Hey guys and welcome to the fifth installment of TG: Remnant, which is now my most highly favored fic ever. Something that I have to thank you guys for because this is honestly the story I've had the most fun writing ever and to see it prospering just makes my heart melt.
Well, sappy stuff aside, this chapter is coming out a couple days later than the two month deadline I had set, but I got it done so I guess it's fine, right?
It's also twelve thirteen-thousand words long and that's a plus, right?
Well, I got nothing more to say, other than I hid some tarot card/number symbolism in this chapter, so first one who finds it gets a virtual cookie or something.
So I guess I'll get this mother started, you know after this mandatory disclaimer.
-Mandatory Disclaimer-
I don't own either Tokyo Ghoul or RWBY.
-Chapter 5: Newfound Nostalgia-
"What do you think the headmaster wants with us?" Ruby asked her teammates as the five of them entered the elevator that served as the only entrance into Ozpin's office together, her tone being one of primarily curiosity with the smallest dash of worry mixed into it, "And I wonder why he wanted us to pack enough clothes to last us a week."
"I think that should be pretty obvious," Weiss answered in a slightly annoyed tone as she put her white suitcase down onto the metal floor of the elevator and then crossed her arms over chest, "He probably wants to send us somewhere for a week."
"Even I can piece together that much Weiss," the young team leader deadpanned, "I'm wondering why he wants to send us somewhere for a week."
"Oh, maybe he's rewarding us and giving us a week off for a vacation!" Yang exclaimed happily, but it was clear from the tone she was using that she was saying this as a joke, "I knew that all of our hard work making short-stuff a respectable member of Beacon Academy would pay off for us eventually."
"For some reason, I can't help doubting that," Blake told her partner before letting out a tired sigh, a wry, contradictory smile crawling onto her lips as she turned her attention onto her team leader, "But if I had to take a guess, I think that it would probably be safe to assume that he wants to send us on some kind of mission, given how distressed he was when he told us to meet with him."
"I guess that makes sense," replied the red-clad fifteen year old with a small nod of her head before turning her head towards the only member of her team to not voice his opinion on the matter, who had a troubled expression plastered all over his pale features as he stared at the metal doors of the elevator through narrowed gray eyes, "What do you think, Kaneki?"
"I think that whatever he wants with us, it has to be pretty urgent," the white-haired ghoul in question stated with absolutely no emotion present in his voice other than a small hint of suspicion, which was so small that it was barely noticeable to the other occupants of the elevator, "He wouldn't have came all the way to the dorms to tell us if it wasn't."
"Y-yeah," she stated, stuttering a tiny bit as she was taken a little off-guard by the sudden appearance of 'Serious Kaneki', which was the name she had given to the entity that occasionally replaced the Kaneki she had grown used to seeing on an everyday basis, who she had dubbed as 'Normal Kaneki'.
It was something that she had noticed during the time she spent with him over the past couple of weeks and to make a long story short, it was something that unnerved her greatly.
'Seriously, how can someone switch in between two completely different personalities so easily?' the young squad leader asked herself as she subconsciously dawned a troubled expression of her own and began to mull through her head in hopes of finding an answer to that question, but was forced to stop when she felt the once rising elevator slowly bring itself to a stop through the soles of her feet.
"Well, whatever Ozpin wants with us, we're about to find out," Blake stated as she moved to exit the elevator with her suitcase in tow.
Without saying a word, the other four members of team RWBY did the same as the bow-wearing teen and all walked into Ozpin's office to find the owner of the office, who was staring out the window that was located behind his back with arms crossed behind his back.
"Good, you're here," the headmaster said as he turned to face the five of them before glancing down at the suitcases they were all carrying, "And I'm assuming those carry the clothes I told you pack, right?"
"Yeah, I checked and everyone should have enough clothes to last us a week," Ruby replied, using an uncharacteristic business-like tone before reverting back into a sheepish tone as she added, "Well, everyone other than Kaneki, he didn't have enough clothes in his closet to last a week unfortunately."
The silver-haired headmaster gave a brief of acknowledgement at her statement, which prompted the red-clad squad leader to ask the question that was probing the mind of everyone in the room.
"So what exactly did you want to see us about, Professor Ozpin?"
The five students of Beacon Academy stared at their headmaster, who closed his eyes and took in a deep breath before re-opening them and opening his mouth to explain the situation.
"As most of you already know," Ozpin began, obviously referring to everyone other than Kaneki when he said 'most of you', "Not every one of Vale's citizens choose to live inside of its walls."
"There are a few who dislike the idea of being confined inside the walls and decide to live outside them," he continued as he stepped out from behind his desk and in front of the five students, "We call the places where a majority of them congregate 'settlements' and as of yesterday, we've lost all forms of contacts with one of those settlements."
Having not expected that last chain of words to come out of his mouth, the five members of team RWBY widened their eyes in shock at their headmaster's words, but Ozpin continued on with the explanation before any of them could question him about what they meant, "Normally, an incident like this wouldn't worry me too much since we have lost contact with settlements before in the past, but I have reason to believe that this is different from the others."
"Really, what makes you say that?" Ruby asked, basically repeating the question that was swimming through the rest of her teammates' heads.
"Well, first off, we've been receiving reports from them over the past couple of weeks detailing increased grimm activity in the area," Ozpin answered solemnly, "None of them were large enough to warrant any concern, but they were large enough to be worth reporting and if couple in the fact that the last of these reports just happened to come through an hour before we lost contact with the settlement, I don't think it would be too much of a stretch to assume that the grimm had something to do with sudden cut off."
"But other than that, I don't have much more evidence to prove that something is wrong," he added, sounding frustrated for reasons unknown to the five students, "Or at least, not enough evidence to justify spending taxpayer money on sending out a group of professional hunters out to investigate."
"So I suppose that means you want to send us out to that settlement instead, right?" Kaneki interjected, basically summarizing the all of the information he had gotten out of Ozpin's explanation.
"On a fundamental level, yes," the headmaster stated with a slight nod of his head to confirm his student's words, "That's exactly what I mean to do with the five of you."
"And is it safe to assume that we're going to be staying at this settlement for more than a single night?" the white-haired teen asked only to receive another nod in response, prompting him to ask another question that was running through his head, "Why is that exactly?"
"Simple, even if the grimm didn't cause the communication blackout, I want to make sure that they don't cause any more problems for the people living at the settlement."
"So basically…" the white-haired ghoul trailed off, taking a moment to crack his right index finger before he continued speaking, "... you want us to pull out some weeds?"
"Saying it like that makes it sound a little morbid, but yes, that's essentially what I want you five to do," Ozpin replied with yet another nod of his head before shifting the topic of the conversation completely, "And before any of you ask, yes, I do have permission to send the five of you."
Having been wondering about that herself, Weiss had opened her mouth to ask, but stopped the words from coming out and closed her mouth when she noticed Ozpin address the issue before she even said anything.
"Wait, that doesn't make sense," Blake spoke up suddenly, prompting everyone's attention to shift onto the bow-wearing teen, who proceeded to ask, "Why would the same people who struck down the idea of sending a professional hunter to deal with the problem, be in favor of sending a group of hunters-in-training who've only ever been on one other mission before in the past instead?"
"The answer to that question is also rather simple," Ozpin began to explain, "Employing professionals would cost the government money, money that understandably can't just be thrown around dealing with one man's assumptions."
