Chapter Text
Flowers.
Gorgeous, beautiful, and dancing flowers stood amongst the endless prairie of ivory; twisted by a holy zephyr breezing by. Within the whisperwind stood the Reaper with his broken metaphorical 'scythe', the tool of harvesting which had forfeited the lives of so many Ghouls.
Amongst the backdrop were streaks of a battle soon to be left in the obscurity of yore, an occurrence that would beckon forth rumors throughout society, the intended purpose constructed from the very beginning.
Somber eyes veiled by an apathetic mask was wrought upon the Reaper's visage, as he stood diametrically opposed to who he could only call a son. Kaneki Ken, Sasaki Haise, whatever name he took, whatever personality he wore, to the Reaper—Arima Kishou—would not matter; he would be his son all the same.
Ichor ebbed from the stomach of Kaneki Ken, his stature remained unbending at the damage, a complex expression crossed over his mien. There was a faint specter of refusal ingrained all over the boy, denying what must be done, what Arima knew must be done.
The blade of crucifixion was before him. An inhale of the world's lifeblood was taken, oxygen filling his systems, before they were released deftly; the last one he would experience before forsaking his role.
Arima's eyes sauntered downward when silence stood between the two in its ethereal wreath, loosened grip over his splintered and broken Quinque, its lifespan as short as its usage. A thousand thoughts flooded him that very moment, a singularity within his encephalon, and right as the cacophonous clamors clawed their way to a crescendo, it was all muted.
Muffled, with no comprehension he could truly make of his stirring emotions in its fleshy pot, he knew there was no need for second guesses nor hesitation.
The flora clung to his knees, grip tightening.
Accept it.
His hand flashed with perilous briskness, the same unrivaled speed he cultivated in his younger years coming in full force. His broken Quinque, Owl, blurred when it slit his own esophagus, trachea, and pharynx.
Pain, pain, it flooded him with a deluge, and yet it felt sedating in a way. The final and greatest blow, in comparison to the boundless ache he felt throughout his life, quelled his solemn heart marbled like a stoic Greek sculpture.
Lay yourself upon the altar and spill your own blood. Augur your own death, Arima Kishou.
Kaneki Ken, his son, took only a mere millisecond before realization dawned upon him like an early thunder.
He took, he took, and he took; as Death would to the souls it reaped, to those frail, sobbing people without a second glance, without a second chance.
He hated taking. Taking, taking, and taking; giving nothing of his own.
His son extended his hand, mouth agape in surprise and confusion.
Why could he grant nothing?
Was this his predestined part?
He stared into the eyes of his son, tears welling up in his two eyes, magnificent orbs separated into their own world.
...There was something.
He could feel hands grasp at his shoulders, at his body as it held it before it quartered with the ground.
There was something, something he could give, give to this beautiful world.
Cries deafened in his ears as tinnitus overtook it. He couldn't hear the words of his own son, but he could make out what his lips were articulating.
This was the providence he deserved, and wherever the winds of Kismet brought him, he would let himself be ushered by its squall.
Tears dripped down his face.
Finally, he could... truly, leave something behind.
The world was white, blinding his eyes. Those organs he knew were beginning to fail him utterly as they have done in recent years, and it was only by the severance of the final thread that they were brought to rest.
The one who sought death the most...
Was the Reaper himself.
In that waking moment to both Kaneki Ken and Arima Kishou, the chess board lacquered in white and black, checkered across unforeseen horizons, had finally shattered beneath their feet.
"Aged eagle."
"Old and wrinkled, sickened and tired. White bearded..."
"The solemn attus, blade in hand, sharpening, sitting cross-legged, carving yew, his mind fading."
"Oh toiyan kutstari (Those who expand across the land)."
"All is well, I have accepted."
"I have aged, bemoan."
"I am white, I shine bright."
"I shall fade, oh so quickly..."
The man who killed me.
The man who gave me my life.
The man who entrusted me with his hope.
"Investigator Arima."
You are my teacher and... my father.
"I was blessed."
His hand snapped forward and reached out for a butterfly fluttering in the air, clutching it in its palm with a near crushing force. The Reaper brought it closer to himself, in front of him, and stared silently at his enclosed palm; the life hidden and snuffed away within.
