29: Teething Issues - [Nightmare]
New poll on my profile! - Author announcement at the end!
Slosh, slosh.
Icy platforms bobbed up and down in bracken water, tinged a midnight colour that was just ever so slightly greener than it was black. The opaque water was like reflective jet glass under the clear blue sky.
Amber led the way, pulling along her pony, projecting an icy pathway over the swamplands with her every magical footstep. Behind her, marched team SEMN, with team PJYB taking up the rear. Ichigo, being, well, Ichigo, just chose to walk just above the surface of the marsh instead.
Journeying in his human body, he wore a deep blue fleece jacket with white furred sleeves, embroidered with silvery patterns stitched into the front. It was half-zipped up over a white shirt, matching his white trousers that were fed into blue-grey laced-up combat boots. The shirt was also tucked in, fastened by a silver dragon-shaped belt buckle. His hands were covered up to the wrist by short blue-grey gloves.
Mistral was the largest of all the Kingdoms, with the greatest population and the widest-ranging borders on Remnant. It encompassed arid scrublands, wind-sheared cliffs, thick forests and, clearly enough, murky swamplands. It wasn't exactly hard going, but they had been travelling East after landing early in a small port-town for almost a day now and all they could see were more and more of the damp bogs.
Twisted mangrove-like trees sparsely broke up the monotony of the wetland, with their roots exposed to the air, and drooping fronds of leaves like willows. Bright blue butterflies fluttered among their boughs, and semi-aquatic crabs slunk out from the dim waters to climb them. Storks and Remnantian birds that resembled royal-blue flamingos strutted about, picked out small fish and took off. Clumps of brown-rodded reeds and white-blossomed lily-pads filled the odd gaps, but the rest of the water was left open. The odd slippery dorsal fin, slimy tentacle and rough hide of scales would intermittently break the surface, giving the creeping impression that there was a lot more to this watery, obfuscated ecosystem that they couldn't see.
Jaune was the first to break the comfortable silence that they had going for a little while.
"Hey, do you see that?" he held his hand over his brow, gazing off into the distance like a sailor. "Are those... dust crystals?"
Amber had spotted it too, and quickly crafted an extended bridge to the eerie cluster of red crystals with a wave of her hand. "Now that's interesting. Anyone want to go check it out?"
She'd gotten a new outfit, and cut her own hair in the first town they'd landed in. It was a long, dark red dress with wide sleeves on her arms. Gold embroidery curled about the arms length and upper chest, and the collar and sleeve shared the same colour. Her hands were gloved up to their upper arms by long, dark grey silk, that ended with golden metallic ornamental bracing along her biceps. The right side of the dress was slit at the hip, tethered together with golden straps, revealing legs that were covered up with dark brown tights. A black detached collar hid the hollow hole in her neck. A feathery gem was hooked on her hip, one that Ichigo almost recognised as the red-green feathered amber pendant she'd had on her original body months ago.
"I'll do it!" Sun was eager to break the tedium with anything of interest.
"I'll, uh, go back him up..." Jaune followed hesitantly.
Sun quickly scurried over, as Jaune slowly crept after him on the ice. They quickly found a lone mass of jagged crystals sticking out of a white mound in the murky water. A plated mound. A luminous yellow eye opened, right in the middle of the small hill.
"What the fu..."
With a swashing wave of swamp-water, the mound was revealed to be a shell. A growling grunt came up with it, followed by a crunch where Sun was leaning over the ice-platform to get a better look.
"Look out!" Jaune caught the faunus by his tail, holding him over the eyeless face of the aquatic Creature of Grimm.
The eyeless red-patterned mask was more of a set of jaws, and only jaws, revealing a wide-hanging, toothless, draconic mouth.
Jaune yanked Sun back, and the pair slid back on the slippery ice, as a gout of fire spewed after them.
Twice their height, with eyes facing all directions in its dust-embedded shell, heaving waves with its every footstep, the short-necked, giant-mouth-headed Grimm gave chase, eating whatever was left of the icy platform that it didn't melt.
"Is that a freakin' giant fire-breathing turtle?" Ichigo muttered aloud.
"Actually, it'd be a tortoise. It's got legs, after all." Blake corrected. "We call them Wartoises."
"Oh, right. It's like a..." Ichigo snapped his fingers, "–alligator snapping turtle, but huge. Cool."
"Aren't you going to help!?" Jaune cried, as he and Sun backed away from the beast.
"Me?" Ichigo pointed at himself double-checkingly. "If I just killed everything, then what's the point of you guys coming along? You won't learn anything that way."
"Haaaah, fine." Yang barged in front. "I'll handle this."
She was wearing a really deep-collared white-cream vest under a black shrug, with the dark sleeves rolled back to her forearms to free up Ember Celica. A black mini skirt peeked out from under the vest, with a short violet silky waistcloth draping off the back. It was paired with two crooked gold-buckled black ammo belts slung loosely around her hip. On her legs were matching black thigh high stockings with garter-belts on the front and back of each thigh, studded with four golden diamonds in a line on each knee. Black ankle boots with four buckles apiece and yellow ribbons on the back tied in bows protected her feet. Around her neck was a lilac pendant set in silver, the same colour as her eyes.
She'd initially wanted to wear something completely different, but Pyrrha told her in the politest way possible that those overalls looked like a potato sack.
Yang charged ahead, holding her fists out in front of her. With a twist of her wrists, the barrels of Ember Celica extended and flared, a pair of heavy-duty shotgun slugs blowing off the fire-dust crystals on the back of the Wartoise's shell. The crystals shattered with a roaring explosion that was more heat and flame than shockwave, boiling the water as they fell in, rolling off the back of the unscathed Grimm.
