Mandatory Disclaimer: I do not own any of the copyrighted material present in this story.

…

Chapter 1 | Blind Rat Stumbling.

…

The last time Kaneki was cognizant of anything, he experienced the world around him melt into incomprehensible nothingness. All five of his senses failed him. All that his eyes could see was darkness; all that his ears could hear was high-pitched ringing; all that his nose could smell was an undecipherable hodgepodge of different, clashing scents; all that his tongue could taste was bitterness and honey; and all that his skin could feel was lava slowly crawling across his body.

Nothing around him had made sense then. Nothing at all. Not even his thoughts, which were all too distorted to make sense of. His head was an absolute maelstrom-and within that maelstrom, it was impossible for him to focus on even a single thought. If he tried to recall the faces of his friends at Anteiku, his head would bounce to the face of the man who had bested him and had probably killed him and his friends. When he tried to focus on the rage that thought instilled in him, it would then shift back to his friends and the pile of bodies, gore, and masks that his failure had most likely lead to them being. When that was at the forefront of his mind, he would immediately go back to the man who beat him.

It was a vicious cycle—one that made him want to drop to his knees and beg for nothing and the bliss it would provide. Then, as if listening to his prayers, nothing came and when it did, he felt himself fall into what seemed like, at the time, a blissful slumber-a slumber that, considering the severity of his many injuries and the track record of the opponent that spawned them, he assumed to be permanent.

So, that's why, after having reveled in nothingness for what seemed like an eternity, he was surprised to actually feel something. Not the sort of feeling that his body could've tricked himself into thinking was actually there either. No, this was a feeling that touched near the entirety of his body, from his clavicle to his toes. It was soft and light, and it had an appealing smooth to the touch texture. He wouldn't go as far as comparing it to anything close to silk, not even close, but it did nonetheless feel nice to touch.

What in the…? He thought to himself as shifted underneath whatever was causing the sensation. For a reason unknown to him, when he tried to do so, his body wouldn't respond to his commands. At least, not immediately. Instead, he found that it would take a couple seconds of mental effort to try and get something to even twitch. That led him to think that he had been drugged at some point, but that worry was soon assuaged when he felt his ability to function return to him after some time.

It started with Kaneki being able to curl his fingers into a weak fist. Eventually, that turned into him being able to bend his arm at a ninety-degree angle. After that, he found himself sitting up and that's when he realized that he was on a bed of some kind.

Considering the injuries that he had sustained before his blackout, and the fact that his nostrils were being invaded by the overpowering stench of disinfectant, the young man was able to put one and two together and realize that he was probably sitting in a hospital bed. That fact in itself caused problems for him.

Ken Kaneki wasn't normal. Far from it. He was a half-ghoul, the very literal bridge between humanity and the species of human-like creatures whose only form of food was the prior's flesh. If someone were to figure out that he was a ghoul, the CCG would be called in an instant and he'd most likely be killed, definitely captured and it'd be very easy for him to be found out in a place like a hospital. A ghoul's skin couldn't be penetrated by any sort of sharpened metal, after all.

I need to get out of here, the half ghoul told himself as he looked around him. His eyes saw nothing but darkness. He had tried to open his eyes earlier but had gotten nothing, leaving him one conclusion. The lights must be off. He did, however, find it strange that he couldn't see any other form of light, but he attributed that fact to it being late and the staff keeping the lights outside dim as to not disturb any sleeping patients.

Satisfied with that being the reason for his continued blindness, Kaneki used his hands to feel around for the edge of his hospital bed and when he found it, he threw his legs over the right side of his bed and stood himself up. The moment his weight landed on his legs, he felt them buckle. Thankfully for him, his hand had never left the bed, so he was able to use it to catch himself before he fell flat on his face.

That was close… Feeling as though he just dodged a bullet as him falling over would've most definitely made a sound loud enough to alert the staff that he was trying to leave, the air around him was just that still, the teen let out a sigh of relief and began putting weight on his weak legs, allowing them to adjust to the weight he was trying to put on them before trying to stand once more. It took a moment but he eventually managed.

