Ka-a-aang!!!
She swung her [Ukaku] wings and knocked aside the sword strike flying in at high speed.
The metallic ring echoed out, and the distance between Eto and Kasuka widened.
Eto kept a close eye on Kasuka's movements while also checking her own [Kagune] from the corner of her vision.
Seeing the [Kagune] begin to flicker like a flame, unable to hold its shape, Eto clicked her tongue inwardly.
"So I still haven't recovered enough."
Her body had healed enough to move without issue, but her weapon had not.
There was almost no energy left in Eto's body to sustain her [Kagune]. She was running on empty.
To fight properly, she needed fuel, and there was no way she could get any in a place like this. The emergency candy she had brought was already gone, too.
The [Kagune] she had just used had scraped together the last of the energy left in her body, but it could not keep its form for long and vanished.
To Kasuka, it looked as if Eto had suddenly withdrawn her [Kagune], and she showed a hint of surprise.
"What's this? Don't tell me you don't want to fight?"
"..."
Eto gave no answer.
That was only natural. Her throat was still badly damaged, so she couldn't make a sound for a while.
But it was true that she didn't want to fight.
She wasn't in any condition to fight, and she didn't want to kill someone just to survive. ...Trying to express that only through gestures was impossible.
Kasuka tilted her head, then straightened it and spoke.
"You're a little different from the other Ghouls, aren't you?"
Her whole body was covered by a blanket, so neither her face nor even her gender could be made out.
She was small, but Kasuka had seen plenty of adult Ghouls with similarly slight builds because they hadn't been able to get proper nutrition.
The blanket itself looked as if it had been stripped from a corpse, stained with blood and even giving off a foul stench.
And yet, the Ghoul in front of her didn't give off the same unpleasant feeling as the others.
That sticky, repulsive, murderous gaze.
Koma had once described it as a "look that sees you as food," but Eto didn't have that kind of feeling. That struck Kasuka as strangely odd.
"Still, if I get the chance, I'd like to sit down and talk with you at leisure."
"..."
Fwoosh!
Instead of answering, Eto kicked off the pipe and began running along the wall to escape.
Her goal was the entrance to the passage she had just come out of. She intended to use it to get away from Kasuka.
Kasuka smiled faintly, as if she had expected that.
"I knew it. Sorry. I said something unnecessary."
With that, Kasuka quickly reached for her waist.
Bang!!
"...!?"
One gunshot, and searing pain as it pierced her right calf.
Thrown off by the impact, Eto's foot slipped as she was about to leap into the passage, and she was flung into the air.
At the edge of her falling vision was Kasuka, pointing a long rifle at her.
Thud!
Like a bird struck by a hunter's gun, Eto crashed onto the pipe. The impact from landing on her back spread through her whole body, but the pain in her right leg was worse.
The area around the calf where a hole had been blown through would not heal easily.
It was clearly the work of a [Q Bullet], or some kind of long-range [Quinque].
"I'm getting old, so dreaming of a peaceful solution without a single fight is a bit much."
Kasuka muttered bitterly, still keeping the long rifle trained on Eto. It was her second [Quinque].
As if erasing even the slightest trace of warmth, the temperature on Kasuka's face vanished in an instant.
"Surrender, or die here. Those are your two choices."
If she didn't surrender, she really did intend to kill her. Eto could tell that much for certain.
But she couldn't surrender, and she couldn't die either. Either choice meant being separated from Koma, and Eto would never accept that.
"I have no choice but to fight!"
If she stayed like this, Kasuka would chase her anywhere.
Unless she subdued her, or at the very least broke her [Quinque] and rendered her helpless, there was no way past her.
She gauged the fuel left in her body.
She could only manifest her [Kagune] four or five more times at most. And even then, it would only last briefly.
Eto immediately manifested the limited [Kagune].
Dark crimson light burst out from the pipe behind her back.
Kwaaaang!!!
"...!!"
The massive pipe bent like a pair of chopsticks snapping and collapsed downward.
Eto and Kasuka, who had been on top of it, were naturally left hanging in midair.
Kang! Kaang!
But the one who had induced this situation, Eto, and Kasuka's response were both swift.
Both of them kicked off the collapsing pipe fragments and leaped, planting their feet on opposite walls. With about ten meters between them, Eto and Kasuka's eyes met for a brief instant.
Gravity pulled at them.
Clinging to the wall was only a momentary reprieve, and as if caught by the darkness stretching out below, their bodies gradually began to slide downward.
Below them was only thick darkness. She couldn't judge the depth.
If they fell like this, neither a human body nor a Ghoul body would come out unscathed. So both of them kicked off the wall at the same time.
Throwing off gravity, Eto and Kasuka surged upward and met in midair.
