Her breathing was ragged, as though it had been ripped apart by the claws of a beast. She ran with everything that she could muster, her chest heaving and her crimson eyes wide and wild with all of the chaos raging in the world. She hadn't broken a sweat yet, and all she could think about was him. Him. The ghoul who had been kind to her.

The building crawled closer as she sprinted across the facility, towering above everything that was steel and smoky; the black asphalt on the ground was moist with the recent shower of rain, and the place reeked of chemicals and oozing black oil. The containment center was large, larger than she had expected it to be, but did nothing to faze her as she trudged on at a superhuman speed, bolting past the steel railings and scaling up incredible amounts of stairs. She could see the lights creating white beams from the windows and out through the cylindrical top, and she could smell the guards patrolling the area as though they were rotten eggs in a henhouse; this was it, and there was no turning back.

She let out a snarling growl, grabbing the railing she trudged towards and launched herself ten feet into the air, flying over the wall that obstructed her and landed smoothly on her toes, her body crouched and her arms spread out around her. She flashed her eyes to the left, seeing the first of the guards walking away, their backs facing towards her and oblivious to her presence; the villainous crimson glare fused itself into her eyes and her jaw grew slack, a writhing pink tongue swirling around over her lips that curled up into a sinister smile.

There was an explosion of indigo fire, only to immediately crystalize into four insect-like legs; in that same instant, a massive, curled black tail emerged from the base of her spine, with black armor stretching across her body in glossy black sections. The guards didn't even know what came at them as their blood splattered against the concrete and steel, with their heads rolling to the edge of the path and topping over the cliff.

With another snarl, her crystalline legs began crawling swiftly up the spiraling pathway. She was black as the night, with no moon to aid the guards with their straining eyes; no stars decorated the sky that evening, leaving only a thick blanket of darkness to cast over the city in one massive sheet. She moved quickly, deliberately, slicing definite blows upon her victims before continuing her way as if nothing had happened; she was silent and terrifying, only a shadow of an assassin that crept eerily through the darkness.

After several levels of what seemed to be poorly trained guards to her, she reached the main wall of the detention center, craning her neck up to look at the monstrosity of a building, and identifying its peak just a few hundred meters up. Her red lips, exposed through her black grotesque mask, turned down into a fierce scowl as the blood of her victims dribbled down her chin; she swiped a tongue over it and let out another growl before stabbing her first two legs into the thick concrete wall, and began pulling herself up the barrier. Her movements were quick and fluid, like an insect itself, as she scaled up the concrete side of the facility.

In a matter of seconds she was up at the top, flinging herself into the sealed center of the entrance, and making no hesitations into attacking the men working the trap door.

She stumbled forward, her massive stinger glistening in the chilled air of the night as she slammed it down upon one man's head, the blood spurting from the gaping wound; his body hadn't even hit the ground when she stabbed the tapering blade into another man's chest, tugging it out with his still-beating heart skewered through its needle-like tip. She snatched the organ with nimble fingers and took a juicy bite from it, the black blood smearing across the white fleshiness of her chin and mixing with the saliva that flooded her open mouth. She let out a seething cackle, eying the guards through the four slits of her mask with their quinque already unsheathed. She crouched on her four stilts of legs, smirking, before launching herself high up into the sky.

She crashed down into the concrete with a quaking rumble, with all four of her legs tapering down into the line of what seemed to be the seam of the trap door. The lid shuddered, cracking a bit as she twisted her legs into the seam, feeling the quinque steel under the concrete top layer collide and grind with her own kagune. She hissed, tugging her legs out of the fissure and lashed her tail around, smashing into an incoming guard with his quinque brandishing in the air. His body struck with the lip of the arena, the rim crumbling beneath the immense pressure of the impact and thus snapping the man's spine as well.

Her crimson eyes bolted around, seeing the men's legs drag across the floor as they made their way towards her, their own quinque gripped tightly in their hands and their mouths stretched wide with battle-like cries ringing out before her. She spotted the metal podium that must have been the control unit for the trap door, and the man who tended to it begin to frantically jab a key into its hole, the red button next to it flashing dangerously. She let out a grumbling hiss, lashing a leg out and sending a meter-long, crystalline stake into the man's chest, knocking him back to topple off the side of the building and to his bloody death.

