Tokyo Ghoul: Remnant

by With Death Comes More Death

After being defeated in his fight against Arima, Kaneki blacks out and wakes up in the world of Remnant... (Discontinued in favor of re)

2. Chapter 2: And Down Comes Down the Rain

Yo, guys and welcome to that edited version of chapter 2 I promised you all. Um, really nothing more to say…

You guys know the deal by now.

-Mandatory Disclaimer-

I don't own either series. Really. Stop asking.

-Chapter 2: And Down Comes the Rain-

Kaneki once read that if someone were to take in the same chemical constantly, over a long period of time, that they would eventually develop a sort of tolerance to aforementioned chemical. After first reading that, he wondered if the same thing could be applied to other things, but now, he knew that it was entirely possible.

From the moment he escaped Aogiri Tree's clutches, nightmares plagued his mind while he slept. He received them over and over, nonstop, for the past few months. At a point, he had gotten so many that he actually started to develop a sort of tolerance to them. Something that first became apparent to him after the first couple weeks, when he started waking up from said nightmares without immediately sitting up or hyperventilating right after waking.

He still did have reactions to them - it was hard not to - but they were now limited to waking up in a cold sweat and the occasional yelling out of someone's name. He, of course, didn't mind gaining a tolerance to them, but that didn't stop him from realizing how depressing the fact was. For a person to have so many nightmares, that they actually started to become jaded to them... That was the very definition of the word: depressing.

So, that's why he wasn't at all surprised to wake up and find himself covered with a thin layer of sweat.

Another fucking nightmare... Kaneki thought to himself bitterly as he sat up on his makeshift bed. The sheets that had spent the entirety of last night covering him, slipped off of him as he subconsciously cracked his index finger with his thumb. I wonder if I'll ever stop having them.

The nightmare he just had wasn't particularly frightening, nor was it very unique. It was pretty much the same old, same old: watching bad things happen to the people he cared about, while he had no absolutely no ability to change what was going on in front of him.

"Oh good," he heard a voice coming from his left say to him suddenly, snapping him out of his thoughts, "you're finally awake."

His instincts kicked into gear almost immediately. The snowy-haired half ghoul rolled out of his makeshift bed and onto his feet in one fluid motion, angling his body so that he would be facing the direction the voice had come from upon finishing the roll. Lifting his hands up to his head the moment he reached his feet, making it clear that he was ready to fight anyone or anything that thought it a good idea to attack him in his-

"There something wrong Kaneki?" Blake asked him from her position on her bed, an open book lying on top her lap as she stared at him with a cat-like tilt of her head.

That's right, I spent the night in their room, Kaneki reminded himself, relaxing back into a much more neutral stance as he did so. Guess I really am in a different world now...

"No," he answered while scratching the back of his head in embarrassment, "you just caught me off-guard, is all."

The bow-wearing teen blinked at him owlishly and asked, "Huh, so you're basically saying that you get yourself ready to fight every time someone manages to surprise you?"

"Yeah, pretty much," he admitted after a few seconds of contemplation, shrugging his shoulders nonchalantly.

"Then remind me to never sneak up on you in the middle of the night," she replied, her dry tone making it hard for him to figure out the intention behind the statement. Was she joking, or was she completely serious? He just didn't know.

Okay… he thought as he let out an awkward chuckle, ...not the answer I was expecting.

"So what happened to the others?" he asked upon taking notice of the severe lack of three certain people's presence.

"Class."

"Oh." Kaneki gave a single nod of his head before asking, "So how come you aren't in class then?"

"Professor Ozpin dropped by with your clothes, but before he left he asked that one of us stay behind and show you around the campus before your initiation," Blake explained to him dryly, as she picked her book back off of her lap so she could continue reading it. "So I volunteered."

He raised a skeptical eyebrow at the explanation and asked, "Couldn't Ozpin have just done this himself?"

"He said something about having something important to take care of before then," Blake replied with a shrug, not even bothering to look up from her book once again.

"Well, that doesn't sound suspicious at all," the snowy-haired half ghoul mumbled to himself sarcastically. Crossing his arms over his chest, he proceeded to ask, "So, what do we do now?"

"Well, it's simple really. You're going to put on some clothes and I'm going to keep reading this book."

Put on some clothes? he repeated the sentence to himself mentally, but about three seconds later, he realized what she had meant by it. Oh yeah, I'm still wearing nothing but my underwear, aren't I?

As he thought this, Kaneki couldn't help but note how much his self-confidence has grown over the past few months.

Back before his ten days with Yamori, there was no doubt that standing half-naked in front of a girl he barely knew would've caused him to gain a blush that was so large, that he'd probably pass out from all the blood rushing to his head.

Now, there was enough confidence within him to do it without flustering at all. Leaps and bounds in progress.

Where exactly are my clothes anyway? Kaneki asked himself, scanning the room around him for his clothes, which he found sitting on the bookcase, neatly folded into a perfect square.

"Hey, do you mind if I ask you a question?" Blake asked him as he walked over to aforementioned bookcase, her amber eyes still not looking up from her book as she spoke.

"Um, sure," he began, glancing over at the bow-bearing bookworm from the corner of his eyes as he picked his clothes up from off the top of the bookcase, "what do you want to know?"

"Do you happen to have a habit of counting in your sleep?" she asked him with a hint of curiosity in her voice, which prompted his eyes to widen fractionally in response.

"No, not that I know of," Kaneki stated, subconsciously tapping his left index finger on the tip of his chin, "but then again, how exactly would I know what I do in my sleep?"

"Fair enough," the bow-wearing teen replied with a contempt nod of her head. "So as a heads up, you count down from a thousand by intervals of seven in your sleep."

"Noted," he stated while slipping on the skin-tight black suit that he wore under his clothes. The material it was made out of contouring to his body like it was a second pair of skin.

All conversation immediately died off after that single word slipped from his lips, but the silence that ensued felt strange to him.

The silence between them felt strangely mutual, comfortable even. It was almost like they made an unspoken agreement to cease all talking at that exact moment, without the actual agreement of course, because it was clear that they were both equally surprised at what was happening.

The fact that they were both naturally introverted people and were used to this kind of silence probably helped, because if they didn't, there was no doubt things between them would've gotten really awkward, really quickly.

Yet instead of acknowledging it or trying to spark up some sort of conversation, Kaneki simply continued to clothe himself and Blake continued reading through her book. Not a word being uttered between the two as the seconds ticked by. Not even when the snowy-haired half ghoul finished dressing himself and plopped himself down on the floor next to the bow-bearing bookworm's bed. They simply allowed themselves to sink further and further into it.

The mutual silence persisted on for a good while. The only sound that could be heard being the faint sound of them breathing in and out.

Unfortunately, they're reverie was shattered when the sound of the people filing into the dormitory reached the two teens' ears. The footsteps and chattering of said people, effectively destroying the serenity that permeated itself through the air around them, which prompted the two of them to let out quiet sighs of aggravation.

"That probably means that morning classes are over," Blake noted, closing the book she was reading as she moved to get off of her bed. "We should probably start heading to the cafeteria, I promised the others to bring you there once you woke up."

"Wait, what would've happened if I hadn't woken up before then?" Kaneki asked as he stood up from the ground, genuinely curious as to what she had planned if that happened.

"Then I would've woken you up," she told him as she flashed him a wry smile. The two conflicting signals making it hard for him to discern if she was joking or not. "I'm not going to go hungry just because you were too lazy to get up."

Deciding that it was probably best for him to think of it as a joke, the snowy-haired half ghoul laughed sheepishly and replied, "Good to know… So, we're going to the cafeteria, right?"

"Yeah, that's the plan," the bow-bearing bookworm stated as she stood up from her bed. The smile on her face growing a tad bit larger as she walked past him and towards the door leading out to the hallway, utter in the words. "Follow me."

And so, he did.

---

Kaneki's eyebrow twitched in annoyance as he followed Blake to the cafeteria.

"By your reaction, I'm guessing that you're not someone who's used to being in the limelight very often," his amber-eyed guide stated dryly, probably referring to all of the people staring at him as he walked down the hallway.

"It's not the attention that's bugging me the most," he replied before letting out an annoyed sigh.

That wasn't a complete lie.

It was true that he wasn't one to actively seek out attention from others, but he was more than confident in his ability to perform while being the center of attention. So, it wasn't the stares from his future peers that bothered him so much.

No, what really bothered him was the fact that they were all gossiping about him so openly.

For the past few months, his reputation as a dangerous ghoul garnered him a lot of attention from ghouls and doves alike. That reputation also forced them to respect him, because if they didn't, they would face the very real possibility of him ripping out their spines with nothing but his teeth.

Now, however, people were talking about him like he wasn't even in the same room and the worst part being, that he wasn't even allowed to stop them because of his agreement with Ozpin. The one that specifically told him to not do too much harm to any of the other students here without good reason.

It was an annoying little detail that the headmaster practically forced on him, but it was a reasonable one at the very least, so he resigned himself to it for the time being.

"Hang in there, we're almost at the cafeteria," Blake assured him with a small, amused smile gracing her lips. "There, people will be so wrapped up with themselves that they most likely won't even notice you."

The artificial half ghoul cracked his finger and gave a curt nod in response, silently adding, For their sakes, let's hope that you're right.

When the two entered the cafeteria, Kaneki was immediately struck by the sheer size and grandeur of the place. It was far beyond anything he's ever seen before, but then again, the only other cafeterias he's ever seen were the ones he saw back when he was still in school, so it could be easily attributed to the fact he's only ever seen three in his entire life.

"Yeah, that was about my reaction to seeing it too," the bow-wearing teen next to him stated. "I would say you get used to it, but you never really do." He glanced over at her and found the dark-haired teen shaking her head. "Heck, I still haven't."

