Work Text:
Meryl sat at her work desk in her tiny, corner office of the CCG branch where she worked and poured over several different papers at once. The floor was empty, most everyone on that level had gone home some hours ago- but not Meryl. She wanted a step-up at her job. She believed what she did was important work, but that there was more she could be doing. Her superiors never gave her extreme cases with highly rated Ghouls because of her size, but she knew what she was capable of, even if they couldn’t see it.
The most wanted Ghoul in that area was the Diablo Ghoul. A horrible beast who had killed many and destroyed huge amounts of property while doing so. The case was dead with very few sightings and recent information to be had, but Meryl knew she could crack it. While the last confirmed sighting of the Diablo Ghoul was fifteen years ago, there had been recent sightings of a Ghoul similar to his description. No one else at headquarters had made the connection between the new Ghoul sightings and Diablo, but Meryl felt it deep inside her bones that they were one in the same.
As Meryl read over documents she already knew word-for-word, a gentle knock at her cubicle brought her out of her thoughts. She looked up to see Milly, her partner, with two iced drinks and a paper bag in hand.
“Made it back,” Smiled Milly, stepping inside the tiny cubicle. She put Meryl’s drink in front of her and took a sip from her own, which was already half way finished.
“I can see that. Thank you, Milly.” Meryl sighed and pushed away from her desk. She grabbed her drink- an iced London fog latte, and took a tiny sip.
She and Milly had been partners for nearly two years, paired together to even out the other’s shortcomings. Milly, a transfer from the US Ghoul Eradication Team, was large and strong; perfectly balancing out Meryl’s small size and lack of muscle. On the other hand, Meryl whizzed through paperwork and was a slightly better investigator than Milly, who would sometimes get distracted. In their time working together, they became close. Meryl had originally wanted their relationship only to be professional, but somewhere along the way Milly wormed her way into her personal life as well.
“Make any hot breaks in the case?” Sitting on the edge of Meryl’s desk, right on top of a few papers, Milly reached into the paper bag she had with her and pulled out a chocolate croissant. She offered it to Meryl and then reached in for a second for herself.
“Nothing,” Meryl took the pastry with a frown. She bit into it in an angry sort of way, but found she couldn’t stay frustrated with the taste of the sweet on her tongue. “I just keep going over the same things, again and again, and I feel like there’s something there, but I’m just not seeing it!”
Milly swallowed a large bite of her croissant and then washed it down with the final gulps of her iced coffee. “Say it out loud,” She recommended, wiping her mouth on her wrist. “That’s what I do when readings don’t make sense, I read them to myself or put them in the computer to read to me.”
It was a very Milly piece of advice. Meryl remembered Milly’s first week in the office. She had put in a rather gruesome case file into the computer to read it for her and the graphic details had been blasted across the office in an artificial voice. Meryl had been mortified, and while neither of them got in trouble for the incident, she did buy Milly a pair of headphones with her own money just to ensure it didn’t happen again. More often than not, Milly shared this advice with Meryl when she was stuck and it did tend to pay off. Somehow, she never had the thought to do it without Milly’s prompting.
“Okay,” Meryl put her croissant down and tugged a paper out from under Milly’s thigh. “Fifteen years ago on July 21st,” She took another drink to wet her throat. “We had the true debut of the Diablo Ghoul.”
“We didn’t learn about him in the States’ office,” Milly nodded. “I didn’t hear about him until I started here.” She continued to munch on her croissant, “But you lived around here when it happened, didn’t you Meryl?” She asked, mouth full.
Giving a soft nod in return, Meryl frowned. “Yes, I was 11 then.” Meryl had been one of the bystanders that day and she remembered the attack clearly in her mind. It was perhaps why she was so dead-set on solving the case, she felt tied to it. “Diablo had long, black hair, a mole, and an Ukaku that resembled a wing.” She could still see it fluttering behind her eyelids, moving like water in the air amidst the destruction. “Blue and white…”
For a moment, Meryl trailed off, thinking over that horrible day, but then she came to her senses and pressed on. “Anyways-” She cleared her throat with a cough. “The attack happened at the old Julai Center. Investigators are still uncertain why it was there, but he destroyed the entire building. We still have no clue how a single Ghoul did so much damage, but his power was undeniable… Some of the closer eye witnesses,” The ones who weren’t killed in the attack, Meryl left out. “They said he was a one-eyed Ghoul, and he used his Ukaku to rain down a million knives upon all those watching.” Meryl stared into her drink as she spoke, “Before fleeing the scene, Diablo called out for all to hear that he was going to end the reign of humans and bring in an era of Ghouls.”
