Name: Katashi Yamamoto

Alias: "The Crimson Tiger"

Faction: Ghoul

Age: 24
Personality: Despite his rebellious and aggressive appearance, Katashi is actually quite friendly and amiable to ghouls and humans alike. He's always up for a chat, especially over a brew of coffee or a smoke. Katashi is spontaneous with planning, unless absolutely necessary, not really his thing. He springs into action, always defending those who are helpless or his friends alike. Due to his almost reckless nature, he finds it difficult to hide that he's a ghoul, always wanting to use his 'evolution' for good whereas many ghouls would like to use it for nefarious purposes. One thing is certain, you can count on Katashi to jump in front of his allies, no matter the cost.

Appearance: Despite his friendly nature, Katashi could seem quite intimidating, standing at 6' 1", weighing 170lbs with a muscular yet slim build. When his eyes do not look like that of a Ghoul's, they're actually a deep blue. Katashi is always dressed sharply, usually his deep red style with his buttoned up shirt and waistcoat. His mask is that of a tiger, with slits for the eyes and a crimson red where the orange should be. Katashi's Kagune is Vermilion in colour and is released below his right shoulder blade. It forms over the front of his arm and juts forward into three prongs, like that of a large claw. These claws are thin and sharp, allowing Katashi to slice or stab. Koukaku types are well known for their heaviness and sturdiness, giving Katashi a great advantage in defence. While it's heavy, Katashi's no pushover when it comes to offence, however, defence is the best card in his hand.

History: Katashi's younger years were an uninteresting blur. Being a pure ghoul, he wasn't like other kids. Still, his parents did their best to raise him up well and it worked. He was taught that even though eating humans were a way of life for Ghouls, there were methods he could utilise and utilise them he did. His diet consisted of, and still does to this day, suicide victims, very elderly people close to death and most importantly, coffee.

Katashi's childhood friends were also fellow ghouls. However, in their teens, this information got out and resulted in many ambushes by spiteful humans who were raised on the basis of hating ghouls. As the minority, the group decided it would be best to just take the beatings, not wanting to make a bad name for other ghouls hiding in the school. However, one day, the usual suspects came with an assortment of rocks, pipes and other makeshift weapons. Katashi had the last straw. He roared out, unleashing his Kagune and shielding his friends from the hail of objects. Before the blunt objects could be swung, Katashi threatened one of them, the tips of his claws pointed directly at the opponent's throat. The group was quickly dispelled and Katashi realised that defending those who could not defend themselves was his purpose.

Recently, Katashi has been mostly laying low, going from job to job and watching wrestling on the TV was his life. Although, every now and then, he rushes to someone's aid. A ghoul being ganged up on, a human about to unjustly lose their life or the prevention of crimes committed by humans and ghouls alike, making a name for himself as a Ghoul Vigilante known as the "Crimson Tiger". However, with the stirrings of Ward 20, could this be his true call to full action on the side of peace?

Skills:

• Skilled in Kagune Combat.
• Intimidation. Whilst he does not like to use it, he knows his figure can be imposing and useful.
• Athletic. Fighting crime is tough on the body.
• On particularly stressful days, he can smoke like a chimney.

Equipment: Katashi carries his phone, a pack of cigarettes and a brown satchel to keep his mask close at all times.

Name: Zonbigōsuto Kyūketsuki
Alias: Bisuto Ketsu, "Wrecker", formerly "Needlepoint"
Faction: Dove - Rank 2 Investigator - secretly a natural One-Eyed Ghoul
Age: 21

Personality: As far as ghouls go, Ketsu is uncommon in that for the most part, his human masque is dominant over and substantially more developed than his "real" ghoul persona, a necessity considering his job. In his pretense of humanity, he maintains a well-meaning, albeit forceful outlook, apparently desiring greatly to help cleanse the world of those ghouls who would kill innocent humans so heartlessly, and will apparently go to any lengths to achieve the destruction of such vile foes.

When he drops this pretense, much of his well-meaning nature vanishes with it, as well as his consideration of ghouls as anything more than food, albeit intelligent and dangerous food - for some reason, his opinions on how humans and ghouls taste is completely reversed. In this mindset, he prefers to act as a stealth hunter, trying to get the drop on any given target rather than attacking them head-on, though this does not mean he is not an effective warrior in his own right.