"Arima-sensei, what have you in your hands there?" A feminine voice asked him from behind, and he hadn't swiveled around to greet the person, for his eyes were glued upon his hand.
Not quite understanding where the honorific was coming from, for he hadn't recalled mentoring a protege possessing such a distinct voice, he simply responded, "An insect."
Life itself, means 'evil'.
His fingers emancipated themselves from their tightened constraint. The chains which froze his bones around detached, shattering as he raised his hand and let it all go, the butterfly hidden within his hand fluttering its wings once more—liberated from his grasp.
Life itself, too, means 'beauty'.
Spectacled eyes followed the mirage of colors pirouetting through the skies with each flap of its wing, fascination and admiration beneath the lens of those orbs.
"Is that so?" The female voice asked rhetorically, a soft and boundless tenderness ladened within. She took a step forward, bristling the pale flowers beneath the two's feet, as Arima took a glance back.
"Who are you?" he finally questioned, arms rested by his side, a youthful vitality he felt within the canals of his cardiovascular system; a long lost story he hadn't heard spoken in oh so long.
"A bit confusing, no?" A low chuckle escaped her lips—a woman with a flowing waterfall of light blue hair and pink interiors, donning an immaculate white uniform emblazoned with a symbol that escaped the Reaper's understanding. "I merely hope you understand what I wish to tell you, from the bottom of my heart." A bright azure halo floated in a stagnant axis by the left side of her head.
"I can listen." A delusion of the mind? A last grasp upon the fading vestiges of his life? He didn't understand, but he felt as if he didn't need to understand this unnatural sight. In reality, he laid upon his deathbed in floral fields.
"Hehe," a low and warm chuckle. "You've always been an amazing listener, Arima-sensei." She stepped forward while he remained a monolith standing in place, a hand reaching into the seams of a pocket.
He noticed that a low drench of burgundy blood stained her uniform by the side, a familiar waft of its iron scent tickling his nostrils and provoking his olfactory receptors. Then, the sound of something rustling could be heard, the girl reaching where he was, and revealing it.
The Reaper's eyes slightly widened in further acknowledgement, realizing what it was. A blank piece of matte paper.
A testament that the Investigators of the C.C.G. would write. Their final wishes, their reflection upon life, and any message they desired to spill to their heart's content should there be an upcoming mission with a high predicted casualty rate.
For him, there was nothing written upon it, not even a dot of ebony ink. In spite of how much he contemplated within his psyche, and deliberated for hours on end, he never wrote upon those papers. It wasn't because he did not believe death could come to him, nor that he were infallible in eternal vigor, but because he never had anything to grant to the testament in the first place.
Despite the injuries she incurred, she almost jovially presented it before him, a small smile gracing her lips. "Arima-sensei, here. Do you remember what this is?"
"...I do." He nodded, fingers brushing the empty canvas unpainted. "I remember them, I remember them all." Papers, one, two, three, ad nauseam, stacked and stacked upon a mountain of white; naught written upon either of them.
"Ah, I remember the story so many times." A nostalgic look crossed her features, eyes drifting upward with her hands behind her back. "You would always recount those stories, but I never truly understood the significance it held to you. I'm sorry."
"There's nothing you need to apologize for." His other hand reached to the paper, fingers daintily touching the blank surface.
She sighed, hands reaching outward again, grasping the other end of the paper still without much force. "I think I finally understand, even if so little, what responsibility is." Her eyes met his own, unfaltering despite the featheriness of it. "Adulthood, you've experienced it in full even if it were so short, Arima-sensei."
"I have indeed come to terms with its miniscule length," he affirmed. A congenital disease that withered his life away, tainting each strand of his dark-blue hair a profound white day by day, night by night. "There was not much I could grant, anyways."
The inevitability of mortality whispered to him each day, there would be a time where he would have to dispel all qualms and come to the conclusion that all things must end. There was peace within that, a sense of nirvana.
"It really isn't fair..." she whispered. "Don't say that, Arima-sensei, you had much to give." Her fingers brushed against the pale sheet, rustle reverberating in its meager length. "Each word, each story, I just wish I could have absorbed them more faithfully back then. I can't even remember some..." a self-deprecating laugh escaped her in a short interval with a lowered head, before a different ambience took her. "That is why, Arima-sensei, I want to make amends." She pivoted back to him, a new spirit begot in her eyes.