Now on his feet, the half ghoul began to ruminate on how he was going to get himself out of this room without being seen by the staff. The fact that he could see no light whatsoever pointed to there being no windows in the room as moonlight, as weak as it was, would still be visible in this pitch darkness. No windows meant that his room was more towards the inside of the facility, meaning more people to try and avoid.

Damn, the curse went unsaid as he needed to focus his hearing on the world around him. Him being located so far deep into the hospital gave him one advantage, though, especially being in the pitch black dark like how he was. At some point, someone was going to have to pass by his room and when they did, he would be able to use the noise they created to figure out in what direction the door was in without having to stumble around in the dark too much.

Come on… Come on… Kaneki thought to himself as he stood in place next to the bed that he had awoken in, entire body tensed and ready to throw himself back under the covers just in case a member of staff had decided to check on him.

It took a few anxious more moments of waiting, but the sound that he was looking for did eventually hit his ears. They were coming from behind him and to his right, meaning that he was most likely looking away from where he needed to go.

Alright, now…. Now knowing in what direction he needed to go, Kaneki put all of his focus on the footsteps themselves and seeing where they were heading as the last thing he wanted was somebody seeing that he was awake. So, he needed to make sure that they were just passing by and not coming in.

As the half ghoul stood there in the dark, listening to footstep after footstep as they grew closer and closer, he took note of a few interesting things about them. They were heavy, meaning that the person making them was either male or a heavier set female, but by far, the most noteworthy thing about them was that the rate at which they were occurring. They were rather erratic, coming one step and then two at a time. Maybe someone with a cane or some other instrument to help them walk? At least the extra footstep made it easy for him to track the individual.

Turning so that he was facing the noise, Kaneki found himself reaching out and gripping the side of the bed that he had just pulled himself off of, listening for any indication that the footsteps would stop and make their way into the room he was in. His grip tightened as he stood there, waiting. Not sure if his next few moments would be spent making his escape from wherever he was now or playing dead.

"Yes, I'm going to check on him now." As he prepared himself for what was to come, Kaneki heard a male's voice, calm and formal, ring out, following the footsteps as they moved. Though, they came off sounding muffled because of the wall that the twenty-year-old assumed separated them.

"Yes, I'll be sure to check in with all of you if there are any changes in his condition." After a few moments of silence on the voice's end, it rang out once again. This time, coming off as a lot less stiff than it was before, giving the half ghoul the feeling that whoever the man was talking to, it was someone who was asking a lot out of him but he was trying to stay patient. "Yes, Ruby, I can confirm that the boy is definitely 'not dead.'"

Not knowing if the man was talking about him or not, Kaneki decided to not risk being found out and slowly slipped himself back into the hospital bed, lying with his back facing away from where the voice had come from so that he could keep his eyes open. As he did so, he noticed that he could no longer hear footsteps.

"Alright, I'm about to step into his room right now." Hearing the all too familiar sound of a metal doorknob being turned open, the half ghoul did his best to not tense up where he lay. A task that only became more difficult when the door creaked open. After that distinct noise, there were a few moments of silence before the man let out an affirmative hum and an audible beeping noise came soon after, explaining the sporadic spans of silence that littered the man's sentences. "So, now then… What should I do with you?"

When those last words had been spoken, the stranger went completely silent and started walking over to Kaneki's bed or, at the very least, that's what the footsteps heading in his direction told him. As he neared though, he noticed something strange about what he was hearing. Actually, it wasn't what he was hearing that was bothering him, it was something that he didn't hear.

Kaneki's eyes had been open the entire time and he never heard him someone flip the light switch to his room. That was when he became very aware of the fact that there was something wrapped around his head.

Ozpin couldn't help but sigh a little at the conundrum that he now found himself faced with. To have gone from supervising the yearly initiation of new students to something this dire, so quickly…. It was rather jarring, even for him–a man who's had to deal with a lot of unexpected events over his lifetime.

Walking across the rather plain hospital room towards the source for all of his exasperation, the headmaster of Beacon Academy made note of the fact that the snow-haired boy that he came to check on had turned over on his side at some point during the night. At the very least, it looks like he's no longer comatose, so that's an improvement.

Ozpin lifted his free hand to cup his chin but was stopped halfway when he saw that the mystery boy had suddenly begun shaking, violently at that. That told the older man one thing: he had finally managed to break himself free of the chains of unconsciousness, only to awake and realize just where he was and why he was here in the first place.