Either way, he maintains a healthy distaste for "stupid people", though depending on when you ask him, who exactly counts as "stupid" will change entirely.

Appearance: Physically, Ketsu seems to be about as regular and unassuming a guy as you can get, at least for a Ghoul Investigator. Whilst certainly well-built, his foreign ancestry shown off through a lightly-toned complexion, messy brown hair, and a height of 172cm, he does not appear to be exceptionally muscular by the set standards, only reaching about 75kg for muscle mass, and you wouldn't exactly guess that the leftmost of his dark blue eyes would turn solid black with red iris when he releases his kagune. Naturally, he does not frequently manifest it, save when he manages to find some time alone with the body of a defeated ghoul.

Ketsu's ghoulish heritage has blessed him with a kagune. His Rc type is bikaku - supposedly the trump card, though he considers it a moderate advantage at best considering how it ties into the kagune RPS cycle - and so his kagune manifests as a trio of half-mottled, half-smooth, blood-red tails, each ending in a sort of needle-like cap with a different colour and texture to the rest of the tail. Rarely will the mottled surface of the kagune bear toothy mouths rather than the usual pattern, for Ketsu's primary form of attack involves impaling his target with the needle-tips of his kagune and draining them of blood and Rc cells, nourishing himself and tasting the victim as if eating their flesh whilst killing them in a way that leaves minimal hints as to how exactly they died. Preferred targets for these precision strikes include major arteries and the kakuhou of ghouls, for these are where the flow of blood and Rc cells is strongest.

When he does need to wear a mask to enact a kill, he prefers a smooth but solid plastic helm, designed to fold down for easy storage within his suit, with a distinctive design of sharp, stylised teeth in a mocking smirk across its width; the mask is almost entirely black, down to the wide lens covering his eyes, save for the solid white inside of the "mouth" design.

As a Ghoul Investigator, Ketsu also has access to the usual ghoul-slaying weapons of the CCG, and in fact has managed to acquire for himself a very specific quinque: that of his own late father, Zonbigōsuto Tarō, the ghoul formerly known as Wrecker. A koukaku-type kakuja quinque, Wrecker's inactive state is essentially a necklace with a metallic circular pendant attached to it; when activated, it takes the form of crimson crustacean-like armour covered in spikes, the helm crab-like with its eyeholes and antennae, and completed with two oversized crab's claws for hands, fitting over Ketsu's entire body when activated as both superior protection and an offensive boost; he is able to bear this armour's stamina-draining effects and substantial weight far longer and more effectively than most might anticipate, thanks largely to his own ghoulish strength and vigour. Better yet, it bears the capacity to alter its colour and texture to match the surrounding environment, effectively acting as active camouflage when necessary to let Ketsu maneuver into more favourable positions.

History: Sometimes, people do bad things for good reasons. Jane Doe, an English teacher working in Tokyo, fell in love with codewriter Zonbigōsuto Tarō despite knowing he was a ghoul, and likewise in the opposite direction, though both were at least somewhat driven by the knowledge that they'd likely not have children. When it then turned out Jane was pregnant, both did what they felt was best for the child: Tarō went out and began cannibalising ghouls, developing a kakuja and the codename of Wrecker in the process, and bringing back their flesh for his wife to feed upon, and Jane engaged in this pseudo-cannibalism that their child might acquire the nutrients it needed to live to childbirth. Apparently, both parents acquired the same odd sense of humour about names as their parents had had, and thus the resulting progeny was named Kyūketsuki.

It was never clear why, whether there were wires crossed in his hybridised brain or whether his mother's pregnancy diet had altered him somehow, but Kyūketsuki's tastes were essentially reversed from birth. Far from enjoying human flesh and blood, even when draining them with his kagune, he much preferred the flavour of ghouls that most others detested, even his father. Tarō, knowing full-well that his own cannibalistic tendencies were already a major threat to a family such as his, never mind those of a young half-breed who might achieve half-kakuja and get himself killed in his madness, decided early on that this preference was not to be indulged unless it couldn't be helped.

