Run

Cars honked and moved in the traffic that was Tokyo city. People walked in and out of various shops, stores, resturants, or just walked for the sake of taking a walk on such a beautiful day.

This wasn’t Tokyo, however, and as several pairs of feet stomped against the gravel of the rooftops of the buildings, their owners ran, breathing raggedly. One in particular belonged to a demi-ghoul everyone knew at this point, and the rest-well, the rest belonged to the Hermosillo Police Department.

“Oiga! Parate ya!” one of the cops yelled for the ghoul to stop, but Haise continued to run, laughing as he watched the cops slowly starting to get tired of chasing him.

Haise switched to running on his toes as he got closer to the gap jump between two buildings, but he knew this one in particular was a difficult one to make, and even the best parkour runners weren’t successful jumping it, but then again, they weren’t half ghoul, were they?

Haise pushed off as hard as he could from the edge of the building, and for a minute, time slowed down, and he could feel the soft kisses of raindrops on his cheeks and face. He looked up at the grey sky, mostly swallowed by clouds at this point.

His feet scraped against the wall of the next building as he barely caught the edge of the rain gutters in time, and he yanked himself up onto the slanted brick roof of an abandoned slaughterhouse.

Haise turned and laughed mockingly at the Mexican cops stuck on the roof of the other building; at least until they started open-firing at him and he had to duck for cover.

“That’s what you get for being an ass to them,” a voice said, and Haise knew that voice all too well.

“Shutup, Kaneki, and get back in my head where you belong,” he responded, but the white haired ghost of himself didn’t fade as usual.

“Listen to me, Haise. This isn’t the end of that. They want your head. You’re not safe. You’re never going to be safe again. You need to just give up and let them kill you.”

“Shut up, Kaneki. You weren’t there. You didn’t...” Haise swallowed hard, rubbing his hoarse throat. He knew it’d healed by now and that he’d be fine other than a sore throat for a few minutes, but it was still one of the scariest things he’d ever experienced.

Haise fought violently against the chains they had bound him in, but it was no use. He wasn’t coming free, and it was obvious by the noose strung tightly around his neck and the board he was standing on over the edge of a 300 foot drop that there was no way he was going to get out of this. He wasn’t going to live. He was going to die right there, right now. Well, the second he hit the ground.

“Haise Sasaki, para todo sus crimenes contra la huminidad, y para la eleccion de ser el monstruo que es, la Suprema Corte de Justicia de la Nacion te sentencia a muerte.”

“Haise Sasaki, por vous crimes contre l’humanite, et pour choisir etre le monstre que vous etes, le tribunal de cassation vous condamne a mort.”

“Haise Sasaki, za svoi prestupleniya protiv chelovechnosti i dlya vybora byt’ monstrom vy verkhovnyy sud iz verkhovnyy sud Rossiyskoy federatsii predlozheniya vy k smerti.”

“Haise Sasaki, per i vostri crimini contro l’umanita, y per la scelta di essere il mostro si e, la Suprema Corte di Cassazione voi condanne a morte.”

“Haise Sasaki, fur ihre verbrechen gegen die Menschlichkeit, und fur wahl die monster du bist zu sein, das Bundsverfassungsgericht von Deutchland der oberste gerichtshof der satze sie dem tot.”

“Haise Sasaki, wei ni de weihai renlei zui bing xua nze chengwei ni de guaiwu, zhonghua renmin gongheguo zuigao fayuan panduan ni si wang.”

“Haise Sasaki, jindo ni taisuru anata no tsumi no tame ni, soshite monsutadearu koto o sentaku suru tame ni anata wa, nihon no Saikosaibansho shikei ni bunsho anata o.”

“Haise Sasaki, for your crimes against humanity, and for choosing to be the monster you are, the Supreme Court of the United States of America sentences you to death. Do you have any last words?”

Haise scoffed, then grinned. “I’m honored all of you lovely folks came out to sentence lil ol’ me to death like we’re in the 1800s. Seriously? A hanging over the edge of a building? Little barbaric for you, Germany, America, isn’t it? Russia, not so much.”

The Russian delegate stepped up. “Vy nemnogo der’ma-!” he jumped at Haise, but the Italian delegate held him back. Haise looked over at the Japanese delegate, an old friend he knew way too well, but the young politician refused to look up at him. Whether it was in disappointment or just fear of the consequences of looking into the ghoul’s eyes, Haise wasn’t sure, so he didn’t try to catch his glaze for long.

Haise sighed. "I'm ready. Let's get this over with."

