#crossoever

In Jean's defense, he played the whole “injured old man hobbling down the side of the road in the dead of night” act far better than Eren ever could have. The brunet followed his partner from a distance, ducking in and out of and behind buildings and alleyways, waiting for his assistance to be needed as Jean made relatively slow progress on a fake limp, but that was the intention. Eren was alert, his eyes constantly diverting from the hooded figure to the surrounding area, his finger looming over the clasp on the sliver briefcase in his right hand.

Suddenly, Eren notice something out of the corner of his eye – a flash of electric blue in the darkness of the night, as a figure lunged toward the injured form on the road ahead of it.

“Jean!” he shouted, and the blond man reacted to Eren's warning in an instant, narrowly rolling out of the way of the ghoul's kagune. The unmasked female drew herself to her full height, glaring at Jean with hungry red eyes. Her teeth was barred in something close to snarl as she tensed the blade jutting out from her shoulder and dived toward Jean a second time. Eren quickly brought his finger down on the latch of his briefcase. It began to unfold, the handle of the luggage forming the base of a large black axe that he swung at the ghoul, emerging from his hiding place. The flat of the blade hit her squarely in the waist, sending the ghoul flying into the side of a building.

“Thanks for the delay,” Jean grumbled as Eren thrust the quinque in his left hand toward his partner.

“Shut up and help me kill the damn thing,” Eren snapped back. The two Investigators split up, each approaching the ghoul from opposite directions. The ghoul finally stood up, fixing Eren in her soulless stare as she slowly moved toward him. Eren in turn kept his eyes on the ghoul, but was more focused on her heavy kagune. He shuffled toward the left, trying to maneuver her into a position that her back would be to Jean, which would making killing the defensive koukaka significantly easier.

She mimicked his motions, seeming to have forgotten that Jean was there. In an instant, the ghoul lunged  at him, preparing to deliver a very heavy blow, but Eren was able to parry it with the flat part of his quinque. The force of the heavy-handed attack reverberated throughout the handle of the weapon he was holding, as Eren swung back at the ghoul in return, this time going for a hit that could have easily cleaved an entire limb off, but the kagune absorbed the strike like it was nothing – not even a scratch to indicate she was hit.

Eren followed the hit with another, then another – the ghoul was forced to put all of her energy into merely blocking his barrage of attacks, as the brunet left her no possible opening to hit him back, gradually luring her into a more desirable position to work past her significant defenses. For a brief moment, Eren peeked over her dark head, locking eyes with Jean, who had his own scythe-shaped quinque withdrawn. The ghoul took advantage of his momentary lapse in concentration to swing at him.

Eren was only barely able to sidestep her attack, given the weight of his quinque, which was also made from a koukaka kagune. It wasn't really ideal for fighting this particular ghoul, but he wasn't really in a position to be picky about the only weapon he had with him. Eren raised his axe, swinging at the ghoul once more. Very abruptly, the ghoul's kagune vanished and she leaped back out of the way of his attack with ease, relieved of the weight of her weapon. The quinque hit the ground where the ghoul stood only seconds before, completely missing her by a few inches. The ghoul gave him one last glare before turning and running away. However, she didn't get very far, as her retreat was stopped in it's tracks by the sharp end of Jean's scythe coming into direct contact with the side of her head, and the ghoul went down with barely a cry of pain.

“Nice try,” Jean muttered, staring down at the corpse of the ghoul.

When Eren woke up to the screeching sound of his alarm clock, he had to stifle a groan. Working until the wee hours of the night and then getting up six hours later to be in at eight was never a good idea, even if it was a self-inflicted decision. Reaching out blindly in the dark to shut the alarm off, Eren frowned as he sat up and saw a lack of a certain person in the bed beside him. Wasn't it Saturday? Mikasa never did anything school or work-related on Saturday. Fighting the urge to just crawl right back in his bed and sleep for twelve more hours, he stood up and shuffled out of the bedroom and into the adjacent kitchen in their small two bedroom apartment.

