4: FULL BROKEN MOON - [Batalla Batalla]

The nocturnal air was brisk, as a bird, dark as the night surrounding it, drew nearer to what was surely gathering countless grimm for miles around.

A veritable beacon of negativity, that had drawn all five lamp-like eyes under its white mask's attention in an instant. With every flap of its feathered wings, it approached the source of miasma of sheer unbridled horror and strife that blanketed the stretch of wilderness. With every beat of its wings, a subtle, imperceptible weight on it increased.

The monstrous facsimile of a raven bowed further and further, and flew lower and lower as it edged closer and closer to its goal. Still, it flew on in the cold clear Autumn sky. One of its kind could never ignore such a veritable wellspring of negativity, especially one young enough that it lacked any sort of self-preservation instinct yet, such as it. Eventually, the source entered its sight. At first, it was unable to recognise the presence of anything, but within a few moments, clarity was grasped. A horned figure, stock still in the bespangled night sky, emanating distilled, irresistible despair. The creature eagerly dived towards the silhouette, ignoring the sharply increasing pressure, the pressing flat of its feathers, the shooting weight before—

The creature fell out of the night sky, dead before its body shattered on the rolling hills hundreds of meters below. In the tall grass, interspersed with wild flowers, it was the seventeenth dissolving pile of its kind so far. It wouldn't be the last.

Ichigo, meanwhile, hadn't even noticed the attention he was getting from the prowling beasts of the night, as he stood in the starry expanse. Even if he could sense them, he wouldn't pay the minor monsters any heed, not at a time like this. Not right now.

The moon...

Who could have done this? Nobody had ever touched the World of the Living in this way before. There wouldn't be a point to such needless destruction, especially for something of this magnitude. Not from Yhwach, nor from Aizen. Their plans didn't involve the goddamn moon at all. Yhwach sought to reshape the multiverse back to its original, primordial state, and Aizen sought to take the seat of god in the Royal Palace of the Soul King. The moon had nothing to do with them. Someone else, then?

At this point, with the powers at play, even the moon's lunar mass was paltry in the face of the might of the upper Sternritters such as the Schutzstaffel, or even a stray shot from a shinigami. Could Kenpachi have screwed something up? Ichigo wouldn't put it past him... but nobody was even here in the Living World in the first place! All of the battles of the war had taken place in dimensions other than that of the living.

Although... Yhwach did claim that he was already restructuring the spiritual planes before he died... could this have been the result? In looking back on the final battle with the Quincy god-king, Ichigo mentally revised the transpiring events. He'd met people since then, Mrs Rose and her widower husband, yet they hadn't even mentioned the shattered moon at all. No way they didn't notice half the freaking moon blowing up over their heads, so was this a reality-warping sort of issue? Had it happened only now?

No, it couldn't have, there wasn't a sign, or anything of the sort, and there wasn't a cataclysmic meteor bombardment torching half the globe, either. This... he... was at a complete loss here. Ichigo didn't know what to do. He had no idea what to do. What the substitute did know, was that he needed to get to the Soul Society immediately. It didn't matter whether he had a Hell Butterfly or not, he'd open a senkaimon right here and now.

Ichigo drew the tightly-wrapped sealed form of Zangetsu from his back, pulling it over his right shoulder and red rosary band as the cloth unfurled from the body-length cleaver. Snaking his right foot back on a bed of unseen reishi, he pivoted his upper torso until it was parallel to his feet, drawing back his right black-banded arm holding the massive sword flat as he held his left arm forward, the dark sleeve drawing back. With a flare of reiatsu, the small amount of wispy clouds in the sky were wiped away, repulsed to reveal the stellar-studded heavens. He twisted, swinging his left side back, and thrusting Zangetsu's tip forth with a step forward from his right. The sharp point found its mark, piercing the unseen gate between worlds and opening with a counterclockwise twist. Ethereal shoji doors, circular in shape, opened up, and Ichigo sheathed Zangetsu again as he stepped through, without a moment's hesitation.

- –—{}—– -

This was a mistake, because instead of the purple, oozing interdimensional path through compressed spacetime, as Ichigo expected, he found himself missing a step, and falling horns-first forwards into pitch-black crepuscular nothingness.

It felt like missing a step whilst walking down the stairs at night, only far, far worse. What the hell? Where was the dangai? Did Yhwach's rearrangement of reality really get this far in so short a time? He was back, back in the aphotic darkness of the shadowscape that he had first fell into a day ago, only now instead of falling into it from someone else's doing, he'd inadvertently entered it himself. This time, however, he was well-rested and alert. Ichigo's dimorphic eyes narrowed, one amber-brown and the other electric yellow on the left, as he created a luminous blue platform of reishi to land on, hands first, before fluidly cartwheeling backwards into a standing motion. He remembered what got him out of this space last time, a garganta, so he'd have to pull off a descorrer again to leave.

