wasn’t her hunger or disgust. It was the way that Charlie’s eyes bored into her, full of questions she could answer and concern that she knew would turn into guilt if she didn’t see any improvement in Vaggie. That was something that she had quickly learned about the cheerful ghoul. If Charlie Morningstar wasn’t able to fix something, then she would act like it was her fault that it had happened in the first place.

Vaggie wished that she could chase that worry away so that the guilt could never form. The closest that she could come was to try her best, even if today was an impossible day. But what difference did her efforts make? Her best hadn’t been enough since that day in the alleyway. Odds were that it would never be again.

Vaggie picked her fork up and pressed the prongs into the filet with a trembling hand.

Beads of deep red liquid rose up where the flesh was pierced, filling the air with an aroma that was more rich and inviting than the finest chocolate cake. The scent made her stomach let out a ferocious growl.

That growl made bile rise up the back of her throat.

She dropped her fork and pulled her hand back like it was on fire.

On the other end of the table, Charlie was all too clearly trying to keep herself optimistic. The subtle slump of her shoulders served as a tell for her true feelings. “Not hungry?” she asked, a soft, sad, and understanding middle ground between how she felt and what she wanted Vaggie to think.

“Sorry,” Vaggie muttered. “My appetite’s still pretty shitty.”

She could tell that Charlie’s smile was entirely for her sake. It was impossible to see it and not feel guilty. The smile itself couldn’t overwrite the anxiety fluttering around her insides. A bloom of warmth spread through her chest all the same,

“You don’t need to apologize,” she said. “But I was wondering… If it’s okay, maybe I could ask a few questions?”

Vaggie looked down at the plate of human flesh. That flutter of anxiety had turned into a full, visceral twist of her organs, begging her to find an excuse to duck out of it. The nonsensical warmth that clung to her so suddenly drove her to say, “Sure.”

“You don’t have to say anything you don’t want to!” Charlie hurried to add. “If you don’t want to talk about your past, that’s your own business. But I noticed…”

Vaggie looked up when the pause dragged on for too long. Charlie was the one looking down now. Her attention was focused on her lap rather than the table and the plate on it.

“Charlie?”

“Sorry, this is just a little hard to ask. I… Um…” Charlie swallowed heavily, hesitated for a moment more, then looked Vaggie in the eye once again. “I’ve been getting the feeling that you were raised differently from other ghouls. And with you only having one eye now, I was wondering… was your missing eye human?”

Vaggie leaned back with a startled blink. She couldn’t tell for the life of her if the sense of anxiety rising up within her was confusion or fear, only that it was threatening to overwhelm her. “What?”

“You don’t need to be scared!” Charlie exclaimed. “I won’t tell anyone if you’re a hybrid! I’m asking because… Well…”

One of Charlie’s eyes lit up in a ghoulish display of red and black.

Only one of them.

“Oh,” Vaggie breathed. “Charlie… I’m sorry, but no. I’m not like you.”

It wasn’t a lie. The eye that Lute tore out of her skull might have still looked human, but that was because it had been. Vaggie was no hybrid, just a human in a ghoul’s body who had once had deceptively mis-matched eyes. Now, she didn’t even have that. But Charlie…

There was no way that the suffocating loneliness that fell across her features as she processed Vaggie’s words could belong to anything but the real deal.

Charlie reigned that pain is as quickly as she did every other negative display of emotion. “That’s okay!” she chirped. “I know better than to get my hopes up. I’ve never met another hybrid, so there isn’t really any reason it’d happen now.”

“You’re really a hybrid?” Vaggie asked.

It was an utterly pointless question. The evidence was already right in front of her.

That stupid question saw Charlie’s smile shifting into something softer and more genuine. “My mom and dad fell in love when they were teenagers. Mom was a human, but when she found out that my father was a ghoul, she still wanted to be with him. They got married and, after a lot of trying, they had me.”

“How?” Vaggie asked. “Hybrids are supposed to be impossible. They–”

“Starve to death in the womb,” Charlie finished. “Hybrids need human flesh and human flesh, so the babies starve before they can be born. But the thing is…” Her expression turned bittersweet. “They don’t starve if they get both.”

Vaggie’s eye went wide. “You mean…?”

“Mom really wanted me.”

“I see.” Vaggie looked down at the flesh in front of her and tried to imagine a world where her stomach twisted, her mouth didn’t water, and she still put it in her mouth and swallowed.

It was impossible.

“Will I meet your mom?” she quietly asked.

“...Probably not,” Charlie said. “No one’s seen mom in a few years. Dad isn’t around much either.”

Vaggie’s head snapped back up.

Charlie was staring at her lap. Her smile had disappeared.

Unthinkingly, Vaggie reached out to take her mind. When the one-eyed ghoul looked up at her, it was her turn to put on a smile for her sake. “For what it’s worth, I don’t think I’m going anywhere.”

*

Ghouls did not have human feelings.

They did, however, have human nerves.

The ghoul’s screams were barely audible past the thick glass of the double sided mirror. The fact that they were audible at all was enough to make Adam whistle. “Damn, they really got a loud fucker this time.”

Vaggie glanced up at him. She expected to see him bloodthirsty, breathless, and excited. Instead, she found him watching the demonstration with barely-concealed boredom. Her gaze lingered on him for a little while, waiting for something else to shine through. When it didn’t, she asked, “Do you see this sort of thing a lot?”

“Shit, Lute didn’t tell you? They’ve been having me help out at Cochlea.” He scowled. “It’s why they assigned me to help chaperone you little shitheads.”

So the bigshot egolord star student wasn’t being spared from the unglamorous jobs offered to freshly graduated investigators. That was… pretty fucking hilarious.

Vaggie bit her lower lip to hide her grin.

It fell away on its own at the sight of the ghoul writhing and convulsing in the chair it was strapped down to. The struggling did nothing to stop the doctor standing before it from inserting the needle deeper into its eye socket.

“Don’t you think this is a little excessive?” Vaggie whispered.

Adam snorted. “Fuck, have you been paying any attention in your classes? Metal can’t cut through ghoul skin unless we load them up with RC suppressants first. We can only get the wonder drugs in them if we inject them through their tear ducts. It’s basic fucking logic, Vajjie.”

Vaggie looked up at Adam with a heavy frown. “Why doesn’t the CCG make better needles? We already make quinques out of kagunes and quinque steel, they could figure something out using that. We could also use suppressant gas, or try to make a pi–”

“You’re talking about a lot of shit that takes a lot of time and resources,” Adam interrupted. He was looking at her like she was insane. “Why the fuck would waste them on this when we have a system that works? They’re monsters, Vags. There’s no such thing as excessive.”

He was right. She was supposed to accept that he was right, roll over, and be done with it.

Adam always did shit he wasn’t supposed to, so why shouldn’t she?

“Doesn’t that mean we should be trying to prove we’re better than them?” she asked.

“Why? It’s not like they’ll give a shit. Being the bigger person doesn’t get you anywhere when you’re dealing with something that isn’t a person to begin with.” His face finally erupted in the vindictive, laughing smile she’d been waiting for. “If you want warm fuzzies and moral lessons, become a doctor or preschool teacher. We’re here to make them know how it feels to beg for mercy.”

