The CCG forensic report on the Third Class Investigator's death was clean, precise, and wrong.
Cause of death: exsanguination via deep puncture wounds to the aorta. Weapon: likely a bikaku-type kagune, given wound morphology. Perpetrator: ghoul, classification B to A, motive predatory. Standard.
The report's critical omission was in the appendix, under 'Anomalous Traces.' It read: *RC cell residue at scene: 0.00 ppm. Contamination protocol followed. Equipment recalibrated. Result stands.*
Zero. Not a trace. As if a ghost did it.
The reviewing officer stamped it 'Filed' and moved on. The machine preferred neat boxes. Anomalies were errors, not evidence.
***
Kaito moved through the 20th Ward's underbelly. The gnawing void in his gut was gone, replaced by a cold, humming focus. His mind was a ledger. One target checked off. Next on the list: an Aogiri Tree recruiter. A talker, not a true fighter. A propagandist poisoning the balance, luring weak ghouls into a meat grinder for a mad clown's war.
He found his spot on a rusted fire escape overlooking a narrow street of closed shops. The recruiter operated here, preying on desperation. Kaito waited. His breath didn't fog. His body was still.
**[Perception Check: Success. Target identified.]**
A figure emerged from a basement door. Male, lean, hoodie. He moved with a recruiter's gait—confident, scanning. An Aogiri pin glinted on his collar.
Kaito dropped without a sound.
He landed in a crouch ten feet behind the man. "Looking for recruits?"
The recruiter spun, eyes flashing red. "Who's asking?"
"A concerned citizen." Kaito rose. "You sell dreams of liberation. You just deliver corpses to the Clowns."
The recruiter's smirk vanished. His kagune erupted from his back in a spray of crimson shards—an ukaku. Sharp, crystalline projectiles formed along its edges. "You know too much to be just anyone."
"I know you're a cog." Kaito's own kagune stirred, a dark, viscous fluid rising from his shoulder blades. It didn't form a standard shape—it was a shifting, hungry mass, like living tar edged with bone-white hooks. The Predator-Type. "A useless cog."
The recruiter launched his attack. A volley of RC projectiles shrieked through the air.
Kaito didn't dodge.
His kagune surged forward, not as a shield, but as a maw. It swallowed the projectiles. They vanished with wet, sizzling sounds.
**[RC Cell Absorption: Partial. Source: Ukaku-Type. Integrating foreign RC pathways…]**
"What the hell are you?" The recruiter's confidence cracked.
"The strong." Kaito moved.
His kagune lashed out like a whip. The recruiter tried to fly back, using his ukaku to propel himself. Kaito was faster. A tendril snaked around the ghoul's ankle and yanked him from the air. He slammed onto the concrete.
Kaito was on him. His kagune pinned the flailing ukaku to the ground. The recruiter screamed, not in pain, but in sheer terror as he felt the pull.
"Join the winning side!" The recruiter gasped, a last, desperate pitch. "The world is a cage! We can break it!"
"You're just building a bigger one."
Kaito let his kagune feed. Not fully. Not to death. He focused on the ukaku itself, the foreign RC structure. He felt it unravel, dissolve, and flow into him. The recruiter's screams turned to whimpers as his vibrant kagune withered, greyed, and crumbled to dust.
**[Kagune Assimilation Attempted: Ukaku-Type (Ranged). Stability: 12%. Warning: Foreign RC pattern is volatile. Control not guaranteed.]**
A new, jagged pressure built between Kaito's shoulder blades. It was hot and wrong. He stumbled back, releasing the now-quiet ghoul. The man curled into a ball, sobbing, his kagune gone.
Kaito's own kagune retracted. The pressure remained. He gritted his teeth. *It's just nature. The strong devour the weak.* This felt less like consumption and more like infection.
A flicker of movement on a distant rooftop. Gone in an instant.
Kaito's head snapped up. His enhanced senses caught a lingering scent—coffee beans and something faintly metallic. *Anteiku.*
He looked down at the broken recruiter. "Tell Aogiri the 20th Ward has a new predator. Tell them to stay out."
He melted into the alley, the foreign heat in his back burning like a brand.