Her legs carried her forward still, towards the podium that now stood empty and unprotected. She slammed her stinger into the quinque that swung her way, colliding with it with a shower of sparks flying into the air. The man grunted as he pushed against the pure muscle that strained against his weapon, his brows creased as he bore tightly clenched teeth, barely contained within curled lips. Her crimson eyes flashed, and with a sudden surge of power, heaved her tail against the hammer to send the man flying back with a screech. The weapon smashed into the ground and slid towards another man, the last one upon the rooftop. He snatched it up in one fluid movement and readied his own blade, staring her down as though he were the predator and she was the feeble-minded little piece of prey.

With a snarling hiss, she lunged forward, the crimson glow radiating from her four eye slits poisonous and dreadfully cunning. Each of her four stilts of crystal legs stabbed into the concrete below, smashing and crumbling the material; the man charged towards her with a menacing yowl, leaping up into the air as he fell only meters from her grasp. He flipped over her and swung his blade, crashing into the muscular, armored black tail that loomed over her body like a shadow. She knocked the sword away, feeling the blade dig slightly into the hardened skin of her kagune, only to find the hammer to come roaring down on her through the open space she had so carelessly left undefended.

The face of the hammer smashed into the side of her head, sending her body to the side and roll into the lip of the roof. She felt her skull shatter with the impact, her mouth stretching open into a painful wail as she stumbled and crashed into the concrete, a pile of rubble tumbling on top of her as a result. Her tail twitched, sticking out from the mass of debris, before it thudded to the ground, limp and lifeless. The man staggered back up onto his feet, limping his way towards the wreckage with blood spilling down the side of his face, where the side of her stinger had collided with his cranium. His breath was heavy, jarring as he slowly hobbled towards the heap, which lay just under the steel control podium.

A mass of concrete smashed into him, sending him back to the opposite side of the wall and crushing him under the chunk of debris; other smaller pieces of rubble dug into the wall, the force of their launch driving them to burrow into the rim like gems within a crown. The monster let out an ear piercing screech, the thick saliva dripping from her mouth in wads of slobber and blood, her chest heaving in such a beastly way it seemed impossible that such a fiend could actually be driven by morals. Its curled lips twisted up into a satanic smile, letting out a sputter of laughter that slowly grew into an insane fit.

The sound resonated through the facility like a siren, ringing and echoing around as though it were a beacon of despair and anguish.

With her kakuja kagune sinking back into her torn skin and her brain still pierced by the bone that had shattered from her skull, she clobbered up the side of the lip of the roof and towards the metal panel. Her eyes skimmed across the control board and were immediately drawn towards the blinking red button. She gritted her teeth and, with a silent plea for luck, smashed her palm into the button; the trap door rumbled, and the panels began to draw apart.

She puffed out a breath of relief, and then took a few steps back. The door was barely cracked open enough for a body to squirm through when she lashed out a powerful kick, knocking the control board off the podium and snapping the metal pedestal in half; the copper wires and skeleton splayed out from the opening, spitting up sparks and flashes. The trap door creaked to a stop, jammed in from the destruction of its stimulus; she leaped off the side of the roof and bounded towards the crack, slipping through the seam and plunging down into the interior of Cochlea.

The internal structure of the prison was nothing like she had suspected; she had only heard that there were four levels, and the deeper you went inside the facility, the more dangerous the prisoners were. However, the central structure of the detention center was floor upon floor of ghoul cells, constructed out of quinque steel from the smell of it, and manufactured so that ghoul escape was practically impossible. There were occasional breaks in the seemingly endless pit of darkness that tunneled through the middle of the facility, with buildings that she assumed to be prison warden centers and four paths stretching out from them to reach the outer rim that held the prison cells.

The emergency siren was already ringing by the time she set foot on the first warden center, breaking her fall with her wings spread out so it acted as a sort of parachute. She fell silently on top of the guard haven, flattening herself on top as she heard the prison guards stomp away to search every nook and cranny of the detention center. As she heard the last of the footsteps fade out, she closed her eyes and took a massive breath. She had five minutes at most before the guards would pinpoint her location, so she had five minutes to find him, and then make their escape. She leaped from her spot and into the outer path lining the rim of the facility, looking from left to right before bounding away.

The cells were numbered rather than engraved with their imprisoned ghouls' rankings, as she had suspected; it would have been more convenient if they had been labeled with their rankings, but she had no time to complain. Her mind pounded with the strings of possibilities she had taken the time to lay out for the course of a full year, an electrifying agony striking through her temples as she stumbled over her feet.

She scoffed.