"Noted," he replied with yet another curt nod of his head.

"Come on, we should go get in line before they run out of food," the bow-bearing bookworm said to him while gesturing for him to follow with her hand.

"You go ahead, I'm not that hungry," the artificial half ghoul stated while subconsciously scratching his chin with his left hand. "I'll just go and see if I can find the others."

He half-expected to receive some form of resistance from her, but was surprised to see Blake simply shrug her shoulders and reply with, "Alright, they usually sit somewhere near the back corner of the cafeteria with another team." She pointed off towards the direction she was referring to. "They really shouldn't be too hard for you to spot, but come back here if you can't find them."

"Got it," he said to her, nodding once in affirmation before they went on their separate ways. Blake getting in line for lunch and Kaneki following the directions she gave him.

Much to his surprise, the other three members of team RWBY were relatively easy to pick out of the crowds of people, just like Blake had told him.

The three were sitting opposite to another group of people, presumably another team of hunters in training. He started to walk over to them, but was stopped dead in his tracks when something hit him dead center of the chest. Doing so with enough force and weight, that it actually managed to knock him back a foot or two.

His instincts were just about to have him jump back and enter a combat stance, but they grinder to a halt when a loud, feminine-sounding squeak reached his ears. A sound that probably meant that he simply bumped into someone by accident.

Dammit, I should've been paying more attention, Kaneki berated himself, mentally slapping a hand to his forehead as he checked to see who exactly he bumped into.

There, sitting on the ground before him was a girl wearing the standard uniform for the female students of Beacon, an empty tray that presumably once held food lying in her lap.

At first glance, she looked almost completely normal-looking. Her hair was the common hair color of brown and so were her eyes.

There was almost nothing about her that made her really stand out of the crowd. Well, other than the fact she looked more attractive than the average face in his opinion, but the one thing that made her stand out the most, was the fact she had a pair of rabbit ears adorning the top of her head.

There were literal rabbit ears sticking out from her head and from what he could tell, she wasn't wearing some sort of headband, which meant that this girl seriously had rabbit ears.

Is she one of those faunus that Ozpin told me about yesterday night? the artificially-made half ghoul asked himself, thinking back to the conversation he and the headmaster had the night before. Yeah, he said that faunus are most easily distinguished from their human counterparts by the fact they either had the ears or tails of animals. So it's probably safe to say that she must be one of them.

According to Ozpin, the faunus were a race that grew alongside the humans. They were by all means physically superior to the human race, but were always outnumbered by the humans, so they were always considered to be the lesser being. Meaning that discrimination against the faunus ran rampant with the general populace for quite a long time.

Apparently, there was even a time where the human race tried to force all faunus to live in a single area called Menagerie, which understandably angered a lot of the faunus. Soon enough, a full out war between the two races over the topic of faunus rights broke out, which the more populated of the two sides ultimately lost.

With the victory, the faunus forced the human government to stop the shipping of all of the faunus to Menagerie and win a form of equal rights, which was probably one of the only good things to come out of the war in Ozpin's opinion.

The war also caused the faunus to gain a predominantly negative reputation with the human race and vice versa, causing a lot more tension to grow between the two groups.

At the time, the headmaster described the situation as 'volatile at best', which then lead him to telling Kaneki about the faunus-rights activist group called: the White Fang.

At first, it strove for peace and equality between the two races, but then, something inside the organization changed and now, they wanted the destruction of the entirety of the human race.

When Ozpin first told him about the faunus, Kaneki immediately started drawing parallels between the faunus and the ghouls of his world.

From the blatant discrimination directed towards them to the interspecies fighting against the human race. It seemed so similar.

Hell, the only real difference between the two races' situations he could find, was the fact that the humans from his world actually had justification to be afraid of ghouls. Since the only thing that ghouls could eat without literally poisoning themselves were human beings and other ghouls, it only made sense that they would clash with one another for pure survival, which only made the metaphorical line between black and white clear for the two races involved.

Here, however, the line between right and wrong was much more blurred. Both sides had a way to justify their actions, no matter how terrible, and there was even a select group of people who firmly rested in the gray area between them.

In his eyes, the faunus situation here in Remnant was much more complicated than the situation with the ghouls from Earth. He, being the literal manifestation of a gray line in the latter, could only take solace in the fact that coexistence here actually seemed possible.

Getting back to the situation at hand, the artificially made half ghoul knelt down and reached his hand out to the girl so he could help her up. Only for her to flinch at the sight of his approaching hand. He blinked at the reaction in confusion.

Did I do something wrong? Kaneki asked himself mentally.

"Um, are you okay?" he asked the girl, using a tone that emphasized the confusion and guilt he felt. "I'm sorry for bumping into you and all," he offered her an apology coupled with a sheepish smile, "I guess I should have been paying more attention to where I was going."

The chocolate-haired faunus opened her eyes and tentatively shifted her gaze onto him, staring at the hand he was offering her with uncertainty in her eyes. The display reminded him of an animal who was wondering if the hand offering it food was safe or not, which probably wasn't the most appropriate analogy to use in this situation, but the shoe fit so he went along with it.

After a few moments of staring at his hand, she eventually took grasp of it were extremely soft hands and he pulled her back up to her feet.

"T-thank you," she told him the moment she was back up on two feet, her tone apologetic and soft as she bashfully rubbed her elbow.

He smiled reassuringly at her discomfort and replied with, "Don't mention it."

That exchange was immediately followed up by a several second-long stint of silence between the two, and unlike the one with Blake, the one he was currently experiencing was incredibly awkward.

"Your shirt..." she spoke up suddenly, prompting the snowy-haired ghoul to blink and look down at himself, and what he found made him let out a tired sigh.

It turned out that the empty tray that she was holding, actually wasn't empty when they collided and the bump had caused a good amount of her food to spill onto the fabric of his shirt. Thankfully, it wouldn't stain because of its dark color, but that wasn't even close to being his main concern at the moment.

No, his main concern wasn't what his clothes looked like, it was what they smelt like that concerned him the most and to put it bluntly, they smelt like shit. This time, however, he didn't actually mean that they smelt like human excrement, but they smelt just as bad. In all actuality, his clothes smelt like meat that had been left to rot in the sun for several days and that smell, was accompanied with the faint aroma of a vomit-soaked sponge.

Kaneki highly doubted that the food here actually smelt as bad as it did to the other students around him. It only smelt that way to him because he was a ghoul; and everything that wasn't either coffee, water, or human meat smelt and tasted disgusting to ghouls, which was probably a good thing considering human food was literally poison to ghouls if a ghoul were to ingest human food and let it digest, one of two things would happen to them: either they would regurgitate the food back up like the poison it was or keep it inside and have their reflexes, strength, and speed hindered immensely.

"Don't worry about it," the snowy-haired half ghoul replied, flashing the girl an understanding smile as he wiped the food of his shirt with his hand, trying his best to ignore the disgusting smell and texture of the food as he did so. "It's just a shirt and I can always get it washed later, so no harm, no foul."

This caused yet another bout of awkward silence to grow in between the two, but it was eventually broken when the chocolate-haired faunus grabbed him by the wrist suddenly and tugging on it lightly as she said, "Follow me."

The snowy-haired half ghoul blinked at the meek-looking girl holding onto his wrist before tentatively nodding, prompting her to start dragging him towards the exit of the cafeteria with a surprisingly tight grip on aforementioned appendage.

A single thought ran through his mind as he got dragged out of the cafeteria, What the hell am I getting myself into?

---

Out of all the places Kaneki expected to end up in when his chocolate-haired companion dragged him out of the cafeteria, he definitely didn't expect to find himself standing in a what was presumably a laundry room, but that was probably due to the fact he had an overactive imagination that was constantly on the lookout for any sort of threat, even in what were the most mundane of situations.

"So, what exactly are we doing here again?" the snowy-haired half ghoul asked while he subconsciously began scanning the room around him, looking for anything that might indicate a trap. He found none, but that didn't make put his guard down, not wanting to be caught by surprise if his paranoia proved to be warranted.

"I-I guess I probably should've told you that before dragging you here, huh?" the rabbit-eared faunus asked him sheepishly, but he found that the way she said it, made it seem like she was talking more to herself than to him. "I wanted to wash your shirt for you since it's technically my fault it's dirty in the first place."

The snowy-haired half ghoul blinked at the statement, smiled gratefully and replied with, "You really didn't have to go through the trouble."

"Yeah, I know, but it's more about the principle to me than anything else really," she told him bluntly, an embarrassed smile finding its way onto her features. "I don't know too many people who would've reacted half as nicely as you did," she continued in a tone that only further emphasized her embarrassment, "so you could say that this is a repayment for, you know... uh, not cussing me out."

The half ghoul just stared at the girl for a moment, subconsciously thinking, Is that really the only reason she dragged me here?

Doing so for what felt like the millionth time in their conversation, Kaneki blinked owlishly at the faunus and then felt an amused smile crawl its way onto his lips at the absurdity of it all.

"Alright then," he began, shrugging as he reached for the hem of his shirt, "if that's what you want."

As a test, he then pulled his shirt over his head. All the while, the artificially-made half ghoul fully expected the girl to try and attack him while he was blinded, but was pleasantly surprised to find that she hadn't even moved a muscle when he finally managed to get the shirt off.

Holding said shirt out to her, he waited for her to take it from him and she promptly did so.

Still nothing? the snowy-haired half ghoul wondered as he watched her walk over to one of the few washing machines that weren't currently in use.

"So… are you a new student or something?" the rabbit-eared faunus began as she placed the shirt inside of said washing machine, clearly just trying to find something to talk about so they wouldn't succumb to more awkward silence. "I don't think I've seen you around campus before, not even at the beginning of the year introduction for all the new first-years."

