Mandatory Disclaimer: Something, something, something about how I don't own these IP's and mean to make no profit out of them. Check out the Pat Reon (but seriously though, don't give me money.)

Chapter 4 | Negligent Thoughts.

Letting a satisfied breath out through her nostrils, Blake put the palms of her hands up against the front and back covers of the book she had spent the few hours reading, shutting it with a firmness that she'd only use when she finished yet another novel. This particular one had been about a man who suddenly woke up to find himself to be a gigantic cockroach. It had been an interesting read, to say the least, one that detailed the feelings of a man who suddenly found himself to be completely isolated in a home that he shared with his entire family. There were several parts that she found to be rather relatable, especially now, when she was essentially sitting all alone in her dorm room.

Putting the novella down on the shelf next to her bed, Blake glanced over at the edge of her bed, down at the reason why she prefaced the words 'all alone' with 'essentially'.

In a technical sense, Blake wasn't alone in her dorm room at all. There with her was the mysterious, blind, and amnesia-ridden boy who Ruby had found in the Emerald Forest not a few weeks ago. In a lot of ways, he was no longer the same. The bandages that were wrapped around his head were now gone, having been replaced with an orb of glass that was painted white and silver and a pair of all black sunglasses with a thin, sleek metal frame. The same fate went for the hospital gown that he had been forced to wear for the majority of his first days here at Beacon, having been replaced by a baggy, plain white t-shirt and a pair of slim-fitting, black sweatpants that Ruby and Yang picked out for him.

The boy that received those clothes was sitting on the floor next to her bed, head buried deep into a book. Though, considering his condition, it would probably be more apt to say that he was finger deep into the book sitting on the side of his right knee.

Wait, no… Being slightly mortified by her poor job of phrasing, and slightly relieved by the fact that it only existed within the safe confines of her own head, the dark-haired girl tried to think of a way to rephrase what she just thought. Though, after a few moments of contemplation, she found herself being unsuccessful in that task.

Shrugging her shoulders and being content with just shoving that slip up to the very back part of her brain, Blake decided to direct her focus on something else, mainly the digital alarm clock on the bookshelf that sat between her and her teammates' beds.

6:30 already, huh? Blake picked herself up off her bed and put her palms on the small of her back. Pushing against it at a slightly upward angle and bending backward, she let out a soft moan of satisfaction as several pops rang out through the air. How much longer are the others going to be?

Walking over towards the boy she was tasked with keeping an eye on, the girl glanced over her relatively new teammate's shoulder to see how he was progressing. She would've just asked normally, but due to the fact that his ears were currently preoccupied with a pair of earbuds, she was unable to reach out to him with her voice alone.

Thankfully, however, Ken seemed to notice her approaching somehow and pulled one of the earbuds out, before then turning his head to look over his shoulder at her. "Oh, did you need something, Blake?"

"No, not really." The dark-haired girl shifted her hips to the side and crossed her arms over her chest. "How have you been doing?"

"Oh, well…" Ken glanced back down at the book on his knees. "It's going well. I think that I'm getting the hang of it, though my fingertips…. They're going to need to be a bit more sensitive. I'm still having trouble telling some letters apart from others."

"That so?" She walked over to the front of the boy and knelt down so that she could better look at his work. "Did you at least manage to translate what the staff assigned to you?"

Her blind teammate hummed and nodded his head, before then reaching up to scratch at the back of it. "Though, I didn't really translate it. Mostly, I got the basic idea of what it was trying to say and then filled in the gaps the best I could from there."

"I'm sure that much would be fine. At least, fine enough to convince Ozpin that you're fit to start taking classes."

"That's a relief then." Ken looked up at her and shot her a grateful, thin wisp of a smile, which didn't persist long on his features before being quickly replaced by his usual neutral expression. "Still, I'd like to try and get the hang of it before doing something like that. My ability to recognize the symbols I do know is still a bit too slow for my tastes."

Blake couldn't help but smile at the determination that he was showing, though she did find his perfectionism in the matter a bit concerning. "That may be the case, but no one anyone's asking you to do that much, that quickly. I'm sure everyone's more than willing to let you take your time with this."