Looks like the dangai might actually be busted right now, which was a huge problem. This could possibly strand all active Soul Reapers in the World of the Living, and all of the surviving Court Guard Squads wouldn't be able to leave the Soul Society. He'd need to extract them with a garganta to show them the state of the moon, or maybe he could get Nel and Grimmjow to help move them. ...Or maybe just Neliel, asking Grimmjow to help shinigami might prove more trouble than it was worth, unless she could convince him to tag along or something. They looked like they got along surprisingly well enough, he'd saved her in Hueco Mundo apparently, after all.

As Ichigo began to hollowfy further to prepare to open a garganta, he attempted to limit it to only his left arm this time. It was only somewhat successful, as most of his left side still bled bone-white. The thick sable stripe grew over his face from his encroaching hollow hole, and the fingers on his left hand sprouted talons as he tapped the unseen boundary beyond reality in front of him. It was only his third time after all, and the first time he'd ever tried to control it. It'd take time to master, of course. His claws found purchase in the stygian nothingness, and he tugged at what he could grasp to open a far neater, wider, accordion-like portal in front of him than the first time he attempted it. He entered, this time taking a deep breath. Just in case.

The first thing that Ichigo noticed upon stepping out, was the sheer brightness of it all. It was daytime? Early morning, by the sight of the light orange-blue sky. Had he jumped forward by a few hours because of the shadow space he fell into? The second thing he noticed, was that he was standing on a cobbled pathway. An empty cobbled pavement, next to an empty tarmac road. Surrounded by... European architecture? Old-style gothic European architecture. The navy blue clay-tiled rooftops all tapered to a pointed line, palladian windows jutted out in bows, and the buildings were all two or three stories at most. Small, black painted narrow-barred metal fences rose waist high around verdant flowerbeds, topped with flamboyant arrowheads, on either side of the arched indented doorways. Was he still in whatever country he arrived in before? Dispelling his hollowfication, he began to wander forwards, drinking in the sights. At least the streetlamps, though modelled like old gas-lit ones, had bulbs in them, Ichigo noticed as he turned round a corner. That meant he hadn't been thrown centuries into the past or something like that, at least. He was mildly relieved he hadn't faced too major of a time displacement, at first... until he entered a busier main street, and saw the traffic... holograms.

Holograms!? Like in sci-fi? He knew Soul Society used them, but judging by the cars, –car models he didn't recognise at all– these were living people. Physical, corporeal, living people, walking along the path, driving cars, casually using holographic projections as traffic lights. Like it was normal. Where... when the hell was he? Ichigo dashed back into the emptier street, before flashing into his one-horned physical body, eyes wide as he charged back into the busy street.

He spied a loitering pedestrian, a young man with combed back black hair in a dark green polo shirt and grey cargo trousers, leaning against the exposed brick wall. He was smoking idly as he watched the traffic pass with his jade green eyes. Ichigo hastily walked up to him, and began with an uneasy tone.

"Can you tell me what year it is?" he spoke slightly rushed, desperate to hear an answer.

The man's eyes swiveled over to him, before he blew a ring of puffy grey smoke right at the one-horned stranger in an open black hoodie accosting him. A late teenager faunus, by the looks of him, with a sharp, angular horn on his left temple as well as bright orange hair which... matched his trainers? Huh, he'd never seen that brand before.

"Eight hundred years after the great war. Who's asking, a time traveller?" he smiled broadly when he saw the guy's eyes widening at that. Wait a minute, did this guy really not catch the joke? It was literally ten times the actual date. Was he serious here? How could he not know the year, to that degree?

Ichigo caught the man's smile, and growled as he grabbed the man by the front of his collar, bunching his grip with the material. "Don't screw with me! Give me an actual date!" he was panicked now, wild in his amber-brown eyes.

The man's eyes— slit like a snake, with odd-looking eyebrows now that he inspected closer— narrowed, as he reached back and reared a left fist. "You're stretching my shirt. Let. Go." He clenched Ichigo's wrist in his right, fingers curling tightly as he shot his fist forwards. "Piss off, cun—" He was laid flat in one blow, knocked out before he hit the ground, startling the other oddly-dressed passer-bys.

Passer-bys, Ichigo realised, of whom several possessed similar traits as the man he just punched out. A few of them had visible animalian features, and it wasn't limited to just the eyes. Ears, horns, one kid even had a brown-furred tail, it seemed. He was as startled by their appearance as they were of him, walking up to a complete stranger and knocking them out.

Oh, crap, shouldn't have done that. He was completely in the wrong here, having provoked the guy first, even if he did throw the first punch. He should probably get out of here, but not before at least sitting the unlucky pedestrian up. He felt pretty guilty now, as he sat the stranger against the wall after stomping out his cigar, but he wasn't in a right state of mind, trembling as he was at the moment. He'd reacted as soon as he felt the oncoming blow, without meaning to.