The half ghoul didn't answer that question immediately like he had been doing for the entirety of their conversation up until that point. No, instead, he took a moment to think about his next words over carefully. Knowing that he couldn't afford to give away too much information about himself before he met with Ozpin again to confirm his backstory.

"That's probably because I just got accepted into Beacon last night," he told her when he finally found an answer that he was comfortable with giving, every fiber of his being silently hoping that the chocolate-haired faunus wouldn't notice that short moment of hesitation in his voice.

Thankfully, she seemed way too engrossed in her current task to notice.

"Last night?" she repeated almost incredulously, the amount of curiosity in her voice reaching such high levels that he swore he could actually feel it in the air around him. "You got accepted into Beacon last night?"

"Um… yeah, why do you ask?" he asked since he truthfully didn't know what exactly that statement entailed.

"I've been going to this school for two years now and this first time I've ever heard of anyone, and I mean anyone, getting accepted into Beacon once first-year initiations were over," the girl explained to him, the awkwardness that once plagued her tone almost completely gone. "You must have done something really special to convince Ozpin otherwise."

At the very least, I got her talking to me normally now, Kaneki thought to himself, inwardly making note of said change in demeanor before cracking the middle joint of his middle finger.

"I really wouldn't call what I did special," he replied as he normally would, but this time, however, he actually meant it. Truthfully, he didn't see how killing those four beowolves could be considered special at all, especially when they were as predictable as toddlers during their fight, but then again, maybe he was just so used to fighting enemies so much stronger than himself that the beowolves just seemed easier by comparison.

"I really just did what I felt was necessary," the snowy-haired half ghoul added, doing so with a finality that should've made it clear he didn't want to talk about the subject anymore, all the while hoping that he had taken just enough off of it to not come across as rude.

"What was necessary, huh? the chocolate-haired faunus parroted his words, not even bothering to use a tone that made it seem like she wasn't trying to figure out exactly what he meant by it.

"So, what about you?" he asked her, hoping that he would be able to shift the focus on the conversation onto something other than himself. "How long have you been going to Beacon?"

"Oh, um… I've been going to Beacon for a couple of years now," she answered, clearly taken off-guard by the suddenness of his question. "This is actually the beginning of my second year here actually."

So, if this is her second year here, and since a majority of the first years seem to be of seventeen years of age, that would probably make her around the ages of eighteen and twenty, Kaneki mused to himself mentally. That is, of course, if she isn't a special case like Ruby and got accepted into Beacon early, but then again, how skilled would she have to be to gain that kind of privilege?

He never actually got the opportunity to see Ruby fight, so he didn't actually know how skilled of a fighter she was, but he assumed that she had to be pretty good to warrant such a jump of education. It was a lot like how children with advanced intellectual abilities moved up to higher forms of education, but replace math with the killing of soulless creatures bent on the destruction of the human race.

So, could the chocolate-haired faunus before him be facing similar circumstances? Kaneki highly doubted it.

Not because she didn't look the part, because god knows Ruby didn't look like a Grimm killing machine herself, but because the probability of their being two child prodigies being found in such succession was highly unlikely at best. Especially if they were solely referring to one's combat ability alone which was something that had to be taught, unlike something like intellectual ability that could just be plain genetic.

Then again, she could've just as easily gotten here on her intellectual ability alone, or even a combination of the two, but in short of flat out asking someone how and when the rabbit-eared faunus got into Beacon, he would probably never know. She was right in front of him though, so he could easily ask the source herself if he so wanted, but he ultimately decided against it as he knew that would come across as rude and intrusive. There was always the option of trying to have her answer it on her own through some careful wording on his part. An option he deemed to be unreasonable as she seemed like the kind of person who didn't give out personal information so freely.

That left him with approximately zero ways to further the current topic of conversation. Well, at least to the point where he could gain the information he was looking for.

Maybe I could- the half ghoul began before he was cut off by the very faunus he was busy thinking about.

"Um, are you alright?" she asked him, her voice harboring a tone that sounded both confused and worried to him.

The snowy-haired half ghoul in question could only blink owlishly in response, which was mainly because a good portion of his mind was still reeling from being so suddenly pried away from his thoughts.

"Hey, are you alright?" she asked him again, raising her voice to a slightly higher decibel than it was before, which really only made her voice a little bit louder than how most people would normally whisper. Nonetheless, it managed to get his attention.

"Y-yeah, I'm fine," he replied reassuringly, stuttering a little as he spoke because of the few remaining cobwebs in his head.

"Really now?" she asked, her tone simply dripping with an understandable skepticism.

Kaneki gave her a nod, scratching the back of his head as he explained what he meant in a bit more detail, "I have a tendency to space out when I think about things too hard."

He wasn't lying. It was something that increasingly worried the other members of his group after he escaped from the grips of Aogiri Tree. There were times where he would spend hours on end simply staring at a blank wall, simply thinking and sometimes, it would take someone literally shaking him out of his thoughts to get him to stop.

It worried him, but like many times before that worry wasn't meant for himself, he was more worried about what that meant to the welfare of his friends than his own.

Truth be told, he actually gave them that very same response every time he would emerge from said stupors. It never really seemed to assure them of his wellness, but that was probably because they knew him well enough to know that he would never give them the real answer. The last thing they needed was to waste their time worrying about him. They had their own lives to worry about, after all.

"So, how long was I out?" he asked the chocolate-haired faunus before him curiously, hoping that it would put their conversation back on track, whatever track that was.

"I don't really know, I wasn't really keeping track of the time..." she trailed off awkwardly. "I'm almost finished cleaning your shirt though," she added, "it just needs to finish drying."

"Oh, was I really out of it for that long?" he asked her, pretty much wearing the guilt he felt on his sleeve at that point. "Sorry about that…" he trailed off trying to find the right words to convey guilt he felt, "... I know that standing here, watching me stare into empty space while you do my laundry probably wasn't how you expected, or wanted to spend your lunch break."

"You don't need to apologize," she told him in such a reassuring tone that it immediately soothed any guilt he was harboring. "Truth be told, as of recently, this has been one of the nicer lunch breaks I've had."

This time it was his turn to be skeptical, asking, "Really, how?"

The rabbit-eared faunus bit on her lower lip, which instantaneously told him that she wasn't sure if saying what was on her mind was a good idea.

So, as to ease her worries, he promptly told her, "You don't have to say it if you're not comfortable with telling me." He flashed her a smile that was one part amused and one part sheepish, adding, "I mean, I don't even know what your name is yet."

"N-no, it's alright," she replied, the surprise in her voice making it clear that she hadn't expected him to say that. "You were probably going to find out about it one way or another, so I might as well get it over with now."

"What do you mean?" Kaneki asked, even though he was pretty sure he already knew what she was going to tell him.

"Well, how do I put this?" she began, her voice sounding as flustered and unsure as ever. "As you can see, I'm not exactly... human," she continued awkwardly, probably making reference to the rabbit ears sitting on top of her head, which twitched slightly as she spoke, "and that often leads some of the other students to… tease me for it… a lot."

"Let me guess, they don't want to get caught so the only time they actually do so is when class isn't in session, which would most likely be during passing periods or when you break for lunch," the artificial ghoul surmised, which garnered a nod of affirmation from said faunus in response. "Have you told anyone about it yet, like one of your teachers?"

"Of course I have, but they can't really do anything about it since discrimination between humans and the faunus has always been a problem," the rabbit-eared faunus explained before letting out a tired sigh. "The only real thing the teachers can do is openly discourage it during classes."

"How about your friends?" He pressed on, hoping to find that someone that would've helped her against such blatant discrimination. "Have they done something about it?"

"No, but they certainly do want to," she replied with a bit of pride in her voice.

"Then why haven't they done something, what's stopping them?"

"It's because I told them not to," the chocolate-haired faunus began before explaining what she meant. "Having someone stand up for me would make me look weak... and that would just make them think that they can get away with pushing me around whenever I don't have one of my friends with me."

"But you also can't stand up for yourself because that would just confirm the violent stereotypes people have given the faunus over the years, and give them a somewhat valid reason to hate the faunus," the snowy-haired half ghoul finished for her, having already seen the cycle play out before with the ghouls from his world. "So, I take it, instead of fighting it," he continued, still drawing from past experiences, "you're just going to take the blows and hope it eventually stops?"

"Y-yeah," she began with a stutter, clearly surprised by the accuracy of statement. "How'd you know?"

"You could say I've seen it happen before," he answered, knowing full well that the answer was extremely vague, but he wasn't going to give away such personal information to a complete stranger.

"So, what do you think I should do?" she asked him curiously.

"Since you can't force them to change their minds about the faunus, you prove them wrong," Kaneki stated as he thought back to his first confrontation with that dove named Amon. "Make them see that you're different from what they think the faunus are. The change most likely won't happen overnight, but I'm sure it'll happen given enough time."

The rabbit-eared faunus opened her mouth to respond, but she was promptly cut off by a sudden beeping noise coming from his left.

"Ah, that must mean that your shirt's finished drying," she stated before letting out an awkward chuckle at the machine's sudden intrusion on their conversation.

"You can go back to the cafeteria, I can get my shirt out of the dryer on my own," the snowy-haired half ghoul told her when he noticed that she was already walking towards it. "I'm sure you're still pretty hungry since more of your food ended up in my shirt than in your stomach."

Not a second later, the chocolate-eyed faunus's stomach let out a loud grumble that was almost comically loud, causing aforementioned faunus to let out another flustered chuckle.

"I guess you're right," she stated, tone just as embarrassed as her prior chuckle, "and it's Velvet."

"Hm?"