***
On the rooftop, Nishiki Nishio lowered his binoculars.
"Tch. Damn it."
What he'd just seen made no sense. A kagune that ate other kagunes? He'd watched the Aogiri punk's ukaku disintegrate. It wasn't severed. It was *drained*.
The victor hadn't even fed on the flesh. He'd just… taken the weapon and left.
Nishiki's phone was out. He hit a speed dial.
"Manager."
"Nishio. Report." Yoshimura's voice was calm as always.
"There's a freak. New ghoul in the 20th. Just took down an Aogiri recruiter. Not normal."
"How so?"
"His kagune… it ate the other guy's kagune. Whole. CCG's gonna have a field day if this gets out."
A pause on the line. "Did he kill?"
"No. Left him alive. But broken. Gave him a message for Aogiri."
"I see. Monitor, but do not engage. This 'freak' is now a priority unknown. Bring Touka if you need to track him, but only to track."
"Tch. Fine." Nishiki ended the call. He stared at the empty alley. "What now?"
He wasn't scared. He was annoyed. Freaks meant trouble. Trouble meant CCG sweeps. Sweeps meant he couldn't hunt in peace for his sister. This anomaly was a problem. A big, flashing-light problem that was going to mess up his routine. He lit a cigarette, the flare of the match sharp in the dark. He'd have to stay out later, be more careful. Kimi was going to worry. This was exactly the kind of crap he didn't need.
***
Kaito made it to a derelict warehouse he'd scouted. The moment the door closed, the pressure in his back exploded.
A spasm wracked his body. From his shoulder blades, a violent burst of crimson crystals shot out, shattering against the far wall. They weren't sleek like the recruiter's. They were malformed, jagged, like broken glass.
**[Foreign Kagune Manifestation: Active. Control Roll: Failed. Stability dropping to 8%.]**
"Damn it." He collapsed to his knees. He clutched at his chest, where his human heart hammered against his ghoul physiology. The memories of his past life—of reading wikis, of debating lore—were a cold comfort. Knowing about the Owl, about Dragon, about RC cell pathways, didn't tell him how to stop his own body from rebelling.
*This is what you wanted. Power. To change the game.*
*This isn't power.* He stared at the shards embedded in the wall. *This is a malfunction.*
He focused, trying to will the foreign RC cells back, to dissolve them. The jagged ukaku flickered, retracted an inch, then burst out again in a wider, more uncontrolled spray. The pain was a white-hot drill between his shoulder blades. He bit down on a cry, tasting blood where his teeth cut into his lip. He was a living contradiction. A lore master trapped in a monster's body, wielding a power that defied the lore. The system was his interface with this reality, but it gave warnings, not solutions. It was a brutal, unhelpful narrator to his own disintegration.
**[Suggestion: Purge foreign RC cells. Likelihood of success: 34%. Risk of self-damage: High.]**
"No." Purging was waste. This was a tool, however unstable. He had to master it. The strong devour the weak. But what if what you devoured was poison? What if you were strong, but stupid? The thought was a new kind of chill. He could see the path so clearly—remove the threats, build the power—but the body he was using was writing its own rules, and they were rules of chaos.
He forced himself to breathe, a ragged, controlled rhythm. In. Out. The panic was human. The hunger was ghoul. He was both, and neither. The anomaly. Slowly, painfully, he pulled the rogue kagune back into his body. It was like swallowing knives. The heat subsided to a dull, persistent ache, a throbbing reminder lodged deep in his marrow.
**[Stability stabilized at 9%. Warning: Further assimilation attempts without integration may cause permanent system corruption.]**
A system. Corruption. The terms were from his old life, a gamer's life. They felt absurd here, covered in concrete dust and the phantom pain of stolen power. He pushed himself up, using the rough wall for support. His legs felt unsteady. The warehouse was silent, the only sound the distant drip of water and the rush of blood in his ears. He had drawn attention—Anteiku's attention. That was a variable. Yoshimura was a balancing force, a cautious chessmaster. He might see Kaito as a threat to the fragile peace, a spark too close to the powder keg. Or he might see him as a potential piece. Either way, he was being watched. His margin for error just shrank.