Mikasa, looking way too perky and alert for the fact that it was seven in the morning and she was awake of her own free will, looked up from the counter top she was leaned over when Eren made himself visible. “Glad you decided to join the living,” she commented as Eren threw himself into the first chair he saw, still only semi-conscious.

Stifling a yawn, Eren looked at her, his eyebrows raised. “Are you even human?” Despite being barely awake, Eren was aware of a rather appealing aroma coming from the corner of the kitchen where Mikasa was standing.

A smile turned her lips upward, as she reached into a cupboard over her head and pulled out a coffee mug.“The last time I knew, I was.”

“Then why the hell are you awake?” he asked her. “Isn't it your only day off?”

“That doesn't mean I have to sleep until dinner time.”

“Yeah, it kinda does. That's what a day off is for a normal human being.”

Skirting around the table in the middle of the small dining area, Mikasa made her way beside Eren and placed a small kiss on his cheek. “Maybe I'm not as human as I thought, in that case.” She handed him the cup that she had just poured up. Mikasa moved back to the oven, but didn't get very far as Eren gently wrapped his arms around her shoulders from behind, pulling her into a hug.

His lips grazed the back of her neck, making her shiver in a way that she never quite got used to. “You're right,” he breathed. “You're obviously an angel.”

“Oh my god, Eren.” Mikasa turned around and playfully shoved him away, which was met with a wide grin from him. “If you had said things like that to be when we were growing up, I would have thrown something at you.”

“Well, that's just rude.”

“Go sit back down,” she chided. “Or go get ready for work. I'm trying to make you breakfast before you have to leave and you're just distracting me.”

A snort of laughter filled the room as Armin walked in, leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed. All he could see was that Eren had her practically rammed up against a countertop, and given the amount of times he had witnessed scenes like this one, he knew where it eventually led.  “Are you two already at it?” he asked, his eyebrows raised. “Christ, it's not even noon.”

“Love knows no time limits,” Eren replied to him, giving Mikasa a kiss on the lips before pulling away from her.

“And neither does uncontrollable animalistic sexual urges,” Armin muttered, pulling himself up a chair, barely phased by the look Eren had just fired his way. “Don't give me any of that, Eren,” he added, taking a sip from his own mug of coffee that was already sitting on the table. “The furniture in this house has seen more trauma from you and Mikasa than a Vietnam Veteran.”

“That's a bit overdramatic,” Eren muttered, joining him at the table.

Armin didn't even look at him, too focused on a stack of papers sitting in front of him. “No it isn't and don't kid yourself. I've seen you two dry humping against-”

“Armin,” Mikasa suddenly cut him off, giving him a far more irritated look than Eren had been, “what do you want on your toast?”

Armin seemed to get the hint and chuckled once before replying. “Just butter is fine.” The blond looked up at Eren for a moment, as his friend was drinking his coffee pretty quickly, but that didn't do much for the dark bags under his eyes. “You look exhausted, Eren,” Armin commented, a frown on his face. “I hope you aren't planning on doing anything dangerous today, because caffeine won't make you any  more alert against an angry ghoul.”

Eren shook his head. “No way. Jean and I killed two last night by setting up a trap, but we were out until almost four in the morning. He's not going to be any more eager to fight than I am. We'll probably just go over reports or something.”

“I asked Marco to look into that Fox ghoul of yours,”  Armin replied. “Maybe we can talk to him when when we get to work.”

“Please,” Mikasa suddenly piped in, approaching the table as she was balancing three plates of food on two arms, “let's talk about something other than impending death at the table.” She sat the breakfast, pancakes, toast and eggs, in front of Eren and Armin, earning a thank you from both of them before sitting herself between them.

“It's not really that, Mikasa,” Armin replied. “Eren's just been curious about a ghoul that he encountered the other night, that's all. It was a pretty interesting one, actually. Apparently had a kagune with qualities of two different Rc types.”