As he ran back to the empty street and flashed into his spiritual form, he ruminated on what he'd learnt. The snake-eyed man clearly lied about the date, he'd probably bumped it up, by the time traveller joke he made. Still, it wasn't a good sign, what with the unrecognisable cars, holographic traffic lights, and animal-featured people now wondering where he went. Were those what Mrs Rose meant by faunus? At least none of them had that odd shell-structured reiryoku, so they wouldn't be able to see him now. But that was just the issue; they weren't spirits, yet they clearly had non-human features. The question remained: Where was he now?

Hopefully he'd never have to find out. Seeing as how the senkaimon failed, and dumped him here in this hither unknown quasi-gothic-futuristic city, Ichigo deigned to try a garganta, directly to the soul society next. This descorrer had to work. Partially hollowfying again, he reached out with two talons and tapped at the invisible wall of reality, opening the throat of the unseen. It was getting easier and easier, he noted, as he stepped through, more warily than usual.

- –—{}—– -

Ichigo's striped face held a countenance of desperate disappointment as he pitched forwards horns over heels, finding himself in the nebulous shadow space yet again. This couldn't be good. Gathering a shallow slope of vivid blue reishi beneath his clawed feet, he slowed his descent into the bracken darkness by sliding on it. Coming to a stop when he was standing horizontal once more, Ichigo let his instincts guide him to open a path to the space with the greatest concentration of reiatsu beyond the umbrageous interdimensional void. He'd be happy with winding up in Hueco Mundo, at this point.

Reaching forward, heterochromatic eyes closed, Ichigo pulled on reality for the third and final time that day. Opening his mismatched orbs to a swirling portal of static, he slowly stepped through.

The sunlit warmth was what hit Ichigo first. Then it was the birdsong, then the insect calls, then a tree branch. Ah, he was falling again. Well, at least he was already upright this time. Ichigo stopped himself on an invisible reishi foothold, and dehollowfied, but not before pulsing a pequisa. His small hopes were crushed by picking up a sea of reiryoku flames, all of them surrounded by the shell-like arrangement found on Summer Rose's spirit and Taiyang Xiao-long. All of them except one... approaching his location, right now.

Ichigo whipped around, and was given no time to lament on the ever-growing pile of problems he was now facing, by the terrified scream of a boy rocketing towards him, pinned on a spear. Not by his flesh; it was far too clean for that, but by the black hood sticking out of... was that plate armour? Making sure not to stop him too suddenly, Ichigo caught the spear, but moved along with its momentum, pulling it out from the -blonde, he noted- boy's hood before letting the bronze spear fly out, all in midair. The spear behind him vibrated like a tuning fork as it thudded into the bark of a deciduous tree, thirty meters up from the ground.

How the heck did someone get into this situation? Was this a fight to the death he was interrupting?

"Oh, gods, please no, I don't wanna die!" the boy shrieked out as Ichigo fell with him in his arms, bridal style, before unceremoniously dumping him on the leaf-cushioned ground. Ichigo glanced about the clearing, ignoring the confused form on the floor before him.

It was now high noon; he'd jumped a few hours again. The trees, they were all fully-leaved, and a verdant green, even at this time of year, mid-autumn. Below the canopy, a few vines wrapped some trunks sparingly, but the bark was mostly exposed. Pastel-coloured flowers, of shapes and species he didn't recognise in the slightest sprouted in chromatic clumps at the foot of the trees, and the forest floor was covered in mats of moss and dead leaves. The flowers were attended to by a few butterflies fluttering in the sunbeams.

"Hey." Ichigo tapped the teen, now that he got a closer look at him, on the shoulder when he stood up. The boy was dressed in a black hoodie, over which a lustrous silver-metal breastplate and shoulder pauldrons were affixed, with black fingerless gloves tightly gripped around a blue-handled, golden-pommelled broadsword with a gilded crossguard, which was flat on the handle-side but sloping up into the blade on top. He'd drawn it, it seemed, from the white, gilt-embossed scabbard on the lower one of his two brown leather belts. On his legs, were fairly light blue jeans, and tasset-plates strapped over his thighs, with metallic greaves over the shins just above baby-blue, white-soled high-top trainers. His armour plating was polished to a shining degree, but was thin, and the way it juxtaposed against the causal clothes worn underneath made for an unprofessional sight.

Ichigo didn't get a response, as the blonde continued carrying himself like he was constantly fretting over something or other in his head. He probably was. Oh, right, he didn't have that 'aura' structure, as Summer called it, to his reiryoku, so he wouldn't be able to see him like this. In a flash, whilst the guy's back was turned, he returned to his physical body.

"Oi." Again, Ichigo tapped the teen on his shoulder. He definitely got a response this time.