"So to remedy that issue, I proposed that we send a group of student-hunters, since it would both cost less money since we don't have to pay students and give the selected students valuable experience they could use later on in their careers," he added, his tone matter-of-fact in nature.
"But why us over one of the teams made up of upperclassmen?" Blake continued to question, "I'm sure that they have much more experience dealing with these sorts of things than we do, so it doesn't make sense to me as to why you would want to send a team of first-years instead."
"You're right, it probably would be a smarter move to send a group with more experience," he affirmed, "But unfortunately, I need the upperclassmen teams here just in case if something much more dangerous, and most importantly, something much more than a mere assumption of mine comes up."
Seemingly satisfied by the answer given to her, Blake nodded at her silver-haired headmaster to indicate that she had no more questions that needed to be answered, which prompted him to ask one final question, "Do the rest of you have anymore questions you want to ask me?"
There was a brief stint of silence between the students and the headmaster where the five members of team RWBY looked at each other to see if any of them had something they wanted to ask, but they all shook their heads in unison when they saw that none of them made were going to do so.
"Good, now head down to the hangar, there should be a bullhead waiting for the five of you there," he informed the five of them sternly, "Once you're halfway to the settlement, I'll get in contact and brief you on the rest of the situation."
"Understood, you can count on us, Professor!" Weiss exclaimed as she gave her headmaster a perfectly performed salute, surprising her teammates with just how excited she sounded.
She suddenly turned on a heel and started walking back towards the elevator that had taken them up to the office to begin with. Her teammates, who were still rather shocked by what they had just witnessed, simply watched as she pressed the down button on the console next to the elevator's doors and began waiting patiently for them to open.
"I guess we should follow her, huh?" Ruby stated as she was the first one to break out of her stupor, letting out an awkward chuckle before bounding off towards her white-haired partner.
This prompted her older half-sister to smile cheerily and exclaim as she followed after her, "Alright, let's get this party started!"
Being by far the most skeptical two of the group, Blake and Kaneki glanced over at one another and shot the other a questioning look before they both shrugged and followed after their teammates, who were already starting to pile back into the metal box that would take them back down to ground level.
Ozpin watched the five members of team RWBY disappear behind the closing metal doors of the elevator with his usual stoic expression before calling out to the figure who had been watching the entire exchange unfold, "You can come out now, Ms. Goodwitch."
His blonde-haired subordinate did as she was told and leapt down from her position up in the rafters of the clocktower. She landed in front of him silently with a clearly troubled expression spread across her sharp features as she turned to face him.
Having been around the woman long enough to know that she wasn't going to say something without his consent, he gave her a small wave of his hand as if to tell her that there was no reason to hold her tongue on the matter.
Knowing exactly what this gesture meant, she immediately proceeded to speak her concerns, "Are you sure that they're ready for a mission of this magnitude?"
"Whatever do you mean?" the headmaster asked, raising a skeptical brow as he feigned ignorance, "This is nothing more than a simple extermination of grimm, I'm sure that even a team with their experience can handle as much."
The veteran huntress simply rolled her at him and retorted, "You and I both know that the people who live at that settlement you're sending them to don't need a group of hunters to help them if it was only grimm, especially with their defenses."
"So until you explain what exactly possessed you to go through the trouble of getting to permission to send them to that settlement," she continued, crossing her arms over her chest before adding, "I have to assume that there must be something much bigger going on that I don't know about."
"Well, truth be told, even I'm not sure what's exactly on the horizon for team RWBY," he explained in his usual emotionless tone, "But I do have an idea as to what might happen and if I'm correct, it's going to be the biggest challenge of their short careers and that's exactly what I'm hoping for."
"Why exactly?" the middle-aged huntress inquired, "As a fellow educator, I can somewhat understand you wanting to challenge your students, but don't you think it's a little too soon to expect them to deal with something of that magnitude?"
"Even without Mr. Kaneki's sudden inclusion, they've only been a team for a couple of months," she followed, a hint of concern leaking into her voice as she spoke, "Do you seriously expect them to-"
"You misunderstand my intentions Ms. Goodwitch," Ozpin cut in, prompting his subordinate to cease all speech immediately.
"You were required to attend weapon crafting class back when you were still in academy, were you not?" he questioned, a question to which she nodded to in response, "Do you remember what they told us about how a blacksmith hardens the metal they put in their weapons?"
"No, admittedly I don't remember much from weapon crafting class all those years ago," she answered before going into an explanation as to why she had forgotten, "Since my weapons don't need such maintenance to keep in pristine condition, I haven't found much need for the information taught to me in that class so I simply forgot it over time."
"Don't worry, even I don't remember every lesson that was taught to me during my academy days," the middle-aged hunter replied reassuringly, "But that's straying from the point I was trying to make."
"And that point being that a blacksmith hardens metal by first dousing it in flames, which is exactly what I'm trying to do with team RWBY," he explained, "I feel as though the relationships they have with one another will strengthen by putting them into a position where they will be challenged more than they ever have been in the past."
"That still doesn't answer my question though," she pointed out, "Why exactly are you going through the trouble of all that when you could receive the same result by having them grow at a similar pace as the other teams?"
"To put it bluntly, I'm afraid of what might happen to Mr. Kaneki in the future," he answered bluntly, "The situation he's currently in is an extremely volatile one and I feel as though it's only a matter of time before we reach our first bump in the road."
He stopped to take in a breath before continuing, "So you could say that my attempt at strengthening the bonds between team RWBY is a precaution to make sure that someone other than myself has his back when we do reach that first bump."
That answer didn't seem to sit very well with Goodwitch, but if she did have any protests she didn't make the known to him and simply gave a reluctant nod in response before turning towards the elevator to make her leave.
"Man, I can't wait to get this mission started!" Yang exclaimed, clearly excited as she paced around the interior of the Bullhead that was carrying them to their destination, "It's been so long since we've had actual action that the moment we land, I just want to run out into the forest and start punching anything with a face!"
"While I can't agree with the last part of what you said," Weiss chimed in suddenly, "I have to admit that I'm also rather excited about finally going on an actual mission."
"I mean, think about it, we're the first team of our year to be sent on a mission without being accompanied by a professional hunter," she continued as her usual stern tone gave way to genuine excitement, "If we do this right, we'd easily be considered the top team of our class."
Ruby let out an awkward chuckle at her teammates' reasonings for being so excited before giving one of her own, "I'm really just excited that I get to go a week without having to go through one of Professor Port's boring lectures."
"Yeah, I understand how you feel," Yang nodded as she groaned loudly, "Seriously, how is it even possible for someone to make a class about fighting boring?"
As three of the five members of team RWBY stood in the center of the bullhead's cargo hold chatting away excitedly about what the mission they were being sent on entailed, the remaining two members were off to the side of the cargo hold sitting down right in front of the side door of the bullhead together in complete silence.
One watching his teammates as they conversed. The other silently reading one of the numerous books she had brought for the trip.
"Well, they're rather excited," Kaneki stated offhandedly, hoping that it would be enough to spark a conversation between him and the dark-haired girl sitting on the floor next to him, who had spent the majority of the nearly hour long flight reading.
Normally, he wouldn't have bat an eye at the this kind of behaviour since he had seen her do the same thing almost everyday he had known her, but he could tell that there was something was different by the way her eyes kept retracing the lines of text on the page she was reading.
"Yeah, that should be expected considering this is our first real mission together as a team," Blake replied without looking up from her book, her tone still as dry as it usually was.
