4. Awakening

Something in Kaede snapped, and she felt freer than she ever was, four invisible woman's hands flowed out of her back. She felt great! She felt… complete in a unique way, something she missed but didn't realize until now.

Her demeanor shifted, from crying as squirming helpless little to something fundamentally different.

"It wasn't a coincidence… I'm not human and never was.", Kaede mumbled, barely audible, the emotions in her eyes becoming colder before being replaced by pure and calm fury, all ounces of fear long since gone. Fully understanding what she was.

"OH! Ya angry ain't that's cu-!?"

The man didn't have time to finish as the fingers of his hand that were holding Kaede flew out, she sliced all five fingers into tiny pieces and it was followed blood spewed from the hand in abandon.

Falling to the ground. Kaede caught herself up and massaged her wrist, the red mark of a hand on her skin with blood that wasn't her own on her skin.

She gazed at the man clutching his fingerless hand, the blood slowly stopped flowing he wasn't smiling anymore. His malformed face with his mouth covered turned to confusion, amusement, then anger.

Taking out his gun the man yelled and started to shoot, one, two, three, four, until emptied the entire magazine and only the useless clicks of the hammer could be heard. 

None of the bullets ever so much as touched a hair Kaede, her eyes could see the rapidly approaching projecting and her vectors moved on instinct, all bullets fell to the ground, clinking as they did so, crushed right before her face. His anger reached new heights as everything unfolded before his disbelieving eyes.

"I will kill you.", she ignored his senseless babbling about how it shouldn't have been like this and said in a cold and matter-of-fact tone. 

She wanted to kill him, it was an urge, a want, a need from the deepest part of her being. A hunger for death, one that always was present but was hidden. Her everything screamed at her to do so and she happily complied.

Moving one of her four new invisible members as if she always had them, it zipped and gripped the man by the neck, suffocating him and stopping any attempt to talk. While all the time she kept eye contact.

The man squirmed, desperately trying to grip the intangibles and invisible hand choking, clawing his neck with his only good hand, he then kicked the ground as he was lifted from the ground. 

Kaede marveled at the sensation of her vectors moving but the reality of what this man just did and wanted to do only extended her anger, the tear on her cheeks only amplifying it.

"Why?", she asked the man, her hold on his neck strengthening, and his fingerless hand flew cleanly cut off. He squirmed even harder, blood falling in great quantity on the ground.

"Why did you do this?", she asked again, her crimson red eyes focused on his human eyes and kakugan, she didn't want any vocal answer or to hear his voice for that matter. 

At this moment the how and why he was a half-ghoul was not at the forefront of her mind, the lack of a kagune confused her, the man clearly had enhanced regeneration and strength but that seemed to be it and his overall body didn't look fine, it looked mutated and wrong, already on the verge of death.

Without awaiting an answer, the four vectors moved by her will as she approached, her bare feet walking on the still-warm blood. 

She cut his feet, he cried, letting the hold on his neck go as he fell on his back. Eyes pinprick filled with terror, she slowly walked toward him as he desperately tried to crawl away from her, the bloody stumps at the end of his legs scraping on the ground while his yell, sobs, moan, and cry filled with fear and anguish. 

His current state brought a twisted sense of pleasure to her being but didn't quench her anger or calm her down.

"AAAAAAHH! My arm gave it back to me!? It hurts!", he yelled as the arm he used to crawl was not cut, but twisted until the bones broke, the skin and flesh twisted until in a violent and gory spectacle it popped right off.

This was followed by further cries of agony as the young diclonius twisted each of his members and tore them off until only a blood torso and a head remained.

The man's status as a failed experiment for the transplant of ghouls' organs is the only reason he was barely hanging on, he shouldn't have taken the strange offer of a doctor at the hospital he was at but should have let himself die of his cancer. 

His chest irregularly moved up and down, his lidless eyes staring right into the eyes of Kaede filled with emotions he was too delirious to take notice of. 

The pain was too vivid for him to fall unconscious and Kaede would not have let that happen either way. All around them were pieces of flesh and skin, fragments of bones, and the smell of blood was thick in the air and overpowering everything else.

His disfigured face caused another wave of rage to go through her being and with one final wave of her vectors, she cut the man vertically in two from the top of the head to the pelvis. Ending his life for good. 

Breathing slowly Kaede mindlessly walked out but she caught a glimpse of something shining around a half-digested finger within the cut-open stomach of the body.

'Dad's wedding ring…', she thought, around a half-digested finger was a simple but elegant silver ring she instantly recognized, her vision turned red and her vectors exploded out of her back.

An elderly voice of a woman she knew since she was two years made her snap out of her rage-filled frenzy and she gazed upon the destruction and bloodshed she had caused in a 4-meter radius around her. The only area not damaged was where she was on her knees, breathing heavily, and where the ring was.

The body was now a bloody pulp, the ground filled with deep lacerations, the ceili, and all were not spared. Her head slowly turned to the side of the voice, and a vector flew right in the old woman's direction only stopping a meter. Unknowingly avoiding an abrupt death.

"Kae-Kaede? Sweetheart is that you? I heard a strange voice from above… Are you alright… What happened he-Oh my God…", Aoi the old woman, their neighbor, and friend, said, beyond horrified as she saw the little girl she used to give wagashi slowly standing up covered in blood from head to toe.