"It's fireproof..." Jaune assessed.
"Yeah, I'm not surprised." Sun reached for his belt. "Those things can take artillery shells and walk it off," he unclipped a ribbed metal cylinder, squeezed a button on its top, and lobbed it at the open maw. He playfully threw it like a basketball, following through with his wrist. The fire-breath had sputtered out now that the crystals were gone, and the grenade found its mark. "–Their insides, though? Now they're way softer."
The reptilian Grimm continued forwards, snarling before a muffled boom rang out. The light left its eyes on its shell, and it slid back under the obscuring black-water of the swamp. It turned to dust as it submerged out of sight.
"Wartoises are so heavy, they won't even be blown apart, they'll just die on the inside. Crazy, huh?" Sun grinned.
Jaune exhaled. "Yeah... crazy."
Pyrrha spoke up, calling out to her partner. "Jaune! You might want to get back! That wasn't the only one..."
Sure enough, under the marish surface, odd numbers of lambent eyes could be spotted, sticking out like will-o'-the-wisps in the shadowy shallows.
Jaune drew Crocea Mors, and readied his stance. More Wartoises? No... "...They're... eels?"
Sure enough, from what Jaune could make out, there was a small shoal of eels of varying sizes all swimming towards them. When the first one drew close, he made his move.
"No, wait!" Pyrrha warned.
Crocea's shining tip was brought down, and speared into the water. Immediately, before Jaune could even pierce the Grimm, he hit resistance. Lashing tongues of crackling electricity flared out, and crawled up the blade and up his forearms.
"Let go, let go!" Sun called. Ichigo reached for his combat pass, and was about to rush forwards, but...
He could tell Jaune was about to pull something. He stopped, and let him have a shot.
"Hraaaaagh!" Jaune didn't let go. Instead, his aura's glow along his arms intensified, insulating him against the lightning, and he wrenched his sword in deeper, then hooked it out and threw whatever was caught on it over his head, out onto the ice bridge between him and Sun and the rest of their teams.
Breathing deeply, Jaune felt the rush of adrenaline numb his pain as he looked upon whatever had just fried him. It wasn't just a fish, he quickly realised. Four slimy tar-black legs, bending out to the sides, four toes in front, five toes in the back, each ending in sucker-pads. A frog? But it had a long oily body, as long as he was tall, with a finned tail. Whiskers like a catfish adorned its ugly face, and spherical yellow eyes bulged out of a freckled white mask. A bioluminescent lure hung off of a short tendril arching from its bony forehead. Creepy.
"Rib-it."
It croaked. Then it opened its mouth.
Jaune pulled his shield up with little time to spare, blocking the blood-red tongue as it latched onto his shield as fast as a bullet. Sun quickly shot off the sticky appendage with a bang from his shotgun-nunchucks, and Jaune rushed the monster and hacked into it with a sideways swipe. With it out of the way, they reunited with the group shortly.
"Bunyips... a lot of them." Pyrrha assessed.
"Bun-what?" Jaune asked. "What're we dealing with, here? That thing gave me a nasty shock."
Ichigo listened in. Out of the entire group, he and Jaune were the ones with the least amount of knowledge of the Grimm.
"Amphibious Grimm with bioelectricity. I'm surprised you could handle it, and shrug it off." Amber informed. "Even full-fledged Huntsmen don't try to do that often. You must have a hell of a lot of aura."
"They... they try and drown people, mainly. You can't swim if your muscles are all seized up, after all." Neptune explained. He was pale, and his movements were stiff and forced. It was the first time he'd spoken since they began their trek over the swamp. He shook his head. "...Nasty."
"So I should just..." Amber stomped, and the ice bridge they were on expanded into a full frosted platform, wide enough that they could all move freely. It covered the swimming Grimm, but was thin enough that they could be spotted slithering about underneath. The pony brayed and snorted at the ominous black squirming shapes. "Go!"
Mercury stalked ahead, and viperously raised his boot, before stomping and shooting through the insulated ice with a bang of Talaria. Pyrrha took careful aim with Miló's bronze rifle form, and nailed another Bunyip right between its protruding eyes. Emerald took pot-shots with Thief's Respite. It wasn't long before they were all cleared out, but...
Ichigo frowned. "Since when do rocks float?"
Sure enough, there was a smooth pebble bobbing on the surface of the swamp water.
Amber reached for her side, and drew her scimitar. "Ichigo... you might want to step in..."
The pebble wasn't alone for long.
The water roiled and crashed as a massive boulder broke its surface. Faceted with jagged edges, the dark slate-grey stone rose like a sprouting tower until it was piled up to the height of a house. Mats of moss and clumps of lengthy pond-weed hung from its crevices, like a patchy coat of botanical fur. Red veins of luminous cracks infested its otherwise water-smoothed surface, and the makeshift monolith's base soon split up until it was a pair of... legs and arms?
In the centre of the twisted hunk of rock, was a white mask. A vaguely face-shaped one, though it was featureless, save for a single, toxic-yellow diamond-shaped eye in its centre. Blood-red streaks branched off from it, over the rest of the mask and out across the rest of the possessed stone. Sheets of swamp water streamed off of it, running down the stringy pond-reeds growing from its once-submerged form.
"A golem?" Ichigo turned to his allies confusedly. The native Mistralians would recognise it, he guessed.