Letting out one more sigh, the head of Beacon Academy made his way over to the unknown boy-the same boy that the newly minted teams RWBY and JNPR had found lying unconscious in the woods as they were heading back from their initiations, his entire body covered in a layer of his own, dried blood. Not even being able to comprehend the amount of damage that was being dealt to the boy's psyche at the moment, he did all he could do and lay a hand on his upper bicep, hoping that it provided some comfort for the boy.

"W-Where…" Though, when the mystery boy finally spoke for the first time, his voice as shaky as the rest of his body, the older man knew that wasn't going to be the case. "My eyes…" And Ozpin honestly couldn't blame him. "No, no…. What happened…? What the hell happened…?"

That last bit came out sounding like a whimper, which prompted Ozpin to try his best and comfort the snow-haired boy as he did his best to work his way through what had happened to him. "I'm sorry."

That was all he could think to say. The boy had just woke up to find that he had no eyes. What else was there to do until he calmed down?

Kaneki rested the back of his head against the plastic-feeling headboard of his hospital bed, head still trying to sift through and process all of the information that he had been presented with. Hand reaching up to gently graze the spot where his left eye should've been, he pressed the tips of his index and middle fingers up against the medical bandages that covered not just it, but the entirety of the upper portion of his head. He kept applying more and more gradual pressure to the location until his body forced himself to stop, the absent feeling lying behind the texture of his coverings being too much for him once again.

"My eyes…." Swallowing, the words that had been resting on the tip of his tongue were finally voiced, or rather, they tried to. They didn't get very far as the young man already knew what the answer he'd get back would be. They were gone. At least one of them, his left, totally, the other damaged to the point where it was still there but useless. How? He was a half-ghoul! They should've grown back! Were his injuries at the hands of Arima too great somehow? That his body didn't have the RC cells required to grow them back?

That answer made no sense in the first place! Where did he even get the energy to heal as much as he did when Arima was standing right there over him? How did he even get into this hospital in the first place without being outed as a ghoul? Surely, someone would've tried to stick a needle into him for an IV or a blood test or something! How the hell was he still here?

Augh! Hands clutching at the sides of his head, he bent his body forwards, pressing his nails into the layer of bandages wrapped around his head and gnashing his teeth together. With every question that invaded his mind, it felt like a thousand more filtered in with it, bombarding his brain so much that it was actually beginning to hurt. Stop! Stop! Stop—!

Kaneki began to tremble once more as he sunk further and further into the typhoon that was conquering his mind, but before fully delving into it, the sound of irregular footfalls reached his ears once more, which distracted him for long enough so that he could push away all of the offending thoughts and center himself in reality once again.

Head turning over towards where the noise came from, the half ghoul tried to pinpoint where the noise was coming from and where it was heading, as after he had the extent of his injuries explained to him, the man who had done the telling left him alone to go and do something, having been gone since.

Not a moment later, Kaneki heard the doorknob twist open once again and he waited for the refined sounding man to say something as the footsteps neared once more, being accompanied by a strangely pleasant smell. Thankfully, he didn't have to wait long.

"My apologies for stepping out like I did, I needed to make sure that the staff here knew that you were awake." The newly blinded young man could only grimace at the thought. He could already picture the fussing and the questions now. "For now, they sent me down with some food to preoccupy you while they work on sending someone to take your IV out." A sigh immediately followed those words. "Unfortunately, it seems that your body has chosen a pretty inopportune time to wake itself back up."

Kaneki furrowed his brows at what the man just told him, mouth moving before he could think about whether or not asking was actually a good idea. "IV?"

"Oh, so you didn't notice it?" At the old man's question, Kaneki began to feel all over his left arm with his right hand, freezing when he got to the back of his elbow and felt the same fibers that were wrapped around his head. "My apologies." The footsteps began once again, moving from his left to in front of him, slightly to his right. The scraping sound that followed indicated that the man might have pulled a chair out to sit down. "I assumed you noticed."

Kaneki chose not respond to that, instead focusing all his mental processes on the fact that a metal needle somehow managed to penetrate his skin. Even in their weakest state, a sword couldn't cut ghoul skin, so how did—?