"You don't sound very excited about it," he began, taking a short glance her way before returning his gaze back onto his three conversing teammates and finished his train of thought, "Something about the mission not sitting quite right with you?"
"So you noticed, huh?" she asked him before she let out a sigh and placed the book she was reading page-down onto her lap so she could face him.
"Well, it was pretty obvious when I noticed that you hadn't turned a single page in your book for over a half an hour," he explained, flashing her a wry smirk of amusement before asking the question that had been plaguing his mind since he first noticed her uneasiness, "So, what's got you so worried?"
"To put it bluntly, there's a chance, albeit a very slim one, that the settlement were going to was overrun by the grimm and I just can't help thinking that we're going to be walking into a slaughter," she explained to him in a solemn tone.
He was half-tempted to say something to reassure her that nothing was wrong and that everyone in the settlement was alive, but ultimately thought better of it, knowing that it wouldn't do her any good in the long run.
Like it or not, the four girls were going to become professional hunters at some point and they needed to be able to think such things without being too greatly affected by it. He didn't want them to become emotionless robots like himself, but he also didn't want them making decisions based solely on what they felt, which meant that he couldn't say anything to reassure her about the settlement's safety.
"Well, that's true, but remember we only found out about this an hour ago," he stated in an equally solemn tone, "So if what you're saying is true and the entire village is indeed destroyed, just take solace in the fact that you really couldn't have done anything to help them to begin with."
"That's awfully reassuring," she replied, her tone ripe with sarcasm.
The white-haired ghoul let out a scoff and countered, "Hey, I'm an emotionless robot whose only food sources are other people and grimm, what exactly did you expect me to say?"
"Just that," the bow-wearing teen replied with a slight smile beginning to grow on the corner of her lips, "But truth be told, that's one of the things that I like about you, Kaneki."
"You're honest and you always say what's on your mind," she continued, using the same dry tone that he once had trouble deciphering, but now had a decent enough read on to tell that she was being both serious and joking when she spoke, "Even if it makes everyone around you uncomfortable."
He let out a quiet, mirth-filled laugh at that and stated, "I don't know about the honest part, the part about me making everyone uncomfortable sounds pretty accurate though."
The statement elicited a soft giggle from the girl and caused that smile of hers to grow a fraction bigger, which effectively destroyed the tense atmosphere that their conversation had created around them and in turn caused a rather peaceful atmosphere to slowly envelope the two of them in its place.
Neither of them spoke after that. They just remained completely silent and basked in the serenity that had surrounded them just like they did on the day after Kaneki first arrived in Remnant, which didn't surprise either of them because it had happened to them so many times in the past couple of weeks that it could be classified as a common occurrence for them.
Hell, they probably spent more time sitting next to each other in silence than they did actually talking to one another, which probably could've been considered a negative thing by people who didn't quite understand what the silence between the two of them entailed.
Their form of silence wasn't the same kind that had become associated with dysfunctional relationships by modern day society. It was the kind of silence that could only be achieved when two people really enjoyed one another's presence, which probably came to the surprise of no one considering the fact that they had so many things in common.
For example, they both shared a rapid love for all forms of literature and that would show when the two of them spent hours discussing the central themes and their overall opinions of the books they were reading, which so happened to be one of the few situations where they would actively talk to the other in length. These discussions also happened frequently enough that other people began to call them a book club of two, but that was beyond the point.
The point being that they shared so many common interests that it only made sense that they would be able to learn to enjoy each other's presence despite the lack of communication.
"Attention Team RWBY, this is your pilot speaking," said the pilot of the bullhead through the intercom suddenly, drawing the attention of said hunters-in-training towards the doorway that lead to the cockpit of their flying vessel.
"We are approximately thirty miles out from our target and will be reaching it within ten minutes, I advise that the five of you begin…" the pilot trailed off suddenly, which caused a spike of concern to run through the five teens, but that concern immediately turned into shock when they heard him scream on the top of his lungs, "INCOMING, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
But before any of them could react to the pilot's warning, something slammed right into the side door the two bookworms of team RWBY were sitting in front of, causing a large enough explosion that it actually ripped a large hole in the metal door.
Having been sitting directly in front of the door while it was being hit, Blake and Kaneki were the ones to take the brunt of the explosion and were sent sprawling down onto the floor as a result.
Still reeling from the momentum of the hit the bullhead had suffered, the pilot tried desperately to regain control of the now rightward-tilting airship by pulling the controls hard to the left, causing it to tilt hard in the same direction.
Ruby, Weiss, and Yang were knocked off balance by the sudden shift in the floor's angle, but they were able to regain their balance almost immediately since they had all been standing when it had happened.
Unfortunately for Blake and Kaneki, who had both been knocked down onto the floor by the explosion, began sliding towards the newly-made hole in the bullhead's door.
Reflexively knowing that he would only have seconds before he would slide out of the airship, Kaneki released one of his kagune and stabbed it into the floor to stop what might've turned into a rather painful experience for him. But as soon as he himself stopped, he caught a glimpse of Blake sliding out the hole and grabbing onto the edge of the bullhead from out of the corner of his eye.
His protective nature flared as he saw this and before he could even think about what he was doing, he removed his kagune from the floor and used it to pull himself towards the hole by stabbing it into the portion of wall that was directly above hole in the door, shaping the tip into a hook as it punched through to the other side of the wall and retracting the predatory organ back into his body.
The resulting momentum sent him flying halfway out of the airship just in time to see Blake's fingers lose the last of their grip and begin plummeting towards the forest floor several feet below them. He reached for her arm as she fell and came away just fingertips from grabbing it, but he was unfortunately unable to reach it in time and she began to fall.
'Dammit!' he cursed to himself as he sent himself completely over the edge after her with his kagune still hooked into the wall.
Now plummeting face first towards the ground in pursuit of an also falling Blake, the white-haired ghoul straightened his entire body into a line to decrease the drag on his body and in turn increase the speed he was falling at, which had caused the distance in between them to decrease drastically in a matter of only seconds.
'A little bit closer...' he thought to himself as he began to reach out for the falling form of his teammate with his right arm.
Fairly confident that he would be able to reach her before he ran out of RC cells to feed into his kagune, he angled his arm so that it would eventually go past her and when it did, he wrapped it around the upper part of her body and pulled her close to his own.
"KANEKI?!" he could just barely hear her yell out in shock as he wrapped his other arm around the small of her back to make sure that he had a firm and equal grip of her for what he was going to do next.
Knowing that it would be difficult for her to hear with all of the air rushing past them, Kaneki screamed his next words out as loud as he could, "HOLD ON!"
She did as he told her and wrapped her arms around her, which prompted him to harden the RC cells in his kagune to stop their freefall, but the pitch black predatory organ snapped the moment their weight started to pull against it.
'Well, that didn't work,' he deadpanned to himself mentally as he put his plan B into action, 'Probably shouldn't have relied on just one anyways.'
Knowing that he would have to do what he was going to do quickly with the canopy fastly approaching, he turned himself in midair so that his back was facing the ground and released all eight of his kagune the moment he felt leaves start to brush against his back, sending them shooting out as far in every direction as he could in hopes of catching the trunks of a few trees to help slow their fall.
Fortunately, six of his eight kagune actually did manage to hit a couple of trees and took off a portion of their total momentum, but they too snapped after a second of being forced to endure the stress of catching the energy their fall had created.