"A Geist!" Pyrrha declared, as she brought her team into formation around her with a wave of her hand. Huh, they must've been practicing that.
The Geist didn't make a sound. Rather, it couldn't, seeing as how it lacked a mouth at all. Instead, the noises it made were all wrought by its force upon the world around it. A swash of the dank water around its solid legs, a crunch of the magical ice platform cracking against its pressing body, and a whip as its car-sized fingerless fist careened down towards team PJYB.
Pyrrha raised her dipylon shield, and held it up with both hands behind Akoúo. It caught the incoming fist, and not only did it not crumple, it stopped it. Jaune raised his own heater shield, and Yang leapt up onto it. Jaune jumped, and so did Yang, giving her the boost necessary to throw her the way up to reach the lithic Grimm's shoulder. She twirled mid-air, triple front flips building momentum for her upcoming act.
The aura around her hair burst into sun-yellow flames, as she clasped her glowing hands together over her head and brought them down together like a mace. They left a comet-tail of fiery light behind as they crashed down, the meteoric impact blowing off the entire stony limb with a crunch. The boulders crashed into the water, showering them all with splashes, and a black ribbon snaked its way around Yang's shoulder. She grabbed it with both hands, and felt the elastic pull send her hurtling back to Blake as Gambol Shroud reeled her in.
Right, Ichigo watched on approvingly. Everyone here was superhuman, he had to remember. Not quite on his level, but Remnant was still full of people who wouldn't blink at throwing trucks and dodging bullets.
The Geist was down an arm, and soon it was pelted with a volley of gunfire courtesy of Emerald, Sun and Neptune. Chips of rock fell from its chapped surfaces, but it ignored them all as it bashed its dismembered shoulder into the ice platform they were standing on. Mercury jumped to the other side of the frozen foothold, grabbing Emerald as he went, as the floating ice was broken in half, ripped apart to fashion a new limb.
Neptune had been left behind, with visible panic in his wide blue eyes as the surface under his feet was quickly being ripped away, and he was in very real danger of falling into the murky water.
"He's freezing up." Blake realised, "What's gotten into him?"
"He's afraid of water!" Sun yelled, sprinting for his partner as he slipped off the raising ice sheet. "It's really bad! He didn't want me to tell anyone!"
Neptune fell over the frosty edge, about to plunge into the darkness of the lake when he felt arms catch him. Before he could blink, he was back on the more stable ice closer to Amber, with Ichigo supporting him.
"I think it's time we step in." Ichigo decided, drawing his combat pass from his pocket. Within seconds, his fullbring covered his body, though it was mostly hidden under his jacket. A line of white crawled across his face, over the bridge of his nose.
Amber held out her hands, harnessing the elemental makeup of the Geist's body to halt its movements. It slowed, then stopped, then, ever so slowly, it began to move again.
"I can't really get a hold of it that well... it's like it's possessed by the opposite of aura..." she ground out. Instead, she froze the water around it, locking its towering legs in place.
"It's fine. Just slowing it down is more than enough." Ichigo kicked off the ice, his fullbring blade's keen edge glinting in the sunlight.
The house-sized Grimm swung its new ice-arm at him, sweeping the platform, but he caught onto its blunt surface and somersaulted over the unwieldy appendage. Head-over-heels, he cartwheeled sideways, and when he found his footing again the Geist slammed down with its shorter boulder-arm. Blut Vene enshrouded his arms and shoulders, and the reinforcing circuits' dazzling light was reflected by the smooth glassy ice under his feet. Off to the side, Amber squeezed her hands, and the arm's pressure weakened greatly. There was a pause, then Ichigo bent his knees, and jumped, curling his right leg up into an inner crescent kick higher than his head. Vene switched to Arterie as the hit connected.
The kick sheared off the arm, a burst of cracks breaking away the stony limb. Amber wasted no time, redirecting the freed boulders to smash into the main torso, shattering the rest of its body.
From within the fractured rubble, a ragged, ghastly figure emerged, floating out like a dark spectre. A wraith, ragged with exposed ribs and hollow forearms, spindly fingers and flowing tatters for a lower body. Its head was like a dark hood, save for the one-eyed mask it still had. Just looking at it made everyone's skin crawl; like it was a malevolent stain upon the world itself.
A bogus poltergeist? Grimm were so very strange...
Ichigo stood in the air, staring down the Geist's true form. Without hesitating, he reached his left hand out, blue flickers condensing and coalescing into his Quincy armament. The sawn-off shotgun's double barrels flashed, and the false ghost was no more. Ichigo tilted the smoking barrels to his lips, and blew away the dark wisps. He really had learnt something useful at Beacon after all.
Falling back to the repairing ice bridge, he took stock of the situation; everyone was accounted for... and arguing.
"You left him there!" Sun accused.
Mercury raised an eyebrow at the faunus, who was jabbing a finger into his chest. He wiped it away with a sneer.
"Are you serious? How was I supposed to know he wouldn't even jump off on his own?"
"Well you helped her, didn't you?" Sun gestured at Emerald, who rolled her eyes.
"He didn't have to. Don't look at me." she huffed.
"Eh, I expected that." Mercury brushed her off, "But you? I dunno why you're sperging out, man. Maybe your friend shouldn't be a huntsman if all it takes to set him off is getting a little wet."
"Shut up! I'm not afraid at all!" Neptune denied vehemently.
"Oh yeah, well you sure showed me, then." Mercury scoffed. "Freaking hell, is this what normal huntsmen are like? A bunch of pussies? What're you supposed to do in a situation like this without anyone to bail you out? In the real world, if you bend so easily, you break."
