'Oh, your fifth? Impressive. I guess I have a ways to go, then,' he shrugged, nodding as Seto called for them to get moving, and began walking after the man himself. Graye, nudging him, asked how he managed to get paired off with the leader of Ward 8, to which he lightly responded 'Who are you calling a runt? Fourth in my graduating year, remember? Though to wit, I do have Seto to thank for that, if indirectly - funny story, I had no idea he was as important as he is when I first met him, just that he was a high-ranking investigator. I challenged him for something, we made a bet over it, and that motivated me to push myself to where I am now.
'As for why he's picked me to go with him on this mission
specifically, well, we have our numbers to think about,' he continued, a bit of a smile crossing his face despite himself. 'We have two other investigator pairs doing their part to contribute to this case, and not so many spare beyond that to my knowledge. Plus, as I'm sure you've surmised, we have some history, if not a heck of a lot. Maybe you and I will one day be allies of that nature too, Graye.'
By now, they'd reached their destination: what appeared to be the scene of a serious fight, a park with some sparsely-scattered, but heavily damaged trees. A nearby bench had taken harm too, one leg bent to tilt the whole construct despite being made of metal, and there was blood spattered across the ground. Though he dared not make it obvious, his nose told him quite a bit right off the bat: there had been both ghoul and human fighters in this, though it had been too long with too many other humans present for him to tell how many of each. That said, it didn't take him too long, maybe a few minutes, to come to the conclusion that the scale of the damage dealt and the blood spilled, human and ghoul both, suggested three fighters total. So, what would be the most likely scenario...?
'Alright,' he spoke up matter-of-factly after about five minutes, raising his voice a little bit to catch both Seto and Graye's ears, 'here's my theory, short of any other information that might be missing. Do tell me if I've missed something crucial, such as whether we have any surviving witnesses?' The extra time had been taken to figure out how to phrase his theory in a way that didn't out himself, but if he wasn't interrupted, he figured it ought to be fairly foolproof as a result.
'The scale of destruction suggests more than two people fighting, but not
many more. It seems logical to assume that it started off with two humans walking through this park, minding their own business as it were, or possibly on a job for CCG. Suddenly, a ghoul attacks; it's unlikely to be two ghouls attacking one human, as to my knowledge, it's reasonably uncommon for ghouls to work together in a hunt, and two ghouls against one human is a fairly extreme amount of overkill unless the target is a skilled investigator. As it happens, one or both humans are in fact investigators, or otherwise have access to a quinque or other anti-ghoul weapon - the lack of bullets in the area suggests they weren't using a gun or Q bullets in any form, and the amount of blood spilled suggests that the ghoul was also injured in the fighting, so clearly they weren't completely defenseless. If we could get some test samples of the blood spilled, we might be able to distinguish who was actually involved, if we haven't done so already.
'In any case, both sides of the combat are injured, but eventually, the ghoul makes its escape, either fed or unfed. Considering what you said about the bodies our suspect left behind earlier, Seto, I'm willing to bet they were in fact fed upon, with some flesh stolen by the ghoul for its own ends if that still applies; it may also have been, as proposed earlier, that the ghoul had a quinque on its person, or perhaps snatched the investigator's quinque, killed them with it, then abandoned it afterwards. Speaking of which, did you say the wounds dealt were consistent with
a quinque, or with quinques in
general? Because if it's the latter, it could be that the ghoul is actually targeting investigators specifically, killing and mutilating them with their own weapons to hide what exactly their kagune's injuries look like.'