"Hm…" Ken cocked his head to the side in what Blake assumed to be agreement. "I appreciate the concern, but I would still prefer not taking my time with this. I…" His head bobbed from left to right as he went silent. "There's just something about the idea of me being in this room, all day and all night." When his face was visible to her once again, she noticed that a frown was now on his lips. "It doesn't sit well with me."

"Don't like our company?"

"No, it's not that." Blake found herself being a little amused at how seriously her teammate was acting. She had meant it as a joke and he was taking it in the complete opposite direction. "Whoever I was before I lost my memories…" He reached up and placed his fingers on the back of his neck, before then leaning his head back to look up at the ceiling. "He was like a centipede, I think. Or, at least, that's what I feel he was like."

Blake was silent after Ken finished speaking, as she wanted to try and make sense of the comparison he was trying to make.

Entomology wasn't a subject that Blake took much of an interest in, but she did know a little about the insect that Ken was comparing himself to. Centipedes were famous for the number of legs they had and their ability to coordinate them all while moving at relatively fast speeds for something of its size. They were also known to be ravenous hunters, who constantly scoured its habitats for food, only ever stopping to eat prey that they just caught or molt.

"Ah…." Blake said that with a nod of her head as whatever remained of her good mood faded with the realization. "For what it's worth, you've taken it all very well so far. If you hadn't told me, I don't think I ever would've known that you felt that way."

"Sorry." Ken removed his hand from his neck and turned his head towards her.

"It's alright." In the end, Blake couldn't begrudge the blind young man for feeling like he did. Not even amnesia could change who a person was and if that was just how he was, there was no helping how trapped he must've felt at the moment. Losing his sight was one thing, but the fact that he was entirely unable to even begin searching for his past life must've eaten at him, gnawed at his insides like the insect he likened himself to. She couldn't completely empathize with where he was coming from, but she understood feeling trapped in something that was no longer in her control, running as far away from it as possible. "Like I said, you've been handling it very well so far. And besides, I'm your teammate. If you were going to pick someone to confide in, no one's going to blame you for choosing me, or one of the others."

Ken nodded his head, but with the lack of actual response from the boy, Blake couldn't keep from wondering if he actually meant it. Centipedes spent most of their lives on their own, after all.

"I'm going to get some fresh air. You wanna come with?"

Ken was silent for a few moments. He glanced down at the scattered pile of bump-ridden paper at his feet and then at the old-fashioned audio recorder he used to listen to his lessons on, before then turning back to her. A shrug of his shoulders was his only response.

Placing the palms of his hand onto the floor under him, he pushed himself up to a crouching position but stopped himself to pat at the ground to his left. Eventually, his hand found what it was looking for and gripped it firmly, before standing all the way up.

"Have you been getting used to your cane?" The question was one that Blake had been one that she wanted to ask for a while now, ever since he began to learn how to use it a few weeks ago. Whenever he wasn't studying the braille lessons given to him, it seemed like he was always working on getting used to getting around with it, always under the watchful eye and helping hand of one of the team, of course, as his practice required that he have objects put in front of him to avoid. Usually, it would be either Ruby or Yang, but occasionally, on days when those two were both busy, Weiss would step in and take their place.

It was pretty strange. Out of them all, the black-haired girl wouldn't have expected the Schnee Corporation's sole heiress to grow so close to the boy. At least, not as quickly as she did. From what Blake had witnessed of her personality up until now, that assumption would've been in line. Weiss, from the very first day they met, seemed like the kind of person to only get close to someone because it was advantageous to her. That changed the day she, Ruby, and Yang left her in charge of watching Ken, however. Not that she was actively looking for an opportunity to spend time with the amnesiac, even after the change, her standing in the school remained her top priority, but she no longer batted an eye when either Ruby or Yang asked her to watch Ken. She simply accepted. No arguing, no dramatics, no fireworks. It was all very out of character for the girl, though not that Blake personally minded at all.