“It is impending death in a way,” Eren muttered, pausing a moment to take a bite. “Any ghoul that's stupid enough to reveal to itself to a CCG agent has sealed its own fate.”

Armin raised an eyebrow at him. “That ghoul saved your ass, if I remember correctly. Would you really kill it after that?”

Eren just grimaced. “It's a ghoul. Nothing a ghoul does is due to sympathy or pity. They don't have human emotions. They're just killers.”

Armin hummed in response. “That's such a backwards way of thinking about them, Eren. We know virtually nothing about their motivations, besides the fact that ghouls literally can't digest anything except for parts of the human body.” Armin took another drink. “I work with ghouls all the time at the prison, and from what I can see, they seem sentient and self-aware.”

“You don't see the side to them I do,” Eren replied darkly. “The ghouls that are brought to you are so drugged up they can't even use their kagunes. I've seen them hunt, I've seen them kill. They're ruthless. They think nothing of the lives they are ruining or the people they are hurting. Even if they are intelligent, they sure as hell don't have feelings.”

“I know what a kagune can do, Eren,” Armin replied dryly. “Just because I've never been on the receiving end of one doesn't mean that I'm not just as knowledgeable about them as you are, if not more so. In fact, I'd almost bet you that I know a lot more about the capabilities of a ghoul's kagune than you do.” Eren opened his mouth to argue, but was cut off.

“You two can argue about how dangerous a kagune is when I'm not sitting right here,” Mikasa snapped, this time glaring at Armin. “I'm aware of how dangerous being involved with the CCG is, but I much prefer to be left out of these conversations.”

Armin looked at her apologetically. “I'm sorry, Mikasa, but I just have to prove Eren wrong in these conversations. He makes it way too easy.” Armin stood up

“Oh, shut up,” Eren snapped as Armin walked past him and towards the door. “Pain in the ass.”

“I’d watch that if I were you,” the blond warned, looking back at him from the doorway. “I'm still your ride to work, buddy.”

Mikasa came up to Eren's side right before he mirrored Armin's actions. Gently, she wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face against his neck. “Just be careful,” she mumbled.

Eren hugged her back, a smile on his face. “See you tonight.”

Eren met Armin outside their apartment in his car. The second they were on the road, Armin looked at his friend out of the corner of his eyes. “So, when are you going to get on with it?”

Eren paused to take a drink before answering him. “Get on with what?”

Armin turned his head slightly, his eyebrows raised. “Oh, gee, I don't know, Eren. You've only been talking about proposing to Mikasa for the last three months.”

Eren began to choke on the burning liquid that as in his mouth. Well, that was one way to be direct, regardless of f it wasn't entirely any of Armin's business when Eren chose to propose to his girlfriend. After he had caught his breath, Eren looked out the window. “It's complicated, Armin.”

“Eren, please,” he sighed in exasperation. “What part of this is even remotely complicated?”

“A lot of things,” Eren muttered.

“Such as?”

“I don't know if she's ready.”

“You've been dating her for five years.”

Eren stifled a sigh. “That doesn't mean anything.”

“It's Mikasa.”

“That's another thing that makes this complicated.”

As the car slowed to a stop at a traffic light, Armin turned to face Eren fully. “What, are you afraid she's going to tell you 'no?'”

“It's always a possibility.”

Armin just continued to fix Eren in a stare that was a mixture of violent disappointment and slight disgust.  “You are absolutely ridi-”

“Alright,” Eren snapped, cutting him off, “I was going to ask her on her birthday, but...”

“But?” Armin probed.

“I forgot the ring,” he mumbled, which resulted in stark silence in the car for several seconds.

“You...forgot the ring?” Armin asked in something close to disbelief. “At home? On the night you planned on proposing to your girlfriend?”

“Jesus, Armin,” Eren grumbled. “Way to make me feel better about it.”