'Okay, that should've slowed us down enough to where the impact won't be fatal,' the artificial ghoul thought to himself as he braced for said impact, 'But it's definitely still going to-'
He would've finished that train of thought, but a wave of intense pain that felt like the entirety of his back had been smothered with rubbing alcohol and then set ablaze forced him to stop. That feeling then spread to the rest of his body when he became almost hyper aware of the bones the impact had broken. Hell, he could even feel that a few of them had managed to lodge themselves into his internal organs somehow.
The pain then continued to spread to the back of his head, which had whipped back into something hard the moment he had impacted. However, the pain that he was feeling now wasn't the same pain he had felt earlier.
This pain was quick and only lasted for a second before it disappeared completely, something he attributed to the fact that he had lost all consciousness the moment that second had ended, but before he faded in unconsciousness.
He could've swore he heard an unfamiliar voice say something along the lines of, "Sorry about this."
At first, the only thing Blake could feel was an uneven hard surface underneath her, which initially lead her to believe that she was lying on a pile of rocks. That assumption was immediately disproved however, when she noticed that whatever she lying on was moving up and down ever so slightly.
'Oh, that's right, I fell out of the bullhead and Kaneki tried to save me,' she recollected as she opened her eyes to find that she was indeed lying directly on top of her eyepatch-wearing teammate with her head placed directly in the center of his chest.
She lifted her head up off said teammate's chest and looked down at him and immediately frowned at what she saw.
There lying underneath her in a small crater that had probably been created by their impact was one completely unconscious Ken Kaneki and from what she could see, he didn't seem to be injured at all, but that didn't say much about his actual condition since she had seen him regenerate from getting impaled clean through the stomach before.
Knowing that he probably wasn't going anywhere any time soon, the bow-wearing teen pushed herself up off of him and looked around to get a gauge of their current surroundings.
She was currently standing in the middle of a forest that was absolutely thick with trees, so thick that almost no sunlight broke through the leafy canopy above them at all. But right when she was about to cast her senses out to get a better sense of the danger in the area around her, a soft vibrating feeling coming from one of her pockets caught her attention.
Already knowing that it was one of her teammates contacting her through her scroll, she reached into said pocket and found that it was indeed one of her teammates, or to be more specific Ruby, calling her. She accepted the call and the thin metal bar extended out to reveal an even thinner screen that displayed Ruby's concerned expression.
"Blake!" her team leader exclaimed the moment she popped up on screen, "Oh thank goodness, you're okay."
"Yeah, I'm pretty much okay," Blake replied in her usual dry tone, letting out a soft sigh before she continued speaking, "Though, I don't think I can say the same for Kaneki."
"Don't worry, he's alive," she added when she noticed Ruby's expression turn concerned, "But I don't think he's going to be going anywhere any time soon in his condition."
"Why, w-what exactly happened to him?" the young teen asked, her expression of concern softening, but was still definitely present.
The bow-wearing teen angled her scroll's camera towards Kaneki's unconscious form and explained, "He used his body to shield me from the impact of the fall and probably got knocked as a result."
"Oh, then what do you want to do now?" Ruby asked, "We can turn back to come get you guys if you want."
"No, you shouldn't waste the time, especially when there are a good amount of people that could be in danger as of right now," Blake answered.
"For now, you three should go on ahead to the settlement and I'll just wait here for Kaneki to wake up," she continued to explain, "I'll be sure to get in contact when he does and we can proceed from there."
"Got it," the teenage team leader began with an apprehensive nod of affirmation, "Be careful out there."
With that, Ruby's pale face disappeared from the screen, which prompted Blake to deactivate the device and put it back inside her pocket. She then turned her gaze back onto her unconscious ghoul teammate and found that a small frown had crawled onto his face at some point during her conversation with Ruby.
'A nightmare maybe?' she asked herself as she stared at her teammate's unconscious form, but her attention was stolen away when she noticed a faint rustling sound coming from the surrounding treeline.
Since she already knew that there were grimm in the area, the sound put the bow-wearing teen on edge and prompted her to reach for Gambol Shroud, which had been hanging from a magnetic sheet of metal on her back the entire time.
Normally, she would've began moving into a position where she could ambush whatever was watching them from the trees, but she refrained from doing so since she knew that it would put Kaneki in danger unnecessarily.
'He just had to jump out of the bullhead after me, didn't he?' she grumbled to herself mentally as her amber eyes scanned the brush for any sign of movement, finding her teammate's actions to be extremely unnecessary since she had already come up with an idea to slow her fall long before he had grabbed her in midair.
She appreciated the sentiment behind the act, but it really ended up just causing her more problems than it solved. Her fighting style didn't necessarily require her to be alone for it to be effective, but she highly doubted that having to keep Kaneki's safety in account throughout an entire fight would be helping its efficiency much either.
Her concern over the fact didn't mean that she wasn't confident in her ability to actually do so however. Truth be told, she thought it to be nothing more than a slight complication, but she would be lying if she said that it wouldn't affect how she dealt with whatever was watching them at all.
For example, she would have to make sure that it got nowhere near Kaneki, which meant that she would have to limit the area the fight took place in to everywhere around the crater he was lying in. That in itself didn't seem too hard of an act at first glance, but controlling the movement of an opponent was actually a much harder task than most people thought.
More often than not, one would need to be superior to their opponent in terms of skill and intelligence to openly control their movements. She was thankful that whatever was watching her out in the brush was a grimm because it was astronomically easier to best a grimm in those terms than it was an actual person.
Almost as if it was acting on que, whatever was watching her crawled out of its hiding place in the brush and Blake found herself to be less than impressed by what she found. To put it bluntly, it was just another beowolf.
She says this because there was nothing remarkably noteworthy about it. It looked to be of average size and weight, and it didn't even seem to have any scars that would indicate that it had gone through and survived countless battles in the past, but complaining about its mundanity was the last thing on her mind.
What was on her mind was the fact that she couldn't underestimate the creature despite how normal it looked, knowing that even a massive well-trained and well-equipped army could be defeated by a small force of guerilla fighters if they were not taking the fight seriously.
The Battle of Fort Castle was proof enough of that fact. And so, instead of relaxing from the sight of the unremarkable grimm, she felt herself tense up even more as she drew gambol shroud from its magnetic sheath and pointed it towards the beowolf with both hands grasped around its hilt.
The beowolf let out a guttural growl at her as its shoulders bounced up and down in anticipation for their coming clash. Blake simply stared back at it, completely unfazed by the grimm's attempt at intimidation.
Five seconds passed and neither of them moved, but their staredown was broken when the beowolf had gotten impatient and charged at her with reckless abandon on all fours. She remained completely still as it bounded towards her, not even reacting when it pounced at her with its claws bare.
It slashed at her, but instead of making contact with her flesh like it had expected, it found that its claws passed clean through her almost as if she was made completely out of air. And before it could even comprehend that she had moved out of the way at the last second and what it had hit was just one of her shadow clones, she was already standing behind it and slashing the back of its knees out from under it with gambol shroud with a single strike.
Not wanting it to even have the time to let out a yelp in pain, she raised her blade up intending to cleave the beowolf's head clean off, but stopped herself when she heard a low grumbling noise coming from the crater Kaneki was lying in and opted to force it into a supine position with a kick dead center to its back.
