Roger "Spider Rider" Burns
Not far from CCG 14th District HQ...
The cramped car rumbled as it ran over a pothole, jolting First Class Investigator Takihara, Rank 1 Investigator Yousou, and Rank 2 Investigators Aitene and Ibano. The brutish, barrel-chested Takihara's first words after hitting the pothole were simple, "Damn it Ibano, drive better. I know these streets aren't amazing, but still! My papers are getting mixed up from this crap!" Ibano, a far skimpier man than Takihara, muttered some kind of apology as their leader continued, "We believe the Spider Rider is going to be present at a rundown love hotel in the shittier side of town, supposedly hunting a serial rapist. Our mission is to kill or capture him."
Aitene, a slender young woman fresh out of the Academy with dyed blonde hair, mentioned to the squad, "Why is a ghoul hunting a serial rapist? What good does that do him?"
"He's got some kind of hero complex is what HQ thinks. Preys on criminals exclusively as far as we can tell." Takihara flipped through a few pages before settling on one of them, "Rider's been noted as likely having been born in the United States, moved through Canada, Russia, China, India, parts of Europe, and then circled through the Middle East and back to Japan, where he's been for about two years, just moving throughout our country."
Unsatisfied, the woman pressed the question further, "So if he preys on criminals, what's the point of apprehending him? Won't it ju-"
"Are you some kind of
Ghoul Fucker like that Shozen bastard, Aitene-san?!" barked Takihara, his face reddening with rage.
The young female stiffened quickly and sat at attention, saying with sudden decisiveness, "No, sir!"
Letting out a deep breath to expend some of his anger, their commander continued, "Rider is known to be able to use his kagune to form eight lethal tentacles at a time, an unprecedented amount, though we don't truly know how capable he is as he's a bitch to catch and put down. HQ currently has him pegged at an A+, but that's without much to go on in terms of combat results." The rest of the squad was likely uncomfortable about the fact they were going in essentially blind, against a Ghoul nearly equal to an Associate Class Investigator as far as was known, but it was always possible the mysterious Ghoul may just completely evade them like he seemed to usually do.
If they had concerns, no one voiced any, allowing Takihara to give the rest of his briefing, "Ibano-san and I will hit the room directly, with you two waiting outside the hotel, on the roof, for that bastard to come up. I'm almost certain he'll go for escaping that direction, so I want you to slow him down if he gets away from us. If nothing comes up there after a few minutes, come either congratulate or help Ibano-san and I. That's the plan but anything is subject to change. Ghouls are, and will always be, as unpredictable as normal humans, with significantly more threat, and we, as Investigators, must adapt. Understood?" A chorus of agreement followed.
The formation of Investigators fairly quickly reached the love hotel and dismounted, moving to their positions as quietly as possible, Yousou and Aitene to the roof, Takihara and Ibano towards the room. Taking what was perhaps the most dangerous position, the pair approaching the room moved quickly, their briefcases at the ready. Noises and voices floated into the ears of the brute and the weakling, though they were mostly impossible to make sense of. The pair leaned against the sides of the door and took out their quinque, both using sword-types, nodded at one another, and then bust in.
Inside, a man wearing blue jeans and an all-weather jacket with a motorcycle helmet and mask on had two golden tentacles erupting from his lower back. One had another man, incredibly ugly yet clearly quite muscular, pierced through the chest and elevated into the air. The other tentacle was almost casually stabbing the airborne rapist, who was covered in blood with dozens of slashes on his body, and clearly to the point where he'd just given up, having already lost numerous fingers and toes. Rider, meanwhile, had managed to keep himself fairly clean of blood as he looked back at the Investigators, his face unable to be seen to determine whether he was surprised or expecting the pair.
Takihara roared in anger and brought his quinque to bear, trying to intimidate the ghoul and draw its attention from his trembling comrade, "Surrender, Spider Rider, and we'll go easy on you!"
The ghoul giggled, his kagune shaking the criminal's body rhythmically. The second tentacle continued to stab it repeatedly as Spider replied with complete confidence, "I'm not interested in fighting, so you'll get one warning. Leave or else."
"Ha! As if we'd let a fucking Gho-" Takihara found his words cut off as he was forced to dodge suddenly, barely managing to avoid two tentacles that shot out from the ghoul while receiving a third, deeply penetrating cut to his thigh,
Holy shit, that speed! Takihara leapt as best he could further into the room, trying to get out of the doorway, and looked back at his comrade, "Iba-"
The man was screaming and lying on the floor, his hands that had been clenching his quinque gone, with blood pouring out of two wounds on his thighs, both clearly quite close to the femoral arteries. Seeing that blood gush out of subordinate forced Takihara to look down out at his own thigh, discovering that it too was bleeding profusely,
Did he precisely hit our arteries, in that split second?