Fwehk!
The tip of a rapier shot through the air, punching a hole in it.
Eto ducked her upper body, and the blade skimmed past her shoulder by a hair's breadth. The palm of her hand then slapped at Kasuka's exposed elbow. It was an attack aimed at the joint.
But the rapier that had been extended was already being withdrawn, and its hilt blocked Eto's palm.
Thoom!!
The brief collision sent both of them back toward the wall.
Their feet scraped against the wall, and once again they began to slide under gravity. Eto drove her fingers into the concrete wall to brake herself.
The height difference between Eto and Kasuka changed.
Before acceleration made her body impossible to control, Kasuka launched herself again.
She thrust the rapier toward Eto's body, which was still hanging on the wall. Eto used the fingers and both legs she had planted in the wall as stepping stones and jumped straight up.
Kwagak!!
The rapier stabbed into the space Eto had just occupied and buried itself in the wall.
Eto, who had leaped vertically, changed direction and dropped, accelerating over Kasuka's head. Her legs, hidden beneath the blanket, shot out and aimed for Kasuka's head like a spear.
But Eto quickly revised her target and slammed the extended leg into the wall instead. In midair, she changed the direction of her fall and spun her body around.
Bang!!
And the bullet from the long rifle flew past the spot where Eto's forehead had been.
Having failed to land a quick counter because of the bullet's interference, Eto fell toward Kasuka in her spinning motion and swung her leg.
But that leg never reached Kasuka, blocked instead by the blade of the rapier that had been pulled free from the wall.
Ka-a-ang!!
"You're pretty good!"
"That's my line!"
Kasuka had blown away the pipe that had served as their foothold, turning this into an aerial battle that was Eto's territory.
Even so, Kasuka didn't care and kept kicking off the wall to clash with Eto. It was clear she was no ordinary fighter.
She wanted no part of a ground battle with someone like this. She had to finish it before they touched the floor, no matter what.
But Kasuka, on the other hand, seemed to want to drag Eto into a ground battle instead of this restricted aerial fight.
Grab!
"...?!"
Kasuka's hand seized Eto's ankle, which had been blocked by the rapier. Without hesitation, she hurled herself into the air.
"Are you insane!?"
If she had a voice, Eto would have shouted that. Perhaps sensing her feelings, Kasuka grinned and said, "Don't look at me like that. I'm just fighting with a proper sense of professional duty."
She deflected every attack Eto threw while trying to shake her off with the other foot, and the two of them plunged deeper and deeper into the abyss of darkness.
"Why does Mom fight Ghouls?"
Mado Akira.
That was what her daughter, who had just entered elementary school, once asked Kasuka.
She didn't seem to be asking because she was truly curious; her deadpan expression said she just needed to know for a school assignment.
Kasuka chuckled and patted the child's head.
"Because I'm a Ghoul Investigator."
"Is that really an answer?"
"I think it's more than enough."
Akira's eyes narrowed further, her expression so flat it almost looked like she was glaring.
As always, she thought her mother was joking around.
"How is that any different from a mountaineer answering 'Because there's a mountain there' when asked why they climb mountains?"
"It isn't different. It's the same answer at its core."
"???"
Akira looked even more confused.
Kasuka realized her mistake, as if the subject had been too difficult for a child.
After thinking about how best to explain it, she spoke again.
"Akira. What does a police officer do?"
"They protect civilians and catch criminals."
"If there were a police officer who bullied civilians and let criminals off the hook, should we still call them a police officer?"
"No."
Akira answered without even needing to think.
If there were police who bullied civilians and left criminals alone, were they really police? No, they were trash wearing a police uniform.
Kasuka nodded as if to say exactly.
"Right. That's what a profession is. Different people may carry out police work in different ways, but the essence doesn't change. Soldiers protect the country, and teachers teach students. No matter how much time passes, that essence should never change. But following that essence is harder than you'd think."
There are corrupt police officers, and in dictatorships there are even armies that are supposed to stop foreign enemies but instead attack their own people.
No matter how much time passes, the essence of the profession doesn't change, yet surprisingly many people easily forget and stray from it.
That was why someone stubbornly tried to follow that essence. Sometimes that was the profession itself; sometimes it was simply their nature.
"About that mountaineer you just mentioned, if you asked them, 'Why are you a mountaineer?' they'd answer, 'Because I climb mountains.' They already place their essence in climbing mountains. Anything else is just ornamentation. Whatever they say doesn't really matter. Their essence won't change in the end."
"..."
"This mom is the same. If you ask why I fight Ghouls, then 'because I'm a Ghoul Investigator' is all you need."
Akira's eyes brightened, as if she understood a little of what her mother meant, though not completely.