"Earlier you said you didn't know my name, so that's it," the chocolate-haired faunus explained, right before sticking out her hand to him, which he took as a sign that she wanted to shake hands with him, despite the fact that said hand was shaking slightly as she did so. "My name is Velvet, Velvet Scarlatina."

"Kaneki, Ken Kaneki," the artificially made half ghoul replied, a thin smile forming on his lips at the faunus's attempt to be assertive as he took her hand in his, idly noting how soft it was before shaking it. "It was a pleasure meeting you Velvet, so see you around?"

"D-definitely," was the reply she gave him before walking past him and out the door leading into the laundry room, moving so fast that Kaneki almost missed the faint amount of red that formed on her cheeks as she left.

What a strange girl, the half ghoul thought as he watched her leave. Now, I really hope this wasn't a trap... He cracked his finger and continued on in a much darker tone as he walked over to the dryer that she had looked at earlier, It really would be a shame if she turned out to be nothing more than a rotten bean...

To make a long story short, Kaneki had never been more relieved to see a simple piece of black fabric in his life.

---

I wonder where Ruby and the others are?Kaneki asked himself as he walked back down the hallway Velvet had dragged him down earlier. I didn't hear a bell so it's probably safe to assume that their lunch break hasn't ended yet,he noted, so I guess I should try the cafeteria before anywhere else.

With a plan of action firmly set into his mind, the snowy-haired half ghoul proceeded to retrace his steps back to the cafeteria. All the while, doing his best to ignore the whispers of the students he passed by on his way there.

I know that they're all essentially the age of high school and college students, but this is starting to get ridiculous, he groaned to himself internally as he picked up his pace down the hallway. They must have something better to talk about than new kid no one knows about.

When he finally entered the only safe haven from the non-stop gossiping going on behind him, or at least the only one he knew of, Kaneki let out a relieved sigh. His dull, gray eyes immediately finding their way over to the corner where he saw the members of team RWBY earlier.

Good, they're still there, he thought upon seeing the four girls he met the day prior - all of which sitting at the same table - relieved beyond belief that he wouldn't have to go searching around an unfamiliar campus ground for them.

Getting to the table they were sitting at was actually a pretty simple affair. Mainly because, unlike his prior attempt to get to team RWBY, he mapped a route out to said table in his head before heading towards it, which it possible for him to get to the table without taking his eyes off what was directly in front of him.

As he neared the table, the artificially-made half ghoul noticed a scraggly-looking teen with blonde hair stand up from the side opposite of team RWBY and say, "... he's not just a jerk to me, he's a jerk to everyone."

From the looks of it, the statement was meant for the three sitting on the same side of the table as the blonde, which Kaneki assumed to be the boy's fellow teammates, and the members of team RWBY as well. That, of course, prompted him to assume that they were all friends on some sort of level.

Truth be told, the black-clad young man could really care less about what they were discussing. Whatever it was, it definitely sounded personal and that meant it had nothing to do with him. So, he wasn't even going to try and involve himself into it. Instead, he slowed his pace towards the table and waited for the scraggly blonde to pass him, before speeding up once again. The two teens sending the other a wayward glance as they passed, but no words were exchanged between the two as they did so.

As Kaneki looked the blonde up and down, he couldn't stop himself from thinking that the younger of the two really looked out of place - in terms of physical build - especially compared to the some of the other students he saw walking down the hallway a few minutes ago. Then again, the boy did make it into the school, so he assumed that there was a lot more strength than his outward appearance let on.

As the blonde walked out of his peripheral view, Kaneki couldn't help but feel as though there was something awfully familiar about the boy, but he couldn't figure it out for the life of him.

Where have I felt this before...? he mused to himself, taking a moment to crack his finger before shoving the question to the deepest part of his mind. Stop it, he berated himself while putting his focus back onto the task at hand, there are a lot more important things to focus on at the moment!

"Kaneki?" the all too familiar sound of Ruby's voice rang out as he neared his goal, making everyone at the table turn their heads towards him and the sound of the scraggly blonde teen's footsteps gradually moving away from behind him stop all together.

His mouth opened in an attempt to respond, but he promptly cut himself off when a white blur suddenly rushed up to him and jabbed a finger into his chest, asking, "There you are! Where in the world have you been?"

Wait, wasn't she on the other side of the table a few seconds ago? Kaneki asked himself as he stared at the white-clad girl standing in front of him with wide eyes. He could feel droplets of sweat form on his forehead as her pale-blue eyes bore into him with the most scrutinizing glare he's ever bore witness to, an awkward chuckle escaping from his lips in response to it.

"Sorry about me disappearing like that," he told her as he sheepishly scratched the back of his head. "I bumped into someone and got their food all over my shirt, so I had to go to the laundry room and get it washed again." He flashed her an apologetic smile as he added, "Sorry about that, in hindsight, I probably should've told you before I went."

The white-clad teen blinked at the statement and replied, "The laundry room… Seriously?"

The snowy-haired half ghoul nodded in response, prompting Weiss to let out a tired sigh as she slapped herself in the forehead.

"Is there something wrong?" he asked her curiously as he raised an eyebrow at her.

"No, nothing's wrong," was her response to the question, though the way she said it really didn't convince him otherwise. "Absolutely… nothing."

"She spent almost the entirety of lunch insisting that we go and find you before lunch ended," Blake chimed in from out of the blue, much to Weiss' obvious chagrin. "Mainly because she was worried that we would be the ones to blame if you didn't show up to your initiation on time."

The answer hit him like a punch in the gut. It hurt, but it also made him realize that he could have handled things a lot better than how he had and that was probably hurt the most. There was a chance to stop or lessen the pain before it even arrived, but because of a mistake he made, there would be pain.

The last thing he wanted was to hurt the people who've been going out of their way to help him ever since he first arrived here. So, that's why his next words were what they were...

"Oh... really?" the snowy-haired half ghoul asked, his tone literally dripping with guilt as he averted his eyes from Weiss'. "If I had known, I totally would've came and told you guys before going there… Sorry, it won't happen again."

---

Weiss blinked in response to the words that just came out of Kaneki's mouth. When Blake told him about her earlier actions, she expected something along the lines of a well-natured jab aimed at her person as her other friends would, but she never expected for him to say something like that. He actually seemed to feel genuinely bad for having worried her, probably even more than he should actually feel.

It actually made her feel kind of guilty for making him feel so guilty.

The heir of the Schnee family let out a defeated sigh and replied in an annoyed tone, though deep down she felt like she just kicked a puppy, "You don't have to apologize… To be honest, I probably shouldn't have reacted the way I did to begin with."

---

At that exact moment, everyone not named Kaneki or Weiss blinked owlishly at the statement, none of them expecting that kind of response from the usually steadfast heiress of the Schnee fortune.

In response to the statement, Kaneki's eyes widened slightly as they snapped back onto Weiss'. He stared at the girl for a few seconds before letting a thin smile spread across his lips.

"Alright then…" he began before turning his head towards the three members of team RWBY and asking, "So, what did I miss when I was gone?"

"Hey guys, I hate to interrupt your little reunion and all, but could any of you guys please explain to us what the heck is going on?" the scraggly blonde teen from earlier cut in suddenly, causing everyone's attention to shift onto his way.

"An explanation would be rather helpful," said one of the three teens sitting across from team RWBY, this one in particular being one of the two males in a group of six females. He had long, messy black hair that was tied up into a ponytail that could have easily reached the middle of his back and a pair of eyes that were the color... magenta.

"Well, it's sort of a long story…" Ruby stated, right before a loud, bell-like sound rang through out from the speakers placed all along the walls of the cafeteria, prompting her to add, "... one that we don't seem to have the time to tell unfortunately."

"What do you mean?" asked one of the girls sitting on the opposite side to team RWBY, this one having long, red hair that was also tied up in a ponytail and a pair of deep emerald eyes. "You could always tell us on the way to our next class," she suggested, her tone sounding way too professional to belong to a high school student. "We do have ten minutes before class starts back up again, don't we?"

"That may be true, but we have special orders from headmaster Ozpin that need to be carried out before we get go to our next classes," Weiss informed the other four in a tone that was a hair from sounding condescending.

"Aw, really?" whined the fourth and final member of the team on the side of the table opposite to team RWBY. She had short orange hair and pale blue eyes, pouting childishly as she continued, "But I really wanted to hear it though."

"Sorry Nora, I promise to tell you some other time… just not now, unfortunately," Ruby apologized in a frantic tone as she stood up from the table. She then turned to the rest of her teammates at the table and asked, "Ready to go you two?"

This prompted Blake and Yang to stand up from their seats and nod in affirmation.

"Weiss?" the red-clad girl asked the heiress, who also nodded in affirmation, prompting her to add, "Alright, team RWBY, let's get Kaneki to that initiation!"

Ruby excitedly pumped her fist into the air after saying all of that, probably expecting her other teammates to mimic her, just to find that she was the only one doing it.

"Come on guys don't leave me hanging…" Ruby told her teammates through a smile that she was forcing to keep on, which lead to said teammates shaking their heads at her in complete unison.

Prompting the red-clad teen to slump her shoulders forward and mutter the only two words that could describe her feelings, "Aw man."

---

Kaneki stepped out onto the edge of the cliff in front of him and let his gaze wander out towards the forest in front of him, idly wondering what exactly lay ahead of him in that expanse of green that awaited him.

As it turned out, the members of team RWBY did their job a little too well and got him to the spot Ozpin had designated as their rendezvous point a full ten minutes too early, giving him plenty of time to do… whatever the hell he was currently doing.

Whatever it was, he remembered doing the same thing right before he tried to save the manger and the others at Anteiku. He didn't know why he did it at the time, but he did have a vague reason as to why he was doing it now.