'I can't believe I'm doing this…' she thought to herself, shaking her head in disbelief as she began to unwind the black ribbon that was tied around her right forearm.
Hunger. That was the first thing Kaneki felt when his consciousness returned to him.
The hunger. Oh, the hunger.
It was gnawing away at him, almost like it was a centipede crawling through his head.
Food… he needed food...
Any food at all would do. He didn't need it to taste good, he just needed it to be food so he could sate this feeling of dread that was gnawing away at his insides.
If he was hungry, he wouldn't have the energy to fight and if he didn't have the energy to fight, he wouldn't be able to protect the people he cared about and if he couldn't protect the people he cared about, there was a chance they could be hurt.
'Need to get up…' he thought to himself as he rolled himself onto his stomach, 'Need to find food…'
He placed the palms of his hands on the dirt ground under him and began to push against it. His arms gave out from under him momentarily when a surge of pain ran through him as he tried to do so, but he was able to catch himself before his face met the dirt once again, a strangled laugh escaping from his lips in response to the pain.
'One needs strength to protect…' he reminded himself as he pushed himself up onto his feet, stumbling forwards momentarily when they too almost gave way under his weight, '... and the body needs food to produce that strength so…'
The artificial ghoul could feel his lips morph into a wide toothy smile as his next words slipped out of his mouth in an almost sing-song type tone, "Where, oh where, can I find some food?"
In hopes of finding a scent trail that would lead him towards food, he took a deep breath in through his nostrils and almost immediately picked up on something that smelled extremely familiar to him. He turned his head towards it and found something that made his already wide smile grow even wider somehow.
There, he found the food he was searching for, wrapped up in a little black bow. The sight made another bout of strangled laughter to emerge from his mouth as he placed his thumb over his index finger and pressed down on it, causing a crack through the air.
'Note to self, make sure Kaneki is well-fed at all times,' Blake thought to herself as she watched the white-haired young man in question tear through the body of the beowolf she had tied up to a tree for him to eat like a man who hadn't eaten something in days, a small frown forming on her features as she did so.
It upset her to think that the man she was watching eat a beowolf alive was the same person who had just taken the brunt of a several story fall to protect her were the same people. A part of her wondered if her companion was suffering from some form of multiple personality disorder due to the fact that the two sides were so different.
One was made up of an overall serious young man who at times could be benevolent to the point of being completely adorable, a quality that was only amplified by his still somewhat baby-faced appearance and the sheepish smile that would pop up from time to time whenever he got embarrassed.
Then there was the other side of him, the side that, like that smile of his, would pop up from time to time. It appeared much less frequently, which was quite a big understatement given the fact that she had only ever seen it once, now twice, but what she saw differed so much from the ordinary that it couldn't help but etch itself into her mind.
His normally serious demeanor would become extremely flippant and wild. His benevolence would turn into blood thirst, and his small, endearing smile would become wide and crazed. It was almost as if that side of him was the living embodiment of some sort of insanity that he kept pushed down to the very bottom of his subconscious.
'Well, hopefully that isn't the case,' she thought to herself, knowing full well what that would've meant.
Just as she thought that, the bow-wearing teen noticed that the speed at which Kaneki was eating had begun to slow.
Taking this as a sign that he was coming close to reaching his limit, she emerged from her hiding place in a nearby cluster of bushes and waited for him to slow down to a stop. And when he did, she took note of the fact that the crazed expression he was wearing as he tore through his meal had completely disappeared, leaving the same emotionless shell of a face she had seen him wear after he ate that deathstalker all those weeks back in its wake.
"You looked like you enjoyed your meal," she told him in her usual dry tone, half-joking and half-serious.
"Well, looks can be deceiving," he replied in his usual emotionless tone as he stood up from his previous kneeling position, not taking his eyes off of the body of his meal as it disintegrated into nothing, "The thing tasted like the guts of a half-rotted fish, but all of the grimm taste that way so I'm kind of used to it by now."
She furrowed her brow in confusion and asked, "If they taste so bad then why bother eating them?"
"You prefer I eat the alternative then?" he countered as he lifted a pale, blood-covered hand up to his lips to wipe away a drop of black grimm blood that was running down his already blood-covered chin.
"No, but why do I feel like there's more to that answer than just that?"
"That's because there is," Kaneki began as he turned his head so that he was looking right at her, a small self-loathing smile forcing its way past his once emotionless exterior before he continued, "Power, I eat the grimm because their blood is supposed to make mine more powerful."
"The same rule applies with ghouls like myself," he added immediately after he finished his previous sentence, "Meat tastes just as bad though."
"But wait, wouldn't saying that imply that you've eaten other ghouls before?" she asked him through narrowed eyes, her voice having an intensity it didn't have earlier.
He let out a scoff at her words and answered with, "I'm not very proud of the fact, but yeah, I have, more times than I can remember actually."
"So you're basically just admitting to the fact that you're a cannibal?" Blake questioned, completely shocked that her teammate could say what he just said so lightly.
"I am half human too so I'm technically considered a cannibal no matter what I eat," he countered, a pang of guilt stabbing her heart when she realized the implications of what he had just said.
Ozpin hadn't told them much about Kaneki's past during the conversation they had about him after his initiation, but the headmaster did explain to them that he hadn't started out as a ghoul. That he was turned into a ghoul by some crazy doctor after some accident that wasn't ever elaborated upon.
She couldn't imagine what it would've felt like to wake up one day and learn that she needed to eat her own kind, the kind she spent her entire life up until that point living as, to survive. The thought alone reminded her of the setup to some tragedy novel.
"So I figured that if I was going to become a cannibal that I might as well eat the meat that made me stronger," he continued on before she could voice her opinion on the matter, his voice laced with what she could identify as bitter amusement as he cast his gaze down towards the ground, "Though looking back at it now, I'm starting to wonder if that was really the best course of action to take."
The bow-wearing teen felt the strong urge to ask about what he had meant by that well up inside her, but she decided that it was best to hold her tongue for the time being, especially since he was acting the way he was. He wasn't completely right of mind at the moment, she could tell by the way he was speaking.
The words that were coming out of his mouth were worrying to no end and the Kaneki she had gotten to know over the past couple of months would've never have said anything that would've made her or their teammates worry, and even if he did, he would've immediately waived those concerns off like nothing was wrong.
He was someone who would rather brush his problems off to the side so that he was the only one who had to deal with them. She didn't know if it was for his own sake or for theirs yet, but she did know that person wasn't the same one that was currently standing before her.
The Kaneki she was looking at was vulnerable, probably the most vulnerable he's ever been, and she wasn't one to take advantage of a friend when they were vulnerable. So for now, she would hold her tongue and wait for a better time to ask the question.
The dark-haired teen counted the seconds that passed as she waited for her teammate to break out of his reverie. The moment the number in her head reached six, Kaneki returned his attention back onto her and began to make his way over to her.
"Thanks for the food, by the way," he told her, flashing her a small, sad smile as he reached his right hand out towards her, prompting her to look down and find him holding the ribbon she used to tie up the beowolf in the palm of his open hand.
"It may not have seemed like much at the time, but I don't know what would've happened if I had stayed in that condition for too long," he once again continued on before she could respond, his voice laced with both uncertainty and concern, "But given my past track record, I might've even attacked you and trust me when I say that hurting you is one of the last things I ever want to do so… thank you."
