5 years later.

Kaneki Ken flew aimlessly through the seventeenth ward. He was not particularly hungry that night, and even if that wasn't the case, he hadn't seen may ghouls and had no intent to eat the humans. There had been rumours of CCG activity on the border of the seventeenth and the twentieth ward, and many of the weaker ghouls in this area did not want to draw undue attention to themselves. Kaneki himself had no intention of confronting the CCG if he could help it. All it would do was put pressure on the area and have him looking over his own shoulder at all hours of the day.

What Kaneki was interested in was the reason the investigators were in the area: it was rumoured that the One Eyed Owl had been spotted recently nearby.

He still didn't know why Eto had left, but it would be a lie to say that he didn't care. He had become fairly independent after being left alone, but the abrupt loss of the person that had saved his life and cared for him after his parents' murder cut deep into his heart.

He was jerked out of his thoughts by the sounds of a fight in the street below. He ground to a halt, crouching on the roof of a neighbouring small building, and looked intently at the combattants, expecting doves. Instead, he saw something he entirely didn't expect. A girl roughly his age, covered in blood and seemingly hurt, was being cornered by five ghouls, and while, from his vantage point, her eyes were obscured by her blue hair, he was certain that she was a ghoul, as well.

He could tell that she was not from the seventeenth ward, mainly because he had spent quite a bit of time there. No, considering their location on the western edge of the ward, it was likely that she had come from the far more peaceful twentieth ward, overseen by Anteiku.

Anteiku, he thought. He had never been in dire need of any assistance, nor had he ever been able to work up the nerve to go to the place for the sake of a promise made days before she had abandoned him, but if there was a chance this girl was from there, he felt that he couldn't just let the five other ghouls kill her. Especially since he knew them all to be cannibals.

Oh well, he thought, as he waited for his moment to strike. I never liked those assholes anyway.

And, just as the lead ghoul's Kagune swept towards the girl, and she made a desperate attempt to dodge, Kaneki swept his Kagune out and parried the blow, jumping off the building and into the street below.

The three ghouls just stared, gaping, at him. Morons, he thought. They're not even moving.

He swept his Kagune out in a semicircle in front of him, and blew the five idiots backwards about fifty feet. He was glad they were at least strong enough to have not died on impact, he didn't want to kill them and then have to hide the bodies from the CCG.

Fortunately, they took the message, and made haste in scraping themselves off the pavement and fleeing back into the seventeenth ward.

Turning around, Kaneki found himself face to face with the girl, who had taken up a fighting stance, he winglike Kagune sprouting out of her back.

"You're in absolutely no state to fight, you know," he remarked.

"So what, then? I suppose you're going to try to eat me, now that you've chased them away," she spat back, her voice laced with venom.

"Hardly," he replied. "Besides, those are some pretty serious injuries you have, and you look rather sick. I suspect you'll be passing out right about now."

And, perfectly timed, her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she fell unconscious.

Unbelievable, he thought, as he caught her before she could hit the pavement. Now I have to carry her back to that bloody café, assuming that's where she's even from.

Oh well, he thought, as he jumped onto the nearest rooftop and began to head towards the centre of the twentieth ward. At least that gave him a motivation to stop avoiding the place. At the very least, he was curious about its owner.

A/N:Please leave a review with your opinion as well as any criticism or suggestions. I'll try my best to respond to them.

A/N #2: I apologize for the short chapter length. I wrote and published these all as they came to me, but they essentially amount to one big prologue. Now that the base is all laid out, I'll be writing an outline for the rest and future chapters will be longer. Since the story diverges from canon at the start of Kaneki's life, I'll need to plan his character out so that it makes sense within the new context. In any case, I'm having a lot of fun with this so far, and I hope you all are, too.