The artificially-made half ghoul believed that he was doing this because a part of him knew that this was the point of no return for him. That this was just him trying to figure out if going past it was a good idea or not. It was and he truthfully didn't know what to do, so his mind immediately went to standing out on this cliff as an response.

Then again, it's not like I have a plethora of options at my disposal in this situation, he thought to himself as he mentally reviewed said choices in his head.

Back during their talk in that clock tower, Ozpin gave him two options. It was either go through with the initiation and spend the next few years of his life in an academy learning how to kill Grimm effectively, while allowing the headmaster to search for a way to get him back to his own world in his free time. Or, reject the invitation given to him and focus one-hundred percent of his time on trying to find a way back to his home universe all by himself.

Both choices had their pros and their cons.

For instance, accepting the invitation would gain him the backing of Ozpin, a man who described himself as up to his knees with connections thanks to his position as headmaster of a hunting academy. An ally like that would prove to be invaluable when, not if, when his ghoul nature was exposed to the public, which was probably only a matter of time at this point.

There was, however, one problem that accepting entailed and it was that the responsibilities that came with becoming a hunter-in-training. They would probably leave him with very little time to actually look for a way to get back home. He was lucky that Ozpin seemed to really want him to come to Beacon Academy, because the moment the headmaster gave him the invitation to join, he immediately offered to look into the matter for him so that he could focus on his studies, which, now that he thought about it, pretty much got rid of the only problem going to Beacon entailed for him.

Unfortunately, his other option, and far more favored option, of doing it on his own was more susceptible to problems.

First, he would need to get himself somewhere to stay and that would obviously require him to gain a source of income to pay the bills, which basically meant that he was going to need to find a job.

It didn't have to be glamorous, or even legal, he just needed a job that could pay well enough to make rent for a cheap apartment, something that he highly doubted would be difficult to find, but finding and performing that job would definitely take some time.

There was also the problem of having to learn about the world around him and its systems - which would too take some time - because he knew that his lack of understanding on the subject would probably raise some suspicions after a while.

Then after that, he would need to find a steady food source, preferably one that wouldn't draw too much attention from the local law enforcement.

Usually, hunting humans or searching for corpses of the recently deceased - like a ghoul would normally do - would be the most convenient way to get food, but this was a place where doing such things would probably raise some more eyebrows in this world, especially since the authorities couldn't just blame everything on ghouls like they would. For example, if someone from his world were to go missing in the middle of the night, the cops would almost immediately assume that a ghoul got to them and report the incident to the CCG.

But since there were no ghouls in this world, it was probably safe to assume that the cops would be more fervent in their search for the missing persons, and if too many of these cases popped up in a single area, he knew that they would eventually just crackdown on it so hard that it would be easier to move to another area than to actually stay in that area for much longer.

Then, there was the newly discovered option of eating the creatures of Grimm, which would sidestep the problem of hunting in the same area too frequently and getting found out by the local law enforcement entirely.

That, of course, meant that he would need to go out of the cities and into places where they inhabited. The only problem was that he knew that the people monitoring those places, the hunters, were twenty times more powerful than anything a police department could send his way and would definitely notice the sudden decrease in the number of grimm in the area.

Basically, the exact same problem, but twenty times worse than the alternative if he were to be caught.

So, in short, Kaneki could either jump through all the hoops that going it alone would entail, just to have a freedom of movement that wasn't entirely free. Or, just accept Ozpin's proposal and just hope that the man wasn't lying to him about helping him look for a way back home.

A tired sigh escaped his lips when he realized what the problem was.

It was him.

He was the problem.

His own inability to accept the support of others when it was offered to him was the problem.

Inability.

God, the word seemed to follow him around no matter what he did.

Back during his ten days with Yamori, he swore that he would get rid of anything standing in between him and keeping those he cared about safe, even if getting rid of it meant going against everything he ever stood for.

This time would be no different. He wasn't going to allow his own weakness to stand between him and his friends, not again.

If that meant pushing away his own irrational insecurities and accepting Ozpin's help, then so be it.

"Uh, Kaneki," the sound of Ruby's voice coming from right besides him was the first thing he heard when he pulled himself out his thoughts.

The snowy-haired half ghoul glanced over at the red-clad teenager and asked her the simple question of, "Ah, do you need something?"

"Oh, I was just wondering…" she began as she fidgeted under his gaze, which made it clear that something about what she was going to ask made her uncomfortable for some reason or the other. "...If you'd have a race with me sometime."

"A… Race?" he repeated in his bout of confusion.

"Y-yeah a race!" Ruby exclaimed cheerily, using a tone that reminded him way too much of an excited Hinami. "When I saw that you could keep up with me yesterday, I thought it'd be fun for us to have a little race to see who's faster." Not knowing how else to respond, he simply blinked at the red-clad girl dumbfoundedly, which prompted her to say, "Of course, you don't have to if you don't want to. I know that you have a lot on your mind because of your initiation and I know that you must want to get yourself prepared for it since your entire future here at Beacon depends on it, so you probably don't want to hear me ramble on about stuff that doesn't have anything to do with what you need to focus on."

She glanced over her shoulder at her three teammates, who were watching the exchange from the sidelines and asked, "Ugh, why have none of you stopped me yet? I'm making myself look like a complete idiot! Why can't I stop talking!"

Instead of offering advice that could help her in the situation, they all simply shrugged their shoulders in response.

Kaneki blinked at the red-clad girl as she rambled on and on, wondering what in the world he did to cause her to enter that kind of state, though he did have to admit that the sight was pretty amusing. But despite how amusing he found it, he decided that it was probably best to stop her before she embarrassed herself any further.

"Sure, I'll race you," he said with a thin smile spread on his lips, using the same tone he would use whenever he spoke with Hinami without even noticing, which caused all speech from the red-clad girl to cease immediately.

She blinked and stared at him as if he had just told her the meaning of life, before asking him, "Wait, really?"

"Yeah," he shrugged before cupping his chin with his left hand and adding, "Sounds like it would be fun."

Truth be told, it really didn't sound like that much fun to him, but comparing his ability to Ruby's would be a good way to gauge his current skill when compared to that of a child prodigy, and see what he needed to be improved on in the future. The wide, almost Hinami-like smile that now graced her features was really just a bonus in his books.

"Good, I was starting to think you were going to say no. Oh, and by the way, I was supposed to tell you that Ozpin and Ms. Goodwitch are here," Ruby stated suddenly, causing the snowy-haired half ghoul's eyes to widen slightly. He turned his body over to where the members of team RWBY were standing behind him and found that two new people had joined their little group standing out on the cliffside.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Kaneki," Ozpin began cordially, "while it's nice to see that you've already started making some friends, I must advise that we continue on to your initiation." He asked while looking down at the watch on his wrist, "You're only wasting your own time here, after all."

"Right," the black-clad young man said as he gave the headmaster a curt nod, taking a moment to turn back to Ruby and flash her an appreciative smile, before walking over to the silver-haired man standing next Ms. Goodwitch.

"Oh, here's that mask you wanted me to hold on to for you," Ozpin told him as the half ghoul approached, pulling said mask from out of one of his coat pockets and holding it out to him.

"Mask? You have a mask?" Blake asked him as he took his mask from Ozpin, prompting him to shift his attention onto the bow-bearing bookworm and give her a curt nod of the head in response. "Why in the world would you ever need to wear a mask?"

"Are you really expecting to get a straight answer from someone who wears a mask?" he asked while an amused smirk crept on his lips, clipping the main portion of the mask around his neck as he spoke. "One of the main reasons why people wear masks is to keep something about themselves secret, after all."

Deciding not to wait for a response, the snowy-haired half ghoul pulled the mask over his mouth and let out a relieved sigh when he felt the leather of the mask contour itself to the curvature of his face like it had done so many times before. The mask's toothy and gum-less smile imposing itself over his own mouth.

One more piece, he thought to himself as he reached for the final and most recognizable component of his mask: the eye-patch that covered up his right eye because of its lack of a kakugan, though it was really because Uta, the ghoul who made the mask, wanted him to see the world through the one eye he covered up the most of the time.

The artificially-made half ghoul closed aforementioned eye and slipped the eye-patch over it, noticing the difference in his depth perception almost immediately. This form of depth perception would have been a major hindrance to most people, but not to him, which was probably attributed to the fact he wore an eye-patch for several weeks before receiving the mask. It got him so used to the limited depth perception that he found that he fought just as well with it on as he did with it off.

"Wait, doesn't that imply you haven't been entirely honest with us since you wear a mask too?" Weiss asked upon noticing the discrepancy in his words, prompting him to shrug his shoulders nonchalantly. "Oh come on, at least answer me with actual words!"

"That's enough, Ms. Schnee," Goodwitch cut into the conversation suddenly. "As much as I would like to watch you give Mr. Kaneki here a tongue lashing, he does have an initiation to get done."

"Fine," the heiress to the Schnee fortune stated reluctantly before letting out a frustrated sigh and turning to the mask-clad teen and saying, "but once you're back, you're telling us whether or not you've been telling us the truth."

The snowy-haired half ghoul let out an amused scoff as he glanced over towards the girl with the same hair color as him, cracking his index finger and stated in a completely emotionless tone, "You do know how contradictory that statement sounds, right?" This elicited a narrowed glare from Weiss, which made him add in a much more amused tone, "Don't worry, I'll be sure to tell you everything once I'm back." Then suddenly, his voice suddenly became much more solemn as he continued to speak, "I'm sure I'll have a lot to answer to for once I'm done here."

"Wait, what's that supposed to mean?" Weiss asked, but she would receive no answer from the black-clad young man, who turned to the two advisers in charge of his initiation.

