Thicker Than Blood

CELL 03: RUN BY DEMONS

It wasn't a very fun walk to Tokyo. Zen was keeping silent, so Ouji did too. It was almost like a competition between the two. But the silence eventually came to an end.

"So where are we going?" Zen asked.

"I have a cousin in Tokyo," Ouji said. "She and her boyfriend have an apartment in the outskirts of the city."

"She lives with her boyfriend?"

"No," Ouji said, a smile playing on his lips. "Her boyfriend lives with her."

Zen nodded. There was a question nagging him, and he finally got the steam to ask it.

"Ouji," Zen said.

"Yeah?"

Zen took a breath and stopped walking. "What's the story with your family?"

Ouji stopped. He turned around slowly, looked his friend in the eyes. All he got in return was steely resolve.

Ouji sighed and continued walking. "My family has a long history with ghouls."

Zen walked after him. "Meaning?"

Ouji hesitated. He had never explained this to anyone before, ever. It was a strict rule that he didn't. But that didn't matter anymore... right?

"My family, the Karyuudo," he said. "The word literally means 'Hunter'. I'm not sure about how exactly, but back, and I mean way back, my great grandfather's entire family was slaughtered by ghouls. This was before the CCG, when ghouls were just starting to surface and we had no protection against them. Somehow, the old man who was still arounf our age at the time, escaped. He saw his family fight back, and apparently saw that nothing could break their skin, or even cause them remote pain. He saw their red eyes, and saw how they... ate people. He thought they were some sort of demon, because he was, you know, really traditional amd believed in that kind of stuff."

"And?" Zen asked attentively.

"So, he worked for a few years. He had no family left, no money, and no help. So he went into this temple on top of this hill, or some jungle, I forget, where he trained. He practiced with hitting boulders until they cracked. In three years or so, he came back down and found the group of ghouls. And he... killed them all. With a sword dipped in fresh acid, he killed 'em all. After that, he changed his name to Karyuudo, and came back to civilization, where he proved himself, became the best fighter, blah blah, won my great grandmother. They trained their kids and drilled it into their heads that ghouls were evil demons sent by hell itself. And those teachings kept going on, till now."

Zen nodded slowly and took in this mass of information. "So, you and your family hunt ghouls?"

Ouji hesitated. "Yeah, I guess I could've just said that. Sorry. I've just never explained this to anyone before."

"Then what were those guns? Bullets have very little effect on ghouls, don't they?"

Ouji reached into his pocket and threw Zen a bullet. The Shigemura caught it. It was a normal assault rifle bullet, but modified. Grooves spun all around the bullet like waves in the metal, and the tip was extremely sharp, more than it should have been.

"We don't use normal bullets. We spend hours modifying those bullets so that they affect ghouls like we need them to. Use one of them on a normal person, and the bullet will go straight through them and the person behind them."

They kept their pace.

"But what about... those things? The glowing stuff they get from ghouls' bodies?"

Ouji shook his head. "We don't use quinques. Using a demon's weapon against them doesn't make us any better than them." He stopped suddenly. "I'm sorry. That came out wrong."