"Hwahhh!" he yelped, as he leapt away, twirling around on one foot to whirl back at Ichigo's unmoving form, left leg raised up and both arms shielding his face. It was the worst pirouette Ichigo had ever seen, by far. Sure, it was a little unfair that he was including Yuzu's dance recitals in that ranking, but the girlish scream from the newcomer really made it deserve to be added to the mental list.

After about five full seconds of holding the pose, the boy drew his hands back, revealing wide blinking ocean-blue eyes as he settled on his feet. "Hah... oh... Where'd you come from? Wait, never mind! So are you my partner?"

"Partner? For what? And what was that spear about?" Ichigo dully directed his thumb upwards at the red-tipped bronze spear with an engraved shaft still stuck perpendicular against the tree bark above.

"I'm... not sure, actually." the blonde looked back down towards the orange haired adolescent. He appeared to be a couple years older than him, with a pointed horn jutting from the side of his head, and was slightly taller, which was reassuring. He was even in casual clothes, just like him, too! "But if you're here, then we'll definitely get to... to..." he trailed off, wracking his brain for whether he could remember anyone mentioning specifically where he needed to go. It didn't work. "...Wherever those relics are!"

"Yeah, 'course." Ichigo brushed off as he edged his vision back towards the spear. Someone had thrown it, and someone had aimed to hit this guy. "Say, is anybody looking to kill you? Is this some sorta teen deathmatch?"

"What!? I hope not! Is that what the headmaster on the cliff meant by opposition?" he whimpered.

"Headmaster?" Did that mean... "Tell me... where am I?"

"Wh-what? You mean you don't even know you're in Beacon's initiation?" The armoured boy began to look... smug? "Pfffft... To think that there was someone here even more unprepared than me! Don't worry about a thing, I'll handle everything." He sprung behind Ichigo and slapped his back reassuringly.

Ichigo wasn't reassured in the slightest. "Hey, hey, don't say something like that so proudly. Being surprised that someone is even worse than you are doesn't make you sound very good yourself... whoever you are." He turned to face the stranger with a raised brow.

The dollar-store knight stuck a thumb back towards himself as he puffed out his chest, with a pearly smile. "The name's Jaune Arc. Short, sweet, rolls off the tongue, and the ladies love it!"

Ichigo didn't love it. He stood there more baffled than anything else, his head tilted sideways. Had this guy never spoken to anyone in his life before? "Thank... you? I'm Ichigo Kurosaki. Say, quick question, what... what do you call the world?" If the 'knight' was gonna spout random nonsense, then so could he. He needed the clarification, anyway.

"What kind of question is that? What do I call Remnant? Is it some sort of trick question? Is 'home' the answer?"

"So it's Remnant, then. Remnant is the name of this world." Ichigo felt numb as he thought aloud, arms slack as he ignored the rest of the answer. He really was lost. "Is... is this place an infinitely flat plane, or is it a planetary sphere?"

The blonde rolled his cerulean eyes, but accidentally looked directly at the sun through the leaf-dappled canopy. He then tried to sound as dismissive as he could whilst rubbing the pain out of his eyes vigorously. "Oh..." he rubbed, "so you're one of those guys..." he continued to rub, "Listen, just so you know, if you climb the central Sanus mountains, you can literally see the curvature of Remnant, you know."

Ichigo ignored his jabs again, lost in thought. This... this was a problem... a big problem... For some reason, he couldn't open a senkaimon, nor open a garganta out of here. Why couldn't he... he thought back to right before he woke up in... in this foreign dimension. This foreign dimension with an alternate World of the Living, and a broken moon. A straight up alien planet. It was then that it hit him.

"I can take solace in the knowledge that I saw a future without you in this world come to pass."
"Begone, Ichigo Kurosaki. My son... Lost in the dark..."

Yhwach... he was the one... the one who sent him here, using the last of his power upon his demise. Out of sheer spite...

Ichigo's brows furrowed into cold, righteous fury at the thought. The teenage knight, Jaune, was still rubbing his eyes and didn't notice the shift in his expression. The short ferns and dead leaves around the reaper whirled upwards, whipping around his hair and horn in a tight gust until he clamped down on his spiritual pressure before it could choke (or worse) the guy in front of him. Ichigo closed his eyes and took a deep breath, in through his nose, and out through his mouth. Yhwach was dead, permanently- he'd made sure of it with the true ability of his bankai. An ability that not even The Almighty itself could counter. Most of the Sternritter Star Knight core were dead, and the survivors of the Wandenreich would all surrender or flee. They'd won. Soul Society, Hueco Mundo, the Living World; it was all safe. All protected. By him, and his comrades. The Thousand-Year-Blood-War was over. The only problems now, with not going back yet, was his, and his alone. In fact, this may actually prove a boon in forcing the Zero Division to use an alternate method for the issue of the vacant Soul King's throne.

He'd find a way back, but it wasn't an issue if it took a couple days first. He'd just need to find this Ozpin geezer first.