Her head wound was not completely healed yet, and it was only then when she cursed herself for not at least taking another heart to consume. She hadn't taken injuries into account, so that factor had taken a rather literal impact into her plan. However, failure was not an option today, and she was excruciatingly determined to get him out of here as quickly and effectively as she could. Failure was certainly not an option.

She furrowed her brows together as she made her way down the path, glancing at the numbers to the side to gauge how far she was into the facility.

368

She skidded to a halt, quickly appearing in front of cell number 372 and knocking viciously upon the steel door.

"Oi, you in there!" she hissed. "State your ranking."

"What?" the ghoul inside sputtered. "Are you the infiltrator?"

She growled, growing impossibly impatient.

"I'm asking the questions here," she spat back, sliding the metal compartment open to glare into the cell. "Don't make me repeat myself for a third time. What is your ranking?"

The ghoul inside flinched back at her menacing, stare, sweat beading down his forehead as he pressed himself against the wall opposite from her.

"B," he stammered, his lips fumbling as he spoke.

She merely scoffed, slamming the compartment back shut and launched herself over the railing, the ghoul in the cell behind her screeching for her to help him.

She swung herself over the rail and into the next level down, flashing her eyes around to spy any guards. After seeing none, she bolted to the nearest cell, and repeated the process again.

She climbed further and further down down the prison, unable to get answers of any sort as she stopped to yell at the prisoners. Still, it was her only option, and she worked as quickly as she could.

"Akashima Takashi," she barked into the fifth cell on that floor. "A rank ghoul. You know him?"

The female ghoul inside the cell trembled in the corner as she faced the other's darkened glare.

"W-we talked the first few days he was here," she stammered, her voice tiny. "I see him c-come into his cell again every night, and they take him away in the morning."

Her eyes flashed as she heard this, a growl ripping from her throat as she gripped the sides of the compartment and stretched it open, the quinque steel screeching and straining in her firm grip. She leaned in closer to the peephole, the vicious glint in her eye intensifying as the taste of success became more apparent.

"What. Number. Is he?" she hissed.

The female ghoul blinked and told her immediately. Her eyes widened as she whirled around, spying the cell directly across from her exact spot. Her breath hitched as she huffed, bolting away and leaving the ghouls in their cells to scream and pound at their doors, begging her to please save them. Save them.

She heard the shouts of the guards as they spotted her, ringing through her ears like an amber alert as she ran towards the opposite side of the building.

Faster. She had to go faster.

They swung from the railing just as she did, dropping in front of her one by one in masses. Her expression grew dark, menacing as her wings sprouted from her back in massive licks of flames, her tail shooting out from her tailbone as the black armor enshrouded her body before any of the Doves could catch another glimpse of her human disguise. They charged at her with no hesitation, firing their guns and waving their weapons in the air.

But she was too quick for them.

She grabbed the first guard in her hands and smashed his face in with her massive black stinger, breaking through his gear and his goggles shattering from the impact. She spun around with her fingers gripping onto the back of his jersey tightly, launching his body into two other Doves who made their way towards her, pushing them back into the wall; three more stormed in on her, assaulting her with Q bullets and Rc cell projectiles. Her wings came closing in on her, their exterior hardening but the interior still blazing like a forest fire, shielding her body from the bullets that assailed her.

She opened her wings, spanning an incredible seven meters across, and flapped them forward with an immense pressure, shooting a shower of refined needles of only a few millimeters at the Doves. The tiny shards bombarded their bodies, slicing through their gear and penetrating into their soft flesh, shooting clear through their bodies and splattering their viscous crimson blood back into the wall behind them. Her scarlet eyes gleamed through their eye slits, a monstrous expression carved into the curves of her threatening snarl.

She sped next to one of their bodies, the armor sinking back into her skin once again, and sliced her hand through his chest to pull out a heart that still pumped faintly in the carcass. She consumed it within seconds, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand before jolting forward again. To his cell.

Faster. She had to run faster.

But which one was his again? She could feel her head's recovery begin to accelerate, but not at the pace she wanted it to go. Her brain still felt like a mush of flesh and shattered bone - the damned quinque. She should have eaten the quinque.

Faster. She still had to go faster.

His scent. She could identify him with his scent. Her eyes widened, focusing on her nose and taking a big whiff of the place, reeking of an astonishing array of ghouls. She snarled, bringing her nose closer to each cell, sniffing them but only to turn away, frustrated.

Faster.

The place was overridden with the stench of bleach and ghouls, uncomfortably sterilized and cleansed to the point of uneasiness. Her spine shivered beneath her skin, her muscles clenching as she trudged on still.