"Ready to begin, Mr. Kaneki?" Ms. Goodwitch asked him in her usual professional tone, prompting the snowy-haired half ghoul to nod in affirmation. She then gestured over to a metal panel that was lying on the ground a few feet next to them as she added, "Then please stand on this platform and face towards the edge of the cliff."

Doing as he was instructed, the artificially-made half ghoul strode over and stepped onto said platform, taking note of how it ever so slightly gave under his weight, before turning towards the edge of the cliff, prompting him to think, Why do I feel like I'm not going to be standing on this platform for long?

"Mr. Kaneki, as I explained to you last night, every student who wants to attend Beacon must go through an initiation to prove that they truly belong to be here," Ozpin began, taking a moment to clear his throat softly before continuing, "for you to pass, you must make your way to the North end of the forest, please don't hesitate to destroy everything that stands in your path." the silver-haired headmaster pushed his glasses up the bridge of nose as he continued, "Once you reach the end of the path, you'll find an artifact, bring me that artifact and you pass."

"Understood," Kaneki stated with a nod of his head, a look of determination burning faintly in his one visible eye.

"Very well, take up a ready position and you'll be launched into Emerald Forest," Ozpin instructed before adding in the words, "I wish you luck."

"There's no such thing as luck," the snowy-haired half ghoul stated, offhandedly quoting a former voice in his head as he readied himself to be launched into the forest. "Only situations combined with circumstance."

If Ozpin said something in response, he didn't hear it because the platform under him suddenly shot him into the air and towards the Emerald Forest.

---

The members of team RWBY watched as the black-clad young man soared towards the forest at high speed, their eyes tracking his flight path all the way until he crashed into the trees and out of sight completely.

"Okay, who else thought that Kaneki's mask was awesome?" Yang asked her teammates suddenly, the excitement in her voice making it seem like she had been holding the question in and was just waiting for the moment she could ask it.

"Awesome?" Weiss repeated incredulously, a cold shiver running up her spine when she remembered the mask and the toothy grin that it displayed. "That thing was downright creepy."

"Aw come on Weiss, you have to admit that Kaneki looked pretty cool with that thing on," Yang prodded before turning her attention onto Ruby with the intention of asking her thoughts on the mask, but stopped when she saw what her little sister was doing. The red-clad team leader was staring off towards the forest below them, a troubled expression spread across her features as she did so.

"There something wrong, lil' sis?" the blonde-haired teen asked with a hint of concern present in her voice, even though the answer was pretty obvious to anyone with a basic grasp of human expressions, so basically everyone other than aliens and the socially awkward.

This seemed to be enough to break the red-clad teen out of her daze because immediately after she asked the question, Ruby blinked and looked over to her, giving her an unconvincing answer in response, "No, nothing's wrong. I'm completely fine, I swear." A raised eyebrow from Yang was all it took to break through her failed attempt of a rouse, "Fine, you could say that I'm a little worried."

"About Kaneki?" the blonde-haired teen guessed, continuing once she saw Ruby give her a single nod of affirmation. "Seriously, there are a lot of things to be worried about in the world, but the guy who can punt a beowolf's head off not being able to take care himself, isn't one of them."

"No, it's not that," the fifteen year old huntress-in-training began, letting out an exasperated sigh as she crossed her arms over chest. "Didn't you notice something about him change once Ozpin pulled that mask out?"

"Well, now that you mention it, he did seem to act a little more… what's the word I'm looking for here?" Yang began, mentally searching for the word that perfectly described what she saw in the young man at that moment, but she was never able to find it because not soon after she started searching, she heard Weiss say something that immediately got the two half-sisters' attention.

"Hey, you two," Weiss called out to the two of them suddenly, prompting the two half-sisters to turn towards the heiress of the Schnee fortune and found that she was holding her scroll in her hand. "Take a look at your scrolls, Ozpin has something to show us."

The two in question nodded and pulled out their scrolls as they were told, unsurprisingly finding a message from the headmaster himself in their inboxes. What really surprised them was when they went to go view the message and found a live video feed coming from what seemed to be the inside of a forest.

Confused, Ruby looked up from her scroll and over towards Ozpin, asking him, "What exactly is this."

"This," began, gesturing to the scroll in his hand, "is a live video feed of Mr. Kaneki's initiation."

"Okay then," Yang proceeded to ask, "so why exactly are you having us watch it?"

"The answer will be clear to you soon enough," Ozpin explained in a deadpan tone, "so please continue to watching the feed, I'm sure you all will find it quite interesting."

That's exactly what the two half-sisters proceeded to do and what they found was a familiar snowy-haired young man running through the forest, weaving through the trees in front of him with ease. They watched as he suddenly launched himself towards something that was just barely off-camera.

The camera angle changed as he jumped off-screen, revealing a pair of beowolves standing right next to each other. Then suddenly, a black blur flew past both of the beowolves, leaving the two wolves completely dumbfounded as the blur continued on past them like they were never there to begin with.

A second later, streams of black liquid erupted from their throats, forcing the two wolves to fall limp onto the ground and evaporate into nothingness soon afterwards.

"He works fast," Goodwitch noted in her usual emotionless tone, though Ozpin could tell that huntress was impressed by the young man's efficiency. "It makes me wonder why it took him so long to beat those other beowolves from last night."

"I asked him the same thing last night and he told me that the display he put up during their initial meeting was only a portion of his actual strength," Ozpin explained, usually emotionless tone holding a small amount of amusement. "I don't know about yourself, but I'm rather inclined to believe him."

"Really now?" Goodwitch asked him skeptically. "If having the ability to kill four beowolves in under three minutes with nothing but his bare hands is just a mere portion of what he can actually do, then I don't want to ever be in the same room with him when he unleashes his full strength on something."

"Funny," the headmaster began as he watched the black-clad young man kick the head off of a boarbatusk. "He told me the same thing last night."

---

A loud cracking noise emanated from Kaneki's index finger as he pressed down onto it with his thumb, idly watching the headless body of what he assumed to be a boarbatusk disintegrate before him. Not having much prior knowledge on the creatures of Grimm, other than what the headmaster told him last night, he really couldn't be one-hundred percent sure that was what it was called. He really only called it that because it had the body of a boar and it definitely had the tusks, so the pieces definitely seemed to fit the name.

Shrugging, the half ghoul with colorless hair pushed the thought of his mind and glanced all around him, trying to remember which way he had been heading earlier. The fight with the boarbatusk wasn't too strenuous nor was it very time consuming, but it did cause him to lose his bearings - as he had to spin to get enough energy into his kick to kill aforementioned Grimm in one hit - and he's read enough horror novels to know that would be more than enough for him to become lost in a forest like the one he was currently in.

It was definitely a good thing that he decided against straying too far away from the cliffs, because as of the moment, they were his only visible landmark that he could use to re-orient himself, since he was currently running under the assumption that they were directly to his south. Ozpin never said that they were facing north when they were up on that cliff, so as long as he kept believing that assumption, he could be running in the completely wrong direction and he'd be none the wiser.

I'm going to have to find a way to figure out which way I'm going before I move any further, he thought to himself as he pondered ways to get that objective done.

There was always the option of using the position of the sun to gauge which way was east and west, and in turn, help him figure out what direction was north. Unfortunately for him, however, the sun was currently being hidden behind a thick blanket of gray clouds-clouds that had been threatening to overtake the sky for nearly the entire day and finally managed to do so at the most inopportune time.

There was always the option of looking for moss and seeing which side it was growing on. He knew that the saying "moss only grows facing north" was only a myth, but he also knew that there was some truth in that myth.

Moss, as it turns out, usually grew where the sun didn't hit to prevent itself from drying out, which varied depending on which side of the planet you lived. Live on the northern hemisphere of the planet and it would grow facing north, but live on the southern side and it would grow facing the south.

Last night, Ozpin pointed out their current location to him on a map and from what he could gather from the piece of paper, they were somewhere just above the middle of the planet. So, logically speaking, the moss should grow facing north or somewhere near there at the very least. There was always the chance that science from this world worked differently compared to the science of his home universe-which he wouldn't be too surprised in seeing after hearing Ozpin's explanation last night, but that was just a chance he was going to have to take. Barring his luck changing and a compass randomly falling from the sky, of course.

So, the artificially-made half ghoul studied the trunks of the trees surrounding him, taking note of where the moss was currently growing, making sure to look at several of them before concluding which direction to go, and when he did, he shot off in that direction.

As he ran, Kaneki silently thanked Hide as he ran because without him, the half ghoul would have absolutely no idea on how to gauge his direction without the help of a compass. An amused scoff left his lips when a mental image of the outdoor survival guide - the one his aforementioned best friend got him for his thirteenth birthday - flashed in his mind, he could even remember what Hide told him when he opened the present.

"... this will help keep you alive long enough for you to get rescued, or at the very least, keep you alive long enough for me to get out there and die with you!"

---

Kaneki had no idea how much time he had spent running through the forest for, but he knew that it had to be somewhere around fifteen and twenty minutes by now. He subconsciously let out a tired sigh when he saw yet another creature of Grimm standing in his path.

This is really starting to get tedious, the snowy-haired half ghoul grumbled to himself mentally as he neared said Grimm. How many does this make it now? Fifteen, twenty?

Normally, he wouldn't have much of a problem with how easily he was killing the beings that decided to get in his way, but killing the same things over and over again, with very little difficulty, was starting to become really tedious.

Well, at the very least it's not another beowolf or boarbatusk, the black-clad young man added when he got close enough to see the Grimm's finer details.

No, this time it was a much larger creature - one that probably stood at the combined height of two of the beowolves he dispatched previously - wearing the same color scheme as all of the other Grimm he saw today, but this time the animal the Grimm reminded him of a bear. The thing's size immediately made him assume that it was much stronger than the average beowolf or boarbatusk, but that really wasn't saying much since he was already so familiar with those two species that he was literally cutting through them like they were nothing at this point.