There was a thoughtful silence between them, Meryl did her best to push away the mental image of the blood. Milly, thankfully, spoke up to distract her. “You said it was his true debut. What does that mean?”
Even though Milly knew the case almost as well as Meryl, it was nice to hear her questions. It helped Meryl better piece together all of the information in her mind. “Well,” She clicked her tongue, “A couple years prior to the attack at Julai Center, a man came in saying he saw a Ghoul who fit the description of the Diablo almost identically. He was a boy then, but he had the same black hair, the same singular eye, a mole, and even the same Ukaku.” With a tired sigh, Meryl took a deep sip of her drink, it was beginning to become watered down by that point. “The only thing different about him was that his wing was red instead of blue.”
Milly hummed and Meryl watched as she scratched her cheek. “Between that sighting and the attack he may have been engaging in cannibalism. It can change a Kagune pretty drastically, so a colour change wouldn’t be all that crazy.”
That thought had crossed Meryl’s mind, yet she struggled over it. She had never seen a Ghoul child before, and truthfully, it was hard for her to envision one. It was her weakness as an investigator, of course, Ghouls still killed and ate humans no matter what stage of life they were in. They were born into cruelty, it shouldn’t have been all that hard for one- even a young one, to turn against his own kind for more power.
In Meryl’s silence, Milly moved around her, rummaging through the disorganized papers on her desk. “But maybe not,” She said, looking at two documents.
Meryl sat up straighter. “What do you mean?”
“Cannibalism makes the Kagunes all weird… Like a cancer cell they just keep growing and growing into a weird tumor." Milly said, easily going against her own theory. “Their Kagunes were too similar to be changed by cannibalism. They would resemble completely different types.” She held out the two papers in her hands to Meryl. “Then there’s the sketches based on witness descriptions. The Julai Center Ghoul,” She jostled one paper, and Meryl took it. “Has a mole under his left eye.” She gave the other sketch to Meryl, “But the younger Ghoul has one under his right eye.”
Meryl had missed that fact completely. She had been so focused on the textual briefs and her own experience that she had failed to notice that detail in the sketches. She looked between the photos, frowning. The younger Ghoul did look like the Julai Center Ghoul, but the moles… “It could have been a misrememberance.” She said, still looking at the sketches. “The Ghoul behind the Julai Center attack had at least fifty witnesses all claiming the same thing, the child Ghoul only had one.”
“Could be,” Milly nodded. She sat back down on the edge of Meryl’s desk. “Or- maybe they could be twins. They’re nearly the same except for the moles and their Kagunes!”
“Twins?” This made Meryl smile. When she first started working with Milly, Meryl had been much ruder to her when she made mistakes or came up with seemingly foolish ideas. She had grown past such childishness and saw Milly as an actual friend then; but despite that, she couldn’t help but find the idea silly. “Milly,” Meryl controlled her tone, trying not to sound too harsh. “Have you been watching those drama shows again?”
A grin spread across Milly’s face and she laughed, “Guilty!” She shook away her laughter, still smiling. “But it makes sense. Siblings tend to look alike afterall…. If only we had more reports on Ghoul siblings and family structures!”
Meryl silently disagreed. While such reports could make catching Ghouls easier, it would mean a surplus of Ghouls and more human deaths. “It could be true.” She said, not thinking it was true at all. Meryl placed the sketches down on her messy desk and stood up with a sigh. “At any rate, Milly, I think we’ve done enough work for tonight. We should both go home before the bus stops running.”
Milly agreed and ran off to her nearby cubicle to grab her things while Meryl packed some documents into her bag. Milly’s idea was comical, but it was an idea. However, it didn’t do any help in furthering the case, it only added another snag to the limited information they had.
With their bags in hand, the girls walked to the elevator together. Meryl still nursed her watery latte as they stepped inside. She pushed the button for the main floor and sighed, the weariness from the day finally settling on her.
“Meryl,” The elevator closed its doors and began its short descent. “Why is he called Diablo, anyways?” Asked Milly.
“Because,” Meryl said as the elevator shuttered to a halt on the ground floor, “Only a demon can do that kind of damage so remorselessly.”