The ghoul on the other side of the glass was begging. She could only tell from the movement of its lips, for its screaming had died down too much for it to be audible. A pair of doctors unstrapped it from its chair and transported it onto an operating table without acknowledging it.

It was still twitching when they cut into its back. That part, at least, made sense. Ghouls’ inhuman systems couldn’t process human pain killers or sedatives. Trying to create medicine for vermin really was a waste of resources.

Behind her, the guest instructor, a first class investigator, went on about how the kagune currently being harvested would be used to create a quinque. If the ghoul survived the harvest and the kakuhou that regrew wasn’t too severely damaged, they would use it to create another. The ghoul currently being operated on was an A rate.

Vaggie found herself struggling to focus on most of what was being said past the macabre scene playing out before her. However, the mention of the ghoul’s rating drew a quiet scoff from Adam, which was outright impossible to ignore.

“What?” she whispered.

“They dragged you out here to see them cut up a fucking A rate,” he huffed. “Talk about a waste of time. Wait until you see a quinque made from an SS rate. That’s where shit gets real.”

Vaggie let out an irritated huff. Irritated. Not amused, not bordering on laughter, irritated. “Do you really think you’d live if you ran into an SS rate?”

“Cheeky bitch. Wait and see, I’ll find something way worse and turn it into paste.”

“You can’t make a quinque out of a pile of paste.”

“I’ll just take yours after you get eaten.”

“Implying that you think I’ll get at least an SS quinque.”

“Duh. I’ll give you one made from a ghoul I killed. Maybe then you’ll feel bad about being such a mouthy little cunt.”

“The ghoul you’ve already turned into paste.”

“Oh for fuck’s– shut up before I tell the warden you’re volunteering to help the janitor. Bet you’ll get off my dick after a few hours scrubbing the execution chamber. They get guts all over that bitch.”

Vaggie let out a quiet snort of something that definitely wasn’t laughter.

On the operating table, the ghoul stopped twitching.

*

Vaggie was beginning to suspect that she was as recovered as she would ever be. She could stay awake all day and walk around without any discomfort. Seeing the world through only one eye was still unusual, but that was doubtlessly something that only time could improve. All in all, she had to admit that things had turned out a lot better than they could have.

She hadn’t set foot outside of Charlie’s apartment since the day she had taken her in.

If anyone were to ask her why, she would be able to present them with three good reasons.

There was a real chance that the CCG was looking for her given her unique status.

If a search was sent out for her, everyone would know exactly who she was, as she’d never had a chance to acquire one of the masks that ghouls used to conceal their identities.

If she was caught, she wouldn’t be the only one who paid the price.

The first two excuses were facts. The third one made her heart leap into her throat in a way that she couldn’t quite describe.

All three of them evaporated when a tentative, hopeful Charlie said that she hadn’t seen her face or description on any posters or newscasts.

Vaggie tried to smile and act like she was happy to hear the news. Her plan was to brush it off once she had given Charlie the reaction she so clearly wanted. She didn’t need to know about the way Vaggie’s pulse slowed at the notion of facing the outside world, nor did Vaggie need to examine it in any depth.

Then Charlie, with a hopeful gleam in her eyes and plea in her voice, asked if she wanted to see her favorite coffee shop.

Vaggie was going to say no. Even if it was safe for her to go outside and her condition had improved significantly, the incident that landed her in Charlie’s lap had been recent and severe enough that she could believably claim that she was too tired. God knew that Charlie was too kind to push the matter if she refused with such an excuse.

She opened her mouth to say no.

In the back of her mind, the voice of someone who she used to call a friend gleefully hissed, “Maybe hybrids are human enough to want it more than the other ghouls. Friends, family, all that shit. They’ll never get it though, because they don’t belong anywhere. And maybe they can put up with it for a while, but the loneliness gets worse and worse until…”

“Yes,” Vaggie blurted out.

The way that Charlie’s voice lit up kept her from feeling any real regret in the immediate aftermath.

The joyful ringing of her voice kept it at bay as Vaggie took her first steps in the outside world as something less than human.

The taste of black coffee on her tongue, the one thing that had remained well and truly the same, was nearly enough to bring her to tears.

Regret did not come from anything that Charlie did. The one-eyed ghoul’s actions, paradoxical though it was, only served to bring some light back into a world that had gone dull and gray.

No. Regret came in the form of a young man. His well-pressed suit and pristine white gloves made him look professional, but his shaky smile and the way that he filled with his silver suitcase belayed an anxiety that served to completely undermine it.

“Shit,” Charlie hissed. She shifted over in her seat; subtle, but enough to obscure her face from the other patrons in the cafe. “Play it cool, okay? I’m pretty sure he’s a dove, but if we act natural, he probably won’t figure us out.”

“Shit, look at the little dove!”

Vaggie swallowed heavily and looked down at her espresso.

So that was what they had meant.

The man who had entered the cafe was clearly a ghoul investigator. Vaggie looked at him and saw one of the subordinates that Adam was training, although she had never met him in person. The only reason she recognized him was because Adam liked to whip out pictures when bitching about strangers for some godforsaken reason. She was pretty sure that his name was Pentious.

Charlie wouldn’t know any of that. She didn’t need to. One look at her told her exactly what she saw when she looked at him: the reaper who followed in her footsteps, ready to destroy everything she knew with a swing of his scythe.

Vaggie’s fingers felt numb around the handle of her coffee cup. “I’m guessing you don’t like ghoul investigators,” she whispered.

She shouldn’t have been surprised that Charlie surprised her one more time.

“I don’t think they’re bad people or anything,” she whispered back. “They’re doing what they think is right. I can’t blame them for wanting to protect the people they care about. I just wish they’d be willing to talk instead of… You know…” Charlie smiled sadly. “Killing us.”

*

“Vaggie!”

Vaggie froze at the sound of her name and turned to face the inexplicable sight of her best friend racing toward her with an utterly unhinged grin on her face.

“Lute?” she asked in open befuddlement. “What are you doing here?”

‘Here’ being outside the academy in the middle of the night. Vaggie was going for a walk around the perameter because she was having trouble sleeping. It was understandable given that graduation was only a week away, but still not something that she was technically meant to be doing. Lute would have had to actually look to find her. She would have had to scour the academy grounds in the middle of the fucking night.

Vaggie couldn’t imagine a scenario where Lute did such a thing that didn’t end with her pissed as all fuck. Yet the woman who grabbed her hands was completely, utterly, and insanely elated.

“Adam captured the Radio Ghoul!”

“…What?”

“You heard me!” Lute cried, giving her hands a sharp tug. “Adam captured the fucking Radio Ghoul!”

“You’re fucking with me,” Vaggie declared, pulling her hands out of Lute’s. “Adam’s good, but he’s not a fucking god, no matter how much you worship him. There’s no way he captured a fucking Kakuja.”