As he neared, the artificially-made half-ghoul ducked underneath the bear-like creature's extremely telegraphed attempt at taking his head off with its paw before spinning counter-clockwise on his right heel. He then promptly proceeded to slam his other heel into the side of the Grimm's head, a head that was covered with a bone mask that happened to crack upon impact.

Surprisingly enough, the kick didn't decapitate the creature like he expected it to. It instead sent the creature flying towards its immediate right and into the trees surrounding them. The combined force of his kick and the creature's weight spiraling through the air making it possible for its body to crash clean through the trunks of said trees as it slammed into them. It ended up slamming through several of them before finally breaking through the tree line and into a nearby clearing.

The half ghoul already knew that the odds of the thing surviving the attack were statistically very low, but that also meant that there was still a chance of it being still alive too. He was actually just about to walk over and confirm the kill, but a familiar black-and-white mass hurtling past him and slamming into a nearby tree made him stop dead in his tracks. He turned his head towards where the blur impacted and was surprised to find that it was the body of the very creature he was going to check on.

Kaneki took note of the rather large hole the grimm had in its chest as it evaporated into nothingness, which didn't exactly make it clear to him if his earlier attack killed it, but he, at the very least, knew that it was dead now.

After seeing what he just say, logic dictated that he probably should steer clear of the clearing in front of him and he was just about to do just that, right before he felt the ground underneath him shake. At first, it was faint, almost unnoticeable even, but then as second ticked by, the vibrations became more and more pronounced.

At that moment, every logical part of him wanted to turn away and run from the encroaching danger, but he didn't move an inch from where he stood. Not even when he saw the creature suddenly burst through the trees leading towards the clearing.

To make a long story short, it was a scorpion. An extremely big one that shared most of the same traits as the other Grimm he saw earlier, but with some changes to the original blueprint. It had the same black-and-white color scheme, but this time, the white heavily outweighing the black parts in both quantity and thickness in this instance. A feature that he took as a sign that he wasn't going to be able to punch through it like the the other Grimm he dispatched today. Truthfully, the only part of the scorpion that he could see wasn't covered with that white material was its legs and the bottom half of its claws, which probably meant that its lower-half wasn't covered with that white material and was probably the part he should aim for if he were to fight this thing.

The scorpion-like creature let out a low-pitched growl as it stared at him with its ten, glossy red eyes, opening and closing its claws in a vain attempt at intimidating him. In response, Kaneki simply stared back at it with his one visible eye, quizzically tilting his head to the side as he raised his right hand up to where it was level with his jaw. Naught twenty four hours ago, he was forced to face down the Reaper of the CCG - an enemy that was known throughout the ghoul community as the dove who had never lost a battle in his entire career, even against SS-Rated ghouls, which was the second highest ranking the organization had for ghouls - he would be damned if he let an over-sized scorpion scare him now.

So, this is what they mean when they say be careful what you wish for, huh? he asked himself as dust and debris from the scorpion's entrance flew past him, cracking the index finger of the hand he raised earlier. Well, Ozpin did say to destroy everything in my path without hesitation…

The snowy-haired half ghoul took notice of something gold coming his way before he could finish that train of thought and jumped backwards, taking note of what it was in mid-air right as it slammed into ground in front of him.

It was the scorpion's stinger. A large one that seemed to be encased in gold for some reason. Bait for unsuspecting prey, maybe?

I wonder what would have happened to me if I got stung by that thing, he mused to himself as he landed back onto the ground with little effort. Obviously it would try to inject some sort of venom into me, but the question is what would that venom do to me if it was to get inside of me? Then suddenly, the scorpion charged at him at a speed he didn't expect it to have with such a large body and tried to grab him with one of its claws.

It's fast, Kaneki noted as he jumped over said claw with very little effort, prompting the scorpion to try and smack him aside with the back of the same claw, probably trying to hit him right as his feet were just about to touch the ground.

As gravity dictated, his feet did indeed touch the ground again, but the scorpion's claw didn't touch him at all upon landing.

That was because the moment his feet met with the ground again, he cartwheeled backwards and just barely made it out of the claw's reach. It was so close that he could even feel the claw go by his back as he planted both of his hands into the ground, halfway into the motion. Knowing that another attack was coming the moment he got out of the cartwheel, he once again jumped backwards the moment he finished and just barely missed getting grabbed by the scorpion's other claw, but unfortunately, he ended up slamming his back into the trunk of a nearby tree in the process.

The impact didn't necessarily hurt the artificially-made half ghoul, but it was definitely enough to remind him of his current surroundings. He was in a forest and that meant he was going to have to change his fighting style to accommodate the fact that there were a lot of obstacles around him that could impede his movement. Logically speaking, that should have meant the same thing for the gigantic scorpion in front of him, but from the way it just slammed through the trees earlier, it was probably safe to assume that it had no problem with fighting in their current position as it could always slam through the trees that got in its way.

Unfortunately, he didn't have that kind of luxury.

Kaneki knew that he had a power to snap a tree in half with a single strike, but what he didn't have was the time to actually break them apart and he was sure that the scorpion wasn't going to wait for him to do so. It was clear to him that he needed to get somewhere out in the open so he could fight effectively and so that's what he moved to do, breaking off into a sprint towards his immediate right, knowing that direction would lead him towards a vast expanse of land where no trees grew, or at the very least, that's what he hoped.

It was something he noticed back when he was standing at the edge of the cliff earlier, but didn't think much of it before Ozpin told him that his objective was somewhere to the north. He could see the clearing peek out from the endless expanse of greenery in that very direction and if he was indeed facing north at the time like he suspected, that's exactly where he was currently heading. Like everything else about his current situation, he couldn't be one-hundred percent sure he was heading in the right direction, but he was sure he would find out eventually.

---

Kaneki weaved through the trees as the scorpion Grimm continued to chase after him, simply crashing through the trees the half ghoul was putting so much effort in not running into.

Just a little closer, he thought as he saw a dull sliver of sunlight starting to break through the treeline.

That sliver widened and widened as he ran towards it, eventually enveloping him completely as he broke out of from the dim confines of the forest and into the open.

The first thing that hit him when he ran out into the clearing wasn't what surrounded him, instead it was the slight contrast of lighting in this new area. It wasn't drastic, but it was definitely brighter out here in the open than it was underneath that canopy of trees, as one would probably expect.

The next thing that became apparent to him were his surroundings and they were interesting to say the least. Directly in front of him was a large, man-made structure built of solid-gray bricks that were arranged in a circular manner - half of which missing pieces or were just flat out destroyed - revealing the inside of said structure. Inside the structure, stood several thin stone pedestals. They looked to be all identical from where he stood, but one of them looked to be different than the others, and that was because that one in particular had something golden sitting on top of it.

That must be the artifact, I'm supposed to collect, the snowy-haired half ghoul thought to himself as he turned back towards the forests, where he could hear the giant scorpion Grimm crashing through trees to get to him. I'm definitely fast enough to get it before the scorpion gets here, but I should probably take care of it to make sure nothing-

The scorpion crashed into the clearing before he could finish that train of thought, but finishing it was definitely the last thing on his mind, especially when the giant scorpion was charging straight at him with every intention of ripping him to shreds. No, he needed to set his thoughts onto a way of beating the Grimm in front of him.

Kaneki already knew that he would never be able to break through its armor with his fists alone, he could probably stun it with the resulting vibrations, but a part of him knew that was probably just hopeful thinking on his part. His kagune - the natural predatory organ of the ghoul that was composed entirely of the RC cells that flowed through his blood and the main reason why ghouls could only eat the flesh of humans and ghouls, as they were the only places the cells existed - could probably break through the armor, but it was the only trump card he had on him and using it so early into a battle would be a waste of what little energy he had on him.

A lick of beowolf blood wasn't going to be able to last both him and his kagune forever, after all, and he would need it if things were to get really dire. That, of course, wouldn't be a problem if he was able to non-lethally subdue the scorpion and devour it. But at the same time, using it when his opponent was ready for him to attack wasn't going to get him the opening he needed to properly subdue the creature before he ran out of energy. No, doing something like that would force him to try and smash through its defenses, and that could easily lead to him killing the scorpion by accident.

The snowy-haired half ghoul needed to wait for an opening and strike when it presented itself, or face the very real possibility of exhausting himself on just one enemy while there were probably plenty of others out in the forest waiting for him to show weakness.

Then suddenly, an idea popped into his head. It was an idea that would get the scorpion to let its guard long down enough for him to strike efficiently and that just happened to involved not moving while the scorpion charged straight at him.

As he expected, the scorpion tried to impale him with its stinger the moment once he got close enough. In response, Kaneki leaned slightly to his left and just barely avoided having his head torn off by the stinger, but even that close call was unable to break through the stoic expression he was wearing under his mask.

Seeing that its initial attack missed its mark, the Grimm pounced at the black-clad young man, aforementioned scorpion's right claw widening in an attempt to trap him inside of it, but he, of course, didn't just let that happen. No, that would make things look a little too easy for his liking. He needed to make sure that the scorpion thought of him as an actual threat, or at the very least piss it off, so that it would fight him until it knew he was dead.

That's why he jumped up over the claw right before it closed around him and towards the Grimm. He then proceeded to land directly in front of it, spin counter-clockwise on his left heel, and plant the heel of his other foot right in between the scorpion's smallest eyes.

The resulting impact resulted in a satisfying thud as the back of his foot slammed against the armor-like material covering the scorpion's body, doing so with enough force to make the gigantic creature slide backwards a centimeter or so, but that was about it. The material didn't crack in the slightest and it didn't even manage to stun the creature at all, but then again, it wasn't like he was expecting the attack to do so in the first place.

