Prologue

Vernon Dursley was disgusted. Not mildly disgusted, or mostly disgusted, he was completely and totally sickened with the situation he found himself in. In his arms was the freak, his 14 month old nephew-in-law, who was constantly making noise and drawing attention to himself as Vernon walked through the shipping warehouse.

Grunnings was entering into a large-scale contract with the company that owned the warehouse to cut the costs of distributing oil to their clients in the United Kingdom, and so Vernon was delegated to physically go to one of the warehouses to ensure the company's competence personally. He had hoped to take a break from the freakish madness his home had become since the thing had arrived, but when his wife heard that he was leaving she immediately made other plans. It became a family trip, and Petunia convinced him that yes, they did need to bring the freak with them or the other freaks would be having words with the couple, and the whole mess concluded with him being stuck with the brat for an entire afternoon. To make the entire situation worse the thing had started to wail, and would not stop making that noise no matter how much Vernon tried to shush him in progressively more forceful ways.

He stopped in his tracks all of a sudden, facing a single crate. It was filled with meat and preservatives, and it was a kind of crate that was made to be completely airtight as the crate shipped. It had a marker on the label designating it as an extreme-distance delivery. He was struck with an idea, and a wicked smirk blossomed on his mouth. He quickly shoved the almost-toddler freak into the crate, and sealed the lid, locking the small crate so tightly that not even air could get through. If the box was sealed, then it wouldn't be opened until after it was delivered. That was three ways at least for the freak to die, if not from suffocating or from being in the airtight case then the cold of being in the upper atmosphere during transit surely would, and if not even that did then the poisons in the preservatives would be more than enough to finish the job. Strutting proudly, he swaggered away. As he left the building, he could almost say that it felt like a dark presence was lifted from his mind the farther away from the boy he got.

XXXXXXX

"This crate's got a bit higher magical readings than normal."

"Oh, that's the ghoul flesh. That box's always funny, the spells that they use to kill the ghouls have to be powerful enough to get past their magical resistance, don't worry about it."

"Say, what would you need ghoul flesh for?"

"Some potion that's supposed to let you regrow limbs, or something. I don't really care. You shouldn't either, if you were supposed to screen the contents you wouldn't be working in the loading dock."

"Alright, don't go bitching on me like my wife, I'll get back to work… bloody foreman"

"If I hear you muttering under your breath like that again I'll have you re-assigned to the Dragon Dung shipments."

XXXXXXX

"Dr, Kanou, your package is here."

"Ah, good!" the elderly doctor looked up from the scene of gore he was cutting into with a glowing red scalpel, his white hair tainted with smatterings of blood from the body he was... exploring. "Just place it in the corner there, will you?" The white coated young man nodded and put the small crate down, dismissing the delivery man that was helping him carry the heavy crate into the room. The young man started to unlock the seals around the lid.

"What do you need from ghouls all the way from England, sir?" The man asked, "if that's not above my paygrade, Dr. Kanou." He apologized sheepishly. Inside he was delirious from fear, as Kanou was known to be horrifically vindictive.

"Oh, no trouble," the Dr. waved the rude question off, "You're a first class investigator, Arima, you're using the Quinque I've created just like every other investigator of your rank, you can ask about them if you wish." Kanou smiled at the stoic investigator, "I take periodic looks at foreign ghoul samples to get a better picture of what ghouls are as a cohesive species. The ghouls in this city in southern Japan are the most powerful and rampant, but progress is fueled by understanding, and limiting research to a single location would be limiting that understanding." Arima nodded silently, his usual response to new information. Kanou set his scalpel down, and moved to help Arima open the crate. Behind him, the ghoul's corpse started to weakly try to regenerate, but it was starved of nutrients and so ravaged by the elderly scientist that it merely twitched on the lab table. Finally, the two of them together lifted the lid off the case. What they saw made even the perpetually emotionless face of Kishou Arima go slack in shock. Inside the crate, which had been airtight, cold enough to freeze flesh in less than a second, and toxic enough to keep ghoul flesh from regenerating, for over 36 hours as the crate shipped, was a single, flawless child no older than two at the extreme most looking up at them in curiosity. In utter defiance of completely inhospitable conditions it was breathing normally, and had a total absence of sickness or discoloration, or any indication that it was anything but perfectly healthy. It defied every bit of medical knowledge that the both of them knew.