"Ah, could you lean back for me a bit?" The question nearly made the half ghoul jump out of his skin. "I need to set your table up so you can eat."

Turning his head to face where the older-sounding man's voice had come from by habit, he was reminded of the futility of the action. Hands clenching up into tight fists, he shook the thought out of his head and cursed at his own inability to keep focused on what was happening around him. His blindness made him more vulnerable than he had ever been in the past and he was in unfamiliar territory with a man who was just as unfamiliar. He needed to keep focused. Questions and fates could be dwelled on when he was sure that he was no longer in danger. "Oh, um, alright."

Doing as he was told, Kaneki allowed the older man to work in front of him, deciding that it was best to try and reorient himself with the senses that he had left. Other than the noises that the man was making in front of him and a little to his right, he could vaguely hear a mechanical ticking somewhere in front of him and slightly leftward, signaling that there was an amount of space between his bed and where the room ended. Just how much was something he couldn't be certain of, but it at least didn't sound too close. There was a rhythmic beeping noise coming from his left and slightly behind his head in pairs every second or so. That told him that he was hooked into some sort of machine, he assumed that it is was an EKG.

Kaneki frowned when he realized that there was nothing else in the room for his ears to latch onto. That was up until the unknown man's voice rang out.

"Ah, there we go, finished." Head turning towards where the voice had come from, Kaneki blinked, or rather, attempted to, as that was impossible at the moment with the bandages that were over his eyes. It was then when he noticed it, a smell that he hadn't noticed before despite it wafting in the air right in front of him. It was savory and it was warm, but strangest of all, it was absolutely making his mouth water. "You're all set to eat, young man. Hopefully, you don't mind hamburger. It was all the cafeteria had ready on such short notice."

Wait, hamburger? If Kaneki had the ability to do so, his eyes would've bulged out of his skull at the reveal. H-How…?

Extending his right hand out in front of him, hand shaking as he did so, he stopped when he felt the smooth, slightly textured surface of the tray that the man set up for him. Feeling around, his fingers soon made contact with something that was raised a little above the tray. Assuming that it was the plate the burger was on, he began to feel around the center of that until he found what was supposedly emitting that intoxicating aroma.

Sure enough, what he felt when he wrapped his hand around it was what he would normally associate with a hamburger. The bun that surrounded it was soft and pliable, and when he pressed his fingers into it, he could feel the hints of warmth coming from the patty through the bread.

Lifting the piece of meat and bread up from the plate, he guided it up to his mouth, an act that was done with caution due to him not being all too sure about if the burger was heading in the right direction or not. When he felt it touch his lips, he bit into it and was immediately met with an experience that he hadn't had in a long, long time. He could feel his teeth sink through every centimeter of the bread and meat, which then filled his mouth with a taste that nearly made him let out a moan in pleasure and a tear slide down his cheek, it was so astounding.

It tasted exactly how it smelled, warm and savory, but there subtle hints of salt and some other tastes that only seemed to be amplified for some reason. He assumed that it was because it had been over a year since he last was able to bite into a piece of food and taste something that didn't make him want to wretch in disgust.

"I take it that you're enjoying the food?" Being too preoccupied with devouring the slab of meat in his hands, Kaneki didn't even bother responding to the question, seeing as the question was most likely meant to be rhetorical. "I'll take that as a 'yes', then."

It didn't take long, maybe twenty more seconds, but eventually, the last piece of hamburger passed through his lips and began traveling into his esophagus where it would then go into his stomach for digestion, and when it did, a thought crossed his mind that nearly made him start choking.

Hands quaking, Kaneki stared at his hands, or at least the space where they should have been as if they were covered in the blood and viscera of a human being. What the hell happened to me? Not wanting his distress to be obvious to the man in the same room with him, he let his hands fall to his knees, which were covered with the thin fabric of the blanket that the hospital provided him with. He tightened his grip on it, though the task was rather difficult to the shaking that was present in his hands. Goddammit…. None of this is right. A ghoul can't eat human food, much less have a damn IV be put into their arm! So, how-?

