Did I startle you? { Juuzou x Reader }

[Part Three] Monster.

After a night of unusually pleasant sleep, I awoke to an uncomfortable pressure on my chest. I eventually gather the energy to open my eyes and find Juuzou sat on me with a wide grin.

"Wake up! Today is your first day of work!"

If I told you that I wasn't completely energised, and not tired in the slightest, it would be an obvious lie. Which was why I could barely reply to him.

"Ugh... Five more minutes..."

Almost instantly, I let my fatigue take control of my mind. Within seconds I was fast asleep like I hadn't been interrupted. The pressure on my chest roughly lifted as I heard footsteps coming towards me.

"Guess we're gonna do this the hard way."

Before I could even open my eyes, a set of hands wrapped around my leg as I was mercilessly dragged out of bed. All I could hear was Juuzou laughing as I kicked and screamed in an attempt to loosen his grip as he dragged me through the hallway, and to the living room. His grip loosened slightly, so I made my attempt to escape back to my bedroom, only to be picked up carelessly and thrown onto the couch like an neglected toy owned by a bratty child.

"Sorry, but you need to get out of bed." Juuzou bluntly states as he skipped to the kitchen. All I could do in response is glare at him, which made him laugh even more.

I finally gave in to the fact that I had to get ready for work, so I went to my room to change. I want too keen to make a good first impression, so I just threw on a white button-up blouse and some black leggings. Juuzou seemed to be in a cringey trance with his eyes locked on me.

"Hello? Anyone in there?"

Juuzou's face turned pink upon returning back to reality, which was kinda cute I guess.

"Oh, sorry... My mind went for a little trip there..."

I decided not to question it, since it was 7:30 and we had to start heading to work. Plus, I was too tired to look much into it.

Silence fell between us as we walked to work; there was no reason to start a conversation, nor was it awkward to not speak at all. The building wasn't too far away surprisingly, and there wasn't anything particularly special about it either, other than the muffled sound of people's voices. I opened the door and analysed my new surroundings.

"Hm, this place is pretty spacious."

"Well it is the CCG, anyway, how are you this morning?"

I turned around to see Shinohara looking down at us with a kind smile. He must've been wearing his work clothes last night when I met him, since he was wearing the same grey suit today.

"Meh, I've had better days. Mostly because I was dragged out of bed against my will."

Shinohara laughed and we both turned to Juuzou, who looked unusually agitated.

"Aw come on! She wasn't waking up so I had to."

Shinohara wisely changed the topic of the conversation by explaining to us what we were working on today.

"Anyway, lets get to your quinque shall we?"

I looked up at him with a smile, signifying an okay; so he lead us down the lab where my quinque was. I looked at the table, but it was covered with a blanket; it was probably for some type of attempt at suspense. I eagerly removed the blanket from the table to reveal a sort of scythe. I had to admit, it was very pretty. All that could escape my lips was;

"Woah..."

Despite the shock, I saw a test dummy in the very corner of my eye. My immediate urge was to test my new quinque out.

I began to run towards the pretty coloured dummy with my quinque not far behind me. My grip on the handle tightened dramatically as I flung the scythe at the dummy, watching as the top half of its torso fell to the ground.

All was silent until I heard a faint 'woah'.

In what seemed like a matter of seconds, screams errupted from the room down the hall. Alarmed, the three of us darted out of the lab and into the room the screams had originated from; this happened to be the testing chamber where vigorous kagune experiments took place, some of which with the ghouls still awake. The doors opened to reveal a ghoul that had escaped during testing, the sight of their green tinted skin and spots of blood covering their body from their neck to their lower thigh sent a threatening wave of nausea into my system. I turned to look at Juuzou, who seemed to be unphased by the sight, as his suitcase transformed into a similar looking scythe to mine. This ghoul has secured it's own death, despite the fact that it was going to perish during testing anyway. 

A nervous sounding statement escaped my lips. "I suppose this is my first fight."

Juuzou eyes moved to meet my own and proceeded to give me a slightly confused look. His eyes wondered to my quinque, as if he was signalling me to prepare to use it, this was a fight with a ghoul afterall. 

"Well, brace yourself."

To my surprise, Juuzou darted towards the ghoul and attempted to finish this quickly with a swift slice to the torso; however the ghoul knew exactly what he was attempting to do and used their kagune to shield themself from his attack. As soon as his quinque made contact with the kagune, he was sent back to the floor, despite it being a hard fall, he seemed unaffected by it. I found it both disturbing and remarkable. I took this as an opportunity to try out an attack against the ghoul as they were focused on the fact he had caught Juuzou offguard. I went for an attack from the underside of it's kagune and used my scythe to slice it's body vertically from it's pelvis up. 

This had apparently taken it's energy out of it as it collapsed to the floor. I managed to get myself on top of the ghoul, analysing it's child-like features. The innocence of the individual poked out from it's tainted appearance and made my mind drift to no destination. The thing that brought me back to reality was the words uttered by the ghoul.

"Why do you do this? Why do you treat us like animals? You really are monsters."

There's that word again, Monster. The word reminded me of years of suffering and agony. In denial, I clutched my quinque and pushed it down into their heart, many times.

The word 'monster' repeated in my head several times until I started randomly running with no destination. Obviously, Juuzou looked at me questioningly as I ran out the door of the building.

'(Y/n)? Where are you going?'

I couldn't stop running, let alone reply to his question. I eventually ended up running in the direction of our apartment. Tears threatened to spill from my eyes as my legs gave out. I could feel a rough pain as I hit the ground and lost consciousness.