Kanou quickly picked up the infant, running his eyes over the child analytically and gaining a faint mad gleam in his gaze. It was wearing a badly fit onesie, suggesting a poor background. Black hair, green eyes, pale skin, healthy body weight for its size, though in a few places like the neck and wrists it appeared to have slightly less body fat, possibly the beginnings of malnutrition. Most obviously was an angry red scar on its forehead in the shape of a lightning bolt. It was a strange scar, with the structure of a bladed incision but far too perfect in its shape for it to have been actually cut into its head. The baby itself looked unassuming, but behind that was a deep chasm of mystery that the biological expert couldn't pierce with his current knowledge of biology.

Kanou placed the child on a clean table and quickly drew a small amount of blood. He placed the blood in an analyser, and while he waited for the machine to spool the sample he took the temperature of the infant and went through a simple physical checkup. The child's body temperature was 10 degrees Celsius below freezing, and yet his body was still functioning perfectly, and not a drop of his blood was frozen. His blood pressure was so low that his veins should have collapsed.

With a soft beep his blood results were displayed on a small screen of the machine, and Kanou became even more excited. His blood was so full of the pesticides and preservatives from the shipping crate that it would have killed a fully grown man, much less an infant his age. Further, his blood had the lowest Rc cell concentration in any human ever recorded. Normal humans had Rc cell concentrations of 100-500 per millimeter of blood. He had 5 per millimeter. Kanou decided that he would push this child, for this child was the most perfect human being he'd ever seen, surpassing in endurance and survivability even some of the ghouls that Kanou had seen. This child would be the key to escaping from the twisted birdcage that was the world.

XXXXXXX

Ten years later

"Happy Birthday, Zero," Dr. Kanou said warmly as he stepped into the lab. On the table was a boy somewhere between ten and thirteen. He had electrodes attached to his left arm, testing his ability to withstand electrical shock. His right arm was being injected with small doses of liquid nitrogen and similar cryogenic substances to observe his resistance to cold and toxins. His legs had multiple incisions made by various implements, each with a different kind of blade and markings made with pen to indicate the speed and totality of the wounds' healing processes. Kanou had made similar tests ever since he'd "acquired" his best test subject, but he repeated them regularly to observe any changes to the child's abilities. Given the boy's ability to withstand virtually anything with zero permanent damage, he had given the child the designation Subject Zero. He called the boy by such when he'd had conversations with the child. Kanou regularly conversed with his subjects, in his gentle and caring persona, not out of any effort to keep his subjects sane, it often did the opposite after all, though it did in some cases have a stabilizing effect. He spoke to them because he was completely, and totally insane, and had the urge to share his vision of the world with those he was studying.

Zero didn't respond, neither to Kanou's words, nor to the extreme pain that he was experiencing. One of Kanou's earliest discoveries was that Zero didn't heal. He regenerated, meaning that instead of new cells filling in damaged areas by the cells surrounding the area dividing and copying (and therefore degrading) his DNA, new cells divided to repair damage and produced the DNA of the cells that should be there, not the cells surrounding the damage. He was completely immune to aging in the way normal humans were. Sure, he could still be killed by a buildup of foreign chemicals and infections until the combined might of pathogens and toxins forced him to degrade and die, but it would take somewhere around twice as long as normal humans take to die of old age.

Zero was a small boy on account of the sparsity of the nutrient injections that Kanou gave the boy in an attempt to gauge his reaction to starvation. He had long, dark hair, pale skin with pink dots and lines from Kanou's surgical tests and injections, and glassy and dull green eyes. His limbs were bony and thin, as Kanou kept him perpetually restrained so his muscles never saw any use. On his forehead, however, remained the same perfectly shaped pink scar that so intrigued and frustrated the good doctor.