"Hey... Jaune? Do you know where Ozpin would be?"

The armoured initiate drew his fingers away from rubbing at his eyelids at last, rigorously blinking at Ichigo before he answered.

"Didn't the Headteacher say he would greet us on the—" he froze like a deer in headlights, before blurting– "Holy crap! Behind you!"

Ichigo wheeled around, whirling his right arm up over his head on instinct with a flare of reishi before spearing it down through the skull of the black-furred shape that had burst out of the obscuring foliage. A foggy, indistinct sharp point of loose shadowy reishi, bleeding from onyx black to glowing blue at its misty edges pinned the sublimating bone-masked cranium of a now-dead... werewolf? to the forest floor. It was huge, almost two meters in length, and the hollow... no, grimm, as Summer had called it, was a light black in colour, like crude oil under torchlight. The reason it resembled a lycanthrope, rather than just a sizable wolf, was that its legs were splayed out from under its rapidly-decaying body, more like a lizard's gait than that of a canine's. A few osseous spines of white stuck from its sloping upper back, and a few more were present on the backs of the forelimbs and front of the hindlimbs. Ichigo breathed out as he inspected the carcass, shoving his hands in his hoodie pockets before craning his neck round to glance back at Jaune's stiff self behind him.

"That another grimm? It's what they're called, right?"

"A Beowolf... I've never seen one before..." He walked over to the dissolving body, and poked at it with his broadsword. "How'd you kill this thing, anyway? You don't even have a sword, but there's a big hole in its head, righhht here." He wedged his blade's brilliant edge in the wet muck of the sable hole.

Huh, he'd used his first ever Quincy technique in his human body. Not bad for his first time, probably because it was fairly similar to his fullbring, but with reishi rather than reiatsu. Even if the reishi blade had already dispersed, it'd gotten the job done. The Old Man did say he could use his abilities in his human body, and although the gaseous reishi he used needed tightening down, he was off to a good start. He just needed to practice more. Maybe he could try blut next?

"A trick. Oi—" He lightly kicked at Jaune, forcing him back from the monster's body. His hands were still in his pockets.

"H-hey! what was that for!?"

"Stop prodding a dead animal. It's creepy. Why do you look so proud, anyway? You're not even the one who killed it."

Jaune paused, then wiped the prideful smile off his face, before replying, "Nuh-uh! It was a team effort! I warned you, didn't I?"

"That's bullcrap! I did all the work!"

"It was still important! Look, I'll do it again! Behind you!"

"Like I'm gonna fall for... oh." Ichigo turned back, to see five more of the wolf creatures, beowolves, approaching the duo, running on white-clawed dark paws, darting in and out of the treeline. They were strangely almost identical to the one he'd killed, as if they were all part of the same species. They weren't like hollows in that regard at all. There was no individuality to them, no distinguishing features, nor unique reiatsu signature. What were these things?

"W-what are we gonna do?" Jaune trembled.

"Just slay 'em?" Ichigo raised an eyebrow at the fretted question. "Is that sword just for show, or what?"

The blonde knight didn't answer, as a bead of nervous sweat rolled from his left forehead to his chin.

"Well I guess that answers that. Don't worry, let me handle it. It's a chance for me to practice some more." A fight in his human body? Now this would be good.

Ichigo bolted forwards, willing reishi to gather in his palm. It formed another, black-and-vibrant-blue smoky point, barely any more concentrated than last time. Hmm, he'd need a lot more practice, it seemed. Still, he'd make do for now. Ichigo leapt at a Beowolf as it reared back, snapping its jaws, baiting it high. He dived low, stomping through ferns and landing on the earthy floor in stride before it could get its knife-clawed forelimbs back down, and punctured its furred stomach. He yanked upwards with both hands, cleaving its front in twain from stomach to upper chest, leaping back as it gnashed its teeth at him pitifully before falling to the leafy floor after being disembowelled.

Without pause, he spun anti-clockwise and threw the dull blade at the wolf-creature approaching from his six, spearing it in the left forearm and causing it to topple that way. Running at it, Ichigo generated another short hazy dagger of reishi before approaching with a slide, severing first the right limb, before rending the second halfway through as the blade was stuck fast inside its matte hide. Black gunk sputtered out, but the monster, crippled as it was, still bit at him and jerked about wildly. Ichigo sprung back quickly, but not before it caught the tail of his hood, ripping it off before it was forced to let go when Ichigo bashed it with his serrated horn. Hmph. He smirked as he drew more blue-black reishi over his knuckles, before jamming the blunt stake through the muzzle of the wolf, finishing it off. Ichigo glanced up, before he clocked the snarling, feral luminescent red gaze of the third shadow-wolf, padding out from behind an ivy-vined tree and lunging at him.