Thus, whilst Kyūketsuki was trained in the usual ways of ghouls - hunting, hiding one's ghoulish side, combat, and so on, and in his case the stealthier methods of finding and killing prey that his father preferred - he was also told in no uncertain terms that his nature as a one-eyed ghoul, and much less a ghoul who found other ghouls delicious, was not to be revealed to the world; hidden under a full helmet of a mask, Kyūketsuki eventually acquired the name of Needlepoint, for the wounds left behind by his particular brand of attack certainly seemed to have been dealt by oversized needles of some sort.

This, in turn, helped shape Kyūketsuki's worldview quite a bit. He never quite got over his view of ghouls other than his father as food, but at the same time understood the need to keep things on the down-low... and one day, it struck him that there was one group who consistently hunted the creatures down: the Commission of Counter Ghoul. And since the ghouls hunted by this organisation were already on the kill list, it wasn't as though they'd miss any of their blood... naturally, it was Tarō who pointed out that he'd be detected as a ghoul the moment he walked through an Rc scan gate, making his dream nearly impossible to achieve.

So too was it his father who further developed his kakuja into a form of active camouflage. So was it that Tarō acquired and translated to code a sample of his son's Rc cells, only to head out with a final farewell and the suggestion that if he didn't return, Kyūketsuki should approach the Commission and get himself that job as a Ghoul Investigator. Three days after that, his wife and son accepted that he had passed away, and with what Kyūketsuki imagined might be his own final goodbye to Jane, he headed to the nearest Ghoul Investigator Training Academy at the age of 19, only to find that somehow, he was able to pass through the scan gates as if he were human rather than ghoul.

Joining the academy, under the alias of Bisuto Ketsu, was the easy task. Making sure he didn't out himself as a ghoul was surprisingly harder, even with his years of practice to draw upon - not least because he had to consume "normal food" in the presence of his peers, only to vomit it up later on - though he did manage to place himself at the top of the class physically, if not mentally. Happening across a high-ranking Special Class Investigator midway through his first year, then, was sheer dumb luck, and it was with this individual that he made a deal:



Suffice to say, this was more than enough motivation for Ketsu. His academy years passed in a blur of social interaction, feverish studying, consuming food only to throw it back up later, and the occasional murder of somebody outside the academy who wouldn't be missed; whilst his physical superiority over every other classmate was assured from the start - though only just enough to maximise his grades in this regard, based on the percentage of his true strength, speed, and precision he ultimately offered up - it took an extraordinary amount of effort to further ensure that his coursework and theory was up to scratch too. His final grades ultimately put him in fourth place, granting him a reputation among the staff as an overall powerhouse of a young man: very strong, yet smart and dedicated too, with much knowledge of Ghoul Countermeasures Law and few notable flaws. The thought he often mused upon after being told this was "If only they knew how much of a powerhouse I am."

He expected to be transferred to the CCG Main Office, where in between his usual missions, he would ask to talk to the Special Class Investigator who he'd made his deal with. Much to his surprise, he was instead transferred directly to the CCG 8th Ward's Branch Office, under the command of that samesaid Investigator - apparently, somebody had been keeping an eye on him, and the man running Ward 8's daily operations was very impressed that Ketsu had actually pulled off his end of their bet. With minimal pomp, Wrecker's quinque was handed over to the man who was secretly his son, and in the few weeks since then, Ketsu has shown little sign of slowing his roll. Not to mention, he now seems to have all the food at his disposal that he could ever want - albeit with the caveat that feeding himself covertly is sometimes a touch more difficult than expected.

Skills:

• Combat training with both a bikaku kagune and various types of quinque
• Incredible precision both on and off the battlefield
• Compartmentalisation of mental states, specifically the divide between human and ghoul personas
• Stealth hunter tactics, his preferred form of attack as both a dove and a ghoul
• Exceptionally potent physical abilities... compared to humans
• An overall nice guy... or so you'd think

Equipment:

• Wrecker, a koukaku-type kakuja quinque, described above.
• "Needlepoint" fold-down helmet, described above.
• CCG ID
• Smartphone
• House keys
• Wallet with money and cards inside