Sun stepped up to his new team mate, glowering as he looked him in the eye with a glare. Silver met blue as they stood at equal height, sizing each other up.
"Aren't you going to step in?" Pyrrha turned to Ichigo and Amber. "Mercury's stepping out of line..."
"He's too harsh, isn't he?" Blake crossed her arms.
"...Is he really, though?" Yang frowned.
"What? Are you serious right now?" Sun exclaimed.
"Don't switch on me now," Yang waved her hands deflectingly. "I wouldn't be so harsh, obviously–"
"–Unless he pissed you off–" Jaune tacked in.
"–but he kinda has a point." Yang side-eyed her fellow blonde teammate crossly. "You can't be a huntress without being able to swim, y'know..."
Ichigo chose now to speak up. "I'll have to agree... but Mercury, you don't have to be such a dick about it. Save it for another time."
Mercury tutted, whilst Neptune swallowed, and recomposed himself without comment.
- –—{}—– -
The rest of the trek was slow, and punctuated by violent interruptions.
Every now and then, they'd attract a new unwelcome party member. The rest of the Grimm of the swamp were exotic, if a little predictable.
Crocodiles the length of trucks, with hides of thick, algae-caked bone, emerged from the depths with a rumbling hiss that reverberated through their bodies. When guns didn't work, Neptune and Pyrrha speared the largest of them through the cranium. Once man-sized pikes crested the waters, their spiny fins keen enough to impale, the teams quickly found that guns did work on these ones. When they came across a shoal of frenzied piranha-like Grimm, Ichigo simply just stepped in and killed them all with a flash of Zangetsu, complaining that it'd take too long otherwise.
The last one they had run into was a titanic King Taijitu, a type of two-headed anaconda Ichigo recognised from his time in Mountain Glenn. Divided between the two teams, both ends were beheaded at once by the quartets in sync.
The shore was soon in sight, a matted tangle of brambles, reeds and long grass. Willow trees lined the banks, their branches trailing down to the water. It was late afternoon, and the sun was still high in the azure sky, but it was only a matter of time until nightfall. Green-headed ducks fluttered about, nestling in with their clutches of speckled eggs.
"Finally..." Jaune muttered, tramping up onto the firmer ground. Amber melted away her frozen bridge with a wave of her fingers, leaving no sign of their passage. She mounted her pony, leading it onto the bank.
It wasn't much longer until they'd come across a path, one that Neptune and Sun insisted would lead them to the next settlement, Shion. The plain road was made of packed dirt, a pale earthy colour edged with short grass. The trees were sparse, with thin nubby tufts of bright needle-leaves resembling hinoki cypresses. Crickets and colourful frogs chirped among the underbrush. In the skies above, they soon spotted trails of dark smoke in the distance.
"Over there... it's a village, isn't it?" Jaune supposed, watching the wafting billows rise. "Phew... we can finally rest..."
"That smoke... it's too dark for cooking-fires..." Blake sounded pensive.
"You think so?" Ichigo stopped walking, and they all turned to face him.
"Just look at it..." Neptune pointed at the thick fumes. "There's an awful lot, isn't there?"
"It's a fire..." Mercury judged. He sounded more disappointed, than he did fretful.
"I'll go on ahead with these two and check it out. You guys follow." Ichigo directed, flash-stepping over to Jaune and Pyrrha. Flashing into his soul-form, he hoisted them up onto his shoulders nonchalantly, like he was picking up a book.
"With these who–oooo!?" Jaune wailed before he disappeared with the flickering blur of Ichigo's shunpo. A small poof of stray dust was kicked up in their wake.
"...Huh. So, we're gonna follow them, right?" Yang put her hands on her hips, looking expectantly over her shoulder at Amber.
"Hn, fat chance of that. We've got this damn horse to deal with." Blake rolled her eyes.
"Snort." the beast of burden seemed to hear her. It was mostly a deep chestnut brown, with a white splodge of fur around the top of its face and snout, and white tufts of fur around its lower legs. Its mane was a milky blonde, and it was quite large for one of its kind, being as tall as a person.
"First of all, this is a pony." Amber chastised, waving her finger in front of her. "Secondly, this pony has its aura unlocked. It's faster than most cars, and strong enough to pull a truck. I just didn't wanna risk riding her at full speed on thin ice. That'd be dumb. But it's alright now!" she beamed and beckoned, "Everybody, get on!"
Yang felt her eyebrow twitch. "How the hell are we supposed to all fit?"
Ichigo surveyed the village from above, spying smouldering flames gnawing away at wooden homesteads. The sky around the village was saturated with smoke, twisting it from an azure blue to a dreary ashen grey.
What little spiritual pressure he could sense there, was telling. His eyes narrowed. That was all he needed to see.
Within an instant, he shot towards the ground, his shihakushō flapping under the speeding winds, Jaune and Pyrrha closing their eyes. He landed neatly, right foot first, setting them on their feet.
Jaune looked a disconcerting mix of pale and yet also green in the face, on the verge of being sick. "You... hah..." he bend down, and held his knees, steadying himself. "...You could have warned me... I get airsick easily..."
Pyrrha's green eyes were wide and horrified. "Ichigo! The village, it's..."
Ichigo didn't reply; he was already setting to work.
The village of Shion was in ruins.
Walls were caved in, rooftops were burning, windows were smashed and the streets were littered with shards of broken wood and pottery. The settlement had once possessed a rural Eastern culture, he could tell from the familiar sloping tiled roofs, peaked corners and tops, and white plaster walls. Ichigo wasn't looking for that, however, as he flew a hundred meters straight up into the air. He could see the entire village from that height, and what he saw didn't bode well.