'Guess, it was a little presumptuous of me to assume that he would recover that quickly,' she thought to herself as she processed the words he had just spoke to her, '"Trust me when I say that hurting you is one of the last things I ever want to do."'
Truthfully, Blake had never had those words uttered to her before in her entire life, but what she lacked in real life experience, she more than made up for with her experience in literature.
The phrase he had just said to her was a common one that she had seen authors use in different ways.
Sometimes, it was used by one character to reassure the other that they would've never hurt them to begin with. Other times, the phrase was used in an ironic sense, usually right when a character was about to hurt another. And every once in awhile, she would stumble across the author who only used the phrase to help strengthen whatever relationship the two characters that were involved had.
This time, however, felt like one of those times where a character was in a position where he could hurt another and was genuinely afraid of doing so. Something that even someone like her, who only knew the very basics of Kaneki's personality, could see him doing without much difficulty.
The sentiment behind those words managed to both touch and trouble her at the same time.
On one hand, it meant that he thought her as someone close enough to him that he feared hurting her, but it also meant that he lacked confidence in his ability to control himself whenever he entered that state.
Thankfully for her, whatever bloodlust his temporary bout of insanity created inside of him had been quelled by his most recent meal and he was almost back to acting like his usual self. The only thing that remained inconsistent was his mouth, which was currently spewing things it shouldn't have left and right.
'I should probably say something to-' she began, but that train of thought cut itself off when she felt something warm and oddly sticky wrap itself lightly around her right hand.
Her eyes immediately shot down towards said appendage and found that it had been enclosed upon by Kaneki's left hand, which was still smeared with the blood of the beowolf he had just devoured.
"What exactly do think you're doing?" the bow-wearing teen reflexively asked as she stared at the hand that was covering the back of hers, being somewhat surprised as to how his blood-covered fingers felt against her skin.
They were rough and heavily calloused, something that most people probably wouldn't have expected due to his rather bookish and soft-looking exterior. Then again, most people probably wouldn't have expected him to have the ability to sprout deadly tentacles from his back either and he could do that too so, it was probably safe to assume that she should never just assume anything with him.
She really didn't know what exactly she expected his hands to feel like, something that she attributed to the fact that she had never put too much thought into the idea to begin with, but for some reason she couldn't help but feel a little surprised by how they actually felt.
"Returning your ribbon," he deadpanned in response as he placed said ribbon into the hand he was holding onto, releasing it from his grip the moment he finished the task, "Why, what did you think I was doing?"
That statement prompted Blake to blink at her white-haired teammate and that prompted him to blink right back at her, silently wondering to herself as she did so, 'What exactly did I think he was doing?'
Before she could even start contemplating an answer to that question, her attention was drawn away by a loud ringing noise that was emanating from one of her pockets.
Recognizing it as the 'call incoming' tone of her scroll, she reached down into the pocket the ringing was coming from and pulled out the offending object for what was the second time in the past ten minutes to find that Ruby was calling her again.
'That's odd, I thought that I told her that I would call her,' she noted mentally as she accepted the call from her team leader, 'Knowing her, she's probably just worried-'
"Why, hello there," greeted an unfamiliar voice as an unfamiliar face popped up on her scroll's screen, causing her train of thought to grind to a screeching halt.
The voice and the appearance of the person staring back at her was unmistakably feminine in nature. She had long multi-colored hair that was shaded a light pink with white highlights on one half and a chocolate brown on the other, which were coincidentally the same two colors of her heterochromatic eyes.
From what she could tell off first glance alone, she looked to be a couple of years older than her. Blake guessed somewhere around Kaneki's age, which would be somewhere around her late teens and early twenties.
"Ah, you must be one of the ones who fell out of that bullhead I had my men shoot earlier," the woman began with a cordial tone that completely betrayed the nature of the words she was speaking, which prompted the bow-wearing teen to narrow her amber eyes at the woman suspiciously, "Tell me, what happened to the other one who fell out? Nothing bad, I hope."
"Who-" Blake began to ask, but the woman cut her off before she could finish her question.
"Who am I? What did I do with the girl this scroll belonged to?" the unknown woman asked in a way that came across as mocking despite the fact that she was still speaking cordially, "You were going to ask me those questions, right?"
"Couldn't come up with something more original, huh?" she added, her tone gaining a small amount of disappointment to it, something that irritated Blake to no end, "Well, whatever, it's not like originality matters much in the end, so I guess I'll let you slide just this once."
The dark-haired girl simply frowned at the tri-color haired woman in response, prompting said woman to state, "Oh, would you please stop pouting, I was only kidding around y'know."
"You're teammates are completely fine," she continued on in her faux-cordial tone, "Well, at the very least, they were the last I checked. That might've changed though."
"What did you do to them?" Blake asked through clenched teeth as she fought the down the urge to snap at the woman, knowing that was the reaction she wanted.
"Me?" she gasped incredulously, "I swear to you that I didn't do anything to them, though I can't quite say the same for my boss and his men."
"If it makes you feel better, they didn't go down without a fight, I think it took telling them that we have an entire settlement of people serving as our hostages for them to surrender," she added as a mocking smile began to spread across her lips, "Pity that my boss wanted them alive, I would've loved to have tested how good they really were, especially that blonde-haired one with the unnecessarily revealing clothing and overly loud mouth. She looked like she could be taken down a peg or two, don'tcha think?"
The bow-wearing teen clenched her hands into fists as the anger that had been building up inside of her throughout the entirety of their conversation skyrocketed to new heights. She knew that the woman was intentionally trying to get her riled up, but there was just something in the way the woman spoke that got on her very last nerves.
It felt like every word that came out of that woman's mouth was spoken with nothing but the intent of belittling her and to make matters worse, she did it with the most patronizing and contradictory voice Blake had ever heard.
'Stay calm,' she told herself as she took a deep breath in through her nostrils, 'Don't give her the satisfaction of seeing you get angry.'
"So what do you want?" she asked the woman on screen in what she hoped was a calm tone, "You went through the trouble of calling me, so you must've wanted something from me, right?"
"Nope, not really," the multi-color haired woman replied bluntly, "Just wanted to see how'd someone react when I told them that we were holding their friends hostage and now that I have seen it, I don't think there's any need to keep talking to you so..."
"... bye~" she finished while she smiled at her with one of the most mocking smiles she had ever seen, waving one of her fingerless-gloved hands at the bow-wearing member of team RWBY before ending the call and disappearing from her screen completely.
Blake let out a frustrated growl as she reached her free hand up to massage her newly aching temple while internally groaning to herself, 'You have got to be-'
Once again, before she could even finish that train of thought, she was interrupted by the familiar sound of someone cracking their finger. Remembering that she wasn't the only person who was present for the conversation and that Kaneki had most likely heard the entirety of it, she snapped her eyes up and away from the empty screen of her scroll so she could gauge his reaction to the situation they were presented with.
What she found was on par with what she expected from him, well mostly. She said mostly because she expected him to wear a troubled expression, which he did, but she could tell that there was something more to it than that.
He had that same look as when she would find him staring off into space blankly, making it seem like he had absolutely no idea that there was a world outside the thoughts that were swimming around his head.
Getting completely lost in his own thoughts wasn't something that was uncommon for the white-haired ghoul, but the look in his eyes told her that this time was something out of the ordinary.
Usually when he spaced out, his dull gray eyes would somehow become even duller, but this time there was a confusion and some other emotion she couldn't identify mixed in with the blankness.