"..." He remained silent, watching a small sleight of hand as an object appeared in the girl's hand.
A standard pen, black in color, most likely encapsulating black ink in its cartridges too; was clutched between her fingers. The Reaper didn't know what to say, complex filled with silence and frame frigidly still when it was extended to him, hovering in the air—waiting.
"I always wondered," she continued, "what you would write upon your testament should you have something to finally give. I know it's a difficult decision, after thinking it over countless times without an answer, or a solution..." Blues danced all 'round. "It is bold of me to ask this, especially if you hadn't come to a conclusion yet, or ever would. But please, Arima-sensei, I want to see what you would desire to give."
A length of proverbial silence doused in tranquility spanned between the two. Even if by instinct they knew it was by borrowed time, there was restitution within it they were bound to contently wait out.
One understood the situation far more than the other, the said other bearing not even a sliver of understanding—but still—the Reaper contradictorily felt the greatest clause of understanding he ever had within his short-lived life
"Even if the paper's blank... the stories still live inside you, Arima-sensei."
He locked gazes with the pen, the paper, and the girl, feeling a tonnage pressed down upon his shoulders, a desire to do something.
"...A crossbreed," he muttered almost despondently, fingers just about intertwining between the girl's fingers and the pen.
She patiently tilted her head with a blink. "Hm?"
"A creature neither one thing nor another, but with its own distinct properties." His eyes closed, interior jewels drifting across the waves of his psyche. "Kafka once wrote of such a thing, a half-lamb, half-cat. It did not know why it lived, only that it did."
The gale stirred the flowers again. The butterfly from before had returned with its rebound, circling its colors above.
"I believe... I was like that." A half-human with the strength and dexterity only seen in Ghouls, but a physiology strictly human in mold. "What was it to do, expressing these unique traits of those two blends? It was fascinating in some way. For myself, I don't know which half was the truest aspect."
How cruel was it to want to give, to not deal death, but nonetheless, that was the only thing he could do. An engineered biological monstrosity that could do nothing but tug at the strings connecting to its marionette body, shortly guiding itself elsewhere in its own vested control.
The pen wavered slightly between the clasps of his finger. "But maybe, I have a choice between the two this time." And with quiet resolve, Arima pressed the tip of the pen to the empty testament.
The soft azure-haired woman sealed her lips, a thin smile forming. She exchanged no other words as the only sounds flowing into their ears were the scrunching of pen onto paper, twirling of floral bodies, and the bristling wind carried by nature's breath. In the center of this womb, the ambience was carried only by that very entourage.
"Thank you," the Reaper expressed in full, low eyes carrying a vast array of unexpressed emotions. "I don't believe I ever received your name."
"No, thank you," she responded, the paper starting to become folded between their joined hands in perfect unity. "And, my name...? You may not remember this, but there should be no harm in giving it, right?"
"You tell me." A faint smile etched a thin upturned crevice on his lips, his hair caressed by the endless draft's fingers.
Her voice drifted, fading as her lips parted. "It's..."
Could Death, the Reaper who could only take, finally give?
It would be a miracle.
The incessant rumble of a terminal train filled his ears. His body would not move to the desires of his brain, and neither would neurons fire off for action in his body, leaving him stuck still in some resting position. Only the cushion of a standard chair, bearing a modicum of comfort, was felt on his back.
Arima Kishou had taken many modes of transit in his life, traveling a long mileage with these locomotives, but this most certainly of all, felt the most bizarre. Strange how it was, that he still felt the marginal traces of flowers all around his very epidermis, surrounding him as it would a circumfix to a word.
His orbiting thoughts came to a calm halt there. Feeling, sensation, and oxygen inhaled intermittently through his nose through habitual action crafted by birthed instinct; was the last thing he should be experiencing at the moment. His throat, although parched and almost a desert, remained undamaged from what he remembered doing to it.
For a lack of a better term, he was befuddled.
It was only when his eyes broke open—his fleshy fuselage remained unresponsive to mental commands—did he finally bear witness to the sights around him. As predicted, he was in a train as it was traveling through rails underneath, bestowing his eyes for a feast of sights upon a silver platter. Or in this case, blue platters.