This day was special because it was something that Kanou was working towards ever since he acquired Zero. Kanou was testing the ability of Zero to handle higher numbers of Rc cells, and Zero always reacted positively. In fact, any time that Zero was introduced Rc cells, the Rc cells took root in his body and adapted to suit him perfectly, and then didn't leave. Over the ten years that Kanou had had Zero Zero's Rc cell count had risen to 74 from 5. Still lower than normal humans, but over 40 times his natural count. According to Kanou's previous understanding, a human that contains at least ten times their natural Rc cell count would suffer from Rc Cell Over Secretion Syndrome. Unlike in normal humans, when Rc cells were introduced to Zero's flesh they integrated into his physiology and became benign, never beginning to form growths or show any behavior other than passive metabolism.

With Zero's ability to adapt perfectly to Rc cells, he was uniquely likely to survive being given a Kakuhou and made into an artificial ghoul. Kanou was planning on waiting for a few more years to see if he could learn anything new from Zero, but even after thoroughly exploring just how far Zero's pseudo-immortality extended he was regaining diminishing returns. Seeing as he was unable to discern the mechanics of Zero's miraculous endurance, he was unwilling to wait on his ghoul related research any longer. The matter had come to a head when Kanou had found a normal human that was compatible with ghoul Kakuhou implantation. Kanou knew that even if Zero's body rejected the Kakuhou, he could simply remove it and Zero would heal, so he would serve as the testing ground, he would be the proof that Kakuhou could be implanted.

Kanou moved to detach all of the testing equipment, steadily pulling needles out of Zero's arms, and pulling electrodes and other sensors off of his skin. When he was finished he extracted a small blood sample to make sure that Zero was in a suitable condition. Zero had frighteningly high levels of liquid nitrogen, and toxic chemicals in his blood, but they were well within acceptable ranges for Zero. An assistant wheeled a ghoul into the room, a prepared Rinkaku with a low Rc cell count, to make the shock of the implantation process as minimal as possible. Kanou retrieved a Quinque Steel hypodermic needle, and injected the specially prepared sedatives into Subject Zero. New assistants wheeled in the necessary tools for the surgery. Zero was flipped on the table so that his back was facing upwards, and he was strapped back down onto it. Kanou took a scalpel from the tray next to him, and made an incision on the ghoul in the small of its back. Kanou didn't waste sedatives on such specimens, so the ghoul screamed.

Kanou lifted the ghoul's Kakuhou out of the ghoul's body using forceps, and placed the organ into a temporary holding jar filled with a solution that would keep it alive and healthy for the few minutes that it would be separated from a host body. He moved over to Zero, replacing his used scalpel with a fresh one. Several incisions later Kanou took the Kakuhou out of the jar and, while an assistant held the sides of the incisions open, he placed the Kakuhou into Zero, sewing the organ to his connective tissue in the same way that it would be anchored to a ghoul's flesh. He placed his surgical implements down, and his assistants moved to take the quietly whimpering ghoul out of the room along with all of the other equipment involved with the implantation surgery. Kanou stayed, observing Zero. A few minutes after the others had left, a small red spider-like structure emerged from Zero's incision, and started to visibly repair the cut at a painfully slow rate. Kanou simply smiled gleefully, and left, intending on implanting the Binge Eater's Kakuhou into Ken Kaneki.

On the operating table, Zero let out the first sound he made that day. As the ghoulish organ attempted to dominate Zero's body, and his body fought back, he cried silently.

"Integration seems to be complete, there is a complete lack of swelling, discoloration, or other indication of rejection. Subject's Rc count is at 1136 and climbing, a number notably higher than the Kakuhou donator. Subject is in the process of developing the ghoul toughness and physical ability. Kakugan is developing before my eyes as I dictate," Kanout said aloud, running his eyes over Subject Zero while an assistant wrote down his words a few steps away. "Subject has displayed the healing factor of ghouls in the days since implantation, reaching the speed of the donor one day after and then exceeding it. Unknown if this is an advantage of One-Eyed-Ghouls, or if it is merely an advantage of Subject Zero. Taking Kakuhou sample." Dr. Kanou used a long, wide needle made of quinque steel to gently (mostly) take a tissue sample from Zero's Kakuhou. He placed the sample on a sterile plate, and shaved a thin layer off of the sample, and he placed it under a microscope. "Rc cells are… being adapted to Zero's body in the same manner as previous tests with the subject, instead of the expected reverse. Within a few remaining hours the Kakuhou will have ceased to be foreign tissue and will be fully adapted to his body, as if it was already there his entire life. If there are no noticeable problems with the implantation within the next week than Subject Zero will be nominated as the prime candidate for project Chimaera." Kanou motioned to the assistant, and the worker stopped recording, looking a little green.