Blake, when Ken was officially made a member of team RWBY, had fully expected to be in the position that Weiss was currently occupying. The sudden shift in demeanor that the heiress had towards their sole male member allowed her to get more reading done. Not that having to watch him would've affected that much at all, today is a perfect example of that, but she relished the opportunity to just focus on reading and reading alone. She was a good multitasker, but walking around everywhere reading a book without bumping into something took a lot of concentration and it was good to be able to do the opposite for longer periods of time.

"I don't mind lending you my arm if you want."

The frown that presented itself on Ken's face wasn't missed.

"No, that won't be necessary." He turned towards the door and made his way all the way to it with ease, the tip of his metal cane never leaving the ground. When he reached the door, he glanced over his shoulder and nodded his head towards the piece of wood in front of him. "Just tell me where to go and I'll follow."

Blake blinked at the display and after a few seconds of staring, shrugged her shoulders. "Alright, come with me."


This is our stop." Blake told Ken as she sat herself down on the stone barrier that separated cobblestone from the grass.

"Ah, alright." Ken's approach came to a screeching halt the moment he said that. For a span of several seconds, he turned his sightless gaze around to look at the world around him. "Where exactly are we?"

"Outside, in front of the academy's main building." Blake placed her hands on the stone under her and leaned her body back onto it. "We're right next to the hunter statue if you wanted more specifics."

"Oh…."

"That didn't clear anything up for you, did it?"

"Not at all." Ken smiled at her sheepishly as he scratched at the back of his head with his free hand. "Sorry."

"It's not like that's something you have to apologize for." Blake shook her head in response to his apology, not quite understanding why he'd think that he was in fault in any way. Amber eyes soon found their way back to the statue. "Do you want me to describe it to you? I don't mind."

The blind young man let his arm return back to his side as he frowned. For a few moments, he didn't say anything and just let his head tilt down towards the ground, but eventually, he turned to look back up at her.

"If you want." He shrugged as he turned his head up over her shoulder, which happened to be the direction in which the statue was in. Though, after looking at him more closely, Blake quickly realized that he wasn't looking directly at the statue, but just in the general direction of it. She could hear a bird chirping away somewhere, so she assumed that was what he was focusing on. "I don't see much point in it personally, but if you started, I wouldn't stop you."

Blake snorted at the boy's roundabout way of accepting the offer. "I'll take that as a 'yes', then."

With that, the dark-haired girl took her eyes off of the boy and placed them onto the statue in question behind her. It took her a few moments to come up with the words and when she found them, she began to describe its basic features.

"The statue is made of gray stone, about a story tall, and depicts two hunters standing on top of a large, upward slanted boulder, one of them is male and the other is female. They're both holding a weapon; the male is pointing your standard sword up towards the sky and the female has an ax and is using its head for support. Prowling underneath the two hunters, in an alcove in the hollowed-out rock is a lone beowolf." Blake shifted her eyes to look at the boy, his head was still pointed towards her. "Has someone explained to you about what a Beowolf is?"

"That's the name of a kind of Grimm, isn't it?" Blake saw both of his white brows raise in response to the question, almost as if he didn't expect to be asked a question. That expression, however, faded the second after it appeared. "An all black, bipedal creature that looks like a humanoid wolf? It also usually has a white bone mask covering its face, white claws, and depending on how long it's been alive, an assortment of white protrusions coming out of it that can take the form of either armor plates or defensive spikes?"

When faced with that rather detailed description from the blind boy, Blake found herself mimicking an owl with how she blinked. "Yes…. That sounds, well, perfect, actually."

"Oh, my bad." Ken flashed her an embarrassed smile. She assumed that he was able to pick up on her confusion. "It was in one of the books that the staff gave me to practice with. All About Grimm and How to Slay Them, I think it was called."

"Professor Port's book?" Blake let out yet another amused snort. "I suppose he was the one who gave it to you?"

"Um… Yeah?" The amnesiac tilted his head off to the side slightly. "Why?"

"Oh, it's just very… typical of him, I guess." Her explanation didn't seem to clear anything up for the boy, but she never really meant it to, so she decided to not explain it to him any further. "You'll understand when you have to sit through one of his lectures."