A slow sauntering blink was given as he assessed his current situation. There were people surrounding him of odd sizes and variety, ranging from... robots to anthropomorphic animals. Briefly, ever so briefly, he considered taking off his sharp-brimmed spectacles in order to wipe them clean, to see if reality was blurring before him.
They were all stuck in their own vices, whether it be on phones, appearing as if sleep elucidated them, or overall focused elsewhere. Small-talk and conversations filled the innards of the vehicle with a repressed form of life, but still life nonetheless. By then, his mental calculus had fulfilled the very basic needs of understanding.
He wasn't dead. By some miraculous turn of the world, through very real sensations coursing through each string of nerves, he discovered that he was alive—and that it was all not an illusion—unless the mind could craft such a perfect hypnosis.
He wore his standard ensemble. His white trench coat with its collar was donned upon his shoulders and wrapped around his body. Underneath it was his tactical Quinque Steel Nanoweave fabric that clung to his skin like tight spandex. Although it bore negligible defenses against Ghouls, it could withstand conventional weapons.
Strange people. There were strange people all around who possessed traits that he had never seen before in either humans or Ghouls. Kagune and Kakuja alike all possessed unimaginable horror and feats inside their flesh, but never had he seen such a wide-spread phenomena take the form of... whatever he was witnessing.
Some genetic defects still remained. Although it didn't feel like his body was decaying by accelerated aging by the second, there was still an imbalance between his right and left eye. The right eye, his blind eye, was blurred as he remembered it being, but his left eye's vision, which had once been waning, returned to its full capabilities.
Something metallic and weighty pressed on his lap, and when he glanced down to gauge it, he found his KA-III Grade Quinque Steel briefcase sleeping upon it. Two of them, peculiarly, an ebony one with fancy aureate engravings, and a twin one bearing the same resemblance of framework.
For a moment, the greatest burst of humor swelled within his chest as he leaned back on the chair he was sitting upon. His neck bent backwards as he pressed against a backrest, his mind attempting, and rather successfully, coming to better terms with the turn of events.
The deceased One-Eyed King who was supposed to have left his crown for the new one to inherit, to pick up from his sundered body, was now alive in an unfamiliar and alien place. If there was a God in Heaven, then by a fraction he was more inclined to believe such.
No use for losing focus.
Slightly shaking his head as an unheard meditative breathing exercise was incurred, Arima reassessed everything before him. He glanced at one of the digital text panels displayed at the end of the modern train's hallway, taking note of the Japanese text that gave an estimated time before their arrival.
About three minutes.
Arima turned back to the residents for one last analysis. Nill threat.
He turned away from them and stood up, carrying his twin briefcases with him, the act causing the weight stationed upon his frame to peel off. To show confusion was to show weakness, and in such a foreign and unfamiliar environment. The C.C.G.'s Reaper stood vigilant, approaching an unsuspecting robot.
To be honest, he believed these state-of-the-art—seemingly state-of-the-art—constructs with refined corners to their physique to be more approachable to the anthropomorphic animals. It was surely his implicit biases speaking.
"Sir," he called out in Japanese to the one of the robots who dressed like an office worker, grabbing the attention of the daydreaming thing. If the text in the terminal was Japanese, then surely the people spoke Japanese too.
"Eh, ah?" The robot with a screen displaying its face jolted slightly, its projected face on a screen undergoing a slew of twists and turns. "Oh, sorry, is there something..." He acknowledged Arima's tall physique, and visage, swallowing(?) a lump. "...That you need?"
The presence he gave off was not lost upon him. "May I ask where I am currently?" He kept his tone respectful, noting how the civilians also spoke Japanese as per his predictions.
The robot blinked owlishly. "You're in Kivotos," it said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "You bought a ticket for this train, right?"
"I don't recall," he admitted.
"Strange that." The robot nodded, seemingly deciding to drop its confusion. "Well, if you don't know where this train is going, uh... It's making a trip to a station close to the Sanctum Tower."
"The Sanctum Tower?" An unfamiliar term for a landmark.
"The tower off in the distance over there," as if the robot knew he would question what the Sanctum Tower was—it pointed outside the window. "See that structure? It's the heart of Kivotos."
