This sounds like a fascinating chimera. 😀
Bella Hennesey. Like the liquor, but spelled differently.
That’s how she’d introduced herself to Hirako Take. Tall, with a cute glasses and an upturned nose framed by glossy auburn hair in a perfect bun, she’d asked him for reports on current investigations for her PhD research. Shown her University of Tokyo ID and everything. Dismissed her awkwardness with her American mannerisms.
And now Squad Zero has cornered her for being something more than interested in ghouls. For being a ghoul.
A green ukaku, like shards of the Emerald City in The Wizard of Oz, emerges from her shoulders. A long, snake-like bikaku creeps out from her lower back.
The Wizard of Oz. The movie they’d watched. Hirako was going to ask her for a second date, too, before Ui had discovered her secret.
“Really?” she mocks. “That’s all the manpower you brought? I’m insulted.”
“And women power!” Hairu yells.
She ignores Hairu. She even ignores Hirako. Arima, Bella knows, is the true threat.
Without a second glance towards Hirako, Bella falls off their roof. Arima leaps forward, but she has already flown away.
They search but don’t find her, and Hirako has to admit he’s relieved. Even if she joins Aogiri after how he treated her.
“I just…can’t believe she was a horrible person,” Hirako admits later, when he and Arima are alone in Arima’s office. “I’m so weak, huh?”
“No, I don’t think so.” Arima’s eyes glimmer, and for a moment, Hirako wonders if Arima let her go for him.
But that’s stupid. Arima would never.
Arima clears his throat. “I know that ghouls can be good people. There’s a secret…I need you to know.”
And that is how Bella Hennesey changed Hirako Take’s life, though not in the way either anticipated.
Mercy and Magic 