Blake could see that Ken's brows were furrowed from behind his glasses as he opened his mouth, she assumed to call her out on being so obviously, intentionally cryptic with her explanation, but in the end, no words left his mouth. Instead, he closed his mouth and let his lips come together into a tight, very small frown as he turned his head off to the side. That made a smile of equal size appear on her own lips.

"So, what did you think of Professor Port's book?" Blake, deciding that it was best to not leave their conversation on such a sour note, decided to change the topic. That made Ken turn to face her again. "Have you managed to finish it?"

"No, not yet, but from what I read so far, it's alright." The snow-haired boy shrugged. "If he speaks like he talks, then I can understand why you'd not like his lectures."

That made Blake perk up. "Oh, what makes you say all that?"

"Port is very wordy when he doesn't need to be, I can tell as much even in Braille. And, for whatever reason, he decided to put a lot of his own personal experiences with Grimm into the book, even though it's supposed to be mainly an educational textbook. It sometimes added useful information to what was being presented, but other times, it would distract and ultimately take away from the material that's actually being taught."

"You know…" Blake leaned her body forwards. "That doesn't really sound like a book you think is 'alright'."

Ken gave a sideways nod. "Mechanically speaking, the book was fine. Plus, he uses a lot of pretty words."

"Pretty words'?" Her ears perked up when she heard that.

"Oh…." Tilting his head towards his left side, Ken reached up with his corresponding hand and started to scratch at the back of his scalp. "How do I explain this…?" His hand then proceeded to transition over towards his chin as he cupped it within his fingers. The boy's lips parted, but he didn't say anything at first. Instead, they were closed wordlessly, before then being opened again a few seconds later. "Words… For some reason, some just appeal to me naturally. I can't explain why, but I just feel… good after reading or saying certain words. How they're structured, how they're spoken, how they're meant to be interpreted. Even how they're used in conjunction with other words…. That all just has a magical quality to it, if that makes sense to you."

"I can't say that it does, unfortunately." Ken lowered his arm as Blake spoke. "While I do love to read myself, I can't say that it's because I outright love the words on the page like you do. I do think I can understand what you're saying with that last part, though."

Ken smiled a thin smile and shook his head, looking off to his right once again. "Yeah, I think that's the case with most people."

When the snow-haired amnesiac proceeded to stay silent in response, Blake immediately thought that, in her usual bluntness, she had offended the boy in some way. That, or at least made him feel uncomfortable about a part of himself that he deemed really important. Those thoughts, however, were soon dashed when he opened his mouth and asked her a question she wasn't expecting.

"Do you hear that?"

Perking up her own ears, it just so happened that she did.


Blake didn't know if the scene that she was being forced to be witness to should've surprised her or not. It was a tale as old as time, four vultures circling a helpless rabbit. The latter with their back trapped into a corner, wanting to back up even further into the concrete as the four with malicious sneers splayed on their beaks as they continued to toy with their helpless prey. There was, however, one big difference between the scenes of then and now: she doubted that those past examples were so racially charged.

The two of them hadn't gone far from where they originally were. It took maybe twenty/thirty seconds at the most, as they found the incident taking place just off the path leading to the school's entrance. The harassment was taking place behind one of the white stone archways that covered the front of the school, but she could still see them just fine from where she and Ken stood.

The two of them were actually to the side of the arched pillar right next to the entrance, using it as cover as to not be noticed by the harassers, who she recognized from the initiation and some of her classes.

Team CRDL. A team of all boys, which was made up of Cardin Winchester, Russel Thrush, Dove Bronzewing, and Sky Lark. Cardin was your standard meathead; tall, broad shoulders, and had a frame that was built for muscle. The only thing about him that didn't lead her to that same conclusion was his slicked back orange hair, but that was for obvious reasons. Russel was significantly less built and tall than Cardin, which could be said about all of Cardin's other teammates as well, but the boy did have one defining feature and that was his light green mohawk. Bronzewing looked exactly as his name suggested with his light brown hair, but outside of that, the boy lacked any real defining features. Similarly, Blake had the same problems describing Lark, who only stood out because of the color of his long, slicked-back grey hair.

