After Dark

**Date Started:** May 24th
**Status:** Ongoing
**Users Involved:** User:ShinyBoi5, User:MohmohMoh
**Setting:** Ward 20
**Characters Involved:** Akari Kurayami, Mizuhime Wanotaka, Akame Shoku

## The beginning

The morning was bright and clear. Everyone was bustling around the local mall. The girl, Akari Kurayami, stood in the long line at the ice-cream shop, waiting for her turn to order. It took ten minutes but she finally got to order her cookie dough, vanilla bean ice cream. She sat down at the nearby fountain and waited for her new partner to come to the fountain for their meet-up before their mission.

Black hair painted with a purple hue danced across the wind as Aoyame Sutsukei entered the mall. People had their own conversations, some trivial talk and others about the news. Teens conversing about the hot topic of yesterdays murder, believed to be yet another Ghoul incident. The middle of the mall had a fountain, sitting comfortably at it was Aoyame’s new partner, eating ice-cream without a care in the world. Crossing her arms she stood in front of Akari, “Do you really have time to eat ice-cream? The day after such an incident?” The tone she carried was sharp to the ears, paired with her serious tone made her seem like the opposite from her newly assigned partner.

Akari looked up at her partner and sighed, "Of course I do, there is always time for ice-cream." she stood up and handed her partner the file for their next job. "The higher-ups gave us pretty annoying job of searching for any clues as to who could be committing all of these incidents. They seem to think it's more than one person, maybe even a whole group of them." Akari explained.

Taking a hold of the files, Aoyame started to skim through the pages one after another, throwing nothing more than a glance at them. The last two pages of the folder contained images of different victims. Some were far more grotesque than others. Aoyame put great concentration in analyzing the images for anything that could give any clues. Anything from a certain attack pattern, the way injuries were inflicted, what limbs and such had been devoured, despite this, none of them carried enough in common to give it away if it were one or two different Ghouls.

A few minutes had passed since she had started to stare at the images, “I don’t know, seems like it could be a gluttonous Ghoul. None of the victims seems to be injured in different ways from what I could tell. Most of the fuckers have an attack pattern that they follow, if not attack pattern it could be an eating habbit. The victims seemed to have suffered more or less the same injuries and the same way to be eaten.”

"That idea was already shot down by the CCG HQ. They said that if public were to find out a gluttonous Ghoul was back after 50 years of peace, they would all freak. But they also did never deny that it could be a glutton." Akari said. "Well one thing that they had written in the pages of victim number 5 was 'She was found in an alley near some graffiti that looked to be a spider made of blood. We are currently testing samples of it, though we haven't found any conclusive evidence as of now.' They then provided an image of the graffiti. Take a look."

The image handed to Aoyame disgusted her, the fact that a Ghoul hadn’t just killed for survival but also used the blood to paint as if it's nothing but a tool for an artist. “Any idea what the spider could mean? A symbol? Threat? Warning? Only an insane Ghoul would leave a message behind. Especially of this caliber.” Handing the photo back to Akari she spoke softly, “Did they check the whole area? There might’ve been things that they missed, or something hidden in the spider. It's a shot in the dark but it has to have some meaning to it. Even if its something as simple as a warning towards other Ghouls.”