"Have an Ukaku Kakuhou prepared for implantation," Kanou ordered, as he watched the Rc cells in the tissue sample through the microscope.

A little over a week later Kanou had returned.

"Hello Zero, your operation has gone flawlessly," Kanou addressed the shackled boy informatively. Zero was upright this time, hung by his wrists with shackles that covered his entire forearms, so that there was no chance of Zero breaking his fingers and escaping. Zero responded by lashing at the doctor with two long tentacles that emerged from his lower back. Kanou blocked the boy's Kagune with a Koukaku Quinque shield. "Oh, no sign of the donor's influence at all, that's a Kagune that's completely your own," Kanou noticed. The boy's Kagune had wide, thick tentacles that had a reptilian appearance, with spikes along both sides of the limbs' somewhat flattened edge. At the tip was a barbed blade. It looked… draconian, for lack of a better explanation.

"Magnificent," Kanou breathed. Zero lashed at the Dr. with his Kagune again, but the effort was futile. The doctor's Quinque was too defensively powerful for Zero to get past. "You're showing remarkable control with your Kagune, especially considering they're not naturally part of your body," Kanou observed as Zero's glowing red limbs sliced at him almost faster than his eye could see. Zero remained silent. "You should know that the other artificial ghoul has accepted his implanted Kakuhou as well, you've got a big brother now," Kanou added conversationally. He pulled a dart gun from his lab coat and pointed it at Zero through the whirl of writhing Kagune. He pulled the trigger and it shot a dart Quinque at Zero, the Rc suppressants in the injection cutting off Zero's connection to his Kagune and making the predatory organs falter, and then flop to the ground bonelessly, finally retracting into the small of his back. Kanou then walked around behind the boy, placing a jar with a round red organ suspended in it onto a table off to the side. Zero grimaced, knowing what was coming, but was unable to stop it restricted as he was. Kanou took a blood sample, as always, and then cut open Zero's upper back to implant the Ukaku Kakuhou from the jar. Throughout it all, even as he was splattered with Zero's blood, his grandfatherly smile never left his face.

"I heard about the ghoul Nutcracker," Kanou told him as he worked, "she has both a Bikaku and a Koukaku Kagune, giving her incredible adaptability in combat, each of her Kagune covering the weaknesses of the other. In your case you'll have a Rinkaku and an Ukaku, a much more offensively oriented combination but you'll still be able to cover the weaknesses of each of your Kagune with the abilities of the other, just like she does."

Zero integrated the Kakuhou just like he did the first over the course of three days. Unknown to Kanou, something else was happening as well, deep within the depths Zero's mind. Zero would have known if his mind hadn't utterly shattered from the final shock of the implantation, placing him in a deep coma.

It was a metaphorical cocoon that would mark the true beginning of his life.

XXXXXXX

Well, here's my first story that I'm going to publish on this site. Review, advice, and criticism is welcome, but this is my story and I have plans for it and I may ignore advice if it takes the plot in a direction that I don't want it to go.

This will be a crossover between multiple things, and so some aspects of everything will be adjusted so that timelines and locations fit together without clashing. So if you read something that's not canon I probably did it on purpose, I hate reading fics where people tried to write about something without knowing anything about the way the particular world works. On the other hand in my personal opinion the purpose of fanfiction is to find a new version of something you love, not just an imitation of what's "Canon", so yes there will be things that aren't true in the actual Harry Potter and Tokyo Ghoul.

I should mention that I own neither of them, just in case you didn't guess by now.

I write quickly when I'm inspired, so if I get a bit of positive feedback I'll probably be dishing out chapters once or twice a month at the slowest, and if I get into a focused mood I might get two out in a week. It depends. I've got a few chapters written already, but I'm going to stay a few ahead of the ones I post so I can go back and edit them.

So, if the prologue hasn't scared you off, enjoy.