Nonetheless, the failed attack gave the Grimm more than enough time to rear its stinger back and send it hurtling towards him. Kaneki watched as the golden stinger travel towards his stomach and eventually bury itself deep inside his body, before eventually burrowing its way out clean through to the other side.

The artificially-made half ghoul couldn't say that the attack hurt him much, even though he could feel pain shooting throughout his body as the stinger ran clean through him. This happened to be the fifth or sixth time something like this has happened to him, so the feeling definitely wasn't anything foreign to him anymore.

Am I gaining a tolerance to getting impaled through the stomach? he asked himself with a small amount of amusement as the scorpion lifted him high up into the air and flung him somewhere off towards his right.

To say that his landing was less than graceful would be a major understatement.

The black-clad young man slammed into the ground and skidded along it like a rock skipping across the surface of a lake, stopping only when he slammed right into a nearby stone pillar that had been toppled over on its side at some point in time. Kaneki could feel blood pooling in his mouth as his body began to repair itself with what little RC cells he had left in him, feeling aforementioned cells go to work repairing his scrambled organs and ripped muscle tissue. It wasn't the most pleasant feeling in the world, but it was definitely better than the feeling he was forced to experience before it.

Knowing that he couldn't let the scorpion Grimm think he was dead and leave him alone, the half ghoul pushed himself up off the ground. His legs were unsteady underneath him and he couldn't even stand up straight without swaying back and forth in place, but he was standing and the hole in his stomach was more-or-less gone.

One of his black-tipped hands found its way up to the zipper of his mask - the one that separated the upper and lower jaw of his toothy mask's gum-less grin - and unzipped it, revealing his actual mouth underneath. A large shadow overcoming him as he spat out the blood in his mouth, knowing exactly what it was, he prepared himself to begin the next part of his plan.

Glancing up towards where the shadow was coming from with his one visible eye, Kaneki saw the scorpion once again widening its claws a couple of meters away from him, but long before it could even think about striking at his person, he pushed his kagune up to the surface.

Normally, his kagune would simply slide out from the small of his back with little to no effort, but this time was different for some reason or the other. No, this time the natural predatory organ erupted from the small of his back with so much force that it caused him buck his hips forwards. It didn't take a lot of time for him to realize it happened.

There were exactly, eight tentacles coming from his back and when he first began his life as a half-ghoul, Kaneki could only ever manage to bring three of his kagune out to the surface at a time. That number turned into four after his time with Yamori and during the raid on Dr. Kanou's lab, he managed to get six to come out. Having eight was a rather new experience for him, but then again, the first time he ever used eight was less than a day ago during his fight with Arima, so it made sense that his body was still trying to adjust to having all of them come out at once.

Another thing that he noticed was off with his kagune, other than the number of them, was its color. The scaly tentacles no longer shone their usual deep crimson color. No, they were now jet black in appearance.

The snowy-haired half ghoul, of course, thought that sudden change in appearance was strange, but he pushed the thought out of his mind, knowing that he couldn't allow it to occupy space there, since there was still a giant scorpion leering over him.

Knowing that it was going to take the scorpion a second to figure out what was going on, the moment his kagune was completely out of his body, the artificially-made half ghoul sent all eight tentacles towards the one part of the Grimm's body that wasn't covered with that bone-white material.

Its eyes. He stabbed them into its eyes.

A small smile crept its way onto his lips the moment they punched clean through eight of its ten eyes, leaving only the smallest pair of eyes in the middle unharmed.

"You know, I once read that despite having more than one pair of the eyes, scorpions have really bad eyesight..." Kaneki began as his head lolled forward, making it so that his face was hidden behind his snow-white bangs, "... why don't we see what happens when we take some of those eyes out of the equation?" A broken laugh escaped from his mouth as he asked, "Would that be okay with you?"

Once all eight tentacles were out of their respective eye, the black-clad young man once again cracked his index finger under his thumb and looked straight into the scorpion's two remaining eyes with his one visible one, and at that exact moment his kakugan took it over and caused said eye to change in appearance completely.

The eye's sclera turned jet-black and it pupil shone a brilliant crimson.

Kaneki didn't know if the creatures of Grimm possessed emotions, but if they did, he was certain that the scorpion would be feeling something akin to fear at this exact moment. At the sight of it, a morbid chuckle escaped from his mouth while that small smile from earlier became a full-blown grin that spanned ear-to-ear.

Tilting his head to the side as he added in a tone filled with amusement, "Sorry, no pun intended there."

The gigantic scorpion let out a bloodcurdling shriek of either pain or anger as he said that, and immediately tried to grab him with its right claw. The artificially-made half ghoul scoffed in response and simply flipped over said claw, rotating in a counterclockwise fashion in mid-air. He made sure that his body was nearly parallel to the ground before he planted the four kagune on his left side into it, attempting to catch himself with them in mid-air.

His kagune bent as it bore all of the energy from the flip, bearing a distinct resemblance to a metal spring being bent in half as he slowed to a stop. And a lot like when one released said spring from their grip, he swung back in the opposite direction and slammed his four, remaining tentacles right into the joint holding the scorpion's claw to its body.

His kagune didn't cut clean through them. It did manage to get through the limb, but it didn't do so without encountering some resistance.

Kaneki found that it was a lot like trying to cut clean through concrete or glass. There was absolutely no way someone would be able to cut clean through either without a tool that was specifically meant for the task and if someone tried to, it would simply crumble apart into tiny pieces.

That was what happened to the claw of the scorpion-Grimm.

It cracked, gave way, shattered, and its blood shot out of it like a geyser. Watching it as it writhed in pain was definitely a grisly sight to behold. One that he thoroughly enjoyed.

The Grimm let out another shrill of pain as it tried to grab him with its claw yet again. Of course, using the one that wasn't completely destroyed, but unfortunately for it, the aim was a little off.

Instead of going for Kaneki's torso like last time, it went for his head, probably hoping that the attack would catch him off guard long enough for it latch onto his head and rip it off.

In all actuality, the snowy-haired half ghoul simply ducked underneath the attack and used his kagune to deliver a devastating uppercut to the joint connecting the claw to the rest of its body, shattering the appendage in a fashion similar to the one prior to it. But unlike last time, the attack's momentum carried him upwards instead of downward, and that's exactly the direction he went.

Jumping into the air after aforementioned uppercut, Kaneki extended all eight of his kagune to his sides and sent their razor sharp tips into the scorpion's exposed legs. The attack forming large enough holes in said legs that they actually went limp not soon afterwards and caused the creature to fall onto its underbelly with a loud thud.

The mask-wearing young man couldn't stop himself from smiling at the sight before him.

My, my... what a beautiful sight, Kaneki mused as he stared at the motionless form of the Grimm before him.

The way that its body was still moving up and down slightly told him that it was still alive, despite all of the punishment it had taken up to this point, but for some reason, he had the strangest feeling that wasn't going to last for very long.

Knowing that he needed to start before the Grimm bled out, the snowy-haired half ghoul positioned his kagune underneath the scorpion's body, hardened them and flipped himself backwards. The force created between the hardened RC cells of his kagune and the ground created enough energy to levy the creature's massive body up a few feet. More than enough room for him to shoot towards the gap, prop its motionless body up with his tentacles and start tearing at the scorpion's softer underbelly. Having to ignore the disgusting taste that was filling his mouth as he shoveled the Grimm's flesh into his mouth.

The young half ghoul continued to eat long after his hunger was satiated, only stopping when the Grimm finally disintegrated into the air around him, leaving him kneeling in an open field with the scorpion's blood covering from head to toe, his kagune disappearing with his meal.

For a while, Kaneki simply looked up at the cloud-covered sky with his mouth open slightly as yet another fit of madness subsided slowly inside of him. Eventually being shook from his stupor by something light and cold landing on his shoulder. He turned his head towards where it came from slowly, half-expecting to find a claw resting on his shoulder, but instead found absolutely nothing there.

Looks like it's raining, Kaneki thought to himself when he felt something cold and wet land onto the skin around his one exposed eye.

Little by little, more and more droplets fell from the sky. The rain becoming a full-blown downpour as he forced himself back up to his feet, the still wet blood from his battle washing off of him as he made his way towards the stone pedestal that he saw inside the temple earlier.

The golden object standing on said pedestal became clearer and clearer to him as he neared, but he didn't completely recognize what it was until he was standing directly in front of it.

It was a golden chess piece. A pawn to be exact.

Kaneki felt a bitter smile crawl onto his lips as he scoffed, thinking to himself, Hm, how fitting.

Just then, a loud series of howls erupted from the treeline behind him. In response, he glanced over his shoulder and found a group of what looked like ten beowolves emerging from the forest, and begin edging towards him warily.

They must have heard all that commotion and decided to follow, the black-clad young man mused to himself before pocketing the golden chess piece, allowing four of his kagune to slip out from the small of his back as he turned and approached the approaching Grimm. Hm, what a bother...

As he approached the beings who probably came to try and rip him to shreds, he noticed something that was drilled into the side of a nearby tree.

A camera, the half ghoul noted to himself as he used on his kagune to impale a beowolf that tried to pounce on him, flinging it off of it not a second later. It's probably one of the ones Ozpin told him about last night. Another crack escaped from his finger as he snapped it with his thumb.

Hm, I wonder what the others think about all of this? He asked himself as the tips of two of his kagune met with the flesh of two more beowolves. No, never mind, that's pretty obvious, a troubled smirk crept onto his lips as he mentally added, I wonder how Ozpin plans to explain this entire situation to them? This was his plan after all...

-Chapter End-

I really don't have anything other to say. Just leave me alone. I posted this late and I'm tired. Leave me alone...