There were Grimm prowling the fallen streets and rooftops of Shion. Winged feline monsters, all soot-black from their furs to their feathers, apart from the jagged ribcages on their lower halves, the osseous plating along their tails, and their manes. The lion-manes around their fierce heads weren't fur, but instead nine crests of sharp bone bonded to a ash-white sabre-fanged mask. Each tooth was the size of a kitchen knife, fitting for the scale of the tiger-sized beasts.
The burnt-out fires were low, but they were still something he couldn't allow to fester. Ichigo drew Zangetsu from his back, and whipped it out wide in one motion, the flat side against the wind, until it stopped with his right arm held out at full length to the side. The resultant gale-force wind was strong enough that it washed over the entire settlement, wiping away the whitling flames all at once until there weren't any left. Jaune and Pyrrha hid from the squall behind their shields on the ground.
The winged Grimm took notice. Pouncing between the cracked tiles of the Mistralian roofs, they spread their black-feathered wings wide to take off. They must've needed to gain momentum to fly, Ichigo observed. It didn't matter.
The first that attacked swooped in from below. It snapped at him, stretching its neck and hinging its fanged mouth wide. From within, a dense gout of fire erupted from its throat. For its troubles, Ichigo slipped the tip of Zangetu's massive sealed state into its maw with a twist of his wrist, then shoved the pommel of it down with his left hand. It was bisected horizontally, the keen soul metal parting tar-black sinew and sickly-pale bone in a splatter of oily muck.
The next tried attacking from behind before he'd even pulled his sword away, so Ichigo swapped grips and ducked low, elbowing it from below with his right arm. It was his elbow against the Grimm's hardened, jagged external ribcage, and his elbow won. The monster's chest caved in, a weak spurt of fire hacking up out of its throat with a snarl, and Ichigo watched as twirling splinters of bone showered down as it was thrown upwards. He tightened his grip on the sword below him, and span horizontally, the revolution bringing his door-sized blade-edge up with his right arm and slicing the Grimm in half.
A barbed, bone point on the end of one of the Grimm's tails stabbed at his chest. He caught it with his bare hand, and inspected it, before ripping it off with a flex. Bulbous at the end, plates of bone leading up to the telson... it was a scorpion's tail. Obviously venomous, but that wasn't an issue. He simply wouldn't get hit.
"He's not even fazed at all..." Jaune watched on, mesmerised by Ichigo's smooth, deliberate, weighty strikes in the smoggy sky.
"Jaune! Behind you!" Pyrrha warned, already having drawn her gear.
He yelped, before pitching to the side in a roll as one of the lion-Grimm dived for his head from a nearby roof. Tiles sild off, breaking apart on the hard paving stones.
"A Manticore!" she identified immediately.
It was upon him in an instant, and as he tried to block the first swipe, it almost ripped the shield away with just one blow. "Holy– I need some help here!"
Bang!
A bullet from her bronze rifle-spear nailed the Manticore in its side, drawing its attention away from her partner. It roared, leaned forwards, and raised its tail over its spike-maned head. The scorpion-tail cracked forth, faster than Jaune could blink, but Pyrrha was ready to block with her shield up. Seeing her under pressure, Jaune forced himself to act with grit teeth.
The tail was extended, the barb against her shield. Jaune took his chance. He brought Crocea Mors down with a yell, severing the tail with a hard and heavy swing. The Grimm snarled out a haze of flames, reeling from the loss, but Pyrrha took the opportunity to belt her javelin-spear right into its head. Polarity ripped Miló right out of its head and floated it back into her hands, and they could both see the vile orange-red light leave its malfeasant eyes before them.
"Nice... nice!" Jaune gave his partner a thumbs up with a bright, wide smile. He felt the adrenaline still flowing through his body, and even as two more Manticores landed on either side of the duo, he knew the two of them could take them both. Back to back, they nodded to each other—
A giant black-and-silver sword beheaded the Manticore in front of Jaune, the blade snapping its spiked bone-mane to get through its neck like it wasn't even there. Ichigo held the sword with both hands, kneeling behind it, kneeling on top of the malformed beast's back, crushing it with his impact. It collapsed to the ground, cracks spiderwebbing-out beneath it, and before it even turned to dust Ichigo had taken Zangestu and sent it hurtling at the one across from them. The sword span like a buzzsaw, trailing its cloth behind it like a fishing line, and it tore right through the monstrous Grimm without even stopping. Ichigo yanked it back, and caught the revolving door-sized blade with a single hand, holding it sideways.
Ichigo stepped off the dissolving Manticore without looking back, sheathing his greatsword in wraithlike cloth as he did so.
His face was all business; his hazel eyes were hardened, his brows knit together and furrowed, and his mouth was a tight line.
"Everyone here is dead."
The news hit Jaune and Pyrrha like a truck.
"W-what?" Jaune stammered.
Right about then, the rhythmic clop-clop of hooves on packed earth and shale paving stones preceded the arrival of the other Huntsmen and Huntresses. Amber had flown in, dropping Mercury and Emerald from under her arms, whilst the rest rode in on the pony, Yang at the front with three in the saddle behind her. It had only been a few minutes since they had last seen each other.
"Ichigo? What's the situation?" Amber requested.
"He said..." Jaune gulped, "...that everyone in the village is dead..."
"What?" Yang's lilac eyes drew wide. She'd already climbed off, and was standing with the others in a makeshift circle.