The Radio Ghoul was the first SSS rate ghoul that the United States had seen in half a century. A beast that devoured its own kind and had earned a monstrous armored kagune for it, it was a wholly unique abomination that the CCG had been hunting for years. The notion that Adam had captured it was…

Vaggie shook her head with a huff of laughter. “Seriously, Lute. If you’re going to jerk me around, at least make it believable.”

“I’m not joking!” Lute snapped. “Adam and Sera were the only one who survived the operation!”

“…What?” Vaggie whispered again.

Their conversation didn’t feel funny anymore. The chill running through her veins made her wish it did.

“They found the Radio Ghoul’s hideout three days ago. Twelve investigators were deployed to capture it. Seven of them were killed and three more succumbed to their injuries later. But Adam lived! He wasn’t even badly injured!” Lute grabbed Vaggie’s hand again. Her grip was so tight that her fingers started going numb. “Vaggie, he said they’re going to promote him to associate special class!”

“Already?” Vaggie whispered.

Would the investigators who died get posthumous promotions? Or was Adam well and truly being promoted on top of their corpses?

“He also said— Fuck, it’s just a rumor, but he said that I’m going to be promoted to rank one, too!”

“Wow,” Vaggie whispered. “That’s…”

Incredible. Adam had only been an investigator for a few years and had already made it to associate special class. Breaking into the upper ranks at all within that timeline was already impressive. Making the jump from first class to associate special class on top of that meant that he was well on his way to cementing his status as a legend.

Awe-inspiring. Lute may not have gone as far as fast, but she was still climbing the ranks impressively quickly. If she stayed by Adam’s side, it was inevitable that she would be pulled even further upwards.

They were truly great investigators.

The best investigators always died the worst deaths.

Lute scoffed. “Too jealous for words?”

Vaggie swatted Lute softly on the shoulder. “Fuck off.”

She wouldn’t. She would stay with the Commission of Counter Ghoul for the rest of her life.

So would Adam.

So would Vaggie.

Of course they would. It was what they had been training for since childhood. All three of them had known that they would almost certainly die at the hands of a ghoul from the moment they joined the academy. All three of them had decided it was worth it. When they died, it would be with the corpses of countless monsters beneath them. Who was she to begrudge them for moving one step closer to the goal they were all fighting for? She owed her friend her happiness.

Even if one of them was as big of a dickwad as Adam.

Vaggie smiled warmly. “Congratulations. You both earned it.”

“Damn right,” Lute said. “Stick with us and you will, too.”

*

“Vaggie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you think that humans and ghouls need to be enemies?”

It was the middle of the night, silent save for the patter of the rain outside. That rain had been loud enough to drown out all other quiet noises a moment ago. Now, Vaggie could hear Charlie’s breathing, the clock on the wall, and her own heartbeat as clear as day.

“What do you mean?” she whispered.

She heard Charlie rolling over to face her. It took a moment for her to fight her way past the racing of her heart and turn over as well.

Vaggie had thought that it was sweet but kind of odd when Charlie offered to move her cot into her room for the night. As she stared at her, features so soft despite being swathed in shadows to the point of unreadability, she found herself glad that they weren’t having this conversation in the daylight.

“I’m asking if you think we can ever live peacefully,” Charlie said. “I know that it would be hard. Ghouls need to eat and humans don’t want to be eaten. But… that means that we have more in common than people realize, right? We both want to live. We’ve both just doing what we need to survive.”

“Charlie…”

“If we worked together, do you think we could find a way to do that without anyone dying? People die every day. I’ve been looking at statistics and it’s more than enough to keep ghouls fed. It’s horrible, but there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Every ghoul in the world could die and humans would keep dying. But… I know that a lot of people wouldn’t like it, but if some of those bodies were given to ghouls, then they wouldn’t need to kill anyone else to keep living. Then the doves wouldn’t need to kill them to keep people safe! So many lives would be saved… It has to be better than what we have now, right?”

Vaggie reached over to lay a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. She couldn’t remember the last time she had touched someone so gently. “It would be.”

Charlie’s whisper was a warmth that was slowly growing familiar laced with a sadness that she dearly wished she could away. “You don’t think it’s possible, do you?”

“I think you’re a good person for having such a beautiful dream.”

One of the best people that Vaggie had ever known.

A person.

A lock of hair had fallen in front of Charlie’s face, barely visible in the shadows of the room. Vaggie reached over to tuck it behind her ear. “How would you try to make it come true?”

“I think… I’d start with helping ghouls find a way to live without hurting anyone.”

*

The CCG’s rules were that junior investigators had to be partnered with an upper rank investigator for the sake of safety and continued education. However, they were usually only assigned to one partner.

Adam and Lute petitioned for an exception to be made for Vaggie.

She was openly happy to be working with her best friend. For the sake of not letting something insufferable happen, she had to act like Adam was a walking, talking headache that she was absolutely pissed about being stuck with, but she had a terrible sinking feeling that the bastard knew she was happy to be working with him too.

There was no chance that she could believably convince anyone that she was anything less than over the moon when she got their first assignment.

The Radio Ghoul had been captured and the majority of its associates dealt with. However, there was still one straggler to be hunted down: a particularly cunning ghoul who the CCG referred to as The Gambler.

When they received their assignment, Adam grinned a grin that showed all his teeth and said, “I think I’m going to wait for the greasy little fucker to realize who he’s dealing with first. Then, I’ll break every bone in its spine and show it its own spleen.” Adam paused, brows furrowing as he slipped into a considerate frown. “Actually, I’ve never done that before? Do you think it’ll make it drool?”

Lute heaved an exasperated sigh that did absolutely nothing to detract from her own grin. “We need to take this one in alive, Adam. You can’t disembowel it for shits and giggles.”

“Why not?” he protested. “It’s a ghoul. The thing’ll stitch itself back together after we throw it in Cochlea.”

“Maybe you’re so much of a badass that you won’t be able to,” Vaggie dryly said.

Adam’s eyes widened in realization. “Shit!” He snapped his fingers. “You’re right, I could tear through a S rate like tissue paper! Little pussy won’t dare put itself back together. Thanks, Vags!”

They devolved into an argument from there.

At the time, it was easy to say that Adam was joking. He definitely was toward the end.

The end had been a joke.

When they captured the Gambler, she realized that the rest had been nothing more than the bare-faced truth.

Vaggie didn’t blink when Adam hoisted his axe high and brought it down on the thing’s kagune. That was standard procedure. The Gambler had thrown itself at Adam after he had it cornered with the bristling, feather-like barbs at the end of its bikaku pointed at him. His intent to kill was clear as day. He was following standard procedure by depriving it of its means to do so.

He was merely playing it safe when he brought the blade of his quinque down to press against the back of his neck. The ghoul was yet to scream beyond the initial wail that had followed the loss of its kagune. That indicated that it still had enough self-control to pose a potential threat.

The thing shrieked when Adam brought his boot down on the gaping wound where its kagune had been.

“Damnit, Adam!” Lute shouted, drowning out its torment. “That was a good kagune!”

Adam responded with a snort. “If it was a good kagune, it came from a good kakuhou. We can wait for it to grow back, tear the thing out, and get our quinque then.”

“What if it doesn’t grow back?”