Kaito's list shimmered in his mind. The recruiter was a minor piece. The real threats were the Clowns, the Washuu, the architects of the coming catastrophes. But to hunt them, he needed control. He needed to be more than a volatile bomb. He needed to understand his own nature. And there was only one way to do that, a way that filled him with a cold, metallic dread.
He had to hunt again. Not just for food, or for justice. He had to experiment. On himself. On others.
***
The next night, Kaito stalked a different prey. Not an Aogiri recruiter, but a ghoul he knew from the 'story'—a lone wolf known for brutal, messy kills that drew CCG heat. Another destabilizer. A brute with a bikaku, all muscle and rage and no foresight. Perfect.
He found him behind a nightclub, dragging a lifeless body towards a dumpster. The ghoul was humming, a tuneless, happy sound that grated against the night.
Kaito's approach was silent. This time, he didn't announce himself. He let his Predator-Type kagune manifest, the dark fluid oozing silently from his pores, a slick second skin that dripped and pooled before rising into tendrils.
The lone wolf sensed him at the last second, dropping the body and spinning with a bestial roar. A thick, segmented bikaku tail—like a monstrous scorpion's—slashed out, cracking the asphalt where Kaito had been a moment before.
Kaito didn't absorb it. He fought. He needed the data.
He used his kagune as a blunt instrument, parrying the strikes, learning its weight and speed. The bikaku was powerful, each swing carrying enough force to crumple steel. But Kaito was stronger, faster. His SSS-rated cells gave him a brute advantage he was still learning to quantify. He weaved under a wild swing, closed the distance, and drove a hardened tendril like a spear into the ghoul's shoulder, pinning him to the brick wall of the club. The sound was a wet *thunk*.
The ghoul snarled, frothing. "Freak! Let me go!"
Kaito looked into his frenzied eyes. This was nature, red in tooth and claw. Simple. Clean. Predictable. For a moment, he envied it.
But he didn't drain him. He needed to test something else. The unstable cache in his back burned, a constant, itching presence. He focused on it, trying to channel it, to shape it. To fire it.
A single, crooked crystal shot from his free shoulder. It wasn't aimed. It was a violent, convulsive expulsion. It grazed the pinned ghoul's cheek, drawing a thin line of blood, and embedded itself in the brick with a high-pitched *ping*.
The ghoul's rage turned to pure, uncomprehending confusion. He stopped struggling. "Two… two types? Impossible!"
**[Foreign Kagune Utilization: Attempted. Precision: Catastrophic. Stability: 7%.]**
Useless. A dangerous, unpredictable tick. A tell that screamed 'abomination.'
Kaito made his decision. He wouldn't drain this one's kagune. He wouldn't add more poison to the well. With a swift, brutal motion of his own natural kagune—a whip-crack of solidified darkness—he ended it. It was a cleaner death than the ghoul had given his victim. The body slumped.
He fed, out of necessity, not hunger. The act was mechanical, grim. As he did, he monitored the churning, rebellious energy within him. He felt the unstable ukaku residue calm slightly, as if soothed by the influx of pure, unadulterated RC cells. It didn't integrate. It just… quieted.
**[Stability increased to 11%. Native RC cell concentration pacifying foreign assimilation.]**
So. His own SSS-level cells could suppress the instability, but not cure it. It was a temporary fix. A palliative. Every new power came with a tax, and the interest was compounding. He finished, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, the taste of copper and guilt familiar now.
That's when he felt the eyes again. The same scent. Coffee and metal. Closer this time. Much closer. They'd seen the failed crystal. They'd seen the mess.
He didn't turn. He spoke to the shadows, his voice flat. "Are you just going to watch, Nishio? Or does Anteiku have a message?"
A tense silence followed. Then, from a doorway across the alley, Nishiki stepped out. He didn't bother with stealth now. His hands were in his pockets, his posture slouched, but his eyes were sharp, missing nothing. The casual aggression was a uniform he wore well.
"Tch. You're a real problem, you know that?" Nishiki's voice was all short, blunt edges. "Draining kagunes? Making a mess? Leaving witnesses who can babble about freaks? The CCG's gonna swarm this ward. They'll shut everything down. Checkpoints. Patrols. The works."