Two halves of a body impacted the shocked First Class Investigator, knocking him through the rotten wall of the love hotel as the sound of glass shattering echoed in the room. Takihara tried his best to stand, falling to his knees twice before getting up completely,
Fuck. Fuck! I underestimated him. Should've went in with all four... Ibano-san! Oh shit! The brute busied himself with tending to the wounded man as best he could, whipping out tourniquets and dragging him towards the elevator,
Forgive me, Aitene and Yousou. I can only hope he just runs past you.
Outside, the ghoul used his eight kagune to climb like his namesake up the wall of the building, tossing his body over the edge. Rider dusted himself off as he looked at the two Investigators waiting for him, both surprised at how fast he'd appeared. For a moment, there was silence until the ghoul motioned for them to move, "Leave me alone and no one gets hurt."
Rank 1 Investigator Yousou clutched his sword and shield quinques and bellowed after a few moments of deliberation, "I'm not about to just let you get past me, a Rank 1 Investigator! Aitene-san, with me!" The completely average built man charged, shield forward, sword prepared to strike, causing the ghoul to sigh.
Aitene watched as Rider's kagune shot out with incredibly ferocity, four merging together and then striking the upper plate of the man's shield with enough force to knock him off balance. With the shield pushed upwards, four more tentacles exploited his opening and cut through his legs and torso. Rider himself hadn't even bother to move as Yousou, dropped his quinques, bent over, and vomited blood as he clutched his chest. Blood gushed from a wound in his abdomen, two wounds on his thighs, and the wound from the arm that had held up the shield, now separated from his body at the shoulder and lying on the ground.
Spider Rider calmly turned his helmeted head towards Aitene, all eight golden tentacles hovering at the ready by his sides, "I don't want to hurt you, especially a pretty lady like yourself, but your friends brought this on themselves. Don't be like them."
The young woman found herself shaking uncontrollably as she looked over at her comrade, now lying in a pool of his own blood, trying to return what was likely his intestines to their original position. Rider scratched his helmet, "Eh? In shock? You must be new. It's a real bitch to train for reality." A tentacle shot out like lightning, slapping Aitene's whip quinque away and the wrapping itself around her waist. She screamed bloody murder as two other tentacles snatched Yousou and his arm, until she realized the ghoul was climbing down the hotel. A few moments later and he'd set the pair down on the concrete as crowds of people ran away in fear.
Takihara burst from the hotel with Ibano on his back just in time to witness Rider drop off the others and then yell from the edge of the roof, "Leave me the fuck alone, and cutie, get a different line of work!" Spider disappeared immediately afterwards as the four did what they could to get their wounded to a hospital.
The brutish leader was forced to report later everything that had occurred, including the fact that Ibano and Yousou were both disabled in combat, though inexplicably not killed. The doctor informed the First Class Investigator that all of their wounds, though heavy, had avoided vital arteries or were survivable for the most part. Takihara had little choice but to prostrate himself in apology for his failure before his superiors, all the while thinking,
That son of a bitch... Spared us?
Yui Sonoto
In a little cell in the CCG Prison...
"Ah, fuck this! I'm so fucking tired of these walls!" roared a sober Yui Sonoto, glad in basic prisoner garb, throwing punch after punch into her prison walls, "A fucking year! It's been an entire year that I've been in this shit hole! Aggghh!!! I just want... I just want... To fucking fight someone!" She kicked the wall repeatedly in a spot she had yet to dent, "God damn it! I want to beat someone's face in! I need a drink! Aaagghh! This place is so fucking
boring!"
The fairly young woman had been stuck inside this cell for more than a year now, without a single drop of alcohol. It was Hell incarnate. Other than the guards who brought her food or came to tell her to shut up, Yui had hardly seen anyone else as well. To tell the truth, she was lonely. Lonely, and pissed.
She sat down with an angry thud on her simple bed, "This is ridiculous. As if it was my fault they all died, or lost hands, feet, limbs, or whatever! I'm going to go crazy if I spend any more time in this shithole..." Falling over exasperated onto her bed, Yui rubbed her head and tried to relax, before deciding it was impossible and rolling off the bed. Immediately, she began to perform push-ups, one of the few exercises she could do to take her mind off her crummy situation considering her cell didn't exactly contain modern amenities, "Sober a year... no fun for a year... nothing... Damn near not even a conversation... Not an attractive man in sight... Fuck this place... Fuck the people who put me here."
Yui declared in her mind as she reached another hundredth push-up for the day, her face twisted in anger,
I'm going to smash that fucking Director's face in for this, I swear to God. I did not deserve this.
A guard strolled by almost on queue and yelled, "Shut the hell up, Sonoto!"