Ichigo was slid back by the thrashing ferocious creature. Bringing his arms up, the jaws ensnared sideways around his vertically barred forearms, the Beowolf twisting its head to gnaw at them with fierce fangs. Only instead of tearing them off, they were halted by a sparking circuitry of reiatsu, flickering incandescently underneath Ichigo's skin after it bit through his sleeves. Looks like he could get blut to work in his human body too, though he didn't mean to test it so soon. Slamming his knee up against the belly of the beast didn't seem to have much effect, after Ichigo hit it three times more for good measure, so he pulled the wolf down on top of him and laid his back against the dry ground. He bent both his legs up, in a lying crouch position, laying feet flat against the Beowolf's stomach. Gathering a hazy stake of reishi at his feet, he kicked out, knocking the Beowolf up into the dappled understory of the forest as it was impaled on a long misty spike of broken-off reishi, which dissipated as Ichigo lowered his legs. He held his hands behind his head, planting them on the ground, before stretching out his feet and jolting them forwards, flipping himself up with the momentum. As he surveyed round, he grinned, cracking his right knuckles into his left hand. He wasn't hurt at all, but fighting whilst learning on the fly always carried a certain thrill to it, especially in his more vulnerable corporeal body no less. Speaking of vulnerable...

What the heck is that guy doing? Jaune looked like he was doing the real-life equivalent of button mashing, swinging every which-way and that, clipping the Beowolf he was 'fighting' here and there, but not in a way that he was going to be able to take it out before the second one pounced on him from the side. He'd have to take care of them. Jaune blinked as he flinched at an incoming swipe, just as Ichigo flashed into his spiritual body.

Ichigo, no longer limited by his mortal coil, supersonically shunpo'ed just as the second Beowolf leapt, and high-kicked it, shattering every corrupt bone in its body with a touch of his black waraji. Its instantly-dead mangled physique was launched high above the canopy out of sight. He swung the massive sealed form of Zangetsu, still neatly wrapped in pale cloth, at the Beowolf a few meters away, swiping just in front of Jaune. It was turned to dust on the spot from the point-blank air pressure alone, blowing away in the hurricane-force gale caused by the casual one-handed swing. He'd had to be careful not to hit Jaune with that one, so he'd moved just past him to swing. Leaves across the forest were carried away by the blusterous swell, and they were still whirling about the air as he unblinked, and opened his eyelids.

"Whoa... the heck? Where did they go? Ichigo...?" Oh, right.

Ichigo flashed back into his physical body, and stepped towards Jaune with a small wave. "Yo."

"Wha-!? How'd you do that? You just appeared! They just disappeared!" the trainee gestured with both hands at the missing Beowolves in shock.

"You're welcome." Ichigo wasn't looking at Jaune as he spoke, instead he pulled off his hoodie and tied it around his waist by the shredded sleeves. It was then that something fell out of his inner pocket. His phone! Looks like it was on his physical body all this time, he realised as crouched to pick it up.

"You're saying you did that in the time it took me to blink? But I just saw you take a good ten seconds to kill three of them over there! Not that ten seconds isn't impressive, mind you, but the other thing, in one blink is... well it's pretty ridiculous."

"Not my problem if you don't believe it." Ichigo nodded, satisfied with how secure his ruined hoodie was, as he replied absentmindedly. He checked his phone's battery. It was low; he'd need to figure something out. For now, he'd switch it off. Lucky thing it wasn't broken by those wolves, thanks to its hard blue fabric closed case.

"O... kay? Hey, can I just ask how you did the disappearing and reappearing thing...? Or, wait, hold on, don't tell me, is it a faunus thing? You're a... chameleon faunus, right? I've seen that sort of horn in a nature book before."

Ichigo blinked blankly at that, before a light bulb of opportunity went off in his head. "Yeah! Of course! It only works on people without aura, though." Probably for the best to not talk to the living about the spiritual world and afterlife, alien planet or not. He'd had experience as a kid talking about ghosts he met in primary school... it wasn't very pleasant for their still-living relatives.

"Aura? Is that like an optometrist thing, as in 20/20 vision?" Jaune tilted his head, befuddled. "I don't wear glasses, though."

"You don't know?" Ichigo placed a finger on his chin. "Well, someone the day before yesterday told me that it's like a shield, for the soul. I've seen a lot of people with it, today, anyway. A lot of them are right here, in this forest, actually."

"You think it's important, for huntsmen... ing?" Jaune looked mildly concerned at the thought.

Ichigo waved it away disregardingly. "Nah, you'll be fine. My body doesn't have that stuff, and look at me."

"Your... body?" Jaune blinked before he appeared rejuvenated by Ichigo's assurance. "Well, that's all fine and dandy! I'm glad I'm not lacking anything then." Ichigo decided not to disclose that he possessed a superior blut-vene substitute.

"Not lacking anything besides basic training, it seems." Ichigo snarked with a sarcastic smile, elbowing the teenage knight's unarmoured side.