“What the fuck does that—”

Adam paused.

There were few things loud enough to make Adam stop talking. One of them was silence when there was something he wanted to be hearing. A pool of blood had gathered around Adam’s boot where he was pressing it down on the ghoul, yet the thing had pulled itself together enough to stop screaming. Worse, it was looking up at him in defiance.

Vaggie had seen Adam angry plenty of times. She had seen him irritated. This display may have taken the cake, but she had seen him indulge his sadism enough times that it wasn’t truly shocking. However, this was her first time seeing him insulted by a creature so clearly beneath him.

“We’re bringing this one in for information, right? I don’t see how it matters what happens to his kagune as long as we can make the ugly bastard scream.” Adam lifted his foot and brought it back down on the ghoul’s injury in a ferocious stomp. Vaggie heard something crack.

The ghoul spasmed, but made no noise other than that crack.

Lute hummed thoughtfully. She tapped the bladed tip of her quinque against her thigh. “You’re right, sir. The most important thing is making our little rat squeak.” She lifted her quinque and gave it a twirl, a beautiful, ferocious grin blossoming across her face with the motion.

There was blood splattered across the ghoul’s teeth. His voice was as strained as a creature on death row. And when he fought to lift his head, he looked at Adam and Lute like they were the stupidest beings that he had ever seen. “You’re wasting your time. I ain’t saying shit.”

Adam’s face contorted in rage.

His next move was halted by Lute striding forward. “Oh?” she purred. “You’re still going to defend the Radio Ghoul? After he sold you out? Because I think…”

She stabbed her blade through the Gambler’s shoulder, pinning him to the concrete. He’s wasn’t able to hold back his scream this time.

“…That you’re smarter than them.”

Adam laughed. He lifted his leg again, only to be paused by a sharp glare from Lute. He met it with irritation, but set his foot down on the pavement nonetheless.

The ghoul needed a little while to pull himself together despite the lessened agony. Adam and Lute grew visibly more impatient with each passing second. Vaggie grew more aware of the way that her stomach was squirming. It was a lot of wasted time and unnecessary discomfort for something that was a foregone conclusion.

It should have been a foregone conclusion.

The battered, broken ghoul let out a wheezing, derisive huff. “Stop fucking around and kill me. All you’re gettin’ out of this is a corpse.”

Lute twisted her quinque. The Gambler’s flesh and bone twisted with it, turning a straight incision into a gaping hole. “Maybe you are a stupid little cunt. You know we’re bringing you back to Cochlea, right? They’ll do far worse than kill you.”

“It’ll be funny as fuck,” Adam chimed in.

“Great,” it snarled. “Then stop wasting our time and do that.”

“I could,” Adam said. “I will. I know people, you know? Assholes so sick and twisted that even you can’t imagine them. You might as well have a fucking cunt with how they’ll fuck you over. First, you’ll get a long ass needle jammed in your eye. Then you’ll carve your back up from asshole to sh—”

“He’s not protecting the Radio Ghoul,” Vaggie blurted out.

Adam and Lute both looked at her, the question evident in their confused, annoyed expressions.

“You were right, Lute, it isn’t dumb. It knows that its master fucked it over. It wouldn’t risk its life to protect it.” Vaggie walked over to stand above the ghoul. It was supposedly an S rate, a powerful beast that could tear a man apart as easily as breathing and would delight in his screams like a cat in the sunlight.

The thing staring up as her didn’t look like a monster. His kakugan had flickered out, leaving behind tired brown eyes. He had black hair and a scruffy black beard, the same that she might see on any world-weary bartended. All in all, he looked…

…Pathetic.

Vaggie looked away from it with a disgusted huff. “Was it working with the Radio Ghoul willingly?”

“Fuck no!” Adam scoffed. “That bastard was a cannibal! All of its minions were blackmailed or threatened.” He swung his quinque idly, drawing a thin line of blood from the ghoul’s neck. “So what?”

“It’s trying to defend the same thing that the Radio Ghoul threatened,” Lute breathed. “It’s old enough to have a mate. Or maybe offspring.” She pulled her sword out of its shoulder with a bark of laughter. “Here Sera said that this would be difficult! We give it a week to spill its guts. If it doesn’t, we hunt down every other ghoul it’s ever spoken to and tear their guts out for it.”

Adam lifted his quinque to point it at Vaggie. “I knew you weren’t a totally useless cunt!”

“Fuck off, Adam,” she huffed, trying to fight back her grin.

She was sure it was a grin.

*

Vaggie felt like nothing less than an abomination when she brought her kagune out for the second time.

Charlie looked at her like she was beautiful.

The fear of what she might lose if she gave Charlie reason to grow more suspicious was what pushed her to try to bring her kagune out in the first place.

The irrational yet overwhelming hope that it would make her happy was what allowed her to pull it off.

But that look? That look was what let Vaggie hold herself together.

It wasn’t enough to get her to look at the thing that she could feel moving behind her. It was inevitable that she would have to, but every additional second that she could put it off for was precious.

Charlie clapped her hands excitedly. “Okay, let’s get going! You don’t need to give me any details if the answer is ‘no’, but I’m going to go ahead and guess that you don’t have much fighting experience?”

I’ve killed more people than you can imagine, Vaggie thought.

“No,” she said.

“Well, that’s okay! Because…” Charlie intertwined her fingers and dropped her hands from where they had been hovering over her chest to sit above her navel. “I don’t know how to fight either! We can figure it out together!”

That was.

Absolutely not how that worked. Two people with no training or experience could build strength by sparring together, but they wouldn’t be able to learn any sort of actual technique. The risk of injury skyrocketed as well. It was a frankly nonsensical prospect.

Charlie was practically vibrating with excitement at the prospect of the nonsense she had so confidently proposed.

Vaggie cast a wary eye around their surroundings. Charlie’s house – or rather, the house that her father had effectively abandoned – wasn’t very large. The basement reflected that. There wasn’t enough space between the walls to spar without running the risk of slamming into one. Worse yet, the only padding on the ground was a small mat that Charlie had informed her was designed for yoga. Odds were, falling would result in hitting the concrete floor at full force. All in all, it was a terrible training space. Lute would leave anyone who dared to take her on in such an area bruised and broken.

Charlie wasn’t Lute.

Neither was Vaggie. Not anymore. She was a–

She wasn’t something that Lute was willing to consider a comrade, let alone a friend or sister.

They should be fine as long as they were careful. Charlie didn’t have the training to know how to be careful, but Vaggie’s experience should be enough to counter an inexperienced ghoul. She may not be fighting with the quinque that her hands yearned for, but that didn’t erase her ability to throw a punch or dodge.

“What’s our first move?” Vaggie asked.

“First, I want to make sure that your kagune can handle this! Do you have good control of it?”

She wished she could say no. An uncontrollable body part was alien by nature. It would be a heinous thing that had been implanted inside of her, not a part of her. Any and all risks that would arise from such instability would be worth the peace of mind that would come from it. Letting the doctors at Cochlea tear it out and living with the resulting damage would be worth it if it meant that she didn’t have to feel the thing behind her. She’d let Adam lead a class and laugh at her screams if it meant that she could be one step closer to human.