"It's true." Ichigo confirmed with a grim nod. "There's nobody left alive here."
"Shion's wrecked..." Neptune faltered, "I–I knew people here..."
Mercury sounded less unsettled by the news. Instead, he took the information, and considered it. "There aren't any bodies here." he noticed, glancing up and down the empty streets.
"He's right..." Emerald voiced her suspicions. "You'd think there'd be more of a mess..."
"Shion is—was a popular camping spot with a hiking trail. They'd use airships to ferry tourists in and out." Pyrrha explained. Her voice was tinged with hope, "Maybe they got evacuated?"
"Not all of them." Ichigo countered. He sounded sure of it.
"It'd explain where the bodies went though, a big enough bullhead like they use for ferries could lift them out for burial in a safer place." Blake mulled solemnly.
"If that's the case, then this village is already considered a lost cause." Neptune realised. "We can't catch an airship here to a major town."
"So... you think anyone alive's already been flown out, and they took their dead with them?" Thump. Yang slammed her fist sideways, into the wall beside her. "Dammit! We were too late!"
"Late? What the hell were we supposed to do? We didn't know anything." Emerald balked. "Heroes don't always show up. Life isn't like that."
"...Life is pretty messed up." Jaune decided.
"You got that right, man." Mercury agreed. He'd slidden down to the floor, leaning up against the wall of an abandoned house, hands in his pockets with his silver eyes closed.
"...You don't sound too bothered by all this." Sun quirked a peeved brow at the grey-haired teen.
"What can I say?" Mercury pulled his hands out from his pockets, and held them wide, gesturing at the empty, abandoned, burnt ruins of the village around them all. "This is life. You're just seeing the ugly side for the first time."
"That's not true." Ichigo retorted, "I've seen piles of bodies before. I'll admit, I'll react less outwardly, but I'm not numb to it all. Maybe it's just easier for you not to care. Maybe you won't show it, like me, or maybe you're just screwed in the head."
Mercury glowered at his rebuttal, biting his lip, but didn't respond. Instead he asked the whole cohort of Huntsmen and Huntresses a question. "Well, what now? Do we go to the next village, or do we find out who's responsible for this? I'm sure the latter's what a proper Huntsman would do." he air-quoted mockingly.
"Who's responsible for this?" Pyrrha murmured, "This was a Grimm attack. We already took care of them all before you arrived, actually."
"Nah, that's not it." Mercury shook his head, and got up onto his heavy feet. He walked along the street, pointing things out as he passed them. "Look. The way those windows are smashed, these doors are broken in a deliberate way. Grimm just smash walls down. That fire started indoors." He stopped, and turned on his heel to face them. "This was done by people."
Mercury wanted to see the reaction in their innocent eyes. How would they take it? These so-called normal people his age, who hadn't seen death before?
"People?" Jaune repeated, thrown off.
"Bandits, he's saying." Blake, surprisingly, spoke up next. "I recognise the aftermath. Just like the White Fang. The tactics, they're smash-and-grab. By starting fires, they forced the villagers to focus more on putting them out, than tracking them. The Grimm must've been lured in by the negativity afterwards."
"...Then we need to find these people. We can't just leave them running around ransacking villages. It wouldn't be right." Pyrrha concluded.
"Well duh, obviously. It's literally our job." Yang pointed out.
"Then we need to search the remains for any clues." Amber smacked her fist into her palm. "There must be something that'll give us some direction here."
Mercury stretched his arms over his head. "Hrmn." he then glanced over the team he'd been given leadership over. Emerald, Sun and Neptune. He addressed the two boys from Haven. "I need both of you to tell me your semblances. Now."
"Fine. I make see-through clones, made of aura. Watch." Sun demonstrated, clapping his hands together. A transparent, faceless copy of himself appeared with a golden-yellow glow. He pulled his hands apart, and the apparition faded away shortly after.
Mercury turned his attention to Neptune next. "And you?"
Neptune fingered his collar nervously. "I... control water. I have to touch it first, though."
Mercury crossed his arms. "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me. You've got an ability like that and you're too much of a sissy to use it?"
"Screw you! It almost drowned my brother... I just can't..." he grit out.
"Oh really?" Mercury snarked scathingly, "That's crazy man, too bad I don't care."
Sun stepped between his partner, and Mercury. "Watch your mouth."
"Or what?"
Sun grabbed him by the collar. "Wanna find out?"
Mercury was the one to make the first move.
A sweep-kick came for Sun's legs, so he jumped, letting go of Mercury's collar. Behind him, his blond tail snaked under his white shirt, pulling out one pair of crimson-gold nunchucks. Using the momentum from the sweep, Mercury followed through into a roundhouse kick on the same side. Still in mid-air, Sun yanked Ruyi-Bang taut between his tail and his left hand, the gold chain catching the rising high-kick... but not stopping it.
His foot powered through, slamming into Sun's left side. The leg came far harder, faster and heavier than he expected, knocking some wind out of his chest.
Mercury was about to bring his foot down, aiming to stomp on his toes for good, spiteful measure, but found himself stopped by the loop of gold chain wrapped around his leg. Sun grinned. The advantage of having a tail, meant his right arm had been free all this time. Now, he raised his elbow high, and brought it right down, hammering into Mercury's shoulder, hard.
The blow was hard enough to send both boys sliding away from each other, one holding his left side, one holding his left shoulder, both staring each other down grudgingly. All in all, the entire high-speed exchange had barely lasted five seconds.