"Hey! That's what this school is for, right? They're literally paid to train us."

Ichigo returned back to a more neutral tone. "Fair enough, then." he froze, holding his hand up for silence. "Listen."

They both turned to face the crunching sound of footsteps behind the greenery, Jaune angling his blade's edge with a tight, wobbling grip tensely at the verdurous bushes, Ichigo gazing expectantly with his arms crossed over his white v-necked t-shirt. He'd sensed someone approaching for a while now, and if his hunch was true, then it'd be whoever tried to impale the bootleg knight next to him on that spear.

Out of the rustling shrubbery and underbrush, a reflective, bronze shield with two shallow cutouts pushed past fronds of verdant ferns to reveal an armoured girl. She wore high, polished bronze greaves and cuisses up her legs, with black fabric underneath, as well as a red trailing waistcloth, black gloves made of the same silken fabric up to her mid biceps, a bronze protective tiara around her forehead underneath her deep red ponytail, which matched her bronze-engraved neck-armour. And finally... was that a metal corset? Where would you buy that stuff? Ichigo double-checked. Yep, a bronze metal-plated corset completed her outfit.

She looked at Jaune first, with a surprised face, and smiled, but when her emerald-green eyes met Ichigo she seemed mildly disappointed. When she spoke, it was with a polite lilt to her voice.

"Hello! It's good to see you got out of that tree, Jaune! Is this your partner, I presume?" she beamed at them, eyes closed whilst tilting her head, hands clasped together amicably.

"No." Ichigo answered immediately. "Did you try to kill this guy?"

The girl's response sounded an odd mix of relieved, and affronted. "What? Of course not! I was just... helping him land?"

"By pinning him to a tree?" Ichigo dryly remarked as he peeped back up towards the red-and-bronze spear still embedded in the tree trunk. Well, the colour scheme lines up, at least.

"It beats broken limbs." Jaune interjected.

"Why're you defending her? You know her? Who even is she?"

"You don't know who I am?" she sounded weirdly hopeful at that.

"Should I?" Ichigo raised an eyebrow at her, imploring her to go on. It was Jaune that answered instead.

"She's an uber-famous cereal mascot." He nodded with his blue eyes closed as he spoke, complete confidence in his words. "How have you never seen her face in the supermarket before?"

"I..." Ichigo couldn't think of an excuse for that. "...I'm not from around here." Luckily everybody else seemed to have their heads full of what they were preparing to say, instead of paying enough attention to scrutinise his excuse too much.

"I'm Pyrrha Nikos! Nice to meet you, for the first time, ever." she sounded oddly eager for that.

"Ichigo Kurosaki. If you want a partner, you can have him." Ichigo gestured an arm back, palm upturned as he motioned at the ill-equipped 'knight' behind him.

"Oh, thank you! You're too kind! Hopefully we can all work to become a great team together!" she hopped up on her toes excitedly.

"Yes! Take me! This guy's a flat-Remnant schizo!"

Ichigo ignored him. This Jaune guy reminded him of Keigo, honestly. "Nah, I'm good. You guys can do whatever you want, but I just need to talk to the Headteacher. Where is he, anyway?"

"He's up on that cliff. The big one, over there."

Ichigo stared through the gap in the treeline, to see a looming cliff face in the clear blue distance, stretching vastly until it faded out of sight. There wasn't a cloud in the sky. "Really? Thanks, I'll get going." He took a stride towards it.

"What? Wait! What about me?" Jaune cried. Ichigo looked back with an annoyed glare.

"You have Pyrrha, right? She'll probably keep you safe. I even sense that aura thing on her. You said you wanted a partner, right?"

Pyrrha was slightly confused at that, but still happy at being trusted so generously. "Why're you saying I have aura like that's so special? And where're you going? Don't tell me you're going to climb the cliffs by yourself?"

Jump up there, actually. "Of course I am. What's wrong?"

Pyrrha was flustered at the thought of letting a potential teammate, someone else who wouldn't treat her like an untouchable idol, slip away. "I... I need your help, too! We're all trainees here, right! We all need to watch each other's backs!"

"Speak for yourself, I'm pretty damn experienced." Even so, Ichigo had already walked back towards them. "But fine... I guess I can put it off for about an hour or two. Where do we have to go, anyway?" Ah well, not as if a relaxing stroll through the woods on a sunny day was something to go out of your way to avoid. Maybe he'd even get to try some more Quincy techniques.

"North is... that way." the amazonian girl pointed a finger out, in the opposite direction of the cliffs. The trees were less dense in that direction, and the foliage was shorter and thinner. The way didn't seem too tricky to travel down.

"Oh! I can do that too. Which way does the sun rise, again? The East, right?" Jaune very carefully checked the position of the sun in the sky, this time making sure to not look directly at it. Idly, Ichigo noticed that Pyrrha hadn't had to check the sun at all.