But Vaggie could feel the thing behind her. It was one and many at the same time, four tendrils sprouting from one warm, pulsating source. Despite the tension in her head, her muscles were relaxed enough for them to sway gently behind her. She could make them fall still if she wanted to though. If she actually tried, she knew that she would be able to move them as easily as any other limb.

She was going to have to try.

If it were anyone other than Charlie asking her to do this, she would spit venom and make an excuse to walk away, assuming that she bothered with an excuse or explanation at all.

Because it was Charlie, Vaggie pulled one of the tendrils closer to her back, trying to suppress the way her skin crawled at the feeling of it rolling in on itself, and said, “Yes.”

“Good! Then we can move on to step two, which is…” If she were anyone else, the uncertainty that flickered across her face would be annoying as all fuck. Because it was Charlie, it was adorable. Vaggie almost wished that it would last longer when she perked up and exclaimed, “Doing whatever feels right! Let’s be careful, give it our best shot, and see what happens.”

Vaggie wasn’t going to be an asshole to Charlie. She was not.

The tiny smirk that tugged on her lips wasn’t being an asshole. She didn’t sound too extraordinarily dickish when she said, “That sounds more like playing around than training.”

“Who says you can’t have fun when you train?” Charlie shot back.

Lute. Lute said that if you were getting anywhere close to having fun when you trained, it meant that you were doing it wrong. Pain indicated that you were getting stronger. Joy meant that you were fucking around and would pay for it on the battlefield.

What the fuck did Lute know? Vaggie knew damn well that Lute loved sparring with Adam. Half of the time, it looked more like foreplay than anything. She was a hypocrite beyond and above all else.

Was she enough of a hypocrite that she would have given Adam a chance if he was the one who had been altered? Or was she such a heartless bitch that she would turn on him, too?

Would she have been a hypocrite for Vaggie if that bloodthirsty bastard wasn’t around?

“Vaggie?” Charlie called, yanking her back to the present that she couldn’t let herself wander away from. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, sorry. I was just… It’s not important.” She stretched her arms out wide. “Show me what you’ve got, Morningstar.”

Vaggie had never seen a kagune that she didn’t find disgusting. There were kagunes that were impressive in the sheer destruction they could wreck. There were quinques that were useful and admirably designed. This did nothing to change the simple trick of their nature. A kagune was an unnatural biological weapon designed to murder innocent people. No ability or appealing appearance could ever hope to make up for that.

Or so she had thought.

Charlie’s kagune was objectively weak. That much was obvious from a glance. It was a thin bikaku that burst free to twist and curl behind her like a vibrant red whip. It ended in a wickedly barbed spade that could be devastating under the right circumstances. However, it would be all but useless without the skill and strength to back it up. She had already told her that she had no fighting experience. The kagune that swayed behind her like a demonic tail was thin not only by nature, but from a distinct lack of muscle. If Lute or Adam were to see it, they would call it nothing less than pathetic.

And yet.

There was a certain cheer to the way Charlie’s kagune twisted through the air behind her. With its vicious barb, it was nothing less than infernal, but the way she moved it reminded Vaggie of a dog waiting to play fetch. It was the exact same shade as the red of her single kakugan, which all but glowed under the fluorescent lights of the basement. That red and black eye contrasted with the heartbreakingly human one on the other side of her face, both serving to make the other stand out.

Both shone with the light of Charlie’s smile. The soulless black and throbbing veins of the eye that she had hated for so long was utterly helpless to put it out.

Vaggie hadn’t realized that kakugan came in different shades of red until that moment.

Charlie lunged forward before she had time to properly take the sight in. It was a clumsy lunge, nothing more than a forward tackle with no strategy or intent behind it. She hadn’t bothered to prepare or kagune for a blow or even bring it closer to her. Vaggie was able to side-step it easily, letting Charlie’s momentum carry her several more feet forward.

Her first instinct was to use her quinque to grab the tail that she had left exposed and bring her to the ground.

She had no quinque to call upon. There was, however, the writhing thing sprouting from her back. Vaggie lashed out with her kagune before she had a chance to realize what she was doing. One of the tendrils – a sharply-tipped red thing that she only caught the barest glance of – grabbed Charlie’s tail and tugged on it sharply.

She lost her balance and tumbled to the ground with a surprised yelp.

Vaggie raced forward to catch her, only for her hand to grab at empty air where her single eye told her there was a person. The tip of her right shoe got caught beneath her left in the surprised flailing that ensured. From there, the only way to fall was forward.

Charlie landed on her back. A stroke of luck saw her head and shoulders hitting the yoga mat rather than the floor.

Vaggie landed on top of Charlie.

Vaggie propped herself up on her hands as soon as she gathered what was left of her wits. She sputtered uselessly as she scrambled to find any sort of apology that would be acceptable in this situation.

Her sputtering stopped when she caught sight of the dazed but warm smile that Charlie was looking at her with.

“Are you okay?” Vaggie asked.

“Yeah. It takes a lot more than a fall to take me down.” Wry amusement flashed across her features. “I guess I should be grateful for that, huh? You’ll probably be able to train me soon.”

“I’m sorry,” Vaggie repeated. “I didn’t mean to–”

“It’s fine!” Charlie exclaimed. “It was really impressive.”

Vaggie blinked. “It… Was?”

“You’re a natural! And…” Charlie paused, a warm blush spreading across her cheeks. Uncertain hesitation lingered for a tenuous moment before giving away to determination. Rather than the bloodlust and fury that Vaggie had known her whole life, this determination blossomed into a warm smile. “You’re really beautiful when you fight.”

She couldn’t think.

She couldn’t breathe.

She couldn’t stop herself from saying, “So are you.”

It was enough.

Vaggie had accepted that she had nothing left to lose. She hadn’t dared stop to wonder if she might have something to gain.

Then Charlie leaned up to pull her into the sweetest kiss of her life.

She melted into it like a woman looking for a reason to live.

*

“Damn!” Adam laughed. “I didn't know you had it in you!”

Vaggie raised an eyebrow at the obnoxious bastard. “You didn't think I had it in me and let me partner with you and Lute anyway?”

Adam was left floundering before deflecting like the dumbass he was. “Lute begged me.”

“Fuck off,” Lute huffed, smacking her partner on the shoulder.

She left him grumbling to stride over to Vaggie with a grin. “Good job, rookie. You'll always remember your first kill.” Lute nudged the limp pile of flesh with the toe of her shoe. “Do you want to keep it?”

Vaggie eyed the limp rinkaku sprawling from the ghoul's corpse. “I think I'll wait for something better.”

*

Vaggie didn't know any of Charlie's friends. She knew that she had them. She knew that she could meet them if she wanted to; Charlie had subtly offered to introduce her to them plenty of times. Every time the subject came up, tried to dodge it without seeming rude. Every time she tried to dodge it, she had been allowed to do so.

Vaggie knew that she would need to let herself be introduced to other ghouls eventually. She may have found spending the rest of her life in total social isolation apart from Charlie to be the preferable option, but she knew that it would make her worry. For the sake of calming her nerves and only that reason, she was willing to take that plunge.