Blake recognized the person the person that they were bullying fairly quickly. While she wasn't the only Faunus in Beacon, she was the only one who really stood out to her for some reason—Blake attributed it to the long brown rabbit ears that stuck out the top of her head.

Velvet Scarlatina. She had long brown hair the same color as her rabbit ears and eyes. The rabbit Faunus was a member of team CFVY, a year senior to both team RWBY and CRDL by a year, which only made CRDL's target so astounding to her.

"Don't." Blake, noticing that her charge looked like he wanted to rush right in and help the girl, held an arm out in front of Ken to make sure he didn't step in and he, not being able to see the appendage, actually walked right into it. The moment the blind young man heard her description of what was happening, the change was clearly visible.

"What? Why?" The anger behind his sightless glare was turned away from CRDL and onto her. "I thought you said that those guys were—"

"—I already told you, that girl is a Faunus!" Not wanting to draw the attention of the bullies that the boy was attempting to interrupt, Blake also lowered the volume of her voice down to a whisper as she turned his body towards her.

That interruption made Ken rear back as if she had slapped him in the face. "So what? I don't see what that has to do with anything."

"Think about it." Not blaming the young man for wanting to step in and wanting to have that understanding show, Blake took a deep breath in through her nostrils, breathed out, and removed some of her earlier intensity from her voice. "You help her now, then what? She gets to not deal with this for right now, but what about later? Are you going to be there every time she gets picked on?"

"H-Hey!" The girl getting harassed let out a pained yelp from behind her. That caused the boy's gaze to veer away from Blake and over her shoulder. "Let go of my ear!"

Ken made an attempt to push past her, but she stopped him with her body the moment he tried. "Blake—!"

"How long did it take us to get here?" The boy froze the moment she pointed that out. "What was it? Twenty, thirty seconds?" He turned his head down towards the ground. "That was from the main entrance to the building. Do you seriously think that we're the only ones who noticed that this was happening?"

Ken took a deep breath in and let it shoot back out in a huff, before then taking a step backward. His sightless gaze flitted away from her, it only moving a few inches off to her left. Upon following it, Blake found that he was "looking" over towards where the four were bullying the Faunus.

A deep scowl spread across the dark-haired girl's lips at the sight. "Look, I'm not trying to say that you're wrong for wanting to go help her, but—"

"—But it's just the wrong thing to do in this situation." The peculiar tone that Ken was using fueled a morbid curiosity in Blake and the moment he finished speaking, she found her eyes drifting over to the boy. She could feel it in his voice, the defeat that his words portrayed as he conceded, but a part of her wanted to confirm it with her own eyes. To make sure that he wouldn't try anything that he would regret. He was staring right at the ground, his body trembling slightly. "It'll just make things harder for her in the long run…. That's what you're saying, right?"

At that, Blake turned back towards the scene that made her mouth feel like it was filled with ashes. "Unfortunately."


Everything about this was too familiar for Kaneki. The scenario that made him want to move, the arguments that kept his feet anchored, the helplessness that made him want to scream until his vocal chords ripped apart…. They were all compounding on one another, forcing him to remember a night that seemed to keep on coming back to him no matter what he tried. All of a sudden, he was standing on a bustling city street, looking into a trash-ridden alleyway.

A woman whose tears were still prominent in a downpour, casting a bleak and bitterly accepting smile towards him as a fleshy noose surrounded her head. Around her stood four men, all of which holding nothing but contempt for the being that they were sent to cull-a being that was more like all them than any of them would like to admit. All the while, his eyes are spread wide open and focused on the woman's lips as she tells her daughter-the daughter whose eyes he had to shield-to live—

"Ken? Ken, can you hear me?" Pure darkness shattered the image that he had been so focused on. It surrounded him, put him in a stranglehold, reminded him of where he actually was. Though, currently, that fact wasn't too clear at the moment.