Naturally, seeing her teammate in such a state caused her to worry, but any concern she had for the young man was dashed when she remembered his reaction to her falling out of the bullhead just a few minutes ago.
He had thrown himself out of a moving airship without a single second of hesitation, which told her that he was one of those people who put the sakes of others before his own, and that probably meant that the reason why he had that look on his face was because he was worried about the others' safety.
Knowing from past experience that he wasn't going to snap out of the trance he was in any time soon without some push from her, she waved a hand a couple of inches from his face and called out to him, "Hey Kaneki, you alright?"
The moment she finished saying those words, the young half-ghoul seemingly blinked himself out of his trance and back into reality.
"Um, y-yeah, I'm fine," he reassured shakily as he reached his left hand up to cup his chin for some reason that was completely unknown to her.
'Why is he cupping his chin like that?' she asked herself as she stared at the offending hand with slightly narrowed eyes, 'Could it be some sort of tell that he has when he lies?'
After putting some thought into it, she found that her theory did make sense. His earlier attempt at reassuring her that he was okay was an obvious lie on his part and other than it just being a tell, there was absolutely no need for him to do something like that with his hand given the context of the situation.
A scratch or a simple tap on the chin, she could understand, but she couldn't find a single reason as to why he would cup his chin at that exact moment.
'I could just be being paranoid, but I should probably keep my eyes out for that in the future,' she noted mentally right when she heard Kaneki let out an awkward chuckle, prompting her to turn her attention away from his hand back onto his face, where she found him smiling at her awkwardly while he scratched the back of his head in a similar manner.
"Look at me letting myself space out like that while the others are in danger," he mumbled himself in a self-deprecating manner, letting out a tired sounding sigh before he shook his head and returned to his usual stern expression.
"Alright, so what do you think we should do?" he asked, his voice now mimicking his expression.
"Well before we do anything, we have to figure out where exactly they're holding the others," she replied as she reactivated her scroll and began scrolling through menu after menu, looking for a certain setting that would do just that, "Something that shouldn't be too hard considering we have locators built into our scrolls."
"Is there a possibility they might already know that?" Kaneki followed up as he raised a questioning eyebrow at her, "They might be using the signals to lead us into a trap or one of the others' scrolls to track us."
"Yeah, they probably already know about the locators and they're probably tracking our signals as we speak," Blake conceded, "So as of the moment, we don't have many advantages over them, but I think I have a way of turning things to our favor."
The eyebrow he had raised earlier remained that way and he asked the obvious question, "Alright, what do you suggest we do then?"
Kaneki glanced down at the screen of his scroll and frowned at what it displayed. There, on said screen, were five differently positioned dots that were colored one of two ways: blue or red, blue representing the location of his scroll and red representing his teammates'.
Two of the five dots were positioned dead center of the screen, one shined a dull blue and the other shined a bright red. The three remaining dots were huddled close together and formed a bright red cluster directly to the north of the two dots in the center.
"You ready to go?" asked the creator of the plan he had agreed to follow as she crouched down next to him to his left, her scroll in one hand and her weapon in the other.
"As ready as I'll ever be," he answered curtly before he reached a free hand out to her as a gesture for her to proceed onto the first part of the plan.
She immediately understood the gesture and placed her scroll into his hand before saying to him, "Be careful while you're in there."
He nodded and she scampered off into the shadows, where she would take care of her part of the plan.
The plan that she had come up with earlier and the one he had agreed to follow was a relatively simple one. He would go right up to where the locator said his captured teammates were and spring any traps the enemy had put in place so he could gain as much attention from his enemy as he possibly could.
As he did that, Blake would discreetly capture one of the enemy's men during all of the commotion and interrogate them as to where they were holding the hostages. She would then proceed to move towards that location and liberate the hostages, including their teammates, something that she claimed to be able to do without alarming a single person to her presence.
Once she finished that, she and the others would head over to his location and assist him with fighting whatever enemy he happened to be facing.
Like he said earlier, the plan was a simple one, which it had to be considering the lack of resources and manpower they had to work with. It also relied heavily on their ability to get their designated task done.
The artificial ghoul was more than fairly confident in his ability to last until she was finished freeing the hostages. Hell, he was fairly sure that he would be able to incapacitate most of the opposition before his teammates came over to help.
Blake had also sounded quite confident in her ability to get her job done without fail and he knew that she wasn't one to embellish her capabilities, but his tendency to worry unnecessarily about the people close to him flared up and caused him to hesitate before agreeing to go along with it.
Something that his bow-wearing teammate was quick to point out as a touching sentiment but was also entirely unnecessary in the end. And for some reason, he felt that she wasn't just talking about his hesitation to agree to the plan, but also his response to her falling out of the bullhead earlier.
'So much for uncompromising confidence in one another,' he berated himself mentally before he shook his head of those thoughts, 'No, this isn't the time to be thinking about that, just focus on your objective.'
After he reminded himself of that, he stood up from his kneeling position and began making his way towards where the three red dots that supposedly represented his captured teammates rested.
Eventually, he found himself staring out from the very edge of the forest towards a medium-sized cluster of buildings that looked to be completely surrounded by six meter or so tall walls made up of a combination of metal plating and stone brick.
'That must be the settlement Ozpin talked about,' he noted as his dull gray eyes scanned the walls for an entrance and eventually found one that was being guarded by two men wearing full black suits with red ties and similarly-colored fedoras, 'And those must be the men that woman from earlier was talking about.'
From what he could see from his position in the brush, the two themselves didn't look very impressive, but then again no one looked impressive when compared to that muscled out whale of a man he fought in his previous world.
The only thing that he could see on the two that looked even remotely dangerous were the guns that were in their hands. He could tell that they were some sort of rifles, but since he had a very limited knowledge of firearms he couldn't tell much about them other than that.
'Alright, let's start with these two,' he thought to himself as he emerged from his place in the trees and began walking towards the entrance the two were guarding, placing the two scrolls he was holding into his pant's pockets as he did so.
They both noticed his approaching form immediately and pointed their guns at him, but before any of them could even consider pulling a trigger, he shot towards them like a bullet.
He doubted either of them could even comprehend the fact that he had moved until he stopped right in between both of them and slammed the palms of his hands into the sides of their heads, making sure to use an amount of force that would only knock them out, not kill them.
And in response to having been knocked from reality into a state of complete unconsciousness, the two suited thugs collapsed limply onto the ground with a light thud.
'Alright, that's two people I won't have to be worrying about any time soon,' he began as he bent over and picked up one of the thugs' guns in his right hand, 'Now to make sure everyone else knows I'm coming.'
The rinkaku-type ghoul pointed the barrel of the gun up towards the sky and pulled the trigger, releasing a volley of bullets up into Remnant's atmosphere and erupting with a noise that was loud enough to make even him cringe out of discomfort.
'That should've done the trick,' he told himself as he then grabbed the smoking barrel of the gun with free, left hand and bent the metal weapon into a shape that greatly resembled one of man's first great inventions with very little effort.
He quickly did the same with the other thug's gun and proceeded to go through the entrance the two thugs were guarding.
Once he was inside the walls that obscured his view of the settlement earlier, he found himself standing on a road that probably served as the settlement's main road, something that made itself abundantly clear to him when he noticed how much longer and wider it was when he compared it to the side streets that branched off from it.
He pulled his scroll out from his pocket, activated it and opened up the locator once again. As he did so, he began to hear the sound of loud, uneven footsteps pounding against the stone ground coming from directly down the road in front of him.
