Guns, Bullets & Bones [Tokyo Ghoul]

Ch. 12 ~ The Rescue

     Very slowly, the world around Dylan began to come in dark, blotchy blurs, rather than the shadows unconsciousness had brought him. His head was throbbing, and stabbing pains shot in his temples, and he screwed his eyes closed in the hopes of easing the pain, but it only got worse, and his eyes slowly cracked open.

     Laying on his side on an expensive Persian rug with his hand pulled tightly behind his back with a piece of rough, frayed rope was not what Dylan had expected when he left the Cat's Cradle sweets parlour. He rather wished he hadn't left now, he'd chose the sweet treats over this, any day.

    The gravity of the situation dropped and it felt like his chest had sunk into his stomach, a sick swirling feeling threatening to make him throw up as his breathing began to pick up in panic, coming in short gasps. He tried to whip his head around and see something, anything which could give him a clue as to where he had ended up, but it just made his head hurt more, dizziness making his vision swim, and gaining no more knowledge than that he was in a lavishly decorated apartment.

    "Ahhhh, I'm sorry," A familiar voice drawled, dripping with traces of a French accent. He was definitely not sorry. "I just couldn't resist,"

     Tsukiyama's perfectly polished white shoes stepped into Dylan's view, slamming down inches from his face, making him jump and try to scurry back. He rolled half onto his back and craned his neck up to admire his captor. Tsukiyama's face was half-hidden behind a crescent moon mask, and he was adorned in a crisp lilac dinner suit. He looked every part the distinguished ghoul.

     "What's going to happen to me?" Dylan choked out, his throat closing and releasing sporadically. "I did nothing wrong...! What are you going to do to me!?"

    "What am I going to do to you?" Tsukiyama asked, cocking his head as if he really were contemplating it, but the sadistic grin which was becoming borderline psychotic told Dylan he had no doubts, and this was all for show. "I'm going to eat you alive~ Ever so slowly~ And I'm going to enjoy every last bite~"

    "I'd rather be dead," Dylan hissed out through clenched teeth. It was a sign of anger, though it was more to keep himself from throwing up, his stomach churning in horror of what he could become. Nothing more than a snack for this ghoul.

    "Then I have some good news for you,~" Tsukiyama grinned, and from a lavish mahogany side table, he picked up a piece of glinting metal. Dylan eyed the knife in terror, the specialized serrated blade definitely did not look like it was for normal culinary use. He doubted his neck would be the first this knife met.

    "P-Please!" Dylan choked out, hysteria rising inside him, and he felt nothing more than the urge to survive, no matter what it took. Grovelling, begging and pleading included. "I-I'm a human! I have feelings, and hopes and dreams. I have a family at home, you can't do this!"

    "Humans always were a burden to me," Tsukiyama sighed dramatically, wafting the knife around and gazing at it adoringly. Or, maybe it was just his reflection glinting in the shining metal which he was staring at lovingly. Dylan didn't care much, the only thought circling his mind was that his death would be now, heart pounding against his ribcage so fast it was definitely not healthy, and he was liable to have a heart attack any second.

      Slowly and gently, the door opened, just a crack. Tsukiyama didn't seem to notice, but Dylan did, and his wide, feral green eyes caught with a pair of Icy blue ones, peering through the gap from the dim lighting of the outside hallway. The door was swung open much wider, and the handle bounced off the wall a few centimetres before coming to a standstill, and Rio strode in confidently, her piercing eyes fixed on Tsukiyama.

     "What's going on?" She demanded, quickly pulling her hands from her pockets, and they clenched into tight fists. Despite her serene face, her angry fists and blazing eyes gave away her cool façade.

     "I was just about to put him down," Tsukiyama hummed before throwing the knife up into the air, watching it spin as it came down, and he caught it delicately by the blade, pinched between his thumb and forefinger. The handle was held out towards Rio. "Would you like the honours?~"

     For a split second, Dylan felt more betrayed than he ever had before. He thought he could trust Rio, like he couldn't trust anyone else. He knew her nature, yet she trusted him with it. She had let him think she trusted him. Really, it was all an elaborate game, cat and mouse. It adds to the thrill of the kill.

     Her hand closed around the handle. Dylan's fate was sealed.

      "I like my friends alive- thanks for asking," She hissed, before whipping around almost too fast for Dylan's bleary eyes to see, before stabbing the knife into the wall, driving it in so deep that it more than likely wouldn't be moving for a long, long time, and Dylan felt something like hope bubble up in his chest, and his stomach was aflutter.

     "Friend? I think not," Tsukiyama snorted, before waving dismissively. "He's nothing but food, merely a human,"

     "Would you like to fight me on this?" Rio asked, her voice dangerously low and quiet, tension descending in the apartment like a fog. It wasn't a question, Rio had laid down a challenge.

     "I could," He replied, eyeing her doubtfully, but did no more.

     "You have twice my charisma, but none of my skill," Rio said with an eyeroll of annoyance. Her eyes were fixed on Tsukiyama as she shuffled past him, but she quickly crouched next to Dylan, pulling loose the rope around his wrists, and yanking him to his feet. Despite the thumping in his head and dizziness which threatened to topple him over, he tried his best to stay upright and allowed Rio to drag him past Tsukiyama, who was simply skulking against the wall, and out the door, and apartment complex completely.

     Dylan was dizzy, and in shock, and he was shaking all over, but he took deep gulps of the night air and he found his chest that little bit lighter. Rio led him down the dark, unfamiliar streets, thankfully keeping mostly to the orange splotches of the streetlights. Soon, apartment complexes became rows of houses, and eventually, Rio stopped under the balcony of one.

     "That way is an entrance to the Brook. Go left and you'll be back on your way home," Rio said, pointing to a small alleyway between two houses on the opposite side of the road. Her hands dug deep into her pockets and she stood, waiting. Dylan leaned shakily against a streetlight and pushed the floppy brown hair out of his eyes as best he could.

      "The world is full of monsters with friendly faces..." Dylan muttered, green eyes sorrowful and heavy with burden. That's what knowledge comes with, the weight of reality and truth, so your eyes can never really sparkle in the same, naïve way they once did. "I've fallen into the dark side... This world, your world... I'm not supposed to be a part of this..."

     "I have found so much beauty in the dark as I have found a lot of horrors in the light," Rio mused. Something in her hypnotic eyes carried the same weight, and didn't quite sparkle in the naïve way they used to.

     "Well isn't that just disgusting?" A voice cut through the night, slicing from above them, and both Rio and Dylan stepped back to crane their necks up at the balcony above them. Leaning against the railings was a boy with side-swept black hair and steely grey eyes, donned in a black and white striped T-shirt and denim jacket. His sharp features were pulled back into a smirk. "I think you're going soft, Rio,"

      "Go home, Dylan," Rio said, turning only to glance at him. He stopped for only a moment before heading off towards the brook. If this was another of Rio's ghoul friends, he didn't want to stick around. Seemingly half of her friends were normal, the other half as bloodthirsty and sadistic as the tales said. And the glint in his steely grey eye did not match that of charming, sweet Ayako, but was far closer to the cruel sadism of Tsukiyama.

      Dylan did not dwell long.

~