Eventually.

Back in the academy and during her first days as an investigator, she had hated taking baby steps. They made her feel like a pathetic coward who was doomed to fall behind her fr– the people she had considered her friends. Her feelings had changed when she found that taking baby steps had become the only way she could move forward at all.

Vaggie was having enough trouble working up the nerve to ask Charlie out on a proper date. That had to be her first priority. She would think about letting her introduce her to her friends after she had climbed that mountain and not a moment sooner.

Along with not knowing any of Charlie's friends, Vaggie didn't know much about them. There was a significant part of her that didn't want to know, given what those friends must be. She understood how hypocritical it was of her. That understanding did nothing to stop the churning in her gut. However, there was a much larger part of her that didn't care. She knew the only truly important thing about them, which was that Charlie's face lit up when one of them called her.

A dreary Sunday morning marked the first time that she saw her answer her phone with dread and apprehension.

She moved too quickly for Vaggie to ask who it was or what was wrong. Charlie looked at the caller ID, grimaced, and answered with the same diligence that she did all other calls. Her hesitation came K the slow, subdued way that she said, “Hi, dad.”

Vaggie sat up so quickly that the couch creaked underneath her.

Charlie tried to smile at her. It was the first time that she had seen her fail so miserably.

A voice came through the phone. Vaggie couldn't make out any of the words, but there was no missing the sound itself. Energetic but void of joy, the only word she could think of to describe it was manic.

He went on for a while before Charlie offered a soft, “Uh-huh.”

She paused. There was another string of rushed, rambled speech from the other end of the phone.

“Mmhmm,” she said when the avoid paused.

The voice slowed. It grew quiet enough that Vaggie couldn't hear it at all. Those quiet words say Charlie's gaze drop to the floor, the frown that she'd been holding back finally blossoming in full. “No. I didn't know that,” she murmured.

Charlie's father was presumably still talking. He remained too quiet to hear.

She began anxiously twisting the hem of her shirt between her fingers.

Vaggie was starting to get the impression the mania was the better option where this man was concerned.

“Yeah,” Charlie eventually said. “I will be. You too.”

Another pause.

“Love you too.”

Charlie hung up and sat down on the couch heavily. Her phone was still clasped in her hands. She turned it over robotically, staring at it without looking.

Vaggie reached her hand toward her shoulder, but pulled back a hair's length short of touching her. “Charlie?”

“There are a couple of high ranking doves in the area,” she said, eyes still fixed on her phone. “Dad called to tell me to be safe. He hasn't really been around a lot, but we've been talking more lately. I've been trying to get him to come around to an idea I have and he's been… Trying.”

Vaggie dropped her hand back into her lap. “Oh.”

“Sorry, I shouldn't be bothering you with that.” Charlie looked up at her with a bright smile. “Don't worry about the doves, okay? We aren't hurting anyone, so they don't have any trails to track back to us.”

Vaggie started.

“I mean it. I know it's scary, but–”

“Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you want to go on a date with me?”

*

“You don’t have any fucking right to judge me!”

“I have all of the right in the world to judge you. Adam? Really?”

“He’s an incredible man!”

“He’s an unnaturally tall five year old.” Vaggie sighed. “I suppose it was inevitable though.”

Lute stopped so quickly that she almost tripped on her own two feet. She didn’t give herself a chance to recover before turning on Vaggie with such speed that she was surprised she didn’t snap her neck. “What do you mean?”

Vaggie blinked slowly.

It wasn’t kind to laugh at her best friend when she was in distress. It was cruel of her to laugh at her when she was already subjecting herself to a relationship with the biggest dumbfuck either of them had even met.

Vaggie wouldn’t be in the CCG if she couldn’t handle being a little cruel sometimes. “Lute, you’ve been pining after that asshole since before I met you.”

“No I hav—”

Vaggie snickered.

Lute allowed her protests to die off into a scowl. “Was it that obvious?”

“Did you actually think I didn’t know? You couldn’t have been more obvious if you tried!”

“Did everyone know!?”

“Everyone but Adam.” Vaggie snorted sardonically. “It’s a bad thing you confessed. He never would have gotten the clue otherwise.”

“You shut your ugly tra—”

“Are you going to stay in the CCG?”

Lute’s snarling scowl disappeared with a blink of confusion. “What?”

“Are you and Adam going to stay in the CCG now that you’re together?” She glanced at Lute’s hand. It was void of jewelry of any sort, but if she got the wish that she knew she harbored… “I know you’re up for another promotion. Are you going to accept or back out?”

“Why the fuck would we back out?”

“So you don’t become some ghoul’s lunch the first time you fuck up.”

Lute thrust a finger in front of her face. “First of all, you mouthy cunt, I’m never going to fuck up. Adam’s never going to fuck up. He’s going to keep climbing the ranks until he’s bigger than Zestial, and I’ll be by his side the entire time. Second.” She jabbed her finger against her chest. “Do you ever plan on leaving?”

Vaggie rubbed her fingers together, feeling the friction of the white gloves rubbing together. It was difficult to imagine a life where she didn’t put them on every day. “No. But I’m not in a relationship.”

“You think that will keep a ghoul from turning your ass into rump roast?”

“No. But it’s different.”

“Because you probably will make a mistake that gets you killed?”

“Fuck off,” Vaggie huffed with a roll of her eyes.

Lute hummed. “Overconfidence isn’t a good look on you.”

Vaggie elbowed her in the side. “It’s not overconfidence, you bitch. Who was it who took down the Behemoth last week?”

“An easy kill.”

“That thing was bigger than Adam!”

“Slower, too.”

“Big words from the woman who fumbled the Firestarter.”

“I was distracted by the fuck fire!”

“Me and Adam were able to focus.”

“Because I stopped you from catching on fire!”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“We’ll see how smug you feel after I kill the Leopard.”

“No way, the Leopard is mine!”

“Are you willing to bet on it?”

“If you feel like giving money away, sure. How about…”

*

Vaggie awoke with heavy eyelids that begged for her to go back to sleep.

The threat of falling back into her memories made it unthinkable.

She slipped out of bed as quietly as a ghost. It was early enough in the morning that much of the house was still submerged in shadows. Vaggie made her way through the hallways easily regardless, not because the dull morning light provided much in the way of illumination, but because she knew them like the back of her hand by this point.

There were implications behind that familiarity, a marker of the distance from her old life that way growing greater with every day. Not too long ago, she would have hated to think of it. Now, it made her stomach twist a little, but that discomfort meant nothing compared to the understanding that had come to dawn on her.

If she did not have Charlie, she would have no one.

If she didn’t have this house, she would have nowhere to go.

If she was alone, an investigator-turned-ghoul with nowhere to go, something terrible would have happened by now. She didn’t know what it was, nor did she want to think about it. That was not her reality. Her life was this tiny house, painted a faint grayish-blue by the light pouring in through the windows. It was the aroma gently wafting in from the kitchen, faint enough that she could have ignored it if she tried, heartbreaking enough that she would never be able to. It was everything she would never be able to tell the girl who had come to mean so much to her, the people she’d have to meet eventually, and everything she didn’t yet know. It was—

Crying?