"So, now that you're finished eating—" Thankfully, a distraction once again presented itself before he could delve all the way into that endless rabbit hole and break down again. "—do you mind that I start asking you some questions, mister…"

Surprised by the sudden intrusion of his mental tirade, Kaneki couldn't stop it from being shown in his voice as he spoke. "K-Kaneki… Ken Kaneki. N-Nice to meet you, sir." His head practically bowed itself in a show of appreciation and gratitude. "Thank you for taking care of me while I was unconscious."

"Don't worry, it was no problem, Mr. Kaneki. As the headmaster of an academy, I'd be remiss in turning away a young person who was so obviously in need."

"'Academy'?" Kaneki, knowing better than to try and raise a brow, tilted his head to the side to signify his confusion.

"Yes, Beacon Academy. You're currently in its infirmary if you were curious."

Kaneki nearly let out a curse when he heard the tone in the man's voice. It was clear that the older of the two men thought that answer was enough to satiate any questions the other would have, but it only really caused more to pop up into his head.

"I'm sorry, but did you say 'Beacon Academy', sir? I'm sorry but I'm not familiar with that name." Every part of him cringed when those words left his mouth, but it was needed for him to progress the conversation in a way that benefited him.

"Oh, really? Not at all, you say?" Kaneki nodded his head at the question. "Hm, that's concerning. Tell me, do you know in what kingdom you're in right now?"

'Kingdom'? Not knowing what in the world the man was talking about, the younger of the two simply shook his head and waited for an answer. One eventually came, though it was a few seconds later and sounded rather, for lack of a better word, troubled.

"Do the names Vale, Atlas, Mistral, or Vacuo mean anything to you? How about Remnant?" Once again, Kaneki shook his head, confused as to why the man started to sound like he did for a second, but that confusion was struck down in favor for his own uneasiness when he realized just what was bothering the stranger. "Well, this is a troubling revelation, to say the least. Are you sure that you don't recognize any of those names? Not even vaguely?"

"N-No, sir." The nineteen, going on twenty, year old swallowed hard after he spoke. So hard that it was probably audible. "Should I?"

"Very much so. It seems that our doctor's evaluation of 'massive head trauma' didn't just stop at what happened to your eyes then."

Kaneki nearly allowed himself to relax when he realized just what the older man was implying. For a moment, he believed that he was going to be asked many questions that he did not have the answer to. Though, that just left him with a lot more that needed answering. Thankfully, if this was heading in the direction that he thought it was, then he was just given a platform to do so.

"Are you saying that I have some form of amnesia, sir?" Kaneki made sure to add a tinge of uncertainty to his voice as he asked that question.

"Most likely. It'd be difficult to explain why you don't remember the name of the world you live in otherwise."

Kaneki's brows furrowed under the cover of his bandages. His mouth opened to protest the statement, but held his tongue, instead of doing something that would get him the answer that he'd need.

Leaning forwards, Kaneki gripped the right side of his head with the corresponding hand and stayed like that for several seconds, using the ticks from the clock to keep track. He thought about adding a little shaking into the act to add to the effect, but he got the response he was fishing for before he could.

"Nothing?" Kaneki nodded. A soft breath from the man followed. "Well, being optimistic never hurt anyone, I suppose. In any event, you're probably curious as to where you are and what you're doing here."

The room was silent for a few moments, save for the noise of footsteps. Then, when those stopped, the air continued to be still for a few moments. Kaneki counted twelve ticks from the clock before the man spoke up again.

"First off, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Ozpin, Headmaster of Beacon Hunting Academy."

Typically, when Kaneki received answers, he expected the questions in his head to lessen, but Ozpin's explanation had only given him more to ponder.

From what he was told, Kaneki was no longer in Japan. He was somewhere far from it actually. According to the man who identified himself as Ozpin, he was in a world known as Remnant.

Ozpin explained Remnant as being made up of four kingdoms: Atlas, Mistral, Vacuo, and Vale-the last of which being their current location. Now, while the headmaster didn't go into detail about how all the kingdoms worked, he did mention something that peaked Kaneki's curiosity. The four kingdoms were all made with one goal in mind, establishing locations where the human race was safe from a force that Ozpin referred to as the Grimm.