Mercury was about to step forwards, when... he couldn't. He just couldn't move his legs anymore. He paled, and checked at his feet with wide eyes, then looked all around frantically, before zeroing in on Pyrrha. Her hand was raised slightly, the fingers splayed.
"You..." Mercury gave her a look of pure, distilled venom, the very worst expression he could muster. His countenance was one of knowing, furious hatred, all of it pouring into his narrowed eyes, clenched jaw, and furrowed brows.
Click-click. Emerald had drawn Thief's Respite, pointing her left pistol at Sun, and the right at Pyrrha. She exhaled sharply. "Dammit Merc! Look what you've made me do!"
Whirr. Neptune's mecha-shift SMG was out, with its barrel trained on Emerald. "Drop it!"
Cha-chak. "Heh-heh. Looks like we have some sorta old-fashioned Vacuoan stand-off." Yang cocked Ember Celica, pointing one gauntlet at Emerald, and the other at Mercury's chest.
Blake looked left and right, her bow pressing itself flat against her head.
Jaune twisted to Ichigo and Amber. "Aren't you gonna do something?"
Shunk. Ichigo buried Zangetsu's point into the ground, appearing with it right in the middle of the deadlock. His eyes took on a blue tint, and the air felt ever so slightly heavier than it did usually. Their guns dropped at once.
"We don't have time for your little impasse. Honestly, I'm feeling pissed off right now. We have a problem in front of us that needs solving. If you want to play cowboys or fight so badly, that's fine by me– but not right now." he pointed at the silver-haired instigator, "Mercury, you're outta line. Quit acting like such a sperg." he reprimanded, his face firm and words weighing heavily on them all.
"What? You're really going to tell me I'm in the wrong, here?" he sounded outraged.
"Not completely. Neptune, you can't use fear as an excuse to avoid honing your strength, it's pathetic. And Sun, you shouldn't be stepping in like that. I'll be the first to say you should protect your friends, sure, but you're not protecting him by fighting his battles for him. He won't stand up for himself, otherwise."
"I think... if you have a semblance, you should use it." Jaune assessed. "In our career, we'll be fighting for our lives. You can't just willingly cripple yourself like that."
"Funny hearing you say that, when your leader's guilty of the exact same thing." Mercury spat.
"Aw c'mon... I was agreeing with you..." Jaune sighed. "What do you even mean, anyway?"
"Do I have to spell it out?" he pointed right at Pyrrha, calling her out, and she froze. "She has one of the strongest semblances I've ever seen, and all she uses it for is wobbling other people's weapons off-course."
"He knows?" Yang gasped, "How'd he figure it out? Pyrrha's only ever told us what hers is."
"His spar with her..." Blake figured, rifling through the last few months of her time in Beacon. "He learned what it was, and that's how he caught her offguard..."
"They sparred? When'd this happen?" Ichigo asked, curiously.
"When you were gone for a couple months, that's when Mercury requested a match against Pyrrha." Yang filled him in. "Mercury actually managed to just barely beat her, and he's the only guy in the academy to have ever won against P-Money before or since. Of course, she'd already sparred beforehand, so it wasn't exactly a fair fight..."
"Bullcrap. I beat her, and everybody saw it." Mercury lauded proudly. "'Invincible girl' my ass."
"She totally immobilised you just now!" Yang pointed at him. "We all saw how pissed off you got! She'd beat you any other time!"
"I'm sorry..." Pyrrha spoke lowly, and kept her green eyes trained down at her feet. "My semblance is called Polarity. You can probably guess what it does. There's a competitive advantage to keeping it a secret, and that's something I guess I ended up carrying over here."
"You don't have to apologise to this jackass." Jaune reassured, "Hiding your abilities makes sense. I mean, look at Ichigo."
"What, me?" Ichigo sounded surprised, "Nah, where I'm from, it's common courtesy to explain your abilities right when you reveal them."
"Are you joking? That's dumb as hell." Yang shook her head. "Why would you even..."
"I uh... don't really know. It's just something everyone does, I guess." Ichigo stared off, his mind trailing back in reminiscence. "Well, there was this one guy who lied about his zanpakutō's power. Kamishini no Yari could stretch up to thirteen kilometres, but that was only one of its abilities. He was a real snake."
"T-thirteen kilometres?" Amber muttered in alarm. "...That's taller than Atlas..."
"Only one ability? What were the others?" Blake's bow piqued up.
"I never found out. He died a few years ago; I was there for his last words. I don't know if I would call him a good man– but I wouldn't call him a bad one, either." Ichigo said wistfully. "All I'm saying is, there're times where being open about your strengths will allow you to hone them further, and you might be holding yourself back if you never practice going all out with it. Then again, having a secret technique can really come in handy. I should know."
"You have a secret technique? That's badass..." Sun commented, with a hand under his chin.
"Moonless Sky. It wouldn't be secret if I told you what it did, though, would it?" Ichigo jabbed.
"I... I see what you're saying. I'll keep it in mind." Pyrrha nodded gratefully. She was a real people-pleaser, and it would bite her, Ichigo could tell. Then again, that was what she had friends for, he reasoned.
"Wait a minute... Polarity... so it's magnetism?" Neptune presumed. "That's... that's overpowered. Can you control the iron in blood?"
Pyrrha looked queasy at the thought. "I–I don't think so, thankfully."
"Then how'd you stop him from walking? His shoes aren't completely metal, are they?" Neptune pressed.
Mercury grit his teeth, but didn't speak. Amber looked on, knowingly, waiting for a response.
"I don't think it's my place to tell." Pyrrha denied.