Vaggie froze. The noise continued. Before long, she had no doubts that she was hearing what she thought she was; the faint, stifled whimpers of someone trying not to give into grief and doing a terrible job of it.

Vaggie took off running. The sound led her to the living room, where Charlie was sitting on the ground with her knees pulled up to her chest and her back pressed against the couch. Vaggie couldn’t bring herself to feel bad at her startled surprise when she burst in. Her single eye darted to and fro, looking for the threat that could have reduced her Charlie to this state.

She couldn’t find anything no matter how hard she looked.

“What’s wrong?” she eventually demanded.

“Nothing,” Charlie sniffed.

Vaggie turned her attention back to her with a tight-lipped frown. That was when she noticed the red flag that she should have caught from the beginning; the cellphone cradled tightly against her chest.

She had never been a very comforting person. There was no need for that in the CCG. Not from people like her. She wasn’t there to tend to the victims of the ghouls they hunted, to hold their hand and make sure they were okay. She was there to kill, fight, and destroy. Lute and Adam had been the same. None of them were comforting, none of them were kind, and now…

She wasn’t one of them anymore.

Maybe that meant she could start learning to be better.

Vaggie crouched down and laid a hand on Charlie’s shoulder. The contact pulled a stifled sob out of her. Neither of them would have sobbed. They would have brushed her off, not leaned into her touch. Vaggie really didn’t know where to go from there, but…

Vaggie wrapped her arm around Charlie’s shoulders.

She all but collapsed against her. Vaggie took that as her cue to wrap her other arm around her.

They sat there, Charlie trembling in her arms and Vaggie holding her with a tenderness that she hadn’t been built for, until the heaviness of the air had faded enough for her to ask, “What happened?”

“A friend of mine died,” Charlie whispered.

“Oh,” Vaggie murmured, voice as numb as her insides. “Was it a dove?”

“Two of them. Anna wasn’t very strong, but they still…” Vaggie tightened her grip on Charlie as she gave a harsh shudder. She couldn’t hear the sob trying to break free, but she felt it in the way her chest seized. That tension made itself audible when she finally choked out, “It wasn’t fast.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault.”

Vaggie closed her eye. There were plenty of people who were justified in crying in this situation. She was not one of them.

“I’m sorry,” she repeated.

“Thank you,” Charlie whispered.

*

Adam called her the fourth-best ghoul killer in the CCG.

He met her glare with a shit-eating grin. “What? Don’t tell me you’re such an egotistical cunt that you thought you could top Zestial or Lute, let alone me.”

“I guess that makes you the most delusional investigator in the CCG,” Vaggie said.

She never told him that she appreciated the compliment.

*

Charlie called her her girlfriend.

She met her breathless shock by nervously shifting from foot to foot. “Unless… you don’t want to be?”

“I want to be,” Vaggie said.

She could never tell her how big of a mistake she was making.

*

“Don’t you think this is a little weird!?”

“Shitty? Yes. Weird? Fuck no.” Adam turned around to face Vaggie with a tired, exasperated sigh that was all too clearly headed in the direction of irritated. “Let’s face it, babe. The rest of these chucklefucks aren’t half as good as we are. They fuck up. When an investigator fucks up, they bite the dust. That’s the way this game works.”

“But she disappeared without a trace!”

“Fuck, Vajjie, did you hit your head on something? Start huffing paint? Seriously, you’ve gotta tell me what you’re on right now.”

For the sake of carrying out a conductive conversation, Vaggie didn’t let herself succumb to spitting fury. She could let that loose when she told Lute what a moron her partner was later. For now, she settled for hissing, “I’m not on anything. Adam–”

“Vaggie.” Adam leaned down, put his hands on her shoulders, and in the most condescending voice known to man, said, “I don’t know how you forgot this bit, but ghouls eat people. Ana disappeared because the bitch got eaten.”

She slapped his hands off her and took a step forward, forcing him to take a step back. “We haven’t found any remains, Adam.”

He threw his hands in the air. “So they turned her bones into broth and used her hair to wave baskets or some shit! Ghouls are sick fucks that don’t waste a drop. It happens all the time.”

“Ana was a good investigator. This wouldn’t have happened to her!”

Adam rolled his eyes with a scoff. “So? Good people fuck up all the time. You don’t mean shit unless you’re great.”

“She’s the third investigator to go missing in four months!”

“I think you mean second.” He leaned forward to wave his finger in her face. “Leanna’s body washed up in a river a week ago.”

This time, Vaggie slapped Adam’s hand away so hard that he pulled it back with a yelp. “She washed up mutilated!”

“No shit she did! Those things don’t exactly like us, Vags!”

“So you aren’t going to do anything!?”

“What do you expect me to do!?” Adam shouted. “I’m hot shit, but I’m not in charge! I can’t go chasing after a case with no evidence. We have nothing, Vags! If Sera and Zestial say we aren’t going to chase after our own asses on a hopeless case, that’s the end of it.”

Vaggie had a shout building up within her as well. She held it back for long enough to truly look at Adam. His eyes were pointed at her. The anger that flashed behind them wasn’t. It almost, if she allowed herself to believe in the impossible, looked like he gave a shit.

“Have you asked them about it?” she asked.

Adam looked away. That told her everything that she needed to know, namely that he didn’t need to bother muttering. “None of your fucking business.”

“What if more of the people I know disappear? Will it still not be any of my fucking business.”

“No, Vaggie, it’ll be too fucking late.” The bastard put his hand on her shoulder again. However, his touch was firm but light this time, and when he spoke, there wasn’t any condescension to be found. “I know what the bigwigs say, but we aren’t in the business of saving people. This shit is about revenge. Someone hurts one of ours, we turn around and fuck them up twice as bad. And hey, y’know what?”

Any bit of caring that might have forced its way onto Adam’s person vanished, replaced by the bloodthirsty glee and ruthless mirth of the CCG’s most vicious investigator. “We have a lot of fun doing it. I mean, is there anything better than getting a monster on its knees, begging you not to kill it? Shit, it’s an adrenaline rush every time!”

Vaggie shrugged her shoulder out from Adam’s grasp. “I suppose,” she muttered.

“Great! So focus on that. Make enough of those things suffer and you’ll get the one you’re after eventually.”

He wasn’t entirely wrong. She didn’t like the notion of killing ghouls as a numbers game, but the fact was that the more of them she killed, the more good she did. They walked around thinking themselves untouchable, slaughtering people with no thought for their humanity or the ones who would miss them. It was her duty to turn the tables on them.

It was the duty of every investigator.

Adam started back down the hall. “Hey, did you hear that the Devil showed his ugly face again? What I wouldn’t give to run my quinque through the fucker. I’m thinking I’ll ask Sera about…”

Vaggie allowed Adam’s words to wash over her as she followed him. He wasn’t entirely wrong, but that didn’t make him right.