"The CCG swarms regardless." Kaito retracted his kagune, the dark fluid receding into his skin. "I remove problems that attract bigger swarms. The messy ones. The loud ones."
"Who said you get to decide what's a problem?" Nishiki took a step forward, his gaze dropping to the dead ghoul, then back to Kaito. "You some kind of self-appointed janitor?"
"The same law that lets you hunt to feed your sister," Kaito said flatly. "Necessity."
Nishiki stiffened. Every line of his body went taut. His eyes went razor-sharp, the casual mask dissolving into pure, cold threat. "How do you know about that?"
"I know many things." Kaito finally turned to face him fully. He kept his own expression blank, a wall. "I know Anteiku keeps the peace. I'm not here to break it. I'm here to remove the tumors before they metastasize. The Clowns. Aogiri's top brass. The ones who think a war is a game and don't care how many pieces get swept off the board."
"Big talk for a guy who can't even control his own kagune." Nishiki shot back, nodding pointedly towards the broken crystal still wedged in the brickwork. "What was that? A failed ukaku? You some kind of… lab rat? A Washuu experiment gone wrong?"
The barb hit home. Kaito's past-life knowledge was a map, but his body was uncharted, treacherous territory. He deflected. "Tell Yoshimura I'm not his enemy. But I'm not his ward, either. Don't get in my way."
He began to walk away, the ache in his back a constant, throbbing reminder of his precarious state. Every step sent a fresh pulse of wrongness through him.
"Hey!" Nishiki called after him, voice cutting. "You got a name, freak? Or should I just file you under 'Problem'?"
Kaito paused. He'd been using his old name in his head. The name of the gamer, the spectator. It didn't fit anymore. It was a ghost. But the ghoul he'd become, this amalgam of knowledge and hunger and instability, needed one. A label for the anomaly.
"Kaito."
He didn't look back. He disappeared into the labyrinth of the ward, a new variable in the equation, hunted by his own biology and now watched by the peacekeepers. The weight of the observation felt heavier than the body he'd left behind.
Nishiki watched him go until the darkness swallowed him completely. He let out a long, slow breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Then he pulled out his phone, the glow lighting his grim face.
"Manager. He knows things. He knew about me. About Kimi. Called himself Kaito." A pause as Yoshimura spoke on the other end. Nishiki's scowl deepened. "Yeah. And he's definitely unstable. Got some messed-up ukaku thing happening. It's janky. Spasmed out on him during the fight. Doesn't seem like a Washuu plant… they make cleaner weapons." Another pause. He kicked at a pebble, sending it skittering. "Tch. Fine. I'll keep eyes on. But if he blows up and brings doves down on us, I'm not cleaning it up."
He hung up, staring into the dark where Kaito had vanished. He lit another cigarette, the ember a bright, angry eye in the gloom. The scent of coffee from Anteiku seemed very far away.
"Kaito," he muttered to the empty night. The name tasted strange. "What now? What the hell are you now?"
***
In his warehouse, Kaito stared at his hands under the weak light of a single, hanging bulb. They were clean. But in his mind's eye, he saw the malformed crystals, the terror in the recruiter's eyes, the wary suspicion in Nishiki's. He saw the system's warnings, blinking red in the periphery of his vision like a critical alarm.
He was becoming what he needed to be to prevent a future of Dragons and ruined cities. A scalpel for tumors. A shield against chaos. But every step forward cost him a piece of his own stability. He was grafting foreign powers onto a frame not meant to hold them, a desperate patchwork monster, all while the clock ticked down towards canonical disasters he could name and date. The irony was a bitter pill. He had the ultimate spoiler, and it was useless against the revolt of his own flesh.
He was the anomaly, awake and acting.
But he was also a man holding a live wire, and the insulation was wearing thin. He could feel the current, hungry and alien, dancing under his skin, waiting for the next mistake. The next bite. The next taste of power that wasn't his own. He closed his hands into fists, but the tremor in them wasn't from the cold. It was from the voltage. And the night was long, and the list of names was longer. He had to hunt again tomorrow.