"Whatever, man. Let's get going." Ichigo set confidently out in the lead, tied hoodie at his waist flowing behind him as the armoured pair shared a glance before following in the path of his long stride.

NEXT: 5 - CASTLING IN THE WOODS - [Fade To Black B03]

Author notes:

And so it begins... what happens when two clueless characters you'd usually use for seamless exposition meet each other? You get horrible advice, such as "No aura? I wouldn't worry about it." or "Invisibility? Yeah, that's totally how faunus work!"

Concept art of Vale I used as inspiration:
[64DOTmediaDOTtumblrDOTcom/d1a7975a4a2b17f699a190e5b3779650/tumblr_mradsodpfq1qgseqbo4_1280DOTpng]
(I don't use that website except for this btw). Here's the official concept artist's page: [rocketsDOTtumblrDOTcom/tagged/RWBY/page/2]

First things first, about the fight. Ichigo was in his HUMAN, PHYSICAL body for the first portion. I can already tell people are gonna wonder if I was lying when I said I wasn't gonna nerf him, so I made sure to explicitly show him literally wipe the last two from existence by barely even touching them in his sealed state. (In the time it took Jaune to blink, no less). You see, that is my solution to the 'tension' question that was brought up in some reviews. Ichigo, when he's able, will treat this world as a space to develop and train his Quincy powers in, using his real body. Uryu, after all, uses his powers in a corporeal form. All Quincies can, as shown by Masaki in the flashback, too. When it gets real, and something more than just his pride is on the line, is when Zangetsu gets backed out, and the SSSteamrolling begins (basically the very next fight coming up, lol). Even then, this is his first time ever using it in his real body, making crappy, barely-solid spikes before he can even shoot a Heilig Pfeil (and yeah, he will). For some reason, loads of people shy away from his Quincy side, when a major reveal is that Ichigo is the ultimate product of Aizen's experiments. Him being the perfect hybrid is integral to Bleach. The aim is:

1) Physical body: high-huntsman/rwby-tier (after he trains with it)
2) Spirit body: NUMBER ONE

Alright, about the rest of the chapter. Thanks to all of the suggestions, spilt between wanting to see initiation and just go straight to volume 2, I realised the issue that people had was that usually nothing of note changes in volume 1 in these sorts of stories. So, I went a middle route. He's still in initiation (because he did seek the greatest concentration of reiatsu he could find with his garganta, which just so happened to be Beacon's Emerald Forest full of trainees with aura), but he's gonna mix things up later on afterwards. Ichigo, whilst outspoken and comfortable with speaking his mind, is more of the sort of character who would never go up to someone and be like "TELL ME WHAT'S WRONG SO I CAN FIX IT!" Instead, he'd keep to himself, but still listen if someone goes out of their way to seek his aid. He respects their ability to sort things out on their own (hence why they split up in Hueco Mundo). That means I've gotta make the characters interact with him, when it comes to the pettier stuff. For a teaser, let's just say, remember what Summer told him about her daughters at her grave?

By the way, I remember reading through other Bleach crossovers, and I've been using that to measure a little of what to write, but mostly, what NOT to write. (lol) Sorry about that, I appreciate your work and all, but I'm gonna avoid a harem/five-man team at all costs. Not to mention, can you imagine Ichigo EVER following orders from someone other than his dad? He ignored Yamamoto to go to Hueco Mundo, no way he's just gonna obey Ozpin like that. Ichigo DOES NOT have a hero/saviour complex; he USED TO, but a major part of his character development was getting over his survivor's guilt from the death of his mother, and letting go of his fear of further loss. He moves on from protecting people because he feels like he has to, to protecting what he values because he likes to. That's a big difference, as in the kind between playing to win, versus playing to not lose. It's also how he goes from healing people after he beats them (Ikkaku), to straight up killing them (Ginjō)— he's okay with losing Ginjō to protect what he values more, despite befriending him. To the one reviewer who asked about a pairing, it made me brainstorm for a little bit before I came up with one. I'll try my best, this being my first work and all, but to pull it off it'd be a good ways into the story anyway, so hopefully I'll be more experienced then. Trust me, it'll be funny, and you won't have to worry about anything other than pure, happy monogamy with the girl in mind. No way in hell am I ever gonna touch something ridiculous like a harem with a 10-foot pole. Bet you're happy now, reviewbro.

Also, RIP to the one guy who got reflexively punched out in the street, it was completely Ichigo's fault. Hey, I just realised that he was technically my first ever OC with dialogue, too. How tragic. I know it might seem like Ichigo calmed down slightly too quickly, but Ichigo's canonically been said to not show that he's worrying or caught up in something, and just focus on what's in front of him. He also still hopes here that he can leave within a day or two (uh oh)...

Finally... thanks to all the 300 followers, 220 favourites and 70 reviewers!