Armin tapped his fingers on the steering wheel for a few moments, watching the road, before finally sighing himself. “How on earth did you even manage that?”

“The fact that I felt like I was going throw up probably had a lot to do with it.” He paused for a second. “I still feel awful about it. We were both having an amazing time, Mikasa was happy, I was happy, everything was perfect...then I realized that I left the ring in my dresser at home.” Eren looked at Armin. “What was I supposed to say? 'Oh yeah Mikasa, I'd love for you to be my wife, but I forgot the ring'?”

Armin returned Eren's look, but with a far less joking demeanor than he had possessed moments before, the teasing gleam in his eyes replaced with a grin. “Eren, you could give that girl a bottlecap and she’d burst into tears. She loves you and just the fact that you would ask to share the rest of your lives together would be more than enough for Mikasa.”

That time, Eren smiled back at Armin. “Thanks.”

Once they got to the headquarters, Armin manged to convince Eren to go with him to the laboratory, as Marco apparently had noticed something about the binge eater while attempting to harvest his kaoukaka, and they all had decided to meet up in the forensic wing of the lab. Admittedly, this wasn't an area of the headquarters that Eren frequented much. It was restricted to all but the first and special-class Investigators and the researchers and various types of scientists who worked there every single day, unless you had permission and an escort by someone who was allowed access. That didn't really bother Eren at all, since he didn't really care about the technical side of what the CCG did. Eren wasn't even entirely sure what exactly all they did in the laboratory, besides DNA analysis and quinque development. It was an alien world to him, but he supposed that's why the laboratory was such a high-security area. It wasn't supposed  to be general knowledge. Wordlessly, he followed Armin to a small chamber leading to the main room to the lab.

Armin shut the door to the small enclosed area. “Cover your eyes.”

Eren did as ordered, as a cold mist covered his entire body. “Do I even want to know what the hell that was?” he grumbled after the sensation stopped.

Armin laughed. “It's just a decontaminate. We can't let any type of potentially dangerous bacteria get into the laboratory.” Armin swiped his badge in the card key lock, the light flashed green, and he opened the door to a large central room to that branched off in separate locations wings. “Follow me.”

As Armin led him past several doors, Eren raised his eyebrow, a bit thrown off at just how huge this place was. “Jesus, Armin,” he said, “this place is big enough to hold half the population on earth.”

Armin stopped in front of the entrance to a relatively small hallway, before swiping his badge a second time. “If you think this is big, you should see the prison.”

“I don't arrest ghouls, so they will never be necessary,” Eren grumbled, earning him silence from his friend.

They made it to a small room, where Eren saw someone he recognized: a man of about his age, with dark hair and lots of freckles all over his face. Marco Bodt was both Armin's assistant and the leading DNA analyst the CCG had, and from what Armin said about him, he was damn good at his job. Marco was looking at a stack of paper on a clipboard when Eren and Armin entered his work area. The room was filled with filing cabinets and computers, centered by a large white table that held the corpse of the binge eater than Eren had brought in a few nights ago.

Marco was frowning, his brow furrowed, but that changed abruptly when he saw the newcomers. “Hey,” he said in greeting, looking at them for a second before tuning his attention back to the dead ghoul.

“Any luck with that kakahou?” Armin asked.

Marco shook his head. “Nah, that fox really did a number on it. I don't think there's any salvaging it.”

“Take a look at this, Eren.” Armin gestured him to follow, as he took a step to the left side of the ghoul's body.

Eren's eyes widened at what he saw. What he had previously thought was a mere decapitation attack from the Fox ghoul had been much more severe than he could have imagined. The binge eater was turned onto his stomach, exposing his back, which was cleaved wide open in a huge ravine of a wound that started at the base of the neck and ran all the way down to the ghoul's mid-back, ending at the exact spot the kakahou was located for a rinkaku.

“You said the Fox only hit him twice, right?” Armin asked, looking at Eren carefully.