Faster. Faster!

There. Just that tiny whiff. She caught his scent; after twelve long months of preparing and aching and enduring the torture of isolation, she had caught his scent again, and she could feel the relief flood over her like a tidal wave as she ran still. Faster. She was so close.

She followed the scent trail a few dozen more cells down the line, no longer stopping to snuffle at every door but rather following the trace as though she were a bloodhound. He was so close - she could feel it in her bones, and that anxiety gnawed at her like the jaws of a starving ghoul.

There! In this cell! This one!

With no hesitation, the massive black tail sprouted back from her tailbone and rammed its tip into the seam of the door. Her creepy legs prickled through her back and jammed themselves into the same spot as well, her brow furrowing with creases of despair etching within the porcelain surface, displaying the massive effort that it took to pry that thing open.

Faster. They were coming; she could feel it rattling in the marrow of her bones.

"Etsuko-chan?" a voice called within the cell. "Is that really you? What the hell are you doing here? Go! Go while you can! Leave me!"

She ignored him, all of her efforts driven into forcing the damned door open. Her tapered but strong crystalline legs grappled at the door, slowly but surely grinding the steel to stretch, lifting out her massive, muscular tail to bash its ball into the weak points, indenting the steel and thus weakening its security.

"Etsuko-chan!" he called out to her again.

She let out a fierce yowl, ripping the door to the side but snapping off her legs in turn. She groaned, huffing in pain as she crumbled to her knees, her breath straining and her body shaking. She brought her face up to look at the damage before her.

The first set she noticed was the door, the steel crumpled like paper with a good-sized crack in its side. She knitted her brows, pushing herself back onto her feet and grabbing the edge of the ruined door with her bare hands, heaving and shoving the panel to the side with all of power she could muster. The iron screeched against the sliding mechanism, her teeth grinding together just as forcefully as she grunted and heaved the thing further, sparks spitting from the grating metal; the sweat beaded upon her face, scrunched up so it looked as though she were pulling the weight of the entire world. Still, her expression was plagued with a courageous intent, a vast determination linking together across her face, weaving together a massive resilience, and thus inciting her on.

Faster. She had to go faster.

She widened her mouth and let out a vicious scream, ripping from the base of her throat and clawing its way up to burst forth from her curled lips. Her fingers sank into the steel, puncturing it further with the metal squealing in protest, and huffed one final, massive heave before tearing the door away from the wall, the sliding mechanism screeching as the iron of the door scraped against it. The cell was open - just barely enough for a body to squirm through it - and she leaned against the mangled side of the steel door with her chest heaving, gasping for air in compensation for the exertion of forcing open the iron panel. It was only then when she rolled her head to the side to glance inside the cell when she saw the second set of damage, far more horrific and grotesque than the mutilated door, and made her knees buckle from the shock that rippled through her.

Takashi.

"What the hell are you doing?" he shouted at her again, the tears brimming his eyes.

No. Just one eye. The other one was gone.

She gaped at him in the most extraordinary devastation a person could ever comprise. Her heart stopped, and she felt her blood run cold in her icy veins as she stared at him in his cell, dressed in the navy jumpsuits those bastards of the CCG gave to all of their prisoners to wear. She felt her chest begin to shatter, corroding away like the sides of a river with the roaring whitewater crashing against its surface over and over and over, relentless and thrashing about with no intention of ever stopping.

The man standing before her was barely recognizable as a man at all. The whole left side of his face sunk in and drooped as though it were putty, with the eye socket sealed shut and the corner of his lips drawn downward, his eyebrow seeming to have been seared off. His fragile mop of charcoal hair was still barely intact, the thread-like waves falling just below his sharp jawline and thinning as though he was a man of great age. A fresh gash, now bulked over in a massive scab, sliced across his right cheek, and he hunched over as though he were some bizarre freak. His hands were gnarled like branches, and from under the navy uniform, which hung from his skinny figure like a rag, she could see contorted, shiny scars that protruded from his skin like mountain ridges.

She was frozen, still as a stone statue, stunned and utterly terrified to speechlessness.

"Oniisan..." she whispered softly, barely even able to comprehend what she was saying. "What did they do to you?"

~~~✿~~~

Part 1 of this memory! I'll be posting the second part soon >:3

As you all may (or may not) know, I'll be in Japan next week, so updates will slow or cease until about the 21st of August or so. Thank you for understanding!

And please don't forget to VOTE, comment, and to add this to your library for future updates!

And as always, thanks for reading!