The Grimm, apparently, were creatures of pure darkness. They took on the shape of animals but were much more distorted-looking in nature. They felt no emotion and were drawn to negative emotion, which often leads to them attacking humans as doing so successfully would often time lead to the emotions they were seeking. That made them humanity's natural enemy and just like the ghouls of his world, the human race moved to do everything in their power to combat them. Even going as far as establishing schools whose one purpose was to teach the future generations how to combat them. The two were so similar that he couldn't help but draw the parallels between this world's main issue and his own.

Still, for all the similarities, it was the differences that took firm hold of Kaneki's mind and he found himself nearly being overwhelmed by stranglehold it had on him. Thankfully, he had the many questions that were trapped in his head to keep him sane, to keep him focused on something other than the reality of the situation. Like the question of if he was really in a different world to begin with, for example!

How could Kaneki just trust Ozpin, a complete and utter stranger, to have told him the truth? The explanation that the man had given him sounded like something out of an anime, book, or manga. Sure, objectively speaking, his own world didn't fare much better with humanity being in an eternal war against a species of flesh-eating creatures that looked exactly like humans, but that was far from the point. He had seen and knew his insane-sounding world to be reality. With him being blind, there was no way that he could confirm anything to be real. Not with the utmost certainty.

Then, there was him being blind. How in the world did he end up like this? Why didn't his regeneration bring his eyes back when it clearly healed the rest of his body? For that matter, how could he have an IV stuck into his arm? How did he eat that hamburger without any problem? All evidence pointed towards him being something other than a ghoul, but that was impossible!

Kaneki had been turned into a one and had been one for more than a year. He had a ghoul's kakuhou implanted into his body. There was no way that he could just turn back.

So, how? That two-word phrase was the very base of every question he had. What in the hell happened to me?

"Ah, it looks like they're here." Suddenly, Ozpin said something that pulled the supposed-to-be half ghoul out of his thoughts. A majority of him hadn't even been aware that time was passing while he was thinking. Looking up from his lap, towards where the headmaster's voice had come from, Kaneki gave the man his now go to sign of confusion: a tilt of the head. "Right, I probably should have mentioned this to you earlier." A barely audible beeping noise rang out from the direction Ozpin was in. "Team RWBY, the group of my students that were responsible for finding you, wanted to check up on you. I'm sure that you understand as to why."

Kaneki opened his mouth but before he could respond, the sound of the door opening to his left cut him off.

"Ah, here they are now…."

For some reason, the next thing he heard after Ozpin saying that, was a feminine voice rebuking someone in an angry whisper.

…

Chapter End.

Hey, yo, a new story like I said. Got some plans for this story, let me tell you that. Also, let me assuage some concerns right now. The story isn't going to be primarily in Kaneki's POV as that'd be rather boring in my opinion, as while writing a blind character is certainly interesting for me, I can imagine that reading a story with no set setting can get rather frustrating, so I'll keep any Kaneki POV to a minimum in favor of, you know, actually setting up the setting and the world around our local blind boy.

Also, some of you will probably be asking about if the Blake/Kaneki pairing will carry over from the previous story. I mean, maybe? I'm not quite sure where I want to go if I wanted to add a romantic angle to this story, which I probably will. I do still like the pairing in theory and I just ended up not executing it properly in my opinion. Though, I have been toying with the idea of something with both Yang and Weiss. I don't know why, but that both sound kinda appealing to me for some reason. Can't forget Velvet, by the way. She's still most definitely in the running. Hell, I may end up doing something close to a harem, but with an actual resolution. Who knows?

Also, by the way, the Neo sub-plot and everything regarding Haise probably isn't going to get carried over, at least not in the same way that it was. I feel like it got pretty convoluted. Some fat needed trimming and I didn't quite deliver when it comes to execution either, so some major revision is going to be done if it were to indeed come back.

Also, also, prepare for some original content in the near future. I'm probably going to be staying as far away as possible from the early plot threads of RWBY as Kaneki, being a newcomer to being blind and all, doesn't really have a lot to add to them in my opinion.

Anyways, see ya next time, ya nerds. Go check out Glass Lilies by FineChyna if you haven't already. It's a great story made by someone who is also great, so it really deserves your attention cuz greatness should always beget attention.