Kasuka became a Ghoul Investigator to fight Ghouls, and at the same time, because she was a Ghoul Investigator, she fought Ghouls. Her essence and the essence of a Ghoul Investigator had matched and become one.
Akira somehow felt that her mother would keep working as a Ghoul Investigator until the day she died. Was that what people called innate nature?
"I didn't know Mom liked killing Ghouls."
"Oh my? You make your mother sound like some blood-mad witch. I don't particularly like killing Ghouls. Do you think Ghoul Investigators are just people with their brains full of nothing but killing Ghouls?"
"Wasn't that it?"
"Of course not! If the only purpose were wiping out Ghouls, we'd be called 'Ghoul Hunters.' Why do you think we're called 'Investigators'? Because we also have the role of finding the Ghouls hidden among people, but there's another purpose too."
It was the first time Akira had heard this, and curiosity lit up her face. Did Ghoul Investigators have a purpose beyond searching for and exterminating Ghouls?
"What is it?"
"To confront Ghouls and judge them."
But the answer was so underwhelming that Akira couldn't hide her disappointment.
"What is that supposed to mean?"
"I'm not talking about danger level. I mean whether you can talk to them, and if you can, whether they're worth sparing instead of taking their lives."
"What's the point of doing that?"
"Who knows? Maybe it's about finding a Ghoul who can be of help to humans. Ghouls with genuinely useful information are treated well even in Cochlea. Or maybe, just maybe, it's the wish of someone higher up to find a Ghoul who can end the long-standing feud between humans and Ghouls."
Kasuka spoke with a tilted head, her eyes sparkling as if she half-believed it herself.
At that, Akira let out a sigh. Even a child her age could tell how absurd that sounded.
"Sometimes you really do seem too childish, Mom."
"Would you rather call me a romantic?"
Even after being called childish by her daughter, Kasuka's attitude didn't change.
Searching for Ghouls, fighting them, and judging them—that was a Ghoul Investigator. The true purpose might be unknown, but the essence itself was exactly that. And Kasuka's habit of interpreting and accepting that in her own way was probably part of her own essence as well.
The stains and shadows on the wall became lines, and the wind gradually turned into pressure.
In the few seconds of falling toward a floor whose depth could not be known, the exchange between Eto and Kasuka, linked by one foot and one hand, repeated countless times.
Ka-ga-ga-ga-gang!!
She tried to shake Kasuka off while deflecting the blade that kept changing trajectory, but Kasuka never let go of Eto's ankle.
Even if Eto forcibly dragged her leg away, Kasuka's rapier would close the distance and aim for a fatal vital point.
Though she barely managed to evade or block the attacks, the small cuts carved into Eto's body kept increasing as time passed.
At the same time, she could instinctively feel the floor hidden by the darkness drawing closer and closer.
"This won't do!"
When a pale surface finally began to show through the darkness, Eto at last released her [Kagune].
Not for attack. She spread it like a parachute to sharply reduce her falling speed.
If she did that, then no matter how stubbornly Kasuka clung on, she would surely be unable to overcome inertia and be shaken off.
As expected, Kasuka was torn away from Eto's foot by the crushing impact. But Eto had not anticipated what happened at the same time.
Shwaaak!!
"...?!!"
Blood sprayed out. It came from the ankle Kasuka had been holding.
It wasn't that Kasuka's grip had been so strong that the skin had been torn off when she let go. If only it had been that simple.
The lower part of Eto's ankle had vanished completely.
Realizing she wouldn't be able to withstand the impact, Kasuka had changed the direction of her blade the instant Eto's [Kagune] wings spread and taken Eto's ankle with her.
Holding the severed ankle in one hand, Kasuka braced her [Quinque] against a nearby wall to slow herself down.
Eto, meanwhile, crashed to the floor with the pain in her leg and her [Kagune] unable to remain active for long.
Cold, hard concrete welcomed her.
Kwaaaang!!!
"Cough!!"
The concrete shattered, and the place where Eto fell caved in.
Her sturdy bones were crushed and turned into weapons that stabbed into her lungs and organs. She couldn't stop the blood spilling from the corner of her mouth. The pain flooding through her body made it impossible to stay conscious.
But the pain didn't end there.
Kasuka plunged down after her, rapier blade pointed downward, as if to crush Eto where she lay on the floor.
Puhuk!!
"Aaaagh...!!!"
Eto's throat was ruined, but she still couldn't suppress the scream that burst out.
The falling blade drove deep into Eto's shoulder, then pierced straight through and buried itself in the concrete.
Fixed in place like an insect specimen, Eto lifted her head as Kasuka leaned in close and said with a face half murderous, half intrigued, "Now then, show me. Your 'essence.'"