"Where— What…?" Kaneki furrowed his brows as he tried to recall what had happened after he conceded to Blake's point. Shaking his head to try and physically clear it, he reached a hand up and gripped his suddenly aching temple. "I'm sorry, I…"

Kaneki paused when he realized that he was having a hard time trying to describe what happened to him.

"Spaced out?" The former ghoul now recognized the voice to belong to Blake. "Yeah, I could tell. You were so out of it that I had to drag you away from where we were by the arm." There was a pregnant pause. "We're back in our room if you were wondering."

Kaneki frowned at the explanation. He wasn't prone to being someone who let his thoughts consume him so wholly. Sure, it would happen when he was alone, but never when he had someone standing right next to him. A pang of guilt hit him just then.

"Did something happen?" Blake's voice was laced with concern. "I know that you were frustrated about not being able to step in, but—"

"—Yeah, I'm fine." Kaneki lowered his arm then. "I just…" He again paused, this time to contemplate just how much he should tell Blake about what really happened to him. "…started to remember something."

There was an audible shift in his teammate's voice as she spoke next. "Something similar to what was happening to that girl?"

"Yeah." He nodded. "Unfortunately."

Blake was once again silent after he answered. That silence only lasted a second before she asked him another question.

"Ken, do you mind if I asked what you thought of the Faunus' situation?"

"I don't see why not." Kaneki turned to face where Blake's voice was coming from and shrugged his shoulders. "It is very topical as of the moment."

The ghoul stopped to think about the question for just a moment, before finally answering.

"I think what's happening to them is awful. They're being treated like second-class citizens for no more reason than what they were born as." Kaneki, for obvious reasons, found himself relating to the Faunus' plight very closely. "If that girl back there was human, there's no way any of that would be happening to her. She'd be treated how she deserves: just like any other creature with thoughts and emotions."

Blake was quiet once again. This time, her silence spanned a couple more seconds than the last time—

"Do you regret listening to me back there?"

The question was like a slap across the cheek, but thankfully, no matter how much it caught him off guard, he already had an answer set in his mind regarding that. Having already answered it once before, it was an easy task.

"No, it was the right decision." Kaneki shook his head slowly as he found himself standing back in that alley once more, watching as the caring mother of a young girl be decapitated just because she dared to try and live. "They outnumbered us four to two and I doubt it'd take anything less than physical violence to get them to stop. And given how I am now…."

Then, just like before, darkness enclosed on him, wrapped its arms around his throat, and squeezed. It was then that he became deathly aware of the cane in his hand. He chuckled and smiled as a thin, warm line formed down the length of his cheek.

"I just wish that I was strong enough to actually do something."

Chapter End.


Yo, so this came out much later than it needed to be. I'm sorry about that, I admittedly got super fucking lazy when my first semester in college ended. Worked hard during finals week and I really wanted to take a month break before I got back into being the meantime, I've played through all of the new God of War. Extremely fun game, if any of you were curious and I suggest you all go buy and play it if you're a fan of the franchise. 9/10, would be a perfect 10/10 if the enemy variety was more plentiful (especially the bosses).

Also, I've noticed that a lot of you have been asking if Kaneki was still a ghoul and just to nip things in the bud now, the answer is: yes, he is still very much a ghoul, but he is not one right now.

Why is he able to eat human food all of a sudden, huh, Death? Why isn't he able to just heal the eye he's missing back? Well, why are you guys asking me questions like this and not just letting me write the actual story, so you can find out? Like, I love all y'all, but you gotta be patient when it comes to shit like this.

Also, also, if any of you were curious as to why I chose to make Kaneki blind and powerless in the first place, I did it because I really wanted to strip the dude of everything that made him, well, him back in Tokyo Ghoul and just have the stripped down, bare bones version of his character. I feel that the gradual progression of him slowly gaining those traits back as the story goes on is a much more compelling story than just having him be normal. It also allows for more opportunity to get the characters invested in one another as Kaneki needs to rely on team RWBY and team RWBY will be forced to interact with him almost every day of their school life.

Anyways, next chapter will involve Yang and Kaneki touching each other. A lot. Giggity.