Although he had only caught a brief glimpse of the city in the distance, he finally drank in the full scenery as it reflected off the panes of his spectacles. The city was likely floundering with life in its center, as any sleepless urban effigy would.
It looked clean, white modernic luster shining from the photons of the sun accentuated on the materials making up their entire polymer. The Sanctum Tower was as pointed to be in the epicenter, had light halos floating above it, a marvel of technology that would require a high degree of active RC cells burning up to sustain.
"It's... a unique sight," Arima let out underneath his breath, possessing a calm measure still etched by habit.
"Haha, you must be new to Kivotos." The robot crossed its arms, nodding. "Though, if you look at it many times, you start becoming used to it, you know?"
"Of course." He nodded. "Thank you for your hospitality." Then, he gave a respectful gesture in a keirei bow.
"Oh, it's nothing, really." The robot scratched the back of its head. "It's nice to have outsiders visit Kivotos, especially with... how it's been recently." A more nervous physiognomy overtook its expressive screen, a sense of mystique threaded between its digital voice.
Their conversation ended when Arima digested everything that he had heard, now being the one to cut off the world around him—but still leaving his sixth sense active—as he reiterated everything he knew.
One minute left.
His index finger tapped his knee, gaining a sensible rhythm to keep himself at ease. Truth be told, there should be no worry present within his body in such a civil environment despite its fathomless eccentricities, but there was something else which gnawed at him.
There was a strange presence he felt in the interior pocket of his trench coat, so he reached inside it and pulled out a folded piece of paper. Blinking once, he unfurled its bent edges and discerned what was written upon it.
Approach the G.S.C. Headquarters.
...It would have been useful, if he knew where the G.S.C. Headquarters was. But then, that brought evermore questions to his already waning clarity of what his situation was, because the letter implied that somebody had brought him to this environment.
Arima's fingers reached to the bridge of his glasses after putting away the letter, slightly adjusting it and removing all glares obscuring it. His eyes were closed, still keeping an internal clock ticking over the last minute of the transit's journey.
When an automatic voice declared their arrival to a station, Arima stood up from his seat, watching the doors of the transit open. He stepped out along with all the other folks, but unfortunately...
It would all immediately interrupted when the sound of bullets soared, altering everybody within the vehicle, and Arima knew why he was felt his sixth sense provoked before.
"All of you, drop your belongings and get on the ground!" A young and voracious voice pierced through the monotonous choir of everyday life, sounds of warning gunfire filling the air, bullets flying upward. "Now!"
Within that immediate occurrence, the robots and anthropomorphic animals alike let out sounds of surprise and fear. They listened, immediately emptying their pockets and dropping down in a fetal position, covering their heads so as to disappear from their line of sight, muttering underneath their breaths.
"I knew I shouldn't have taken the transit today—"
"I thought the chaos had already ended—?!"
"Just my luck—"
"Agh, again—?!"
Arima Kishou stood amongst the lowered forms of the civilians around him, remaining standing amongst the tumultuous chaos. He analyzed the firearms, decorated and colored in myriad hues, a spectrum he wouldn't have ever expected in what he deduced to be a Japanese-like setting.
Halos were floating atop their heads in different shapes, sizes, and color; the most distinct feature he saw upon them aside from their armaments and school outfits. Then, the most mind-numbing question of them all?
Why... Why were adolescents in possession of firearms?
The sight coiled around his body hesitation. In the line of C.C.G. work, executing children Ghoul were an expected norm amongst Investigators, even if protocol suggested they be captured. However, that did not mean he ever enjoyed having to deal with killing or targeting children.
Guns were pointed in his direction, and the same robot he had a small conversation with not too long ago was nudging his feet. Muttered underneath its mechanical breath, it was discreetly telling him to get down himself so as to not incur the wrath of the 'Sukebans,' but he didn't listen.
"You, are you deaf?!" One of the girls with a halo called out. "I told you, drop your briefcase and get on the ground, now!" Although her voice was filled with confidence and held no room for argument, there was still a faint tremble in her hands that suggested hesitance.
Inaction was typically the death of many C.C.G. Investigators should they choose to let even a hint restrain them. Within a short berth of movement in his legs, Arima dropped the briefcase in his left hand and traversed the distance between them within the blank of an eye, side-stepping the aggressor—baffling her.