A man in all black held a gun up to Haise's head as he balanced the board Haise was standing on, and then he commanded Haise to walk forward in Spanish. Haise looked straight ahead as he neared the edge of the board; the rope around his neck made like a cape behind him all the way to where it coiled in front of the delegates' feet neatly, tied securely to a thick pipe.

The man in black was joined by another man on the board as Haise took the last step he would take on the board. He hesitated for a moment. It was comical that they held a gun to his head, as if he had the choice either to snap his neck and painfully asphyxiate with an uncomfortable itchy rope as the culprit, or die quickly and silently by a bullet to the back of his head. He'd be dead before he ever fell off the board and definitely before he hit the ground. Though while the gun seemed like a better death option, Haise knew that they would never make it that easy for him; they would just shove him off. It was just to scare the lesser, weaker people into doing what the gunman wanted. Well, either way, you were going to die.

Haise closed his eyes and let out a breath he didn't know he'd been holding, and without thinking, he kept walking like there was more board in front of him, but just as he knew would happen, he fell off the edge of the building, and air whipped his clothes before he felt a hard yank at his throat that made him gasp. There was a snapping noise that followed, and Haise couldn't keep up with what was happening next. He felt his lungs were tight and on fire as he tried to gasp for air, but he was coming way too short. Just as he felt his consciousness start to fade, he could hear someone scream his name, and the pressure around his throat released. There were a few gunshots, and Haise was airborne again, falling the 300 foot drop.

He grabbed the remains of the rope with his handcuffed and chained hands as best he could, and quickly, he tied a knot and threw it like a lasso at the curved corner of the tall building. He felt another hard yank at his throat and gasped again, and his hands made quick work to grasp the rope tightly and pull up his body weight to take it off his throat.

Haise pulled himself onto the balcony of a woman's apartment and coughed violently as he collapsed on the floor. His head felt strange and like his mind was swimming, but he knew it was only because he had literally severed his neck from his spine. A bit of blood made its' way into the phlegm he coughed up, and the coughing started to hurt, badly. Haise heaved a bit, and for a second, he thought he might throw up.

Resisting the urge to gasp violently and start painfully coughing again, Haise slowly stood with the help of the balcony railing, and just when he thought it couldn't get worse, a screaming old Mexican woman ran out and started beating him with a metal baseball bat.

Haise hitched his breath as he was struck and he started coughing and gasping again. More blood came up, and he was back on the floor.

"Ugh...hello ground...my old friend...you won't beat me like a crazy old lady," he muttered into the cold concrete ground, and the old lady hit him a few more times with the baseball bat until a younger Mexican woman ran out and grabbed the baseball bat off the older woman. They exchanged some words Haise didn't quite catch, as his consciousness was starting to fade in and out again, until he heard the words "llama la policia", and he was awake again.

"No!" he cried out, and he sat up, leaning against the balcony. "Por favor, please...no...no policia..." he begged breathlessly, and the two women exchanged looks.

The next thing Haise knew, he was running from roof to roof from the Hermosillo Police Department.

Kaneki was silent a moment. "Haise," he said, "do you know what this means? You being on the run?"

"I know, Haise said as he looked at the body in front of him. Haise had gone back to where the gunshots were heard, only to discover the Japanese delegate and his dear friend had been murdered for cutting Haise's rope and saving him.

"My life wasn't worth it," he said, holding his friend's body close. "Why did he cut me free...?"

"On another note," Kaneki said, "I think your friend may have just caused World War III. Look. The bullet is from a TEC-9, which is a pretty specific weapon. You don't suppose those men in black were CIA special black ops agents from America, do you? Cause if they were, and they just shot a Japanese politician, there goes Japan's alliance with America."

"No," Haise said, "I don't think that those men were CIA. I hardly believe they were American. That Russian was a little too quick to his temper when I made a comment, and if he was a real politician, he knew I was going to die and suffer a painful death at that, so why would he try to come at me?"

"And I have another question. If they were going to kill you anyway, why would they go to all the trouble to chain you up AND to handcuff you, and why were you able to escape so easily only after you were cut free?"

"I don't know, but I knew that hanging someone off the edge of a building was an odd method of execution. The last public execution like that was in 1936 and I was sure it wasn't likely that whatever I did was bad enough for that."

Haise frowned. "Wait a minute...what did I do...?" Kaneki shook his head. "I don't know, dude, but we got company. Let's go." Haise looked behind him at two men who were shouting, and the group of policemen he thought he'd lost were on his tail again.