Eren eventually tore his eye away from the mildly frightening sight and nodded. “Yeah, it ripped the throat open in one strike and beheaded him in the other one.”

“Well,” Marco added, looking up from his papers again for a second, “that's not all it did. That ghoul destroyed this ghoul's kakahou in the same hit that beheaded it.” Marco beckoned Eren to a second table set just lower, where a small sac was laying. If Eren hadn't known what a kakahou looked like, he probably wouldn't have even recognized the organ, which was so deeply punctured by the other ghoul's kagune that it looked like a deflated balloon. “The second we removed it from the corpse, the kagune disintegrated.” Marco looked up at Eren again. “I wonder if that was deliberate.”

“There's no doubt in my mind it was deliberate,” Armin replied. “That ghoul knew that an intact kakahou is required to make a kagune into a quinque, so it destroyed it before we could turn it into something to be used against other ghouls.”

“That is one powerful ghoul,” Marco mused, seemingly to no one in particular. “Strange that we've never heard from it before.”

That surprised Eren a bit. “At all?”

Marco shook his head. “We ran the DNA we got from it's crystals through a database, and no matches. This ghoul has never been reported at the scene of any crime, nor does it match anything else we have in our record, period. Nothing. It's a completely new ghoul.”

A silence fell between the three, broken only by the occasional beep from machinery in the background. Not even Eren could deny how rare of an occurrence that was. Shiganshina wasn't exactly docile when it came to ghoul attacks, but usually finding a ghoul's identity was like piecing a puzzle together. Usually you found DNA at the scenes of attacks, and when a ghoul was killed or even just seen, it was a simple matter of linking a face or an alias to the DNA. It wasn't very often that you found an entirely new ghoul altogether.

“On the bright side,” Marco added, looking at Armin, “I did notice something you might find interesting about the Fox's kagune.” Marco moved over to one of the filing cabinets, thumbing through it until he pulled out a folder, which he quickly flipped open. “While I was looking into it, I was curious about various aspect to this particular ghoul's kagune, and since we had quite a large number of the crystals from the Fox, I did a little extra exploring. I wanted to see if the Fox's Rc's cells biologically more resembled that of an ukaku or a bikaku, since it apparently possessed qualities of both.” He handed the forms to Armin for him to glance over while he was talking.

“Unsurprisingly, the Rc cells strongly resembled that of an ukaku ghoul. Given that they were from an ukaku crystal, that was to be expected. What was interesting was that the cell structure was slightly different, which I’ve never seen before. Different Rc cells exist, but they always have a very specific shape to them. This one was like a fusion of two different cell types.” Armin finally looked up at Marco, truly baffled. “What means,” Marco continued, “is that it is highly unlikely that this ghoul developed a second kakahou through cannibalism like some do, but rather was born with a single kakahou that is capable of producing both an ukaku and bikaku kagune at the same time.”

“Is that even possible?” Eren asked, his eyebrow raised.

Marco shrugged. “We've never heard of one in Shiganshina, but that certainly doesn't mean that there's never been one reported in the entire history of our interaction together. Ghouls live all over the world, and some populations even avoid human beings altogether when they're not hungry.”

Eren didn't look convinced. “That sounds like a load of bull.”

“Well, Eren,” Marco replied, giving him a small smile as Armin handed over the folder once more, “you're the one that is so adamant you saw this hybrid. I believe you, especially after looking at a sample of that ghoul's Rc cells. If you're going to be so close-minded about theories regarding this ghoul, perhaps it's for the best that you continue to concern yourself with merely killing ghouls.”

Eren glared at him, his arms folded across his chest. “The next thing you're going to tell me is that human-ghoul hybrids are a thing.”

“You never know,” he replied. “Just because we've never seen one doesn't mean we never will.”

After his very eye-opening venture into research wing with Armin and Marco, Eren found himself engrossed deep in thought in his office, though he wasn't entirely sure why. Yeah, the Fox ghoul was definitely something special – it's behaviors and kagune alone were enough to make it stand out. But, still, it was just a ghoul. A ghoul normally wouldn't have had him so worked up about basically nothing.

