Chapter Text
It’d been a week. A week. This wasn’t Marvel. Wasn’t DC. Wasn’t Naruto or One Piece. Gwen didn’t know what it was.
The abandoned building was quite, eerie in its desertion, signs of humans so far away relegated to nothing but the faint signs of laughter from some party she wasn’t at.
Something had- had happened to her. Changed. From the moment she’d arrive, she’d thrown up every inch of food she’d eaten. Maybe it was guilt for when she’d- ah when she’d nothing. Nothing at all. She’d find him, soon.
Of course, throwing up everything had come with an obvious consequence.
She was hungry.
Not regular hungry either.
Hungry.
But of course it was completely normal hungry. For regular things like- like- like chicken.
Like chicken.
Gwen was normal. Which was an established fact. Normal girl Gwen, yup!
Gwen had come here so she could be a hero, escape from her boring reality, not- not for- well- that.
She wasn’t like that. She wasn’t!
Gwen pulled her hand up, the most grotesque smell hitting her nose like a battering ram, spreading nausea to her stomach.
Her hand inched closer.
It hovered over her outstretched tongue.
Come-on Gwen! What are you hesitating for?
She raised her tongue.
“AUGH!”
She threw it!
Chocolate- her favorite.
It landed far away, menacing her even from there.
Gwen huddled into a ball in the dark of the decrepit building, lights of the city, just outside her home, so endlessly far from her reach. City streets like the guards walkways to a prison with only one cell.
Gwen swallowed.
She wasn’t.
She reached down, holding her arm out.
It shook, and Gwen reflexively swallowed again.
Her other arm raised to meet it, but not for anything kind. A nail, long and jagged from nervous picking, pushed lightly against her skin.
She pushed, pushed, pushed and-
Pull!
Her eyes, squeezed shut, slowly opened, only to once again slam shut.
Nope. A hallucination. Or something. Humans didn’t heal so quick. Humans don’t lick their lips looking at a suicide victim. Humans have herbivore teeth. Humans didn’t crush concrete when they got freaked out.
She did, though.
Gwen forced her eyes open.
So, so, so-
So she was- was a villain then.
“That’s fine. I can be a villain…” She was the perfect candidate, right? Gwen Poole. Evil extraordinaire.
She leaned down, grabbing what was below her and pulling it up. God knows why she’d taken it. Gwen pushed her tears back as best she could, and-
Bit.
—oO0Oo—
Mado flicked through page after page of reports, trying to paint of picture of their newest problem. They had been organized to his specific preferences by a secretary, case details, victim activity, crime scene photography, and suspects.
But there was just one problem.
Every suspect was wrong.
He understood that not every member of the CCG quite grasped the vile nature of Ghouls like he did. Vicious, relentless, and most importantly- attached to the lie of personhood. They grafted themselves to their facade, and it weakened them. Mado would damn- DAMNED- if he did not exploit it.
That’s why he was certain.
Every suspect twinged off his expectation in one way or another. It was infuriating.
Suspect: Bako Okada. Hair length and color matching, expected facial profile within reasonable range, thirty two, ate extremely small portions. The problem was her job. She was an at home worker for a software development firm. Ghouls prefered social jobs, where they could flaunt their disguise like buying clothes in front of the poor.
Suspect: Sayuki Yuki. Entered a restaurant, near the scene of the crime and left out the back door. Prime suspect except for one thing: The restaurant receipt didn’t include coffee, a Ghouls second favorite food, a way of blending in. She had left out the back to avoid a stalker.
Mado had had the stalker arrested promptly. His job was to protect humans, after all.
Suspect: Mitsubishi Ayano! The moment questioning started, she revealed she’d had an off the books abortion gone wrong. The attempt to save her life had resulted in several scars. Which she had… shown.
All the other ones were off for dozens of reasons. Too many to list.
Dozens of suspects. But not one of them the culprit.
It meant one very obvious thing. The culprit was someone the cameras hadn’t caught leaving or entering. That noone had noticed.
Well. Almost noone. Mado glanced to the side, catching the boy behind the glass in his stare.
They had one witness.
Some crazy boy with no id.
Called himself ‘Teddy Poole’ and all testing had revealed a thoroughly average human boy. Mado figured he was probably abandoned by his parents, born out of wedlock to the shame of some American woman, birthed off the books, and dropped as soon as he could talk.
He had told them all the same thing, the same crazy thing.
“She’s my sister, my- my sister and-” He lurched forward in his seat, “-and!”
Human boy, brother to a ghoul. It was insane.
Mado had a few theories.
Theory one. Two children born off the book, end up on the streets and find each other. Teddy is kind and welcoming enough to the Ghoul that it forms a symbiotic relationship with him, he provides her a cover story ‘See- we’re twins, investigator. And since he’s human so am I’ and she provides him with protection from other ghouls. Nature at its most unnatural.
Theory two: It was adopted at an early age by his parents. Inevitably, it eventually killed them after it got hungry. Teddy didn’t know, and had already gotten tragically attached- it’s the nature of humans to care. So he took her with him and went on the run.
Theory three: They were related. There were theories that humans and ghouls were sister species, and were therefore capable of interspecies breeding. Mado had always dismissed it as nonsense before. Familial imprinting occurs, so she doesn’t kill him.
Well. The whole situation was insane. Crazy. But that’s just it, Mado got to where his was as an investigator by remembering to never dismiss crazy when dealing with Ghouls.
Mado bared his teeth.
Crazy it was.