'Sounds like the other men heard that gunfire,' he noted mentally, not even bothering to look up from the screen of his scroll as he listened to the sound of those footsteps come gradually closer and closer before coming to an abrupt end, presumably when the makers' of the noise finally reached his position.
He could feel the scrutinizing eyes of the people, who he assumed had come to investigate the gunshots from earlier, bore into him from all sides as he continued to simply stand there, staring at the scroll in his hand like they had never shown up to begin with.
Something that unsurprisingly didn't sit too well with at least one of them and prompted that said person to call out to him in a deep, husky voice, "Hey, kid, could you do me a favor and put the scroll down for a damn second so we can this whole 'I'm-going-to-take-you-prisoner' thing over and done with?"
"I've got better things to do than to wait for your-" the thug began to say before Kaneki cut him off.
"You guys are part of the group who shot at the bullhead earlier, aren't you?" he asked them, his voice remaining completely emotionless as he spoke, "The one that took this entire settlement hostage, you're with them right?"
"Yeah, what's it to you?" asked another thug whose voice was considerably more gravelly than the one who was previously talking, "Ah, wait, you must be with those three girls we captured earlier."
"You here to save them or something?" continued the gravelly-voiced thug, whose tone of voice had become considerably more self-assured than it was before, "I'm sorry to say this, but you ain't gonna be playing hero tonight, kid."
"Yeah, especially with the likes of us-" began another thug, who had a higher-pitched voice than the two prior to him, but Kaneki cut him off as well.
"'The likes of you'?" the white-haired half ghoul repeated as he finally looked up from his scroll and directed his gaze towards where the voices were coming from just to find a group of five men, all of which wearing the same outfits as the two he knocked out earlier, standing arm-to-arm with one another with their weapons, which consisted of curved swords and axes that were all painted a dark red, pointed directly at him.
"'The likes of you?'" he repeated once again in a tone that was laced with dark amusement, a small smile creeping onto his face as he returned the scroll to his pocket, "My, my, what a bother the likes of you are."
"What'd you just say to me, you little punk?!" the thug with the higher-pitched voice, who was standing directly in the center of the group of five, snapped at him before taking a step towards him in what was probably a vain attempt at intimidation, "You better watch your mou-"
Deciding that he didn't have the time to chat with the five suited thugs, Kaneki shot towards the thug with the higher-pitched voice while he was still busy talking and slammed a fist right into the side of his jaw with the same amount of force the half ghoul used to knock the other two from earlier unconscious.
The afflicted thug's body flew several meters backwards before he made contact with the ground and crumpled into an unconscious heap onto it.
Knowing that what had just done would surprise the other four thugs so much that it would give him just enough time to incapacitate another one of them, the artificial ghoul turned his attention and body towards the man to his immediate left, which so happened to be the thug with the gravelly voice, and slammed his left shin right into the suited man's stomach.
The gravelly-voiced thug dropped the weapon in his hand and collapsed down onto knees while clutching his stomach in anguish, something that made it clear that he wasn't going to be fighting any time soon. But since there was still a chance that the thug could recover while he was dealing with the others and rejoin the fighting, Kaneki kicked the agonizing thug in the back of the head with his right foot, once again holding back so that the kick wouldn't kill the man.
By the time the gravelly-voiced the thug fell unconscious onto the ground, the half ghoul had already set upon the thug who had been silently standing at the far left-edge of the group of five and directly next to the man he that had just been incapacitated.
Unlike the previous two times however, the suited-thug was able to react to the teen's sudden charge at him, but the only thing that amounted to was him raising his sword up before he was met with a left hook directly to the bridge of the nose.
As the third of the thugs to fall unconscious flew back in recoil of the damage, Kaneki became aware of the pair of hurried footsteps that were coming from behind him and turned to find that the other two henchmen, who were standing to the right of the thug with the higher-pitched voice, rushing towards him with their weapons raised.
He side-stepped the ax of the thug he recognized as the one with the deep and husky voice, who rushed right past him due to the momentum of the charge, which allowed him to focus on the other thug who was currently lunging towards him in an attempt to run his head through with a sword.
The rinkaku-type ghoul leaned out of the way of the incoming blade and reached up to grab the arm that was holding onto said blade with both hands before throwing the man over his shoulder and back first into the ground in a single, fluid motion.
Knowing that the throw alone wasn't going to be enough to fully incapacitate the henchman, Kaneki then proceeded to lodge the bottom of his shoe into the downed man's mouth, knocking him and probably some of his teeth out completely.
Then, as he released his grip on the thug's arm, he turned his attention onto the final member of the group of five, who still hadn't recovered from the momentum of his earlier miss and was just now turning to face him once again.
The eyepatch-wearing ghoul didn't want to give the man that luxury and closed the distance in between them as he was turning to face him. Kaneki doubted that the man even realized he was there before he thrust his open palm directly into thug's gut, prompting him to respond in a way similar to the henchman with the gravelly voice.
He was about to deliver the finishing blow when the distinct sound of clapping slowly coming from directly behind made him stop dead in his tracks. His instincts flaring up inside of him, he reached into his school blazer and pulled out a certain thirty centimeter-long object from one of its pockets, pressing the button that rested directly in the center of the metal object as he did so, causing a metal blade twice the size of its container to spring out from it.
Spinning on a heel, he turned to face, and slash, whoever had snuck up behind him. He expected to make contact with something, either the metal of the person's weapon or the flesh of the person themselves, but what he actually hit surprised him to no end.
He hit nothing. His blade had hit absolutely nothing.
'What the-' he began to think to himself before he felt something blunt drive itself right into the center of his stomach, which made him double over in response.
He barely had time to register the hit before he felt something long and wooden slam right into the side of the jaw with enough force to send him flying to his right.
The white-haired half ghoul quickly corrected himself in mid-air and flipped himself so that he would be facing whoever had hit him when he landed. His dull gray eyes widening when they fell upon who had just hit him.
There standing before him was the multi-haired colored woman who had called Blake on her scroll earlier, who was staring at him with that same small, self-assured smile she wore earlier gracing her features.
"Oh, so you were the other one who fell out that bullhead earlier, why am I not surprised?" she asked him with a sense of familiarity that confused Kaneki to no end, she let out a bitter-sounding chuckle before she continued speaking, "I guess you and old habits don't die very easy, huh?"
"What are you-" he began to ask, but the woman cut him off before could finish.
"You've changed a lot since the last time we saw each other, haven't you, Haise?"
-Chapter End-
Well, that's a wrap folks. If you've been checking out my profile as of late, you know that I already told you this chapter was going to be ending with a cliffhanger so you can't say that I didn't warn you.
So if you haven't already guessed it by now, Blake and Kaneki are going to be one of the main pairings of the story. And yes, when I say one, that does mean that there's going to be another pairing or two.
*Cue the cheering of everyone who voted for harem*
*Cue the booing of everyone who picked against harem*
Hey, hey, you non-harem-ers calm down. I know I said no harem, but there's only going to be ONE or TWO other pairings and that's it. This isn't going to turn into your stereotypical harem-fanfic where every girl like the MC and is fine with him dating other women because he's the MC.
And don't worry, they're going to be essential to the plot later on down the line, so just calm your faces.
Well, other than that, I got nothing more to say except see you in two months when I'm done with the next chapter, peace out guys!