Mercury tilted his head, in confusing acknowledgement of her omittance.
"Y'know... you should be glad you have a semblance." Mercury attempted to put it amicably. "Imagine not having one, after years of training, and how that must feel."
"You're saying you don't have one?" Neptune clued in.
Mercury twisted his gaze away from them all. "Mine was taken."
"Taken?" Pyrrha repeated in alarm.
"...I don't want to talk about it." And that was all he said.
"But—" Pyrrha began, before Ichigo held up a hand to stop her.
Ichigo peered in to Mercury's soul. What he found was one that was missing something, a dull grey spirit that was lacking a piece of itself. Not a hole, like a hollow's, but more like a chunk had been taken out of it.
"He's telling the truth." Ichigo reached into the pocket of his shihakushō and pulled out his denreishinki. He typed out a quick text into the soul phone before pocketing it again without elaborating. There. Mercury might be an asshole, but he'd probably still be able to help him out a little. Once he was done, his eyes rove over the assembly of student Huntsmen and Huntresses in front of him.
"Spread out, and search the town. There might be something we've missed. A sign, clue or lead. Go."
"All right, bossman. Whatever you say." Yang stretched her arms over her head as she turned her back on him.
As the group began to fan out, Ichigo reached out and grabbed Amber by the shoulder as she passed him.
"Gah! What was that for?" she whined, then straightened herself. "Don't tell me... you sent them all away, but you secretly already know what to do? Devious."
"You got that right." Ichigo admitted without a beat, "There're newly-deceased spirits in this village. You'll be able to see them now, just like me. I want you to come with me to meet them."
"I can see the dead?"
"Well yeah, dummy, you're dead too." Ichigo put it bluntly. He ripped Zangetsu free from the ground, and sheathed the massive blade on his back.
"Hmph. You don't have to say it so plainly. Learn to treat a girl with some tact..." she pouted.
Ichigo led her down the rubble-strewn street, lined with broken, empty houses, under the cloudy, smoke-clogged sky.
NEXT: 30 - THE SPIDER'S LAIR - [The Fate]
Author's notes:
This chapter sets out what I want the teams' dynamics to be. Mercury and Emerald are both 'grittier' than the students, and Mercury, being the more confrontational one, is butting heads with his new allies now that he's no longer as leashed as he was under Cinder. I want the 'ex-bad guys' to feel different from the good guys. It'd be dumb if they're just like 'okay, we're all friends now!' right away. Amber'll talk about them next chapter.
I also threw in a Jaune/Pyrrha fight scene. Might as well do something with them since Pyrrha's alive, after all. The "spar" between her and Mercury went similarly to that one non-canon fight I drafted out in Chapter 23. I don't mind Jaune, probably because he's (unintentionally) the best character in the series, but I don't want to ever draw attention away from Ichigo. I don't give a FUCK about shipping (aka SHITping) btw, but even if you discount that aspect there's a reason so many people here use him as a MC for their stories rather than the actual main characters.
As for the Grimm here, Manticores and the Geist are canon, but the others are made up. I'm against character OCs, but Grimm don't really count IMO. The Wartortle is just a big evil alligator snapping turtle with dust crystals in its shell that it sees out of, and Bunyips are based on Australian mythical cryptids of the same name. The others are just IRL animals, but Grimm, so they're less interesting.
Ichigo kinda took on a leader-ey role here, stopping things from going FUBAR with his reiatsu, and I kinda took it from how he acts in the TYBW plus how he acts as an elder in the Hell chapter. He would've also been on edge after sensing all the dead in the village, otherwise he wouldn't have reacted so sternly to the infighting. Tell me what you think.
Amber's design is literally just Mistral arc Cinder with brown hair and a mask and beauty spot instead of an eyepatch, plus two full sleeves since she doesn't have a Grimm arm. Yang and Blake are wearing their 'Alternate' outfits from Volume 1, rather than their actual Mistral outfits. This is because they look way, way better than their actual character designs from later Volumes. They actually fit their colour schemes and everything. Those new ones look pretty bad ngl. Nothing on par with Kubo or Toriyama who can just pump out 10/10 character designs one after the other, but then again few designers are. Speaking of Kubo, Ichigo is wearing his clothes from the cover of the 'All Colour But The Black' artbook. You can just look all of this stuff up.
Thanks for 2,600 follows, 2,100 favourites and 1030 reviews! There'll be a surprise character return next chapter, you'll see...
Author's announcement:
There is a new poll on my profile. Check it out. This will explain why.
To Shatter Fate is about to hit its thirtieth chapter, and it's about a third of the way into the story (I'm guessing). I've written a lot for it, and I'm not stopping anytime soon. I'm just saying, I'm going to try my hand at another 'serious' fic like this one soon. I've done a few other stories, but they're all parody high-effort shitposts. This'll be a properly done thing. Tell me, what would you think of Bleach x Bloodborne crossover, by me? I already know what I wanna do, and who I'm gonna use. Except, it won't be anywhere near as long as this story. I'm aiming for 3—5 chapters, tops. As for why I'm announcing it like this when I haven't even started it, it's because it'll obviously delay work on To Shatter Fate while its running. I'm asking whether you want me to prioritise it for a short while and just finish it all, or have it be a background thing that I only focus on one chapter at a time. I'm also advertising it here. Woooo!
You know how most Bloodborne crossovers are about some unlucky sod getting mindfucked by all the horrors and nightmares? Well, with this story... this one's gonna be quite different... think less "intricate cosmic horror", more "wild gigachad rampage".