Most ghoul investigators were in the business of revenge. That didn’t change the fact that they saved people. The people they saved meant that they deserved to be avenged, not left waiting until their killers faced justice out of pure coincidence.

Something had to be done.

*

They had been at the coffee shop for nearly an hour, but Charlie had barely taken a sip of her drink. She kept looking at Vaggie, starting to say something, hesitating, and then going off on something else entirely. Something had either gone very wrong or very right and she didn’t have a fucking clue which it was.

She could have cried in relief when Charlie finally said, “So… My dad called me the other day.”

Vaggie had started running her finger around the rim of her cup. As soon as Charlie said that, she pulled it back and dropped it into her lap. “What did he say?”

“He said… Well, you see, I had this idea. I was thinking of opening a cafe where humans and ghouls can co-exist. The humans wouldn’t know they’re co-existing, of course, but they could come in and drink and talk together. It would also give me a sort of headquarters to work out of so that I can… help ghouls who can’t hunt for themselves find food.”

Charlie’s grin was so sincere, anxious, and full of hope. It made her feel horrible for the way that her stomach clenched as she asked, “Help them find food?”

“Yeah! You know that I feed you the bodies of suicide victims?”

She’d mentioned it. Vaggie hadn’t been sure that she believed it. She hadn’t been sure that she wanted to believe it, for if it was possible for her to live that way, that would mean…

It was too late for that now.

It wasn’t too late for her to ask, “What are you planning, Charlie?”

“Dad said he would help me buy space for a cafe and find bodies. I was wondering if maybe you–”

“I’ll help you.”

Charlie’s eyes shone brighter than the sun, her hope more piercing than Adam and Lute’s hatred had ever been. “Really!?”

“Really.”

It didn’t have to be too late. As long as no one knew, it may as well be the beginning.

*

Vaggie didn’t know exactly where her comrades had disappeared, but she was able to create a rough parameter once she delved into it. It was a decently wide area, but not so vast that she didn’t have any hope of finding any hints. Quite the contrary; Lute and Adam had led her on searches through far larger swathes of territory before.

She’d always had one of them close enough to call out to then, if not by her side.

So what? She may not have been a first class investigator yet, but everyone knew that her promotion was on the horizon. Adam himself had admitted that she was one of the most talented ghoul killers within the CCG. It was always easier to ask forgiveness than to ask for permission. Her skill and status meant that she would be forgiven. If she asked if she could act at all, she would be denied and watched so closely that she wouldn’t have any hope of helping.

Someone needed to help. If the CCG was going to turn a blind eye to the nightmare hanging over their heads, then that duty fell to her.

It was an easy one to fulfill in the first several steps. The beast behind this was clearly targeting ghoul investigators. Therefore, all that she needed to do was make it obvious that she was an investigator, spend a lot of time in the same area, and wait.

And wait.

And wait.

She spent three days searching, making excuses as to why she wasn’t around, and feeling her dread and excitement turn into a truly noxious frustration. It looked like the third day was going to be another fruitless search when she heard what she had been looking for, so soft and well-placed that she almost didn’t catch them, but unmissable once she did.

Someone was following her footsteps.

They were getting close.

Good. She wanted them close.

The ghoul’s footsteps grew faster and closer. Her own remained steady and oblivious. The sweat forming on her forehead and the back of her neck was not acknowledged. Her hand was not allowed to tighten around her quinque case despite every instinct screaming for it to. Vaggie stared straight ahead, waiting until she could practically feel the monster’s breath on her neck.

The battle started the moment she did.

Vaggie opened her quinque case in time with her running spin. It only took a few seconds for her barbed, whipped-like bikaku to spring from its handle and form into something solid. By then, she had already put several more feet of space between herself and her would-be assailant.

She couldn’t read the ghoul’s expression beyond its sleek black mask. That was the purpose of the wretched things, to hide their identities from opponents and investigators so that they could live to kill another day. It was a miserably efficient system.

But she could hear it sputtering. It was the witless noise of a creature that had realized its mistakes were going to cost it its life. It was scared, or as close to scared as a creature without a human heart could come.

Adam always said that fear was a gift to them. It was the closest that they would ever come to feeling human emotion. They were generous to allow them get to feel what it was like to be a person in their final moments.

Lute said that once they gave into that pseudo-fear, the battle was already lost. The ghouls would forget its best strategies and make mistakes that they could take advantage of. If an investigator was able to make a ghoul scared, the battle was already won for them.

Vaggie was certain that the battle was won.

Then the black-masked ghoul laughed. “Oh boy, you’re a spicy one!” it exclaimed, clapping its hands together.

The ghoul had an obnoxious voice. It was booming and animated in a way that spoke of falseness. There was an ego behind it as well.

As if Vaggie didn’t already hate the thing enough.

“Hey, you’re with the CCG’s golden duo, aren’t ya? You’ve gotta be pretty tough to be able to keep up with them. Maybe— Woah!”

Vaggie sent the ghoul skittering backward with a forward lunge. She lifted her quinque high, all too cleaning aiming for its throat from the left, only to pivot and dive down at the last second, sending her quinque racing toward her quarry’s ankles.

She almost cut the things feet off. A milisecond before she could, it jumped up like her weapon was a fucking jump roap. She whipped her quinque in the other direction when its feet hit the ground, and the routine repeated.

The ghoul jogged several feet backwards with a gleeful laugh. “Oh, you’re good!” he crowed. “Not good enough, but don’t feel down little missy, you can’t blame yourself for something like that! There are some things that only the best of the best can handle, and I’m sorry to say it, but—”

Vaggie raced forward in a head-on attack. She kept her feet light, prepared to dive out of the way at a second’s notice. The ghoul probably had a ukaku kagune if it was able to move so quickly. That meant she needed to account for the possibility of a long-range attack. It would be difficult, but—

“—They aren’t going to think you’re very good at all by the time we’re done with you. But hey, that just means it’s time for a change. To that I have good news: a whole lot’s gonna change around here. And even better—”

The tip of her whip arched toward the ghoul’s throat.

A blade slipped seamlessly into her back to settle between two of her ribs.

Vaggie was aware of her quinque falling from her spasming hand. She felt her knees hit the pavement and heard the wet gasp leaving her throat. She felt the pain, too blinding for her to think, let alone act.

All of it, while all-consuming in the moment, would be forgotten in the haze of time.

She would never forget the way the ghoul knelt down to grab her chin. He tilted her head up to meet his face. His mask was gone, but the only feature she truly registered was his face-splitting grin. “—You might be the one who survives.”

*

Vaggie looked up from the mug she was cleaning to see a pair of doves walking past Charlie's cafe on a quiet Thursday morning. The mug threatened to break beneath the strain of her clenched fist.

The doves paid her no mind, for they weren't paying any attention at all. The tall asshole of a man was in the middle of some animated spiel. His smug smirk managed to be more attention-grabbing than his wild gesticulating. The blond woman beside him grinned up at him with a cruel smile, completely entranced by whatever bullshit he was spewing.

They were gone in an instant.

Vaggie got back to work like she hadn't seen them at all. And why wouldn't she? A pair of passing murderers were completely irrelevant to her. She was no dove.

She never had been.