“I can see you're working hard, Eren,” a voice suddenly sounded through the small room as the door to the office flung open haphazardly, slamming against the wall. Eren didn't even have to look up to know who it was. His name was Hannes – a man that Eren knew well from his childhood. Eren mostly remembered him from all the teasing he'd received at this man's hands, especially regarding how close him and Mikasa had grown after she'd moved to Shiganshina with her parents when she was nine years old. As him and Armin had grown and joined the CCG, not much had changed in that respect. Hannes was the same man that he had always been, the difference being that he was now more opt to call Eren lazy than to tease him for having a crush on a certain pretty neighborhood girl.

Not surprisingly, Eren saw his own father standing directly behind Hannes. Grisha and Hannes were long-standing partners on the force of Ghoul Investigators, having been together as a team since they both graduated training when Eren was just a kid. They were a formidable duo, both first-class Investigators that had brought hundreds of ghouls to justice over their careers. Grisha had been teaching Eren about his job at the CCG for years, and the death of Carla Jaeger at the hands of a ghoul had only furthered Eren's resolve to follow in his father's footstep. He'd be lying if he said that he didn't look up to Grisha a lot.

“I was up late last night,” Eren finally muttered to Hannes in response. “Get off my ass.”

He laughed in response. “Welcome to my world, kiddo. That just comes with the job description.” As he spoke, both Hannes and Grisha took a seat at the desk Eren was already using.

“What the hell do you two want?” Eren snapped, more to Hannes than anyone else, which just got another laugh from the blond.

“Eren,” Grisha said, and Eren shifted his gaze over to his father, “did you hear about what happened last night?”

Eren frowned at how grave the older man's face looked. “No, why?”

Hannes sighed. “Two Investigators were killed. Thomas Wagner was one of them.” Eren felt his eyes widen in shock at that. He hadn't really known Thomas or his partner very well, but they had been in the same training class together.

“What happened?” Eren asked, to which Hannes shrugged.

“They really haven't released any kind of  public information about it, as it's still being properly investigated. All we know for sure is that if it was a ghoul, they weren't eaten. They were just killed and left totally intact.”

“It couldn't have been anything but a ghoul,” Grisha sighed in response. “They were both on-duty, they were both armed, and both their quinques were destroyed. It was a ghoul powerful enough to overpower two well-equipped Investigators, and one that was killing just to kill. It didn't even feed.” Grisha met the troubled gaze of his son. “Eren, I heard that you recently encountered a ghoul that showed similar behaviors.”

Eren frowned. “I did, but the Fox ghoul I saw attacked another ghoul and ignored me. Truth be told, that ghoul saved my life. It chose to leave me and didn't eat the other ghoul, either. It just flew away.” Hannes and Grisha looked at each other for a moment, apprehension evident in their expressions.

“So, it was an ukaku?” Hannes finally asked.

“Sort of,” Eren replied, which earned him a very confused look from the blond man.

“Sort of?” he echoed. “Eren, I think you've been doing this long enough to know a ghoul's Rc type when you see it.”

“That's not what I meant,” Eren snapped back. “The Fox was bikaku, too. It had two kagunes. I did talk to Armin and Marco about it, and they seem to think it's some kind of hybrid after looking at some crystals from it.”

The older adult were silent for a long time, until finally Grisha spoke up. “Eren, if that's true, this ghoul sounds incredibly dangerous. It has the potential to be a deeply disturbed creature. At the moment, it's motives are totally alien to us. It looks like it may be killing for joy, but that remains to be seen.” Grisha stood up, and Hannes copied his motions. “The case of the Fox ghoul will be taken up by a higher-ranked Investigator, as they are more qualified to deal with something as powerful as this one seems to be.” Eren opened his mouth to protest, but Grisha raised his hand, cutting him off.