Not even another word escaped her lips as he swung the briefcase in his right hand, the object slamming into the shorter figure's chest, all air leaving her as she was thrown back from the force. Just as the others realized what had occurred and pivoted their firearms his way in shock, he renewed his footwork.
Perhaps he had applied far too much force in that attack, but he didn't have the luxury to stop.
Left, right, center, all around the sphere he had mentally drawn around himself, a sort of martial arts discipline he had taught himself in gardens and training rooms. By now, it was practically ingrained in his veins, allowing inhuman skill in all his executions.
Do not kill, and do not let a single shot fire.
Those were the two commands he silently kept to himself as he dashed through the miniature battlefield, briefcase continuously knocking the wind out of each of the criminals. He had realized after two hits, that they were much more durable than the average human, as durable as Ghouls.
In short, contemporary firearms wouldn't damage them just like how they would be inefficient in piercing a Ghoul's iron skin. Therefore, more force was applied each blow when he threaded between all his enemies, knocking them out one-by-one, the clacking of firearms falling to the ground.
He made sure to use his free left hand and detach the magazines in the firearms so they would not misfire when dropping to the ground. Then, more bashing, bashing, bashing, and bashing; the kind which had been taught in the C.C.G. training repertoire.
Combat with one's briefcase, though uncommon, happened frequently enough between missions.
After half a second had passed, Arima halted his movements calmly and let his boots drift across the ground, looking over the unconscious adolescents he had the displeasure of attacking. The halos which he remembered seeing were turned off, a sign of their consciousness.
The citizens who had been grounded looked up with shocked expressions, as if attempting to make sense of reality's broken fidelity in front of him. To give them credit however, they recovered from their stupor quite quickly—too quickly—as they stood up, dusting themselves off and hurriedly offering their thanks to him.
They are used to this. The fact came to him, begetting more questions about the nature of this 'Kivotos' he found himself in.
"Contact the local law enforcement," Arima said to them, watching them fiddle with their devices, some scurrying away from the scene after picking up their scattered belongings.
"T-thank you sir, a-and, er, I don't know if the KSPD would be available, but I'll try!" One of the anthropomorphic animals, a pug, said. "With the chaos all around the city, I don't know if they'll have the time to... arrest them all." He motioned with his free hand as he held a phone to his ear, waiting for a line to connect.
"I see..." The Reaper adjusted his spectacles. "Then, I believe I should inquire about this elsewhere." Hopefully, the armed aggressors would be arrested by law enforcement. "Restrain the terrorists," he added at the end.
"I-if it's fine to ask, where are you going?" The pug asked, impatiently fiddling with his phone, feet tapping as it didn't connect.
"The G.S.C. Headquarters." He picked up his other briefcase with that response.
A/N: Finally took my compulsive writing self to write a crossover that isn't just related to Arknights—apologies for any grammatical errors while I was speed-typing at 1 A.M. I might continue this, but I seriously need to catch up on Blue Archive's lore and explore intricacies of its characters if I want to write a cohesive and well-fleshed out story, and I'm juggling other things at the moment so this might be a lower priority. But I've seldom been looking forward to writing brighter stories.
I need to get better at writing too. Six-to-seven months of writing may have cultivated a decent assortment of skills, but there's still a lot of concepts I sorely lack pertaining to the subject.
Some people might already know this from my other fics, but I thought of using Black Reaper Kaneki as the main protagonist, but decided against it because it would be hard trying to write somebody who can only eat humans in Kivotos setting. The only workaround I have with that is having the Student Council President know how to make synthetic food Ghouls can eat that is developed at the end of Tokyo Ghoul's story for coexistence between humanity and Ghoulkind—but I've already written an Arknights x Black Reaper Kaneki story, and wanted to try my hand at Arima Kishou.
No (full) glaze, but COUGH COUGH —Arima is the greatest representation of the strongest in anime aside from Saitama and Yoriichi— COUGH COUGH.
Ahem, sorry. Something slipped. But honestly, I just like Arima's character and writing, I think it's cool. I'm glad he's still human and complex in the end, because writing character interactions is what I enjoy the most when dipping my feet in crossovers.